Chapter 12

No more fighting from here on — where would they go? What would they do?

Right — as for what a man was to do, where he was to go: for Chen Dasheng this was a question that needed no thought at all. He was used to waiting; there was always someone who'd tell him, who'd assign him his task.

When he was very small, Chen Dasheng too had been full of curiosity about this world of men. He'd asked his father — a man tall as the sky — but his father said: what's the good of thinking so much? You just follow your grandfather and your elder brothers and keep the family's land in good order; come autumn, once the grain's in and your grandfather has money, he'll first pull together the family estate for your elder cousins; once your cousins have taken wives, he'll take a wife for you; your wife will bear you a son; and when you die there'll be someone to lay out offerings for you, and you'll have sacrificial food to eat...

And how fine sacrificial food was — offering-cakes steamed from fine flour, and a big fat chicken, dried dates to eat all you liked, and wine to drink besides.

His father's greatest wish in all his life was that, when he died, his children and grandchildren would set out just such a sacrificial meal for him.

Later came the flight from famine; that night his mother and sister were carried off, and he wanted to go out and fight to the death alongside his grandmother, but his father hauled him back and gave him a slap, and said again: don't go out! Just hide! You do as you're told, hear — do as you're told and you'll live... So he did as he was told, on and on he obeyed, until he heard them say his father was dead and wouldn't be coming back.

So whose word was he to obey then?

Later the general came, and the general said: do as you're told and you'll live, you'll have high office and rich pay — whatever you want, in short, you'll have it...

Idly feeling at the half-sheepskin pouch strapped at his waist, he muttered under his breath: "So it's over."

Chen Dasheng stretched lazily and leaned against the pillar; perhaps his feet were bothering him, for he worked off his old boots to bare a pair of big, blackened soles.

His brothers were near knocked out by the stink on the spot; holding their noses they scattered, and draped themselves back over the wall to watch the show.

And so, comfortable at last, Chen Dasheng looked up at the sky and said: "Fools..."

Little did he know.

---

At that very moment, outside the Fengyi Hall of the palace, Madam Cao — whom the Emperor had taken to wife after his first wife died years ago — had flipped the table clean over.

Fine porcelain lay shattered across the floor... and outside the broad, level hall, over a hundred palace servants knelt in silence.

"This is them cursing me to bear none but princesses — cursing my children to short lives, that's what this is!"

Madam Cao ground her teeth, holding back her fury.

A nurse-matron at her side, quick to read the moment, took a teacup from a palace maid's hands, offered it up with both hands, and withdrew with a bow.

However well-mannered, however sharp these old palace servants were, the new mistress could never trust them.

Madam Cao would of course open her heart to no old palace servant; she took the teacup, drank a few sips, and only then came outside the hall, seated herself in a chair spread with phoenix-medallion satin, and turned over carefully what this person had come for.

This person came without a shadow and left without a trace, yet had stolen only the offerings to the Seventh Maiden from the incense altar at her first presiding over a sacrifice.

What in the end did this person intend? Was it to tell them all that she hadn't the power to command the inner palace? And second — the Seventh Maiden is the daughter of the Heavenly Emperor, the goddess who watches over the wits and health of every girl in the world, over their grace and clear-mindedness. To steal the Seventh Maiden's offerings was to strike at her daughters — this was a curse!

How vicious a thing — but who was this person?

In the midst of her rage, a eunuch came in below to report that Meng Dingchen of the Jiusi Hall had come. At that, Madam Cao at once gathered in her feelings and looked, expressionless, toward the distant palace gate.

That knot of men, hems stirring faintly, formed into two files and came at a brisk pace; drawing near, they knelt together. The one at their head wore a six-ridged cap and the ceremonial dress of a sacrifice — a robe of blue gauze, a skirt of red gauze; his features were composed and upright, he wore a short beard, and with his phoenix eyes and straight nose he was strikingly handsome. Once he'd knelt square and proper, he kowtowed with gravity and said: "Your servant is at fault! Your servant has failed in his duty!"

Madam Cao wanted to hurl the teacup in her hand, but breeding held her back; she had to swallow it and, feigning unconcern, gave a little laugh: "It's no great matter — at a time like this, truly... hardly worth mustering such a fuss over."

"It is nonetheless your servants' failing, that Her Ladyship has been alarmed. Let Her Ladyship set her mind at ease; your servants will add men at once, comb out every gap, and from this day such a thing will not happen again..."

"That won't be necessary!" Madam Cao cut in, and in a voice without rise or fall refused a second time: "That won't be necessary!"

