The Red Plains (The Forbidden List Book 3) (13 page)

The crowds thinned as the smoke rose higher. Now they were pushing each other to flee back the way they had come.

“They’ll start a panic,” Enlai said as they broke free of the last of the retreating civilians.

“There is little we can do. We have to secure the walls.” Haung turned to the soldiers and militia that had managed to fight their way clear of the crowd. He raised his voice over the crackle of flame and shouts of the disappearing crowd. “To me, to me. Form up a line.”

The men looked around confused before realising who it was giving the orders. A short few breaths later and Haung had them arranged in a thin column, several ranks deep that filled the road. Haung and Enlai took up their positions at the front. With a deep exhalation of breath, clearing the fear and stress out of his body, Haung waved them forward.

They marched into hell.

Climbing back on the horse was not something he looked forward to, but morning was moving on and the Mongols would, Xióngmāo assured him, be in pursuit. They had to move.

“Where are we going?” he asked of his companion.

“West, far to the west, to the mountains of Xinjiang.”

“But that’s through the desert. Not even the Wall extends there. No one can march an army through it. There is no water, no shade, no anything. The academy tutors...”

“Didn’t teach you everything. There are no towns, true, but there are people who move through it. The trade caravans pass through. There are oases if you know where to look.”

“Why there?”

“North takes us into the land of the Mongols proper. The grassland gives way to desert and, if you travel far enough, to more steppes and more Mongols. East towards the coast, passing first through more Mongol territory where we will be hunted. South back to the Empire, but there is a Mongol army in our path. West into the desert, fewer Mongols and there is a destination to our travels. Your friend has spoken of someone who may be able to assist us getting back to the Empire, and defeat the Mongols.” Xióngmāo pointed in each direction as she spoke.

“Who?”

“A magician,” she said.

“A
Fang-shi
?”

“Zhou, you still need to move beyond just the Empire’s ways. The
Fang-shi
are but one style of magician. There are others.”

“A type per plane? Just like the immortals?” Zhou said.

Xióngmāo reined her horse to a stop and waited for Zhou to draw his up alongside.

“What do you know of the immortals?” she asked.

“I know that there is one per plane, life, death, fire, water and all the others, including Spirit,” he said.

“Who told you this?”

“Yángwū,” he replied.

At the name, Zhou saw his companion’s eyes widen and a look of shock appear on her normally calm face.

“Where did you hear that name?”

“That’s the name of the man who captured me. He kept asking questions and trying to break into the spirit realm, the one who gave me this staff blocked the pathway,” Zhou paused. “She is the immortal for the realm of life, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is,” Xióngmāo nodded. “Are you sure you have the name correct?”

“Yángwū, yes.”

“It can’t be. He was killed a long, long time ago. It cannot be him.” She seemed, to Zhou’s mind, to be talking to herself rather than him.

“He said he used to be a
Wu
,” Zhou said, trying to help.

“It can’t be,” she repeated. Zhou tried to gain her attention, but her eyes were focused elsewhere.

“Why not? I don’t understand. You have always told me that
Wu
live for a long time.”

“He died, Zhou,” Xióngmāo said. “Let’s move on. We can’t afford to be too slow or they will catch us.”

She clucked her horse into motion and Zhou encouraged his to follow. The lows hills continued for most of the morning. Rising and falling like little ripples on a pond, the two horses bobbed over the ridges and valleys trying their best to remain out of sight of anyone following. The vegetation changed little. Every scrap of ground was covered with grass, short and wiry on the northern slopes with a tendency to grow longer on southern sides. The sky above remained cloudy and grey. There was the threat of rain on the air and the last thing Zhou wanted to do was ride through a storm. Clothes became sodden and the wind stole all the heat from your bones.

After an hour of watching the hills roll by, Zhou lost all interest in the scenery and landscape. The distant mountains, really just a smudge of slightly lighter grey on an horizon of almost uniform grey, held little appeal. The grass swayed in the wind, but that is what grass does, it was nothing new. All he saw before him was the head of his horse, the rump of Xióngmāo’s and her back. She rode in silence.

The constant plodding motion, the slight rock of the horses gait, the up and down over the hills was tedious and hypnotic. Each time the unending, unchanging sights before his eyes lulled him through boredom and towards sleep, a jolt on his spine or a pain in his thighs would force him back to wakefulness. Sleep would have been a blessed relief and a better way to pass the time.

He resigned himself to the view ahead.

