Chapter 63

A brushwood gate, a little shop-flag. A rough-and-ready wine-table, salt-beans and chicken liver. And three bowls down, a man knows neither his father nor his mother.

Wu Xiu had a thing on his mind, and still meant to drink another man drunk? Three bowls into himself, and it was he who was drunk first.

Drunk, a man talks. Wu Xiu grew more and more topsy-turvy, and with his wits gone muddy he couldn't govern his mouth. Half out of his head, he cursed the Tan family first, and all his fox-and-dog friends besides, from top to bottom. And the more he cursed the more choked with grievance he grew, and having no way to vent it he clutched at his own clothes and his own hair, and, cut to the very heart, threw himself down and rolled to and fro upon the ground.

Chen Dasheng, startled, could only squat on his stool and look down at the Wu Xiu rolling all over the floor.

Why so wretched, then? As though his own father lay dead?

Did the Tan family truly draw such hatred from you?

A fine thing indeed!

Wu Xiu had a good satisfying cry, then slowly crawled up, drank a few more bowls, dashed one to the ground, and let out a "That's better!"

That done, he clapped Chen Dasheng on the shoulder, and said, all sincerity: "Chen~ Captain, I'm wronged! They, they don't believe me!"

Chen Dasheng slowly sat himself right, and poured Wu Xiu more: "Captain Wu, whatever it is weighing on your heart, tell me. I've known you a good many years, and know your roots too. I believe you."

Wu Xiu was moved. One-handed he clapped Chen Dasheng's shoulder: "hic~ and what good is your believing me? Never mind... I'll not say it! I mustn't say it! I'll only tell you this. Brother never dreamed it would be you, that you'd have such loyalty in you, a thousand times, ten thousand times, hic, better than that pig-and-dog lot! Come, come~ fill it up! Today brother makes you his apology. I did you all wrong before, hic! Only drink this bowl, and brother'll tell you a secret besides... a great secret!"

The drunken cat had not, for all that, forgotten his purpose. Drunk to this pass, and still he pressed the wine on Chen Dasheng.

Chen Dasheng lifted the jar and poured himself a bowl and drank it off. And Wu Xiu, red in the face and breathing wine-fumes, cheered aloud: "Good! A good head for it! hic, then bro~ brother'll take one with you." He proudly raised his bowl and took the smallest of sips, his face flushed redder than ever, like a very monkey's.

Truly no clever man, this. His cheating had holes in it at every turn, just like a thief who stops his own ears and thinks the bell won't ring.

Chen Dasheng held up the empty bowl to show him: "Drunk it down. Now it's your turn to speak." Your secret, that is.

Chen Dasheng gave the wine-jar a shake, and tossed the empty jar back behind him. And from behind the reed curtain a fresh jar was slowly passed out. Chen Dasheng caught it up, bent his head and sniffed it, smiled, then poured himself a bowl of water, and drank that off.

Wu Xiu cheered loudly, snatched up the salt-beans from the plate, rubbed them between his two hands, blew off the husks and clapped them into his mouth. And when he'd chewed a while he mumbled: "Brother! Do you know, there's yet another saying in this world?"

Chen Dasheng filled his wine and pushed the bowl to him: "Say it."

Wu Xiu took a great gulp, set the bowl down, smacked his lips and sighed: "There's a saying in this world. Heaven, Earth, the Sovereign, one's Parents, and one's Teacher?" With difficulty he clambered up to Chen Dasheng's ear and breathed into it: "This great wealth of yours today, on the strength of what? On the strength of nothing but my Wu family's Six-Handed Saber Method, that's what, we..."

Chen Dasheng raised his brows, taken aback: "Your family's?"

Wu Xiu went off again. He slapped the table hard, and glared at Chen Dasheng: "Go and ask about it! My ancestor of the old dynasty, Wu Yisheng! My ancestor Wu Yisheng! A Confucian general of his age, who led a million troops! And on the strength of what did he win his high office and his rich pay? Hmph. And when I say I owe you nothing, it's because your wealth today came, every scrap of it, out of my Wu family. As the saying goes, a teacher for a day is a father for life. Do you take my meaning? Say I owe you nothing, why, I truly owe you nothing... you understand?"

