Chapter 25

Chang Lianfang stood with a stack of military orders in his hand. His face was complicated. He gazed at the seven short-stumps squatting across from him.

These past years he had met Brother Wanquan only a few hurried times. Every time it was all warmth and affection. Wanquan never once said Chen Dasheng had it this hard. Brother Wanquan always said it this way: everyone's fine, don't fret. Who lives and who dies is up to Heaven. On the killing-field every man fights for his own life, and no one can help another.

He himself had spent all these years at the Emperor's side. The Tan house's battle-line was on the right flank. Four years had flashed by. He was a fifth-grade young general now. And his own sworn brother had come to this.

Chang Lianfang pictured Meng Wanquan's empty sleeve, and that ever-smiling face of his.

There was no going back to how things were, after all.

The stench rolled into his nose in great waves from a foot away. It was years without a bath, body-reek laced with the smell of blood, and the rank stink of horse-fodder and horse-dung.

He wanted to gag but held it back. He could not show these men the least disgust. That would be disrespectful. But the smell truly stung the nose. It was sharp and acrid enough to bring tears to his eyes.

Under his own command, under his father's, under the Emperor's, the sorriest soldiers were never like this.

In his first years, what he could least bear was the winter marches. When a man under him got his toes frostbitten, they said the toes snapped clean off, and it grieved him half to death. These were soldiers he had trained with his own hands, day after day, seeing them through on the drill-ground.

When he saw the old cotton bedding at his sister-in-law's, his first thought was: how many cotton shoes could this make? How much less would his own men suffer the cold this winter?

Father and son had all but come to blows over that bit of old jackets and bedding.

In the past his soldiers had always looked at him with worship on their faces, and he had taken pride in that reverence. But thinking of it now, those soldiers knew how other men lived. They rallied to him not for that battered tang of his, but because he treated them well and took them for human beings.

Chang Lianfang's heart was heavy. He turned the military orders over and over in his hands. They were yellowed, blackened, filthy. Military orders?

In war the army went mostly by secret tiger-tallies and hidden seals. Anything written out on paper had no secrecy to it at all. Those few sheets his sworn brother spoke of, orders for a night ambush? How could a command ever be issued that way? Passing word on paper was the clumsiest way to guard against leaking army intelligence, and no one encouraged it. How would the great generals who held command dare use such a thing, and make a joke of their soldiers' lives?

Not one thing among these papers counted as a military order. Not even half of one.

What there was instead: some spoiled ledger-sheets the provisions office had copied out for men's rations and horse-fodder, a child's wretched copying-practice of the sages' precepts picked up who knows where, a Daoist's spirit-quelling talisman-scroll, and, worse still, a hand-copied chapter of the sort of filthy book the elders at home never let him read.

It looked as if someone had wanted to trick these poor wretches into laying down their lives for him. He'd happened to be reading some idle book at the time, so he simply pulled out a page, drew a red seal on it with a brush, and handed it over to be done with it. Men like these couldn't read anyhow, and they'd know even less what a real military order looked like.

The Long Saber Battalion especially, Tan the Second's blade-edge, lived shut away and hidden as a rule. They were never let deal with outsiders.

But behind this careless fobbing-off, how many lives had been thrown away?

No wonder his father had never liked Tan the Second. Sometimes he'd say the man's very name fouled his mouth. And when Chang Lianfang wanted to go and find his sworn brother, his father wouldn't allow it. He must have feared his son would see certain things and be disappointed.

Among the soldiers of a man like the Emperor, why should there be men in a state like this? All of them carried their heads in their hands, fighting to win the realm for him. Why should it turn out so different?

Chang Lianfang lifted his head, looked up at the far-from-bright sky over the corner, and muttered: "Your Majesty..."

In that instant the image of the Emperor in his heart, godlike as it had been, came crashing down. It was not that he stopped revering him. He simply saw, from a clearer angle now, a new Emperor.

Seeing his sworn younger brother's face grow blacker and blacker, Chen Dasheng asked cautiously: "Well?"

Chang Lianfang opened his mouth to speak, but a nose-stinging wave of stench rushed over him again. He held his breath. Unable to bear it any longer, he said, "Brother, how long has it been since you changed your jacket and trousers?"

