two
Truly, if Shen had not been so impossibly angry about it, Chung would not be here. He was Chung the messenger, not Chung the warrior. Shen’s training and his own diligence had given him a fighting skin, the superficial skills of it, but not the heart at all.
Perhaps all warriors were the same, hiding some other self beneath a lethal bluster? Perhaps. He might have liked to think so, but he couldn’t persuade himself. Chung couldn’t know the heart of another man, but he knew Shen as well as anyone could hope to, mind and body and blood; and he didn’t believe that Shen was hiding anything. That man was a soldier all the way through.
Which was what made him so difficult now, when war was here at last and Shen could not fight it.
“I thought you’d be glad,” Chung said once, risking more than he knew. “I thought this was every soldier’s dream, to be excused duties for a while.” To lie in the grass, he meant, with food in your belly and a bottle at your elbow, someone who loves you kneeling beside, your wound healing well, an impressive scar to show people later and every little foul-tempered convalescent whim catered for in the meantime …
“Not when his friends are going to fight,” Shen snarled. “I should be there, with them.”
And you’re the one who’s stopping me. He didn’t say that again, he didn’t need to; it was writ large on his body, in his scowl. It wasn’t true, of course—it was the doctors, the imperial doctors who had taken one look at Shen and ruled him unfit to fight—but Chung had been saying the exact same thing beforehand, you’re not fit to fight. So had everyone, the emperor included. Chung said it first, though, and most heatedly; and it was Chung who fetched the doctors, thinking that a medical opinion might carry more weight than an imperial or a loving one. Not so, apparently …
“It’ll go just as well without you,” Chung said now, trying to reassure, heaping error on top of error. “Even you’re not indispensable,” trying to tease his ego, my arrogant little soldier, error upon error upon error. “One more sword, what’s that? In an army?”
“One more sword that knows the right place to be, when it’s needed,” Shen spat. “Not indispensable, no—but someone will die because I’m not there. One of our friends, most likely. That’s how battle goes. You know.”
He did know; but not even shared experience could save him now, when he wanted to use it on one side of the argument and Shen wanted to use it on the other.
At first they only argued, Shen was only angry because he couldn’t go. Later, when he understood that Chung was even thinking about it—oh, then had come the fury. Hard hands, hard words; a cold back turned until Chung sought out another place to sleep.
Even then, the right word from Shen—it didn’t even need to be a kind word—would have changed his mind, in so far as he had made it up at all.
All he got was savagery, intercut with the logic that he could already use against himself, no use to him at all.
“You? You’re a messenger, not a fighter. You only know how to run.”
“Yes. They will need runners.”
“You’re Mei Feng’s runner, not the emperor’s. She’s not going; why are you?”
I’m not, not yet; I only think I should. “The emperor may be glad of me. And I do know how to fight, you taught me. I can handle a blade, even, better than before, after all this practice. I could be really useful.”
“You could be really dead. Fool.”
Then Shen took it into his head to behave as though Chung were dead already, a ghost already, to be ignored or else cursed and driven away: which only drove him into the strong grip of a decision. He would go, then. Not to be Shen, take his place, no: that would be ridiculous, it was one of the ridiculous accusations that Shen flung at his head along with bowls and stained bandages and one time a used chamber-pot. But to be himself, Chung the messenger, following his emperor and being with his friends. Fighting if he had to, for something that he thought he might believe in, if he could only pin down quite what it was.
He had actually been glad to step on the boat at last, to be committed, a part of the great invasion. Nothing he could do then but be the best soldier he could manage. He fancied himself going home with tales of glory—I saved the emperor’s life, I saved the day, I ran the message that brought the victory, we would have been lost without me—but he knew those were just fancies. Mostly he only wanted to be sure of going home.
At least he had the emperor to follow and people he knew around him, the imperial guards he had trained with in the forest. They had adopted him, he thought; he was more a pet than a colleague, but a welcome pet, a mascot for the troop.
They must have been seen from the city like a rising horizon, a darkening on the edge of vision, an encroaching storm. Not quite running except when the emperor did, they never quite caught up with the vanguard: only the signs left like a trail, bodies by the roadside now and then, blood-wet. Some of them might have been rebels, trying to delay the emperor’s men, give others more time to flee. They might have been rebels too slow to run; they might not have been rebels at all, only peasants unlucky on the day. The emperor glanced the first time, stiffened his face and hurried on. Chung tried not to look, but that was harder. The bodies danced in the corners of his eyes.
The emperor’s entourage worked hard to keep him behind the stormfront, and that not far, never far enough. He was emperor, and this was his day of vengeance, long delayed; he wanted to taste it for himself. If he couldn’t have Tunghai Wang at his sword’s point, he wanted someone at least, anyone, any rebel. And was frustrated, because the city was empty, near enough. Emptying as they watched, wherever they had sight of the river, where trails of retreating men showed on either bank.
Even the emperor could not have everything he wanted, even on his day of triumph. They chased as straightly as possible down from the ridge to the river, as fast as possible until an arrow hit the emperor’s jade mail. There was serious argument then, the sweating generals demanding that he take himself back out of danger; he resolved that by stepping quite neatly around them and running on. He would have gone alone if others hadn’t scampered to keep up, to keep ahead.
Chung ran easily enough in his wake and thought, If Shen could see me now, he wouldn’t mind so much. There’s nothing here. One arrow, what’s that? Not worth crossing the channel for …
THERE WERE more arrows, but none that came near the emperor. There was no real resistance, no barricade that had not been swept aside already, no holding out to the last man. Skirmishers on the flanks, who fired arrows from cover and flitted away before a squad could find them: nothing worse than that. Nobody, it seemed, was prepared to die for Tunghai Wang.
And here was the river, broad and full; and over there was the other arm of the imperial invasion, advancing just as fast, finding almost no one to fight.
There was no bridge, there were no boats, it was too far to shout. Still, the soldiers could wave at each other. Chung did that cheerfully, though he hardly knew anyone over there, and couldn’t see those few he could have named. Jiao should be there somewhere; if she were standing among the men on the bank she would be standing out, so she wasn’t there.
He hoped she wasn’t hurt. He hoped nobody was hurt, or as few as were hurt over here.
He hoped they could stop, now that they had the city and the river, but he had small actual hope of that. The emperor had come for a battle, and he wouldn’t be happy without one.
Besides, the running rebels had been close enough to see, from higher on the ridge. Who could resist a chase?
NOT THE emperor, that was certain.
