Taming Poison Dragons (31 page)

‘Look at that tower,’ said Mi Feng.

I peered across the battlefield. Flags of different colours were being raised and lowered on a watchtower.

‘What of it?’

‘An observer up there is guiding the artillery behind the walls,’ he said.

‘What nonsense!’ I scoffed.

He glanced at me, then shrugged. Yet as he had predicted, water barrels began to fall among our artillery, several landing in the crowds of men hauling at the ropes.

A few unfortunates were instantly crushed, a terrible end.

But the casualties were light.

‘Come now!’ I said, less certain.

A fresh flight of projectiles curved up from the city.

These trailed smoke. Down, down they came with a loud whoosh. Some exploded in mid-air, others hit the earth.

Wherever they fell pandemonium broke out, for instead of water, the barrels contained burning powder, jagged pot-tery, and flint.

As long as I live I shall remember it. Those striking the siege engines at once destroyed them, roaring like enraged dragons. Wood and clouds of smoke rose amidst the screams. More terrible were those fire-barrels falling among the conscripted peasants as they hauled desperately on their ropes.

When the smoke cleared, scores lay dead or wounded, twitching pitifully in piles. Wailing filled the air. Yet any peasants who tried to flee were beaten back to their posts by soldiers.

Again a flight curved like fiery geese from the city.

Again, explosions made my horse rear. Mi Feng watched impassively from his saddle. Within half an hour, our once-proud siege engines were either burning or mere piles of shattered timber. Scores of men lay on the dusty earth, many still alive as they smouldered. My nostrils caught the aroma of roasting flesh. To my shame, for we had not eaten since dawn, I thought of roast mutton.

Immediately I retched and Mi Feng had to steady my horse. Bile choked my throat and nose.

It was merely a foretaste.

*

Our journey to the North Western Frontier had prepared us for the possibility of defeat.

We had left the capital in late October and made good progress on the road. Su Lin filled my thoughts. I was subdued and morose even in my sleep. Mi Feng, however, became more alert with each 
li
 we travelled. At his insistence we shared a room at night and he made a point of wedging the door with blocks of wood he had carved for the purpose. After a week on the road I mustered sufficient spirit to question such precautions. For the first time since my misfortunes began, he grew angry with me.‘Are you a child?’ he snapped.

I was speechless before his impudence.

‘Don’t you realise you’re not meant to return from the frontier?’ he roared. ‘How do you know Lord Xiao hasn’t decided you won’t even reach there?’

‘That is ridiculous,’ I blustered. ‘It would be murder!’

‘Get off your horse!’ he commanded.

We were on an isolated stretch of the highway.

‘I do not answer to a servant!’ I shouted back.

Then, to my amazement, he leapt from his mount and dragged me to the ground. He stood in front of me and whipped out a long knife from his belt. To my horror, he grabbed me by the chest and held the blade to my throat.

Its point tickled my fluttering windpipe.

‘Yun Cai is dead!’ he cried, then let me go and stalked back to the horses.

I stood on the dusty road, panting in consternation.

‘Are you mad?’ I stammered. ‘Of course you are!’

‘Yun Cai is dead,’ he repeated, furiously. ‘You have a fine sword and you can’t even defend yourself. Pah!’

He spat at my pony, which shied nervously.

‘Paper is my shield and ink is my sword,’ I protested, loftily. ‘I am a scholar, not a barbarian, you dog!’

‘That is why you are dead,’ he replied.

It is said a good friend’s advice hurts, a bad friend’s never. Though I longed to dismiss him there and then, I must confess, I dared not. As suddenly as it had arisen, his flare of temper faded. He got on his knees and, shame-faced, pressed his forehead to the road.

‘Forgive me, sir,’ he said. ‘I have done wrong. But you scare me. You’re too, too. . .’

In a fury, I struggled onto my horse and rode away.

When he caught up, I did not discharge him, but stead-fastly refused to acknowledge his existence. Indeed, I sulked like a boy. That evening, as we rested at an inn, I asked timidly if he knew how to use a sword. Foolish question. Whatever he had learnt during his captivity among the barbarians seemed to involve some kind of weapon.

