Path of the Eclipse (11 page)

One of the highwaymen had caught hold of Chih-Yü’s mount’s reins and was trying to drag the horse down. Chih-Yü hacked at him, once on the face and once at the thigh, and the man collapsed, but not before his companion with a club had broken her horse’s hind leg. The bay screamed and tottered.

Saint-Germain had cut down another highwayman when he heard the agonized sound of Chih-Yü’s horse. He turned to see the man with the club strike again at the bay’s other hind leg just as the oldest of the outlaws reached to pull Chih-Yü from the saddle. He reached into his boot scabbard and in one quick, fluid motion sent the dagger sailing to lodge high in the old man’s back.

The highwayman did not even scream. His arms lifted higher; then he toppled backward just as Chih-Yü’s horse fell.

Though pinned to the ground by her bay, Chih-Yü still fought. Her sword laid open the nearest man’s belly while she struggled to get free of the weight of her feebly thrashing mount.

One of the highwaymen broke and fled, and at that, the others faltered. Knowing that the skirmish was almost won, Saint-Germain singled out the man with the club and rode at him. This time he did not use his sword, but in a feat of amazing strength carried the man from the ground as he passed and flung him bodily into the berry vines.

Chih-Yü had just worked her way free of her fallen horse when Saint-Germain reached her side and came out of the saddle. She gave him a long, appraising look. “Who cut you?”

Until she spoke, Saint-Germain was unaware that there was a wound on his forehead that was oozing blood. “I don’t know,” he said honestly as he blotted the wound with his sleeve. “It isn’t serious.”

“Apparently,” she said, then looked down at her horse. “It’s a pity,” she said, before she brought her blade down to end the animal’s suffering. She stood staring down at the bay as she wiped her weapon and fitted it into the scabbard.

“And you?” Saint-Germain asked when the distant look was gone from her eyes.

She shrugged. “It’s senseless. There are Mongols coming to destroy us, and we must lose a good war horse to highwaymen.” She glanced toward the man in the thicket, who was moaning low in his throat. “Impressive.”

Saint-Germain said nothing. Her suspicion now could be fatal to him. Instead he wiped his sword on the lining of his dalmatica, then slid it into the scabbard before bending to turn the oldest highwayman over and pull the dagger from his back.

“You’ve fought before,” Chih-Yü said when she realized he would not speak to her.

“I have.” Unbidden, the memories came. He felt the futility of it, as he so often did now.

“In the West.”

“Yes.” He had put the dagger back in its boot sheath. “Will you ride behind me?” he asked.

“I haven’t much choice,” she said wearily; then her expression changed. “I did not expect something like this to happen. I would have brought armed militiamen with me if I thought we were likely to be attacked.”

“Perhaps it was not quite as simple as it seems,” Saint-Germain suggested gently as he brought the gray up to her.

Her eyes held his, each with their dark brightness. “You mean No-ei may have sent them word?…”

“It is one possibility. There are apt to be Mongol scouts in the area as well.” He offered her his joined hands, and tossed her up onto the gray’s back behind the saddle.

Once again she studied him. “You are stronger than I thought,” she said to him as he mounted.

He nodded, replying carefully, “Those of my blood are noted for strength.”

After a moment of hesitation, she put her arms around his waist as the gray set out through the whispering forest. She was silent until the track to the Mao-T’ou stronghold was reached, and then she spoke softly to him. “When I hired you in Lo-Yang, I thought you were a very poor bargain, but I knew I had to return with someone, or everyone here would lose heart. I was, I think, more fortunate than I knew when you agreed to come here.”

Saint-Germain could not quite smile. “You honor me, Warlord T’en.”

“I wonder,” she said, then lapsed into silence again as they made their way toward her stronghold.

A letter from Kuan Sun-Sze in Lo-Yang to Saint-Germain at Mao-T’ou stronghold.

In the fortnight of a Thousand Blossoms, in the Year of the Ox, the Fourteenth Year of the Sixty-fifth Cycle, to the learned foreigner Shih Ghieh-Man at the Mao-T’ou stronghold in the Shu-Rh District:

Though it is always a pleasure to remember the affection of those we respect, yet on this occasion I would wish that my reasons for sending this message were only those of friendship, but sadly, this is not so.