Her gaze and Meng Dingchen's met and crossed, and on neither side was there the least trace of respect.

Meng Dingchen despised her in his heart: Cao of Anyue, entering the Fengyi Palace without edict or decree — where did she think she was? Did she suppose that by standing here she was Empress?

The Emperor had only just sacrificed to Heaven and taken the throne, and as for these ladies of the inner palace, there was as yet no clear word. Though Madam Cao was the wife he'd taken second, things were not now as they'd been before: so long as no edict came down from the front, she was Cao, and not the Empress.

Madam Cao had not addressed Meng Dingchen by his office-title as Master of the Jiusi Hall. Second grade — so what of it? Go and ask around: in all the offices of every dynasty through spring, summer, autumn, winter, where had there ever been a Jiusi Hall? Chief Master of the Jiusi Hall, no less?

Go leaf through the books of rites, look at the statutes of the dynasties past... Her brother was never wrong: risen by neither civil nor military examination, up from some backwoods track, these people were of crooked origin after all. The Emperor's raising up of brigands from the wilds ran clean against the sages' teachings — did he not know that only in the proper hall of office could each fulfill his own duty?... What did these jianghu wild-men the Second had gathered up understand of what makes an able minister? What did they understand of the way of governing a realm?

Yet these people, purely on the strength of their jianghu ties with that son-of-a-concubine, had gotten themselves into the seats of power — truly casting aside the future of the myriad people, a thing to be gravely feared.

Madam Cao patted the arm of her chair and, mustering a thin smile, said: "Why go to such lengths? At a time when nothing's yet in order — it's only a few bowls of sacrificial food. Surely — surely the Emperor hasn't heard of it?"

Not having been bidden to rise, Meng Dingchen could only answer from his knees: "Reporting to Her Ladyship — the Emperor is in a great rage, and has sent your servants to investigate the matter to the bottom."

At these words a genuine smile came to Madam Cao's face at last; she smoothed her hair, glanced at the former dynasty's palace servants trembling on their knees below, and thought: so it really is different now — no wonder the Grand Commandant threw over even his own father for the sake of this throne.

It was truly high up here — you could see everything clearly.

Back when she was at the Grand Commandant's residence she'd had no such power and airs; every day the old lady was alive was another day of torment for her.

Come to that, this food-stealing thief was capable enough: first assassinating the old emperor and frightening off the old Empress Dowager, and now coming here to play tricks on her — yet leaving no trace to be exposed, which set her heart fluttering with unease, not knowing what to make of it.

Madam Cao's mouth twisted slightly askew, and she put on a grateful air: "The Emperor is always so. Ai! What could happen to us, mother and children? It's him, the Emperor, I worry for — how many days now without proper rest? The front's only just steadied, the Emperor's busy with a thousand things, and these inner-palace affairs... ah, I've only just taken them up myself; in a day or two it'll all be right.

"You may go back... the Emperor can't do without you either. I've already sent someone to fetch my elder brother; tomorrow I'll trouble Master Meng to verify the identities of any who come and go — not one of the people here can I trust, since they're all of the old dynasty after all... See to it, Master, and just give them each a few strings of resettlement money and send them out; don't harm their lives. Any who'd been truly capable wouldn't have lasted to now, would they?"

The palace servants kneeling over there could breathe at last; hearing Madam Cao say so, some of them broke into loud weeping and kowtowed in thanks for her merciful heart.

The corner of Meng Dingchen's mouth twitched; he prostrated himself on the ground: "Yes! Your servant obeys..."

---

Chen Dasheng had no notion that a few bowls of food could wreck a person's career. Full and drunk, their fill of the spectacle had, the seven of them, at the grey hour when the light was just failing, went scuffing along the little paths, meaning to leave the palace.

Only this time it didn't go so smoothly: a sentry every three steps, a picket every five; twisting and turning to dodge them, they'd just barely reached an outer exit when a band of saber-bearing guards in brand-new full-length armor blocked their way.

As dozens of steel blades slid half from their scabbards, someone over there bellowed: "Halt! Who goes there!"

In an instant Guan Si'er and the rest tucked themselves, neat and orderly, behind Chen Dasheng.

In the Long Saber Battalion the tradition was for the big to lead the small, and their way of attacking was likewise: whoever was ablest charged out front... and if you died, the next man stepped up and went on dying in your place.

