Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 197: And He Laughed.

Han couldn't make his mind work. Run? Stay? He was gripped by fear. Dmonics moved along the watercourse, scarcely disturbing the leaves. They traveled quickly, passing from left to right before him.

Eventually, he realized they weren't going to turn and rend him limb from limb. But that didn't stop his breath from coming in low pants, nor the deep cold from settling into his bones. And then they were gone, away to the east, towards the river. It was a long time before his breathing returned to normal.

When Master Zhang found him at sunset, still lying there, he burst into tears. Master Zhang embraced him. "I'm sorry," the Qi warrior said. "You did well." Han was ashamed of his tears, but he couldn't stop them.

"They got between us and you," Master Zhang went on. "I couldn't risk my Qi warriors for you. That – that is how it is out here." He patted Han. "You did very well."

They moved camp in the same silence that the Qi warriors did everything. They went north, and Han saw that the tracks made by the demonics had the shape of human feet. He looked very closely, and he couldn't see anything but bare feet and soft shoes.

A young lotus warrior nodded to him. He cleared his throat quietly and leaned close. "Nomads," he said. Han knew enough to know that the warrior was honoring him by speaking. "I thought they were wild demonic beasts." He looked at the warrior. The young man shook his head, put a finger to his lips, and rode on.

That night, Feng put an arm around him. "Sorry, lad. It should have been me left with the baggage. I don't even know why we're here." Master Zhang came and offered each of them a cup of warm rice wine. He sat on his heels, still armed from head to toe in Qi armor. "You are here to take my news to the king– when I have news."

He looked back and forth. "Tomorrow."

Feng drank his rice wine. "What did you learn today?"

"The fortress still holds," Master Zhang said. "And holds the bridge, as well. Pavilion Mistress has done far better than I expected of her, and I owe her an apology."

Feng nodded. "I'll ride at first light."

Master Zhang shook his head. "The woods this side of the river are full of the enemy. Nomads, Talons, Duskreavers, swamplings, and worse." He shook his head. "Tomorrow night we'll make a demonstration. A loud demonstration. We will draw every creature of darkness like—" he smiled "—like moths to a flame." He nodded.

"Then you'll ride."

✶ ✶ ✶

Just a few leagues north of the hillock where Master Zhang camped, Wuyi stood in the castle gateway with Pavilion Mistress. Behind him were most of the Qi warriors, led by Yun Ming, and twenty attendants and servers led by Zhen. Every man wore a pavallion's robe over his Qi armor.

He gathered them in a circle. "What a very scary passel of pavilion ladies we make," he said. "The Lotus Pavilion will need to be a little more careful in their selection process." Pavilion Mistress laughed. The men going on the raid managed a sort of nervous titter.

"This needs to be fast, so listen up. It's like taking a town in the south. Sneak to the wall. Ladders up on the whistle. That's all there is. When you are in, head for the towers at the gate.

We get the men that are stuck in below there with the enemy and back we come. Don't leave your wounded behind. You know all this." He grinned and turned to the head warrior of the fort. "You must keep the gate open until the raid returns. But don't leave it open for a few men. You hear me?

When the raid is in, close the gate." He turned to Xianyu Ma. "When you see my red fire, pound the town with everything you have."

Xianyu Ma nodded. "The Bridge Castle has the word, too." Beside him, Xilai crossed his arms and winked.

Wuyi nodded. "You all know Baijian would come to get you. Let's go get Baijian."

A murmur.

He jumped down from his barrel and led the way—not to the gate, but to the medicine hall stairs, and Pavilion Mistress walked with him. She led them through the lower medicine hall, and then down steep steps to a basement, and then down another set to a well—a spring in the deep hillside, a cleft off to the right with lights burning.

Wuyi could feel an immense welling of power. Raw power.

Neither righteous nor demonic.

He reached into the thick Qi and started absorbing the Qi that had been sent to his statues. He dropped back into the cleft and came to a long storage room, packed to the rafters with wagon sides and barrels of dried meat. It took long minutes for men to shift the wagon beds. There was a door behind them. Pavilion Mistress drew a key from her girdle. Their eyes met.

"The key deactivates the array, Now you know all my secrets," she whispered.

"I doubt it," he said.

"I am quite sure I should not give you this," she said. She smiled bitterly and handed him a small scrap of curled parchment, hard as an old leaf in his hand, smooth as a woman's skin.

"I could disapprove, as her spiritual mother," Pavilion Mistress went on. "I could just be a jealous woman." She shrugged. "Elder Yueli brought this note to me and confessed that she had passed another." She met his eyes. "Liwei is not for you, Young Master. She is greater—far greater—than we."

He smiled. "That is not what I expected you to say." He bowed. "I beg your indulgence." He turned aside and held the scrap up to a torch on the wall in a clamp. He read, and he smiled. It was a message from Liwei apologizing for her behavior.

He turned back to Pavilion Mistress. She shook her head. "You are pleased."

"How is she greater?" Wuyi asked.

Pavilion mistress did not answer.

The column had begun to move. The door was open, and the lower door, too.

"Thank you," he said.

She smiled. "You have brought me no peace, young man." She waved her hand. "Go—kill our enemies. Triumph." She sounded tired.

The company went down through Pavilion Mistress's passage and entered a maze of stone corridors. To those who knew what to look for, it was obvious that men had not made these curving corridors. But they were empty, although, to Wuyi, every yard of them reeked of the power that had been used in storming them more than a thousand years ago, more than two thousand years ago.

And still, the power lingered, like the smell of smoke after a fire.

Eventually, Pavilion Mistress's will-o'-wisp led them to a double door of tallow, bound with iron, copper, and silver. To Wuyi's eye, it was covered in runes—powerful wards drawn. He'd never seen anything like it. She'd given him the key. He held it with renewed respect.

Some of the warriors were very much on edge. An hour in silent, haunted corridors deep under the earth isn't the best preparation for combat. The sounds behind him were of men on the edge of panic. He turned and cast a soft light. "Ready, Men?" he asked softly.

More and more men stumbled into the antechamber in front of the great doors. "We'll come out into the shrine of the Lower Town," he said. "The roof is collapsed. Don't run. Out here, an injured foot or Qi exhaustion is a death sentence and we're not coming back this way. So don't linger." He couldn't explain why.

He was about to open the fortress's Array defenses, for a moment. He imbued his voice with calm. Humor. Normalcy.

"Let's go get Baijian," he said. He smiled at Yun Ming, who, praise be, smiled back. And he turned the key.

✶ ✶ ✶

Luding felt the change. He was busy resighting his battery, wishing again that he had a array master or an expert scholar—some reliable human calculator who could command the tedious business of putting the great rocks on target. Exrech had proven uninterested. And far too slow. Unwilling to build anything.

He watched the swamplings dig, raising a new mound out of range of the new rock thrower on the fortress. He knew this new battery represented a heavy defeat in time and effort.

He was trying not to acknowledge that he had to go into the debatable ground and destroy the fortress's new ballista with his own power. He had no other weapon available with the necessary reach. And he would have to squander power like an angry boy to breach the fortress's millennium-old defenses.

That would leave him weak.

And then he felt the shift. He tasted the air—wasted valuable time sending a raven stooping over the walls, and he saw the nimbus of fire on his former apprentice's hands, saw the great ballista cranked all the way back, saw—

—nothing.

His raven was struck by an arrow and tumbled out of the air.

He cursed, disoriented by the loss of his connection. Reached for another—

The fortress's Array defenses were down.

He stepped out from behind his new siege mound. Raised an arm, and let fly a bolt of pure gray lightning.

And he laughed.