# # #

“We’ll rest here,” Xióngmāo said, bring her horse to halt and leaping to the ground. Her horse seemed to content to bend its muzzle to the grass and to start munching. “Walk around, eat something, and then we are moving on. We have a long way to go.”

“How far?” Zhou slipped from his horse and began rubbing his thighs, trying to push the blood back into his abused legs.

“A long way. Once we get to the desert there are a few small villages and inns that were built to service the walls and patrols” she said and began rummaging in her packs,

“You said the Wall ends,” Zhou said as he attempted a few steps on aching legs.

“It does, but the Empire built mud and sand walls out in the desert many centuries ago. Just to discourage any Mongol raiders thinking it was an easy way into the Empire. It is not, of course. The desert is alternatively scorching hot and freezing cold. There is no vegetation for their horses and water is hard to come by. The inns and villages survive by being on the trade route. The merchants bring in food and goods to trade, the inn owners and villagers sell them water in return. It works for all, though they can be rough places.” She lifted a small bag out of her pack and from it drew a thin rice cake. “We’ll need to stop in them to get food and water for the journey.”

“We are going to follow the trade route? Won’t that make it easier for the Mongols to find us?”

“There is little choice and we will turn off it when we can. At that point, we will have to head through the desert. They will not follow us there.”

“But you think they will catch up to us before that?” Zhou said.

“Yes, I’d expect the first, the advance trackers, to catch up to us sometime tonight.”

“Tonight?” Zhou turned his gaze to the landscape, back the way they had come, searching the horizon for any sight of pursuit. “And what then?”

“Two choices. We hide and hope they go away, or we kill them,” she said, biting into the rice cake, little snowflakes of crumbling rice floated to the grass below.

“They will not go away, will they? If they are tracking us, they are just going to stay there,” Zhou said. “We will have to kill them.”

Xióngmāo, mouth full of rice cake, nodded.

Haung’s first sight of the city wall was a shock. It was empty of troops, undefended, as more Mongols climbed over the battlements. The fighting was taking place at the base of the wall and the defenders were falling back. Between the last house and the wall, the area that Haung had ordered cleared of buildings, the army and militia were struggling with the attackers.

“Enlai, take a section and reinforce where you can,” Haung ordered. The
Taiji
nodded, signalled to a group of troops and led them into the fight.

Haung looked along the line, watching it wave and undulate as soldiers fell and were replaced by fresh troops. Medics, risking their own lives, raced between the troops dragging out wounded soldiers and doing their best to treat them there and then. As he watched, one of the wounded soldiers raised himself up and began to strangle the medic trying to treat him.

It took a moment, for Haung to realise what was happening and then he was racing over the ground, his sword flowing into his hands. The medic was scrabbling at the hands around his neck, trying to pull them away. Torchlight revealed the medic had pulled a wounded Mongol from the fight. The man had lost his helmet somewhere and in the dark, in the crush of the lines, the leather armour had probably looked a little like that which the Empire soldiers wore. A simple mistake that might have killed the medic.

Haung plunged his sword into the Mongol’s back, parting the leather armour with ease and sliding it through the flesh and ribs. He reversed the sword’s motion, drawing it out in a flat arc as he span away on the ball of his supporting foot.

The Mongol warrior stiffened, but did not release his hold on the medic’s neck. Haung swung again, higher this time, towards the Mongol’s neck. The edge of the sharp
Jian
sword cutting into the warrior’s thick neck muscles and coming up hard against the bones beyond. Haung twisted his wrist, opening the wound, as he withdrew the sword.

The medic’s struggles were weakening. The man’s face was turning purple and his hands flapped feebly at the Mongol’s who, despite having two mortal wounds, either of which should have killed the man outright, was still putting more pressure into his attack on the medic.

Haung stood still, shocked and then cut again. All the strength of his body, all the training from his
Shifu
, all the energy found in the quiet, went into the cut. The sword blade flowed upwards in a reverse cut between the unconscious medic and the Mongol warrior who held the dying man upright in his squeezing hands. It sliced through the attacker’s arms, cutting flesh, severing blood vessels and amputating the Mongol’s hands.

The medic dropped to the ground and the warrior stumbled backwards. Haung ignored the dying Mongol and dropped to the ground next to the medic, flicking the disconnected hands away from the man’s neck. The outline of those constricting hands was clear on the medic’s flesh, standing out stark white against the purple flesh surrounding it. In a few hours, should the man live, the hand prints would turn to bruises and the flesh around to a rainbow of greens, blues and reds.

