Chapter 55

The old lady came into the garrison still at odds with Qi Qian'er. She wouldn't be helped along. She shook off her hand and took First-Moon's instead, swept her people into Chen Dasheng's room in a fury, and slapped the door shut with her own hand.

It gave Yu Qingguan and the rest a fright.

Yu Qingguan looked at Qi Qian'er, all bewilderment. "The old lady? What's got into her today? She's, she's actually willing to lose her temper at the little sister-in-law?"

Qi Qian'er winked at him hard, again and again, and said loud and clear. "Ah! It's nothing! She only heard it wrong! You don't know, Elder Brother Yu. We'd just come into the city when we saw a whole crowd going by with banners, beating great gongs, and those bronze gongs were deafening. I was afraid they'd hurt the old lady's ears, so I covered them, and now she's cross with me, insisting she heard Dasheng's name. I heard it a good few times myself. What Dasheng? That's the opera-troupe criers calling their playbill to drum up custom. The old lady heard it wrong!"

The thing had been cried through the streets three times already that day. Yu Qingguan's face changed color the moment he heard it. But seeing Qi Qian'er wink at him, he was no fool. He cleared his throat at once and said, loud. "Right, right! Just so! City folk are a loud lot, full of every kind of trick! She's surely heard it wrong. Our big brother went into the palace today, and he's waiting on the Emperor. When would he have the time to go courting idle trouble? Surely heard wrong. It's that, that playbill..."

He looked at Qi Qian'er, pleading.

Qi Qian'er cursed him for a blockhead inside, and prompted him at once. "The opera troupe!"

Yu Qingguan nodded quickly. "Ah, yes! The opera troupe! The opera troupe! Just that troupe, they've only lately opened. A few days back we were even saying we'd find a chance to go see it..."

The old lady shot out of the room, planted herself in the doorway, full of breath, and scolded. "You pack of little lightning-blasted wretches, do you take me for a fool? I've not gone deaf yet! This old woman can drive livestock still. However far off a battle-cry is, my ears are that sharp! Not once in my life did I mishear the gong that calls the retreat! It IS Chen Dasheng, and I heard your garrison's name plain too! I'm not eighty-odd yet, don't you go cozening me..."

She pointed at Yu Qingguan. "You, Qingguan, Granny's used you well, a hot meal at every meal, shoes and socks made for you. You! Tell me the truth! Is what all Yanjing's talking of my Scabby, or is it not? All that about the third of the third month, and a challenge-notice, and a dueling platform, and a fight to the death, no quarter. One 'Chen Dasheng' after another! Other people's grandmothers I can't speak for, but don't I know my own grandson's name? Don't I know it? Cheat me if you dare! Don't I know which garrison my own grandson serves in, old woman that I am? Speak!"

The veins stood out on the old lady as she roared.

Well. There was no hiding it now.

Qi Qian'er's heart was anxious too. Seeing there was truly no hiding it, she sighed, and said to Yu Qingguan, helpless. "The old lady wants to know, so tell her."

Afraid of startling the old lady, Yu Qingguan edged toward the door, stammering. "Granny, you sit tight, er, I've the night-watch in the palace tonight, and we brothers were just about to set off. Look, these clothes! My watch clothes! Er, if you've need of anything, just send Han the Mute and his wife on it..."

But he didn't get away. The old lady sprang up and caught him by the ear and scolded. "Run, would you? I see you mean to be the death of me! Swear it! Swear it on my years, you're not deceiving me? Has something befallen my grandson?"

Yu Qingguan was at his wits' end, and put on a coaxing smile. "Listen to you, it's nothing so grave! I can't run! Granny, heh! Let go of me first..."

But the old lady wouldn't let go. And it was Qi Qian'er who said: "Tell her."

There was no help for it. So Yu Qingguan told her what the dueling platform was, and what a challenge-notice was, and what the red banner meant, and hid not a jot of it.

When he'd done, he looked up at the old lady, worried. Seeing her face gone blank, he asked, careful. "Granny? You're all right, aren't you? Don't fret, Attendant She is over him up there to shield him. They'll not let harm come to him..."