He hadn’t stopped to wave, only to give swift commands to his trumpeters and bannermen. That done, he was setting out to run again.
“Majesty, wait!”
“For what?”
“For your own safety, and for our peace of mind.” The general bold enough to shout at his emperor was bold enough to snarl a little also. His arm came perilously close to gripping the imperial shoulder hard enough to give the imperial person a brisk shake. “Majesty, do you not see?”
“I see a clear path along the river, with my enemies retreated out of sight; I see my men eager to pursue them, on this bank as they are already on the other. I see the shadows growing shorter, good time passing. That’s what I see. Tell me, Meng Yao, what do you see?”
“I see an old godown in disrepair,” his stabbing finger pointing, “where a hundred men might lurk for exactly this, the chance to catch a fool young emperor unprotected.” His hand might have stopped a fraction short of shaking his fool young emperor, but his voice did not. “Beyond it, I see another,” that stabbing finger hard at work, “and another, and another. If I were Tunghai Wang, I would have spent a thousand men that way, because you are young and want to hunt.”
If I were Tunghai Wang, he seemed to be saying, you would be dying now, or soon now, if you were not dead already.
And he and Tunghai Wang had been colleagues, no doubt, for decades, friends perhaps, debating tactics over flasks of fiery spirits late into the night. They would know each other’s minds from a thousand battles fought in talk, a thousand games of elephant chess. He was a man to listen to, at least.
And the emperor knew it, that at least; he sighed and stood still. “If he had time,” he said—perhaps a little hopefully?—“if he could organize his men, then yes, he might have done that …”
“Majesty, Tunghai Wang has been a soldier all his life. If he only had five minutes, he could organize his men. Enough to spring a trap on his pursuers, at least, to delay us while he makes a good retreat. If that trap happens to catch the emperor, that is his luck and my failure, that I have allowed my emperor to run headlong into it.” Which he would not do, his voice and body said together, if he had to trip his emperor over and sit on him.
“Or perhaps his luck lies in knowing you are here with me and saying this, making me listen; and so he does not need to spend his men, because you will still creep cautiously from one godown to the next while he makes his getaway with all his men intact.”
The emperor wasn’t really arguing, though: only standing resentfully acquiescent while the general organized his own men to search the godowns. Not the imperial guards; they stayed grouped around the emperor, talking to one another, talking to Chung a little.
Not talking to the emperor. This was different from the camp in the forest, where he was almost—almost!—one young man among many: where they could laugh and sweat and sleep and eat with him, where he could let slip the overlord and be more communal than regal, more human than godly, more like them than unlike.
Not here. The companionship of generals was … inhibiting, keeping comradeship as far at bay as it kept wariness close at hand. And here they had to prove themselves, they had to keep him alive or what purpose did they serve, what had the camp in the forest been for, and all that training? They were daunted by that arrow, the memory of it; and they were daunted too by the jademail shirt, which could keep them at a distance even more easily than a general did.
Its relentless shimmer was a constant reminder that this young man was not as other men, nothing after all like them. It was his birthright, his immeasurable fortune to wear an immeasurable fortune that they were forbidden even to touch. They stood back from the shirt, more than from him; so he stood on his own except for generals who had only ever seen him in terms of his throne: to be shifted their way when possible and not at all when he was stubborn, but stone either way. They wouldn’t think to talk to him, and so nobody did.
Chung couldn’t have been the only one who noticed. He did think of stepping out of line, putting himself forward, going to stand with the emperor; and of course did not, and nor did anyone else.
They watched Meng Yao and his soldiers make their way along the waterfront, from warehouse to boathouse to shabby broken warehouse. They saw gates levered open, doors kicked in. Building after building they saw men edge inside, heard voices call.
Saw a few lurking refugees herded out at swordpoint. No rebels, no resistance.
Only time passing, measured by the current in the river: how it swirled and bubbled, how it turned and backed up as the tide came in.
AT LAST the emperor’s impatience reached combustion, just as even his general’s caution was exhausted. The one strode forward so fast he was almost running already, so eruptively that his many escorts did have to run to catch up to him; the other waited by the roadway, bowed low, said, “Majesty. I do believe the riverfront is safe.”
“I do believe,” the emperor snarled, “that if Tunghai Wang is also safe, it will be because of this!”
No, Chung thought: of course the emperor would blame Meng Yao, but it was not the general’s fault. It was Tunghai Wang, playing them, knowing them. Knowing that they would have to search the godowns regardless, he had left them empty, saved his troops, still bought himself an hour.
No, not so long as that. Meng Yao had been swift and efficient, the tide had been on the turn, it had only seemed an hour. The sun said otherwise.
No matter. It had been long enough to infuriate the emperor; long enough to let the rebels run far out of sight.
Now he chased. Which meant that half his guard had to chase harder, to stay ahead; and Chung was a solid, ready runner. He found himself in the forefront without at all meaning to, shoulder to shoulder with men who had followed the emperor—or preceded him, like this—all the way from the Hidden City; and with men and women fresh from the jade clans, who had never been this far from their valleys and never expected to be so.
He ran with his tao drawn, as the others did, so as to be ready; unless it was simply so as to seem one of them, though he wasn’t sure whom he might be fooling. Not himself, not them, not the emperor. Not Shen. Even in his absence, not Shen.
They came past the last of the godowns, past an old wharf for a river ferry where there was no ferry, either side of the river. The road ran on, barely more than a muck track for farmers. There was nothing to be cautious for now, no buildings to alarm the general, only the inevitable paddy rising in terraces both sides of the valley—
—UNTIL THEY came around a bend in the river, and saw the bridge.
The bridge already broken, deliberately so perhaps, to stop them corresponding with the other half of the army. It was a wooden structure that arched across the water in dolphin-leaps, what were really two separate bridges from this bank and from that, meeting on a little island-rock between. At least, it should have arched in dolphin-leaps. It used to.
The leap from the island to the farther bank was gone. The bridge rose from its footings just far enough to say I was a bridge!—and then its timbers frayed into empty space, a leap that vanished, as though pressure of time and use had worn it entirely away.
Chung didn’t believe that for a moment. He believed rather in what he couldn’t see, rebels crawling among the timbers beneath, knocking out the vital pins that held its span together. The sudden fall that followed, dark and heavy lengths tumbling into the busy, hurried water.
There would be no pause here, no reunion across the water. It didn’t matter for Chung—Shen was far away, across another water altogether—but Yu Shan might have appreciated the chance. Or the emperor or his generals, for more tactical reasons; or any number of the troops, only because those were their brothers over there.