Placing a hand on the medic’s chest, he detected the rapid, but faint trace of a heartbeat. The chest rose and fell in small movements. The man was alive. Haung looked up and around for another medic, someone to take over the care of the one he had saved. The battle still raged, the line was further back from the wall and still more troops arrived.

It hit him on the back, the full weight of a man and Haung was driven to the ground. He twisted, letting his left shoulder hit first, giving him a pivot over which to roll. The man who had collided with him wrapped his arms around his chest, pinning Haung’s arms to his side. His attacker’s arm hit the ground first, absorbing some of the force, but the impact on Haung’s shoulder would still leave a bruise, he knew.

He rolled, pushing with his legs against the ground, adding the force of the impact to his efforts. Now on top of his attacker, Haung snapped his head backwards. He felt the impact on his skull, the shock running through his jaw. Twice more he did the same thing. Each time the flesh behind him gave way a little more, but the arms did not release their hold.

With one more snap of his head, Haung turned his attention to the arms that held him. He grabbed at his attackers hands, intending to find the thumbs and bend them, forcing the man to release his grip. They were not where they should have been. There were no thumbs, no fingers and no hands attached to those arms.

Panic rose in his chest, overcoming the quiet, and he choked it down. The arms were strong, stronger than they had any right to be, but the lack of fingers to interlace was a weakness. Haung focused his efforts on one of the arms, pulling it off his chest, giving himself room to breathe and move. With a last heave, he tore free of the arms, rolled to the side, scooped up his sword and stabbed it into the Mongol warrior’s chest.

There was little effect and Haung stepped back. The warrior struggled to its feet, using the stumps of his arms as leverage. No blood, Haung noted, came from any of the wounds he had inflicted. The chest wound should have shown a spreading stain of blood on the man’s chest, the neck should have sprayed blood when it was cut and the severing of both arms should have resulted in a flood. Nothing.

“Hold him down, lads,” came the booming voice from the right as Haung raised his sword once more.

Five or six empire soldiers raced past Haung and tackled the Mongol warrior, grabbing him round the legs, arms and waist. They pulled the still struggling warrior to the ground, but even with the greater numbers it was difficult for them.

“Bloody difficult to kill,” Gang said as he strode past Haung.

The big warrior lifted his hammer high and brought it down with a sickening crunch on the Mongol warrior’s head. The enemy’s legs twitched once and were then still. Empire soldiers rolled away and went in search of their next target.

“Only way, smash their heads, cut their heads off or burn them.” Gang twisted the hammer in his grip, grey and red sludge flew from it, arcing through the darkness to land like raindrops on the earth.

“What are they?” Haung asked.

“Mongol warriors, dead ones.”

“What?”

“Gan Ji tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t understand most of the words he used.” Gang pointed to the thin
Fang-shi
who had stood at the back of the newcomers, unnoticed by Haung.

Haung turned his attention to the magician. “What can you tell me?”

“In books,” Gan Ji said.

“What is?”

“Forbidden, not allowed to read, told not to research.” The magician’s sentence did nothing but confuse Haung.

“I think he means he read about them in a book and got into trouble for trying to do some research,” Gang said. “Once you clue your ear in, it is not too difficult to make sense of things he says. Not all the time though.”

“Less than a day, night time only, make stronger magic, come back, start to move, obey.” Gan Ji nodded as he spoke, a look of confidence on his face.

“It is Empire magic? A
Fang-shi
?” Haung said.

“Mongol, them.” Gan Ji pointed at the dead Mongol warrior.

“Mongol magic,” Haung said and received a nod from Gan Ji, and a smile. “They are turning the dead into
Jiangshi
? I thought they were a myth, a bed time story to tell children.”

“Yes,
Jiangshi
. No,
Jiangshi
.” Gan Ji hopped on his feet three times and waved a finger.

“How do we kill them? Heads and fire?”

The magician nodded. “Peach.”

“Don’t ask,” Gang interrupted. “It won’t make any sense. I’ve tried. All he goes on about is peach and peach trees. Never heard of a peach killing anyone or anything, less they choked on the stones inside and they’d be bloody stupid to do that. We’ve got teams running round showing everyone how to take them down. It is not easy and we’re losing three or four men, at least, for every one we kill.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Don’t know,” Gang said, shrugging his broad shoulders. “They climbed the wall and over-ran it pretty quickly. We lost of a lot men there. Gongliang is dead, did you know? One of these got him.”