The old lady wiped a hand down her face and said, her look quite ordinary. "It's nothing! What should be wrong with me! The old Chen family's ancestral graves are done for good and all now, so why not lay up a little virtue for those that come after? I've shouldered no end of things in my day, haven't I! And, your big brother's still drawing breath, isn't he? Yes, yes. He's still drawing breath! Qian'er, Qian'er? Qian'er!"

The old lady rounded on the blank-faced Qi Qian'er with a sudden roar. Qi Qian'er started, threw off the tangle of thoughts in her head, and asked. "What is it? Granny?"

The old lady's legs had gone weak. She braced herself on the garrison's stone pillar, and pointed into the room. "You, go and fetch it, fetch your Eldest Uncle's thing, and go, go to the palace and find the Emperor! Tell him! Tell him the Chen family has given him eight lives, and we'll sell him our lives no more! We'll take our leave and go home to our village! My grandson's life, I'll not give it him! Go and say it, go and beat that, that Grievance Drum? Isn't it so? I saw in the operas you're to beat it..."

The old lady swayed a few times and crumpled. The garrison fell into an uproar, and someone was sent to the palace to call a doctor. But of that no more.

By now the sky had gone dark, and within the palace the Dongming Hall was ablaze with light.

The Emperor found the cold-snap of the turning spring bitter beyond the ordinary that day, and had charcoal added twice. At the last he even went and sat by the brazier, and took no supper, and wore the look of a man holding down a great rage.

Besides the Emperor, four others were in the Dongming Hall: Attendant She, Chen Dasheng, the Board of War Minister, Sun Shouyi, and the Master of the Jiusi Hall, Meng Dingchen.

Early that morning there had come, out of nowhere, from Yuegong Mountain, Pang Tu's disciples Shen Fanjiang and Pei Daohai.

The two had come from far off, yet they did not, as in the old dynasty, throw their weight about on the strength of being disciples of a Yuegong Mountain grandmaster.

Quite the reverse. The two came courteously to the dueling platform, and showed the tablets of their names and origins, where they were from, with every road-pass and stamp of the journey complete, not one wanting.

And at the last they formally tendered Yuegong Mountain's martial-world card. By the Jiusi Hall's new martial-world decree, they left not a single step of procedure unfollowed. All done by the rule.

The few junior wardens keeping the Jiusi Hall's platform saw at once that the card was laid down against an officer of the court, and dared not take it. So the other side fetched the people of the Yanjing branch-lodges, and each of them, beating gongs and setting off firecrackers, went round the city from all four gates.

All the way they proclaimed it, and with an ironclad case: the Jiusi Hall's newly-issued decree, they said, nowhere forbade a civilian dueling platform to challenge an officer of the court. Or was it, perhaps, that no one dared?

No one dared take it on himself to decide. So it was reported up, level by level, until it reached Meng Dingchen.

Meng Dingchen was in a hard place too. Martial-world folk are hard to hold in hand to begin with, and their connections behind them run out into every trade there is. How many southern-faction martial-world men served under His Majesty alone? There was simply no going round it. And if a civilian duel might not be laid against an officer of the court, then that was an injustice.

But who could have foreseen it, that the first card in all Liang would be a card laid against the Long Saber! This was to slap the Emperor's face in the open!

Even a fool knew the Long Saber were seven men. To challenge but one of them was a base and shameless thing to begin with, and yet? And yet what could be done? Then the firecrackers crashed out together outside the Jiusi Hall, and the gongs shook the heavens! This was the first decree the Jiusi Hall had laid down to bind the martial world. If it were not taken up, then Meng Dingchen's and His Majesty's whole design came to nothing.

And yet, as a matter of face, what if the Emperor's old saber lost? That would look ill too, worse still, he would give offense to Attendant She. But there was no minding that now. Refuse, and the court's grip on the martial world would lose all its standing at a stroke. Take it up, and that was a grandmaster, that was a "First Spear" who had not come down from the Jiuxiao Peak of Yuegong Mountain in fifteen years.