Their brothers were to be seen, massed on the bank there, waving. They were yelling too, only their words couldn’t reach so far; the waters were noisy here, squeezed either side of that island and again at the bend, high and urgent in their hurry to the sea.
There were figures to be seen on the island too; and angular shapes that were not natural, frameworks with arms that moved in sudden awkward flurries …
And now there were dark specks rising from the island, not birds but something hurled, like rocks. It was in that moment that Chung understood: those were actual living rebels on the island there, and they had machines that threw rocks, which was probably what the soldiers on the other bank had been trying to say …
Not rocks. They rose so slowly, he had time to see how unnaturally round they were: worked stones, perhaps, but there was something more. He thought flickers of light accompanied them in their flight. When they rose above the horizon of the valley wall, he was sure he saw thin trails of smoke hang behind them as they arched across the sky.
One more glance across the river, just that moment he could snatch his eyes away; beyond the gesticulating soldiers he could see stretches of the riverbank seared black. And, yes, something piled that might be bodies, burned almost to charcoal …
He opened his mouth to yell a warning, but there was no time. They had seemed so slow to climb, those dark barrels with their trailing fuses; they were suddenly in a dreadful hurry to descend, as though they wanted to outrace their own surprise.
He wasn’t the only one to understand. People were gasping, shoving, trying to scatter; but the roadway offered little space and too many bodies, while the paddy was a soft slow clinging wade, impossible to hurry through.
Chung looked back, to where some few bolder guards were pushing closer to the emperor. Shen would have done that: not so much to offer his own body’s protection, but only to be there where it mattered, at the heart of things.
Chung was too late, too slow. He looked up again and here they were, hurtling now, impossible to duck or dodge. Impossible to do anything but stare.
Down they came, smoking, fizzing. Their falling made its own noise too, like the sound of wind contained in a pipe, but Chung was sure that he heard fizzing.
ONE FELL into the river. A splash, a moment of floating—just long enough for Chung to register the baked-pot look of it—and then a swirl and a gurgle and it sank.
ONE FLEW over his head, over everyone’s head, fell into the paddy and was lost in a great eruptive splash of muddy waters.
APPARENTLY, Chung’s mind was keeping count, all unawares: two more …
ONE FELL on the road ahead.
The track might be muddy and little-used, but there was stone beneath the mud, generations of farmers building it up to take the weight of their carts and wagons. The projectile fell like a barrel, and smashed like a pot; he thought it was a pot, that brief moment that he saw it whole. A huge pot of unglazed clay, spilling blackly across the roadway.
Spilling black fire as it seemed, as flames erupted.
Chung felt the heat even from distance, even as his counting mind thought, too far to hurt, which means three misses, which means …
ONE MORE.
ONE THAT fell behind him but not so very far behind, not far enough.
He heard its fall, he heard the soft explosion of its flame; he heard the silence first, and then the screaming.
He turned then, his body a great reluctance but he had to know.
Not the emperor, no—but close enough.
A gout of fire clung to the emperor’s back, to his jade-scale shirt.
That was the first Chung saw, the first he looked for, the closest flame to him.
THE EMPEROR was ignoring it.
Beyond him, others were burning. Screaming. Writhing.
Roll on the ground, Chung wanted to call, but no one would hear him.
Besides, the ground was aflame, a great blaze of fire leaping up to divide the emperor and his nearmost guards from all those who came behind, those he had outrun.
Screams were cut off by splashes as those who were burning leaped over the wall into the paddy.
Those who didn’t jump were thrown in bodily, by the emperor and Yu Shan working together.
Slow to turn, slow to start moving, but when Chung did, it was with a perfect resolution.
The emperor was burning … !
The emperor was tall and solid, stronger than he looked. Hard to move. Also, weighted now with a shirt of stone.
No, Chung would not try upending him into the river. Or the paddy.
Instead he dropped his tao, bent as he ran, scooped up a double handful of wet mud.
Which he hurled onto the emperor’s back as soon as he was close enough, as close as he dared come to that flare of fury. Not close enough to slather it on by hand, he wasn’t brave enough to thrust his hands deliberately into a furnace; close enough to feel his skin tighten and his muscles flinch. How the emperor endured the heat of it so perilously close to his own skin, just the thickness of a fine stone scale away, Chung couldn’t imagine.
If the emperor had chosen to ignore the fire, he certainly didn’t ignore the mud. That might be because the last of his burned guards had gone into the water, and he was alert again to the world around; it might be because a gobbet of mud missed the fire and landed in his hair.
He half turned toward Chung—which meant he half turned his back toward Yu Shan. Who stooped and rose and flung his own handfuls of mud; and meanwhile Chung had crouched again for more, crying, “Majesty, turn around, let me …”
“It doesn’t burn,” the emperor said calmly. “At least, it only eats itself. I don’t even feel heat—”
It was eating the mud, perhaps, if it couldn’t eat the jade. At least, handfuls of mud had no effect; the fire blazed as brightly despite Chung’s efforts, despite Yu Shan’s. The emperor might claim to feel nothing, but it had already singed his hair.
Just then a voice cried a warning, an arm flung up to point: more canisters from the island, already in the sky. The emperor cursed, grabbed an arm in each hand—almost at random, it seemed, except that one arm was Yu Shan’s; the other, as it happened, was Chung’s—and flung himself forward.
The jerk of it almost pulled Chung’s arm from his socket. The mud fell from his hands and he was dragged along like a reluctant child, like booty, like prey. He had to stutter a few desperate steps before he caught some kind of balance, before he could find any speed of his own.
Even then, there was nowhere to run to. The earlier missile’s fire still burned, the one that had fallen short, all across the roadway from river to paddy. They would have to wade, unless they swam.
Chung glanced up and saw stark black shadows in the sky, already falling.
And the emperor was still on fire.
Perhaps he thought he could run straight through the blaze ahead, and the flames not harm him? Perhaps he thought he was untouchable?
Perhaps he was right, but it wasn’t true for Chung. One desperate glance at Yu Shan, behind the emperor’s back, through the sear of flame—and Chung swung himself forward on the emperor’s arm, thrust a leg out, and tripped the Man of Jade.
At the same time—as though they’d discussed it, as though they’d rehearsed it—Yu Shan drove his shoulder into the emperor’s, so that all three of them went sprawling in an ungainly, rolling tangle, over the road and over the edge and down into the river.