So he became my tutor. When we paused on our journey, he made me brandish P’ei Ti’s gift until my arm ached. And if I didn’t scream like a madman as I hacked the wooden targets he constructed, Mi Feng would grow surly and mutter: ‘Yun Cai is dead.’ If I showed the proper spirit, he chuckled and urged: ‘That’s it! Cut deep! Stamp on his face! Doesn’t it feel good?’ And I was alarmed to discover it felt very good. Most gratifying, indeed! Lord Xiao’s body received a thousand imaginary gashes at my hands, and with each blow I experienced a thrill of power.

Afterwards, however, I felt ashamed.

The inns near the frontier were full of strange rumours concerning the rebels. Now it was Mi Feng’s turn to suffer, for he was inordinately superstitious.

It seemed the rebellion of Wang Tse was no ordinary uprising. The initial cause was banal enough. The local Prefect had embezzled money and grain, starving the city of Pinang and its garrison until neither could tolerate the abuse. A mob stormed the Prefect’s enclosure, slaughtering all they found, adult or child. In Wang Tse the rebels had chosen an admirable leader. Many believed he was not just a soldier, but a sorcerer.

Everywhere we heard tales of his forbidden powers. It was said that, even as a common Captain of Artillery, Wang Tse had married a sorceress who taught him many useful spells. His wife’s father had owned a magic mirror and when her mother decided to burn it, appalled by its dark promptings, the ashes whirled around her and she became pregnant. The fruit of this unnatural conception, Wang Tse’s wife, was no less than a fox fairy in human form, able to conjure up soldiers and cavalry from paper and beans. Certainly his forces never seemed to diminish.

Of course I smiled at such fanciful notions. The idea that demons would raise a rebellion in out-of-the-way Pinang seemed absurd. Why not choose the capital itself?

Then we learned the first army sent to crush the rebels had been slaughtered almost to a man, mainly because of a mysterious sandstorm, for Wang Tse could conjure wind and weather. Still I pretended to attribute the disaster to natural causes.At last we reached the mountain passes leading to Pinang and joined a train of fifty wagons carrying supplies to the front. The roadside was littered with white bones, for the region had endured many battles during the previous Emperor’s reign, as he struggled to maintain the Silk Road’s flow of wealth into the Empire.

*

By now every man in the army had heard dark rumours concerning Wang Tse’s power. Most kept a constant watch over their shoulder, for the sorcerer’s wife sometimes flew above our troops at night, scattering an invisible ink which caused premature death by painting unlucky characters across a man’s forehead. One sergeant, who had been at the siege from the beginning, told me a strange tale:

‘I was with the first army,’ he said. ‘We got as far as the city gates, when suddenly we were covered in a fog of sand and smoke. A most devilish wind was blowing, sir!

We were driven into the marshes on the south side of the city. Well, everyone knows the rest. I’m lucky to be talking to you, sir! We lost two-thirds of our men, sir! That’s why they’ve sent a new general to take charge.’

‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

‘Field Marshal Wen Po,’ replied the sergeant.

Of course the name was familiar. Who had not heard of Wen Po? Less well-known was that this same illustrious Wen Po was Lord Xiao’s cousin. If my tongue hadn’t been parched from the dusty mountain road – it was a barren range, all rock and sandstone crag, populated by vultures – it would have gone bone dry. The web Lord Xiao had spun around me tightened yet again.

Later that day we arrived at Pinang, and witnessed the burning of the siege engines. Could sorcery have guided Wang Tse’s missiles? It is hard to doubt what everyone knows to be true.

We were guided through a large encampment to a wind-picked hillside overlooking the western ramparts of Pinang. By now I was sufficiently recovered from my queasiness to look around. The roads were full of wounded men hobbling back to their camps. Down below, in front of the ramparts, siege engines still burned and acrid smoke billowed. I was surprised to notice many of the dead were simply left to smoulder where they had fallen.

Yet I needed to clear my mind. An important event awaited me. For I must meet the clerks who were to be my underlings.

‘With all due respect, sir,’ advised Mi Feng. ‘You’ve got to show who’s boss right from the start. Find a reason to slap one of them about.’

‘I have never beaten you,’ I replied. ‘Yet you seem to respect me.’

He considered this for a moment, then concluded: ‘Even so, it won’t do no harm.’

Of course he was right. I dismounted beside a latrine and swapped travelling clothes for my official uniform, much to the amusement of several cooks squatting in the trench, who shouted ribald comments, while pointing up the hillside at the Bureau of Fallen Heroes.

