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The Altair Mountains were black, but the desert at their feet was red. Red rocks and red sand. Even the sparse grasses were coated with red dust.
Huang Fa and the monk led his mare into a small fortress with adobe walls at a trading village called Arumchee on the border of the Taklamakan Desert.
For two days, Huang Fa had not been able to sleep. At night he dreamt of vengeful spirits circling in the grass, and by day he felt dazed and exhausted.
Every soul embodies both the yin and yang, he told himself. Each is balanced between darkness and light. I gave into the darkness for a moment, and now I must seek balance again.
The thought soothed him. Still, it felt comforting to hear the crow of chickens and to see silk garments hanging upon bushes outside of the adobe huts, and to smell fresh beans and chicken cooking in the houses. It felt even better to be inside the strong walls of a fortress, even if those walls were as red as the desert.
Here Huang Fa went to report the killings. Slaying raiders wasn’t a simple matter, even if it was just a pair of young horse thieves. This had been a righteous kill, and everyone needed to know that--otherwise there could be reprisals.
Huang Fa wasn’t worried for himself. He was just passing through. Six weeks from now, he’d be home, safe in his cabin on the lake. He’d have a fine horse for his stables and a dowry to give Yan’s father.
But the traders and settlers here had to live among the barbarians. Mostly, the settlers were jade carvers who worked the stone gathered near Black Mountain, but every year there were more and more caravans heading for Persia and Greece. The caravanserais paid good bribes and hefty tolls to the barbarians for safe passage; these people needed to know that the barbarian raiders had failed to keep their bargain—and so paid with their lives.
Huang Fa reported to the garrison commander, a wealthy fellow named Chong Deming who wore a wide golden belt of office over armor made from layers of red silk. He sat on a stool outside a weathered manor house while sipping porridge from a red ceramic bowl. He had white hair and a beard so long that he must have thought himself the equal to one of the Emperor’s counselors.
A barbarian woman in bright blue silks squatted on the ground next to him, as if she was his wife. Huang Fa humbly kowtowed, joining his fists together and bowing solemnly, and then approached and bore his news upon further invitation.
Alarm grew evident on the commander’s face on hearing Huang Fa’s news.
“You killed two barbarian boys?” Chong Deming asked, his penetrating gaze spearing Huang Fa. “Which tribe?”
Huang Fa shrugged. He had come across so many barbarians the past few months that he no longer knew or cared what tribe they came from.
“What did they look like?”
“They were merely youths,” Huang Fa answered frankly. “They wore bright pants of purple, and had their teeth all filed down like fangs. Their faces were tattooed with the symbol of the Holy Tree. One had this hunting spear,” he said, holding up a javelin with a dark-green jade tip, “and the other had a bow made from the horn of an aurochs.”
Chong Deming pulled at his beard thoughtfully. “Oroqin barbarians,” he said. “As I thought. Normally they are peaceful people, eating sheep and goats from their flocks, and hunting for wild asses in the mountains. But their animals have been hit hard by a plague of anthrax, and so the barbarians have been starving for the past few seasons.
“Some of their men tried to rob a caravan last spring. The caravan guards made quick work of these unskilled barbarians, and my men hunted those that escaped. We tracked them for five days, and caught them in their yurts in the mountains. We hunted them from chariots and finished off the men with our long-handled halberds. But we spared the women and children. We did not have the heart . . .”
The old general fell silent, and Huang Fa looked to the monk for his reaction. The young man shook his bald head sadly and asked the general, “Did your compassion gain them nothing?”
The general mourned, “I’d hoped that they would find their way back into the mountains, that their own people would feed them. But I fear that they are doomed.” He looked to Huang Fa. “Did these two young men have any distinguishing features?”
“One was a runty kid that squinted, with bowed legs. The other was clean and handsome. He wore a necklace made of jade and bear’s teeth.”
At that, Chong Deming’s face fell, and he peered down into his bowl of morning porridge thoughtfully. Steam curled up from it. At long last, he blew over the wide lip of the clay bowl, but did not sip from it. “That would be Battarsaikhan’s son, Chuluun.” His voice became soft, frightened. “You’ve heard of Battarsaikhan?”
The name stirred at the back of Huang Fa’s brain, like a rat in its burrow. “I think . . . .”
“It means . . . ‘hero who wins without battle.’ He is a hunchback, a powerful sorcerer who kills with magic rather than the ax or bow. He is the most dangerous man in all these mountains. His oldest sons died in our attack at White Ox River last summer. . . .”
“Gah,” the monk muttered. The news was terrible.
“Battarsaikhan was in the mountains then, training the boy that you killed,” Chong Deming said. His voice came hoarse, bitter with sorrow. “Now, the sorcerer has no children left. Couldn’t you have let those boys live? They were just trying to feed their starving tribe. You could have just taken your horse. . . .”
Huang Fa stared at the old commander wordlessly, shame thick in his throat. “I
