Under Heaven (8 page)

"You'll need to ride fast."
"I know it. The man inside ...?"
"Is dead."
"You killed him?"
"She did."
"But he was with her."
"He was my friend. It is a grief."
Bytsan shook his head. "Is it possible to understand the Kitan?"
"Perhaps not."
He was tired, suddenly. And it occurred to him that he'd have two bodies to bury quickly now--because he'd be leaving in the morning.
"He led an assassin to you."
"He was a friend," Tai repeated. "He was deceived. He came to bring me tidings. She, or whoever paid her, didn't want me to hear them or live to do anything about it."
"A friend," Bytsan sri Nespo repeated. His tone betrayed nothing. He turned to go.
"Captain!"
Bytsan looked back, didn't turn his horse.
"So are you, I believe. My thanks." Tai closed fist in hand.
The other man stared at him for a long time, then nodded.
He was about to spur his horse away, Tai saw. But he did something else, instead. You could see a thought striking him, could read it in the square-chinned features.
"Did he tell you? Whatever it was he came to say?"
Tai shook his head.
Gnam had danced his horse farther south. He was ready to leave now. Had the two swords across his back.
Bytsan's face clouded over. "You will leave now? To find out what it was?"
He was clever, this Taguran. Tai nodded again. "In the morning. Someone died to bring me tidings. Someone died to stop me from learning them."
Bytsan nodded. He looked west himself this time, the sinking sun, darkness coming. Birds in the air, restless on the far side of the lake. Hardly any wind. Now.
The Taguran drew a deep breath. "Gnam, go on ahead. I'll stay the night with the Kitan. If he's leaving in the morning there are matters he and I must talk about. I'll test my fate inside with him. It seems that whatever spirits are here mean him no harm. Tell the others I'll catch you up tomorrow. You can wait for me in the middle pass."
Gnam's turn to stare. "You are staying here?"
"I just said that."
"Captain! That is--"
"I know it is. Go."
The younger man hesitated still. His mouth opened and closed. Bytsan's tattooed face was hard, nothing vaguely close to a yielding there.
Gnam shrugged. He spurred his horse and rode away. They stood there, the two of them, and watched him go in the waning of the light, saw him gallop very fast around the near side of the lake as if spirits were pursuing him, tracking his breath and blood.

CHAPTER III

T
he armies of the empire had changed over the past fifty years, and changes were continuing. The old
fupei
system of a peasant militia summoned for part of the year then returning to their farms for the harvest had grown more and more inadequate to the needs of an expanding empire.
The borders had been pushed west and north and northeast and even south past the Great River through the disease-ridden tropics to the pearl-diver seas. Collisions with Tagurans to the west and the various Bogu tribal factions north had increased, as did the need to protect the flow of luxuries that came on the Silk Roads. The emergence of border forts and garrisons farther and farther out had ended the militia system with its back-and-forth of farmer-soldiers.
Soldiers were professionals now, or they were supposed to be. More and more often they and their officers were drawn from nomads beyond the Long Wall, subdued and co-opted by the Kitan. Even the military governors were often foreigners now. Certainly the most powerful one was.
It marked a change. A large one.
The soldiers served year-round and, for years now, were paid from the imperial treasury and supported by a virtual army of peasants and labourers building forts and walls, supplying food and weapons and clothing and entertainment of any and all kinds.
It made for better-trained fighters familiar with their terrain, but a standing army of this size did not come without costs--and increased taxes were only the most obvious consequence.
In years and regions of relative peace, without drought or flood, with wealth now flowing at an almost unimaginable rate into Xinan and Yenling and the other great cities, the cost of the new armies was bearable. In hard years it became a problem. And other issues, less readily seen, were growing. At the lowest ebb, of a person or a nation, the first seeds of later glory may sometimes be seen, looking back with a careful eye. At the absolute summit of accomplishment the insects chewing from within at the most extravagant sandalwood may be heard, if the nights are quiet enough.
A QUIET-ENOUGH NIGHT. Wolves had been howling in the canyon earlier, but had stopped. The darkness was giving way, for those on watch on the ramparts of Iron Gate Fort, to a nearly-summer sunrise. Pale light pulling a curtain of shadows back--as in a puppet show at a town market--from the narrow space between ravine walls.
