Empire of Dragons (48 page)

‘One of our emperors wrote, “When your time comes, go in peace, for there is peace with he who calls you.” Similar concepts, I see. One of our poets wrote, “Banish the fear of death with love.” ’

Yun Shan clasped him close and embraced him. Metellus could smell the fragrance that had made him feel alive in the time of his unconsciousness and he felt an intense wave of emotion fill his chest. He kissed her and the warmth and softness of her lips made him feel he was kissing a goddess. He took her hands in his and brought them to his face. ‘It doesn’t seem possible that hands like these can give a caress or impart death with the same light touch.’

Yun Shan pulled away from him and sought out his eyes in the darkness. ‘I will not let them take me alive, Xiong Ying. You know that, don’t you?’

‘I know, Yun Shan, and the thought of it chills my heart. How is it possible that we’ve found each other, that you wrenched me back from the other world, only for us to be called towards death once again? Why do the Red Lotus want to defend this place at any cost? Isn’t there somewhere else they could go?’

‘No. Wei would find us anywhere. Facing him is the only solution. He is bent on soothing his own suffering with the suffering and death of others, and there is nothing that can turn him away from this road.’

‘Not even you?’

‘I’ve thought about it. If I could save Li Cheng by handing myself over to him, I would do it. But it wouldn’t be enough, I’m certain of it. He is obsessed by a desire that cannot be satisfied, by an unconsumed love that burns stronger than any real love, because it lives only in his imagination, generating bloody ghosts, demons who infest his nights and pollute his meditation.

‘There is no peace for Wei. He wants to turn himself into a nightmare, into one of the monsters he calls up every night when he closes his eyes.’

Metellus held her until he could feel the beat of her heart becoming one with his own. She threw her arms around him and kissed him again.

‘I want this night to never end,’ she said. ‘I want the darkness to cover us and hide us, I want time to stop, I want all of your memories to disappear except for those that we’ve experienced together.’

‘My memories only make my feelings for you deeper, Yun Shan, because they’re the memories of a man who has nothing to hide . . .’ He broke off. ‘Listen . . . they’re coming.’

Yun Shan strained to hear.

‘Horsemen and foot soldiers . . . a great many of them . . . thousands and thousands.’

The wind carried a barely perceptible buzz that faded when the breeze diminished in intensity.

‘You have the ears of a fox.’

‘I told you that I spent long hours as a border guard. I saw many of my comrades fall because they hadn’t heard the enemy crawling through the dark with a dagger between his teeth. Look now,’ he said, pointing to the horizon.

It was swarming with lights. Thousands of flames quivering in the dark, swaying as if moved by the same gusts of wind that blew through the silent alleyways of Li Cheng. The front was narrow, but then slowly broadened into an ever wider line, until the entire expanse of the high plains was covered by trembling lights.

The men came into sight as dawn crept over the sky; rare stars pierced the cobalt dome with a light as pure as a diamond’s. Then the sun sent a blade of light between the hilltops and a thin strip of clouds.

Wei’s army was revealed.

There were foot soldiers advancing with long yellow drapes tied to the shafts of their pikes, warriors from the steppe wearing leather helmets with long horsehair crests, Manchurian horsemen with bronze breastplates and spears decorated with onager tufts. The imperial cavalry carried long banners of red silk on which the golden monogram of the Han dynasty was still embroidered; they wore breastplates of leather and bronze and helmets of the same shining metal.

At the centre was the black heart of the army: the Flying Foxes. Black they were, on black horses, arousing fear even at this distance.

Metellus heard a beating of wings over his head. He saw a dove fly over the rooftops and alight on one of the windows of the monastery, the quarters of Dan Qing.

‘How strange,’ he said. ‘Did you see that? Your brother’s dove is back. Doves may fly back to their homes after they’ve been deliberately transported far away, but I’ve never heard of the opposite. Go tell your brother what’s happening. I’ll stay here.’

Yun Shan ran to the monastery and was soon back with Dan Qing, armed with a bow, bludgeon and sword.

Dan Qing let his gaze sweep over the army that was now drawn up in full battle formation, stock still on the plain. Only the standards fluttered in the morning breeze, shot through with shivers of light.