“I know.” Haung shook his head, clearing his thoughts. “Did some of these not-quite
Jiangshi
get past the line?”

“It’s possible. There was mass panic when we found we couldn’t just stab and kill them. It took a little time to organise a line and even that was just to hold them back. Wasn’t until Gan Ji here told us how to kill them that we managed to fight back properly. Rest of the time we were having to slice them into pieces, hack off limbs until they stopped moving.”

“Let’s find Liu and Enlai,” Haung ordered. “I want all the troops to know how to stop these things and then I want to do something to end the threat. Gan Ji has, I think, given us the answer.”

The three men raced along the line, stopping where needed to pass on the information they had to the officers. Each time they were met with a disbelieving look, but Haung refused to listen to their other theories. He ordered them to try and when it succeeded they passed the knowledge on.

Enlai, commanding his section, had both swords drawn and was weaving, with incredible speed and grace, through the
Jiangshi
that attacked him. His blades cut and severed their limbs, causing the dead warriors to stumble. Soldiers rushed in, axes held high, to hack them apart as the
Taiji
moved on to the next.

“Grab torches,” Haung shouted, “set them on fire. Cut off their heads.”

The empire line wavered as the information spread and then steadied. Haung joined the lines, his own sword slicing out at the
Jiangshi
, slowing and distracting them enough for the soldiers to swarm them. One of the soldiers rushed in with a fiercely burning torch and jabbed it into the chest of an approaching
Jiangshi
. The flame flared and the Mongol’s fur-lined smouldered, but did not catch. With a sweeping arm the dead Mongol smashed the soldier in the side of the head. Even above the noise of battle, the crunch and crack of bone was clear.

“They’re too wet,” Enlai said, dropping back from the line for a moment. “They’re the dead from earlier, the ones that were floating in the lake Gongliang made.”

“Then we take their heads,” Haung said. “I will not lose the city to these things.”

Time passed in a blur of fire, death, screams and shadows, but Haung’s army and the militia made progress. First, those
Jiangshi
that made it through the lines were rounded up and dealt with. The city, beyond the lines was safe again, and then the difficult job of clearing the wall began.

The dead Mongols were still climbing the wall, adding more
Jiangshi
to the battle. Now the narrow confines of the stairs and the battlements reduced the ability of the soldiers to overcome the
Jiangshi
with sheer numbers. Liu joined the battle alongside Gang, the two masters leading the way, axes hooking arms and legs, hammer smashing them to the floor or crushing heads in a single blow. Blood covered step by slippery step to the top where the forces split, fighting their way through to meet up with other troops who had climbed other stairs. Every piece of ground regained came at a cost, soldiers injured, men killed. Martial skill was still vital to success, but it was a war of attrition.

From the troops behind Haung a wail of despair rose, to be joined by one from the front. The Mongol
Jiangshi
were no longer fighting alone, new allies had entered the battle. The Empire soldiers, those killed on the wall in the initial assault began to rise. Their movements were slow and jerky at first, but as they struggled upright those movements became smoother and stronger.

Here, now, the empire soldiers were faced with friends, with men dressed in their uniform. People they had fought, slept, eaten and drunk alongside on the Wall and in the city. These troops wore the wounds of their deaths, great gashes in stomachs from which tubes and blood still poured, missing limbs, shards of bone sticking through flesh, red faces, hollow eye sockets. They were a new horror, made worse as soldiers were asked to hack apart, to decapitate, to set fire to creatures that wore the countenance and visage of their friends.

Haung’s sword deflected the arm of a
Jiangshi
, pushing it high and wide, and, on the return stroke, severed the hamstring of the dead warrior. It toppled forward, onto one knee, still trying to move forward. A twist of his wrist and Haung’s blade cut across the warrior’s throat, opening the neck to the bone. Blood, black in the torchlight, flowed in some vestigial reflex the
Jiangshi
raised a hand to the wound as Haung span the sword around in a flat arc, the quiet guiding his hand, and the sharp edge passed between two neck vertebrae, completing the decapitation.

Haung stepped forward and faced the next one, an empire soldier by the uniform. He looked up, into the face of his attacker, and was thankful the quiet numbed his feelings. Gongliang’s face stared back at him. All sign of emotion, of thought, of recognition, and of personality was absent from his friend’s eyes. The broken shards of bone, dark with blood, flesh and gristle hanging from each smashed rib, stuck through the man’s chest and uniform. The evidence of the blow that had taken his life.