Drunkenly laughing, he caught hold of Chen Dasheng again: "Brother, you owe my Wu family your tuition-fee, so give up this fine treasure to me, why don't you? Brother's a bit pinched for money just now..."

At that Chen Dasheng laughed. He took up Wu Xiu's own wine-jar, poured himself a bowl, drank a great mouthful, and said: "If the saber-method's so fine, then why doesn't Captain Wu practice it himself?"

Wu Xiu's face went scornful, and he gave an odd, cackling laugh: "What are you talking of~! My father's no fool! My Wu family. The Wu family's killing is too heavy. Three generations barely kept me alive, this one seedling, so how would he send me off to the killing-field to whet a blade? Back then that old thief Tan came to my house several times to talk it over, and my father refused him again and again. But, hehe~ do you know how it went?"

"How?"

"His house, ha, pressed their most promising true-born eldest grandson onto our house, ha ha... You never saw my sister, hic, my sis... hahaha, a match made in heaven with that Tan Weitong, a match made in heaven, hahaha..."

Wu Xiu laughed wildly a while, pinched up a piece of chicken liver and put it in his mouth, and smacked his lips over it in a low, coarse way. And then he told out an old, old story.

For it turned out that the long-saber inner-force and the long-saber skill that Chen Dasheng and the rest had trained in went, by its true name, by The Six-Handed Saber Method. And it had indeed been created by the Wu ancestor Wu Yisheng, and afterward sealed away, for the method was too cruel.

Wu Yisheng had been torn a hundred ways. Unable, in the end, to bring himself to destroy his own life's work, he'd left a testament to his descendants before he died, saying plainly that the method did harm to Heaven's harmony, and that his descendants must never again train troops by it.

And the Tan family, before ever they threw in with the Martial Emperor Yang Zao, had been an ordinary house of martial merit. They too had a handed-down method of drilling troops, strict in the ordering of an army, yes. But what house of soldiers was not strict? And so, generation after generation, they'd struggled on with dim prospects, and a flat, unremarkable road in office.

Then Tan Shize, by a lucky turn, made a friend of Yang Zao. And Tan Shouyi laid out two roads for the Tan family: the main branch would sit still and not stir, and the collateral branch would come forward to aid Yang Zao. And the Wu family would give the Six-Handed Saber Method as a daughter's dowry and marry into the Tan, both sides sealing a bond, and it plainly set down that if the Martial Emperor won the dragon-throne, they would share the glory and the wealth alike.

And so Tan Shize and Tan Weitong were both pushed to the fore. From that day the world had its Long Saber Battalion, and the old sabers had their string of wronged and wandering souls.

As for the thing Wu Xiu mocked, it was nothing but that the Wu true-born daughter had been born ill-favored, with half her face covered from birth in a purple birthmark.

Wu Xiu, full of spleen, went on cursing the Tan for breaking the bond, for casting off faith and honor... The fellow was drunk to the dregs by now, and rattled off no end of things, this and that and the other. And at the last he dived head-first under the wine-shop table and set up a thunderous snoring.

Only when he'd fallen dead drunk did Yu Qingguan and the rest come slowly out from behind the reed curtain.

They all stood there in silence, and went on standing until Chen Dasheng got up, and took from his own waist that gold-inlaid gem jade-and-coral broad girdle, and, bending, lifted Wu Xiu and tucked the girdle into the breast of his robe. Then he said to the youngest, Guan Si'er: "Si'er, go find a cart to send him home."

Guan Si'er nodded, and turned and went out.

The seven old sabers watched the covered cart bear Wu Xiu away. And when the cart had passed out of sight, Yu Qingguan said: "Chief, it looks like you've changed your mind."

