Chapter 28

Sunset glow lay over the evening. River and hills were wrapped thin in gold. The woods went slowly still, and the birds' cries faded into the quiet. The old road ran clean and fine, dust rising along it, travelers stepping aside. The whole way was smooth. The Martial Emperor Yang Zao, his old blades gathered up, pressed on to the edge of Yanjing before he stopped the imperial carriage.

It wasn't that the Ministry of Rites' pack of tiresome officials had come out with more of their nonsense about the hour not being right and no entering the city yet.

It was that a man who'd carried great ambitions since he was small, who'd laid his plans in secret, raised his troops at Shao Shang, campaigned all the way, and mounted the throne, had ended up hemmed in by a thousand petty affairs. Today that man had buried Tan Shize and turned for home. He looked at the far hills and the evening glow, and all at once his heart came clear and light.

It was as if he'd set something down. From here on, past and present were two different things.

Yes. Tan Shize, who'd campaigned at his side, was dead. From here began a new road.

The past was the past now. Hereafter it would be seen how he drove this carriage called Great Liang, and where he drove it.

Yong'an was the new reign-title, the era-mark that belonged to the Martial Emperor himself. Hereafter each emperor would have one reign to his name. The dynasty-name Liang came from Duliang Prefecture, where the Martial Emperor's forebears had lived for generations. From now on all under heaven was the realm of Liang.

The Emperor got down and walked slowly to the old river at the road's edge. The water was clear and the country round about beautiful, so he had a low couch spread and screens set up on three sides. He meant to watch the sunset here and take his evening meal.

The Emperor ate simply too. After he'd taken a little food, more or less at random, he looked about and asked Zhang Minwang, "Those few who are always leaping about, how is it I don't see them today?"

The few the Emperor meant were the three boys raised at his side and brought up like his own princes: Earl Chang Mianshen's youngest son, Chang Lianfang, Grand Preceptor Li Zhang's grandson, Li Jinggui, and Empress Dowager Zheng's grand-nephew, Zheng Aman.

In the early years quite a few boys had been sent along. Later, for one reason or another, many left, and war spares no one from death, so now there were just these three.

For all the mysteries the world made of the imperial house's affairs, the Emperor's relations with his legal mother, Empress Dowager Zheng, had in truth always been good. That goodness came from the old Yang house being a single sprout in a thousand li of scorched earth. Good or not, it had to be good.

Zheng had raised and taught the Emperor herself, and she was a formidable woman. After he raised his troops, her natal family backed him with all their strength, and out of gratitude the Emperor took several of Empress Dowager Zheng's grand-nephews to his side.

Empress Dowager Zheng had the name and station, and the kindness of having raised him, and by rite and law she was the Emperor's mother. So, after a to-do in the palace, the Emperor's birth mother, Madam Jiang, took the chance to move out of the city and live on the hill outside Yanjing.

The old lady didn't want to make trouble for her own son.

It was an old practice for an emperor to help his intimates raise their children. Looked at darkly, it meant hostages, a pact of mutual hold. But Yang Zao wasn't so dark a man. The boys were sent of their families' own accord, and he simply let the boat go with the current.

He truly raised them as his own sons.

And once the families came, little by little, to understand his temper and his character, they naturally took the boys back.

Every house was different. In the end, of the outer-clan families, only Aman was left, a pretty child, just like a little girl, who loved most to play sly tricks and hatch mischief behind people's backs, and whom the Emperor found great fun.

There was Li Jinggui too, of a great scholar's line, who loved most to brawl with the princes. Not knowing his own strength in the early days, he'd drawn blood more than once, and the princes and he would come bawling before the Emperor by turns, each telling on the other, demanding he give judgment.

As for Chang Lianfang, he was an out-and-out warmonger. There was no battlefield he didn't want to go and swing his tang on, and he spent his days carrying his head to the Emperor to offer up trophies and curry favor.

These were his own to raise, after all. However he looked at them, they were fun. So on a day without seeing the boys, the Emperor missed them.

