Five Odd Honors (7 page)

Thundering Heaven had taken advantage of Loyal Wind’s retreat to manifest armor for himself. Blood leaked from beneath the metal-embossed leather plates. Thundering Heaven seemed to glory in the gore, wearing it as a savage might have worn garish war paint, grinning ferociously as he advanced on Loyal Wind.

Mounted, Loyal Wind had the advantage of height, but Thundering Heaven gained that of mobility. Moreover, Thundering Heaven’s sword was slightly longer than Loyal Wind’s, giving him the advantage of reach as well. He demonstrated this by slashing out and nicking Proud Gamble on the side of his neck.

The charm Loyal Wind had cast upon himself before entering the field did not automatically extend to his mount. He cursed his lack of foresight. Of course, Thundering Heaven would go for the horse. He was a tiger.

Proud Gamble screamed in pain, but he did not shy as a more usual horse would have done. In exile, Thundering Heaven had created the blade Treaty. Water Cloud had created the Rooster’s Talons. The Exile Rat had created an abacus that permitted him to calculate arcane matters as a more usual abacus sped along the calculation of wealth.

Loyal Wind had created no such tool. Instead, in the chestnut stallion, Proud Gamble, he had created the perfect war horse, brave and calculating, infused with almost human intelligence and understanding of the fighting arts. Into Proud Gamble, Loyal Wind had fused something of himself, in addition to memories of the best and bravest horses he had known as a mounted warrior.

When Loyal Wind had died, Proud Gamble had come with him into death. Perhaps this was because the steed was in some sense an extension of Loyal Wind. Perhaps it was because at the time of his death Loyal Wind was obsessed with himself and his own pains and gave little thought to the child heir he was leaving behind. For what ever reason, unlike Thundering Heaven who must make do with a secondary weapon, Loyal Wind augmented his abilities with the ideal weapon of his choice.

This, then, Loyal Wind calculated, gave him an advantage over Thundering Heaven, an advantage the other could not match.

Proud Gamble knew that if he shied or fled, this would give the enemy an advantage. He knew the weight of his iron-shod hooves and how they could crush bone, render muscle into bloody pulp. This understanding went beyond the rote training of a war horse to comprehension of the tactics involved, but even with this magical enhancement, Proud Gamble was not a human general, any more than the sword Treaty was a diplomat.

The stallion reared, seeking both to bring his rider clear of any danger from Thundering Heaven’s sword and to bring the power of his front hooves into play. He reared, and, as the tiger seeing the soft underbelly of his prey exposed strikes, so Thundering Heaven struck.

A tiger might have been foiled by the armor that protected some of Proud Gamble’s underbelly, but for all the glittering insanity in his eyes, Thundering Heaven had full possession of his human intellect.

His blow did not strike harmlessly against armor, but sliced deeply, cutting through the chestnut stallion’s hide and hair, ripping through muscle and into gut. Proud Gamble screamed. Although he attempted to bring down his hooves in a killing blow, some essential muscle or sinew had been severed and the strike fell short.

As Thundering Heaven’s blade cut into Proud Gamble’s belly, Loyal Wind realized that what he had believed was his advantage was, in this battle at least, a disadvantage. He had created the chestnut stallion to be an extension of his abilities. Somehow, Thundering Heaven was exploiting that link, making the stallion’s pain and debilitating weakness Loyal Wind’s own.

Through the pain, Loyal Wind suddenly grasped something of the nature of the blade Thundering Heaven wielded in Treaty’s place.

“The sword,” he gasped.

“Its name is Soul Slicer,” Thundering Heaven said, laughing as he sliced the air with the finely honed blade. “Philosophers teach that our souls have at least two parts, some argue for more, but even the most ignorant peasant knows of the hun and po souls. With Soul Slicer I can render a ghost into partially aware fragments. And, of course, I can transform the living into the dead.”

Loyal Wind felt Proud Gamble stumble as Thundering Heaven made another lightning-quick strike.