The words were out before he could stop them, and he was aghast at himself. How could he say such a thing at a moment like this?

Chen Dasheng's face went strange. He looked at his sworn brother, then sniffed at himself. "What are you on about? Jacket and trousers? These want changing? These are new! Yangdan found them for me just last year, good and thick too. Fussy little lord, you. I'd thought you'd grown out of it!"

Chang Lianfang, holding his breath, shrank back.

Chen Dasheng did not understand why a person would need two sets of jacket and trousers. Even in his family's good days in the past, they'd had no habit of a change of clothes. One suit was one suit, and only when it had truly rotted did you think of making a new one.

His mother, his granny, his elder sister wove cloth the year round. But cloth once woven had to be paid over in tax. As long as he'd been in this world, he remembered his father wearing one suit of jacket and trousers too, dark blue, covered all over in patches.

His father wore those trousers to farm in, to go out in, and to marry off his elder sons. Only then would his mother wash them now and again. When they'd washed thin and torn, on went another patch.

When his father's jacket and trousers couldn't dry in time, he'd wrap himself in a tattered quilt and go right on with his work in the yard.

His own trousers here didn't even have a patch on them, did they, little brother? So was this him being looked down on for stinking?

Chen Dasheng worked this out, flew into a temper, and reached out to smack Chang Lianfang on the head: "What are you talking about? You think everyone's like you, a young master at home with two sets of jacket and trousers to change into!"

Chang Lianfang dared say no more. He himself had two sets of jacket and trousers, and far more besides. The hardest time of his life had been his stint in the recruits' camp, never full, thinking every day only of a mouthful to eat, until he forgot there was such a thing as smell at all. Dwell long enough in a fish market and you no longer smell the stink. Back then he hadn't known whether he stank or not. He'd only stayed a few months before he was wounded and left, which gave his father a bad fright.

When he'd healed and gone home, for a month and more his father hadn't dared look him in the face. The next year, when he saw his mother and grandmother, he was so furious he could hardly bear it, and he told on his father. His granny took her walking-stick and beat his father up onto the roof, roaring at him: Why don't you go, then? Why don't you go? If you deserve to die, then go and die! I'll not grieve for you! My darling grandson, so small, his luck was bad enough being born into your house, and still you can't treat him well? You sent him off to that deadly place. Was he raked up out of a stove-pit? You're trying to be the death of me!

His father hadn't made a sound. He only crouched on the roof and let his own mother pinch at him. His granny had never said such heavy words before. But thinking of it now, older, with things behind him, he understood: his granny had known what kind of place the recruits' camp was, and known too what he'd meet with once he went out.

Two sets of jacket and trousers? He had far more than two. Ever since the family moved to Yanjing, every time he went home he found he'd gained no end of clothes, not one or two pieces but heaps of them. There was an outfit for every season, a different outfit for whatever guest he met, even a different, fitting outfit for whichever pavilion he dined in.

Which jade pendant went with which belt, which shoes matched which robe, and even so, this crowd of upstart new nobles were still bumpkins next to the old nobility. They couldn't wear the clothes to their beauty, and always felt small, as if they were missing something.

When he felt slighted he'd grumble to Consort Xiao, and the consort, feeling for him, would grant him a few fashionable robes newly made in the palace for the Sixth Prince. He'd put them on and turn about before the Emperor, and the Emperor would beam, and even have someone fetch him new braid-knots to go with the clothes.

He was handsome, and the elders of his house and the elders of the palace both loved to dress him up. Even the Emperor had sketched an armor design for him with his own hand, and had the Armaments Directorate make it up in the finest materials.

The band of young soldiers who'd once been at the Emperor's side had all grown up under his eye. They'd thought they had the best of everything. But back then the Emperor would laugh at them: you pack of poor little things, what fine days have you ever seen?

And then the grown-ups would all feel for them together.

They'd campaigned south and north, jolted along after the army. In their parents' eyes, perhaps, that was suffering.

