The Hand, the Eye and the Heart Page 10

  I couldn’t duck without jerking my shield out of position and giving up ground to the other side. I gritted my teeth, bracing for the impact—

  Yang Jie appeared next to me in a graceful swoop. One strong, small hand snapped up to seize the shaft of the practice pike, forcing it away from my face. With his dominant hand, he jabbed a blunt sword back through the gap into the opposing trainee’s … gut, by the sound of the stunned Ooof. My shield suddenly met no resistance. I surged forward, the trainees next to me following with whoops of triumph. The pike rattled over our shields to the dusty dirt at our feet.

  Yang Jie – mood seemingly back to its normal buoyancy, despite the morning’s events – winked at me, scooped up the fallen pike, and braced himself against the back of the man next to me. With a chorus of animal grunts and snarls, we pushed the other side back. I heard their leader cry out, “No! Hold your ground!”

  A savage grin split my lips. We were going to win.

  Then, above the familiar cacophony of shuffling feet, panting breaths and clattering weapons, there came a high, clarion call – the bright and unmistakable notes of a sentry’s horn, carried on the hot summer wind that flowed above our heads.

  Someone was approaching the camp.

  As one, both sides fell back, dropping practice weapons and reaching for real ones, turning to face the western hills where the horn had blown.

  “Wait!” the sergeant bellowed, voice tense. “It was an alert, not the call to arms.”

  Nevertheless, we scrambled into formation and stood tense and prepared. My heart was drumming with readiness, and I wished I had my armour. Who was coming here and why? There had been nothing but regularly scheduled supply caravans in the months since training began.

  “Alert from the west?” Yang Jie muttered. “No one ever comes here from the west…”

  The horn sang out again: three long, wavering notes that reminded me of Bingbing’s welcome song. The sergeant sagged for an instant, then straightened, his hand falling from the hilt of his sword. “All clear!”

  He might have said something else, but I heard nothing more than that.

  There, on the crest of the hill above the valley, the crimson banner of the Imperial Army rose into view, held on a long silver pole by a military outrider on a dark horse. Another reined in beside him, this one with a dappled mount, holding a flag of rich, deep blue, picked out in gold with a personal emblem that I did not know.

  And finally, followed by a small gaggle of servants, spare mounts, a wagon and pack mules, a towering warhorse appeared. Its heaving sides were the colour of blood, its legs, mane and tail black as night. The animal would have dwarfed Yulong, just as its rider dwarfed me and almost every man in the training field with me. Silhouetted against the bleached-blue sky, he appeared the size of a giant.

  The sun flashed on the plates of his armour, setting fire to the flying white horsehair plume of his helmet. His red horse reared – and the rider lifted a burning sword, seeming to salute us. Around him the banners snapped and rippled in a sudden hot wave of air that washed over us, gritty gold with dust and summer grass pollen. High overhead, a hawk dived, its haunting shriek echoing through the valley.

  I sensed the indrawn breath of my fellows, the feeling of unreality. This was a scene from a tapestry or ballad, an image from a legend. It couldn’t be real.

  The horse’s front hooves hit the ground again with a puff of dirt. Then the rider and his followers turned and began a sedate descent down the hill.

  “General Wu,” Yang Jie whispered, eyes wide.

  “Who?” I asked, only to startle when everyone turned on me with expressions of disbelief and annoyance.

  “Wu Jiang!”

  “The emperor’s favourite nephew!”

  “He’s the youngest general in the history of the Imperial Army! Only twenty-one years old!”

  “They call him the Young General,” Yang Jie said more quietly. “The hero of Black Gorge. It’s said he’s the best the emperor has. The best since your father.”

  There was a weighted pause while everyone stared at me. “Oh, him,” I said feebly.

  I had heard of Wu Jiang. From my father, in passing. Not with this froth of hero-worship bubbling around his name.

  Even before the Leopard’s uprising, before the war, the emperor had paid a heavy price for the throne. Many of her family had died in the earlier conflicts which had sealed her reputation. After her oldest brother lost his wife to poison meant for the emperor herself, Wu Fen had taken his only child, his son, into her own household and raised him as a sort-of big brother to her child, the crown prince.

