Chapter 103

Guan Si'er and Hu Yougui spent the whole day busy at the Guard garrison's drill-field. They were young and had good memories, so the brothers had them learn from the old scouts everything passed down by word of mouth. Later it would all go into a book for training scouts.

Two years of study now, and the two of them could manage paperwork well enough. At least setting down a matter clearly and completely was no trouble to them.

A whole day's work done, the two sixth-rank secretaries of the Board of War went back to the Long Saber garrison and changed their clothes. Then they went straight to the scent-house at the street-mouth for a good hot soak. Only that washed off the day's weariness.

Hu Yougui had the dead skin pared off his feet before he came out. At the door he heard Guan Si'er leaning on the hitching-post, muttering: "Scout near and the enemy comes easy, so the worth is in scouting far. Watch-mounds few... watch-mounds few... watch-mounds, what the devil is it..."

"Watch-mounds few, and the ways in are many, so the worth is in covering all round. You dozed in class again yesterday, didn't you? Day after day, no telling what's on your mind. The brothers and I are onto using spies already, and you're still on scouting patrol? Mooning over your wife, your wife, all day. Oh, so only you have a wife?"

Hu Yougui jeered at the seventh brother, then looked about for his little orderly.

That orderly was young, a distant kinsman of Liu Daya. He was only fourteen this year, and a scamp.

Liu Daya was run off his feet this year, so he'd handed the boy to the easiest-tempered Hu Yougui to mind for a few days. He said he'd come fetch him in two months, and that the boy should eat some hardship and learn some regret. But what mind did Hu Yougui have for that? A man sitting fine at home, and a naughty pup drops out of the sky without so much as a by-your-leave, and he's supposed to school the boy? Pah. He'd spoil him on purpose instead, and let the little pup learn that the sweetest, happiest place in the world was the army camp.

Guan Si'er knew he'd fallen behind in his lessons too, but he wasn't ashamed at all. He said, all honey-faced: "Sixth brother, don't tell me you never long for a wife?"

His wife was black, true, but she was fragrant, sweet-scented and soft.

Of the seven Long Saber brothers, only Hu Yougui was still alone now. He was the fifth, four-and-twenty this year, and the least in any hurry. When the matchmaking with the Chai girls came up he'd refused flat and said there was no rush, so it had fallen to Erdian instead.

The house had six household mistresses now. They knew plenty of women and had put many a fine girl in front of him, but he was never satisfied. He said he only wanted someone pleasing to the eye.

What's pleasing to the eye? Say that, and you could mean almost anyone.

Hu Yougui heard his brother ask about a wife and answered quick: "No. What's it to you? Go find your little black monkey."

Ge Sansu was just as black, and yet the seventh found her pleasing no matter how he looked at her. He chattered on every day about how his wife was clever this way and clever that way. Clever, so what? She was a girl in mourning, and there were three years yet to wait.

Guan Si'er curled his lip: "Fifth brother, that's a funny thing to say. So what if she's black? Sister says, cover her up a while and she'll turn white." He looked round, then suddenly put out a hand, lifted his sleeve, and said low and secret: "Brother, under the sleeve she's white, I've seen it, truly, ever so white, like beancurd. Brother? What are you looking at?"

Hu Yougui had found his little orderly at last. He pointed, helpless, at the small ragged boy standing by a meat-cake stall, and said with a smile: "Who else? Another monkey. Take my eye off him a moment and he bolts."

That said, he walked slowly to the cake-stall, patted the little orderly's shoulder, and asked: "Little Ding, what are you doing?"

The orderly called Little Ding jumped and turned. He saw it was his own general, so he wasn't frightened, only shy at being caught hungry, and said: "G-General, I didn't see you come out."

Hu Yougui didn't scold him, but teased: "When have you ever seen me come out? What, hungry? Want some?"

The boy nodded hard. Hu Yougui felt in the oxhide pouch at his waist, drew out a handful of coppers, counted fifteen, and handed them to the stall-keeper: "Trouble you, roll three."

Then he said gently to the little pup: "Is one enough? Shall we buy two?"

The boy shook his head: "One's enough."

The cake-seller smiled and said yes, and rolled three quickly. He lived on this street and knew this was a man of rank, so he stuffed in extra meat and offered the cakes up with both hands.

Hu Yougui thanked him, took the cakes, and handed one to Little Ding with a smile. He ate one himself, and gave the last to Guan Si'er as they walked back to the scent-house.

Guan Si'er saw him spoiling the child again, took the cake and scolded, laughing: "Spoil him, then. Is this how you lead troops?"

Hu Yougui's temper was easy as ever. He rumpled Little Ding's head and smiled: "Lead what troops? He's a kitten yet. Didn't you hear Lord Liu going on? He's the one seedling of his house. How long can he stay? Mind I don't feed him down thin and give him back."