The Emperor must surely have known good days once, living the way these old nobles of Yanjing did, sleeping in underclothes worth near two taels of silver, with six grown maids kept sleepless the night through just to shoo off the mosquitoes and flies. Only later, when the days went bad, did the Emperor rise in revolt.

Yes, the old Tan house was old nobility too, of a kind with that crowd of old Yanjing nobles who looked on them as so many country bumpkins.

The knot that had wound itself round his heart these many days came undone at last. All that faint envy, that faint sense of his own smallness, turned every bit of it into scorn.

Heh. So that's all they amount to.

Chang Lianfang's face turned grave. He pointed at the papers. "Second brother, these aren't... military orders."

Chen Dasheng seemed to have guessed as much already. He nodded. "They're not... right. They're not."

Now that the truth was laid bare, Chang Lianfang felt boundless guilt. It wasn't guilt toward Chen Dasheng, but toward his own father. These past years he'd not been very good to his father, only trailing about after the Emperor, so his father was forever staring at them with a face full of quiet reproach.

He had always been unwilling to think back on the time his father sent him to the recruits' camp.

Only now did he understand what his father had meant by those words. His father had said: you rotten little pup, you're living in a nest of plenty. Don't go thinking that one turn in the recruits' camp has shown you everything there is in this world. What do you know of how many filthy things there are in it, stuffing yourself full every day and putting on airs with your own father?

Every time he was picked for a command and came back from the battlefield full of himself to report to the Emperor, the Emperor always said, all smiles: "Oho, our little general's grown up. No bawling this time, eh? Well done! There's a reward!"

The Emperor of those days was not as he was now. Spoils came easily on the battlefield, and were as easily given away, and he'd been the same, thinking it nothing much.

So whenever the Emperor had some fine thing on him and he spotted it, he'd pester to be given a command, and once he'd won and come back he'd shamelessly beg the thing off him. If his father didn't see, well and good. If he did, his father would chase him down to beat him, and everyone who saw it grinned. They all grinned.

How ugly he'd been. Chang Lianfang suddenly wanted to cry, so he cried. He lifted a hand to wipe away his tears and said to Chen Dasheng: "Second brother, they were just cheating you. All of you."

Chen Dasheng was taken aback a moment. Thinking Chang Lianfang grieved on his behalf, he comforted him: "Don't be like this. The truth is, the truth is a few of us had thought as much too. Really, we had."

Chang Lianfang, awkward and abashed, didn't know what to say. Over and over in his mind rose the old days, when he'd failed to wheedle a thing out of the Emperor and taken a beating besides. He'd stamped his foot and sighed at his father: "Dad! Why don't I just go be the Supreme Commander's son? Being your son is too hard!"

Furious, he'd flung up the tent-flap and stormed out, a roar of laughter behind him, his father shouting after him: "I've long since not wanted you! As if anyone treasures you? Go on, off with you, off with you!!"

The Emperor laughed too: "Done! I never mind having one son more. That's settled, he's mine now, and no going back on it!!"

"Your servant has no regret at all. Only, only the old lady, the old lady mightn't be willing. This humble general, this humble general has, ah, business to see to..."

And then a whole crowd of uncles would laugh at that.

Thinking of it now, which of the commands they'd ever received hadn't been weighed over and over by their elders, made certain of winning, before their elders would bear to let them go out and blood their blades?

Protected like that, the princes and the rest together, thirty-odd in all, even so, some had left in fright and said they'd gone off to study. Now at the Emperor's side, apart from the princes, only two or three of the old ones had grown up alongside him.

The Emperor didn't blame those who left. After all, he was fighting for the realm, and he could hardly take other men's flesh and blood and cast them to ash. If they didn't want it, then they didn't want it.

But for those who died by mischance, the Emperor, whenever the memorial day came round, would change into plain mourning-white, offer the sacrifice himself, and sit in silence a long while.

These few who had stayed, the Emperor truly treated as his own sons.

Among that band of boy-generals, Chang Lianfang could say with confidence that he was the only one who'd seen a true mouthful of blood in the recruits' camp. On the strength of that one mouthful of true blood, not a single one of his merits was false. So long as the Emperor dared use him, he could satisfy the Emperor. But now, all those merits had scattered like smoke.

