Empire of Dragons (36 page)

Plump-cheeked children hung out of the windows overlooking the street to admire that impressive parade, but the voices of their parents calling them back in sounded worried. Rare passersby hurried along, and an unreal silence seemed to have fallen on the city. Metellus exchanged an uneasy look with his centurions and they passed the word on to the men: ‘Be careful. Anything could happen at any moment.’

‘I’ve managed to loosen my bonds,’ replied Antoninus. ‘If I can get free, I’ll help the others.’

‘Good,’ replied Quadratus, ‘but don’t take any initiative without the commander’s orders.’

The column had arrived at a point where the road narrowed under an archway which rested on thick stone pillars. The horsemen had to regroup into a single file, since the passage was not wide enough for two men to ride through side by side. Just when Wei’s carriage was proceeding under the archway, several men wearing red armbands, dressed in grey tunics and trousers, dropped swiftly from the top, sliding down silk ropes. They landed on the roof of the carriage and tried to slash it open with swords and axes. Fierce fighting broke out between the escort and the aggressors as Wei’s men climbed on to the top of the carriage to fend off the attack.

Metellus and his men were forced to remain at a distance, closely guarded by a group of mercenaries of the rearguard with their weapons drawn. They must have received strict orders indeed regarding the prisoners, because they didn’t take their eyes off them for a moment, as if nothing were happening just a few short steps away; as if the very survival of their leader were not at stake.

The assailants moved with deadly speed: their weapons flashed like lightning bolts, their sudden movements were imperceptible and unforeseeable, until the moment they struck.

Metellus saw Prince Dan Qing writhing violently at the heart of the clanging and fighting, his head still covered by the black hood. It was as though the fury of the battle that raged around him had invaded him as well, but the knots that held him only dug deeper into his skin. Metellus also caught a glimpse of Wei, stock still inside his carriage, paralysed by fear, possibly, or seized by a sudden desire to die. Or perhaps he was merely totally unmoved, his mind far away from the scuffle.

Everything happened in a few moments that seemed to stretch on infinitely. The group at the head of the escort, which had already passed under the arch, spun back around. When their horses reached the archway, they catapulted from their saddles, vaulting over the suspended span and landing firmly on the carriage roof.

Flying Foxes.

The first defenders, mostly Manchurian mercenaries, had already been killed or driven away, but the battle was on even terms now. The exchange of blows became so fast and so flawless that Metellus and his men nearly forgot that they were prisoners, becoming completely absorbed in the spectacle of a struggle that seemed more like the clash of demons animated by infernal energy than of human beings.

The men with the red armbands abandoned the roof of the carriage, springing to the ground so they could fight more freely, but in no time the numerical superiority of the Flying Foxes had won the upper hand. One of the assailants fell dead, then a second and a third: the first run through from front to back, another neatly decapitated, their comrade hurled against the wall with such force that his skull shattered. A fourth was taken alive and disarmed before he could manage to kill himself.

Only then did Wei leave the carriage and look around. The surviving Manchurian mercenaries approached with their lit torches and the scene of the massacre appeared in all its gruesome reality. The warrior who seemed to be the leader of the Flying Foxes approached the prisoner they’d taken alive and ripped the kerchief from his face, revealing a boy of perhaps twenty. ‘You’ll be sorry you didn’t die when I get to work on you,’ he snarled.

‘Who are those men, Commander?’ asked Publius.

Metellus tried to read meaning into the scene he saw before him, cut by deep shadows and bloody light. ‘Wei was attacked by a group who must be against him taking power, but he won out in the end. You’ve seen for yourselves: the Flying Foxes are invincible.’

‘We beat them,’ replied Rufus.

‘Well, we did, thanks to Severus’s shields, and also because they weren’t prepared for our style of fighting, but . . .’

Metellus’s words were interrupted by a yell and a loud chorus of cursing: the captured rebel had been struck in the middle of his forehead by an arrow loosed from above, and he crumpled to the ground. All around the arrow shaft blood gushed copiously, covering the youth’s body, which cramped up in violent spasms, as if he were refusing to surrender to the death that had already taken him.