Little Ding, cheeks stuffed with cake, said as he ate: "I'm not going with him, I'll stay at the Long Saber garrison! G-General, don't mind my granduncle's nonsense, I came to learn real skill, I'm not leaving!"

Hu Yougui laughed despite himself: "Not leaving? Eat off me a few more days and I'll have to pawn my saber to keep you! Who calls his elder's words nonsense, no manners. Just eat. A little piglet, all he knows is eating."

So the three of them gnawed their cakes and threaded through the crowded Yanjing lanes, free and easy indeed.

They were handsome to begin with, and two years coming and going among the great folk of the palace had given them a cut above the ordinary. Even in plain cloth they carried themselves free and easy, like young pines meeting spring. The whole street stole looks at them.

People looked at them so often, but Hu Yougui minded it not at all. He swallowed the last of his cake and chatted with Guan Si'er: "Si'er, say, children have it good now. We had no such luck in our day."

Guan Si'er thought of himself at fourteen, and shook his head smiling: "True. Back then, whoever gave me a meat-cake like this, I'd have given him my life for it. Ai, fifth brother, you rarely talk of the old days. What were you doing at fourteen?"

Among the old sabers Hu Yougui was the quick-moving, few-words kind. His temper was gentle, he was careful, he liked doing the tidying-up work, and he seldom pushed himself forward.

When the others talked of home at their ease, he never spoke of his past, and they took it he had some bitterness there and didn't ask.

This time someone had asked what he'd been doing at fourteen. Hu Yougui was taken aback. He stopped, looked off into the distance, and thought of things long past.

As it happened, fourteen was the very year he lost his mother. His father was a fool well known in the streets for loving a fight, always ready to take a blade in the ribs for a friend. People took him for a simpleton and dragged him again and again into the kind of trouble that ruins a house.

His mother was a proud woman, and you might say she died of anger. After that only he was left to hold the house up. But his father was still his father, foolish and loyal, and the trouble kept coming. With his mother gone from the helm, the house began selling off rooms and land. When there was nothing left to sell, his father brought down trouble again and was taken off in chains by the county yamen.

His grandparents wailed as if dying, and his brother, three years younger, lay sick with a chill and no money for a cure. So he gritted his teeth, gave himself to a caravan-escort company, and signed a life-or-death contract.

The times had already begun to break down then. North and south were unquiet, and running escort was running with your head in your hand.

After that his father lost his respect for him, and couldn't bear it, and the two even came to blows. His father beat him black and blue with his fists, and he turned around and went out on another deadly escort. This time he never came back.

The escort train was set on by bandits on the road. He was thin and small, but sharp, and knew how to beg for his life. As luck had it the bandit chief's son needed a companion, so he was taken up the mountain as the little bandit's lackey, whipped and punched every day.

His heart was full of anger then, that he should eat such bitterness. But every time, his grandparents would say to him through tears: that's your father, you should be filial to him, surely all parents in the world love their children, he'll come to understand. Worst of all, his brother agreed with the grandparents then, always saying he was in the wrong for quarreling with their father.

Looking back on it now, as a grown man, those bitter things really came to nothing.

He turned bandit at fifteen, and ate a bitterness more terrible than the Long Saber camp. There were no women on that mountain, and he was fine-featured, so of course he was marked out, and suffered greatly for it. To escape that torment he gritted his teeth and, for the first time in his life, killed a man. From then on he made a place for himself in the bandits' nest.

He had a good head and no end of sly schemes. Reckoning this way and that, he rose to the ninth seat, a thorough villain.

Looking back, he too had a hand in cruelty, and bullied those weaker than himself. Sometimes he thought, maybe joining the Long Saber camp was his comeuppance.

Later still the Emperor rose in revolt. That bandit nest was wiped out, and the Tan house, passing through, took him in. He became a rebel soldier and muddled along to now.

Fourteen to four-and-twenty, ten years gone in a blink. He'd grown seasoned long since, and had thought most things in the world through. One rice raises a hundred kinds of people. You don't choose your parents, and if you've the bad luck to draw them, they're yours.

A grandson can always be got again. Of course the grandparents were close to the son. And his brother, who stayed by the grandparents all day, was shaped by them too, of course. As for his father, he'd long since written him off as a cripple who needs lifelong medicine, and let it be.

What else was there to do? His little brother wasn't even as tall as Little Ding then, a country child who'd never been out of the village. What could you expect him to understand, to grasp?

To be sure, Hu Yougui's heart was not wholly at peace. He'd never set up a house or taken a wife, and had no thought of going home. He'd thought life through clearly, and only meant to live free and easy. Only, he thought, a dirty man like him wasn't fit to marry some good girl.

Little Ding downed a meat-cake, his whole mouth running with gravy, and Hu Yougui patiently wiped it clean with a kerchief. Whenever he saw this boy, he thought of his own brother, who was one-and-twenty this year and had never been close to him, mischievous and vexing as he was.