  And that was all I knew of Wu Jiang.

  Perhaps they tell different stories to daughters than sons…

  “Men!” the sergeant shouted, making us all jump. “Did I declare a holiday and forget it? Did I ask you to stand around gossiping like women in the middle of doing the laundry?” His face was like a thundercloud as we all scrambled back into place. But hardly had the opposition hefted their shields again when his own head whipped around.

  Commander Diao was approaching the training field. Captain Lu walked on his left, and they were trailed by the censor, the camp’s priest and the novice priest, Diao’s aide-de-camp Sergeant Yun, and every other person of any importance in the valley.

  Towering over Diao on the right was an astonishing physical specimen, as broad across and nearly as tall as half a barn door. His glossy hair gleamed a true blue-black, drawn up from a severe widow’s peak into a simple knot. His jaw was square and stubborn, adorned by a beautifully trimmed dark beard which framed a wide, full-lipped mouth. The beard was probably an attempt to make himself appear older, because his face, though bronzed, was young. He wore the gilded, bejewelled armour of a general, and bristled with weapons, but walked as if the weight of metal plate, scale and steel was nothing to him, even in this blistering heat.

  Once again I felt the interest and awe ripple through my fellow recruits and, once again, their emotions were mine as well. This could only be the Young General. The man was the pinnacle of masculine beauty and power. At a single glance I knew he was everything that every man aspired to be.

  How must it feel to be him? It must be something like paradise, to be a man like that.

  “Form up, recruits!” our sergeant ordered. His second order came in an undertone that was still perfectly audible to the back ranks. “Hold your tongues and look sharp.”

  I skidded into position, still examining the Young General avidly. He turned his head, and I caught my breath as I glimpsed the dark fire of his eyes, alight with fierce intelligence and ambition.

  “Some of our most promising young recruits,” Diao was telling Wu. “And Sergeant Sui, who is invaluable in helping whip them into shape.”

  Our sergeant bowed deeply. “An honour, General.”

  “Indeed it is!” Diao agreed heartily. His expression was even more fixed than usual. “I only wish that we had been offered some small warning as to the general’s planned inspection—”

  “Oh, not an inspection, Commander,” Wu Jiang protested. His voice was deep but surprisingly soft, and he drew his words out almost sleepily. “A friendly visit.”

  “Regardless, I fear you’ll find our ability to entertain you lacking,” the commander finished. “We are a mere humble training facility. Luxury is not to be expected here.”

  Yang Jie made a small, pained sound. I agreed silently. For some unfathomable reason Diao seemed to dislike the Young General, or resent his presence, and he was taking little trouble to hide it.

  Captain Lu, on the other hand, was oozing around to the Young General’s right side with a smile that positively beamed. If he had been a cat, I would have been checking the ground for feathers. “I’m certain that a decorated military hero like Wu Jiang expects nothing that our camp cannot provide, sir.”

  Was that … a subtle dig at the commander for implying that Wu Jiang was a soft nobleman?

  “I’ll wager we c
an offer the finest martial entertainment in the empire. Perhaps even fine enough to present the general with a real challenge. I, myself, would be happy to engage in a friendly sparring match before dinner—”

  Diao cut Lu off ruthlessly. “The general has ridden several thousand miles to grace us with his presence. I’m sure that what he would like most is to bathe, eat and rest. Is that not so, General Wu?”

  “Whatever you say, Commander Diao. Very kind of you,” the general said amiably, giving the impression that he’d barely heard anything either of them had said. His eyes were scanning our ranks with interest, and he murmured a question to our sergeant, who looked almost as star-struck as we all felt at speaking to such an august personage.

  Lu wilted, while the commander’s face hardened even further into a smile that was painful to see. Diao led the general away, and everyone else scurried to follow.

  The sergeant turned back to us, ran his gaze over our ranks, and sighed. “Go on, then – clean yourselves up and get your chattering and dreaming done,” he ordered wearily. “You stink and I’m sick of the sight of you.”