The question stumped Chen Dasheng. General Tan the Second had said: once you'd become a man of the Long Saber Battalion, you could no longer count yourself a man. From then on you were a blade of the Tan army — and a blade, once sent out, must whet its edge on war-merit. Whet it well and you're a keen blade; whet it badly and you chip your edge and lose your life, and then let no one bear a grudge: it's the same for everyone, all of it fate as it was meant to be.

When Heaven means to take you, no one can stop it!

That was how the saying went, all right — but Chen Dasheng still wanted to be a man.

Puzzled, he thought: it's a new dynasty now — so what am I?

If he were a subject of merit, the higher-ups wouldn't just leave him abandoned in the palace with no notice taken — look at the others: even their warhorses had a fine suit of barding...

Once that band of men had drawn their blades and ringed them all round, the gate-officer leading them came over, and he and Chen Dasheng sized each other up.

Rather unsure of himself, Chen Dasheng ventured a probe: "...Good... folk?"

Good folk, more or less — the Grand Commandant had won, after all, a thing even Heaven had granted.

The gate-officer looked this squad of stragglers over carefully, in their half-suits of soft armor: their clothes in tatters, and off them rose an unmaskable reek of years without a wash, along with the sickening stink of sweat and blood.

Knocked back on his heels by the stench, he covered his nose, retreated a few steps, and only then said in disgust: "Who are you?"

Hadn't he just told him? Good folk! We're all together, aren't we? Good folk together!

Wasn't that right?

Chen Dasheng consulted his conscience a moment, then reported with great earnestness: "Reporting to the officer... good folk!"

The old dynasty had been struck down by Heaven at Qingfeng, after all.

This officer was half laughed into anger by him — "good folk," indeed; was the man a simpleton? He looked at their clothes and battered helmets, the sort once common but grown rare of late.

Where this lot had wormed in from there was no telling — a pack of low, unranked foot-soldiers, and who knew how many days they'd been knocking about the palace.

At that thought he shot out his right hand and made a grab for the pipa-bone of Chen Dasheng's shoulder.

Chen Dasheng moved without a thought passing through his head: following the man's motion, he hunched and twisted his shoulder and came to stand at the officer's left hand.

The gate-officer's hand closed on empty air in that instant, and he was actually taken aback.

Nothing else for it — he'd been startled, alarmed.

The man's movement was too deft, too slippery; he felt that however many times he reached out, he'd never get hold of him.

Chen Dasheng's movement was slight — he hadn't even lifted his head, just a faint sidestep of his feet — but the six men behind him, like one whole centipede, moved small at the front and larger toward the back; however the last man moved, however his steps widened, in the end they were all like a single centipede, stuck together so you couldn't have pried them apart.

It was a genuinely uncanny sight.

All around, steel blades came fully clear of their scabbards, the sound ringing out one after another, and Chen Dasheng hurriedly dug his identity tag out of the half-pouch at his waist and held it up: "Truly — truly good folk!"

For all the men he'd killed, he still wanted to be a clean, innocent good man.

The gate-warden hesitated, but in the end took the tag and examined it closely, front and back.

The tag was crude: thin copper plates front and back sandwiching a slip of thin wood; the front bore a "Tan," the back a surname, "Chen," marked with the number seven, and below on the back an iron-branded battalion mark — showing him a veteran of veterans who'd never once risen past a squad of ten.

At that the gate-officer's manner turned respectful, and he asked in a soft, gentle voice: "Ahem — you, sir — what's all this about good folk and bad? I'm only asking which unit you belong to, and when it was you came in."

Chen Dasheng was puzzled: wasn't it written on the tag? Why ask? Could this one be, like himself, unable to read?

He cupped his hands apologetically and answered: "Reporting to the officer, we're of the Long Saber Battalion, under General Tan Changde of the Right Army..."

"Wh — what?"

The gate-officer cried out in shock, and a murmur ran through the men around.

They'd only ever heard tell of them before — and here were living ones to be seen?

This was the Long Saber Battalion, alive.

The soldiers all stared wide-eyed, looking them over, until Guan Si'er and the others grew more and more embarrassed under it.

The Emperor had able men and capable generals thick as ox-hairs, but among the ox-hairs there were a few especially long ones: the Leopard Battalion of His Majesty's own guard, the Second Prince's Iron Armor Battalion, and the Long Saber Battalion of the Tan army.

Compared with the first two, the Long Saber Battalion's fame was of longer standing — back then the Second Prince's Iron Armor army didn't yet exist.

They said that when the unit was first raised, General Tan the Second had personally picked two thousand strong young men from the scattered corps, then sifted them down, layer by layer, to five hundred soldiers; and from the time His Majesty first raised his troops, the Long Saber Battalion had been doing the work of taking on the enemy's cavalry.

