The Mandate of Heaven (62 page)

A question answered by shouting and clashing metal at the gatehouse. The bodyguard provided by Liu Shui had pounced.

‘Who else is here?’ demanded Hua, staring round into the darkness, his sword arm pulled back to thrust. Discovering no one, a puzzled look crossed his face.

‘Just me,’ said Teng. ‘Now, drop your sword.’

Hua kept examining the undergrowth. ‘Just you?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘Then I’d advise
you
to drop
your
sword. Do you expect me to surrender to a coward?’

He made a pretend tiger roar, just as he and Chao had amused themselves when seeking the dead prince’s tomb all those years before. Ruffled, Teng said: ‘I strongly advise …’

‘Shut up!’ said Hua. ‘You’re a weakling! It’s that precious Deng blood of yours. Everyone knows your grandfather hung himself instead of fighting the Mongols like a man. Well then, give me your sword like a sensible …’

At that moment he leaped at Teng, sweeping his blade. The scholar cried out, managing to parry the blow at the last moment. Hua stepped back. With another bellow, he slashed again – a feeble stroke, inexpertly delivered. Teng’s ripostes were similarly inept. Back and forth they swung and parried, clanging and uttering ferocious grunts until, finally, both were winded and backed away. Sounds of fighting still drifted from the gatehouse, including an agonised scream that Teng thought horribly like Shensi’s voice.

‘One of yours, I think,’ said Hua.

‘Perhaps.’

Teng wondered if Hua shared his desperation for help. The spy’s earlier taunt had been correct: it was in his blood to expect others to do his fighting.

‘I am going to pick up my bag and walk away,’ said Hua. ‘If you follow or interfere, I’ll kill you.’

Uncertain of his enemy’s intentions, Hua stepped cautiously over to his fat leather bag. Still Teng hesitated. It would be better to wait for one of the bodyguards. Hua laughed coarsely as he seized the bag with one hand, holding the sword in the other.

‘It’s like I say,’ he said, ‘you’re a coward. Just like your grandfather.’

The insult, so often rehearsed by Teng’s deepest fears and anguished pride, or sheer weariness of being scorned by men inferior in every way except guile and an absence of scruples, forced up his sword. Teng charged at Hua. ‘Yueh Fei!’ he cried. ‘Yueh Fei!’

Back and forth they clashed, only this time in deadly earnest. Despite his enthusiasm, Teng was clumsier than Hua. First he took a gash on his left arm, then a cut on his scalp that began to trickle blood over his forehead.

‘Had enough?’ gasped Hua, crimson from his exertions.

Teng’s chest burned for air. His body, still not fully healed from the misery of the Salt Pans, felt as though it would curl into a senseless ball and beg for mercy.

‘Yueh Fei!’ he called, desperately, as though his great ancestor might help him. And perhaps the Immortal Hero of the Empire did watch from the Jade Emperor’s Cloud Terrace and approve his hapless descendant’s foolish courage. Teng’s next desperate sword stroke – for the first time in the entire fight – connected with an intimate part of Hua. Not his flesh, it was true, but a bulging purse attached to his broad girdle. The bag split and burst, spilling a tinkling rain of gems and pearls and gold objects onto the moss-covered paving stones.

Hua involuntarily tried to grab his precious treasure, lowering his guard for a moment. Long enough for Teng to level his sword and drive it deep into the small man’s chest. Having delivered this blow, Teng let go of the hilt and staggered to one side, breath panting. His heart pulsed as though it would split and burst like Hua’s bag of treasure.

‘Y-you!’ gurgled Hua, blood bubbling up from his punctured lung. He dropped his own sword and vainly attempted to grip Teng’s. Slowly he toppled forwards, driving the hilt deeper in. After a last twitch he lay motionless.

At that moment Shensi arrived, followed by two of the bodyguards assigned by Liu Shui. The old tomb-finder surveyed the scene coldly. Blood trickled from Teng’s wounded scalp, dripping onto the ground where jewels and gold objects lay scattered.

The corpses of the four guards and Minister Hua were thrown off the cliff into the lake below. The body of their own man – for one of the rebels had perished in the fight – required more honour. As the first beams of dawn filtered through the young woods surrounding the Salt Minister’s old house, they dug a shallow grave and left him to rest.

Chao had managed to escape yet they did not think he would return soon.

‘He’ll wait for the end of the curfew,’ said Shensi, ‘it’s too dangerous otherwise. Besides, he’s badly wounded. We’ve time to set things in order.’

This included a thorough search of the bodies before throwing them over the cliff. Once opened, the baggage contained a fortune in
cash
, jewellery and silver ingots bearing the Imperial treasury’s seal of authenticity.

Among the valuables, too, a gold and bronze leopard with red jewels for eyes. A treasure found in the dead prince’s tomb a decade earlier and somehow filched from Hornets’ Nest. Teng remembered Hua’s deep fear of curses. Perhaps that curse had worked itself out.

For the first time in all the years he had known him, Teng saw tears on Shensi’s grizzled cheeks. ‘At last,’ sniffed the tomb-finder, ‘something! This time I’ll not lose it!’

‘We must go now to Cloud Abode Monastery,’ said Teng. ‘I must find my father before Chao informs Salt Minister Gui what has happened.’

With that, as dawn seeped a faint trace of light to the east, the four surviving rebels climbed the Hundred Stairs towards the monastery, bags of loot on their backs.