  The east barracks were filled with jubilation. Not only had we been blessed with a glimpse of the famous General Wu, but we had somehow gained an hour’s free time before dinner without incurring any punishments for it. After the morning’s grim events, it really was like a holiday.

  The others chattered eagerly, turning over every detail they had observed – the height and colour of General Wu’s horse, the way he shaved his beard, the possible maker of his sword – as if it were a precious gem. I alone seemed troubled by the murky undercurrents which had swirled around the commanding officers and their royal visitor.

  “Your problem is that you use all your brain power up worrying about things that are none of your concern,” Yang Jie told me. He was reclining on his bed eating a few precious slivers of his favourite lemon peel, the picture of ease, with Bingbing perched on his updrawn knee. “Then, when you actually need the use of your brain, you find that it’s given up, exhausted, and you’re on your own.”

  I threw a smelly sock at his head. He batted it out of the air with a moue of disgust, and I snorted out a laugh.

  “Lucky I’ve got you around then, isn’t it, Oh Wise One,” I said. “I suppose you spent your time in that pit contemplating the mysteries of the universe, and if it wasn’t for me interrupting you, you’d be penning a book of philosophical poetry right now.”

  He finished his lemon peel, folded his arms behind his head, and softly recited:

  “Fires on the horizon.

  Wars never end.

  We fight and fall,

  And the dark birds pick at our flesh

  Perching on dead trees surrounded by the dead,

  Where we have painted the grasses red.”

  The words made the air resound, vibrating like the iron strings of a zither. I swallowed. “That’s…”

  He arched a fine brow at me. “You’re not the only one that can read, you know. Come on. We might as well get to the mess early. I’m still making up for last week’s half rations.”

  But we hadn’t been eating long before a wave of excitement and surprise washed through the recruits.

  Captain Lu himself had entered the mess – ushering the Young General before him.

  Both men had changed from their armour into more casual loose robes, but the fineness of the garments, the neatness of their hair and the pristine cleanliness of their skin – the kind of cleanliness that could only be achieved with the application of copious amounts of hot water, foaming soap, and access to a mirror – made them look glaringly out of place in the mess among the scruffy, barely washed, unranked men. I had never even glimpsed an officer in this building before; the sergeants and officers ate in their own smaller mess, and the two captains dined with Commander Diao in his large, opulent tent each night.

  What was Captain Lu thinking?

  General Wu looked around with a hint of reticence, clearly aware of all the eyes on him. Captain Lu simply walked up to a table by the tent wall and cleared it of its occupants with an excoriating glance. Two of the men hurriedly tidied away all the plates, cups, trays and chopsticks, while another departed at a run and came back with a new, heaping tray of food which he humbly presented to the senior officer. The Young General and Captain Lu seated themselves. Lu wrinkled his nose at the food and pushed it aside. General Wu began to eat.

  It seemed prudent at this point to at least pretend we weren’t gawping at the two senior officers, so we all turned back to our food, and a subdued hum of conversation slowly built around us. I couldn’t help observing the officers from the corner of my eye, though.

  “Do you think Lu’s angling for a promotion?” I asked softly. “Does he hope Wu Jiang might take him on as part of his personal staff? It’s no secret that he hates being here.”

  “Promotion doesn’t work like that, does it?” Ma Wen asked. “Aren’t there … rules and … proper channels?”

  “If you’re as well connected as Wu Jiang, the proper channel is probably a wave of your hand,” Yang Jie said dryly. “But he doesn’t look all that impressed by Lu to me.”

  The Young General had propped himself up on one elbow, visibly bored, while Lu talked at him.

  Before I could reply, Commander Diao stormed into the tent. He was smiling so hard and so terrifyingly that several nearby trainees cowered in their seats.

  “Oh dear,” said Yang Jie, with what I felt was admirable understatement.

  “Ah! There you are!” Diao boomed pleasantly as he strode across the room. I imagined lightning bolts crackling in his thick beard and bristling eyebrows, and found my back bowing down of its own accord, as if to get further out of range.

