Breaking Bamboo (29 page)

Wind rattled the shutters and Guang sensed it was changing direction. He knew it would drop soon. Then dense fogs would fill the river all night until dawn. To change an unpleasant a subject he mentioned this prediction to Chen Song.

‘Are you sure?’

Guang prickled.

‘I am seldom wrong on weather matters – even if I am Wang Ting-bo’s dupe!’

Chen Song nodded and said: ‘Then there may be a way. After all, our spies come and go through the Mongol camp. I shall return in a few hours.’

While he was gone the lamp and candles flickered. Finally, Guang fell asleep in his chair. When he awoke Chen Song stood before him.

‘I have commanded the servants to fetch tea,’ he said.

While they waited for refreshments, Guang listened. His friend had been busy that night. He claimed to have selected a handful of men proficient at entering the Mongol camp un detected – and more importantly, at leaving the same way. It seemed Chen Song was still in communication with his old associates among the spies, especially one from Fukkien Province. The Fukkien had explored the artillery companies facing the city using a stolen quartermaster’s licence to sell wine and had learned many useful things. On such a dubious fellow Chen Song asked Guang to surrender his entire trust.

‘Your intentions must be hidden if you are to survive,’ he declared. ‘Your tactics must be unconventional.’

He outlined a plan so daring, yet in essence so simple, that Guang wondered if he had underestimated his friend.

‘It is essential the Mongol turncoat has no prior warning. No one must be told, not even His Excellency. The Fukkien will manage everything.’

‘Our great patron would hardly approve,’ said Guang. ‘In fact, you are proposing that I deceive him.’

Chen Song answered with a little smile.

‘If it works he can hardly complain.’

‘And if it does not?’

‘You will not complain either. Or not for long. But you may yet win through! Remember the old proverb: when the map is unrolled, the dagger is revealed.’

Guang chuckled at this wit, though he seemed to recollect the historical incident that inspired the proverb had ended very unhappily.

*

Two days later, on a winter’s night when the moon had deserted the Middle Kingdom, a flat, narrow boat slid away from the shadow of the pontoon bridge connecting the Twin Cities. Six men crouched low as they paddled. Fog rolled over the mile-wide river and they travelled almost blindly. Dark waters were revealed; then left behind.

Occasionally the rowers detected light through the murky air – watch fires and lanterns from Nancheng and Fouzhou. In siege-time the ramparts were well lit at night so the barbarians might know the defenders’ valour still glowed.

Soon the Twin Cities were left behind and the boat entered channels formed by gravel banks. The boatman at the prow half-rose as they neared an island of silt and driftwood. The danger was less about getting stuck than making a noise. He directed the boat towards the southern shore, the side of the river where Nancheng lay, and where General A-ku had constructed his largest camp.

Now the lights filtering through the fog resembled a thousand glow-worms, each a fire tended by men born in dry lands with flat horizons. Uncouth men whose only reason to be here was conquest. Men who despised the watery people they sought to subdue.

Scents tainted the thick air; roasting meat, wood-smoke and something acrid, elusive, the fetor produced by tens of thousands living in close proximity. The rowers heard song-snatches, random shouts, sounds distorted by the fog. Once they heard a braying laugh, quite clear, and knew they had paddled too near the shore. At last the helmsman held up his hand and the boat drifted slowly on the current, back the way it had come. In the silence one of the rowers rose and whispered to their guide.

‘Is this the place?’

The boatman nodded, gesturing at a gravel-bank.

‘Set us ashore,’ murmured Guang. ‘Remember, wait at the place we agreed. If you fail me, His Excellency Wang Bai. . .’

He need say no more. The Pacification Commissioner’s nephew had recently gained a new title – Ineffable Assessor of Disloyal Conduct. Whole families hung from trees in the East Market, punished for a wayward relative’s treason.

The boatman guided the boat towards the shore. Curtains of mist opened and closed before them. A faint bump and their senses strained the night for movement. Nothing. Just ripples of river, muffled splashing as they waded onto dry land.

Once on firm ground the five formed a huddle. They were a ragged sight. Deliberately so. Sacks of grain and skins of cheap wine hung on their backs. If challenged they could reply that they were bearing supplies to their company and produce a passport written in the strange Mongol script to prove it. They wore the uniforms and armour of North Chinese auxiliaries loyal to the barbarians, even down to their weapons.

