The Pirate Empress (49 page)

He Zhu swallowed. Emperor Qin had been dead for a millennium and more, but did this Xiongnu chieftain know it? No!

“Alai, come!” her father bellowed. On the outskirts of the encampment, Amon’s three sons aimed bows at Zhu.

Alai sent Zhu a frightened apologetic look, then darted her eyes to the rear of the closest tent. She ran after her father as he turned to holler at her again, and Zhu drew his knife from his boot and aimed for the chieftain’s back. Alai kept getting in his way and he failed to get a clear shot. One of the archers let loose a warning arrow and it struck the sand by Zhu’s foot. His gelding reared and whinnied. Zhu seized its bridle to quiet its bucking, looked back. The Xiongnu family was gone, but the archers remained.

What was Master Yun thinking when he suggested this course? He should have predicted this outcome. Zhu grabbed at the sides of his helmet, tearing at the wisps of hair that escaped from its sides. How was he going to get the children back? If he invaded the enemy camp, how would he escape himself? Zhu whispered a calming chant to the gelding and led it by the reins to a dune where he could remain out of sight to think. He must stay until he was assured of the children’s safety. Had Alai betrayed him? He waited a few long moments before peeking around the side of the dune. Sand slipped from where his hand brushed the loose structure. The chieftain was confident that he would be obeyed, but not
that
confident: two more archers emerged out of the shadows and sat down near the outermost tents to watch the plain.

The children and Alai had disappeared into one of the tents, somewhere around the back of the settlement. The gurgling of water came from nearby, so there must be an underground spring. The sand would smother the sounds of his snooping, and Zhu softly clucked his tongue to draw the attention of his horse. They both needed water; he could not act on a dehydrated brain.

The sounds brought him to a bubbling of water. Around the desert spring, silver grass sprang lush and juicy. The gelding fell immediately to grazing, and Zhu cupped his hand, glanced swiftly about, and then drank deeply. Its mineral coolness slaked his parched throat and cleared his head. The long overdue refreshment felt icy on his fingers as the wind dried his hands. Truly, at night, the desert was cold.

“Zhu!” a voice whispered.

A long, thick shadow fell over him and he turned to see Alai, wrapped in a goat’s pelt, behind him. He rose with a hand on the hilt of his sabre. Friend or traitor, what was she? “You said that your father would accept me,” he growled.

She bowed her head slightly. “I thought in his delight to see me he’d accept you as my husband.”

“And why would he be so delighted as to accept a Chinese son-in-law? Why would he be delighted to see you at all? He sold you for meat and a slab of wolf’s fat!”

The goatskin slipped from Alai’s shoulders and tumbled to the sand. Zhu instantly regretted his words; she had taken an enormous chance sneaking out of the camp to find him and she had slipped past the archers faking a goat, crawling on hands and knees.

She stood tall, hands on hips in defiance of his scathing insult. “I am a bowmaid. Among my people, my skills are valued. I am a warrior. And every warrior counts, especially now, with the emperor pushing us away from our pasturelands. I made the choice to marry into Altan’s tribe. He did not buy me.” Her eyes blackened in fury. “I could kill you now, He Zhu, with my dagger. And you wouldn’t even know what hit you.”

“I know,” he said. “Which is why I regret pissing you off.”

He smiled and she returned the sentiment. “I would not be here if I meant to hurt you or the children.”

He met her eyes, which had softened and now the whites gleamed in the dark light of the passing moon. “So why have you come?”

“To pledge my word. Master Yun trusted me with these children. He told me I held the future of the Chinese Empire in my hands. Why? Why me? Is any of this even true? Is it possible that my family and I are no longer living in our time? I do not want to believe him because it means that at some point we will have to return to our
own
time, which means that we will be dead. I don’t want to be dead, Zhu.” She swallowed, raised her eyes searchingly.

She held up her hand, nervously, and he met her palm with his own and let his fingers slide down between hers. They stayed clasped like that for minutes, before Zhu brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed them. “The burden is not really yours, Alai. What you choose to do will not change what will be. Whether Peng and Wu live to fulfill their destinies will happen or not, no matter what we do. I have failed to protect Wu, though I have followed him and searched for him and even after I found him, I lost him again. Somehow he found me, only to have me lose him again. I have to trust that Master Yun knew what he was doing when he decided to leave the young ones in your care. I only know that I cannot enter your encampment.
Your
time is not
my
time. And if Master Yun is correct, I won’t be able to leave your encampment if I enter it. So the fate of Peng and Wu are in your hands. I can’t help them now. But I know they will be safe because they are with you. I have given Wu a gift to protect him and his cousin, and now I will give you a gift to protect yourself. Do what you will with it, Alai. I think it was meant to fall into your hands.”

