Chapter 49

The fully-armed guard had already raised his cold-gleaming blade; two children, one fourteen, one ten — how could they be his match?

Zhuo Siheng cared for nothing else; no weight of personal safety or life or family was enough to make him choose to stand by and watch them die — yet he was no reckless brute, but grew braver the more urgent it got, calm and resolve rising from within; in a stroke or two he loosed his cloak, and with no hesitation charged out sidelong from behind the tree that hid him.

The blade-raising guard, caught off guard, was rammed off his feet at the waist; then before his eyes was a wet pitch-blackness — Zhuo Siheng had wrapped the cloak over his head and shoulders, binding even his arm and blade into a tangle in a flash; the soaked brocade wasn't heavy but was tough, and two loops round were hard to undo or cut through — only he didn't know now what he'd use to repay His Honor Zeng, who'd lent him the cloak.

"Run, quick!" Zhuo Siheng finally got a moment to shout at the two children, already frozen dumb.

No sooner had he spoken than his foot slipped, and the guard, blind, hooked his leg and tripped him to the ground; the rotting smell of leaf-litter, mud-moss and thick decayed lichen rushed up his face.

Falling on the thick leaves didn't hurt much, but there were broken branches lying about, and one jabbing his waist was agony; heedless of it, terrified the guard would get his breath back and turn murderous again, he struggled to lift his head and urge the children to flee — but the crown prince Liu Xu and Princess Qingshan, Liu Wan, showed no sign of going; four small hands reached out, each seizing one of his arms, and dragged and hauled him away from the guard.

But how could two children have the strength to carry off a grown man?

In his panic Zhuo Siheng, heedless of the pain, forced himself to scramble up — but behind him the guard had torn the cloak off his head and slashed his blade down at him.

At the most perilous instant, Zhuo Siheng grabbed both children and rolled on the ground, bringing out the old nimbleness with which he'd once dodged wild beasts' claws to escape the stroke; safe, he at once pushed the crown prince and princess away, telling them to get farther from him, then turned the man's own way back on him — sweeping the guard's knee-hollow and kicking him flat to the ground by main force.

Rain or no rain, Zhuo Siheng's back was long since soaked with cold sweat; he couldn't let the well-trained guard stand up and swing his blade again, and now, like a wolf pouncing on prey, flung his whole body out to pin his quarry.

Though these years he'd kept up his archery diligently, strong of body and firm of shoulder and back, he'd never learned a single fighting move, and certainly couldn't beat a well-trained guard soldier bare-handed.

But if he flinched and weakened, how would the two trembling children behind him live?

He could only grit his teeth.

The guard was no slower; springing up where he lay, he met him with a level blade. The crown prince Liu Xu, seeing Zhuo Siheng about to run onto the very blade that had nearly killed him and his sister, cried out in warning without thinking: "Look out!"

But Zhuo Siheng wasn't rushing the guard; he charged the hazel tree nearest the guard.

The hazel's branches were low, its forks soft and tough; borrowing their spring, he hooked and drew one like drawing a bow to the string, and loosed the longest branch straight at the guard's face. The soldier raised one hand to block and swung his blade with the other — but his arm was still tangled in the cloak he'd struggled to shed a moment before.

The broad leaves were beaded with water, heavy and hard as they whipped at the guard; the branch's fibers were full of water, and the guard's blade, fast and fierce, couldn't for the moment cut through the sodden bough; the cloak snagged on the branch, the blade caught in the notch, and the man was stuck fast, neither forward nor back.

Only now did Zhuo Siheng truly strike.

With his own weight he bore the guard down, forcing him to loosen his blade-hand; the blade jammed on the branch, and that right hand too, torn and tangled in the cloak, hung caught and couldn't free itself.

At the life-and-death instant, blood-courage rushing to his head and killing-intent foremost, a bloody thought rose in Zhuo Siheng's heart: he stamped a foot down on the guard's branch-snagged wrist, grinding it to the earth, until the man's arm twisted into a grotesque arc and he shrieked; the princess, already tottering from fright, seeing and hearing so terrible a scene, felt her whole soul drawn out of her — the crown prince clasped his sister and covered her eyes, forbidding her to look more, though he himself was near fainting on the spot with fear.

