Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 192: Contempt

Yun Ming had halted the Raid group two-thirds of the way down the ridge when it became clear that the breach had fallen. Now the Raid group turned and rode silently back up the road.

Wuyi was waiting at the gate. "Right," he said to Yun Ming. "Good call."

Yun Ming dismounted, gave his reins to a farmer – the attendants were all in armor – and started to turn away. "The Lower Town is lost," he said.

"No," Wuyi said. "Not yet."

Over their heads, the ballista lashed out again.

"You are risking everything on the hope that we will be saved. By the king." Yun Ming was obviously restraining himself. The words were very carefully enunciated.

Wuyi put a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, besides, the Lotus Blossom Sect should not watch the pavilion get destroyed. And you might not know this, but the king has arrived near Xiang Stronghold," he said.

"Heavens be with us," Yun Ming sighed.

✶ ✶ ✶

Just a week after Wuyi and his group arrived at Yushan Fortress, two hundred leagues and more south of Qinglian, well west of Leidian, the capital of Tianqin, stood the Stronghold of Qingyun.

This magnificent fortress, perched on a solid rock outcrop, was a century old, with high battlements, four slender towers with arched windows topped with jade copper-gilt roofs, and a grand arched gate that made some visitors exclaim that the entire structure must have been built by celestial beings.

Qi Master Li Zhang, one of the leading elders of the Lotus Sect's branch in Tianqin Kingdom, knew better. It had been built by a wealthy lord who had donated it to the Lotus Sect to save his soul.

It was a very comfortable place to live, a dream for a soldier who had spent most of his life sleeping on the cold hard ground. Master Li Zhang was standing in his tunic, in front of a roaring fire, with a piece of talisman in his hand – a small piece of talisman that had just turned almost perfectly black. He turned it over and over in his hands and winced at the pain in his shoulder.

The battle with a demon had hurt him badly recently.

It was a chilly morning, and from the glazed glass window, he could see that there had been a frost – but a mild one. Spring was in the air. Flowers, crops, new life.

He sighed.

Jino, his new servant boy, appeared with a cup of warm tea and his clean robe. "My lord?" he said, an evocative question for two words. The boy was far too intelligent to spend his life serving tea for old men.

"Trousers, tunic, and a robe, lad," Master Li Zhang said. "Summon Elder Wang Tao and my disciple."

Wang Tao, the second in command of the Order of the Lotus Sect in Tianqin Kingdom, was in his study before Master Li Zhang had his trousers laced to his tunic – something he could not get used to allowing a servant to do.

"My lord," Wang Tao said formally.

"What's our fighting strength right now?" Master Li Zhang asked.

"In the fort?" Wang Tao asked. "I can find you sixteen Qi warriors fit to ride this morning. In the domain? Perhaps fifty, if I give you the old men and boys."

Master Li Zhang lifted a talisman, and Wang Tao went pale.

"And if we promote all our disciples who are ready?" Master Li Zhang asked.

Wang Tao nodded. "Then perhaps seventy." He rubbed his beard.

"Do it," said Master Li Zhang. "This isn't some minor incursion. She would never call us unless it was war."

✶ ✶ ✶

Li Xian clamped down on his impatience, and it turned, as it always did, to anger.

The blossoming of his rage always made him feel sinful, dirty, and less of a man and a holy warrior, and so, while riding easily through the high ridges and spring flowers of Tianqin's fertile heartland, he reined up his second horse and dismounted, to the confusion of his warriors, and knelt in the dirt beside the road to pray.

Praying for prolonged periods always steadied him.

Images floated to the surface of his thoughts as he imagined his heavenly guide; as he pictured himself as a holy warrior riding to the rescue of the Holy land, or inserted himself in meditation into the adoration of everyone, a lowly caravan guard sitting on his horse behind the princes who adored the newborn lamb.

Contempt broke through his reverie. He despised the King of Tianqin, who stopped in each town to play to his peasants, win their sighs and their raucous laughter, still their fears and give them law.

It was done with too much drama and it took too much time, and it was obvious – obvious to a child – that something was happening in the east that required the instant application of the kingdom's warrior's fist.

He felt Disgust. The warriors of Tianqin were slow, slothful, full of vice and barbarity. They drank, they ate too much, belched at the table, and never, ever trained in martial arts.

Li Xian and his group traveled from village to village in full armor, head to toe, with heavy quilted robes under hauberks of Qi armor surmounted by shining steel plate – three layers of protection, which every Qi warrior in the west wore every day of his life – to the village, to the temple, or to ride out with his lady.

The demonic Wild had not made a major incursion in the west in a century, yet their Qi warriors stood ready to fight at every moment.

Here, where stands of untamed trees covered every ridge, and where an incursion of the demonic Wild threatened a major city just over the horizon, the warriors, the Qi adepts, traveled abroad in vibrant robes with elegant, long trailing sleeves, cloud-patterned shoes, and intricately wrapped headpieces, with their armor stored in wicker baskets and wooden chests.

At this moment, four days from Xiang Fortress, a group of the King's younger initiates and disciples were hawking, riding their palfreys along the ridge tops to the west. He wanted to punish them for their light-hearted foolishness. These effete youths needed to be taught what war was. They needed to learn to take off their silk gloves and feel the cold weight of steel on their soft hands.

He prayed, and praying made him better. He and his group that had come with a mission did not plan to join the king at the start but to achieve his goal, his master had told him to join the king in this war against the demonics.

He was able to smile to the King and nod to a young disciple who ill-manneredly galloped down the column, raising a cloud of dust, mounted on a hot-blooded Eastern mare worth a hundred gold liangs as a racehorse and worthless in a fight.

But when the army, which grew every day as contingents of Qi adepts, warriors, and archers joined from each village, each county, and each manor, settled for the night, Li Xian ordered his warriors to set his pavilion as far from the rest of the army as could be managed – out in the horse lines, surrounded by beasts.

He dined simply on soldiers' rations with his cousin, summoned his spiritual guide, Master Shen, to hear his sins of passion, and then, purified and spiritually clean, he bathed in water from the Yuntop , the mighty river that rolled by the door of his tent.

He dismissed his disciples and his servants, and he helped himself dry, listening to the sound of three thousand horses cropping grass on a beautiful spring evening. The smell of the wildflowers overpowered even the smell of the horses.

Dry, he dressed in a white robe and trousers, with a simple white changshan. He unrolled a small, precious rug from far to the west, and opened a portable shrine – two paintings hinged face to face for travel – one of Yan Yin and the other of the Buddha. He knelt before their images and prayed, and when he felt empty and clean, he opened himself.

And his mysterious master came.

"How are you, my disciple."

As he did every time the master came, Li Xian burst into tears. Because he never quite believed a visitation was real until the next one confirmed all of the past ones. His unbelief – his doubt – was its own punishment.

Through his tears, he bowed. "Bless me, Master, for I have failed you many times."

He tried never to look directly into its shining face, which seemed in memory to be made of beaten gold, but in fact looked more like mobile, sparkling pearl. Looking too closely might break the spell—

"It is not your error that the King of Tianqin did not do as we wished. It is not through you that this kingdom has been untimely assailed by the forces of Evil. But we will overcome."

"I succumb to rage, to contempt, to self-righteousness and anger."

"None of these will help you to be the best warrior in the world. Remember how you are when you fight, and be that man at all times."