DOWN AND DOWN into dark roiling waters that snatched Chung’s breath away, that tumbled him end over end until he had forgotten entirely which way was up.
Growing up in the docks, on the wharves all day long, he had been in the water and out of it, wet more often than he was dry; he swam like an eel, sinuous and native. Until today, when the jarring shock of the fall and the rough battering current almost made him forget how to swim at all.
He thought he was lost, a nonsense soldier fallen to a stupid death in this unfought war, dead before the enemy could even be brought to battle.
He thought how angry Shen would be, which was a sorrow he could almost smile at if he weren’t being hurled against rocks on the river bottom.
But he opened his eyes, at least, at the thought of Shen; didn’t want to shame him by going into death like a coward, all courage washed away.
He opened his eyes and saw a light that was momentarily yellow, flame beneath the water, and he thought the emperor’s still burning, it must be sorcerous, that wicked fire the rebels throw …
But the yellow died, not so strong a sorcery after all; and then the light was only a glimmer of green, a frog in a pond.
And that was still the emperor in his shirt, and Chung did try to swim toward him. He still had no breath, and couldn’t hold his lungs empty for much longer; but he kicked against the current and struck out with what strength he had remaining, and …
AND THEN a hand gripped his neck and dragged him startlingly upward, and his head broke surface and he crowed a ragged breath, and then another; and that was Yu Shan’s head in the water beside him, breathing easily, almost amused.
When he could talk—it took a while, it hurt a lot and was little more than wheezing with a shape to it, but he had to try—he managed, just, “The emperor …?”
Who had still not come up for air, anywhere that Chung could see. Which ought not to be possible, but a lot of that young man’s gifts were not strictly possible for mortal man. They did clearly lie within the grasp of a god. Or a man of jade, given that he did seem to share them with Yu Shan.
“Gone that way,” Yu Shan said, nodding upcurrent. Of course. Where he couldn’t run because his path was blocked by fire, of course he’d swim it. His victory was in peril, his chase was delayed; did anyone think he would wait calmly until he could consult with generals, fetch up men and boats, assault the island and its garrison like any normal commander …?
Chung was a fierce swimmer if he had to be, but this current was fiercer. He couldn’t swim against it. Yu Shan could, though; and still could, even with Chung clinging to his belt.
They swam underwater as much as possible, and close to the bank. The surface was all broken anyway where the river rewove itself after the island had torn its single flow in two, but still better not to chance being seen, two heads breaking water in mid-stream.
They made their way swiftly—at least, Yu Shan made their way, while Chung clung and kicked and tried to feel useful, not too much of a drag—up to the bridge and into its shadow; and there, yes, there they found the emperor.
Waiting with as much patience as he could muster, not much: clinging to a dank timber and gesturing to them for silence, caution, speed.
HIS JABBING finger showed them why. Higher within the arch, shadow had substance: other figures hung in the framework, waiting.
Waiting surely until they heard footsteps on the bridge above, soldiers running over to attack the rebels on the island. So few men, holding up an entire army while Tunghai Wang ran farther and farther away: of course the vanguard would hurry across the bridge, as soon as they found a way to reach it. And then a few mallet-blows on appropriate pins and the bridge would disintegrate beneath their feet, and those who didn’t fall into the urgent river would find themselves stranded on the island, just a few helpless men in the face of a triumphant defense; and the rebels would still be free to carry on hurling their fire until they had no more, by which time their comrades and commanders might be hours, even days ahead …
Not if the emperor had any say, they wouldn’t. He went climbing softly up the bridge’s wooden girders with Yu Shan at his side, their noise covered more or less by the noise of the river beneath them.
Chung stayed below; anything else would have been ridiculous bravado. He knew he had no place in this exploit. He really had no place with them at all, Yu Shan should have seen him safe and left him on the riverbank for the guards eventually to find him.
Here he was, though, and glad of it, thrilled; and saving it up to make a story, something to tell Shen. Something not to spoil with absurd heroics, trying to overreach himself, getting himself killed and maybe others too, maybe even the emperor too …
He did lift himself up out of the constant frothing tug of the water: partly to feel safer, partly to see better. To have more to say, not to spoil the story.
He would swear that jade shirt shed a light of its own. Perhaps it only caught the reflection of daylight off water, but it shone in the shadows and he thought it was deliberate, inherent, something of the stone.
Something to see by, however it came: a strange and greenish light as though the emperor were still a frog as he crawled long-leggedly, long-armedly through the network of crossed timbers that supported the arch of the bridge.
Yu Shan stayed close enough that Chung’s eyes could follow him too, a figure of shade, green shadow in a green light.
Those above them might have been asleep, or daydreaming, or listening very intently overhead, because they seemed to notice nothing beneath them. Not till the last possible moment, when that greenish cast embraced them too, and one of them glanced down in puzzled wonder.
And screamed, so that there was no secret anymore; the sound echoed and echoed, trapped in the shadows between wood and water. Chung’s head turned away instinctively from the man’s naked fear, his naked shame—
—AND SO he saw the other two men who had been crouched deep in the footings, where even the emperor’s jade-bright eyes had overlooked them.
Two men swinging with the ease of practice through the frame of beams, long knives between their teeth; and only him to stop them, disarmed and awkward and dripping wet …
He set his jaw, just to stop his teeth from chattering, and began to swing himself slowly up the climb of the bridge and out over the water.
They followed, casual and unconcerned, competent and lethal.
Up, and out.
Halfway up, a man fell screaming by his ear; fell into the water and was lost, a sudden silence, an absence.
Another man fell with no sound at all, only the sudden shadow of his plunging body, there and gone, dead already.
Not the emperor, not Yu Shan. Chung didn’t even need to look. They wouldn’t die like that, swift and meaningless and gone. He’d seen men die just that way on the beach raid, and still didn’t believe it of those two. Besides, neither one of them would scream.
Perhaps those two swift deaths whipped on his pursuers; perhaps they thought he was climbing up to seek help of his friends. Perhaps they realized that his friends might actually survive that strange quiet fighting overhead, now that the odds were more in their favor.
They came after Chung more urgently then, which only meant that he needed to do something a little sooner. Otherwise he would climb up into that higher fight, get in the emperor’s way, bring two more rebels up beneath Yu Shan just at the wrong moment …
So he locked his legs around a horizontal beam and let his body drop down like a child hanging from a tree branch: drop and swing with his arms at full stretch, suddenly and unexpectedly within snatching range of one of the climbers below.