I have been thinking back with pleasure to the many hours I have spent in your company, of the long and erudite conversations we have shared and of your courtesy and distinction. Therefore it is doubly hard for me to write to you now and inform you of what transpired here eight days ago.

The temper of the city has been uncertain, for there are disturbing reports and even more disturbing rumors circulating regarding the Mongol forces. It has been said that Temujin’s men have conquered far more territory than the Ministry of War will admit. If this is so, then we are most surely lost, for what we have heard is bad enough. I am telling you this so that you will understand how events have come about here, and realize that it was not you but your foreignness that provoked the students and soldiers.

As I read this, I see I am trying to postpone the moment of telling you, and that is a disservice to you and the friendship we have shared to do so. Very well, then: eight days ago, a mob numbering several hundred, mostly students and soldiers from the local garrison, maddened by the latest report of heavy losses in the north, went rampaging through Lo-Yang, destroying all that was foreign. It gives me great pain to inform you that your compound suffered greatly at the hands, of these distraught men. Your gates were torn open and many of your belongings were ruined. Those that were not, I am sending to you with two university messengers to guard them and a formal decree that exempts them from seizure. Most of what survived are Chinese works of art. There are two jade lions, one large silk hanging, which is a little singed in one corner, a number of ceramic pieces, all but one of your collection of musical instruments—I fear that your bowed lyre did not survive the wrath of the students. There are also your supplies from your laboratory. The walls there were very stout and the students and soldiers did not trouble themselves to destroy that side wing of the house. That lantern in the main hall, the one I have admired so often—that was pounded out of shape and given to the metal workers in Street of the Blind Poet.

The officers of the Tribunal did not arrive in time to save the central part of the house, but contained the fires before they spread. The August Magistrates have issued a formal statement of condemnation for the barbarity of the acts of the students and soldiers, and will in time, they assure me, present you with a proper apology and restitution for the damage done.

Most of the supplies in your laboratory will be held here for you, but I have arranged to have the four metal chests sent with your belongings, as well as the two foreign chests of compounds and such supplies. I took the liberty of examining the metal chests to be certain they had not been rifled, as a number of your chests and cases were, and found that they contained earth. I recall that you explained to me once that you have long been convinced that earth has certain properties that are not fully understood and appreciated. I thought at the time you might be involved in experimentation with those properties of earth, but we did not pursue the matter. I trust now that you will forgive me if I ask to be kept abreast of your experiments so that I may apply what you discover to my own study. As you may recall, I told you that since many insects live underground, I have often thought that the earth in some unknown way nurtures them.

There, you must forgive me. I have had the audacity to make a request of you at the very moment I am telling you of your own great loss. I would understand if you chose not to reply to this letter, or to communicate with me again, for though I have long admired you and taken pride in the honor of your friendship, yet, when it was put to the test, I failed you. Will you, of your compassion, pardon me for this? Your generosity would lighten the burden I carry on my conscience, but there is no reason you should extend it to me. Do as you think best, Shih Ghieh-Man, and I will accept your decision as just.

Written by my own hand, and delivered by the officers of the Lo-Yang tribunal, to the foreigner Shih Ghieh-Man at the Mao-T’ou stronghold of the Warlord T’en Chih-Yü in the Shu-Rh District.

Kuan Sun-Sze

Master, University of Lo-Yang

6

Smoke hung over the ridge and the stench of burning filled the air. Saint-Germain stood on the newly constructed ramparts and watched the flat, brassy sky as the smoke trailed across it.

“Any sign?” the gatekeeper called up to him from his post below.

“Not yet,” he answered, a frown darkening his face.

“It’s early,” the gatekeeper said by way of consolation. “Hardly past noon. Jui Ah told us that the troops wouldn’t be back until nightfall.”

If they’re back at all, Saint-Germain thought as he said, “Warlord T’en planned to be off the field by sunset at the latest” to the gatekeeper.

It was a hot day, though not with the thick, drumming heat of high summer. The air was clear, shimmering in the distance, and the gravel in the newly dug trench around the Mao-T’ou stronghold gave back a hard shine where the sun struck them.

