The Pirate Empress (52 page)

Quan squatted to drag the chewed carcass out of the horse’s belly, but the stench sent him into the underbrush. He had managed to extract an arm and shoulder, and saw that the man was indeed an Imperial soldier. Beneath the crust of dried blood, he caught a glimpse of yellow and green—the Imperial band.
Was he coming to warn me of some subversive act of Altan?
Man and horse had frozen in the sub-zero temperatures, and now Quan knew returning to the capital was more important than ever. Zi Shicheng and his rebels were not bluffing when they said their clothes were rags and their boots mere flaps of leather. Attention to the simple request of warm winter clothing and food was all that had ever been needed to stave off a rebellion on the walls. If it was bad here, it was that much worse on the northeastern frontier.

With every day that passed, Quan felt the azure dragon in his hand pull stronger. Presently he sighted the black-roofed farmhouses and the homes of the suburbs so tightly packed that anything beyond was obscured. He trudged up the streets. Ahead, the red and yellow of the palace buildings drew his eye. He still had to get past the wall and into the palace to see His Majesty. From the bottom of his gut he hoped that Zheng Min was not there. The Emperor deserved to hear the truth about his military governor—how, against Imperial orders, he had tortured the brigade general, and how he had sent his grandson Wu to the Mongol camp.

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Like an antelope Xingbar raced with Master Yun astride his back. They followed the wall west. The black range of mountains snaked, swathed in yellow mist, rolling in peaks and valleys toward Altan’s camp.

How strong was his magic? Could she escape oblivion? Jasmine had absorbed his spell and gone willingly into the sinkhole. With the power of Dahlia added to her own, they would break the holding spell that he had placed upon the Queen. His brow crinkled like the crimped crust of a rich brown pastry.
Demon’s and stones.
There was no spell to break. The two were not confined. The rift allowed the passage of all things ancient into this world—and there was nothing more ancient than Dahlia. What was her plot? Why did she not show herself? How had she and Jasmine opened this rift when he had managed to keep them apart? He glared down into the Mongol campsite. It looked peaceful in the dying light of the sun. No demon birds wheeled above it. No odour of blood to tell him that Jasmine was feeding. No fragrance of the flowers that shared her name. No scent of the fox faerie. Except for earth and smoke and the pungency of livestock and their waste, there was no significant smell at all.

Master Yun alighted from his mount and whispered. “If I do not return in a few minutes, flee to the Forbidden City and find Quan.”

Xingbar whinnied and shuffled his feet restlessly. Master Yun stroked the horse, and then stepped away. He looked down into the plain. The orange lights from a number of fires flickered in the gathering gloom and a few female forms moved among the pale tents. The warlock clamped his hands together and leaped into the air, his robes flying around him like the wings of a crow. He landed atop the wall just short of where he had cleared its height on the back of Xingbar when he and Zhu, and the Xiongnu bowmaid had fled with Peng. A woman stirring the coals of a fire looked up, her thick braids sharply outlined against the glowing night sky. Her shadow remained still, before she returned to her task unalarmed.

Master Yun drifted down from the wall like a bat, walked to Altan’s tent but no lantern glowed within. All around him he saw no sentries, only women busy at their nightly chores.

A shiver chilled Master Yun to his very core, and he looked up into the black sky to see the Pole Star fall.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Zi Shicheng at Dalinghe

A trace of blood drifted on the wind above the stone gates of the garrison. Zi Shicheng laughed as the sentry on the watchtower recited the decrees of the Emperor, his ratty clothes hanging on his scrawny half-starved body. Who was this churl to say what the Emperor decreed? As far as the rebels were concerned, His Imperial Highness was already dead. They had breached various points on the wall surrounding Shanhaiguan. And although Shanhaiguan itself could not be breeched because of the thickly walled bottleneck that led onto the plains of China, Dalinghe was poised to fall.

The Chinese rebel beckoned his Manchu captains to join him below the watchtower in a show of force. The allied army had besieged the thirty-thousand-strong armed fortress, and now, on the eighty-second day, it looked like the garrison was near surrender. The watchman lowered his weapon and exchanged a glance with his similarly ill-looking companion. They had crossbows, but it seemed they had no arrow bolts left.

“Your emperor has failed you,” Zi Shicheng said. He gave the watchmen’s torn and shabby clothes and pathetic armament a swift once over, before arching a brow. “How many of you are left? I count only two of you on the watchtower. When was the last time you fed?”

He winced at the thought of what they must be eating. After almost three passes of the moon, what food was left?

“Some have survived the winter,” the watchman said, his haggard face creased with bitterness and scorn. “We have lived on lizards and crows and melted snow. Among other things.”

Zi Shicheng refused to imagine what could taint the watchman’s voice with such self-loathing. “You join my army,” he said, “and you will feast on the delicacies of the palace: cured rabbit meat, venison, fatted beef and summer duck. Sweet melons, water chestnuts and fresh soybeans—none of that dried stuff re-hydrated into mush. All of this bounty that the nobles take for granted, everyday of their despicable lives, would I fill and delight your grumbling bellies.”