He had to arch his spine painfully to do it, but for a moment at the height of his backswing there he was, just an arm’s length away. The rebel was startled, clinging on with both hands, helpless; and Chung could simply reach out and grab that heavy knife the man held in his teeth, seize the handle and jerk it away.
Teeth wouldn’t grip on oiled steel, against that abrupt sideways tug. Now the man was disarmed, and Chung had a weapon.
That was all he’d meant. He swung himself back up again with a terrible effort of his belly muscles—Shen would have laughed, and then made him practice the move over and over, again and again, week after week till it was easy—and went to put the knife in his belt.
And saw dark streaks on the blade, and for a little moment wondered how he’d cut himself.
But of course it wasn’t his own blood; that blade hadn’t come anywhere near his skin.
A quick glance down showed him the man he’d just left, still clinging to the beams, lifting his head as though to stare after Chung, to accuse or just to protest, why did you do this to me?
One brief glimpse in the shadows; that was enough. Chung turned his own face away, not to see what he’d done, that had left a blade so darkly marked and so easily wiped clean.
The knife was double-edged and sharp as the wind. Jerked savagely, heedlessly out of the man’s mouth, it had cut through his tongue and the flesh of his cheek, the muscle and bone of his jaw; he gaped slack-mouthed and always would, half his face hanging open to the world.
He had a comrade, a friend perhaps, who was suddenly being as slow to chase as Chung was numbedly slow to get away. Who had stopped to listen to the slow keening that arose from that ruined mouth, to touch his companion’s shoulder in some hopeless gesture of sympathy, of pity, of promise.
Who lifted his own head now to find Chung looking down at him watchfully, unable after all to keep his face turned away.
The rebel took his own knife from between his teeth then, in a deliberate gesture; gripped it fist-tight and began to climb again.
This time, when Chung swung, he used his hands to grip the beam. It was his legs that drove in toward the rebel. Who needed one hand to grip, and could only slash wildly with the other while he clung to a perilous balance on the dank and slippery woodwork.
Chung felt that blade score across his leg, but he had too much impetus for so fine a cut to divert him. His feet slammed against the rebel’s chest, knocking him back against an upright, knocking all the breath from his body, knocking him from his stance so that now he was only hanging by that one desperate hand.
Chung bent his legs at the moment of strike, so that his body went on swinging in toward the rebel. In the moment that he had before he must swing away again, he let his legs slip around the man’s waist and lock behind.
Then, with his own body’s weight and a great jerk, all the muscles that he had working with him, he pulled the man off the bridge.
And swung back, unlocked his legs and let him fall.
One last despairing clutch, the man’s hand trying to snare Chung’s ankle; but that ankle was wet already and slick with blood now, it offered no safe grip. Chung felt him slide away, didn’t listen for the splash. He gathered himself for another effort, to haul his body up into the safety of the bridge’s frame; felt a burning pain in his leg just at that worst moment, and wondered if he was actually going to make it—
—AND A HAND reached down to seize his wrist, lifted him up into that reassuring woodwork. He found himself safe—entirely safe, no question—in the irresistible strong grip of the emperor.
“Are you hurt?”
All instinct and courtly convention told him to lie, to say No, majesty, and allow the emperor to let it go, not to concern himself in the least.
But his emperor was his commander too, and this was a field of battle; and Shen had trained him better than that. What was right at court was wrong in war. He said, “A cut on the leg, majesty.”
“Can you stand?”
“I… think so.” It hurt more, now that he was thinking about it. His trouser leg told him nothing, being sodden already from the river; he was trying to test the leg itself there on the cross-beam, but the emperor was still supporting his weight, and how did you tell the Man of Jade to let go?
“Well, perhaps another swim will help.”
“Another …?”
You weren’t supposed to question the emperor. Everybody did sooner or later, but that was in camp. At court, they tried not. Here in battle, Chung was fairly sure that he shouldn’t. He bit that one off half asked. And glanced up into the green-shaded shadows, trying to see past the obscuring glow of the jademail shirt; and said, “Are there …?”
And choked it off again, but the emperor smiled and said, “More rebels up in the arch there? No. This bridge is safe, until our people come.”
Which would be soon now, surely, an imperial guard without its emperor. But there were still those terrible fires on the riverbank, the guards must still be under attack, more canisters hurling at them; maybe not so soon after all. Maybe even time enough for the rebels to send more men under the bridge to bring it down …
Perhaps the emperor meant that the bridge was safe because he and his companions were there now to protect it. Chung said, “Yes, majesty. So …”
“So where is Yu Shan?”
Chung nodded.
This time the emperor didn’t smile. His eyes were bright and compulsive, and Chung couldn’t look away. A proper subject keeps his head low and his gaze lower in the presence of his emperor, but they had learned other manners in the camp. This was neither court nor camp, and even so Chung had no wish to stare, nor to be stared at by majesty, but he wasn’t being offered the choice. Something deliberate was happening here, and it was the emperor’s decision, and …
And it wasn’t that Chung heard a noise below, even now, when he might have been listening for it. What he heard instead was a silence, an end to noise: the breaking-off of a sound that had been low and persistent and sharp enough to cut through the constant noises of the river, only he’d been too busy to give it any attention.
The emperor heard it too, or heard its ending. And still didn’t release Chung’s gaze, but only said, “Yu Shan is … attending to the last of the rebels.”
That must mean the one Chung had left with a ruined face. That missing sound could well have been the moan of a man helpless in extraordinary pain; so Yu Shan had gone to help in the only way that would suggest itself, the way of war.
Chung didn’t try to look.
Yu Shan came gracefully up to join them, and the emperor said, “The three of us, then: Chung is hurt, but he thinks not badly and a swim will help his leg if you and I help him, Yu Shan …”
“Majesty?”
Here he was asking questions again, but he was too bewildered to hold himself in check and the emperor didn’t seem to mind.
“Yes, Chung?”
“Where must we swim to now?”
“The rebels will be watching the bridge,” Yu Shan said, “as well as our friends across the river. If they see us—well, there are only three of us, until our friends catch up. We don’t know how many they are. And if they throw fire at us as well as swords, even the emperor may not come through it.”
The emperor thought he was fireproof like his shirt, but he nodded cooperatively.
“We can’t just sit and wait,” he said. “Our people will come through, but they might have to wait till night, or till they can fetch boats up; and more of them will die in the meantime, perhaps many more if they keep trying to reach us through that firestorm. We need to prevent it.”
