Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 164: Strategy

Pavilion Mistress shook her head, her anger mingled with frustration. "By heavens, young master, you task me too heavily! I did nothing beyond my right, indeed my duty. The demonics were beaten—or so I'm told by both the town official and the king. Why should I not expand my holdings at the expense of some old trees?

And when the killings started—young master, understand that I had no idea the killings were connected, not until—"

Wuyi leaned forward. "Let me tell you what I think," he said. "Xingchen unmasked a traitor and died for it."

The Pavilion Mistress nodded. "It is possible. She volunteered to go to the outlying holdings when, ordinarily, I would have gone."

"She was your right hand? The post your new right hand now holds?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No. She held more power than the other elders, but she was too young to hold a significant position."

"And she was widely disliked," Meiying interjected. The Pavilion Mistress flinched but did not deny it.

Wuyi rested his head in his hands. "Never mind. We're here now, and so are they. It's my guess that the Talons, the demonics, or both, were going to kill you and seize the Pavilion and the stronghold; Xingchen thwarted their plans somehow, either by confronting the traitor or by taking your place. We may never know." He shook his head.

The Pavilion Mistress looked at her hands. "I loved her," she said softly.

Wuyi sighed, his voice gentle. "I will do my best to hold this fortress and protect you. But, my lady, I still feel you know something more. There's something personal about all this, and you still have a traitor within your walls." When she didn't respond, he stood up and handed her a cup of wine.

"Not your usual contract, Young Master," she said.

"My lady, this is my first contract: You are not the only one here trying to keep things hidden and manipulate. But my members have handled many such cases. Before we joined the brotherhood, we were warriors for hire for lords—you'd be surprised how much these lords pay just to defeat rival lords.

Here it's also a war between rival lords, except this time the rival lord can't be negotiated with or deterred from his path or simply murdered, and those are all good ways of avoiding a direct conflict. But in every other respect, you and the demonic are feuding border lords. You've taken a piece of his land, and in turn, he's raiding you and threatening your home."

As Wuyi spoke, his warriors began to trickle in—Baijian, Yun Ming, Shen, and others. A few more had not come, but his Qi masters were here, so those absent, either asleep or on patrol, would learn of the events anyhow.

"Sit wherever you can," Wuyi said. "I'll try to make this brief. I'd say we're almost surrounded, and our enemy hasn't yet bothered to build trench lines or ballistas. Yet he has enough force to close off the path and every road around us. He's supported by nomads—those men and women who live outside the empire, for those of you unfamiliar with local terms," Wuyi gave Yun Ming a mirthless smile.

"I'm guessing he has a hundred or more nomad warriors, a thousand swamplings and Duskreavers, and perhaps fifty to a hundred other creatures of the types we've already seen—flying serpents, daemonics, and the like." He shrugged. "I'm guessing our enemy is a potent Qi cultivator of Qi Lord level."

Baijian whistled. "Lucky we didn't get ourselves killed trying for their camp then."

Wuyi nodded. "When you move fast and plan well, you deserve a little luck," he said. "But yes, I'd say that getting away with that raid seized our luck with both hands."

"So now what?" Meiying asked.

"First, Yun Ming, you are now the Leader of the warriors, not just your group. Meiying and Baijian, you both will be second in command. We need more people who can fight; if not Qi warriors, there is always strength in numbers. Shen, are there any likely young warriors among your refugees? The merchants?"

Shen scratched under his chin. "Archers? Maybe. Qi warriors? Not a one. But I'll tell you what there is down in my little kingdom—there are two wagon loads of armor in barrels, some nice swords, and a dozen heavy crossbows.

Some of them are low-grade Qi armor."

"Better than what we have?" Wuyi asked.

"Not better than yours, but yeah, better than many of our warriors," Shen licked his lips. "The swords are good, the spearheads better. The heavy crossbows are as heavy as anything we have."

The Pavilion Mistress smiled. "Those were for me, anyway."

Wuyi nodded. "Take it all. Tell the owners we'll give them chits for it and settle up at the end if they are still alive. How heavy are these crossbows?"

"Bolts a forearm in length and thick as a child's wrist," Shen said.

"Allocate them to warriors as you see fit," Wuyi said.

Wuyi looked at the Pavilion Mistress. "I want to build an outwork." "Anything you like," she said.

"I want to put all your farmers and all the refugees to work, and I need your help to ensure that I get no insolence from them. I need them to work quickly and quietly," Wuyi took out a scroll of parchment and unrolled it. "We want a deep V-shaped wall on both sides with ditches outside the walls, built three hundred steps from Fort Castle, where the road from the Lower Town starts up the hill.

It will allow us to send soldiers and supplies freely back and forth from the Lower Town to fort Castle. Put boards all along the bottom so men can walk quickly, without being seen, and install three bridges over it, so our warriors can easily move about the fields. See this cutaway? A nice hollow space under the boards. Good place for a little surprise." He smiled, and all his followers smirked back.

"We'll also put a wall along the Gate path, running all the way to the top. We should have done it in the first place, anyway. Ballista Towers here and here," he rubbed his chin. "First, we'll install covered positions for these new frame crossbows—here and here—so that if they attack while we're building, it's all a trap and they lose a couple of their own for nothing.

Lastly, we'll improve the path from the side gate to the Lower Town."

All the members nodded.

Except Baijian.

Baijian spat. "We don't have the men to hold all that wall," he said. "Much less in both directions."

"No, we don't. But building it will keep the peasants quiet and busy, and when our enemy attacks, we're going to make him pay for it, and then let him have it."

Baijian grinned. "Of course we are."

Wuyi turned to the others. "I'm assuming that our enemy doesn't have a lot of experience in fighting humans," he said. "But even if he does, we won't have lost much with these distractions."

The Pavilion Mistress looked pained. Her eyes had a hunted look, and she turned away. "He is a man. Or he was, once."

Wuyi winced. "We face a man?"

The Pavilion Mistress nodded. "I have felt the brush of his power. He has some small reason to—to fear me."

Wuyi looked at her, gazing as intently as a lover into her flecked brown eyes, and she held his gaze as easily as he held hers.

"It is none of your affair," she said primly.

"You are not telling us things that would be of value to us," Wuyi said.

"You, on the other hand, are the very soul of openness," she replied.

"You quarrel like couples," Baijian muttered under his breath.

Wuyi looked at Shen. "We cut the patrols down to two a day, and we launch them at my whim. Our sole remaining interest is getting any more convoys in here safely, or in turning them away. Xiang Town is almost gone. As my people saw him summoning meteorites from the sky. Meiying—how far did you go today?"

She shrugged. "Eight Li?"

Wuyi nodded. "Tomorrow—no, tomorrow we won't send anyone. Not a man. Tomorrow we dig. The day after, we send four groups, in all directions except west. The day after that, I'll take half the warriors west along the road, as fast as we can go.

We'll aim for twenty li, pick up merchants or convoys we can, and get a look at Xiang fortress. Then back here, all with enough force to kill whatever opposes us."

Baijian nodded. "Yes, but against a hundred nomads, in an ambush, we'll just be dead. And that's without a couple of big demonics and maybe a pair of flying serpents and a hundred duskreavers to eat our bodies afterwards. Eh?"

Wuyi wrinkled his lips. "If we surrender the initiative and hunker down here, you're all dead too," he said. "Unless the king comes with his army to relieve us."

The Pavilion Mistress agreed.

Wuyi sighed. Boy, was he glad for having the Statue of Knowledge.