Zhu parted his mantle and slid the Scimitar of Yongfang from his sash. He hoisted it into the air, gripped its hilt and heard Alai gasp and stumble backward. He slackened his hold and the Qin warrior he had become vanished, leaving him simply He Zhu again in his red-tasselled helmet and grey mantle with the green dragon and yellow triangle on his sleeve.

“I can’t take that,” she stammered.

“I think it was meant for you.”

“Why?”

“It is a Chinese weapon forged in your time. It belonged to a rebel soldier named Yongfang. He betrayed his ruler, the Jackal-Hawk, Tiger-Wolf whom you despise so well and whom my people know from history’s writings as First Emperor Qin.”

“A rebel’s sword,” she whispered. She stared, wide-eyed, at its gleaming bronze blade that never seemed to dull with use or age. “Why does it shine like that?”

Because it is a ghost warrior’s weapon.
He didn’t say that, of course.

“If I take the sword,” she said, “will I also become a Qin warrior?”

“I have seen every instance of its magic play out that way, and that is why I think I must give it to you.”

“But that will leave you weaponless.”

Zhu shook his head, and lifted his mantle to show Alai the glint of steel on his hip that was his trusty sabre. “Do not squeeze the hilt with great force unless you mean for it to act. Hide it somewhere safe until you need it.”

“But Zhu, when will I ever need to be a Qin warrior?”

Zhu dropped his eyes. He felt weak now, bereft of all of his gifts. “You’ll know when the time comes.
If
it comes.” He caught her eyes as he raised his head. “I am going to leave you now, Alai. With you I leave my daughter, my nephew, the magic gemstone of my forefathers, the Scimitar of Yongfang and now, my heart. Will you bear this burden for me, Alai?”

She closed her eyes to weather her heartache. Tears glistened in her eyes as she opened them, and a single drop broke free, tumbling down her cheek like a silver crystal. “I don’t know if I can,” she whispered. “And I don’t know how I cannot.”

Zhu brought Alai’s face to his own and touched her lips with his. The silk ribbons that had loosened from her braids rippled in the breeze, and he unfastened one ribbon and tied the scimitar to the sash around her waist. Then he dropped to one knee and lifted the goatskin from the sand. Granules flew from it, raining back to the ground. He draped the goatskin around her shoulders and stood tall. “Now go,” he said. “Before I change my mind and risk losing my life and the lives of those who depend on me.”

Her tongue wet her lips and she turned her eyes away. She pulled a tie near the top of her blouse releasing the silk into a fluttering fold caught in the wind. Her blouse slid from her shoulders to reveal firm mountain-like breasts capped with chestnut snow. She took his hand that was quivering like a strung bow and flattened it over her breast, then opened her mouth, tongue reaching for his. Zhu cast all resistance aside and succumbed to the urgency of his jade spear.

Alai peeled him out of his armour, gripping his manhood, rendering him hard as iron. He stripped her of her remaining garments until she stood naked with only the Scimitar lashed to her waist. He lowered her to the goatskin. Then dragged his mantle over top of them both. She moaned as he cupped her lotus flower with his hand, feeling the cleft of her petals. He lowered his head to allow his tongue to explore every complex fold that formed its perfect cup. To his horror and supreme pleasure, she took his jade spear in her hands and guided it skilfully into her mouth. The delicate skin passed between her soft lips, then scraped over her teeth causing him to flinch, before the embrace of her tongue and the warmth of her upper palate closed in blissfully. Zhu froze in position half on his knees, half with his head tucked between the bowmaid’s strong thighs, drool dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“Alai!” he said, hoarsely.

Her answer was to suckle him as though he were a cow’s teat. He could barely think, barely breathe. His eyes dropped to the perfect lotus flower he had awakened. It glistened as though filled with fresh dew, waiting for something to relieve it of its burden of nectar. He found himself heaving, his hips pumping as she ran her tongue teasingly over the entirety of his jade spear. Even Jasmine had not brought him to sexual heights like this. She released him before he could spill his seed, and wriggled out from under him. “Now you will never forget me!” she declared.