His kindness to Little Ding wasn't truly from the heart. A man like him had run death-escorts, been a bandit, schemed against more men than he could count and killed more than he could count. He knew he was complicated, even dark inside, and he'd long used gentleness to cover the unclean things.

Little Ding of course didn't know that the general he looked up to most was black inside. He only gazed at him in worship. Then he caught sight of a man selling maltsugar from a pot, grabbed his general's sleeve, and wouldn't move another step.

Guan Si'er gave a cold laugh at the sight, but good-tempered Hu Yougui reached for coins again. He'd pinched out two when someone at the roadside called his name, uncertain, testing: "Da, Da, Dagui? Is that you, Dagui?"

No one had called him Dagui in years. Hu Yougui started, then quickly gathered his face and sized up the man.

The man who'd called him was past fifty, big and tall, with bright eyes and a half-face of beard. He wore a respectable satin coat of bamboo-root green and shuffled along in wooden clogs, his toenails dirty black. In his hand he carried a birdcage with a thrush hopping and flapping inside.

The man came up in a few steps and looked him hard up and down. Behind him the bird-shop boy followed step by step, afraid he'd run off with the bird, and hurried to catch up with the cage.

This bearded fellow had come to buy a bird, and had chanced on an old acquaintance.

There was no help for it. Hu Yougui had been fine-looking since he was a boy, with clear brows, a high nose, and a clean, fair scholar's face, born into a rough man's house.

The bearded fellow was truly moved, and stared hard at Hu Yougui and asked over and over: "Da, Da, Dagui, it's Dagui, isn't it? Do you know me? I'm your Uncle Wang Hua!" He jabbed hard at himself: "Wang Hua! The one who lived by the big carriage-inn in the county town. You and your father used to come to my place, I killed a chicken for you to eat. Don't you remember me, Dagui?"

Ai, this time it came back to him. This was Wang Hua, his father's bosom friend, the one always ready to take a blade in the ribs for a friend, the county's second-biggest fool.

Wang Hua was loud and drawing plenty of eyes, so Hu Yougui pulled him over to the tea-shed by the bird-shop. When no one was watching, he said with a smile: "It's Uncle Wang!"

He waved Guan Si'er off. Guan Si'er paid for maltsugar for Little Ding, and the two of them went off holding sugared straws. A few dozen steps on was the Long Saber garrison's gate.

Not till they were out of sight did Hu Yougui say smiling to Wang Hua: "How many years since we met? See, I hardly knew you. How is it you're in Yanjing?"

His old home was some thousands of li from here.

Wang Hua was of course greatly moved. He looked Hu Yougui over, left and right, and saw that though he wore fine cloth, there was something uncommon about his whole bearing. The little oxhide pouch at his waist had clasps of gold set with coral, plainly the purse of a man with solid means.

Wang Hua didn't answer the question, but smiled, as fresh and easy as if they'd parted only yesterday: "Mistake anyone, I'd never mistake you! You take after your mother. Your brother's a big strapping thing now, the spit of your father. Oh, why don't you go home? You..." He slapped his own head and laughed foolishly: "Heh, look at my head. True, go home to what? There's no home! Child, your village was gone long ago, you couldn't find your way home, could you?"

Talk all out of order. Ten years apart and he was the same old Wang Hua.

Wang Hua was thirsty, and raised the tea-bowl and drank half, and set it down heavily and said: "That's right, you don't know. The third year after you left, our whole county town was finished. The reb... pah! The Great Liang army was at the walls, wasn't it, and the magistrate in a panic grabbed every man he saw, and in the end drove us up onto the walls to defend the town. Your father, your brother, heh, your grandfather was past sixty and couldn't get away either, he went up too, frightened out of his wits!"

The fellow talked every which way, and Hu Yougui could only ask close: "Wasn't my house in the village?"

Wang Hua remembered something at last, looked at the gentle, smiling Hu Yougui, and slapped his thigh: "The county town's gone, how would there be a village? I tell you, Dagui, you mustn't hate your father. Your father and I were both fools. We only learned later we'd truly been duped. Truly, your father was sick with regret. Once, drunk in the night, he howled and wailed all night and slapped his own face, and knocked out his two back teeth with it. He truly knew his wrong. Don't blame him."

Hu Yougui said carelessly, smiling: "He's doing well. I'm gone, and he still has money to drink."

"What! Where would he get the money? Mine!" Wang Hua waved a hand, his face full of hate: "That time you went out and never came back, they all said you were dead. Your father went to the caravan company to find you, but they said yours was a death-contract, life and death left to Heaven. You child, how were you so bold, how did you dare sign a death..."

Hu Yougui had been fourteen then. With that frame, who'd have taken him but on a death-contract?