Things were not as before. He could no longer, as he once had, call some son of his own to his side to fuss over freely.

Nothing for it. He could only make merry with other men's children.

Sending for them now, this was a man in good spirits.

Zhang Minwang smiled, came over, and said low, "They slipped off long ago. They're sulking with the little Highnesses, so today they didn't come at all."

Hearing it, the Emperor laughed. "Children! Nonsense, the lot of it, good friends one day and bad friends the next! Wasn't it only just now, when they were trapped, that it was you carrying me and me carrying you, sleeping the night on the hill hugging each other's stinking feet for warmth, all sweet with big-brother-this and little-brother-that? Never mind them. Call them all in. I'll show them the old blades and let the little rascals open their eyes a bit."

Whose stock was up and whose was down among the boys, who was in favor and who was out, the Emperor knew it all clear as day.

Those Feng and Liu and Yue boys who'd left before had come back one after another, and the few little fellows felt that, having grown up alongside the princes, they ought to be the closer for it.

But now the realm was newly settled, the outer-clan rewards had come down, and the ranks and stations were fixed. The natal families of the second empress, Madam Cao (mother of three princesses), of Consort Jing (birth mother of the Ninth Prince Xuanhe), and of the Fifth Prince's mother, Madam Liu, and the Seventh Prince's mother, Madam Feng, all naturally meant to trade on the old ties and cozy up afresh with a cousin here or a cousin there.

The few little fellows were sore at heart over it. Going out together this morning and seeing the bustle around the princes, they'd sulked, and turned on their heels to sneak off to Sanjiagou with their fathers and elder brothers.

Anyone else, given the order to attend the Emperor, would be beside himself with joy, with awe, with dread, terrified some slip might vex the Emperor or make a fool of him.

These few were stiff-necked: up and off they went.

The Emperor knew they were only being silly. He wasn't the least angry, and quickly sent to call them back, the way an old father, come by something good to eat, shares it out among his children.

Before long, three young lords in plain dress and out of sorts came dawdling into the screened enclosure.

The one in front wore a gold coronet, a great red flying-fish figured robe, a broad white-jade flying-fish belt at his waist, five-colored boots, a silver fish-pouch hung below the waist, and a few odds and ends besides: a fine little fire-striker set with coral, a small leather-handled knife for cutting meat inlaid with tourmaline. It was a whole get-up of gorgeous scarlet, but it couldn't hide a waist slender as a willow in the wind, or features so fine and delicate they seemed like a girl dressed as a boy. This was Zheng Aman, pampered at home by a houseful of women, the very heart's-flesh of Empress Dowager Zheng.

Close behind came one straight-backed and strong, heavy of brow and big of eye, with a small gold coronet on his head, a wide-sleeved blue robe with peony flowers, a gold belt, and a small flower-worked leather flat-pouch with a silver fish below his waist. He stood still and smiled, showing a mouthful of even white teeth, the two front ones especially big. With poor eyesight you'd take him for a rabbit-spirit in human shape.

The last, of course, was Chang Lianfang, dressed well today too, in the audience clothes he'd changed into after the funeral, though not so strictly, more the way one dresses to meet the elders at home: a narrow-sleeved dark warrior's robe embroidered with a qilin, a small jade coronet, thick white-soled warrior's boots, and a silver fish at his waist. Only today he carried something in his hands, a five-jin silver-mouthed Yaozhou gourd.

For all that these few looked like young lords, each in fact bore a real office and held a real post in the army. They owed nothing to a forebear's shadow, and by service every one counted as an old hand. But for their age, and the ranks of fathers and elders above them, they'd have risen faster than anyone.

In private the ministers said among themselves that these few, so long as they didn't get tangled in the troubles to come, were sure seedlings of ministers who'd serve three reigns.

The boys made their bows in earnest. Once they'd risen, the Emperor said to Chang Lianfang, "What's that in your hands?"

Chang Lianfang smiled, darted at once to the Emperor's side, pulled the stopper from the gourd, and fanned the smell over with his palm: "Have a smell, have a smell!"