“The rebels are all busy looking downriver,” Yu Shan cut in. Interrupting the emperor was a great offense, greater than staring, greater than questioning: so impossibly forbidden that there could hardly be a law to forbid it. No matter. He might have learned it from Mei Feng, who did it all the time. “Shooting their fireballs, killing our people. We’re going to swim up to the north end of the island; that way we can surprise them.”
If they don’t see us in the water, if they don’t have a watch on that end of the island; and we’ll still only be three, and what if …
Arguing with the emperor, once he’d made up his mind? Pointless, even if Chung had any way to measure how very much it was forbidden.
BACK INTO the water, then, briefly and anxiously aware of more flames, more shouting on the riverbank; anxious too about what lay ahead, how he might possibly help.
For now he was a hindrance, but at least not an awkward one. Yu Shan and the emperor could both apparently swim one-armed and underwater, utterly untroubled by towing Chung against a current that would have swallowed him and never spat him out again.
They could hold their breath too, far longer than he could. They ran him to the ragged edge of his control again and again, and still clearly came up each time sooner than they needed to.
Once, they came up under the bank and he could see across the water to the island. He saw no rebel watching the water, no alarm, no men running for weapons. What he did see was order, regularity, the discipline of soldiers. They hauled down the arms of their flinging machines, loaded a projectile—carefully!—into the basket, lit the fuse and heaved on ropes that caused the basket to hurl upward, the projectile to fly away. They watched how it flew, where it landed; perhaps they made an adjustment to the line of the machine; and then they did it again.
And there were four machines and many men, and every one of those projectiles meant a fresh blaze falling on or around the imperial troops. Chung couldn’t see what harm his friends were taking; there was smoke and flame and no time, the emperor wouldn’t let them linger with their heads out of water.
The last time they rose, they were in mid-river and there was no island where he looked for it, to the side, where it had been. The emperor and Yu Shan hung in the water, motionless except for hands and feet, as though this was the sea at the slack of the tide; Chung still needed to cling to Yu Shan’s body as he turned around, as the current sucked at him. There was the island: a strip of rock that stood proud of the water, just wide enough and flat enough to take the footings of two bridges, just long and wide and flat enough to hold four machines and their busy crews. And a stack of projectiles, Chung could see that now too, built up like barrels at this near peak of the island where the rock narrowed like a jade ship’s cutwater, where it slit the river like a blade slits a run of silk.
No watch, no guards: who could come this way, except by boat? And there was nowhere here for a boat to tie up, only blade-sharp rock rising sheer and slick from the river’s swirl.
Barely anywhere for a swimmer to clamber out, unless that swimmer had jade in his blood, in his bone.
The emperor approached the black wall of rock, reached up and found a handhold, another …
Once he’d pulled himself up out of the water, he paused and stretched down an arm. Chung found himself lifted bodily by Yu Shan, passed into the emperor’s grip.
Looking at that dark rock face as he was raised past it, he could see no handholds, nothing his numbed fingers might have gripped. He watched from above as Yu Shan scrambled up after, and it looked as though he simply smeared his skin to the rock. Perhaps the stone in his blood reached to the stone outside and clung …?
They had come up into the shadow of that stack of containers. Briefly, even the emperor let them crouch and rest there, let the weight of water drain out of their clothes, let them peer around the wall of pots to see just how many men they had to face.
They couldn’t wait long, though, while those machines still hurled fiery death at their friends, his troops. Nor could they stay undiscovered long, while men came to the pot stack again and again …
Soon, then, a man came and lifted one more canister from the heap, and found himself abruptly facing the emperor he had rebelled against, whose troops he was raining fire on, whose own body perhaps he would have liked to set aflame.
He never got to do that.
He might have had a moment to realize, to understand that this was indeed the emperor and that there was a long list now of things he never would get to do.
Then the emperor’s blade pierced him, and he fell.
In falling, of course he let the canister fall too.
If it was fused, at least it wasn’t lit; but who knew what sorceries were in that black stuff that the pottery sealed? Perhaps it would flame in sunlight and the fuse was only a precaution. Perhaps it would ignite every one of these gathered canisters, and they would all erupt at once. Not even the emperor would be proof against such a fire …
Chung had time to picture that, all of it, in the moments that the canister took to topple out of the toppling man’s hands: the terrible slow flickering start, the creep of black, the eruption.
He had time to picture its aftermath, the end of empire and his own less significant end, in the little singular moment that the toppling canister needed to crash onto that brutal rock beneath.
Except that what he could picture, so could another man.
Yu Shan, in this case.
Whose hands caught the canister a perilous finger’s-breadth above the rock as he dived forward, as he rolled and held it somehow safely all the way, as he rose to his feet again in the same moment still with his arms full of unexploded death …
… AND IN full view of all those rebels manning the flinging-machines, who reacted with a roar of discovery, an abandonment of their ropes and pulleys, a snatching-up of swords and dagger-axes …
NO POINT staying crouched now in the shadows, nothing to hide from.
Chung and the emperor stood up, blades in hand: the emperor with his long broad-bladed tao, Chung with no more than the knife he’d taken under the bridge. It didn’t seem to matter much. In standing up he’d seen beyond the machine crews, to the footings of the bridge.
To the squad of men who had been crouching there, ready for whatever troops came across the bridge if it didn’t fall beneath them.
Who were standing now, turning from that to this, from the fight that hadn’t come yet to the one that was here now.
Who were—well, too many to fight. The emperor might be fireproof, but he was not invincible. He’d been wounded once already in battle, in his first battle, against assassins in the forest; and had survived it because his jade-hard bones wouldn’t let steel cut through them. This many men could overwhelm him; and then they could hack him apart, cut him into many pieces, and even the jade-magic couldn’t draw him back together.
At least, Chung thought not.
Hoped not, truly, although that might be treason or heresy or some such. A piecemeal emperor, surviving disarticulation … No. Please, no.
But he didn’t see how the emperor could survive this forest of blades, unless he dived back into the river. Which Chung just knew he would not do.
Chung tried to move, to stand in front of the emperor, a little proper gesture of you shall not pass.
There was an impossible, an imperial chuckle in his ear; an irresistible hand on his shoulder, nudging him gently aside.
“Thank you, Chung, but you should probably take shelter behind me.”
That would be sensible, but not actually possible. He couldn’t survive where the emperor didn’t; they would kill Chung in relief, in celebration, just in passing. And he couldn’t dive into the river and hope to survive that. He’d be drowned and dead before ever he reached calm waters.