He was in the throes of agonizing ecstasy. And as she rose to pull on her clothes, he seized her from behind and tossed her against a nearby sand dune. She was almost as tall as him, so when he forcefully thrust her legs apart with his own, his jade spear easily found its mark. Her lotus blossom opened willingly and sucked him inside her, holding him like she would never let him go.

She reached up to return his kiss, but he turned her away with a rough hand. “We must hurry,” he said. “Before we pay an impossible price for this blunder.”

When the fires of their bodies were quenched, they dressed silently. Zhu sent skittish looks here and there to make sure their activities were unwatched.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” Zhu growled through gritted teeth.

“Yes, but now you have one more reason to return.”

“I had every intention of coming back.”

“For your sister’s boy and the foxling, yes. But what about me?”

Would he have returned for her? Zhu popped his helmet over his head to squash the tender mood she was trying to rekindle. He gazed at her tousled braids, the ribbons falling every which way, and the Scimitar dangling at her hip. “Don’t ask me to love you Alai,” Zhu said. “I can’t afford to do that.”

“But
I
love
you
.”

“Is that why you’ve agreed to protect the children?”

“Partly, but partly I want to see how this is possible. I mean, for me to live in the future.”

Zhu gripped her chin and jerked her face up to meet his eyes. He glanced around at the empty desert, the gurgling spring, the black night sky. “This is all it can ever be for us. I don’t know Master Yun’s plan. But it seems to me if he can close the rift that has allowed all of these creatures of legend to return, I will lose you.”

Oh, what was the use? This dialogue was headed nowhere. Ming or Qin, Mongol or Xiongnu. The conflict between the agricultural-based, city-dwelling Chinese and the nomadic horsemen of the steppe was immutable. It had been so for a thousand years and would continue for a thousand more.

“I’m sorry, Alai,” Zhu said gruffly. “My horse awaits. I must go to Xian.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The Writing on the Bones

Quan squinted into the merciless sun, its jabbing rays blinding him. No food, no water. He had begun by following the tracks of Captain Huang’s convoy. The idea was simple enough: follow the Imperial troop straight out of the desert. But soon the tracks in the sand were wiped clear by the savage wind. On foot he had no hope of keeping the horsed soldiers in sight. The last traces of them disappeared.

Was that a footstep? He kept imagining someone brushing past him, but when he looked, no one was there. Another thing. Just as odd. The sand. It ceased to gleam white gold under the red sun. If in fact, the sun was still red. When he dared blink at the blinding celestial orb, it seemed to have transformed into a ball of white fire. And yes, what was he thinking before he had been sidetracked by the oddity of the sun? Of course, the sand: he looked down at the sifting grains swirling at his feet. From here to as far as the eye could see, the desert looked red. And where had those rust-coloured columns come from? In all his travels across the desert, he never once saw stone pillars in the badlands.

A crunching sound turned Quan on his heel and he drew his sabre from the sheath at his hip. Yes, they had left him his sword, but what good was a sword when there was no food to kill? He turned, and saw blinding desert from west to east, and still the invisible footfalls. A shimmer in the atmosphere drew his eyes to the horizon. Was it a mirage? Huang had managed to slip him food and drink the last night before they abandoned him, but now all was gone, and his flesh still screamed from Zheng Min’s tortures. Something moved! On the ground near his boots, footprints appeared. Could it be? Was this … the Land of the Walking Bones? Surely it was a fiction. But if pigs could talk and birds could form bridges and men could breathe in the cold blue heavens, then what were a few walking bones?

“Where are you?” he asked. “Who are you? Step out where I can see you!”

His dizziness increased, the crunching stopped, and if he wasn’t so delirious, he could swear that something solid stood beside him. He touched the air, rubbed his eyes.
I must be hearing things, seeing things. There is no one standing nearby
. He closed his eyes again, feeling his body sway. The tip of his tongue touched his cracked lips but it had no moisture to impart. Even if there were someone to talk to, he would be lucky if he could croak.

He snapped his eyes wide to the desert landscape and almost jumped out of his armour. All around him were the rust-coloured columns. Like a stout, stone forest, they brought shelter from the wind and sun. He moved over to one, and painfully slid his back down it until he rested on the sand. The crunching had recommenced, but this time it was moving away.

When Quan rose again it seemed the desertscape had changed again. He could have sworn that there were three columns to his left; now there were eight. Did the stones move? It was decidedly claustrophobic inside this forest of rust-coloured stones. He sought a way out, but when he detected an opening and headed for it, another column moved into his path.