Chang Lianfang lifted a sleeve to wipe his tears. His head felt uncommonly clear. Never had he been so calm.

He had to help his sworn brother pick this matter apart with his own experience. Otherwise the wrong of it would send Chen Dasheng to his coffin with his eyes unclosed in fury.

Holding up the "military orders," he asked: "Second brother! Do you mean to go before the Emperor and file an imperial complaint?"

Chen Dasheng started, then rose, left the rain-sheltered corner, and squatted down outside in the falling rain, arms wrapped round his head. He looked as helpless as a fledgling with no mother-bird to shelter it, out in the rain.

Seeing this, his brothers made to follow, but Chang Lianfang held them back.

"Don't. Let him think it through."

Yu Qingguan looked at the stack of "orders," his throat working up and down as if a little walnut were lodged in it. A long while passed before he got out two words: "Ah, all right."

That said, he drew the brothers off to a darker spot, where they squatted down and, all together, watched Chen Dasheng without stirring.

They all understood now, yet they grieved little for themselves. They grieved only for their chief. How could they be so useless, to have brought their all-able, all-capable chief to sit there stifled, at his wits' end?

The rain came down harder and harder. From the mourning-shed there rose all at once the long, high note of an ox-horn, and the clear, strong sound of the eulogy being chanted came drifting slowly over:

"Alas!... The whole realm grieves, woe, and woe! The late Grand General, Lord Wu Su, who lived not out his years but gave up his life... Men's hearts are struck with dread. The mourning cries of untold millions shake the earth, and at the mention of our late lord, tears fall and wet our lapels... We have heard of the General's virtue, how he honored the men fallen in peril, and reared the orphans of those who died in service, how with his own hands he pushed the funeral cart, doing rich honor to the dead to comfort the living..."

Chen Dasheng rose slowly in the rain and listened quietly to the eulogy. He could not understand it, yet he meant to fix every word of it in his memory.

Only when the chanting over there was done did he walk slowly back into the corner, squat down again before Chang Lianfang, and ask: "There's no winning the complaint, is there?"

Chang Lianfang nodded: "You can't win. His Majesty holds three great armies. The Tan house has a hundred and sixty thousand men. My father says they'll be split into five armies later on, and the Tan house will still command at least one of them."

Chen Dasheng nodded: "What you say, I don't understand. Two thousand went into the Long Saber Battalion, and only the seven of us lived. The rest died wronged."

He raised both his hands, and out of the dark came six more pairs of hands, mottled and scarred. All of them together did not come to a hundred fingers.

Chang Lianfang's face turned solemn: "One thousand nine hundred and ninety-three."

Chen Dasheng nodded: "One thousand nine hundred and ninety-three, and one Yangdan besides."

Chang Lianfang did not know who Yangdan was, but since Chen Dasheng named him specially, he must matter.

He said, "Since Shao Shang, when the Tan army formally raised its troops and helped the Emperor fight for the realm, the losses reported to the Ministry of War the other day came to over eight hundred officers fallen and more than a hundred and ten thousand men lost. That the Tan house beggared itself for the new dynasty, that much is no lie."

Chen Dasheng nodded: "There's no winning. This captain of mine, maybe there's not even a name of mine on the muster-rolls."

Chang Lianfang nodded: "Since ancient times, armies have drawn pay for phantom soldiers and stolen their subordinates' merits. It's common as dirt. Everyone does it. It's only that the Tan house does it so ugly."

Chen Dasheng glared at him: "It's not that they grab too ugly. It's that everyone's wrong to do it. This thing is not right. Won't Heaven forbid it either?"

Chang Lianfang was half-laughed into exasperation: "Heaven?"

Chen Dasheng nodded in earnest: "Outside Qingfeng city, I saw it."

Chang Lianfang pressed his lips together: "But Heaven never struck the old Tan house dead, and the Emperor won't stand by to see the old Tan house come to grief either."

Chen Dasheng looked at the sky and asked: "By what right?"

Chang Lianfang said, "By no right at all. He's nobler than you, abler than you, has more men than you, more power than you, more than you in everything. The Tans lost over two hundred this time, and the Emperor dares not fail to acknowledge that. And as for Heaven, on the first and fifteenth of the month, at every festival and New Year, the offerings he lays on the altar are more than yours too."