Chen Dasheng nodded: "Mm! Changed it! This one day's business, it seems I'd thought the affairs of the world too simple. Do you know what it is I've just now worked out?"

Yu Qingguan and the rest shook their heads together.

Chen Dasheng turned and looked off toward the Nation-Protecting Temple: "Power! The power to change another man's fate at a light push, the kind of power that lies in the hands of a Tan Shouyi, and of my teacher and his sort."

And, rueful, he pointed at his own eyes: "The truth is, the mountain that we see, and the mountain your little sister-in-law sees, is not the same mountain those people see."

Ma Ergu was puzzled: "How, not the same? Even Tan Shouyi himself couldn't look at a mountain of stone and see a mountain of gold."

Chen Dasheng gave a soft laugh: "It's not the same, though. They stand on the mountain's flank, and we at its foot, and the Emperor on its peak, and Heaven above in the sky! At first I thought only to do as your little sister-in-law thinks, that if you've a pair of ten-tael shoes you must have a hundred-tael robe of gold thread to match them, and so we'd find a way to press the girdle onto Wu Xiu, and sooner or later he'd drag out a whole string of disasters and bring down a great retribution on himself! But that's not how I think of it now! A piece of talent like Wu Xiu deserves to be sent off into the enemy's camp to do harm to others. Only, as things are, his wings are small, and he can't yet spread a great wind. And so... we'll give him a fine cloud-ladder up, and the trouble he stirs, its wind being a touch too small just now, will blow the harder for it!"

Seeing that his six blockheads hadn't followed, Chen Dasheng sighed: "Study your books well hereafter, and then you'll understand the principle of it, that he who would climb high must begin from the low, and he who would journey far must begin from near."

"Chief... what's that mean?"

Chen Dasheng, a fierce fire in his eyes, looked off at the far Nation-Protecting Temple: "I've turned it over and got it clear at last. The truth is, for a man, dying in an instant is an easy, satisfying thing. Think back to our own days waiting to go into the line, what a torment that was. They took the lives of our old-saber brothers~ and traded them for high office and rich pay, for glory and wealth... so we'll dig out the very root of their wealth, and then take their lives! That's the first satisfaction under heaven... The way my teacher settles with an enemy, that's a slow, real pain!"

The old sabers looked at one another, and asked Chen Dasheng at the last: "Then, how's it to be done?"

Chen Dasheng put out his palm and clenched it hard into a fist in the air: "Out of the palace! Lay hold of the same thing they hold~ and only then can two armies cry their challenge across the field!"

In the quiet of the evening, Attendant She, a little basket in hand, was squatting in the vegetable plot pinching off the greens he'd grown. He'd pinched but the half of a basket when he saw his student come in from outside wrapped in a reek of wine.

Attendant She handed the basket off to a eunuch at his side, and asked him, smiling: "They say you ran off partway?"

Chen Dasheng curled his lip: "It'll have been the Second Prince, for certain!"

Attendant She smiled: "Father and son were chatting it over for a joke, and I caught an earful, they say you've got eight sons?"

Chen Dasheng's cheeks flushed on the instant, and it was a good while before he stammered: "The two brothers were squabbling... I only teased them a bit."

Attendant She was between laughing and not: "You're a bold one, there's no one you won't rib. Do you mean to go on playing the fool with them all your life?"

This time he did not, as he'd once have done, pretend not to have heard. Instead Chen Dasheng stood proper and looked at his teacher with clear, bright eyes: "I'll not play it anymore."

Attendant She, surprised, raised his brows. He bent and changed his garden shoes, sat down on a bamboo stool, and asked as he picked the leaves: "So? And the lesson I set you today, have you done it?"

Chen Dasheng stood straight, and answered, careful and grave: "Yes, done!"

Attendant She was taken aback, and lifted his head to look at him: "Are you sure? Then tell me, what did you see today?"

Chen Dasheng thought a moment, then answered in earnest: "Your student, going there, saw the good men and pious women thick over all the mountain. Saw where the people's hearts turn. Saw half the court's ministers on their knees, burning their incense, every one of them longing for a wealthy life to come."