6
^th
Day, 9
^th
Month, 1322

Dawn, three days before Teng was to attain the unlikely exploit of killing a man. Far out on the lake where the water was deep as forty people standing on each other’s shoulders, down through drifting clouds of sediment and vegetation to the lake’s bed, fish of many kinds were feeding. They had discovered a banquet.

The remains of a burned junk rested on the muddy, rock-strewn bottom, half-hidden by gently swaying weeds. Its mainmast had snapped and projected at an angle. The hull, split open by a gigantic crossbow bolt, showed signs of charring. Weapons lay within the wreck, as well as diverse objects to maintain a floating house. None were useful to the fish and crabs and eels. As dawn light filtered through the cloudy water, nocturnal feeders worked furiously, aware the coming of day would bring more powerful eyes and jaws.

The junk had been sunk the previous evening after a chase by paddlewheel destroyers from the government fleet. A few lucky hits by bomb-hurling catapults set her ablaze. She had drifted down slowly, along with her secrets.

The greatest of these had resided in the hearts and minds of the junk’s crew: memories and flickering, earnest convictions balanced by doubt. All gone, treasures uncountable. Now long-jawed fish sought what profit they could from flesh and bone and blood and sinew that had encased those treasures. Eels entered gaping mouths to find tongues that once laughed or cursed, told truth and lies. Soft, spongy meat, easily swallowed. Larger fish worried away at open wounds. The very smallest discovered an interest in eyeballs.

One of those lost treasures wore a scroll case on his belt. Within, already ruined by water, was a pulpy mass of documents: Chao and Hua’s coded letter to Salt Minister Gui, as well as Teng’s translation and a further note in which he warned Hsiung that he was leading the rebel fleet – and by extension, the noble cause of Yueh Fei – into a certain trap.

Its belly gorged, a pike broke from the feast and swam upward. It sensed a disturbance in the water: unusual currents and vibrations. Upward to a roof of shimmering brightness lit by the rising sun. Dark shapes surrounded by clouds of bubbles were disturbing the glimmering veil of the lake’s surface. The unusual vibrations intensified, frightening the king-pike. Still it rose, drawn by impulse. Finally it broke through, hovering between worlds of water and air, glassy eyes staring. Images implanted themselves – high, threatening prows, painted hulls, sails, oars, shadows – incomprehensible to the fish. But it understood danger. With a flick of silvery tail, it swam back down towards the lake bed to lurk among reeds until its meal had been digested and another must be found.

Just as the pike broke water and took fright, Hsiung emerged from a hatch in his paddlewheel battleship and climbed on deck. Like the fish he surveyed the horizon. What he saw made him glad.

Ships flying the vermilion flags of Yueh Fei and the Red Turban cause were advancing across the lake – nearly two hundred, each loaded with soldiers, marines and sailors. The autumn sky was blue and cloud-chased, the morning hopeful. The dawn’s flush mirrored a return of colour to his own cheeks after months of dissipation and banquets, striving always for mirth, led by the moods of Ying-ge. Those moods were part of her fascination. Yet, somehow, away from her judging eye and subtly conveyed disapproval, away from her radiant expressions of affection, he felt a new energy. When a servant rushed up offering a bowl of breakfast wine he waved it away.

‘Bring me pure lake water,’ he commanded. ‘Seeing the lake will bring us victory I wish to honour it!’

The officers clustered round him applauded this clever sentiment, so that Hsiung felt like a Noble Count indeed. Already he no longer required medicines. Though intended to renew his vigour, the draughts often left him listless and dull. No need for such potions now! After his victory he would never need them again.

‘Fetch Admiral Won-du!’ he commanded.

Coloured flags flew to summon the Admiral, who obligingly left the huge, rectangular floating castle used as his flagship. There were ten such monstrous vessels in the Yueh Fei fleet, each large enough to contain hundreds of marines. Their role was critical to Hsiung’s plan of attack: sail up to the fortified harbour walls of Hou-ming, lower ramps and storm the defences. Then Hou-ming would lie beneath his knife like the throat of a panting, exhausted deer, its mouth frothing, eyes rolling helplessly … Hsiung felt the dark lights stir and gasped so loudly some of his officers exchanged curious glances. He must not think that way again! Had he learned nothing from the Buddha’s Caves? How hard it was to be burdened with a foreknowledge of torment!

At that moment Admiral Won-du clambered aboard Hsiung’s battleship; like his maternal cousin, Ying-ge, he was unusually handsome and rosy-cheeked. His cold, watchful eyes, however, suggested a calculating character. Won-du was known as a swordsman and Ying-ge had often implied – in the subtlest of terms, of course – he might even be a match for his master, the Noble Count. Perhaps that was why Hsiung frowned as the Admiral bowed, though there were more pressing reasons.

‘Admiral, what is your report?’ he demanded, taking a seat bolted onto the gently swaying deck. Again Won-du bowed.

‘The enemy flee before us, sire!’

Although light ships shadowed the rebel fleet and occasionally disappeared over the horizon, none had dared to engage. Hsiung stirred in his chair. The danger lay in losing the element of surprise. Although Prince Arslan must know the rebels were displaying their strength, the Mongols could scarcely imagine they would be bold enough to assault Hou-ming itself. Even now, so late in the campaign, just a few picked officers were aware of Hsiung’s exact intentions.