Path of the Eclipse (28 page)

The reception room was pleasant and uncluttered. Two fine scrolls hung on the wall, and though one was water-damaged, the other was in fine condition. Saint-Germain judged from the style and brushstrokes that the scroll was three or four hundred years old. There were lacquered chests standing by the walls, one of them quite large, the others of medium height. All were fitted with neat-worked brass. There were two couches, both handsomely but not lavishly upholstered, and six chairs. A low table was placed between the couches. It was rosewood and elaborately inlaid. In Lo-Yang, Saint-Germain thought, the room would be regarded as far too plain, almost shabby. Chih-Yü, he knew with a pang, would have liked the room, though it might have been a little too cluttered for her taste. He turned to look out the window, letting his mind wander over the ridges and crests of the mountains. The curious emptiness of grief had gripped him and it was almost more than he wished to do to wrench himself free of it. In all his years, he had never learned the secret—if there was such a secret—of resigning himself to loss. His joy had been purchased with the pain of loss.

He was still staring out the window when the door opened and one of the house servants announced in a dialect Saint-Germain could barely understand, “The Warlord Mon Chio-Shing.” Saint-Germain rose at once, forcing his attention back into the room. He bowed formally.

“Ah,” said the older man, coming forward with the curious rolling gait of one who has spent more time in the saddle than on the ground. His bald pate shone and the grayed wisps of his mustaches drooped around his mouth. Yet he walked with vigor and his nearsighted eyes were lively. “You are the magician, then.” He made a sort of bow, then indicated that Saint-Germain should sit as he himself dropped onto the nearer couch.

“Among other things. This person has been credited with skills and abilities which—”

Warlord Mon interrupted him. “You have beautiful manners, but there is no need for your address form here. Talk like a plain man, I beg you.”

Saint-Germain smiled faintly. “Thank you. I did not want to give offense after all you have done—I am grateful, believe me.” He might have continued with these courtesies, but Mon waved his hand impatiently.

“Yes, yes. I know the routine as well as you, if not better. One of the reasons I stayed away from Court—there were others, of course, but this was an important factor—was all those ceremonies required for the simplest things. When a man must spend half the morning trying to find just the right way of presenting a lacquered fan, then you know things have gone too far.” He sighed. “I was beginning to wonder when you’d emerge. Three days is a long time for a ritual. That servant of yours guards you as diligently as a dragon guards Heaven.”

“He has been with me a long time,” Saint-Germain explained, though he implied no apology.

“That’s as it should be,” Mon concurred. “It takes more than a year or two to make good servants. It’s not easy to create real trust. It pays to treat them well, but you must know that.”

“Yes, that has been my experience,” Saint-Germain agreed politely, curious to learn what it was that this old Warlord really wanted of him.

“Take Masashige,” Mon went on so casually that Saint-Germain knew the discussion must be urgent. “An excellent servant. I’ve never had one better. He has defended this fortress for more than a dozen years. The fastest swordsman I’ve ever seen. No one … could touch him.”

“Yes,” Saint-Germain said dryly, “I would not like to face anyone faster.”

Warlord Mon laughed heartily and pounded his knee with his fist. “You foreigners,” he said when he could speak again. “What I like about you is your humor. Delightful. A Chinese soldier would feel he had to give me a full report on how he conducted his battle, and all you do is tell me that you would not like to meet anyone faster.” His mirth played itself out and he assumed a more serious expression. “He’s taking his loss hard. It’s never happened before.”

“He didn’t lose,” Saint-Germain said at once. “You stopped the fight.”

“You convince him of that. He has told me he could not have got to you before you threw that ax, and a weapon like that … He insists that you said that you did not want to kill him. You wouldn’t have said that unless you thought you
could
kill him. He told me that he was wholly disgraced because stopping the fight deprived him of an honorable death.” Warlord Mon pulled at the ends of his mustaches. “In part, I suppose I was trying to save him—to save you both. I will hardly allow Masashige to get cut down, and if I had wanted you dead, I had only to signal the archers, and you would have been full of arrows. But you see, I was impressed with you.”