‘What are they waiting for?’ asked Metellus.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps for someone to open the gate.’

‘Come now. Here? That’s hardly possible,’ objected Metellus.

‘It wasn’t possible for an army to get this far either. It’s never happened.’

‘Someone has betrayed us,’ said Yun Shan.

‘Have you had any further news of Baj Renjie?’ asked Metellus.

‘He took part in my breakout, but he never showed up at the meeting point afterwards. I fear he was captured. He’s probably dead.’

‘Does he know how to get here?’ asked Metellus.

Behind them they could hear their soldiers rushing to the bastions to prepare to defend the citadel. The machines creaked noisily as they were put in position and freed of their heavy canvas covers, revealing huge firing arms, powerful scorpions with multiple bows.

‘No,’ replied Dan Qing. ‘No one but the members of the Red Lotus knows where this fortress is located. And no member of the Red Lotus has ever betrayed it.’

‘What if the traitor were your dove?’ Metellus asked again. Yun Shan looked puzzled. ‘That cage had a kind of mechanism that released its occupant after a certain number of cycles. There must have been a reason for that . . . Where did you get that cage, Yun Shan?’

‘As I told Dan Qing, Daruma gave it to me. It was his gift for the prince.’

‘Daruma . . .’ muttered Metellus. ‘Daruma . . . is that possible?’

‘It was Daruma who organized my escape,’ said Dan Qing. ‘Why would he ever . . .’

‘Look out!’ shouted a voice. ‘They’re advancing!’

A unit of enemy archers was running towards the walls. They drew up at the bottom of the ramp and took position.

‘Take cover!’ shouted Metellus.

A cloud of arrows shot upwards, described a wide parabola and landed inside the circle of walls. One of the warriors who had not found shelter collapsed to the ground, run through by a number of arrows, as did all the domestic animals wandering through the square: three dogs and a trained monkey.

Metellus turned to Dan Qing. ‘No one assaults a fortress with archers. They want to keep us busy on this side, so they can attack from another. Watch out!’ he shouted. ‘Over there!’

A second barrage of darts rained down on the rooftops, the towers and the sentry walk on the walls.

There was silence, several interminable moments of deep silence.

Then a whistle pierced the sky.

‘F
LYING
F
OXES
!’ someone screamed. ‘Alarm, sound the alarm!’

Metellus raised his eyes to the sky and saw, in utter astonishment, what he had never been able to see clearly in the past: a swarm of flying men, hanging from huge wings of silk, gliding on the wind, skimming the treetops.

‘Archers!’ shouted Dan Qing. ‘Loose!’

The archers turned their sights away from the advancing troops and trained their bows upwards without striking their targets, who were moving quickly and still too far away. A second volley took off, but many arrows were intercepted by the tree branches and fell to the ground without causing harm. Two of the soaring raiders were hit and fell headlong to the ground. Several more were injured, but the rest landed safely in great numbers and immediately engaged in furious battle with the monks who surged around them.

Metellus could see the army charging the walls from outside and had his men load the machines. He had put together a formidable array of field artillery: catapults with several arms, multiple-bowed scorpions that hurled steel bolts,
ballistae
that flung jugs of flaming pitch to which Metellus had added the mysterious concoction prepared by the monks, one of their most jealously guarded secrets.

‘Fire!’ he shouted. ‘Now!’

The various
ballistae
shot, at brief intervals, four heavy boulders each, opening frightening voids in the ranks of the Manchurian cavalry. The bolts came next and then the jars of burning pitch. They flew like flaming meteors over the wall and then, to Metellus’s utter amazement, exploded in mid-air with an earth-shaking boom, scattering a rain of fire on the troops below. Many tried to run off, but the Flying Foxes, positioned at the wings, stopped them cold with the deadly aim of their bows: the punishment reserved for cowards. Wei’s voice could be heard, as shrill as a falcon’s cry. The troops reunited in a compact front and charged forward again in attack, shouting and shooting volleys of thousands of arrows against the besieged citadel and against the war-machine posts. Many of those who manned the machines on the bastions were hit and put out of action.