In the end, it was taken up! And Yanjing set to beating its gongs everywhere, proclaiming it to all the world!

The martial world was the very root of chaos, sure enough!

The hall was without a sound. Even Attendant She, who loved his cold gibes as a rule, said not one word today in his own student's defense.

His heart bled for his student, but he could not break the rule either. This was a great matter of the court! The unity, high and low, of the Shaoshang faction, that had thrown away so many lives, could not be squandered, nor the realm of Liang they had at last set firm upon its base be ruined!

How could a student of She Qingling's stand back and cower!

Chen Dasheng, even were he to die, must die on the dueling platform.

Attendant She thought: if his student were lost, then for ten years he would do nothing else. He would give even this old carcass of his, and wipe out Yuegong Mountain to lie in the grave with his student.

A fury past all bounds looked out of every corner of the palace.

As night fell, several guards carried in two chests sealed with the Jiusi Hall's paper seals. The chests were heavy as lead, each big enough to put a grown man inside.

When the chests came to the ground with a dull, dead thud, the Emperor felt the cold on him again. He took up the fire-tongs with his own hand and laid a few pieces of charcoal on the brazier, and said: "I! In all my life I have hated two kinds of useless men above the rest! The wandering knights of old! And now, the drifters of the martial world!"

Meng Dingchen's eyes narrowed a fraction, and his fist clenched in secret. He hated them more even than His Majesty did.

Only Chen Dasheng sat quiet to one side. He knew, of course, what had come to pass, and he knew that, robbed of his brothers' support, his saber could only meet an enemy head-on.

But what of it? He feared neither to die nor to stand forth! Had the old saber been one to cower, he'd not be standing here now.

The guards set down the chests and left. Meng Dingchen rose, went to a chest, tore off the seal at one pull, and opened it, to find it packed full of registers, each written over with people's names.

He turned them over a while, and found Pang Tu at last in the Jiuxiao Peak stack. But reaching for it, he found it was only an upper volume, with a middle and a lower yet beneath.

Just so, that was the First Spear, that was the master of Jiuxiao Peak who, twenty years ago, out of righteous wrath, had wiped out the thirty greenwood strongholds of Qingyao Mountain: the Grandmaster Pang Tu.

He offered the three volumes up to the Emperor with both hands. The Emperor only gave them one disappointed glance and said: "This is all there is?"

He had hoped that, with Meng Dingchen's abilities, a register might be made of the martial-world drifters, and best of all, that the secret manuals of every school and sect, their martial-world ties, their feuds, and all their sundry hidden matters, might be known clear to the bottom, and every one of them held in hand.

He had no wish to be merely an emperor who governed the common people.

But, the beggars were the martial world, and the idle rogues were the martial world, and the Canal Gang came out of the martial world. There were three hundred and sixty trades, and every trade its guild, and every guild its head. Among the seven hundred and twenty peaks of the world lived none knew how many so-called grandmasters, so-called recluses.

These people were all linked one to another. When the world flourished they came out to stir up wind and waves, and when the world fell low they went hopping about drawing the lines of black and white, the white way, they called it, that saves the world, the black way that misleads the people. But who among them truly acted for the common folk of this land? Every one a seeker after his own name!

The small martial world, scraping a bellyful of a living, was well enough. But the drifters of the great martial world paid no tax, kept no law, and did all things purely as their own whim took them, and that was the thing no emperor of any age could bear. And yet, for all the emperors who had died over it, the martial world had never vanished, and never could.

Yang Zao had an ambition all his own, and yet even he had no confidence that under his rule the realm of Liang would never breed a beggar again!

What no one had foreseen was this, that the martial world's first blade, feeling out the court, should fall upon the Emperor's own saber-chief.

And yet it had to be owned: vicious, and precise!

Yang Zao's heart surged, pent and choked and hard, and his rage rose to the very heavens!

Meng Dingchen made his apology. "Your Majesty, the first year is but newly past, and my hands are too few. The fault is mine!"

