Daylight on Iron Mountain (34 page)

The horses moved skittishly at the words, as if they understood.

Li Chao Ch’in looked about him, seeing how they were stirred by Li Fu Jen’s words – how they had lit a fire in their eyes.

He raised a hand.

‘If we fight Tsao Ch’un we will lose. I have no doubt of it. We are administrators, whereas he… Well, we all know what Tsao Ch’un is. Everyone knows. And rightly fears him. Yet if we
must
fight… if we
really
must… then we must begin at once.’

He looked to Li Weng, his fourth son, the only one who had yet to speak.

‘Weng… have you anything to add?’

Li Weng, while no less sturdy than his brothers, had always been teased for his bookish ways. Of the six of them, he was the intellectual, the thinker. Now, he showed that his reading had not been in vain.

‘One thing before all, Father. History teaches us that we should sound out who is for us and who against. Once we know that we might rally our support. Tsao Ch’un is powerful, yes, and the Banners will probably obey him, but he has made many enemies these past years. If we can persuade those enemies to become
our
friends…’

Li Chao Ch’in raised his chin, nodding thoughtfully. For the first time that day, he felt the most slender glimmer of hope. Li Weng was right. It was not they alone who had fallen out with Tsao Ch’un. He had offended many. Only how far did their hatred go? Would they fight alongside the Seven, or would they be afraid to join a war against Tsao Ch’un?

He looked to his fourth son and smiled.

‘And so the bookworm turns…’

There was laughter, then smiles all round as Li Peng leaned across and ruffled Weng’s hair. Only Li Chao Ch’in, seeing it, felt his heart break again, knowing that this was possibly the last time he would see them so. For it was war. There was no doubting it, after all. A war in Heaven itself. Li Chao Ch’in swallowed and looked down.

‘Father?’

He looked up, meeting Weng’s eyes again. ‘It’s all right, Weng. I’m okay. I was just thinking… maybe we should leave the horses here and get a cruiser to come and pick us up. If we’re to begin…’

He left it unsaid, but now that it had been decided, then there was nothing left but to act. To wait any longer… no… they must begin at once.

Yet still he hesitated. Still he longed for things to be the way they’d been two days ago. Before the sky had changed. Before the days of ease had ended.

*

Li Chao Ch’in bowed low, welcoming his unexpected guests, the great audience room cleared for once of servants.

‘Fan Peng… Prince Li…’

He and his sons had arrived back only minutes earlier, to find the estate in turmoil, details of Tsao Ch’un’s preliminary strikes fresh, uncensored, on all the news channels. When he’d subsequently heard that an unidentified cruiser had entered Tongjiang’s airspace he had expected the worst. Even so, he had not panicked; had not had the craft shot out of the air, as another might have done. That restraint had, for once, paid off.

‘Forgive us for imposing on you,’ Fan Li said, kneeling and bowing low, taking Li Chao Ch’in’s right hand as he did and placing the iron ring that rested there to his lips. ‘We beg you, my Lord, to have mercy on us and give us shelter…’

‘Fan Li… please… you are my guests…’

There was grief in the young man’s face as he glanced up; a grief that was mirrored in his mother’s countenance. The sight of it moved Li Chao Ch’in deeply, for Fan Chang had been like a brother to him.

‘Please, Prince Fan… you do not have to bow to me.’

But Fan Li remained kneeling, his head bowed. ‘We were attacked, Lord Li. He sent two of his attack craft out after us… we shot them both out of the sky, but not before one of them knocked out our communications. If it had not been for our pilot…’

The young man stopped, composing himself.

‘It was awful,’ he said quietly. ‘We could see it from the sky as we flew away… That cunt torched the whole fucking palace, and the servants… they threw the poor bastards back into the flames…’

That cunt
… Li Chao Ch’in noted that; noted the venom in the young man’s voice when he’d said it. Until that moment, he had still been contemplating making some kind of peace with Tsao Ch’un. But that was impossible now, he realized, for he had taken in as guests Fan Chang’s wife along with his son and heir. That was an irreversible act. Unless, of course, he handed them over to Tsao Ch’un. But how could he do that? How could he face his sons – how face
himself
– if he acted thus?

No. It was war.

Li Chao Ch’in groaned, knowing that, for all he had said to his sons, he had not really decided until that instant. He had wanted to keep it all safe – he and all his friends and family – but that simply was not possible. Tsao Ch’un wanted them all dead, and what Tsao Ch’un wanted Tsao Ch’un usually got.