  The commander’s next words, as he arrived at the general’s table, were too quiet for us to hear. Lu spoke and was seemingly crushed by a single retort from Diao, subsiding into his seat with a frustrated expression. General Wu appeared placatory, lifting his hands as if in apology and shaking his head. Diao kept on smiling.

  “What in the world is going on over there?” Yang Jie mumbled, giving voice to the flame of curiosity which burned in every breast.

  Then, with the feeling of inescapable doom that you might expect when observing the first tiny rolling rocks that signal a coming landslide, I saw Diao turn his head, as if searching for someone that he expected to see in the mess.

  “No. Please no,” I whispered, causing my tablemates to look at me askance. I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead and slumped down as low as possible over my half-eaten dinner. Diao’s eyes lit upon me. “Not again, not again,” I moaned.

  Diao made a peremptory gesture of command. Come here.

  “It’s been nice knowing you, Hua Zhi,” Ma Wen said gravely. “Make your ancestors proud.”

  Yang Jie just stared, open-mouthed – along with the rest of my barracks – as I reluctantly pushed to my feet and walked slowly over to the table by the wall.

  Eleven

  eneral, this is Hua Zhi of the House of Hua – Hua Zhou’s son,” Diao was saying as I arrived. My jaw clenched so hard that pain zigzagged into my teeth. Why was Diao talking to General Wu about me?

  I saluted.

  The general nodded in my direction, eyes assessing me keenly. “I didn’t know the Wild Tiger had a son.”

  Oh, ancestors. I cleared my throat, praying I could get through this without ruining everything. “In fact, he has two, sir. Myself and my younger brother.”

  The general accepted it without apparent doubt. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise indeed. I met your father when I was very young, and always remembered it. He is an excellent man. I hope he is well? And your mother, too?”

  The man’s presence – the heat of his interest – was overwhelming. I tried my hardest not to melt into the floor. “I – left them well, sir. I have not heard from them recently.”

  “The soldier’s life,” he said wryly, as if speaking to a man of similar rank.

/>   Against my will, my gaze slid sideways to see what Captain Lu thought of this. The captain’s expression was hard, but as his eyes met mine he smiled: a humourless baring of teeth. A chill slithered down my spine. He’d murder me if he could.

  Diao clapped my shoulder with a friendly if heavy hand. “Hua Zhi is, as expected, a very skilled young fighter. And he will truly benefit from a match – facing up to such a superior opponent will allow him to polish and refine his already impressive skills. But you must promise me to take account of his youth and inexperience, and treat him kindly.”

  A sparring match. That was what this was about? I almost wilted with the relief. Lu had tried to get the general to spar with him earlier, probably hoping to impress him with his abilities. Diao had blocked that, and was doing the same again – only using me, this time – probably out of spite. Lu’s sycophantism towards a man Diao disliked must really have rankled.

  “I really have no need of any entertainment,” the general protested. “This is not a state visit. I don’t want to cause any disruption.”

  “Oh no, how could I be such a bad host?” The commander clapped me on the shoulder again. I resisted the effort to rub the feeling back into it. “And we cannot dash this fine young man’s hopes now, either, can we, Hua Zhi?”

  “Of – of course, sir,” I stuttered, slightly late.

  “No time like the present then, gentlemen!” Commander Diao gestured at the general in much the same imperious manner he had used with me. Wu Jiang – who I felt had every right to be losing patience at this point – only let out a faint sigh as he pushed away from the table. To my dismay, Captain Lu followed as Diao steered General Wu and me towards the entrance.

  As our group of four left the mess, there was a sudden rush of frenzied motion behind us. I knew without looking that every man in the place had leapt to his feet, rapidly emptying the building as they scrambled to follow us and get the best view of the coming “duel”. Diao noticed the sounds – I could tell – and I fleetingly hoped that he would turn back and order everyone to return to their dinners, but his only reaction was a slight crinkling around his iron-hard eyes.