Though that, thought Wujen Ning, from his post on the ramparts, was not quite right. Street theatre curtains were pulled to the side--he'd seen them in Chenyao.
Ning was one of the native-born Kitan here, having followed his father and older brothers into the army. There was no family farm for him to rely upon for an income, or return to visit. He wasn't married.
He spent his half-year leave time in the town between Iron Gate and Chenyao. There were wine shops and food sellers and women to take his strings of cash. Once, given two weeks' leave, he'd gone to Chenyao itself, five days away. Home was too far.
Chenyao had been, by a great deal, the biggest city he'd ever seen. It had frightened him, and he'd never gone back. He didn't believe the others when they said it wasn't that large, as cities went.
Here in the pass, in the quiet of it, the dawn light was filtering downwards. It struck the tops of the cliffs first, pulling them from shadow, and worked its way towards the still-dark valley floor as the sun rose over the mighty empire behind them.
Wujen Ning had never seen the sea, but it pleased him to imagine the vast lands of Kitai stretching east to the ocean and the islands in it where immortals dwelled.
He glanced down at the dark, dusty courtyard. He adjusted his helmet. They had a commander now who was obsessed with helmets and properly worn uniforms, as if a screaming horde of Tagurans might come storming down the valley at any moment and sweep over the fortress walls if someone's tunic or sword belt was awry.
As if,
Ning thought. He spat over the wall through his missing front tooth. As if the might of the Kitan Empire in this resplendent Ninth Dynasty, and the three hundred soldiers in this fort that commanded the pass, were a nuisance like mosquitoes.
He slapped at one of those on his neck. They were worse to the south, but this pre-dawn hour brought out enough of the bloodsuckers to make for annoyance. He looked up. Scattered clouds, a west wind in his face. The last stars nearly gone. He'd be off duty at the next drum, could go down to breakfast and sleep.
He scanned the empty ravine, and realized it wasn't empty.
What he saw, in the mist slowly dispersing, made him shout for a runner to go to the commander.
A lone man approaching before sunrise wasn't a threat, but it was unusual enough to get an officer up on the wall.
Then, as he came nearer, the rider lifted a hand, gesturing for the gates to be opened for him. At first Ning was astonished at the arrogance of that, and then he saw the horse the man was riding.
He watched them come on, horse and rider taking clearer form, like spirits entering the real world through fog. That was a strange thought. Ning spat again, between his fingers this time for protection.
He wanted the horse the moment he saw it. Every man in Iron Gate would want that horse. By the bones of his honoured ancestors, Wujen Ning thought, every man in the empire would.

"Why you so sure that one didn't bring her to you?" Bytsan had asked.
"He did bring her. Or she brought him."
"Stop being clever, Kitan. You know what I mean."
Some irritation, understandable. They'd been on their eighth or ninth cup of wine, at least--it had been considered ill-bred among the students in Xinan to keep count.
Night outside by then, but moonlit, so silver in the cabin.
Tai had also lit candles, thinking light would help the other man. The ghosts were out there, as always. You could hear their voices, as always. Tai was used to it, but felt unsettled to realize this was his last night. He wondered if they might know it, somehow.
Bytsan wouldn't be--couldn't be--accustomed to any of this.
The voices of the dead offered anger and sorrow, sometimes dark, hard pain, as if trapped forever in the moment of their dying. The sounds swirled from outside the cabin windows, gliding along the rooftop. Some came from farther off, towards the lake or the trees.
Tai tried to remember the dry-mouthed terror he'd lived with on his first nights two years ago. It was hard to reclaim those feelings after so long, but he remembered sweating and shivering, clutching a sword hilt in bed.
If cups of warmed rice wine were going to help the Taguran deal with a hundred thousand ghosts, less the ones buried by Shen Tai in two years ... that was the way it was. That was all right.
They'd buried Yan and the assassin in the pit Tai had begun that afternoon. It wasn't nearly deep enough yet for the bones he'd planned, which made it good for two Kitan just slain, one by sword, one by arrows, sent over to the night.