There was some disappointment in Attendant She's eyes. He gave a slight shake of the head: "Just that?"

Chen Dasheng shook his head too: "Not only that... I should say I saw as well, that there's a soft blade hung above the imperial power itself."

The green vegetable came apart, stem from leaf, in an instant. Attendant She threw one glance to his side, and the attendants all fell back together.

When they'd gone well off, Attendant She pointed at a stool beside him: "Sit and speak."

Chen Dasheng let out a slow breath. And, fearing the wine-fumes on him would reach his teacher, he moved the little stool away, and dragged the vegetable basket over instead, and, tidying it for his teacher as he went, said: "It was by a lucky chance. Going down the mountain to drink and settle the bill, your student saw the shopkeeper count his money out into two shares. One he put into the box before the Buddha-niche, and one he kept for his own spending..."

Attendant She took up the pot to pour his student some water.

Chen Dasheng declined: "I'm not thirsty."

Attendant She glared at him: "Get on with it, you've not finished, by the look of you."

"Oh. So I asked the shopkeeper why he did so. And the shopkeeper said the land he farmed was the temple's own property, that it was field-rent for the Nation-Protecting Temple... And temple property pays no tax, and so the common folk who till the temple's land have no Emperor in their hearts, and less still any court.

"Then your student went back into the Nation-Protecting Temple and wandered about, and saw some of the common people, and of the gentry, and even of the officials, making over their family lands to the Buddha, and asking the monks to give the alms out for them... And on the way up, the Sixth Prince said the Nation-Protecting Temple had eight hundred years of history, and the Second Prince said a thousand. And he said the North and South Nation-Protecting Temples alike bore the good work of delivering all beings, so on the strength of what did the world set the North above the South?"

Chen Dasheng stopped there, and took up his teacup, and it was a good while before he said, forlorn: "In this world, there should be no man who carves off a domain and stands apart from his sovereign..."

Attendant She was silent a good while, and at last bowed his head and began to laugh.

Being laughed at put Chen Dasheng out of humor, and he asked: "Teacher, was your student right or not?"

For it wasn't as though he'd told the man a joke.

Attendant She only covered his face, and laughed the more freely and heartily.

He laughed a long while before he checked it. And then he asked his student, with more tenderness than ever: "Never mind me. But you, how is it you've come into the palace at this hour?"

Chen Dasheng gave an "Ah," and, as though something had come back to him, sprang up and went off to the storeroom at the back of his teacher's house.

He knew where his teacher kept the storeroom key, and he had always been free to take anything in that storeroom he pleased. Only, he never took a thing.

She Qingling laughed again. And a good while later he looked off toward the storeroom and sighed: "Ancestors of every generation, late it may be, and yet my She family has its prodigy son after all."

Before long Chen Dasheng came out with a tray of assorted trinkets, every color of palace-reward, stacked high and higgledy-piggledy. He set the things down on the stone table in the yard and asked his teacher: "Teacher, quick, help me have a look at these, I don't understand them. I've arranged to go out with Zheng Aman tonight, and that crowd of his are all queer-tempered. I ought at least to get myself up a bit more like them."

Attendant She looked at the odds and ends, sighed inwardly in disgust, and thought: in the end, the boy must be taught from the root.

"Are you a fool? Hang yourself all over, and the ones who'd look down on you will look down on you still... Making friends is not taught this way."

"Then... teacher, teach me."

Attendant She, warming to the teasing of his student, said, half in jest: "All right, call me father, and I'll teach you."

And Chen Dasheng, who had long since taken Attendant She for his father in his heart, called out without a moment's hesitation: "Father! Teach me, then!"

...

Late that night, before the curfew, Chen Dasheng went with Tong Jintai to a certain manor outside Yanjing.

He'd long known of this manor, a place the new-risen of Yanjing had moved, just as it was, from Shaoshang, to kill their time and take their pleasure in.