Quan wandered between the standing stones. He dragged his raw, desiccated body forward and stopped to stare at some sort of mirage. A dwelling rose out of the wasteland, half of it sunken in the sand.
Is this possible? Does someone live here?

Over the pithouse, camel hides formed a roof over a framework of bones. Quan approached, lifted the hide flap that covered the doorway and nearly gagged at the smell inside. Dried flesh still clung to some of the bones. He croaked out a greeting but got no response. Surely no one would mind if he helped himself to some hospitality? When no one replied to his second call, he descended into the living area on a rope ladder, and collapsed on the dirt floor.

The walls were shored up with thin struts made of the ribs and long bones of animals and … men? On the floor were more hides, many bones and several bladders of water. Quan crawled over, grabbed a water bladder and poured the contents down his throat, splashing his face and hands in the process.

Who lived here? Where had the water come from? The collector of the precious drink must be somewhere nearby. The floor started to move and Quan recoiled. Thick chains of ants flowed across the floor and were swallowed by a hole in the ground that protruded from a small sand-hill.
Well, where there are ants, there is food.
He shoved a stray bone down into the anthill to stem their return, searched the hut, and found dried jerky rolled up inside protective hide covers. Even had the meat been infested with ants, Quan would have shaken them off and counted himself lucky. His thirst slaked, his second imperative was to feed. He stole three strips of the jerked meat and chewed voraciously, and when thirst and hunger no longer consumed him, he rose from against the curve of the pithouse wall.

The place was mostly made up of bones, bones with writing on them. Delicate Chinese characters were scratched into the broad scapulae, pelvises and long bones of camels or horses. Blood, dried and darkened, had been rubbed into the etched letters, and each stanza leaped to the eye like they had been written in ink on white parchment. Quan lifted a femur and read the precise script scratched lengthwise along the ivory bone. Poetry. How odd.

The Emperor’s generals ride

to battles of ten thousand mile marches.

The warlords live not by tilling but by bloodshed

leaving fields of white bones

and warriors crawling like ants.

The soldiers defending the wall yesterday

are now the phantoms of dust today.

Listen closely

to how the drums roll.

“That is not for your eyes!” a voice shouted from above him.

The sunlight from outside cast an aura around the figure that stood at the door of the pithouse. “I’m sorry,” Quan said from his crouched position. “But these verses, they are beautiful. Did you write them?”

The black shape snorted and dropped the hide flap that covered the entrance. “Of course, I did. Do you see anyone else here?”

“I hope you don’t mind but I helped myself to some food and drink.” Quan paused when the stranger remained silent, and he took the opportunity to study him. There was something very familiar … Quan grinned, enlightened. “I know you, you’re Ho Teng! The Emperor’s poet.”

Ho Teng flung off his hide cloak and turban to reveal a thin frame and shiny bald pate. A full growth of whiskers rambled from his chin, and the deep furrows in his forehead were deeper than Quan remembered in the days when he attended poetry readings at court. Ho Teng clawed his way down the ladder, while Quan rose in courtesy, only to have the poet stay him. Ho Teng sank to the floor, back against the pit wall, stroking his beard, musing, for Quan was known throughout the Empire and needed no introduction. “What brings you to the ends of the world, Brigade General?”

“Treason. Military Governor Zheng Ming has convinced the Emperor that I am a traitor.”

“Ah.” Ho Teng bobbed his head slightly.

“You’re not surprised?”

“Nothing surprises me these days. What was your crime?”

Quan let his head droop. “Love,” he said. “I helped the princess Lotus Lily escape.”

“Sometimes love is the greatest betrayer of all. But that was many years ago. His Majesty’s grudges stick.”

Quan managed a forced smile. “Why are
you
here?”

“Love also. Love of verse and the desire to speak my mind. But I have been long away from court. Tell me what has happened on the frontier.”

The Middle Kingdom was on the verge of collapse. The walls were not holding. Zheng Min had become a slave driver and a menace to the Empire. “The men are deserting their posts like rabbits chased by a fox,” Quan said. “And without enough sentries and the manpower to rebuild where Altan’s hordes have breached the ramparts, the Dragon Wall is an open invitation to all who have eyes on the throne.”

Ho Teng sighed. “Why did you ever think the walls would hold? How many men have died building and protecting them?”

“Too many,” Quan said. “They are weary and disheartened. They believe they have been abandoned. And no matter how hard Zheng Min whips them, they can’t keep the Wall standing.”