Then we rode up the steep slope to a small, miserable hut. As I looked across the basin of hills enclosing the city, hundreds of campfires glittered in the dusk. The cold wind moaned and an eerie, desolate light lit the mountain peaks, so that the winding Silk Road glowed as it uncurled westwards, vanishing into the distant horizon.

Pinang was dark and silent below us, except for a few torches on the city walls.

I dismounted stiffly and smoothed my uniform. An orange glow shone through the open doorway of the hut, and I could hear voices muttering. I approached quietly and glanced through the low entrance. Within lay a scene of wretched disorder. Here was my office, an outpost of government, yet it would have disgraced a slovenly thief.

Three men in threadbare uniforms crouched round a small fire, built within a circle of stones. Their faces were gaunt and unshaven. More like brigands than honourable clerks dedicated to His Imperial Majesty’s service. On a low table were piles of documents. As I watched, one of the clerks, not much older than myself, reached up and took one of the scrolls. Tearing a strip of paper, he rolled it into a taper and used it to light a small lamp. His eyes wandered to the doorway, and he froze. I glowered into his startled face. The others followed his gaze. The room was silent except for the crackle of dried ferns and brush-wood on the fire. They exchanged nervous glances.

Finally, I said in a quiet voice:

‘Bring me that paper you have used to light your lamp.’

The young man rose and brought it over sullenly. His fellows did not move. A bad sign. Given my uniform, they should have been on their knees.

I plucked the paper from his hand and slowly unrolled it. Then I glanced over the writing. An inventory of ink cakes used during the last year. He cringed a little at this proof of negligence, but only a little. Now was the moment when I either gained their respect or became their pet. So without a word, I slapped him as hard as I could across the face. After my recent sword practise it must have been a fine blow, for he keeled over with a cry.

‘Get out!’ I roared. ‘The lot of you!’

They scrambled to their feet and lined up outside. For the next few minutes, I harangued and railed, conscious that Mi Feng was watching with approval. Then I ordered them to collect their blankets and find somewhere to sleep, promising they would be thoroughly questioned at dawn. Mi Feng arranged my own bedding and we spent an uneasy night, disturbed by the low muttering of the wind, and the clerks, outside.

Lord Xiao’s written instructions were clear. I should supervise The Bureau of Fallen Heroes. A fine title for a petty office! Our duty was to record all losses among the troops, either through battle or disease, with due reverence to the proper military authorities. ‘As and when the opportunity arose’, we were to send full reports of our progress to the capital.

The pointlessness of this mission was obvious. Firstly, such a task belonged to the military administrators, who naturally resented our presence. Not least because many claimed the wages of dead soldiers while pretending they were still alive. Secondly, our reports would end up in a great mass of paper in the Finance Ministry, unread and unregarded.

Of course the real function of the Bureau of Fallen heroes was to punish any underlings who displeased Lord Xiao. Perhaps I should not have been so hard on the clerks for we were all cranking the same wheel. Yet I was determined to vanquish Lord Xiao’s malice by a most ridiculous method. I would fulfil my mission, however meaningless, with exemplary diligence and vigour. In this way, I reasoned, pride might be retained, my worth confirmed for all to see.

The next morning I summoned the clerks into the hut, one by one, and grilled them. Each entered half-frozen from a miserable night beneath the stars. I had not intended them to be terrified, yet they were.

One had been exiled here for answering back to Lord Xiao’s secretary (this was the scroll burner). The second had been drunk when Lord Xiao unexpectedly inspected his office and had broken into a tirade about the conditions under which he was expected to work. The last had offended Lord Xiao by giving him the nickname ‘Squeaky Rat Voice’, which his childhood friend treacherously reported in order to gain a promotion.

I learned that my predecessor as Bureau Chief – who had made the mistake of protesting about financial irregularities Lord Xiao wished to cover up – had died for no apparent reason within a week of reaching Pinang. His official hat and robes hung forlornly by the door. Since then they had drawn their weekly rations of millet and rice and tried to stay inconspicuous. Their main duty consisted of guarding against soldiers from the neighbouring camp who, as I was told solemnly, ‘were ten times worse than any rebels’. Not a single list of the fallen had been compiled.