He wanted to help Zhuo Siheng, but the two moved so fast against each other that were he to rush out rashly he'd only hamper Zhuo Siheng from fighting; yet if he could do nothing and sat watching them grapple, at this moment of life and death his whole heart was anxiety and dread.

Suddenly he touched, at his side, a dagger — as if courage were at once poured into him; he picked it up and threw it to the ground beside Zhuo Siheng's foot.

But he was too slow, no time to call a warning; and the guard, as if maddened by extreme pain, wrenched by main force and broke his own arm — the one Zhuo Siheng had trodden — and, bearing enormous agony, grabbed Zhuo Siheng's sleeve and, with a soldier's brute strength, slammed him to the ground.

The blow hurt so that golden light burst in the pitch-dark before Zhuo Siheng's eyes, his whole body unable to move; when he could see again he was gripped one-handed by the throat, his breath choked dead in another's hand.

He still had strength to struggle; driven by the will to live, his whole body tensed and gathered force, one hand clawing at the guard's eyes and face, the other tearing at the guard's broken arm.

The two fought to the death heedless of their own lives, each rousing the beast's savage instinct within, both hanging by a thread in the cold autumn rain in a last desperate struggle.

At this, from what courage no one knew, Liu Xu, who'd watched it all, came back to himself out of his terrified daze, and cried out in a grief near weeping: "Attendant Zhuo! Flee for your life, quick! Don't mind us!"

Hearing this voice, so utterly without will to live, Zhuo Siheng's heart quaked; his breath was at the very edge of cutting off, his dropping hand fell to the ground — and touched something cold, wet, metal.

As if all at once, he could breathe freely again.

Only Liu Xu's cry, hoarse with weeping, rose once more: "Just go... tell my mother where Wanwan and I died, that's enough..."

Crying and crying, he felt how quiet everything was — could they be dead already? Half-dazed, he opened his eyes and first saw Zhuo Siheng turned over on the ground, gasping in great violent breaths, no hand at his throat, while the guard stood bolt upright where he was, the dagger the crown prince had thrown driven into the seam at the ribs of his armor, blood welling from it like a scarlet spring.

Struck dumb, the crown prince went weak all over, the hand covering his sister's eyes dropping as if beyond control; Princess Qingshan opened her eyes too, and at once shuddered rigid — the guard soldier took even two steps toward them, then, as if collapsing all at once, dropped to his knees, and looked over at them with the most horrible, vicious gaze she'd ever seen.

"Your mother? Pah... your mother's a master-selling whore..."

With that, his head drooped, and the kneeling body never moved again.

Zhuo Siheng had heard those words too; his breath just restored, he was again aghast, his mind a blank, and his first thought on coming to was: could the emperor mean to harm his own children?

Perhaps his earlier troubles had already prejudiced him against the emperor; the rain, at some point, had grown heavy again, and when the cold rain on his neck woke him he at once cursed himself for a fool.

However little the emperor liked the crown prince, he'd still found him the finest teachers in all the court, regularly checked his lessons, often asked the grand academicians about his studies; the emperor was certainly no good father to the crown prince, but to say he'd do such a thing to put a favored son in his place — Zhuo Siheng thought the chain of reasoning lacked logic and prime motive.

Wait — what if the "master" in "selling the master for gain" wasn't the emperor?

The cold rain really might clear the head; feeling his brain could now run at full capacity, after a little thought Zhuo Siheng recalled Tong Shipei once saying the emperor and empress had been married by Jingzong's decree, and the empress was indeed suspected of having been a watcher; but all these years the emperor had never raised it, only coldly neglecting the empress — what was the link? Could this guard be a loyal partisan of Jingzong's, and, the empress having back then betrayed Jingzong and joined hands with the emperor, was he avenging his old master by killing the empress's two children to leave the mother in unbearable grief?

Zhuo Siheng looked at the kneeling guard, thinking he'd killed a living man — deserve it as he might, still something in his heart seemed to tremble from the distance, and his stomach began to cramp, wanting only to retch.

But then, seeing the crown prince and princess, cowering and terrified, staring dumbly at him like two startled little beasts, pity rose in him at once.

So he mustered, with all his strength, a gentle look, and smiled faintly at the two children, wanting to tell them the danger was past and they needn't die.

At least for now.

