Sons (23 page)

“You have done well not to be sick before this. Go out into the cool court.”

But the lad would not, and he stood his ground sturdily and Wang the Tiger was pleased at this and he said,

“If I am Tiger, you are fit to be a Tiger’s cub, I swear!”

And the lad was so pleased he grinned, and his teeth shone out of his white sick face.

When Wang the Tiger had thus done what he promised he would he went out into the courts to see what his men had done with the lesser robbers. It was a cloudy dark night, and the shapes of his men were but a little more solid and dark than the night. They waited and he commanded that torches be lit, and when they were flaring he saw that only a few men lay dead and he was pleased, for he had commanded that men were not to be wantonly killed and that they were to have the chance to choose if they would change their banner or not, if they were brave.

But Wang the Tiger’s work was not done yet. He was determined to storm the lair now that it was weakest and before the robbers who were left had any time to reinforce themselves. He did not stay even to see the old magistrate, but he sent word saying, “I will not claim a reward until I have stamped out this nest of snakes.” And he called to his men and they went through the dark night across the fields to the Double Dragon Mountain.

Now Wang the Tiger’s men did not follow him very willingly for they had fought already this night and the march was a good three miles or so and they must perhaps fight again and many of them had hoped to be allowed to loot in the city as a reward for their battle. They complained to him then saying,

“We fought for you and we risked our lives and you have not let us take any booty either. We have never served under so hard a master for we have never heard that soldiers must fight and have no booty; no, and not so much as touch a maid, either, and we have held ourselves off until we fought for you, and still you give us no freedom.”

At first Wang the Tiger would not answer this but he could not bear it when he heard several of them muttering together and he knew he must be cruel and hard or they would betray him. So he turned on them and slashed his fine sword whistling through the air and he roared at them,

“I have killed the Leopard and I will kill any and all of you and care nothing. Do you have no wisdom at all? Can we despoil the very place which we hope to be ours and turn the people against us with hatred the very first night? No more of these cursed words! When we come to the lair you may loot anything and take it all, except that you are not to force a woman against her will.”

Then his men were cowed and one said timidly, “But, captain, we were only joking.” And another said, half wondering, “But, captain, it was not I who complained, and if we do loot the lair where are we to live, for I thought we were to have the lair.”

Then Wang the Tiger answered sullenly, for he was still angry,

“We are no robber band and I am no common robber chief. I have a better plan if you will but trust me and not be fools. That lair shall be burned to the ground and the curse of those robbers shall pass from this countryside, so that men need fear them no more.”

Then his men were more astonished than ever, even his trusty men, and they said, one speaking for all,

“But what shall we be, then?”

“We shall be men of battle, but not robbers,” answered Wang the Tiger very harshly. “We will have no lair. We shall live in the city and in the magistrate’s own courts and we shall be his private army and we need fear no one for we shall be under the name of the state.”

Then the men fell silent in very awe of the cleverness of this leader of theirs, and their evil humor passed from them like a wind. They laughed aloud and they trusted to him, and they mounted the steps eagerly that led to the pass to the lair, and about them the fogs wreathed and curled in those mountains, and their torches smoked in the cold mists.

They came suddenly to the mouth of the pass and a guard was there so astonished he could not run, and one of the men, being very merry, ran him through with his sword before he could speak. Wang the Tiger saw this but he did not reprove his man for once, because it was but one he killed, and it is true that a captain cannot hold ignorant and wild men too closely in check, lest they turn and rend him. So he let the man be dead and they went on to the gates of the lair.

Now this lair was indeed like a village and it had a wall of rock hewn out of the mountain and welded together with clay and lime so that it was very strong and there were great iron-bound gates set into the wall. Wang the Tiger beat upon those gates, but they were locked fast and strong, and no answer came. When he beat again and still no answer came, he knew that those within had heard of what had befallen their leader, and doubtless some of the robbers had run back and warned the others, and either they had fled from the lair or they had entrenched themselves within the houses and prepared for attack.