One whiff and the Emperor laughed: "You rotten boy! Where'd you get such good wine? This has to be twenty years and more. Weren't you off to a funeral today? Whose wine-cellar have you been rooting through?"

Chang Lianfang gave a little heh-heh, and, rather than hand the gourd to the Emperor, handed it to Zhang Minwang.

Things were not as before. A bit of good food or drink brought to the Emperor, he'd once have picked up and eaten right away.

Now the Emperor had a food-taster eunuch. Besides, whatever he ate or used, the imperial physicians had to read his pulse each day before it could be arranged.

They couldn't offer things up so freely.

Zhang Minwang took the gourd and praised it. "Mm, I always knew our little Third Lord was a dutiful one, to know our Emperor's fondness for a drop."

At which Chang Lianfang laughed: "That I am!"

Then he sprawled over the Emperor's low table to claim his credit. "Your Majesty doesn't know. Your son went today, and the rites they'd laid on up front were fussy past bearing. Lord Tan had it ordered like a Daoist rite, one moment having us stand on the left, the next saying the direction was wrong.

"Your son admired the Second General's character to begin with, and meant to go and pay his respects properly. Hmph! But whatever respect I had, that house ground it clean away. And then I thought, your son is attending the Emperor today, and there's no rule that says I have to go and see the ministers to the grave. So I slipped off."

That year, at Donglin Ferry by Tongyan Mountain, pursuers behind and no boat ahead, the Emperor was wounded and cut off from his own guard, with only a dozen-odd boy-soldiers at his side.

Who'd have thought these boys of thirteen or so, carrying and hauling him, hunted down and losing a few along the way, would bear the Emperor across the river on their own shoulders, and lose a few more to the rapids midway, until only three were left.

When they got back, the Supreme Commander had an incense-table set out in proper form and took every one of the boys as his sons, dead or living, all his sons.

Now the remains of the dead boys, too, he meant to keep a place for in the new imperial burial ground.

And so Chang Lianfang and the two others called themselves "your son" before the Emperor, while the princes called themselves "your servant-son."

The few little fellows were clever. Before others they always said "your servant" or "this humble general." But once they were alone with him, it was "your son" this and "your son" that, though they never said "father." They still called him "Your Majesty."

The measure suited both sides, and the princes too.

Hearing Chang Lianfang's tongue run loose, the Emperor tapped him on the forehead.

Chang Lianfang smiled. "Ai! My heart's truer than that family of his. Two days ago I knelt a whole shichen chanting sutras for General Tan..." He waved a careless hand behind him. "The two of us knelt together, over at the Huguo Temple, and burned a sutra I'd copied out by hand to see the Grand General's soul on its way."

The Emperor smiled and nodded, gratified. "As it should be. Your hearts are true, and the Second General Tan, if his soul is watching, will surely be glad. He watched you grow up too... Ai, there aren't many left of those days... If An'wu and the rest were here, there's no saying how lively, how happy it would be."

Seeing the Emperor turn sad again, Zheng Aman gave Chang Lianfang a kick. Chang Lianfang patted his own forehead and hurried to point at the wine-gourd, the one no one had taken, still cradled smiling in Zhang Minwang's hands.

"Wouldn't you know it! With nothing to do, your son took some men to look about. Heh! You never know till you ask. Sanjiagou was ringed with old wineries once, several old houses two or three hundred years in the trade. You're fond of a drop, so your son took men round searching, and it was your good luck. There's an old house over there named Dai, only just come home, and I had them knock. I asked if there was good wine, and look, a drop of the strong stuff off the bottom of the vat, I got it all for you."

At that the Emperor was pleased, and asked: "So there are folk returning home, then?"

Zheng Aman came and sat by the Emperor's leg and nodded. "There are. A few of the old market shops on the Yanjing streets have opened up too. Your son went in for a look, nothing there at all! Just a lone shopkeeper. He looked at me, I looked at him!"