The Emperor gave a rueful laugh. "Never mind, it's been hard on you, Fifth, too." He looked up at the expressionless Chen Dasheng, and in his heart the man's unbroken calm was a thing he prized and approved. So he pointed at the registers. "Take them to Dasheng. Have his teacher explain them to him. There may be some use in it at least."

Chen Dasheng rose, took the registers in both hands, and offered them up to his teacher.

Attendant She took them, and without so much as a look flung them aside like some filthy thing, and said. "What's the use of the like? A little half-knowledge is worse than burning your boats behind you!"

That said, he turned and smiled at Chen Dasheng, and asked. "Sheng'er, are you afraid?"

Chen Dasheng said, deeply steady. "He is only one man!"

The fighting he had known was never on the little dueling platform. When he went to war it was ever amid a thousand horse and ten thousand foot, with a hundred ox-horns braying at his back, and stout men drinking blood-wine and beating the wild-ox-hide drums to hearten the ranks. Tens of thousands facing off in silence, and only the war-horses whinnying and blowing hard, the iron hooves flying up the earth, the black press of brave men's hearts. For once they went to battle, never once had they thought to come back alive.

Meng Dingchen was struck dumb, and lifted his face to look full at this old saber-chief. Twenty this year, was he? Like enough he had never known what a grandmaster of the martial world so much as was.

So he said: "Then, does Recorder Chen know what a great grandmaster of the martial world is?"

Hearing Meng Dingchen ask it of him, Chen Dasheng was calm as ever. But he looked at him and said: "Wind!"

Meng Dingchen, not following, was taken aback. "What?"

Chen Dasheng repeated it, looking into his eyes. "Wind! A great wind!"

And in that instant they all understood: those who come back from the battlefield truly do not know the martial world, they know only the wind.

"Heh heh. Hahahaha. Good! Good!"

The Emperor rose of a sudden, and all the gloom went off him, as though he were back once more on the field of a thousand armies. He threw off his spring cloak, walked in great strides straight out of the hall, thrust a fist up at the night sky, and roared: "Wind!"

The night-watch guards were but a few days back from the battlefield, and the old habit was in them yet. In an instant, one and all, they drew the sabers at their waists, raised them high over their heads, and roared together: "Wind! Wind! Wind! A great wind!"

The Martial Emperor Yang Zao laughed till the tears came. He roared along with them a while, then came back as if drunk, and clapped Chen Dasheng on the shoulder. "I, I would give Dasheng one word..."

Attendant She patted Chen Dasheng's shoulder and said softly. "Sheng'er, kneel."

Chen Dasheng slowly knelt. The Martial Emperor Yang Zao laid a hand on his shoulder and said: "Feilian!"

And strange it was to tell, the Emperor had no sooner spoken than a spring thunder broke across the sky, dull and rolling it came from the far hills, and pealed out at last over the whole of Yanjing.

The spring rain had come. Drop by drop it fell upon the earth of Yanjing.

Chen Dasheng did not know what Feilian was. But Attendant She wept, the tears streaming, and slowly bowed himself down before His Majesty in praise. "Long live my Emperor! Ten thousand years, and ten thousand years again!"

Feilian! It was another name for the God of Wind!

Chen Dasheng's duel on the third of the third month was life or death, no quarter: alive, he was the living god of war. Dead, then by the Emperor's own golden, jade-graven word, a god among men, enfeoffed by the Emperor's own hand!

Whatever the God of Wind's beginnings had been before, today an earthly emperor had conferred a divine seat. If he did not die, that was another matter. But if he died, then from this day the God of Wind the whole world worshipped could be none other than Chen Feilian.

"Bring wine!"

The wine-mood was on the Emperor of a sudden, and he bade them bring wine, and made ready to drink deep and free.

The rain came down, and the hall doors stood wide. Before each of the night-watch guards that day was set a little table, and a wine-set upon it.

In silence they kept the Emperor company at his cup. The Emperor sat outside the hall, poured one cup out into the rain, tipped his head and drank one himself, and all of them, silent, drank one along with him.