Now Guang must surrender even the pretence of command.

He did so reluctantly.

‘Well, my friend,’ he said, addressing a grizzled man with a scar across his cheek. ‘We are in your hands now.’

The man nodded. He was Han Chinese like those he had undertaken to lead through the camp.

‘I still do not see why I was given no notice,’ muttered the scar-faced man. Indeed, the Fukkien had forced him into the narrow boat at knifepoint. ‘Surely I must warn my kinsman you are coming.’

‘I wish to communicate His Excellency’s assurances to your relative then leave,’ replied Guang, in a low voice. ‘He needs no warning for that.’

‘I have another idea,’ said the guide. ‘Why not wait here?

Send your boat to hide in the mist while you stay on the shore.

I shall return with my brother-in-law. It will be safer for us all.’

The Fukkien stepped closer to him and the scar-faced man grew uneasy.

‘No,’ said Guang. ‘We will follow your original plan.’

A furtive look crossed the man’s face.

‘As you wish. It’s all the same. Follow me.’

Their guide strolled into the mist, the Fukkien close by his side. The rest of the party followed, assuming casual expressions. They climbed the high riverbank then took a muddy path to a palisade of wooden stakes. As their guide had predicted it was unguarded. The reason was plain to see – and smell. Even as they watched, a stoop-backed peasant in rags trundled a wheelbarrow full of human ordure down a short wooden jetty and dumped it in the river.

‘This way,’ said the guide.

Beyond the palisade they entered a world of conical, animal-hide tents. The fog revealed humps and glowing fires. Upright shapes moved through the grey air. Here the scents they had detected on the river were so concentrated Guang almost retched. Their guide walked quickly, his head lowered, the Fukkien just behind. If they became separated from the scar-faced man, Guang did not care to think how they would find a way back through A-ku’s camp. He had already decided to perish sooner than be captured. In his belt was a dagger sheathed in fast-acting poison to make certain of it.

Each step took them deeper into the fog-shrouded camp, the air thickened by clouds of drifting smoke. They passed circles of lolling men, spear-thickets and sudden voices. Once they blundered into a crowd of Mongols taunting two blinded and naked prisoners to fight with fists and teeth alone. Skins containing fermented ewe’s milk circulated among the jostling warriors. The air was full of wagers. No one challenged them.

Their guide stepped past an enclosure where huge iron pots bubbled over fires. Slaves fed the flames, depositing naked bodies into cauldrons. A sickly sweet smell filled Guang’s gorge with bile. He had heard rumours of this place. Everyone knew the Mongols rendered down the carcasses of fallen enemies. Grease was essential in war, whatever its provenance.

Then they circled a pit of cowering prisoners weighed down by heavy wooden yokes. Their scar-faced guide began to speak to a guard in their uncouth tongue. Before he could say more than one word the Fukkien had taken his arm and was whispering urgently in his ear, evidently sharing a joke. The warrior looked at them in contempt, then spat down on the men below. Guang caught a glimpse of white eyes before they moved on.

Next came a regiment recruited from the north: Han Chinese, and more dangerous than Mongols for they took more notice of their own kind.

Yet no one disturbed their progress. Chen Song had hired a reputable sorcerer to chant favourable spells through the long night to ensure their invisibility and perhaps his magic worked.

They travelled the enemy lines, skirting corrals of camels and horses, dung piles and mountains of straw, until they reached the catapult companies facing Nancheng. At last their guide halted. Even in the darkness his long white scar showed plainly.

‘I will take you to my kinsman,’ he whispered. ‘We must pass through that line of catapults. Beyond lies his tent. You must wait here until I return. Perhaps I can bring horses, as I promised.’

The man’s forehead was shiny. The exertion of their dangerous journey had been too much for him. Unless, of course, he feared a different kind of discovery. Guang inspected his men: they were remarkably calm. The Fukkien seemed quite at ease.

Guang caught the latter’s unblinking gaze and slowly lowered his eye-lids.

They stepped aside for a drunken soldier staggering to the palisade wall, muttering to himself as he released a steaming jet. Guang stepped close to their guide, his face inches from the livid scar. When the soldier had blundered away and vanished in the fog, he murmured: ‘Tell me, my friend, why did your brother-in-law insist that a senior officer come to fetch him? It hardly makes sense.’