So he shook his head and said no to majesty, moving to take a position at the emperor’s side.
Yu Shan looked back, rolled his eyes at them both, turned to face the onrush of rebels—
—AND HURLED the canister he held. The man he’d caught it from, the man the emperor killed, he’d been using both arms just to lift it; Yu Shan lobbed it one-handed, high and looping.
HIGH OVER the heads of the advancing rebels, who were perhaps amazed that he could do that, knowing as they did just how heavy it was; and then perhaps relieved and contemptuous, just for that little moment when they realized it had missed them entirely.
UNTIL THEY heard it land behind them, among their abandoned machines, between them and their friends at the bridgehead.
THEIR FACES, some of them: their faces were terrible, in that moment before they turned to see the truth of it.
How that canister shattered on the rock, right there between one machine and another.
How the black liquid it contained splashed out between the two; and how it was hard to tell whether it caught fire from the one side or the other, because both machines had an open flame there to light their fuses, and it really might have been either one. Or the sun, of course, or some kind of sorcery.
There was surely a sorcery in the fire that leaped up. Chung knew about oil, all manner of oils. None of them would yield a flame this furious, a heat this vicious. It seemed to seize whatever fuel it could find, clinging to wood and flesh with equal greed; where it found nothing but stone—on the bare rock of the island here, on the emperor’s back before the river doused it—it only sat and waited, burning nothing but air, seeming not to burn itself out, not to drip or drain away.
The machines were largely bamboo and twisted rope, with leather slings. They blazed mightily, going up like grass.
The men were lucky, on both sides. The squad from the bridge hadn’t reached quite so far yet; the teams working the machines had all rushed forward to face these invaders from the river. There was no one left to get caught in that sudden conflagration, no monstrous death to watch or listen to.
And no way for the bridge squad to reach their colleagues through the flame; no way for their colleagues to retreat, unless they went into the water. The fire bisected the island entirely, trapping them at the peak here with these impossible saboteurs …
There were still many of them, all against three. Chung might have felt dangerously outnumbered if his two companions hadn’t been the men they were, men of jade, immeasurable.
He still worried for them all, because a blade could still kill any man or all of them together. He worried most for the emperor, who refused to understand that, who thought he was fireproof. Who was jumping onto that great stack of projectiles right now, balancing on a liquid hell if any one of the rebels had a spark of fire on him. Or if the wind carried a spark from the inferno at their backs, or …
The emperor held his arms up, and bizarrely, unaccountably, the rebels stopped their charge. A few short paces separated them from where Yu Shan and Chung stood, at the foot of the heap now, blades drawn to make some show of guarding the emperor above their heads.
Perhaps the rebels were glad of that sudden excuse to halt. Chung saw more fear than fury in them. Not fear of the blades they faced, that would be ridiculous, but perhaps of the men who bore them. At least of Yu Shan, who could pick up and hurl one of their projectiles one-handed.
More, though, they were afraid of that fire. Nervous glances measured how far it was behind them, how the sparks carried, what it could find to burn from there to here …
This must be why they had not destroyed the second bridge till now: not to maroon themselves with a stack of these volatile weapons, not till they must, hoping to leave themselves the chance of an escape.
They should have brought a boat, he thought; they should have thought that little bit farther ahead. Tunghai Wang should have thought it for them, when he was planning this, when he was ordering machines built here to guard the river roads. For certain sure he had not arranged it all in an hour this morning, caught up in a great retreat …
But they were here now and so was Chung, with his friend Yu Shan and the emperor also; and there was no boat, and there was an engulfing fire between them—between them all—and the bridge away.
Perhaps that was why the rebels were prepared to listen to the emperor. Who looked down at them as if they were his own people—which they were, of course, even though they had sold themselves to Tunghai Wang—and said, “Put up your blades. There is no point in dying here now.”
Not a man did what he was told, but more looked back or looked sideways, looked at one another. Now that they’d stopped, it seemed there wasn’t one ready to hurtle forward again. Likely it looked very bad to be first, even with a crowd behind you.
The emperor waited just a little time, then said, “Yu Shan, one of those machines isn’t burning yet.”
Indeed, it was the one nearest to the rebels—nearest to us! Chung thought, and tried not to let his face so much as twitch—that was only smoldering along the side that faced the fire, that was still waiting to burst into full flame.
Yu Shan laughed, and slipped his tao into its scabbard. The relaxed way he did that was almost threatening in itself, so dismissive of the men he faced.
Then he picked another of those canisters from the top of the heap, reaching for the very one the emperor was standing on, making him dance to the side, laughing in his turn; and he looked at the machine that wasn’t burning, and the gathered crew of rebels that stood nervously between him and it—
—AND THEY backed abruptly, silently, without any discussion to one side and the other, to leave him a clear passage through.
They thought perhaps that he would carry it toward the fire, if he was entirely mad; or else that he would throw it as before. Either way, all too clearly, they did think him mad. There were fire and sparks all around, and he had seen directly how these pots would burst and flame, and yet he still lifted one and stood ready to hurl it, and they wanted nothing except distance, more distance than they could find on this little rock.
In fact, he rolled it. There was a natural crack in the rock of the island that made a gutter all along its spine, whose two edges gripped the pot and steered it just where Yu Shan clearly meant it to go, the smoldering side of that nearest machine. Where it bumped and jostled against a leg of the machine, and sat and smoked a little; and they waited, watching, the rebels edging back and farther back, and Chung wondered if the pot’s seal would give way before its contents were hot enough to burn, and if not then what would happen, and—
—AND THEN it did happen, and it was an explosion beyond anything Chung had ever seen or imagined. Not even the rebels could have expected this, surely. A flung pot broke on impact, before the fire caught. If they had seen this before they would have been screaming at Yu Shan, ducking for whatever shelter they could find behind one another, not just that nervous sidle out of range.
If they’d seen this before, they would have known they were not out of range, nothing on this island was out of range.
The flask exploded and fire gouted up, flame enveloped the machine in a moment, but that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst was how the air was suddenly lethal, a blast of heat and wind with a vicious whiplash sting to it.
Chung saw a man’s eye gone, just gone into a hole, and he could have sworn that smoke came out before the welling darkness.
He saw a man’s throat opened, but not from a sword cut, nothing like that, it didn’t seem to bleed, not soon enough; at first it only gaped like a second mouth while he gasped for air and couldn’t find it.