How long passed, none could say, when far off, under the dim palace lanterns, through the curtain of the rain, a company of people was seen coming slowly toward the place.

Nearer and nearer they came, and Chen Dasheng saw at last that it was his own brothers, come here?

Why had they come? Chen Dasheng stood, and swayed a little.

Yu Qingguan, at the head of them, held the bundle and turned it over in his mind the whole way. He could not for the life of him work out why the little sister-in-law had forbidden him to bring up one word of what the old lady had said.

The little sister-in-law had told him only the origin of that blood-stained robe, and the household's people, what they were called, and where they had died, and, at the last, the family's plea for eight merit-coins to go into the grave with them, and not one word beyond it.

They were never as clever as the little sister-in-law. So they could only take up the thing and hurry into the palace.

All the way, Yu Qingguan had turned her manner over in his mind, she'd seemed to think her own man in no great danger at all? Her one care had been the old lady's health, and that vexed Yu Qingguan more than a little.

But be that as it might, this robe was to be brought before the Emperor today.

The Emperor, seeing the rest of his old sabers, smiled, and turned to Zhang Minwang. "Someone, bring my old sabers wine!"

Before Zhang Minwang could stir, he saw Yu Qingguan and the others come slowly before His Majesty and kneel, holding a bundle up high.

His Majesty was a shade startled, and asked: "Some matter? What is this thing?"

Yu Qingguan raised his face. "First, may Your Majesty pardon your servant the crime of disturbing the sacred presence!"

His Majesty waved a hand. "All that's so much fart-etiquette! No matter!"

Yu Qingguan slowly set the bundle down and slowly opened it, laying bare the blood-stained robe, and he said, steady as their saber-chief himself: "Your Majesty, do you remember this robe?"

Zhang Minwang held up a lantern and let its light fall slowly across it.

All of them looked together, and it was a long while before His Majesty said, slow: "This, this seems to be an old robe of mine. Tongyan Mountain."

Yu Qingguan nodded. "Just so! Your Majesty, the household's old Lady brought this thing today, and bade me lay it before you, and beg you, in her stead, for eight merit-coins!"

They were all struck dumb, and looked, every one, at Yu Qingguan.

The Board of War Minister, Sun Shouyi, gave a light snort. His own house had but one gold merit-coin. This Chen family, humble-born after all, truly did not know a good thing from a bad.

Ai!

Attendant She broke in: "Even to beg a merit-coin, one is enough! You don't know the rules, you must never make so overweening a request!"

But Yu Qingguan looked at the Emperor's unreadable face and said: "Your Majesty, one is not enough! The Chen family, the Chen family has eight coffins!"

And again the whole hall fell utterly still.

The muffled thunder rolled a few times in the sky. Then they heard Yu Qingguan say, clear and ringing: "The old Lady, being unwell, lies ill at the garrison, and truly cannot come into the palace to beg the reward, so she has charged your servant to beg it in her stead. The old Lady says: the humble woman Chen, née Wu, begs leave to lay this before you! Since Your Majesty raised your troops at Shaoshang, the Chen family's four sons and eight grandsons all served as Your Majesty's horsemen. In the twenty-fourth year of Hongshun, in the third month, the eldest son, Chen Daniu, at Tongyan Mountain stood as Your Majesty's double. His body took twenty-five spear-points, and his corpse was cut across by forty-three blades. He gave his life in perfect loyalty, and never once repented of it..."

Chen Dasheng murmured: "Eldest Uncle..."

Yu Qingguan's memory reached only so far. He had the words by heart to here, and Tong Jintai took them up: "In the twenty-fourth year of Hongshun, in the seventh month, Chen Choudun was lost at the Wucheng Pavilion, aged twelve! A boy scarce grown, not to a man's waist, a lonely ghost that wanders, with no home to return to. In the twenty-fifth year of Hongshun, the second month, Chen Sanniu was lost in the great battle of Chiyuan. In the twenty-fifth year of Hongshun, that same month, Chen Daxing was lost at the Deer-Sacrifice Terrace, aged twenty-three. In the twenty-fifth year of Hongshun, the fourth month, Chen Chouzhu..."