Chen Dasheng, holding himself in: "The old dynasty gave no less, either."

Chang Lianfang said, "Heaven's not blind. There can't be two Emperors in this world, and my Emperor is better than the last!"

Chen Dasheng countered in earnest: "That's what you say."

Chang Lianfang urged him, holding his patience. "Many people have died. There's no more fighting now, so at least the old Tan house won't have so much to keep them busy. Think about it. The old lady at home has found you a... Brother, you've lived through it, through everything, however hard. Why put yourself through this?"

Chen Dasheng's voice rose: "I can't live! Behind me follow one thousand nine hundred and ninety-three wronged souls, and one Yangdan to add besides."

Chang Lianfang: "But Tan the Second is dead."

Chen Dasheng was startled a moment. Then his eyes drifted to the side, glanced over, and he said: "This heap of things wasn't given by him alone."

Chang Lianfang looked at the thick stack in his hand: "You remember them all?"

Chen Dasheng nodded: "I do. Tan Shiyuan, Tan Weitong, Tan Weizheng, Tan Shikun... Wu Xiu."

His memory was superb. He recited a good hundred names like a storyteller, half a volume of the Tan family genealogy.

Chang Lianfang had long known Chen Dasheng had a fine memory. He too had learned the great houses' lineages by heart, and he sighed to hear it. "Shou, Shi, Wei, Xing, Xiu, Cheng, Zhao, Zheng. Anyone with one of these characters in the middle of his name, that's eight generations of the house, top to bottom, no mistake. The Tans are a great house of Hengtai Prefecture, five hundred years and more in the passing-down."

Chen Dasheng looked at Chang Lianfang in earnest: "I've got to set down how these characters are written, too. Write them out for me later! Teach me to know them."

Chang Lianfang was half-laughed into exasperation again: "And what'll you do once you know them? Write out their names once a day, playing the Judge of the Dead striking souls off the roll?"

Chen Dasheng told Chang Lianfang, in deadly earnest, "From Tongyan Mountain to Wucheng Pavilion, Zhuoning Pass, Huayang city, the four commanderies of Nanzhong, the thirty-nine cities along the two rivers' banks, two thousand men, mother-borne and father-raised. Their blood was red, their flesh felt pain, and every stroke of the saber cut down flesh that had dropped from a mother's body. Who feels no pain? Who feels no fear? Five hundred went out, and what was left..." Veins knotted at his temples, and he forced the words out. "I know none of them! I know not one! I know only one thousand nine hundred and ninety-three! And one Yangdan besides! My lord general, this humble man has a wrong to right!!"

Yu Qingguan's voice came slowly from the side: "It was agreed, the contract-paper thumb-printed. We sold ourselves to their house, our lives bought with grain and coin, and fifty jin of grain in relief if we died. The grain and coin never came, and when men died, no one cared. A wrong!"

Chen Dasheng looked at them, then nodded to Chang Lianfang: "Just so."

Chang Lianfang stared wide-eyed at Chen Dasheng: "For this? Only this?"

Chen Dasheng nodded gravely: "A mouthful of grain, a life. Fifty jin keeps a whole household, young and old, alive. Without that mouthful to eat, they died for nothing."

Silence...

A long, long while passed before Chang Lianfang said slowly, "Tan Shize is dead, but his father, Tan Shouyi, arrives early next month, and the Emperor has granted the father a marquisate even so. So the house has two marquises in one gate now. Tan Shouyi holds office as Junior Preceptor, with a yearly stipend of two thousand dan, and that's not counting his fief or his salary in silver. That man, even my father fears him."

Chen Dasheng's face held none of Chang Lianfang's difficulty. He asked, plain and direct: "Can he be killed?"

Chang Lianfang rolled his eyes: "He can. But behind him there's still Tan Shiyuan, yearly stipend fifteen hundred dan, holding office as Left Vice Minister of War, upper second grade!"

"Can he be killed?"