When he was still seven or eight li off from the manor, Chen Dasheng dimly felt the very ground under his feet faintly trembling.

His carriage carried his official mark on it, and there was no telling how those within made it out, but at any rate he came straight to the place, and was stopped by no one on the way.

Just as he was used to seeing in Yanjing, the ones who stepped down from those carriages were all young lords and wastrels. And a young lord of a high house, going out, had a dozen attendants at the least at his side, and seven or eight lavish carriages drawn by tall horses. Stepping down he was hemmed round before and behind, with slaves and maids ringing him to wait on him, every one of them as helpless as though he'd neither hands nor feet.

And yet the Emperor still sighed to his old ministers that the children of this day were rather to be pitied, that they had never seen real wealth.

Real wealth. A phrase like that always left Chen Dasheng at a loss. The wealth the Emperor painted seemed not at all the same as the wealth his teacher, mm, his father, spoke of!

Crowds of slaves and servants gathered in their bands about their several masters, and made off toward that round building.

Chen Dasheng's foot no sooner touched the ground than his heart gave a startled shudder. The sky-loud drums and music came crashing suddenly into his ears, and in that instant he was back on the killing-field.

The high, proud ox-horn trumpets, the wild-ox-hide war-drums, and the even, soul-stirring beat of the earthen fou... and the even, rhythmic clapping of hands, too?

Rich as he was now, it was only in the palace, or in the opera-garden, that Chen Dasheng had chanced now and then to hear fine music, and had felt his life risen up to the very sky, that he passed his days like an immortal. But this stir now? This strange, strange music. Even the Emperor, perhaps, could not afford to hear its like so often.

He was listening, rapt, when he felt a hand clap his shoulder.

Chen Dasheng turned his head to look, and it was Zheng Aman, in a jade crown, and got up in pink-and-purple brocade all of a piece.

More and more like a girl, he grew, and mustn't be told so.

Behind Zheng Aman a dozen and more familiar young lords had gathered. Chen Dasheng had long known them all, and yet neither side would lightly take the first step to make acquaintance. Today, though, all of it was for show: Chen Dasheng had come out precisely to make friends of these men.

For, be it understood, anyone who kept company with Zheng Aman came, without fail, of a house of the third rank or above.

Zheng Aman was glad to see Chen Dasheng. He came straight up and threw an arm round him and looked him up and down.

Chen Dasheng and Tong Jintai were in cloth again today, but these two suits of black cloth with the dark hidden pattern were made by the finest masters in the palace. Unusually, too, Chen Dasheng, who had rarely worn any trinkets, today wore a string of jade-hued bone beads on his wrist, and at his waist hung a plaque of the very best mutton-fat white jade, plain and unornamented, above and below which were worked bright-red ruyi-knots and hung bright-red tassels. The cord-work of it was a marvel of craft, the coloring balanced and quiet. Even Tong Jintai wore a kesi scent-bag today, and a string of aloeswood beads on his hand.

Sharp-eyed as Zheng Aman was, one look at that bone-bead string and his eyes lit up.

He caught Chen Dasheng's hand, slipped the string off it, and held it up to the lantern a servant raised, and studied it a good while. And at last, with the look of a man who's lost, he flung the string back to Chen Dasheng: "Hmph! The very bones of greatness in you, you've come to steal my thunder tonight, is that it?"

Girl-talk again.

Chen Dasheng curled his lip. He reached out, took up Zheng Aman's fragrance-drenched sleeve, and tossed the priceless treasure into it as one tosses rubbish, and said, with a touch of disdain for Zheng Aman: "Forever fretting over these little knots, and never a manly bone in you! A grown man, and you listen to their idle noise. It's all a false name the market-traders shout up to sell a thing dear, and a broken fish-bone puts you in a temper? My teacher's got a whole heap of them, tomorrow I'll hang you head to foot in them!"

Zheng Aman was astonished. He took out the bone-string and put it on again.