The Emperor slapped his leg and drew a satisfied breath: "Good, if there are! One household, then a second..."

Seeing him about to turn to court matters, Li Jinggui hurried in: "Your Majesty, your son hears you seized the Tan house's old blades today?"

Standing to one side, Zhang Minwang gave a snort of laughter.

The Emperor pointed at them and grunted. "You rotten boys. I said, when I got here so neat and quick, where were you all squatting just now?"

Chang Lianfang blinked. "Heh-heh, over listening to the Sixth Immortal's stories. Seems he missed the maiden Duo, and was beating his breast and stamping his feet. Besides! Without your leave your son didn't dare just come over! Your Majesty, what are the old blades like?"

At the question the Emperor pictured Chen Dasheng and the others. He'd meant to say they were pitiable men, but that in the end was a slight, so he thought it over in earnest, and introduced them with care.

"They're the shape of a blade. You few have always been lawless things. When you meet them hereafter, lower in office as they are than you, and moving in a different set, you're to keep a good measure of respect for them... They are, when all's said, men of true merit. Only, the Tan house has led its armies this way since of old, and there are times when, even knowing it, I can't step in too far... They are men made hard by great suffering. There's much that's good in them. You'll come to see it, by and by, and take some of it into yourselves..."

Here the Emperor suddenly began to laugh, a laugh that held a great many things in it. To call it the look of a mouse got at the oil would be disrespectful, but it was just such a look.

The Long Saber Battalion was the soul of the Tan house. Only the Tan army with its long sabers was the whole of the Tan army.

And now he'd led the men off, so the soul was his.

Rather than put the old blades to hard use, charging into battle, the Emperor would sooner set these men in plain sight and see them tended just so. For winning the whole army's heart, that could do more than anything.

Thinking of the state of the men, the Emperor charged them, round and roundabout, once more: no disrespect, no turning up the nose at the smell, and so on.

Until Zheng Aman took a fit of temper and muttered: "Your Majesty! Your son came back off the battlefield too!"

Mm, he was about the only one who could lose his temper so freely.

The Emperor shook his head, smiling, and gave the order. "This wretched temper! Go and call Zeng Anbang here, and the sabers too. See how they've eaten. If they've had their fill, call them here. If they haven't, call them here as well, only don't let them gorge themselves sick all at once."

Zhang Minwang smiled and went. Before long the Vice Minister of War, Zeng Anbang, arrived first.

The Vice Minister Zeng Anbang held, along with his post, the charge of the imperial guard garrison.

The imperial guard garrison was the army the Emperor managed in person, with the Ministry of War assisting. It stood outside the five great armies, charged only with guarding the Emperor and the palace, with patrol and with ceremony.

In short, the soldiers up the Emperor's own sleeve, and the army the emperors of every age trusted most.

The palace guards and the golden-mace guards of emperors in the histories, and their like, all came out of the imperial guard.

At the same time, when the sons of the martial-merit houses grew up, the best place to send them first to build their service was the imperial guard garrison.

Having paid his respects to the Emperor, the Vice Minister Zeng Anbang got up all smiles, rubbed his hands, and said, "Your Majesty, is this, is this for our garrison?"

Seeing him pleased, and knowing already the scramble going on below, the Emperor teased, "Don't want them? Then I'll give them to..."

Zeng Anbang hurried to wave his hands and bow. "No, no! Your Majesty, your servant is delighted to death. Those are Tan the Second's blades, who wouldn't love them! I love them to death. I promise you, just put them in my hands, and in less than three years, no, two, I'll forge you a second Long Saber Battalion!"

So that was how these men thought of it, sure enough.

The Emperor laughed, raised a hand to take the silver wine-pot Zhang Minwang passed him, poured himself a cup and drank it, smacked his lips, and first nodded and winked at Chang Lianfang.

Seeing the boy so pleased, he was pleased himself.

After two more easy cups, the Emperor sighed: "You do dream sweet! Only, there'll never be old blades again!"