As for the old dynasty, its most illustrious force these several hundred years had been the Black Cavalry, and the Long Saber Battalion existed precisely to deal with the Black Cavalry — their long sabers were the very bane of mounted skill.

Young officers like these had heard no end of legends over the years — the great figures with this one's hammer and that one's spear, steeds worth ten thousand strings, strategists who could move mountains... but the loftier ones they couldn't picture the grandeur of; in the end these low-ranking soldiers loved the tales of the Long Saber Battalion best, because... that was the legend of the common foot-soldier.

It was only last year: when His Majesty rewarded the three armies, the veterans of the Long Saber Battalion, old and young alike, started at nothing less than Resolute Commandant, and drew the first grade of military pay.

They'd risen by their own ability, and that was a thing others could hardly envy them.

They also said the Long Saber Battalion's sabers were a good hand's-breadth longer than the standard long saber, and their swordwork was vicious and direct: raise the blade and one clean cut, and man or warhorse alike came apart in two halves — brutal work, and beautiful.

For all that, the Long Saber Battalion's casualties ran very high; in the earliest days it was said most of them were skewered to death on spear-points, and later the tale went that they'd been wiped out to the last man — especially this past year, hardly any word of the Long Saber Battalion's exploits had gotten out at all.

Yes — the long saber!

Reminded of the long saber, the gate-officer craned his neck and, by the light of a freshly lit torch, looked again at the backs of this row of men.

Sure enough, these men stuck together in a row, movements all of a piece, each pressed tight against the next, and all with heads bowed. Now and then they too wanted a look at the excitement, and would tip their heads up a fraction — a glance quick as anything, a flick of a lift, the body still, just the eyeballs rolling about, whirring round in a rapid circle — and whoosh, down went the head again.

For all the world like clever little ground-voles in the clods of a field, too quick to catch.

Now he could see clearly: every one of these men bore a very long blade on his back. Wrapped in coarse cloth, points down, the tips hung no more than a palm's-height off the ground — yet the hilts rose above the back a good head's length past the crown.

At the sight the gate-officer shivered inside: a weapon that long, one stroke of it coming down... tsk! What a clean, savage thing it'd be!

Up close, though, that smell again... The gate-officer covered his nose and backed off once more, more than half his inward admiration flushed away by the stench, and coughing a few times he asked: "Might I ask — ahem — when it was you elders came in?"

It was too choking.

Chen Dasheng thought it over seriously: "...Three days back, we had orders to break in through the south gate... and haven't been out since."

The drawn steel around them slid slowly back into its scabbards. The old dynasty's last stand against them had been the remnant forces holding the south gate outside the palace to the death; the fighting there, they said, had been savage, and it was General Tan the Second who'd led his men and cut their way in with nothing but their own flesh.

The gate-officer's manner softened further, and he bent his upper body forward: "Then, elder..."

Seeing him dressed more grandly than himself, Chen Dasheng explained earnestly: "Not 'elder' — this humble one is called Chen Dasheng."

Fine long armor like that was a privilege only the senior officers who lived in the oxhide tents enjoyed.

The gate-officer coughed violently, and Chen Dasheng, quite kindly, offered: "The — the weather... bit cold these past days, eh?"

"Cough... yes! Chen — Elder Chen, then why not go out? Yanjing fell long ago, and our Emperor took the throne this very day..."

Was that so? It was! He'd even seen it.

Chen Dasheng looked at the dun-grey palace, the dun-grey sky, and only then said slowly: "Mm, that's so... having had no order to withdraw, we've been waiting here in place for word."

At these words the soldiers around all put on looks of grief. Ai! The Long Saber Battalion would likely never see their general come for them again.

One soldier over there, grieving, said in a low, choked voice: "You elders won't have heard yet, will you? General Tan the Second — he — he died for his country..."

Chen Dasheng blinked, looked behind him, then at these grieving gate-guards, baffled by their manner. Why the grief? These days, what day passed without a few dying?

Besides, they weren't even General Tan the Second's own men; and what was more, he and his had no particular bond with General Tan the Second either.

That Tan the Second had sent them off to die day after day — his dying was good news, surely.

So, philosophically, he said: "...Everyone's got to die. Die out there or die here, it's all the same."

What a bold and expansive sentiment it was.

The interrogating gate-officer at once drew himself bolt upright: "Just so! To die for one's country is the very mandate of Heaven for us; each of us has his charge and dares never be slack in it. May I ask, elder, why it is you're leaving now?"