He pulled Fan Cho to his feet, then placed his hands gently on the young man’s shoulders.

‘Cousin Li… Lady Fan… my house is as yours. You are my kin, and I promise to protect you, if I can…’

Li’s head dropped, then he began to weep. ‘My father…’

Behind him, his mother began to wail, her voice rising and falling in torment.

‘Your father was a good man,’ Li Chao Ch’in said, the slightest tremor in his voice. ‘A brave man, too. I will miss him greatly. But I would be as a father to you, Fan Li, if you would have that?’

Fan Li fell to his knees again, clutching at Li Chao Ch’in’s knees. ‘I would be honoured, my Lord…’

‘Then come,’ he said, raising the boy to his feet a second time. ‘I need you to stand beside me, Fan Li, while I call our cousins.’

An hour later, Li Chao Ch’in sat at his desk, alone. The arrival of Prince Fan and his mother had set off a spate of calls between the Seven that had ended abruptly ten minutes back, when Tsao Ch’un had cut their communications.

It was an ominous portent. But much had been decided before the lines went down. He knew, for instance, that they were of one mind in fighting Tsao Ch’un, whatever the result. Fan Chang’s death had achieved that much, to weld them into a single force. Tsao Ch’un had crossed the line.

Looking back, he could see it clearly now: the slow decline, the descent from greatness into paranoia. Tsao Ch’un had always been whimsically unpredictable, and thus always dangerous, but always clever with it too, knowing whom to hurt and whom to praise. Whatever his excesses, he had always been loyal to those who were loyal to him. How else could he have achieved what he’d achieved. Only recently…

It was the death of his wives, Li Chao Ch’in decided. It was that that had pushed him over the edge. But it barely mattered now. All that mattered were the hours ahead.

He let out a long breath. They had to overthrow him. To wage total war against him. But how in the gods’ names did they fight that war? How stop the primal force that was Tsao Ch’un in his anger?

The truth was, none of them had the least idea. Kill him they must. But how did they go about that? Dozens had tried and not a single one of them still lived, while Tsao Ch’un…

Li Chao Ch’in stood, then walked over to the window. He had assigned each of his sons a separate task. But now, with the network down, they were idle, like him. Until they could find another means of contacting each other…

One thing he knew for certain. He could not sit here in Tongjiang and wait for Tsao Ch’un to come to him. To do so would mean certain death. No. He had to organize somehow.

Shepherd was the key. He was sure of it. If he could only get Amos Shepherd on their side they might have a chance. Only Shepherd was Tsao Ch’un’s man, and besides, he was half a world away.

Outside a craft was setting down. Li Chao Ch’in watched it a moment, then turned away. Friends were arriving all the while now, rallying to his call, but it was not enough. None of it was enough. Unless they could turn the Banners, unless they could find some way of getting to the man himself…

There was a knocking on the outer door.

‘Who is it?’ he called, his voice sounding old and frail even to his own ears.

‘It is I, Father. Li Peng.’

‘Then come…’

Li Peng came several paces into the room, then bowed low. ‘Father, we have a guest.’

Li Chao Ch’in gestured towards the big window at his back. ‘I know. I saw…’

‘No, Father. He’s incoming right now. We’ve told him that if there’s any funny business we’ll blow him out of the sky.’

‘Him?’

‘Forgive me, Father. I mean Shen Fu… the First Dragon… he’ll be here in just ten minutes.’

*

The First Dragon set the map aside, then looked up at his host. Li Chao Ch’in looked drawn and pale, like a man who’d had no sleep.

‘Things are looking bad. But not as bad as they might have been.’

‘How so?’

‘You might, for instance, have been blind.’

‘But we
are
blind. Tsao Ch’un is jamming all our communications.’

‘Not all. You have my eyes.’

‘Your eyes… ?’

‘Oh, we don’t like to speak of it, but the Ministry possesses a discreet communications network. It was designed precisely for times like this.’ The First Dragon looked up, meeting his eyes coldly. ‘You may use it if you wish.’

Li Chao Chin stared at him a moment, then his face split into a wide grin. ‘Are you serious, Shen Fu? A proper communications network? One Tsao Ch’un knows nothing of ?’

‘Well, if he does, we’ll soon find out. But as far as I know—’

‘But that’s wonderful! If we could get that up and running…’

Li Chao Ch’in stopped, noticing the look on the First Dragon’s face.