Zeng Anbang's face went blank. He cupped his hands, about to ask, when he heard the Emperor say slowly, "Not unless a second man rebels against me, not unless there's another old-dynasty iron cavalry to whet them on. Tsk... old blades come easy, do they? I don't know how that Tan Shouyi raised his sons, one like this, one like that. The good ones dead of their goodness, the rotten... never mind."

Never mind. The Emperor didn't care to say more.

Zeng Anbang was blank only an instant before he understood. Understanding, his heart too went solemn, and he nodded, very heavily. "Yes. There'll never be old blades again."

He cupped his hands and asked leave. "But I don't know how Your Majesty would have your servant arrange them. Your servant is dull, and fears that arranging them wrongly might spoil Your Majesty's great matter."

Hearing him, the Emperor smiled. "Mm, that day they cut their way in through the south gate behind their Second General, so let them keep the night watch at the south gate."

"Yes!"

"As for their posts, I'll arrange that presently. As for the men themselves, they're to be set apart from the ordinary guard."

"Your servant is dull. I don't know how to set them apart?"

The Emperor rose and paced the ground a few turns, then settled his mind, sat back on the low couch, and ordered, "The seven of them are to be supplied at double a fifth-grade guardsman's allowance. Your garrison has its courtyards. Pick a good one and let them live together, and they are not to be split up..."

"Yes!"

"Nor need it be too out-of-the-way special. Only don't stint them, and drop a word to those below to show them great respect and no slighting. Be sure they eat the best and use the best, and they're not to be worn out on duty. A place in the great-audience ranks to stand about in will do."

At this Zeng Anbang was baffled. Was this training guards, or keeping lords?

He raised his face and cupped his hands. "This, is it fitting?"

The Emperor gave a helpless laugh. "Oh, I should set you to drill them? Put them to guard-saber work? Send them out on patrol? Zeng Anbang! You block of wood! Think. How did Tan the Second train his men? What sort of men are they? What sort of blade?

"Their heads run stiffer and straighter than yours. They can't read, and they don't bend! The least stir tomorrow, a few at my court who... ahem, the ones who'd die remonstrating, ai, you follow me! A few of those ministers have vile tempers and cause no end of trouble. And, and those few at the Censorate! When the time comes, before the man's even worked himself up, before I can react, over there the saber's out, and then, heh heh! You just get ready to collect the corpses at court every day!!"

And not whole corpses, either. Sixteen pieces at the least.

Now Zeng Anbang was pleased no more. He thought it carefully over, and his face went whiter and whiter, and then he pleaded, gingerly, "Your Majesty, if that's so, your servant, your servant daren't take them on. Wouldn't it be better to send them to a camp outside the city? Free and at their ease."

The Emperor was angry enough to swear. "Zeng Anbang! You blockhead! Those are the Tan house's old blades. Of course they're to be brought back, well oiled, their edges kept! You look after them for me, and get them cleaned up spick and span and set at my great south gate!

"Set right at the gate, you hear? Those are the blades that destroyed Hongshun's eight thousand iron cavalry! The seven of them are worth ten thousand troops! Setting them at the south gate is to show all under heaven! To show those with treason in their hearts! To show the old dynasty's remnants! My palace gate is the hardest gate under heaven. I'd like to see who dares come and test his blade on it!"

As the Emperor said this, his chest heaved hard. Having said it, he was pleased again, so he drank another cup.

Zeng Anbang was thoroughly cowed now. He nodded and knelt again. "Your Majesty, calm your anger. Your servant understands."

The Emperor nodded. "Mm, good that you do. Just do it. And you're to be, mm... the gentle sheath outside their blood-glued scabbards!"

What sort of muddled saying was that now. Zeng Anbang was vexed past bearing.

Right in the midst of his vexation, word came from outside that Chen Dasheng and the rest had arrived.

Hearing it, the Emperor was all smiles at once and said, over and over, "Good, good, good, call them in, call them in."

Before long a wave of stink came in ahead of them. Chen Dasheng and the rest were the same foolish sight as ever.