Those who survived remained at their posts and fired again in quick succession: first, second, third, fourth station. Their bolts shrieked through the air and mowed down the enemy archers and foot soldiers in great numbers. Other meteors streaked across the sky, strewing globes of fire that exploded on the ground, this time in the middle of the infantrymen, slaughtering tens of them with each blast. Wei rode furiously on towards the fortress as if nothing could stop him, as if the arrows were deflected by the fierce aura that surrounded him. He was yelling with his strident, penetrating, inhuman voice and no one dared any longer to retreat. The enemy continued to advance under the hail of missiles, racing up the access ramp to the southern gate. Behind him Metellus could hear the shouts of the combatants and the raging of the battle. He imagined that Yun Shan had joined the fight, no longer seeing her at his side, and he was tormented with anguish, but he held his position and went on coordinating the relentless firing of his machines.

Wei, from outside, realized that his men would never reach the gate as long as those machines remained in position and he ordered his archers to let fly with barrages of incendiary arrows. The darts stuck into the wood of the machines’ mobile frames and set them on fire. Many of the artillerymen were forced to leave their posts to attempt to put out the flames.

A second and third wave of Flying Foxes descended inside the citadel, coming to the aid of their encircled comrades and reversing their odds. Dan Qing and Yun Shan, flanked by their best combatants, counterattacked vigorously, hurling themselves into the fray. From his vantage point on the battlements, Metellus could see that the Flying Foxes were trying to open the gate from the inside. He ordered several of his archers to aim in that direction and to bring down as many as they could. Several were hit and fell, but many others amazingly dodged the arrows and continued to advance, spinning their swords with remarkable rapidity and making dizzying leaps. They seemed to be animated by inextinguishable ardour, coordinated by a single mind. Metellus had already seen this approach in the great courtyard of Luoyang and he was flooded by panic. His brow dripped with cold sweat. Now a large group of assailants was racing up the stairs towards the battlements, spreading themselves around the entire perimeter. Metellus and his men met them, the Roman brandishing his two
gladii
and plunging furiously into the battle.

He had never been able to test his new combat skills on the battlefield and he realized that the incredibly fast hail of blows, the glint of steel narrowly missing his face, his head, his heart, produced a delirious excitement he had never felt before, not even at the peak of the fiercest battle. He was concentrating so intensely on his adversaries’ movements that he could deconstruct them in time and space and understand the direction they were coming from as if they were three times slower than in reality. The two
gladii
flashed and struck with massive power, they intersected high and low, parrying, deflecting, stabbing, whacking, slashing.

In the eye of the storm, each combatant sought a single adversary, and the battle fragmented into myriad individual fights, with a victor and a victim at every instant. Metellus shouted out at the top of his voice, ‘Yun Shan! Yun Shan, where are you?’ and knocked his adversaries back down the stairs, making them fall in clusters. He himself seemed an unstoppable war machine. A sword sliced into the flesh of his right shoulder, another grazed his left thigh, but he kept advancing, indifferent to the pain. A fresh wave of Flying Foxes swooped down very close to the gate and, before the Red Lotus combatants had time to react, managed to open it.

Wei and his men stormed through the gate but Metellus, from the battlements, ordered the artillery to wheel their machines around and aim them inside. The invaders were greeted by relentless volleys of steel bolts, boulders and balls of flaming pitch pouring down upon them, spreading death and destruction. But Wei was their soul: black on his dark steed, he drove on without pause, dragging the others behind him. They seemed possessed, trampling on their own fallen in their fury to advance. Waves of assailants came spilling through the open gate now, like a river breaking its banks.

Watching this happen from above, Metellus understood that the situation was hopeless. He shouted to his men, ‘Resist at any cost. Cover me from behind!’ and ran along the battlements in the direction of the staircase leading to the mausoleum of Emperor Yuandi. He suddenly vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up.

In the big courtyard, Wei’s warriors had fallen upon the monks of the Red Lotus, led by Dan Qing and Yun Shan, who fought on with desperate valour. Wei had dismounted and was doing battle with his sword in his hand, cutting down anyone who tried to get in his way as he neared the centre of the enemy ranks. He had spotted Yun Shan and it seemed that nothing could stop him.