He led Chen Dasheng off toward that huge round building, and asked as he went, unable to believe it: "You truly give it me? You're not to regret it, now. I tell you, this thing can't be had for money! You'd not turn its like up in the inner treasury, three thousand strings at the least. And to hang me a whole set of them? You're plainly cozening me. You ditched me and ran off in broad day, and I've not squared accounts with you for it yet!"

Chen Dasheng, helpless and much put upon, said: "Given you! Given you!"

The onlooking lords had each their own thoughts. They traded glances, and, behind the dozens of tall lanterns to left and right, went crowding and jostling inward in their masters' train.

And all along the way, every soul that met them fell back three paces, some making the salute of an equal with both hands, some bowing low, some even going to their knees...

The world outside has ever its own rules and reasons, but Zheng Aman heeded none of it and walked straight on, and still made no introductions to Chen Dasheng, but only nodded, now and again, to a familiar face.

By now the sky had gone quite dark. And when Chen Dasheng followed Zheng Aman in through the round building, one door made two worlds. Within, the whole was flung suddenly open, bright as broad day. Three tiers of hollow platform rose in steps. The roof was linked with iron chains, and dense-wound colored silks sheathed the chains, and great white paper lanterns hung down through the air, setting the whole arena a-glitter.

The sound was loosed deafening: layer upon layer of drum-beat, and fou-beat, and ox-horn and war-drum in chorus, came down from the three tiers, till they'd beat the very heart and liver and lights out of a man.

No string-music showed itself here, nor should any.

Countless pairs of eyes watched that party, and Chen Dasheng, for his part, looked freely about him at all of it too. Under the bright, sunken hollow of the floor, ringed round with green-stone walls a zhang high, the skin of the floor was yellow earth mixed with sawdust, and in the middle of the yellow earth a wrestling-ring marked out with a white circle...

Yes, this was a place of gambling and of wrestling-bouts, only vaster past all counting than the wrestling-stages of the Yanjing market-wards, and past all counting more lavish.

Not just anyone could get in here. Those who were let in at the door had to be, at the very least, the son of an official.

Another dense sky-drum, and a stout, low roar of men's voices drew Chen Dasheng's eyes over.

The wrestlers making ready to mount the stage were, each of them, tall and heavily-thewed. They knelt in the circle like iron towers, and put out palms like iron fans, and, in time with the beat, slapped hard at their own bare chests. That resolute, that heart-quaking momentum was such as a true battlefield holds, and no more.

Even Chen Dasheng, a battlefield man these long years, was a shade shaken by it. And as for the young wastrels who'd never once been to a battlefield, once the blood-heat was conjured up in them, the madness of it may be well imagined.

A good hundred attendants in dark clothes came bow-backed and mincing to lead Zheng Aman and Chen Dasheng in. And as they went, the young lords, by the rules of the place, settled one by one into the seats that were theirs. The people grew fewer and fewer, in knots of three and five, each paired off with his own.

No sooner had a man sat than servants came bowing, bearing up whole roast sheep, charred golden and dripping fat, and bronze trays heaped with steamed cakes and sweetmeats, and mountains of fruit, and basin-wide vats of fine porcelain filled with the best wine of Yanjing, all there for the taking as one pleased.

Zheng Aman took Chen Dasheng to a soft cushion at the very center of the second tier. And no sooner was he down than he lay half-reclined, and, to show off, waved an arm at Li Jinggui across the way, and pointed at Chen Dasheng, and struck a pose of laughing up at the heavens.

Li Jinggui, seeing that Zheng Aman had brought Chen Dasheng and Tong Jintai along, sprang up over there in a fury.

Chen Dasheng could hear not a word anyone said, and so could only do as Zheng Aman did, and sit down below him. He'd no sooner sat than someone brought up a soft armrest heaped with brocade, that he might lounge and loll at his ease however he pleased.

Li Jinggui had friends of his own. That set of theirs held now and again a poetry-meeting, an incense-judging, a tea-gathering, and so drew a line between themselves and the coarse Zheng Aman. The wealthy sat on the second tier, and the run-of-the-mill piled up on the first, roused to a pitch and roaring there like very madmen.