Then Wang the Tiger bade his men prepare fresh torches out of the dried autumn grass that was about the lair and they set fire to these torches of twisted grass and they burned a hole in the wooden part of one of the gates, and when the hole was big enough one slipped through it and unbarred the gates swiftly. They all went in then, and Wang the Tiger led the way.

But the lair was as still as death. Wang the Tiger stood to listen and there was not a sound. Then he gave the command that every man was to blow his torch to flame and the houses were to be set on fire. Every man ran to the task and they yelled and screeched as the thatched roofs of the houses caught fire and as the whole lair began to burn suddenly people began to run out of the houses as ants will run out of a hill. Men, women, and little children streamed out and they ran cowering here and there and Wang the Tiger’s men began to stab them as they ran until Wang the Tiger shouted that they were to be allowed to escape, but that the men might go in and take their goods.

So Wang the Tiger’s men rushed into such houses as were not too ablaze and they began to drag out booty of silken pieces and yards of cloth and garments and anything they could carry. Some found gold and silver and some found jars of wine and food and they began to eat and drink gluttonously and some in their eagerness perished in the very flames they themselves had lit. Then Wang the Tiger seeing how childish they were sent his trusty men to see that they did not come to harm and so not many perished.

As for Wang the Tiger, he stood apart and watched it all, and he kept his brother’s son near him and he would not let the lad loot anything. He said,

“No, lad, we are not robbers and you are my own blood and we do not rob. These are common, ignorant fellows and I must let them have their way once in a time or they will not serve me loyally, and it is better to let them loose here. I must use them for my tools—they are my means to greatness. But you are not like them.”

So he kept the lad by him, and it was very well he did, for the strangest thing happened. As Wang the Tiger stood there leaning on his gun and watching the flaming houses that were beginning already to smoke and to smoulder, the lad suddenly gave a great scream. Wang the Tiger whirled and he saw from above a sword descending down upon him. Instantly he lifted his sword up and met it and the blade slipped down the smooth sword and it fell a little on his hand, but so little it was scarcely a wound, and fell to the ground.

But Wang the Tiger leaped into the darkness, swifter than a tiger, and he laid hold on someone and he dragged it out into the light of the fires, and it was a woman. He stood there confounded, holding her by the arm he had caught, and the lad cried out,

“It is the woman I saw drinking with the Leopard!”

But before Wang the Tiger could say a word, the woman had twisted and writhed and turned herself, and when she found he held her fast and beyond her strength to free herself, she threw back her head and she spat full into Wang the Tiger’s eyes. Now he had never had such a thing happen to him before and it was such a filthy, hateful thing that he lifted his hand and slapped her upon the cheek as one slaps a willful child, and his hard hand left the marks of his fingers there purple upon her cheek, and he shouted,

“That for you, you tigress!”

This he said without thinking what he said and she shouted back at him viciously,

“I wish I had killed you, you accursed—I meant to kill you!”

And he said grimly holding her fast still,

“Well I know you did, and if it had not been for my pocked lad here I would have lain dead this instant with my skull cleft!” And he called to some of his men to bring a rope from somewhere and bind her and they bound her to a tree there by the gate until he could know what to do with her.

Now they bound her very tightly and she struggled and chafed and cut her flesh but she could not so much as loosen herself, and as she struggled she cursed them all and especially Wang the Tiger with such curses as are seldom heard anywhere they were so rich and vile. Wang the Tiger stood and watched while the men bound her and when she was safely tied and tight and the men had gone to their pleasure again, he walked back and forth then in front of her and every time he passed he looked at her. Each time he looked more steadfastly and with more wonder, and he saw she was young and that she had a hard, bright, beautiful face, her lips thin and red and her forehead high and smooth and her eyes bright and sharp and angry. It was a face narrow and bright as a fox’s face. Yes, it was beautiful, even now when she had twisted with hate for him every time he passed her and each time he passed she cursed him and spat at him.