Nothing for it. A small effort couldn't set these men to rights, and besides, they were hungry.

The Emperor was a good master, and had them fed in good earnest first.

Chen Dasheng and the rest came in bracing their bellies. The kitchen had just set before them a great basin of mutton, half a basin of rice, and all sorts of pastries to eat as they pleased.

Where had they ever seen such extravagance? So they'd buried their heads in it and eaten till just now.

The few of them came into the room and knelt in devout worship of their master.

Their master was a good man, truly, so good!

When they raised their heads, they heard Guan Si'er give a full-bellied belch.

The boy had never belched from a full belly before. Belching, he clapped a hand over his mouth and turned, astonished, to look at his chief. His chief had never eaten his fill either, so how would he know what a full-belly belch was?

Seeing them so, the Emperor smiled, pleased and gratified, and asked, "Chen Dasheng! Have you eaten your fill..."

Before the Emperor had finished, someone at his side cried out in astonishment: "Chen Dasheng?"

Chang Lianfang's little look was just like the real thing. He gave a shout, walked straight over, and studied Chen Dasheng's filthy face from side to side. At last, his voice trembling, he asked, "Are you, Brother Scabby?"

Chen Dasheng blinked, pinched his own thigh, and, holding down all manner of feeling, murmured at Chang Lianfang, "Little, little Hua'er? Little brother?"

Zheng Aman rolled about laughing on the low couch. For that name "little Hua'er," Chang Lianfang had got into more fights than anyone could count.

Everyone thought Chang Lianfang would flare up on the instant. Even the Emperor shot to his feet, afraid Chang Lianfang would throw a punch, and over there a saber would come out...

But instead, Chang Lianfang burst into tears. "Brother Scabby! Boo-hoo, Second Brother! It's you!!"

Chen Scabby nodded. "Ah, it's me!"

He wasn't much of an actor. His voice came flat and stiff. Only Chang Lianfang put his back into the playing.

"But you, aren't you, didn't Brother Wanquan say you were doing fine? How did you come to this? You, you, you're of the Long Saber Battalion, of all things? My, my father lied to me. I had him ask after you once, and he said you were doing fine, and never said a word about it. How did you get into the Long Saber Battalion?

"A few days ago I even saw Granny. Oh, that's right, Brother Scabby, did you get the letter your sister-in-law had my father carry to you? Do you know Granny's taken a wife for you..."

Chang Lianfang, all fervor, was clearing his own family of any part in this business of the old blades. But the Emperor broke in from above, "Hua, Hua'er! You child, you two know each other?"

Chang Lianfang had no time to mind the name. He turned, his face all tears, and pointed at Chen Dasheng in great excitement. "Your Majesty, do you still remember that business of the recruits' camp your servant told you of once?"

That said, he tugged his clothes aside to show a scar, and pointed at it. "I told you, back then there was one who cried his way onto the battlefield just like your servant, and it was this Scabby, oh, Brother Dasheng, he still went by Scabby then. If Brother Dasheng hadn't risked his life to save me that time, dragging me round and running, there'd be no your servant now."

Zheng Aman stopped laughing. A little abashed, he sat up and asked, awkward, "So it was him, he saved you? We'd all forgotten. I'm sorry, why didn't you say so sooner? Had we known..."

Had they known, had they known, it would have made no difference. Tan the Second's blades, no one could take away, not even the Emperor of those days.

Chang Lianfang nodded. "Ah, saved me, he did. We were small then, the two of us bawling, tears and snot, howling and running both at once. I was bleeding the whole time, so frightened my legs went soft. If Brother Wanquan hadn't come and carried me off after, the two of us would have died right there."

No one spoke here. The same thought was in every head. Look at them! Born the same year, one is heaven's favored son, and the other has become a blade for killing men.

In their mind's eye, unbidden, rose a scene: many years ago, two thin, frail boys, hand in hand, fleeing the battlefield in tears.

And now, one lived so brilliant a life, and the other had become a cutting-tool that had forgotten it was even a man.