Throwing his weight onto his arms, Loyal Wind balanced himself against the chestnut stallion’s withers and heaved himself from the saddle before he could be crushed beneath the falling horse’s bulk. Thundering Heaven’s second blow had been to Proud Gamble’s right foreleg. Now Loyal Wind’s own right arm ached with an echo of the horse’s pain.

Limping from the force of his landing, Loyal Wind dragged himself to stand between Proud Gamble and further attack. He brought his sword around to block Thundering Heaven’s next blow, but a tearing pain in his gut made him slower than he should have been. Loyal Wind knew he was not bleeding, that nothing had actually cut him, but the pain was exquisitely real.

Loyal Wind parried Thundering Heaven’s attack, but he was aware that he had only succeeded because the Tiger was playing with him. Being already dead, Loyal Wind could not die, but he thought that what Thundering Heaven intended for him would be worse than death.

Dissolution.

Rendering into fragments that would vaguely remember who and what he had been, and that might take centuries to consolidate once more—if ever they did.

By contrast, death had been a mere transition of states.

Behind Loyal Wind, on the packed dirt, Proud Gamble was blowing red-tinged froth. Blood pooled from numerous wounds, sinking into the dry, packed dirt, making it a sticky, tacky mud.

Loyal Wind felt his own ch’i draining away, his protective spells fading to nothing. Before his ch’i was completely gone, he stretched his awareness along the thread that bound him to Proud Gamble. The stallion might be a magical construct, but its suffering was all too real.

Leaving himself unguarded, Loyal Wind snapped the bond. The chestnut horse ceased to breathe, ceased to suffer. Tears welled in Loyal Wind’s eyes, blurring them so that although he could see the flash of silver grey that meant Soul Slicer was descending upon him, that his own dissolution was imminent, he was unable to effectively block the attack.

He fell to the bloodied ground, determined that although he might weep, he would not scream.

Soul Slicer cut the air, but the blade did not strike Loyal Wind. A barrier flashed between him and the descending blade. The ground shook as if in grumbled protest at being fed so much blood. A glossy, blue-black flank filled Loyal Wind’s vision.

Loyal Wind smelled rank cattle sweat, saw the triangular head and the curving horns of a water buffalo. Nine Ducks, the Ox, had come to his rescue.

Loyal Wind could sense the protective spells that surrounded her, and knew then who had cast the barrier that had saved him.

Proud Gamble’s pain was fading from his limbs, but Loyal Wind still felt incredibly weak. With a certain shamed gratitude, for if he had not given in to impulse, he would not have needed rescue, he heard Nine Ducks speak.

“Get away, Loyal Wind,” she said, her voice coming from between the water buffalo’s lips. “I’ll cover your retreat.”

She spoke then to Thundering Heaven.

“There was a tale told when I was a girl, about a farmer who left his prized water buffalo to graze near a rice paddy while he returned to his hut for his midday meal. A short time later, a neighbor who farmed a nearby plot rushed in, chattering almost incoherently about the enormous tiger that had attacked him while he worked in his field, and how he had only escaped by the merest chance.

“The farmer grabbed a spear and ran to defend his prized buffalo, but when he arrived, the buffalo was grazing peacefully and the tiger was nowhere to be found. Nervously, the farmer came closer, hoping his neighbor had been exaggerating. Then, a few feet away from where the buffalo grazed he noticed a patch of cropped grass, dark with blood and adorned with fragments of black and orange and white fur.

“All that remained to prove that this mess had once been a tiger were the teeth and claws. The rest had been trampled to pulp.”

Loyal Wind had been backing away while Nine Ducks told this story. The Tiger was trembling with barely suppressed rage, but he was no fool. The protections the Ox had erected around herself would take time to break down. While the Tiger sought to do so, Nine Ducks would not be standing patiently watching.

There might well be another bloody stain on the killing field when she was finished.