It was baffling beyond words. Chen Dasheng looked at him, then at his brothers behind him, and said: "Just hungry... we're hungry!"

There was no telling what had happened, but by this hour of the evening there wasn't a whiff of food anywhere, and in every nook and cranny people were hiding and weeping; the place truly was ill-omened.

So that was it — they'd gone hungry for days!

The soldiers, full of pity, one after another loosed their grain-sacks and pressed them insistently on Chen Dasheng and the rest.

Giving them to us free? Then we won't stand on ceremony.

Chen Dasheng led the way, tying the dry-rations sacks in a row round his waist-belt.

Their identity tags checked over, the soldiers let them pass easily enough. Only when they'd gone a good way off did a subordinate quietly ask the gate-officer in charge: "Say, chief — they're carrying big bundles on their backs... aren't you going to take a look?"

"At this hour? This place has been swept clean, looted eight times over and more — and those are honest men. Look at what they're wearing! Heh, what could they have found? Anything good would never come round to their sort. Besides — am I to go looking? Or are you?"

"...Ahem. I saw nothing at all, sir."

Only when those seven grubby figures had vanished from sight did someone sigh softly: "That was the Tan family's Long Saber Battalion, that was."

Chen Dasheng and the others walked a good distance, then rounded a corner and broke into a headlong sprint; only when they'd reached somewhere safe did they, panting, open the ration-sacks on them — and finding them full of fine-flour cakes and jerky cured with good salt, these men, who carried deep memories of hunger, turned back toward the palace full of gratitude and thought as one:

"This palace is full of good folk, truly!"

Chewing his jerky, Chen Dasheng had no idea his home was close at hand — a great house with a finely carved spirit-wall — nor that his granny had found him a wife... and that the wife was quite the formidable one.

---

That night, Qi Qian'er slept in the newly tidied house, and the old woman came to keep her company, her bedding in her arms.

The old woman felt she could never do without this girl now.

There was no lamp in the room at night, so grandmother and grandchild lay on their backs and chatted.

The old woman said: "Girl, are you asleep?"

"No — do you need to get up in the night, Granny?"

Qi Qian'er knew this old woman's water came short and often.

"No — I only wanted to ask you something."

"Ask me?"

"Ai — your family, your own people's doings, I mean! Tell me about them, won't you."

Qi Qian'er tugged the quilt up, and to the sound of the crickets outside the window began to remember.

"My family was just how it was. I never even saw my mother — later they pointed at a grave-mound and told me, you know, your mother's buried over there! They only meant to make me cry, but I'd never seen my mother, so I didn't cry, and behind my back they said I was a cold-hearted one."

"Hah! The mouths on those back-court women — what good ever came out of them, running down this house and that."

"Mm. From the age of three I was in among them behind the ancestral hall, boiling raw silk. I couldn't do the heavy work back then, so all day I watched the pot; I was little, always drowsy, and if I dozed off I got a beating... but the aunties were kind sometimes too, slipping me a bit of cake to eat and such. They knew a great deal, and I learned no small amount from them."

"Learning things is a fine thing!"

"Mm, it is."

What Qi Qian'er said was true enough. The folk near the old imperial city — and the Huo family stewarding the crown's estates besides — so the talk of the aunties was forever of this consort in the palace, that marquis in the capital, what coral some family's old lady got for her birthday, or which house had flung five thousand taels of silver at the Huguo Temple in the capital for a single tall stick of incense...

Back then she only half-listened, never once wondering what the coral looked like or how tall the tall incense stood.

"Let's sleep..."

The old woman couldn't hold out in the end, and was first to start snoring.

Qi Qian'er gathered the quilt and turned over, and breathing in the comforting smell that belonged to a home, she too soon closed her eyes.

After so many days she could finally sleep a good sleep at last; a young body drops into dreams fast, and hazily she slipped into a nightmare — in it Qi Qian'er was back at the Plague God's temple... She could see the blaze but feel no heat of it, flames leaping to the sky, and at her ear the old eunuch was speaking again. He said a great deal — of his childhood, of his young years — and then he said he had a breath?

To give to her?

No! No!

It wasn't as if she'd run out of breath herself — what did she want with someone else's?

Qi Qian'er didn't want it, but the old eunuch had hold of her and she couldn't move a muscle; sitting there on the ground she felt the crown of her head go hot in wave after wave, her head all muddled, and under a splitting pain she gave a great cry and opened her eyes...

"I don't want it!!"