Saint-Germain had been studying the old Warlord and knew that this bluff manner was assumed. For an instant, he pictured himself shot with arrows, and could not decide how he might have accounted for refusing to die. He had been shot by arrows many times before, but none of the shafts had struck his spine or penetrated his brain, and he had survived. “I will have to say, Warlord Mon, that I felt I did not do well against Masashige. If his sword had been as long as mine, or if he had had more stamina, he would have killed me before we completed the first four passes.”

Warlord Mon gave this his judicious consideration. “Quite likely,” he said after this reflection. “You are very strong, aren’t you?”

It was true enough, and no one was more aware of it than Saint-Germain. He lifted his shoulders in self-deprecation. “I have a certain advantage in my blood. We have great strength—it is a gift.”

“As you say, an advantage.” The Warlord gave Saint-Germain another long look. “They tell me that you are a powerful sorcerer.”

“They?” Saint-Germain inquired.

“Your servant and your guide, naturally, and most of the men who watched you fight.” He leaned back in the chair and waited for an answer.

“I have some skill.” He said this carefully, not knowing how much the old Warlord might know.

“Your name implies rather more than that, Shih Ghieh-Man,” he said testily. “How does it happen that a great sorcerer is on this trail?”

Saint-Germain had known he would have to say this eventually, and now that Warlord Mon had asked, he knew a certain relief, though it was tempered with recognition of his precarious situation. “There are new laws in the Empire that are punitive to foreigners. It makes for some difficulty in gaining employment. For three seasons the Warlord T’en Chih-Yü was my patron. I provided her with metal alloys. She required an alchemist.” It was not entirely polite, but Saint-Germain rose and paced down the room. “She had wanted to hire mercenary soldiers, but settled for me, instead.”

Mon Chio-Shing’s eyes followed Saint-Germain. “Was?”

“The Mongols came to the Shu-Rh District where Mao-T’ou stronghold was. Twenty-two days ago, they destroyed the two valleys she guarded.” Was it so little time since Chih-Yü had been cut down? The memory of her was at once strangely distant and achingly, abrasively near. T’en Chih-Yü, who had wept in his arms, now lay in a poorly made grave, a carrying box for a coffin. His hands tightened at his sides.

“We’ve been hearing more about these Mongols,” Warlord Mon remarked as he pulled a moon-fan from his belt and began to wave it. The room was cool and a thread of wind snaked through it, chilling it more, but Warlord Mon used his fan.

“And you will hear more still,” Saint-Germain said bitterly, no longer bothering to observe the proper social forms. “While the men in Lo-Yang and K’ai-Feng debate what is best to do, those warriors will devastate the land.”

“Isn’t that a trifle overstated?” Warlord Mon asked.

“No. It is the truth. You haven’t seen the destruction I saw in Shu-Rh District.” He turned to his host. “You believe this is like the old wars, where the Lords evacuated an area and conducted their combats according to rules approved of by Kung Fu-Tzu. Those men of Temujin’s have not heard of Kung Fu-Tzu and care nothing for his dicta. They want land. Land, Warlord Mon, not crops and slaves. They have cut trade routes, sacked towns and cities, killed every peasant, artisan and merchant they have encountered. And while the men of the Secretariat of War insist that honorable soldiers would not stoop to such acts, the Mongol warriors continue to pillage and slaughter.” His voice had become rough with the depth of his feeling.

“So.” Warlord Mon nodded gravely. “Then the dispatches I have read have not been misleading. I had hoped otherwise.” He got to his feet, and now he moved like the old man he was. “How long would you guess it will be until they come into these mountains?”

Saint-Germain stopped on the far side of the room. “I don’t know. It will depend in part on the Imperial army. If the army can be moved quickly and decisively enough to provide a regular defense, the Mongols will be slowed. Who knows, with proper strategy, they might even be stopped.”

“But you do not expect this to happen,” Warlord Mon said.

“No. I don’t.”

Warlord Mon gave a click with his tongue. “Those clerks of the Secretariats and Tribunals, they are like seamstresses. What do they know of these matters? They are in love with minutiae. They will waste months trying to determine if all the new infantry helmets match.”