“I merely sought to protect my guest from unwelcome intrusion,” Thundering

Heaven said, wiping Soul Slicer’s blade on his trousers, then stepping back so that he was between them and the entrance to the cave. “Do you seek to enter here?”

Nine Ducks considered, angling her head side to side so that the light glinted off her curving horns.

“I would like to speak with my old friend, Bent Bamboo.”

“I speak for him,” Thundering Heaven said, his arrogance returning. “I have told Loyal Wind the conditions under which Bent Bamboo would cooperate with your plans.”

“I heard,” Nine Ducks said. “Very well. I don’t believe those are Bent Bamboo’s terms, but I believe they are yours, and that you have placed yourself between us and the Monkey. Given what you claim that sword of yours can do, I can believe why he agreed to support your agenda.”

“Then we understand each other,” Thundering Heaven growled.

“I understand you,” Nine Ducks said, turning her back on the Tiger and walking away, her tuft-tipped tail swinging lazily side to side. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking you understand me. It might be your last mistake.”

Loyal Wind admired Nine Ducks’s courage as she sauntered over to him, never glancing back at the angry Tiger behind her. True, she was armored in heavy protective spells, but that did not mean she was immune to harm. Was she taunting the Tiger deliberately? Seeking, perhaps, to draw him away from the entrance to the cave?

Loyal Wind thought she was, and braced himself in case Thundering Heaven took the bait. However, the Tiger was too experienced a campaigner to give in to the rage that was apparent in every line of his body.

“Let’s go,” Nine Ducks said when she stood beside Loyal Wind. “We cannot achieve anything more here.”

Loyal Wind agreed. When they had returned to Nine Ducks’s pavilion alongside the lake, he accepted tea and refreshments.

“I’m sorry I didn’t reach you sooner,” Nine Ducks said. “The two of you shifted so quickly from debate to battle that I nearly did not have enough time to set my protections and come to your aid. Tell me, is Proud Gamble gone forever?”

Loyal Wind swallowed his tea around the hard lump that formed in his throat.

“Quite possibly. At the very least, I will need to re-create him. I lost so much ch’i in that encounter. . . . Where do you think Thundering Heaven acquired that sword? Surely he did not craft it himself.”

“You forget,” Nine Ducks replied. “Thundering Heaven is not the young man you remember. By the time he died, he was in his early seventies. Unlike many of us, who gradually shifted at least some of our attention to our daily lives, Thundering Heaven had done little with his life but perfect his knowledge of the fighting arts—and he did not neglect the arcane branches of those arts. It is quite possible he created that sword, but whether he did so in life or in death, I cannot say.”

Loyal Wind shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I felt . . . I don’t know what it was I felt, but there was something there, something horrible. I suppose it could have been Thundering Heaven himself, but if so his nature has become corrupted beyond anything I could recognize.”

“I saw madness in his eyes,” Nine Ducks replied, her voice soft. “What ever else Thundering Heaven was when he died, I do not think he was insane. What will you do next?”

“I will report to Shen Kung,” Loyal Wind said, “and ask whether he wishes to tell Pearl Bright of her father’s ultimatum, or whether he wishes me to do so.”

“Do you have the strength to make the contact?”

“You saved me before my ch’i drained completely away,” Loyal Wind said. “It will not be difficult to make the contact. Shen said he would be waiting.”

“Very well,” Nine Ducks said. “Away with you. Our time may be infinite, but the same is not true for our mortal associates.”

Loyal Wind rose to his feet and made a rather awkward bow.

“I owe you my continued existence, Nine Ducks. If there is anything I can do in return . . .”

The old woman looked up at him.

“There is.”

“Name it.”

“Stay away from Thundering Heaven. Next time he’ll be ready for both of us. He may be ready for an army.”

“I pity Pearl,” Loyal Wind said.

“Perhaps,” Nine Ducks said softly. “But I believe I also pity Thundering Heaven.”