The emaciated watchman’s eyes teared and he licked his split lips.

“It was never our intention to torture you, only to convince you to join us. My name is Zi Shicheng. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? I know what you’ve been through. I, too, served His Majesty. I, too, was forgotten in the cruel, farthest reaches of the wall.”

Where he came from, the rage and resentment of the sentries posted at the bitterest extremes of the frontier were at the boiling point. It was easy to recruit new spies, gatekeepers and infantrymen. News came from turncoat
yebushou
that the tower crews at all strategic garrisons and entry points into the Middle Kingdom had fled, when the steppe horsemen approached. Often the cowardly watchmen, on sighting a Mongol or Manchu contingent, would look the other way, terrified for their lives, and simply allow the passage of the invaders. The
yebushou
who once spied for the Chinese emperor now spied for the Mongols or the Manchus. That was why he was surprised to meet resistance at Dalinghe.

The Chinese soldiers were on the very cusp of chaos. Defection and rebellion were rampant among the rank and file, while the fate of their officers was a nightmare. Failure to defend the wall from breaches was punishable by execution. Stories circulated that Zheng Min, the Emperor’s top man, punished traitors for deeds that were no more relevant than a goat feeding on yesterday’s slop. If the rumours were true that the great Brigade General Chi Quan had been executed, then the path was truly clear to the throne.

On his march to the gates of the garrison, he had passed the heads of several top generals perched on pikes. What acts of treason had they committed? Other than allowing Manchu forces to massacre forty-five thousand Ming troops in one campaign. The message was clear. The Emperor cared nothing for the welfare of those who formed his armies. And Zi Shicheng would use their discontent and disillusionment to his favour.

“Think of it, Watchman, sweetbreads, plump fish and fresh fruit. And clean spring water.” He stared boldly up at the tower, and then furrowed his brow as he realized that this watchman was no watchman at all. His uniform, though torn and tattered, showed the decoration of an officer. So that was how bad it was.

“All right, fine,” the watchman said, voice heavy with reluctance. “You may pass.”

Zi Shicheng sneered. “Naturally, I may pass. And
you
may live—if you join my ranks. We are headed for the Juyong pass and the capital. Are you with us?”

The officer-turned-watchman nodded.

As the rebel army entered the gates of the dilapidated garrison, the smell of death greeted them. Their leader counted bodies; so many piled up one on top of the other. Small fires burned and the smoke sent up odours of sweet barbecued pork. But there were no pigs left in the garrison, no livestock at all. Zi Shicheng surveyed the scene, and frowned: so many dead, but so few bodies in comparison to the numbers reported. The stench of cooking and the stench of dying were noxious. “How many survivors, Captain?” he asked.

The watchman glanced down at his frightful uniform. “You called me captain. You know? Through all this misery and filth, you can see my rank?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “But captain of what? Look at what we have come to!”

“It was not necessary for you to come to this if you had only joined us when we approached you eighty-two days ago.”

“You counted the days?”

“Didn’t you?”

The captain nodded and indicated a wooden post outside his quarters where notches were cut into the pine. “Today is the eighty-second day.” He took out his knife and slashed a mark across the line that was already there and looked up at Zi Shicheng. “I have no authority to surrender the fortress to you. I, myself, am willing to join you because I see no point in remaining here to be fodder for my general. He, however, will never surrender. He is the reason we are still here and in this state of abject misery.”

“No longer your problem, Captain. I absolve you of all responsibility concerning the welfare or condition of this garrison. I will speak to the general and obtain his official surrender, and if he refuses, he will be granted the honourable execution of his choice. Now, show me where he is. I will speak to him myself.”

The captain escorted the rebel leader to a stone dwelling in the most sheltered part of the tiny town. As they strolled side by side, the captain talked. Out of an original thirty thousand soldiers, nearly twenty thousand were dead. Starvation and its inevitable consequence—cannibalism—had taken its gruesome toll. Eighty-two days without fresh supplies was too long. Zi Shicheng knew that, which was why he had chosen this tactic. It had worked, but the damage was devastating. The first to go were the workmen, then the merchants, followed by the weakest of the soldiers. At the very end, the officers began to butcher the dead among the rank and file to sustain their own lives.

They stopped at the door of the general’s house. The captain knocked.

“What is it?” a gruff voice answered.

“I have brought someone to see you,” the captain said.

“It is Zi Shicheng, of the Manchu army,” the rebel leader interjected. “I have come to take Dalinghe and to ask you to join us. What is your answer, General?”

The door flew open, and a stout but dirty middle-aged man in a tattered general’s uniform scowled at him. “I will
never
surrender.” He turned from the rebel leader to the emaciated captain. “Look at what the Chinese defector has brought us to. And you want to join him?” He thrust a finger at the death and putrefaction surrounding them. Bodies that had not been consumed when fresh were rotting. Those individuals, who had survived the culling and were starving, looked as green and shrivelled as those that were already dead.