"He can. But behind him there's still Tan Weitong, Loyal-and-Martial General of the upper fourth grade, yearly stipend three hundred dan, and just now angling for a substantive post in the Ministry of War. The office he lands will likely be better than mine. He'd have command over at least eighty captains of your sort. Bid them live and they live, bid them die and they die. Tormenting the likes of you isn't even worth a lift of his eyebrow. A word, a roundabout snare, and it's done. And you may not even truly be a captain at all."

"Can he be killed?"

"Can you ever kill them all? You think Meng Dingchen's Jiusi Hall is for show? Behind him there's still Tan Weizheng, Tan Weixin, the seven branches of the Tan house, six living generations under one roof, so tangled and deep-rooted that even the Emperor won't touch them lightly. Never mind that you've no proof now. Even if the wrong were real, what of it? Men like us, with guilt on us, can buy it off, have it reduced, have it pardoned..."

Before Chang Lianfang finished, Chen Dasheng had already stood up and gone back into the rain, face turned up to the sky, letting it pour down on him...

Over at the mourning-shed, the mournful ox-horns sounded all through the camp. Time to nail down the coffin, no doubt.

A long moment passed. Then the man slowly reached up, wiped his face, came before the corner, and asked Chang Lianfang, "If I were a real captain, how many dan a year would I draw?"

"Resolute grade?"

"Mm!"

"Ninety dan, seventy strings of cash. What do you ask that for? There's no way their house would ever give you that much."

"I mean to go up front and see this Emperor of yours. Men like us either go on selling our lives, or we die. The Tan house won't let us leave, and the only one who can pull us out is the Emperor. I have a saber. We are the last seven long sabers in this world that can stand against the Black Cavalry, and I am the point of the blade.

"I'll sell myself to the Emperor. I'll spend my life for him, starting from ninety dan. When I draw a hundred dan, I'll do in the man of their house who draws a hundred. When I draw three hundred, I'll do in their man who draws three hundred. And one day I'll draw two thousand dan, and then I'll settle accounts with them, one by one!!"

In an instant Chang Lianfang was struck by the surging murderous will before him, and nearly sat down flat on the ground.

This thing was called killing-aura. He'd claimed he had it, and his father had said he didn't.

Now he understood at last: he didn't.

He opened his mouth, and it was a good while before he caught his breath enough to ask: "Then what if you die on the way?"

This time Chen Dasheng said nothing. It was Yu Qingguan who spoke, slow and unhurried: "There's still me. If I die, there are still them."

Right, they were as one man.

This time it was Chang Lianfang's turn to run out. He squatted down in the rain and, too, did not stir.

He thought of a great deal. His family had come from a fallen line of gentry. Only by his father's head for scheming, and by father and three sons risking their necks and their kin selling their lives, had they at last become new nobility, and they'd hardly had a few good days of it yet. He could not get mixed up in this business. He dared not send his whole family to their deaths.

And what if he and Chen Dasheng were sworn brothers of the deepest bond?

He could not drag his whole household, old and young, off after Chen Dasheng to take revenge, and his family would never agree to it anyway.

But if he did not help Chen Dasheng, then all the books he'd read, all the benevolence he'd seen, all the morals he'd learned, had he learned them for nothing?

The dull boom of the three armies' cannon. The coffin was being raised...

Chang Lianfang slowly stood, walked up to Chen Dasheng, and said: "My household, eighty-odd souls all told, can't be dragged along in my folly."

Chen Dasheng nodded in understanding: "No, they can't. I'll not ask you for that. I ask you one thing only: I want to see the Emperor."

Chang Lianfang looked him in the eye and asked: "Brother! No regrets?"

Without hesitation: "None!"

"Then let's go..."

Chang Lianfang turned to go, and Chen Dasheng asked behind him: "Where to?"

Where to, indeed?

This time Chang Lianfang actually laughed. He pinched his nose and turned back to Chen Dasheng. "To see the Emperor, I've got to take you to see Sixth Fatty first. We're going to put on a little play for people. Sixth Fatty, ah, he's a little immortal, that one!!"

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Author's note: for the sake of irony, I borrowed nineteen characters from the Memorial Requesting Honors for Zhang Xun.