When tonight's most honored guests were seated, the pack of wrestlers rose with a shout, their faces set in wrath, the veins standing out on their necks. And, striding great river-leaping strides, arms flung wide to show the knots of their muscles, they came up close against the viewing-tier and worked hard at selling themselves...

Below their waistbands hung numbered wooden tags. And once you'd fixed on one, you had only to call a servant over and lay your bet on the bout.

Another burst of sky-shaking drums, and a deep, mighty roar from the men, drew Chen Dasheng's eye. Letting it rove idly round the ring, he picked out a number. Zheng Aman had brought him out to amuse himself tonight, and so of course his stake too was Zheng Aman's to lay.

Tong Jintai and Chen Dasheng were both men come down off the killing-field, and they read a man with a cruel keenness. A martial-world adept they could not read clear, but at a ring like this, reading the muscle, reading the eye, so long as the wrestler played no trick, they'd not read him wrong.

Seeing that his two brothers had both chosen number thirteen, Zheng Aman laughed and laid down sixty taels of gold for the three of them.

His stake was, likely, not so great as those on the first tier, for he was truly here to play, whereas the tier below him were the real gamblers.

Chen Dasheng put out his hand, and a man set a wine-bowl in his palm. He clinked it across the air with Li Jinggui opposite, drank it off, and heard all the drums and music stop in an instant.

All around fell silent as death. And the ox-horn on the third tier gave out a high, long-drawn note. And when the note had ended, the partition amid the green stone was yanked suddenly aside, and in one instant a pack of hunger-red-eyed wolves came howling out, and made straight for the wrestlers in the middle of the round stage...

This sort of turn was, likely, put on every day. The board no sooner drawn back than every soul set up a roar. Chen Dasheng leaned instinctively back, and put a finger in his ear and dug at it.

Someone behind clapped him. Chen Dasheng turned, and it was Zheng Aman himself bringing him a bowl of wine. He took it and drank it off, and before he could return a bowl, there came a sky-shaking roar, and a number chanted out by all together... A hungry wolf had been seized by a wrestler, who, gripping it by the fore and hind legs, flung it against the green stone and dashed the life clean out of it.

And so, by the order in which the wolves were killed, the run of the wrestlers' turns on the stage was set...

Grown used to the rhythm of it now, Chen Dasheng soon shook off the frenzy that had gripped the crowd. Even when they brought up the wolf's-blood wine, from the wolf his own wrestler had killed, it stirred no further blood-heat in him.

Nor in him alone. The greater part of the second tier sat steady. The new-risen Shaoshang faction had few among them who'd never been to a killing-field. They sat quiet and unmoved... and however drunkenly the war-drums beat through the wrestlers' bouts, the Shaoshang men held to their own bearing.

A wrestler was flung senseless upon the green stone. Someone piled the stake-gold from his side over by the winner's. And as the winner won on, bout after bout, the space about him grew into a world of glittering gold and gleaming silver...

And yet a few who watched in secret saw that, amid so clamorous a scene, that little patriarch, so seldom out of the inner palace, had actually fallen to nodding... and then had truly gone to sleep.

Chen Dasheng had drunk through two sittings that day, and was tired, naturally enough. But he'd only just fallen into a sweet dream when Zheng Aman shook him awake from behind, back and forth.

He'd no sooner opened his eyes than a deafening din came roaring at his ear: "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!"

Not knowing what had happened, and seeing Tong Jintai in front, who'd snored a snot-bubble by now, still deep in his own dream, Chen Dasheng gave him a kick and rousted him up too.

Zheng Aman was laughing without the least restraint. He pointed down at the stage and said to Chen Dasheng: "Chief! Chief! That wrestler down there wants to have his gambling-bout with the two of you..."