Wang Hua said half of it, then suddenly understood, and tugged at his beard, awkward, and begged pardon: "Hai, it's not your fault, not your fault. You, you were a good child, it's all your father's foolishness, he believed whatever he was told. It's that, with you gone, your father couldn't get you justice, and your house, with your father such a fool then, he couldn't even hold on to the old place, and there was nothing for it but to come to the city and lean on me."

Hu Yougui laughed despite himself, poured the Wang fool tea, raised it in salute, and said: "That's truly put you to trouble, caring for his whole house."

Wang Hua wouldn't have that: "Listen to you, I cared for him? Short ten or eight wen was nothing, but more than that, would your aunt stand for it? He lived with your grandparents in the city-god temple. When I'd a little in hand I'd go look in on them, and when I hadn't there was nothing I could do, was there?

"Ai, your father got his comeuppance too. Of all the men he'd been good to, not one would take him in. He did day-labor to keep the family, and in his free time went about asking after you. Whenever anyone from our county went traveling far, he'd beg them to keep an eye out. Your father had a hard time of it then! He'd earn a few coppers and spend half of them on this. You child, hai, true, even if you went home, you couldn't find home, whose home isn't gone..."

The fellow talked every which way, but Hu Yougui understood him well enough.

He had no particular thought about it. Understood, and that was that. So he stood to take his leave: "So that's how it is. Uncle Wang, I've business today. Else, shall we set a time another day and talk it over? When I've leisure, I'll stand you a drink."

Wang Hua started, glared, and grabbed him: "You child, you think your Uncle Wang's the same as before? Your father's the big fool, I'm the second fool, and if I let you go today, and your father comes to me for you again and I can't produce you, you'd have your father beat me dead? Heh, nice dream, no chance!"

Hu Yougui was at a loss before this simple soul. He couldn't well break free in a crowd, and said helpless: "You too. Couldn't you just pretend you never saw me?"

"But I did see you! You're my nephew Dagui!" Wang Hua puffed with anger: "You, I think you're the fool! I tell you, it's not that your uncle won't look after you, your house isn't what it was. The year your father was cheated by the magistrate, didn't he turn hard, rallied a band of men and opened the city gate in the dead of night, welcomed the Great Liang army and saved a whole prefecture of people? After that your father struck it rich. He threw in with the general in command then, the old vanguard general Sun, Sun Su! You know the man?"

He of course knew that. Hu Yougui thought it over and said: "Sun Su? Didn't he move off the left route to be Prefect of Nanfeng?"

Wang Hua glared again: "What a rude thing to say, how dare you call the Prefect by his name? Such a big fellow, your years grown for nothing, no sense at all!"

Still a fool. Didn't you say his name too?

Nanfeng Prefecture sat close by Qingfeng, a lively place near Yanjing, just out past Baiquan Mountain.

Hu Yougui truly found life a funny thing. He'd been swept into the Great Liang army, and after all that his father hadn't got clear of it either.

Wang Hua didn't know Hu Yougui was grumbling inwardly, and muttered on, still holding his hand: "Your father's struck it rich too, following the Prefect. You've such big manors now, several of them over Nanfeng way! He gave his life for the Prefect, and the Prefect came up through the army and took to him, and brought him along. Dagui, your father's an official!"

He turned and announced it to Hu Yougui, sure of himself, hoping to see him amazed. But Hu Yougui watched the Emperor nearly every day, and had never once seen this second fool at court, so he figured it was no more than some trifling local post.

Not that he scorned a small office. What if it were a first or second rank?

Sure enough Wang Hua went on: "Your father's an official! He's Judge at Nanfeng now, a real sixth-rank lord. I was loyal in my day, and took his aunt's beatings and scoldings to help him along, and your father knows my worth, and when he struck it rich he brought me up too. Heh, your uncle's a squire with two big manors now."

He dragged Hu Yougui along again, and a few steps on turned and said: "Dagui, your uncle's no fool. We were only fools with your father before. A man cheated enough comes to understand at last. Your father stopped being a fool long ago, truly. Who's good and who's bad, we know now. But it's late, isn't it?"

Hu Yougui was wholly at a loss. At the street-corner, with no way out, he took out his waist-token and held it up to Wang Hua: "Uncle, what Hu Chunhou has is his own affair. He has a home and an estate now, and I wish him a houseful of wealth and a long life. People have their bonds and their partings. The father-son bond between him and me was cut ten years ago. I have a home and an estate now too, and a post on me. So, I'll not run. Tell him, it's no matter. Let me go first, and I'll point you to my yamen gate, and tomorrow you can say what you like going back. Only a scene in a crowd's not good, is it?"

Wang Hua was only simple, not blind to the weight of things. He saw that great token and was frightened through, and with his mouth working, watched Hu Yougui go off into that great big yamen.