Seeing that smile, all bonds of ruler and subject forgotten, the little princess and little crown prince cared for nothing; scrambling up, they ran together to their savior Zhuo Siheng, and both, left and right, threw themselves into his rotting-leaf-and-blood-stained arms, weeping bitterly.

To be spared after doom came to just this.

Zhuo Siheng stroked one wet little head with each hand, knowing it couldn't console children still unnerved and having seen killing and blood, but that it might at least convey that someone was protecting them.

The two wept more desolate and bone-deep than the autumn rain now falling on all three, their bodies trembling violently and helpless as withered leaves about to drop in the rain.

In truth Zhuo Siheng's hands were shaking too.

His first time killing a man was to protect the children and to save himself, yet he'd still run a living body through with his own hand — how could he take it in stride, calm and untroubled?

The only things that could quiet his heart just then were the crying that proved the two children still lived, and the fierce protective urge deep within him.

...and one more thing: the truth.

Crying on in the rain was no solution; Zhuo Siheng patted the two and, bending, said softly: "There now, it's safe already; shall we go find shelter from the rain together?" — patient as if coaxing his own siblings.

The crown prince lifted his head first; knowing he was a youth now and shouldn't be so, he hastily wiped the tears from his face and nodded hard. But the princess was truly frightened, her small fists clutching Zhuo Siheng's lapel to death, refusing by any means to let go, weeping in broken gasps till she was nearly out of breath; Zhuo Siheng could only half-kneel on the ground, brushing the twigs and dead leaves from the badly-shaken little princess's head and body, and with soft, gentle words calm her down.

The crown prince took his sister's hand of his own accord, taking up the duty of comforting her; Zhuo Siheng nodded to the youth in approval, knowing well how a child so young could hardly steady himself soon after such a cruel sight — only that, with a dearer one needing care, he forced himself to.

Zhuo Siheng sighed, had the brother and sister lean on each other first, and went to examine the guard's corpse.

The man's armor was just ordinary guard's gear, its lining nothing strange, only black in color rather than the vermilion of an officer like Zhao Ting'an. The tiger's-mouth of his hand was all thick callus — surely a true trained fighter. But everything else on him by which his identity might be told was nowhere to be found.

The crown prince Liu Xu, watching Zhuo Siheng all the while, guessed he was searching for evidence, and freeing one arm from around his sister, pointed west: "His horse is tied over there."

Zhuo Siheng hurried over to look, but was disappointed too: the things on the warhorse were also standard guard-cavalry issue — water-flask and quiver hung on both sides of the saddle-pad and a hemp-backed longbow, and nothing else to be found.

After a moment's thought, he took the bow and arrows and slung them on himself, took the thin blanket padded under the saddle, stroked the horse's mane a couple of times, and led it back to the two children, draping the blanket over their shoulders: "Your Highnesses — crown prince, princess — we must leave here first."

In truth he had another question in mind he wanted to voice.

Neither child was mischievous or headstrong; they'd never have run so deep into the royal forest on their own — so how had they been lured to this murder-laden spot?

But to linger here was the worst of options; he could only take them back to safety first, and once the two had steadied, ask carefully and hear the truth.

Just as he was about to help the two up onto the horse, he suddenly heard a rustling tremor, much like the rolling thunder that shakes the trees in a sudden northern-forest downpour — Old Huyan called it heaven's thunder striking wood, when a tree far off is lightning-struck; if the rain hadn't yet come, one had to hurry out of the forest at once, lest a wildfire catch you.

But now the rain had fallen a day and a night, man and tree soaked through; a lightning strike burning one tree was still possible, but to set off a wildfire was hardly realistic.

Then where did this sound come from?

He waited a good while and there was no thunder, yet the strange, fine sound came nearer and nearer, until even the crown prince and princess heard it clearly.

"What is that sound?" the crown prince asked Zhuo Siheng uneasily.

Zhuo Siheng had no time to answer; instinct told him danger was closing in, and without thinking he grabbed one child in each hand to help them mount and flee fast.

But it was all too late.

A grey-yellow surge of waves came sweeping toward the three, slapping past tree after tree.

The day and night of downpour had burst some mountain tributary of the Pei River, no one knew which; Mount Yan's valleys were many, all now become ready channels, aiding the rushing torrent into a flash flood that in an instant swallowed the three huddled tightly together, and in a blink they were gone without a trace.