Their guide looked from face to face. Guang detected the acrid scent of fear.

‘So he. . . he would know you are in earnest,’ said the man.

‘I am,’ said Guang.

He shoved the short dagger concealed beneath his cloak into the fellow’s stomach, twisting it so the poison worked quickly.

The Fukkien had already covered the man’s mouth. Their guide was carried to a ditch and laid out of sight almost before he had slumped. Hidden beneath his own dark cloak, he looked strangely at peace, like a man sleeping.

The Fukkien motioned and they walked towards the upright shape of a catapult, vague in the mist. If all had gone according to plan, they were near the corner of the camp, beside the river. Guang realised he was shivering and wondered if his men noticed. He must not think of the dead man. He was gone.

Quite behind him. He must never think of him again.

‘You are sure this is the artillery company you mentioned?’ he asked the Fukkien.

‘Yes.’

‘And you can identify the officer you told me about? You are sure of his name?’

The Fukkien looked at him curiously.

‘Talk puts us all in danger,’ he murmured.

Guang repressed panic. He must rely absolutely on the Fukkien or perish here.

They approached a catapult rising like a huge gallows. Half a dozen Han Chinese crouched at its base round a fire of dried dung and wet leaves. Clouds of smoke added to the fog. Little surprise the artillerymen were Han, for the Mongols possessed no skill in such matters. A short officer wearing an embroidered coat squatted closest to the flames. Even in the bad light his deep tan suggested a curious story.

The Fukkien stepped forward.

‘Is this the catapult nearest the corner tower?’ he asked. ‘I cannot tell for the fog.’

‘It is,’ said the officer.

‘Ah!’ said the Fukkien. ‘You are the one they call Li Tse!

Don’t you remember me?’

The officer glanced up wearily. He struggled to place the Fukkien’s face. Certainly there was something oddly forgettable about him. In the same way, his words did not linger in one’s mind when he spoke.

‘No. . . Ah! Now I do! The quartermaster with wine that should not be his! Ha! You have more?’

‘Much more. And at the same price.’

The other artillerymen stirred expectantly.

‘Here!’ said the Fukkien, offering a wineskin. ‘Try this, my friend.’

The officer took it and tilted.

‘Good!’ he said. ‘A little bitter, but good!’

The bitterness bore a scent of cloves. Before long anyone who tasted the wine would be fast asleep.

‘Let your men try it too,’ said the Fukkien. ‘And keep your voice down. Our business must be private.’

Reluctantly, the officer surrendered the wineskin. It passed from hand to hand.

‘What is your name again?’ asked Li Tse, suddenly suspicious. ‘Which regiment are you attached to?’

Guang looked round. It was a miracle their conversation had not alerted the neighbouring catapult crews. But nearly everyone was asleep and the fog deadened those noises it did not distort.

‘Step aside with me, sir,’ said the Fukkien. ‘We will agree a price in private.’

‘I asked what regiment?’ repeated the officer.

Guang could bear it no longer.

‘I told you we should sell it to Bayke!’ he hissed, addressing the Fukkien. ‘Let’s go to him now.’

The Fukkien shot Guang a look of surprise, then his face went gravely blank. Meanwhile the artillery officer reached for the wineskin circulating among his men.

‘Hey, not so quick!’ he said.

‘Come with us or stay here,’ said Guang.

He turned to leave and sensed the Fukkien follow reluctantly. Everything depended on the next moment. Guang had taken a huge risk. If the officer did not join them all they had endured, the danger and fear, the murder of their guide, would be for nothing. And they would still need to escape the camp.

Guang led his men deeper into the mist. It seemed his ploy had failed. Then Li Tse appeared behind them through the fog.

‘Hey!’ called the officer. His last word that night. Concealed by the rolling air, they clamped hands over his mouth. He writhed until a blow stunned him, and the Fukkien’s poison was forced down a tube between his lips. A few moments later they slid his unconscious body into a long sack tied with hemp cords.

Guang listened. The camp was full of noises. Whinnying horses and snorting camels. Crackling log fires and mournful singers. The voices, snuffles and snores of countless men.