“I don’t see that we have any choice,” the captain said. “It is clear to me that the Emperor has forgotten us. Either we join Zi Shicheng and his Manchu allies or we join those piles of putrefying, green bodies against the wall.”

There was no convincing the loyal general to take the easy way out and opt for self-preservation. “Then I will die,” he said.

The rebel leader granted the general a dignified execution. He was shot in the heart with a graceful arrow by one of the Manchu’s crack marksmen outside the fortress on a grassy knoll on a beautiful, sunny day. Only a few white clouds marked the blue sky. It was his hope that his loyalty would be rewarded and that Heaven’s doors were open to him. When the general’s body fell heavily to the ground, Zi Shicheng ordered his men to carry the dead body back to the fortress for cremation. But he had underestimated how desperate were the remaining survivors of the siege. The moment they saw the fresh meat, they leaped on it and tore it to shreds with butchering knives to cook on their own fires.

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At night Esen flew low and tethered the bird behind the tents, then crept about listening at door cracks. He dared not openly return to the Mongol encampment without the boy, but hunger and thirst were taking its toll. What could they do to him anyway?
He was my hostage!
Esen clenched the Chinese Phoenix, squeezing a handful of azure and gold feathers. He was running out of fresh berries and the necklet of dried fruit was beginning to lose its effect
. I must not lose this magic. It is the only thing I have left.
He swooped below grey-tinged, pink-bellied clouds. The sky was deep blue, but the colour in the cloud told him to expect a change in the weather. The bird bucked and squawked, trying to shake him off its back. If he lost his grip, he was doomed.

He must win back his men, but how? They scorned him for his obsession with Lotus Lily, for leading them on a futile chase. How stupid was he? He had the boy in his grasp and instead of killing him, he had kept him hostage. It was that military governor’s fault. Zheng Min refused to allow him to reveal Wu’s lineage. Had he enlightened the Emperor, His Majesty might have showered him with riches and an army to defeat his own brother. Zheng Min promised him unimaginable wealth and a fine contingent of soldiers. But if the man were telling the truth, why not divulge Wu’s true identity? That was the real question. What was the scoundrel up to?

Returning to his brother’s army was no better. The men laughed at him, called him a giant peacock-riding fool. There was more to
Fenghuang
than a flying mount! There had to be. At sunset, he would enter the encampment again and learn what strategic attacks his brother was planning. He tugged on the neck feathers of the phoenix and it rose higher into the air. Out there from the west, racing over the plain in a cloud of dust, something approached. Was it a horseman? It was no steppe rider of the Mongols; he rode like the wind with the speed of a dragonfly, and almost as lightly, too. Grey robes flying behind him, lopsided topknot at his crown with long strings of silvery hair whipping out past his shoulders. Was it the warlock? That trickster of a geomancer had stolen Wu. How Esen wanted to get his hands on him. But now that he saw the warlock coming, he was stumped. Returning to camp without the boy was unthinkable. Could he capture the warlock? The warlock had the boy. A lantern suddenly struck light in his head. Why, the devil of a Chinese sorcerer had the girl, too! When Esen had taunted Master Yun’s small caravan in the desert, he had noticed a little girl in their midst. She sat astride a horse on the lap of the warrior-monk they called He Zhu.

The day was growing old. Esen hid in the shadows of the deepening clouds. The horseman did not look up. Horse and rider were headed straight for the Forbidden City. Did he know his trajectory would steer him squarely onto enemy turf? The Mongol armies were stationed a day’s ride outside of Juyongguan, the last pass before the capital.

Esen dived to the opposite side of the camp, and ordered the phoenix to disappear while he went in search of his brother. The Khan was seated on the ground, stripped to the waist outside his tent, sharpening his blade. His muscles rippled with his every motion.

“Where the hell have you been,” Altan shouted when he saw him. “Where is the boy? I told you never to leave him alone.”

When had Altan grown that hard jaw and those abs and biceps of steel? How had he gained on his older brother in height and girth, and honed that commanding voice? No wonder they called him Khan.

“You have two minutes to gird your armour and come with me,” Esen ordered. “There is a prize outside your door that you will not want to miss.”

Altan frowned, but Esen paid no attention, snatched up his brother’s tunic from where it lay on the ground at his feet and tossed it to him before signalling for all the men in sight to follow to the camp’s outskirts. Altan raised a hand to belay the order, but then changed his mind. He followed, grumbling.

Master Yun was waiting for them. He alighted from his horse and walked slowly toward the ten thousand armed men who approached. “Which one of you is Altan?” he asked.

Esen’s brother raised his arm, which was encased in a leather falconer’s glove, and his hawk floated down from the sky to grip his wrist with thick, spidery claws. “Who is asking?”

“Master Yun, the Emperor’s warlock.”

The chief of the warlords laughed. “The last time the Emperor had a warlock, he was replaced by a fox faerie.”

“Quite true,” Master Yun said. “I take it you’re Altan?” He turned to Esen and although the grim set of his mouth remained unchanged, the warlock’s eyes smirked. He shoved a finger into Esen’s chest. “This one I already know.”