Chung himself felt a whip-cut across his face and ignored it while he could, while he was occupied with gaping at the fire, at the rebels so strangely injured out of nowhere. At the emperor, who was gazing down at his own chest—his jademail shirt, rather—with an expression of puzzled wonder, reaching to pluck something from between two scales.
He looked to Yu Shan at his side, and found him unharmed but also staring, but not at himself. At Chung.
“You’re hurt. Did you know?”
He did know; it did hurt. Like a burn now, more than a whip. He reached a hand up—and snatched his fingers away again, biting back a yelp. No fire, but the flesh burned to the touch none the less, flamed like a brand where he touched it.
“What happened? Why doesn’t it bleed …?”
“It is, it’s starting now.”
So was the man with the open throat, starting to choke on his own blood. Twice doomed, Chung thought, no hope for him.
The emperor jumped down, and showed them something on the palm of his hand: small and sharp and blackened, vicious as a wasp but inert, clay, a piece of pot.
“I felt them bouncing off the shirt,” he said, “but this one caught between the scales and stuck. The pot shattered when it exploded, and all its little pieces …”
All its little pieces had flown like sparks in all directions, and struck like flecks of steel. Chung would be marked for life—not so pretty now, Shen, will you still love me? when I carry this mark that says I was here, where you were not?—and could count himself lucky; others would be blind or dead.
Others would be thinking they had found a new weapon.
Not the emperor, not yet, but he would talk about this, of course, and some of his generals would see what he did not.
Now, though, he looked at Chung, and then at Yu Shan; and nodded, and turned to the rebels and said, “We need to go now, we still have a war to fight. If you wait here and do no more harm, you will suffer none from us. But my people will be coming over that bridge soon. They will want revenge, because of what you have done to our people ashore, and you have nowhere to go. You need someone of ours, to speak for you once these fires burn out. Which is why we will be leaving Chung here—”
“Majesty, no!”
It should properly be death to interrupt the emperor, but everyone was doing it today.
This time, the emperor overrode him. “Yes, Chung. Yu Shan and I could carry you ashore—and what then? Shall we carry you all day? You’re hurt, twice hurt, and you can’t keep up with us. Here, you can be useful. Protect these men. Will you do that?”
In truth, he had no choice. They all knew that. His emperor ordered him to it; besides which, his emperor could jump into the river and be away, Yu Shan with him, and what could Chung do then? Jump after them, splashing loud enough—sinking loud enough—to be sure they noticed?
Well, yes. Shen would do that, no doubt. Not Chung.
Chung scowled, and nodded, and watched his emperor dive neatly into the river with his friend a moment behind.
And then turned to face a pack of rebels, who could kill him in a moment if they saw a reason to; and lifted his chin, lifted his voice, said, “Your weapons. Take them off, put them down. Make a heap of them, over here,” an open space next to the stack of pots.
Nobody moved, so he moved himself: went to that space and dropped his knife deliberately in front of them all. “I’m not your captor, didn’t you hear the emperor? I’m here to speak for you. They’re more likely to listen to me if you’re not armed.”
“And what if they’re ours? If they find us surrendered to one unarmed man?”
“Listen,” Chung said: and yes, there were sounds coming through the fire. Sounds of combat, of one squad as it might be fighting to defend a bridgehead against an army. “If your men fight back there, they’re going to die; that’s all the imperial guard trying to come over the bridge at once, to find their emperor.”
They still took a little time for thought, for muttering among themselves, but not much now. One by one, they came and dropped blades, belts, spare knives at his feet.
One said, “Was that really the emperor?”
Chung nodded.
“And the other one, what … who was he?”
“A man of jade,” Chung said, “out of the mountains. Half the imperial guard comes from the mines, as he did.” Which was true and deceptive, both at once.
“The emperor is the Man of Jade.”
“Yes. But the miners have a … special relationship with the stone, just as he does.” They’re not all jade-eaters, but I won’t tell you that. “They all wear a piece of jade next to their skin, he gives them that license,” because they get sick without it, but I won’t tell you that either.
“Only the emperor can wear jade!”
“Yes. But this emperor allows his chosen people to wear his sign.”
“And you?”
“Oh, no,” he said, “not me, I’m not from the valleys. Just a wharf brat who grew into a runner, me. I was a kitchen servant before—”
—before I was a friend of emperors he might have gone on to say, but he should probably not have said any of that, and he didn’t get the chance to finish.
He had too many prisoners under his guard, who had just seen their friends hurt and killed among them. He was as unarmed and as trapped as they were, and he was alone; small surprise if one of them seized his words as a confession of weakness. Perhaps the man thought it was an insult, that the emperor left someone so weak to watch him and all his colleagues.
Whatever he thought, he struck out suddenly, with no warning, his great fist flying at Chung’s head.
EXCEPT THAT Chung’s head wasn’t quite there anymore, because actually there had been a warning and Chung wasn’t quite as relaxed as he might have been pretending, and Shen’s training did have some purpose after all.
A little shift in the man’s eyes, a shift in his feet: Chung knew that punch was coming, and where it would land. Where it was meant to land.
Reaction was instinctive. Trained, Shen would say. By the time the man had comprehensively missed his mark, Chung was already swaying upright again. His hands were already reaching to grip the man’s thrusting arm, to pull him even more off-balance; all his body was twisting beneath that arm, lending a more organized strength to its effort, doing nothing but help here …
HELPING TO the effect that the man flew high into the air over Chung’s shoulder, came crashing down helplessly onto bare rock, might well have slid off into the greedy river if Chung hadn’t still kept a cruel locking grip on that arm.
Chung didn’t even look down at him. He looked at the man’s cohorts and said again, “Just a kitchen servant, until the emperor’s favorite picked me for her messenger. And she only did that to save me from a fight that I was losing.”
Every man there could see this message, and understand it. Slowly, one by one, they stepped back, they let the tension ebb out of their bodies.
Chung relaxed his grip, released the man at his feet, reached down to help him stand.
Then, “I don’t know how safe all these pots are,” he said, “how hot that fire’s going to make them—but I think they’d be safer in the river, don’t you? While we’re waiting?”
All except one, which he sat on to be sure of it, while the men busied themselves—quite eagerly, he thought, for conscripted labor—hurling the stack of projectiles into the water.
When one of them turned to him with a gesture, that one too, he shook his head.
“I want to keep this,” he said, “to experiment with. And if any of you knows how the contents are mixed, what goes into it, whether there’s any sorcery …?”