“When do you get your relief?” the gatekeeper asked. Saint-Germain had been on the walls of the stronghold since the militia had ridden out shortly after sunrise.

“When the Warlord returns,” he answered distantly, watching the smoke smudge the metallic face of the sun. He braced one arm against the hewn logs of the stockade and stared at the distant ridge.

“Now you don’t want to fret,” the gatekeeper said a little later. He spoke with a soldier’s dialect and found it easy to understand the cultured, academic words Saint-Germain used.

It was an effort for Saint-Germain to wrench his attention from the tallest part of the slope to the squat man with white hair and eyes raisin-dark. “I wish I had been allowed to ride with them,” he said, knowing that there was also within him a reprehensible sense of relief. “They have said that they will not fight with a foreigner.”

“So they have,” the gatekeeper agreed. “Don’t think too harshly of them. Those militiamen aren’t like real soldiers. They see very little of the world. Now, when I was in the army, there was this Tartar fellow, tall, ugly brute and spoke the language worse than a Hang-Chow prostitute, but what a fighter he was! Every man in the company loved him for his bravery and his good sense. But none of the militiamen here would have agreed to go into battle beside him, and that would be their error. You can’t let Jui Ah upset you. That’s what he’s trying to do. It’s the Warlord you’re here to serve, not that fellow. You ought to remember that.” While he spoke, a servant had brought him a bowl of food—a cereal paste with bits of pork and mutton stirred into it. He dipped his fingers into this and glanced up at Saint-Germain again. “It’s barley today,” he remarked. “Sure you don’t want some?”

Half-annoyed and half-relieved by the gatekeeper, Saint-Germain did not answer at once. “Hsing will tend to that later,” he said after a silence.

“Now, there’s a pleasant thought for a man. That Hsing. What thighs.” He paused to gobble more of the barley-and-meat mixture. “Were I a younger man, I’d be jealous of you, but at my age…”

Saint-Germain’s features were unreadable. “I am not a young man, gatekeeper.”

“Oh, not a youth, surely,” the gatekeeper said sagely. “But all I have to do is look at you to know that there are fires in you that were extinguished in me years ago.” He gave a philosophical gesture and finished his meal.

“I might surprise you,” Saint-Germain said lightly, but felt a grim certainty. He stared out at the ridge and saw that there was more smoke. He could smell it on the wind, a charred odor that tainted the clean smells that promised summer. As he watched the spread of gray and brown over the sky, he tried to distract his thoughts with a catalog of Hsing’s beauty. She was the most shapely woman he had seen at the Mao-T’ou stronghold, and none of the farmers had any wives or daughters like her. She was, he surmised, the offspring of one of General T’en’s concubines. How did Chih-Yü feel about this half-sister? he wondered, but had no answer.

Slowly the smoke obliterated the sun.

Hsing, Saint-Germain reminded himself with an angry desperation as he kept his eyes on the ridge, was oddly complacent, almost bored. She would lie beside him, wholly self-absorbed as he excited her with the full range of his skills. She would close her eyes, going into herself so completely that Saint-Germain was almost certain she did not know when he had taken his pleasure of her. For Hsing, it was not a thing to be shared.

The afternoon was still, and the wind had fallen, but the smoke hung on the air, acrid, poisonous, drifting more slowly now and spreading its blackness over the sky.

Some little time later there was a fluttering movement at the crest of the hill, and Saint-Germain straightened up, his eyes slits as he strove to make out what was approaching. He moved along the narrow catwalk, his gaze never leaving the distant ridge. He was alert now, and oddly feral. His black, steel-studded pelisse was Frankish and the black coxalia that clung to his legs were Byzantine; his only concession to Chinese fashion was his thick-soled boots. He had got used to hearing the whispers about his manners and dress and no longer worried when one of the militiamen regarded him with contempt.

“What’s happening?” the gatekeeper called up.

“Riders,” Saint-Germain said tersely.

“How many?” There was ill-concealed anxiety in the man’s voice, for there were only ten militiamen in the stronghold, and if the riders were Mongols, there was not enough time to muster a makeshift defense.