Unhappily, Saint-Germain was forced to agree. “They have been slow to send inspectors, and the petitions for army assistance, as far as I can tell from what happened in the Shu-Rh District, go unanswered. I know that T’en Chih-Yü journeyed to Lo-Yang herself and never got the attention of anyone more highly placed than an official of the Magisterial Tribunal. That was one of the reasons she hired me. She had no opportunity to speak to men who could give her soldiers.” He turned one of the chairs around and sat again.

“So it will be unwise to depend upon the capitals.” Warlord Mon strode to the window with a trace of his old jauntiness in his step. “And we must fend for ourselves, it appears.”

Although Saint-Germain shared Warlord Mon’s evaluation, he said, “It may be that the defenses will improve as the Mongols strike nearer the heart of the Empire. It is one thing to ignore the remoter districts, and quite another to leave the major cities open to attack. If there were one or two constant lines of resistance to the invasion, I think it is possible that the tide could still turn.”

“And it may be that the Celestial Dragon will appear in the sky and blast our enemies off the face of the earth, but I am not going to anticipate such an event,” Warlord Mon said as he stared out the window. “I’m badly manned here,” he went on a moment later, his tone quite conversational. “I know how imposing the place looks with the big towers and high walls, but they count for little. Oh, there have been several hundred men quartered here in the past. At the moment, however, I have seventy-two men-at-arms, and most of them are archers, which is just as well, because there are only fifteen horses in the stables. We can fire arrows from the battlements until we run out of them, which would happen quickly, because we have few supplies, and then we would be exhausted.”

“Only seventy-two men-at-arms?” Saint-Germain asked, incredulous.

“I don’t let it be known generally. And with Masashige defending the approach to the gate, few travelers got close enough to see how pitifully few men I have here, and how little resistance we can offer.” He glanced at Saint-Germain. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to remain here, could I? You fight well and you admit that you have some skill in weapons-making.”

For a moment Saint-Germain could not speak. A sense that was not quite sickness, not quite dizziness, churned within him. He wished he knew how much of this could be read on his face. Had he changed color? There was no alteration of Warlord Mon’s expression, and so Saint-Germain gave a steady response. “It is an honor—”

“It’s nothing of the sort. I’m desperate,” the old Warlord interjected.

“But one that I cannot accept,” Saint-Germain finished. “I would, believe me, be of little use to you. Most of my equipment was destroyed and I have no means of replacing it. There is nothing I could do for you that a good smith could not do equally as well.” This was not entirely the truth, but he did not want to have to answer more questions.

“Nonsense,” Warlord Mon said brusquely. “You can fight. I saw you against Masashige, remember.”

“That was not my choice,” Saint-Germain pointed out quietly, his dark eyes on the old Warlord with their full, compelling weight.

“True enough,” the old man muttered, and turned away. “Well, I had hoped, but…” He thrust his moon-fan back into his belt. “When you are healed, I will not detain you—you may leave here without hindrance, you and your servant and your guide. Should you change your mind, I would welcome you here. And it may be,” he added hopefully, “that by the time you are healed, the passes will be blocked and you will have to remain here until spring.”

Saint-Germain gave Warlord Mon an understanding smile. “I am sorry. I will be ready to leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? But there were knives in you…” The old man’s narrowed eyes grew wide.

“The … ritual which kept me confined to that room for three days was, in part, allied with healing. It is something like my strength, you see.” He rose from his chair. “There is weakness still, but it will pass.” He did not add that it would require blood for that to happen.

“I’ve always thought that the reputations of magicians and sorcerers were more a matter of the credulity of those who allowed themselves to believe than any power on the magician’s or sorcerer’s part. In your case, however…” As he crossed the room to the door, he made a sign that Saint-Germain had seen children make to ward off evil. “It is well that you leave, if that is the way of it.”

With great sadness, Saint-Germain gave the old Warlord a full, formal bow. “Mon Chio-Shing, this unworthy person is most grateful for all you have done for him and those accompanying him. It has been a privilege to have met you, and this person wishes to assure you that he will treasure the memory of this encounter.”

Warlord Mon bowed and left the room, but said nothing.

A little while later Saint-Germain quitted the room and began the walk back to the quarters he and Rogerio had been assigned. His mind was preoccupied with the unfortunate interview he had had, and for that reason he did not at first notice the powerful figure that approached him along the narrow hallway.