Chen Dasheng blinked and looked down, and only then found that number thirteen had won, just as he'd foretold. And perhaps a full round of it had roused the man's wildness, for now, pointing at the twenty-odd trays of gold and silver ingots at his side, he was roaring up at the main platform of the second tier... and, as he roared, the iron tower, his face all blood, pointed toward Tong Jintai with a look of full-blown indignation.

"Fight! Fight! Fight!"

The sounds of a hot bout came up from the first tier, and Chen Dasheng looked at Zheng Aman, mystified.

Zheng Aman shouted, laughing: "That fellow reckons he's been slighted! Beat him!!!"

Oh, so that was it! A man couldn't have his sleep, then?

Chen Dasheng looked left and right, puzzled, and then went to glaring at Zheng Aman.

Zheng Aman, well pleased with himself, lay back and looked up at the sky. Plainly this heavy player at games had done the whole thing on purpose.

There being truly no help for it, Chen Dasheng gave Tong Jintai a kick, and chinned down toward the stage.

Tong Jintai woke too out of his dream. And seeing the strike in his chief's eyes, he stood without the least demur, slowly stripped off his new clothes, and sprang straight down onto the stage from the second tier.

Tong Jintai looked up and sized things a while, then bared his teeth in a grin: "Wuwa~ so high up!"

All around fell silent. A few lords gathered slowly over, and a round-faced one asked Chen Dasheng, smiling: "Marquis Chen? Your brother'll be all right?"

Chen Dasheng answered, his eyes a little far-off: "The man's never yet been thrown..."

Only now and then, when he dropped his saber and was fighting for his life, his own warhorse had gone down and dragged him to the ground with it, more times than he could count.

At one great drum-beat, the blue-and-bruised iron tower bore down upon Tong Jintai...

And quicker than it takes to tell, Tong Jintai stepped clean past him, whsst, and was behind the iron tower. There was no seeing any further motion of his, and the people only heard the wrestler's one shrill and ghastly scream: for Tong Jintai, from behind him, had hooked both hands easily into the top and the bottom of his spine, and in an instant hoisted him up.

The spectators, who'd been about to roar, had the sound pressed back down onto their very tongue-tips. They'd never seen a fight so swift. In one blink the man was behind, and the short one had driven both hands straight into the flesh of the wrestler's back and hoisted him high aloft.

A man held so, by the bone of his spine, can make no more resistance. And the wrestler, his back in a heart-rending agony, screamed on and on.

And the blood from his back came trickling slowly down Tong Jintai's arm.

Chen Dasheng stood, and came to the edge of the second tier, and said to Tong Jintai: "Put him down. He's wrestled the whole night through, why go bullying him."

Tong Jintai nodded, and slowly drew back his hands, and set the iron tower down steady on the ground. This one was a smiler too, with a tiger-tooth showing.

He comforted the panic-stricken iron tower, all smiles: "Don't be afraid. I didn't bring my saber today."

In that instant, a sky-shaking cheer broke out of a sudden.

Tong Jintai came ambling back up to the second tier, and attendants brought strong wine to wash the reek of the blood from his hands.

And the two brothers had no sooner sat down again than a whole crowd of the young lords came thronging round them. Men will ever side with the strong, and the more so with such a topmost figure as this, who by sheer crushing weight had beaten a strong man three times his own bulk, and neatly too.

"Away, all of you, away! What manner of things are you, that you'd dare go crowding round my brothers?"

Li Jinggui shoved men aside with all his might, struggled through to Chen Dasheng and Tong Jintai, and flung himself upon them, babbling all manner of nonsense: "Brother Feilian, Brother Feilian, teach me, teach me!"

But before he'd got the words out, fresh young lords were joining in: "Marquis Chen! Marquis Tong... your brother's of the Anchang Earl's house..."

"You, away with you... Brother Feilian, my ancestor and the She family were friends of old..."

More and more of them crowded round, and Chen Dasheng began to laugh. He saw it. That gate of Yanjing's, that had always been shut fast against them, was, by a few slender sabers that had spent every last ounce of strength simply to stay alive... at long last... being slowly, slowly pried open.