They'd wrapped them in winter sheepskin he wasn't using (and would never use again) and carried them down the row of mounds in the last of the day's light.
Tai had jumped into the pit and the Taguran had handed down Yan's body and he'd laid his friend in the ground and climbed out of the grave.
Then they'd dropped the assassin in beside Yan and shovelled the earth from next to the open pit back in and pounded it hard on top and all around with the flat sides of the shovels, against the animals that might come, and Tai had spoken a prayer from the teachings of the Path, and poured a libation over the grave, while the Taguran stood by, facing south towards his gods.
It had been nearly dark by then and they'd made their way hastily back to the cabin as the evening star, the one the Kitan people called Great White, appeared in the west, following the sun down. Poets' star at evening, soldiers' in the morning.
There hadn't been anything in the way of fresh food. On a normal day, Tai would have caught a fish, gathered eggs, shot a bird and plucked it for cooking at day's end, but there had been no time for that today.
They'd boiled dried, salted pork and eaten it with kale and hazelnuts in bowls of rice. The Tagurans had brought early peaches, which were good. And they'd had the new rice wine. They drank as they ate, and continued when the meal was done.
The ghosts had begun with the starlight.
"You know what I mean," Bytsan repeated, a little too loudly. "Why're you so sure of him? Chou Yan? You trust everyone who names himself a friend?"
Tai shook his head. "Isn't in my nature to be trusting. But Yan was too proud of himself when he saw me, and too astonished when she drew her swords."
"A Kitan can't deceive?"
Tai shook his head again. "I knew him." He sipped his wine. "But someone knew me, if they told her not to fight. She said she'd have preferred to kill me in a combat. And she knew I was here. Yan didn't know. She let him go first to my father's house. Didn't give away where I was--he'd have suspected something. Maybe. He wasn't a suspicious man."
Bytsan looked at Tai narrowly, considering all this. "Why would a Kanlin Warrior fear you?"
He wasn't so drunk, after all. Tai couldn't see how it would hurt to answer.
"I trained with them. At Stone Drum Mountain, nearly two years." He watched the other man react. "It would take me time to get my skills back, but someone may not have wanted to chance it."
The Taguran was staring. Tai poured more wine for him from the flask on the brazier. He drank from his own cup, then filled it. A friend had died here today. There was blood on the bedding. There was a new hole in the world where sorrow could enter.
"Everyone knew this about you? The time with the Kanlins?"
Tai shook his head. "No."
"You trained to be an assassin?"
The usual, irritating mistake. "I trained to learn how they think, their disciplines, and how they handle weapons. They are usually guards, or guarantors of a truce, not assassins. I left, fairly abruptly. Some of my teachers may still feel kindly towards me. Others might not. It was years ago. We leave things behind us."
"Well, that's true enough."
Tai drank his wine.
"They think you used them? Tricked them?"
Tai was beginning to regret mentioning it. "I just understand them a little now."
"And they don't like that?"
"No. I'm not a Kanlin."
"What are you?"
"Right now? I'm between worlds, serving the dead."
"Oh, good. Be Kitan-clever again. Are you a soldier or a court mandarin, fuck it all?"
Tai managed a grin. "Neither. Fuck it all."
Bytsan looked away quickly, but Tai saw him suppress a smile. It was hard not to like this man.
He added, more quietly, "It is only truth, captain. I left the army years ago, have not taken the civil service exams. I'm not being clever."
Bytsan held out his again-empty cup before answering. Tai filled it, topped up his own. This was beginning to remind him of nights in the North District. Soldiers or poets--who could drink more? A question for the ages, or sages.
After a moment, the Taguran said, also softly, "You didn't need us to save you."
Outside, something screamed.
It wasn't a sound you could pretend was an animal, or wind. Tai knew that particular voice. Heard it every night. He found himself wishing he'd been able to find and bury that one before leaving. But there was no way to know where any given bones might lie. That much he'd learned in two years. Two years that were ending tonight. He had to leave. Someone had been sent to kill him, this far away. He needed to learn why. He drained his cup again.
He said, "I didn't know they would attack her. Neither did you, coming back."