But he paid no heed to her. He only stared at her as he went in his silent way and after a time as the night wore on to dawn she grew weary for they had tied her so tightly that she was in much pain and at last she could not bear it. At first she did not curse and only spat, and after a while she suffered so she did not spit either and at last she said, panting and licking her lips,

“Loosen me even a little, for I am in such pain!”

But Wang the Tiger did not heed this, either, and he only smiled hardly, for he thought it was a trick of hers. She begged him thus every time he came near her but he would not answer. At last one time he came past and her head hung down and she was silent. Still he would not go near her, for he would not be spit on again and he thought she feigned sleep or faintness. But when she did not move for several times he passed, he sent the lad to her, and the lad went and took her by the chin and turned her face up, and it was true she had fainted.

Then Wang the Tiger went to her and he looked at her closely, and he saw that she was fairer than he had even seen her to be in the dim and flickering light of dying fires. She was not more than five and twenty, and she did not look a common farmer’s daughter or a common woman and he could not but wonder who she was and how she came to be here and where the Leopard had found such a one. He called a soldier then to come and cut her down and he had her trussed still, but more lightly and not hung against a tree. He bade them lay her on the ground and there she lay and she did not come to herself until it was dawn and the sunlight was beginning to creep through the morning mists.

Then at this hour Wang the Tiger called his men and he said,

“The time is up. We have other things to do than this.”

His men ceased their quarreling over booty slowly and they gathered at his call for he made his voice very loud and fierce and he held his gun cocked and ready for any who would not obey him, and he said, when his men were come, “Collect every gun and all the ammunition there is, for these are mine. I claim these as my share.”

When his men had done this, Wang the Tiger counted the guns and there were a hundred and twenty guns and a goodly amount of ammunition, too. But some of the guns were old and rusty and of little value, and these Wang the Tiger, because they were of such ancient and clumsy design, kept to one side to throw away as soon as he could find better.

Then in the midst of the ruined and smoking lair his men tied their booty into bundles, some large and some small, and Wang the Tiger counted over the guns they had found and these he gave to the more trustworthy men to guard. At last he turned to the woman who was tied. She had come to herself and she lay on the ground, her eyes open. When Wang the Tiger looked at her she stared back at him angrily and he said to her harshly,

“Who are you and where is your home that I may send you there?”

But she would not answer him one word. She spat at him for answer and her face was like an angry cat’s. This enraged Wang the Tiger greatly, so he called out to two of his men,

“Put a pole through her bonds and carry her to the magistrate’s court and throw her into the gaol there. Perhaps she will tell then who she is!”

The men obeyed him and they thrust the pole ruthlessly through the ropes and carried the ends of the pole on their shoulders, and she swung there.

As for Wang the Tiger, when all was ready, the sun was clear of the mountain tops and he walked ahead of his men down the pass. From the lair a feeble cloud of smoke still rose, but Wang the Tiger did not turn to look at it once.

Thus they marched along the road through the country to the city once more. Many a man passing this strange throng looked cornerwise out of his eyes, and especially at the woman trussed to the pole, her head hanging down and her fox-like face pale as ashes. Every man wondered, but not one dared to ask of what had happened, lest he be drawn into some desperate brawl or other, and they were afraid and each went about his business and kept his eyes down after he had glanced a time or two. It was full day and the sun was streaming over the fields when at last Wang the Tiger and his men reached the city gates.

But when he was in the darkness of the passage through the city wall his harelipped trusty man came and led him aside behind a tree that stood there by the gate, and he whispered to Wang the Tiger, hissing with the earnestness of what he had to say,

“I have this to say that I must say, my captain. It is better not to have anything to do with this woman. She has a fox’s face and fox eyes and women like this are only half human and the other half fox, and they have a very magic wickedness. Let me put my knife in her deeply and so end her!”