Chen Dasheng, who never wept, quietly let the tears fall.

At the last it was Guan Si'er who brought it to its close: "Your servant-woman is coarse, and knows not the rules. And now, near seventy, and half already in the earth, with eight sons and grandsons lost from beneath her knee, yet loyal, and without repentance! And now that all under Heaven is at peace, and an age of chaos turned to concord, your servant-woman gives thanks for the Emperor's high grace! Of the Chen family's thirteen sons who went forth, five have come home again. And the old woman, longing for her sons, and coveting the merit-coins, now casts herself down to beg, eight coins, to buy her sons and grandsons a smooth and easy road below. In fear and trembling, she knocks her head! She knocks her head! She lays it before you, she lays it before you!"

Guan Si'er finished his cry, and bowed to the ground together with his brothers: "We beg the Emperor's mercy!"

In a moment, all the people of the courtyard and the hall slowly knelt and pleaded: "We beg the Emperor's mercy!"

The old woman's plea for the reward had been told but the half of it, and the Martial Emperor's eyes had already gone red round the rims.

He turned slowly to the bowed Chen Dasheng and said: "Feilian, why did you never speak to me of one word of this before?"

Chen Dasheng was silent a moment, then slowly raised his face and looked at His Majesty. "Wind!"

Ah. It was the wind!

While they waited, the Emperor had them rise, and asked Yu Qingguan: "The old lady's taken ill?"

Yu Qingguan nodded. "Yes. The moment she came into the city, she heard of the civilian duel."

Chen Dasheng, whose face had been calm throughout, was at last thrown into a fright, and was about to beg leave and be gone, when Yu Qingguan said: "A palace doctor has been called already. The old lady left her charge, and has taken her medicine and gone to her rest."

The Emperor hesitated, then looked at Chen Dasheng and asked again: "The old lady, has she no other word for me?"

Yu Qingguan called to mind at once the little sister-in-law's charge, and said: "Yes, nothing else, only that after she'd taken the medicine, the old Lady muttered a word: that it was given over long ago for the Emperor's use!"

So it was, so it was!

The Emperor, who through all of it had not shed a tear, moistened at the eyes at the last, and the tears fell.

After a while, Sun Shouyi murmured: "What a loyal and righteous Chen family, what a nobly understanding old lady!"

He envied them!

Zhang Minwang, with a file of little eunuchs, came at last to the front of the hall, bearing three trays of merit-coins.

This time the Emperor was open-handed: he took one from the gold coins, and three from the silver, and four from the bronze. He undid the sachet at his own waist, poured out the spice, and stood there setting them in one by one. When they were in, he handed it to Chen Dasheng. "The edict I'll have them draw up to match tomorrow. Go home and see to the old lady, and tell her, another day, when the chance comes, I! will feast the old lady in the palace at a family banquet."

Liang's coining of these merit-coins had in truth been but small, and they were given only to officers and men of extraordinary service. Every one the Martial Emperor gave, he gave with the greatest care. To give a whole bagful at one stroke, like this, that was the first time.

Chen Dasheng slowly knelt, raised both hands high, and received his elders and his brothers into them, and felt a vast weight, as of a great steelyard-stone, come down upon his heart!

He could bring out no fine words. He could only say: "Aye!"

He held the heavy bag, dared not rise, but drew slowly backward on his knees, all the way to the door. As he stood up he heard the Emperor call out to him of a sudden: "Feilian!"

Chen Dasheng turned, bag in hand, and knelt: "Your servant is here!"

A gold merit-coin, gleaming bright, came flying to him. He put out both hands, and it fell onto the brocade bag.

The Martial Emperor looked at his old saber, and said, with something like a grinding of his teeth: "For me! Hew that Pang Tu down! And then, come back to me alive!"

Chen Dasheng nodded, in earnest: "It shall be done!"