“For every soldier whipped that stands up, another lies down.”

The master poet’s verses said it all, and even though Ho Teng was not a military man, he understood the futility of war at the wall. What happened when an immovable mass met an irresistible force? Barbarian fought against Chinese, and Chinese against themselves. Army confronting army, dynasty after dynasty: all stalwart forces. Immutable. And through it all, the erecting and razing of walls: how would it end?

“The people must know of Zheng Min’s deception,” Quan announced. “You must return to Beijing with me. The citizens deserve the truth. And so do those who were once faithful. The rebel Zi Shicheng was once a loyal guardsman. But too many lies, empty promises and abandonment on the desolate frontier have rendered him false. He must know the truth about the battles lost, the hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed because of Zheng Min’s ridiculous campaigns. When the truth is known, that there are no victories, that there never were, and that the Mongols are raging against the border in numbers greater than the horde of ants that share your abode, even the rebels will renounce their treachery and rally to their emperor.

“Your words tell it best. You must help me to unravel the lies of Zheng Min, who spins a fine tale to save his own face. I know his next move. I heard him discussing his plans with his toady Lu Dao when they thought I had swooned from their cruel treatment in His Majesty’s dungeons. They plan to discredit His Majesty with tales of a broken mind and a splintered sword, a sword that Zheng Min claims the Emperor broke himself because he was too cowardly to lead his people into the greatest war China has ever known since the reign of First Emperor Qin.

“Before the walls come crashing down one last time, Ho Teng, we must try diplomacy.”

“No,” the poet said. “It’s better that I live out the last days of my life in this barren wasteland. I am done with talking to stone walls, to a ruler who heeds the advice of a malignant mind because he does not like what he hears from those who know better, and whose solution is to send the offending voice into the barrens. The people cannot hear if the Emperor won’t listen. And His Majesty long since gave up listening to anything other than what he wants to hear.”

“We’ll bring your verse; we’ll shake him up—”

“NO. I already had a chance to return and I came back to this waterless barrens. The Middle Kingdom chooses chaos and war. So let them live it. My poems are for me alone. No one thinks they are worth reading, no less worth listening to. When I have finished writing all that I have to say, I will take my poems to the grave. But first I will obliterate every last memory of my thoughts. If my poems are not worth reading, then they are not worth keeping. Bone by bone I will scratch out my words, and bone by bone I will burn them.”

Quan stared speechless. “I see,” he said. “You have lost hope. The people have disappointed you and you refuse them a second chance. His Majesty’s fear and Zheng Min’s treachery has cost the kingdom your confidence. Stay here then, without country, without people. But I can’t. My place is by my emperor’s side. And if that means I must defend the walls, then defend the walls I will.”

Ho Teng reddened slightly. Whether from shame or the energy expended during his outburst, it was hard to say, but no retraction came from him.

I don’t blame you
, Quan thought. Not one mote.

“One day, Ho Teng, the people will hear your voice. But maybe you are right, and that time isn’t now. But tell me then, you say you had the chance to return to the capital. How did you evade those rust-coloured pillars that seem to chase a man’s every move? And how did you evade the silent monster whose bones walk?”

“I have stopped being afraid. That’s how, Brigade General. I have no desire to leave the Red desert, and the forces of this place know it. So, they let me alone.”

The poet seized his eye in sudden comprehension. “Of course,
you
wish to leave.” He rose from his place opposite Quan who was seated cross-legged on the floor, and went to a stack of uncured hides that seemed to be his bed, and retrieved a metal object that was buried in the hairy folds. “Here is something that will help you to find your way out of the barrens.” Ho Teng dropped an amulet into Quan’s extended hand: an azure dragon, iridescent with metallic blues and purples, silver and black.
Made of what? Iron? Steel?

“This amulet was a gift from Master Yun. I rode part way with him before he left me on the road on a matter of great urgency. What the problem was he failed to say. All I can tell you is that we witnessed the circling of a massive number of demon birds in the sky. There was no mistaking that they were harbingers of Feng Du.”

The green-headed desert vultures?
Quan had only seen them when death was imminent. “Which way did he go?”

“West, I think. He told me to follow the pull of the Charm of Bearing, the azure dragon that you now hold in your hand. It is drawn to the Forbidden City, the dwelling place of emperors.” He clasped Quan’s hand with his own, and curled his fingers over the amulet. “Take the charm. It’s yours. I have no need for it now.”