"Well, of course, or we wouldn't have come."
Tai shook his head. "No, that means your courage deserves honour."
Something occurred to him. Sometimes wine sent your thoughts along channels you'd not otherwise have found, as when river reeds hide and then reveal a tributary stream in marshland.
"Is that why you let the young one shoot both arrows?"
Bytsan's gaze in mingled light was unsettlingly direct. Tai was beginning to feel his wine. The Taguran said, "She was flat against the cabin. They were going to crush the life from her. Why waste an arrow?"
Half an answer at best. Tai said wryly, "Why waste a chance to give a soldier a tattoo, and a boast?"
The other man shrugged. "That, too. He did come back with me."
Tai nodded.
Bytsan said, "You ran outside knowing they'd help you?" An edge to his voice. And why not? They were listening to the cries outside right now. And screams.
Tai cast his mind back to the desperate moments after Yan died. "I was running for the shovel."
Bytsan sri Nespo laughed, a quick, startling sound. "Against Kanlin swords?"
Tai found himself laughing too. The wine was part of it. And the aftermath of fear remembered. He'd expected to die.
He'd have become one of the ghosts of Kuala Nor.
They drank again. The screaming voice had stopped. Another bad one was beginning, one of those that seemed to still be dying, unbearably, somewhere in the night. It hurt your heart, listening, frayed the edges of your mind.
Tai said, "Do you think about death?"
The other man looked at him. "Every soldier does."
It was an unfair question. This was a stranger, of an enemy people not so long ago, and likely again in years to come. A blue-tattooed barbarian living beyond the civilized world.
Tai drank. Taguran wine was not going to replace the spiced or scented grape wine of the best houses in the North District, but it was good enough for tonight.
Bytsan murmured suddenly, "I said we had to talk. Told Gnam that, remember?"
"We aren't talking enough? A shame ... a shame Yan's buried out there. He'd have talked you to sleep, if only to find a respite from his voice."
Buried out there
.
Such a wrong place for a gentle, garrulous man to lie. And Yan had come so far. Carrying what tidings? Tai didn't know. He didn't even know, he realized, if his friend had passed the exams.
Bytsan looked away. Gazing out a window at moonlight, he said, "If someone sent an assassin they can send another--when you get back or while you are on the way. You know that."
He knew that.
Bytsan said, "Iron Gate saw them come through. They will ask where the two of them are."
"I'll tell them."
"And they will send word to Xinan."
Tai nodded. Of course they would. A Kanlin Warrior coming this far west as an assassin? That had significance. Not empire-shaking, Tai wasn't important enough, but certainly worth a dispatch from a sleepy border fort. It would go with the military post, which was very fast.
Bytsan said, "Your mourning's over, then?"
"It will almost be, time I get to Xinan."
"That where you'll go?"
"Have to."
"Because you do know who sent her?"
He hadn't expected that.
It was Xin Lun who suggested it to me
. Yan's last words on earth, in life, under nine heavens.
"I might know how to start finding out."
He might know more than that, but he wasn't ready to think about it tonight.
"I have another suggestion, then," said the Taguran. "Two of them. Trying to keep you alive." He laughed briefly, drained another cup. "My future seems to be bound up with yours, Shen Tai, and the gift you've been given. You need to stay alive long enough to send for your horses."
Tai considered that. It made sense, from Bytsan's point of view--you didn't have to think hard to see the truth of it.
Both of the Taguran's suggestions had been good ones.
Tai would not have thought of either. He would need to get his subtlety back before he reached Xinan, where you could be exiled for bowing one time too many or too few or to the wrong person first. He accepted both of the other man's ideas, with one addition that seemed proper.
They'd finished the last of the flask, put out the lights, and had gone to bed.
Towards what would soon enough be morning, the moon over west, the Taguran had said softly from where he lay on the floor, "If I'd spent two years here, I would think about death."
"Yes," said Tai.
Starlight. The voices outside, rising and falling. The star of the Weaver Maid had been visible earlier, shining in a window. Far side of the Sky River from her love.
"They are mostly about sorrow out there, aren't they?"
"Yes."
"They would have killed her, though."
"Yes."