Metellus turned in the direction from which the arrow had come and distinctly saw, on the rooftop of the house opposite him, a dark figure holding a bow. Two more arrows flew in rapid succession and two of the eunuch’s guards dropped dead.

Only then was Wei’s apparent impassivity perturbed. He shouted, ‘Seize that man, damn you! Get him!’

Another arrow whistled by, missing Wei by a hair’s breadth and sinking instead into the leg of one of his Manchurian mercenaries. The man fell to the ground, twisting and moaning in pain. The archer then took off, springing from one rooftop to another with incredible leaps.

In the confusion that followed the assault, Dan Qing, still hooded, had been forced back and was now only a few steps away from the Roman prisoners. Metellus whispered just loud enough to make himself heard: ‘Prince, we’re here.’

‘Is that you, Xiong Ying? What has happened?’ asked Dan Qing. ‘What was all that uproar? Are you all right? Is anyone hurt?’

‘We’re fine. The men who launched the attack were after Wei, not us.’

‘And what happened?’

‘They were defeated. Three of them are dead. A couple of them got away. A survivor was taken prisoner but killed by one of his comrades posted up on the rooftops. The Flying Foxes are after him now. They’ve got their bows drawn . . .’

The heavy arrows that the Flying Foxes had nocked into their bows were more like harpoons, with silk ropes at their tails. Their purpose became clear to Metellus: they were shot into the beams under the eaves, where they stuck fast. The archers swiftly hoisted themselves up on the ropes and took off after the fugitive.

‘He has a red lace on his arm, like the others did,’ continued Metellus. ‘He’s moving fast, but Wei’s men are close behind. It looks like they’re flying! Gods, what is this place?’

‘The Red Lotus,’ murmured Dan Qing. ‘Not all hope is lost, then. Can you see anything else?’

Metellus glimpsed the fugitive as he dropped behind the edge of a rooftop, reappeared briefly inside a terrace and then vanished entirely.

Wei was giving insistent orders to his guard, and half a dozen men shot off at a gallop in different directions. He then signalled to the escort, who regrouped in a compact formation. The corpses were gathered and loaded on to a wagon, then Wei re-entered his carriage and the convoy started up again.

Antoninus turned towards Metellus. ‘What’s going to happen now, Commander?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Metellus. ‘But you try to stay alive. Whatever happens, try to stay alive.’

T
HE FULL MOON HAD RISEN
behind the mountains, illuminating the rooftops of Luoyang, glittering with the evening dew. Dark shapes ran as light and fast as shadows after another figure who jumped from one terrace to another, climbed nimbly up steep pinnacles, leapt on to the branches of the great trees waving their foliage over hidden gardens, and then scurried like a squirrel towards the top of another building.

The Flying Foxes gave the fugitive no respite. They hunted him down from the left and from the right, trying to drive him towards a point where the city’s houses sloped down towards the walls. But the runaway appeared and disappeared continually, taking cover whenever possible and then darting off in another direction as soon as his pursuers had passed. At a certain point, he managed to get enough of a lead to shin up a tower and establish his stalkers’ bearings, unseen by them. As soon as he saw one of them sailing from one rooftop to another, he drew his bow and ran him through in mid-leap. The lifeless body plummeted to the road below. The resulting confusion allowed the archer to disappear under a hatch and to descend a staircase to the atrium, from where he reached the street. A dark archway offered the fugitive refuge for long enough to allow the Flying Foxes to scatter in the distance, like a pack of bewildered bloodhounds who had lost the scent of their prey.

When all was calm, the mysterious figure removed the kerchief that covered his face, revealing a delicate, feminine oval shape and jet-black eyes that sparkled for an instant in the light of the moon like a young tiger’s. She opened the door at her back with a light touch of her hand and found herself in an inner courtyard where a horse waited, its reins tied to an iron ring.

She loosened them and glanced back outside. She strained to hear, until she made out a slight buzz at the end of the street: a place with a lot of people, she hoped, where she could blend in unnoticed . . . She walked at a fast pace in that direction, leading the horse by its reins, heading towards the dim light she could see at the road’s end. She soon found herself at the edge of a little square bounded on the opposite side by a caravanserai. A confused babble emerged from the vast enclosure: people’s voices joined with the loud snorting of Bactrian camels, the huge beasts that accompanied caravans for immense distances, bringing goods from one side of the world to the other. The girl was about to step out into the open when a cavalry squad passed by at a gallop with their unsheathed swords pointed forward. She drew back into the darkness and waited until their furious galloping faded into the distance. She checked that no one else was coming and crossed the square, facing the courtyard of the big caravanserai.