‘What?’

Shen Fu nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Lord Li, but there is bad news as well as good. Tsao Ch’un has acted quickly. He has sent in one of his Banners, under the command of his eldest son, Tsao Heng.’

‘A whole Banner army?’

‘Yes. Half a million men. They went in an hour back… to Manhattan Island…’

Li Chao Ch’in looked down, his whole manner suddenly downcast. Manhattan Island was where Wu Hsien had his palace.

‘Has he been captured?’

‘Not yet. At least, not according to our sources. But who knows how long he will evade their forces? Tsao Ch’un, it seems, means to divide us then pick us off one by one.’

Lord Li stared at him. ‘You know… that still sounds very odd. That “us”. You of all people… I would have said you were the most loyal of all his servants.’

‘I was. Until he crossed the line.’

‘But there must have been doubters… in the Ministry.’

‘There were. And now they’re dead.’

‘And you are here.’

‘Yes. Together with my hands… my
shou
…’

Shen Fu stood, looking like a great gaunt crow, his black robe dragging behind him on the floor. ‘Let me say what I must, Li Chao Ch’in, without wishing to cause you any loss of face. At present you don’t know what to do, am I right?’

‘We were trying to contact our friends…’

‘And then Tsao Ch’un put a stop to that, neh? And now what? You are here and he is… well… you simply do not know, neh? He might be fifteen minutes away, at the head of another Banner army. You simply wouldn’t know.’

‘But now we have your eyes…’

‘Maybe so. But that is not the point I’m trying to make. What will win this war or lose it is information… knowledge of what your enemy is doing… of when and where and why.’

Shen Fu had been pacing slowly up and down as he said this. Now he turned, looking directly at the T’ang.

‘Right now we have one single, small advantage, and that is that Tsao Ch’un did not plan this war. If he had it would already have been over. You would have been dead, and your cousins along with you. As it is…well, we have a chance. A very slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t see that, Shen Fu. If Tsao Ch’un has all the armies.’

‘Ah… but he doesn’t. When the last of the American states surrendered to Jiang Lei, Tsao Ch’un disbanded the majority of his Banner armies. Now only six remain, and those, for the main part, will be loyal to Tsao Ch’un.’

‘So?’

‘So this… When the American campaign was stalling, Tsao Ch’un brought in mercenaries – trained soldiers from the old Northern European States – Danes and Swedes, Finns, Norwegians, Lithuanians, Poles and Russians – to form new Banner armies. It was those new Banners that finally swung the balance. The American empire fell and with it the last opponents of Tsao Ch’un.’

Li Chao Ch’in shrugged. ‘Every schoolboy knows as much.’

‘Maybe… but what they do not know is how much bad feeling there was among the mercenary ranks. Oh, they were paid off, and paid well… Only many felt that Tsao Ch’un was not grateful enough… That he was, perhaps,
embarrassed by the need to call on them.’

‘I see, and you think…?’

‘That maybe they would form those Banners again. If we asked them to. If the cause was right. And if, at the end of it, we were to make the Banners permanent.’

Li Chao Ch’in drew in a sharp breath at that. Was that the cost of this? To make the
Hung Mao
armies permanent?

He looked away, troubled.

‘I would have to consult my cousins.’

‘Of course… but you yourself would have no objection?’

Li Chao Ch’in hesitated, then looked to Shen Fu again. ‘What choice have we? To fight a war without armies… how is that possible?’

Shen Fu smiled tightly. ‘It isn’t. So make those calls. Speak to your cousins. And Lord Li…’

‘Yes, Shen Fu?’

‘Tell them that they must decide right now. Tomorrow will be too late.’

While Li Chao Ch’in went off to make his calls, the First Dragon made a call of his own, on a secret line one of his predecessors had set up twenty years ago but never used.

‘Marshal…’

Aaltonen, Head of Security for City Europe, was seventy-six now, the same age as Tsao Ch’un. Only the years had treated him with greater kindness than his Master, and though his hair was grey, his face was ruddy with health and his eyes sharp and vigorous.

The old man bowed respectfully. ‘First Dragon… how unexpected.’

But Shen Fu was not fooled. He knew Aaltonen had been waiting for a call, if not from him then from one or other of the Seven, for he had kept an eye on the old man these past few months, noting who he’d been in contact with. If anyone were the key to this, it was Aaltonen, for of all the old North European mercenaries, only he had retained any kind of position after the disbanding of the Banners.