them up to the Taguran. Bent again and retrieved the two arrows, gave them to the young man, as well.
“Don’t hurry to the afterworld,” he repeated.
Gnam’s face was expressionless. Then, “My thanks,” he said.
He did say it. There was that much. Even here, beyond borders and boundaries, you could live a certain way, Tai thought, remembering his father. You could try, at least. He looked west, past the wheeling birds, at the red sun in low clouds, then back to Bytsan.
“You’ll need to ride fast.”
“I know it. The man inside …?”
“Is dead.”
“You killed him?”
“She did.”
“But he was with her.”
“He was my friend. It is a grief.”
Bytsan shook his head. “Is it possible to understand the Kitan?”
“Perhaps not.”
He was tired, suddenly. And it occurred to him that he’d have two bodies to bury quickly now—because he’d be leaving in the morning.
“He led an assassin to you.”
“He was a friend,” Tai repeated. “He was deceived. He came to bring me tidings. She, or whoever paid her, didn’t want me to hear them or live to do anything about it.”
“A friend,” Bytsan sri Nespo repeated. His tone betrayed nothing. He turned to go.
“Captain!”
Bytsan looked back, didn’t turn his horse.
“So are you, I believe. My thanks.” Tai closed fist in hand.
The other man stared at him for a long time, then nodded.
He was about to spur his horse away, Tai saw. But he did something else, instead. You could see a thought striking him, could read it in the square-chinned features.
“Did he tell you? Whatever it was he came to say?”
Tai shook his head.
Gnam had danced his horse farther south. He was ready to leave now. Had the two swords across his back.
Bytsan’s face clouded over. “You will leave now? To find out what it was?”
He was clever, this Taguran. Tai nodded again. “In the morning. Someone died to bring me tidings. Someone died to stop me from learning them.”
Bytsan nodded. He looked west himself this time, the sinking sun, darkness coming. Birds in the air, restless on the far side of the lake. Hardly any wind. Now.
The Taguran drew a deep breath. “Gnam, go on ahead. I’ll stay the night with the Kitan. If he’s leaving in the morning there are matters he and I must talk about. I’ll test my fate inside with him. It seems that whatever spirits are here mean him no harm. Tell the others I’ll catch you up tomorrow. You can wait for me in the middle pass.”
Gnam’s turn to stare. “You are staying here?”
“I just said that.”
“Captain! That is—”
“I know it is. Go.”
The younger man hesitated still. His mouth opened and closed. Bytsan’s tattooed face was hard, nothing vaguely close to a yielding there.
Gnam shrugged. He spurred his horse and rode away. They stood there, the two of them, and watched him go in the waning of the light, saw him gallop very fast around the near side of the lake as if spirits were pursuing him, tracking his breath and blood.
CHAPTER III
The armies of the empire had changed over the past fifty years, and changes were continuing. The old
The borders had been pushed west and north and northeast and even south past the Great River through the disease-ridden tropics to the pearl-diver seas. Collisions with Tagurans to the west and the various Bogu tribal factions north had increased, as did the need to protect the flow of luxuries that came on the Silk Roads. The emergence of border forts and garrisons farther and farther out had ended the militia system with its back-and- forth of farmer-soldiers.
Soldiers were professionals now, or they were supposed to be. More and more often they and their officers were drawn from nomads beyond the Long Wall, subdued and co-opted by the Kitan. Even the military governors were often foreigners now. Certainly the most powerful one was.
It marked a change. A large one.
The soldiers served year-round and, for years now, were paid from the imperial treasury and supported by a virtual army of peasants and labourers building forts and walls, supplying food and weapons and clothing and entertainment of any and all kinds.
It made for better-trained fighters familiar with their terrain, but a standing army of this size did not come without costs—and increased taxes were only the most obvious consequence.
In years and regions of relative peace, without drought or flood, with wealth now flowing at an almost unimaginable rate into Xinan and Yenling and the other great cities, the cost of the new armies was bearable. In hard years it became a problem. And other issues, less readily seen, were growing. At the lowest ebb, of a person or a nation, the first seeds of later glory may sometimes be seen, looking back with a careful eye. At the absolute summit of accomplishment the insects chewing from within at the most extravagant sandalwood may be heard, if the nights are quiet enough.
A QUIET-ENOUGH NIGHT. Wolves had been howling in the canyon earlier, but had stopped. The darkness was giving way, for those on watch on the ramparts of Iron Gate Fort, to a nearly-summer sunrise. Pale light pulling a curtain of shadows back—as in a puppet show at a town market—from the narrow space between ravine walls.
Though that, thought Wujen Ning, from his post on the ramparts, was not quite right. Street theatre curtains were pulled to the side—he’d seen them in Chenyao.
Ning was one of the native-born Kitan here, having followed his father and older brothers into the army. There was no family farm for him to rely upon for an income, or return to visit. He wasn’t married.
He spent his half-year leave time in the town between Iron Gate and Chenyao. There were wine shops and food sellers and women to take his strings of cash. Once, given two weeks’ leave, he’d gone to Chenyao itself, five days away. Home was too far.
Chenyao had been, by a great deal, the biggest city he’d ever seen. It had frightened him, and he’d never gone back. He didn’t believe the others when they said it wasn’t that large, as cities went.
Here in the pass, in the quiet of it, the dawn light was filtering downwards. It struck the tops of the cliffs first, pulling them from shadow, and worked its way towards the still-dark valley floor as the sun rose over the mighty empire behind them.
Wujen Ning had never seen the sea, but it pleased him to imagine the vast lands of Kitai stretching east to the ocean and the islands in it where immortals dwelled.
He glanced down at the dark, dusty courtyard. He adjusted his helmet. They had a commander now who