She took a look around as she tied her horse to a crib. The inner part of the enclosure was illuminated by a number of coloured lanterns that spread a warm light under the arches, over the baled merchandise, on the servants tending the animals and on the colourful characters who came from every part of the world, wearing costumes of every sort, conversing in a multitude of languages and getting ready to sit down for their dinner after concluding deals with the other merchants who frequented the place.

The girl realized that she was still wearing the red ribbon on her arm and she slipped it off as soon as she heard voices behind her. She tucked it under her belt and turned her head away, to avoid meeting anyone’s eye.

‘Easy on that crate! It’s fragile, I said, damn you!’ croaked the voice with a strong foreign accent.

The girl moved a little to let them by and a corpulent, dark-skinned merchant passed alongside her, accompanied by two servants who were dragging a wooden crate on a wobbly cart.

A Chinese scullery boy approached the man. ‘Very honourable Daruma,’ he said, ‘your most honourable colleague Wu He awaits you for dinner.’

‘I’ll be there straight away, my boy,’ replied Daruma, and he moved his bulky frame towards the entrance to the tavern at the end of the caravanserai.

Behind him, the girl reached out her hand and deftly snatched a swatch of cloth resting on top of a bale of raw wool. She draped it over her shoulders to hide her grey tunic and entered the tavern herself. She went to sit down at the end of the smoky room just like any other regular customer, in a dimly lit corner near the table where Daruma and the Chinese merchant were sitting.

A group of Mongolian musicians sitting under an archway were playing string instruments, producing low-pitched sounds that they accompanied with voices just as resonant. The soloist had a voice so deep that the girl could feel it vibrate inside her.

‘It has been a terrible year . . .’ started up the Chinese merchant.

‘. . . production was down, parasites nearly wiped out the silk worms . . .’ Daruma finished his words with a knowing air. ‘I’ve heard this story before, Wu He. You’re looking for an increase of 10 to 20 per cent. There has never been a good year since I’ve known you and your prices are always going up.’

‘Ah! You mustn’t complain!’ retorted Wu He. ‘Who knows how much those Westerners earn when they sell our silk to the foreign devils. Oh, by the way, do you know that some of them showed up in the city just a short time ago? Strange-looking characters with bizarre clothing. They were with the convoy of the eunuch Wei, may the gods preserve him, and they seemed to be prisoners.’

The girl overheard his words and unobtrusively slipped along the bench to get as close as possible to the two merchants, who were seemingly intent on their conversation.

Daruma noticed her move but didn’t react and continued speaking with Wu He. ‘Foreigners, you say? What did they look like?’

‘Round eyes, beards as thick and dark as a boar’s bristles, hair on their arms and legs like monkeys . . . wearing metal bracelets at their wrists. That’s how a servant of mine described them to me. And then there was another prisoner, Chinese it seemed, to judge from his clothing, whose head was covered by a hood.’

The girl could not hold back. ‘I could not help but hear your words, honourable gentlemen,’ she said, ‘and I would be very curious to see these foreigners, because I have never seen one in my whole life. They say they are truly horrible . . . Do you know where they’ve been taken?’

Wu He considered her in surprise, while Daruma shot her an enquiring look: that sudden remark from a stranger who had been listening in on their conversation seemed quite out of place.

Wu He began to speak nonetheless: ‘As far as I know, it seems they were taking them to . . .’

He hadn’t finished what he was saying when a group of imperial army soldiers entered the tavern. The girl immediately lowered her gaze and turned her head towards the wall, and that didn’t escape Daruma’s attention either. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her close to speak to her so that the others could not hear. ‘Too slight a wrist to be a man’s, but very strong nonetheless,’ he thought. Aloud, he said, ‘And now, if you don’t tell me why you’re interested in those foreigners, I’ll tell those soldiers to search under your belt, where they just might find a pretty red ribbon . . .’