George Martin - The Way of the Wizard

In Yan’s dream, she’d seen his startlingly clear eyes under the moonlight, while the crickets sang their nightly hymns of longing and carp finned in the pond beside her cottage. “When I return,” he’d said, “I will have much silver. Your father will surely agree to the match when he sees what I bring.” Huang Fa was but a lowly merchant from a fishmonger’s family, and he dared to hope to marry a landowner’s daughter. He would have to rise much higher in station to do so; he would need to buy land himself.

His voice, soft and husky, seemed preternaturally clear in the dream, as if he stood over her bed. His image had left her feeling over-warm, with a soft fluttering in her womb. At fifteen, Yan was young and in love, and felt all of the longing and guilt and confusion that went with it. Her mother had once told her, “A girl’s first love is always the most treasured. If you are fortunate, he will also be your last love.”

Yan inhaled deeply, hoping that perhaps Huang Fa really had come in the night, that she might catch his scent. But the early morning sky outside smelled only of thunder. She wondered where Huang Fa might be, and as she did, she whispered a prayer to the Sun God. “Wherever he is, may he greet the morning with pleasant thoughts of me.”

The land was black in the Altai Mountains, black stone upon black stone, with only the sparest of grasses and shrubs cropping up here and there.

Huang Fa stalked through the cold pre-dawn in a sullen rage, and for a moment he tried to conjure an image of Yan. Walking a hundred li in single night can drive the humanity from a man, make him hard and cold. Fatigue had left him reeling, and the icy winds wafting down from the Altai Mountains over the barren gray stones had drained the warmth from him. He had only one sandal, and so he hobbled as best he could. In a jest of fate, his sandaled foot had developed blisters that bled, and so hurt more than his naked foot. But before the sun was even a sullen smudge on a smoke-gray sky, he spotted his roan horse, gazing down in a desultory stare at the barren rocks, its long dark mane and tail gusting in the wind. The barbarians that had stolen her had left her tied to the only tree within three li, and they’d fallen asleep under it. For ten hours Huang Fa had been wondering how best to kill them.

Huang Fa felt a touch on his elbow. “Are you sure you want to do this?” whispered the monk with no name.

Huang Fa paused, turned toward the young man in the pre-dawn. The monk was but a shadow in the darkness, with a bit of moonlight shining upon his clean-shaven head. The monk had no name, for he had renounced it. He whispered urgently, “These men are not killers. They were kind enough to merely sneak off with all your belongings, sparing your life. To take theirs would be to return compassion with brutality.”

Huang Fa argued, “The barbarians only stole the horse before, but they won’t make the same mistake again. Once they open my bags and find the dragon’s tooth. ”

The monk did not dare argue. He knew that the barbarians would never relinquish such a great treasure. Yet the dragon’s tooth meant little to Huang Fa. He had to save his mare. The barbarians could not guess the worth of such a fine mount. These men consumed horses as if they were chickens. Even if they did not butcher her, they would likely only wait until she bore her foal and then harvest her mare’s milk to make liquor.

Huang Fa was determined to get his mare back at any cost, and he could not let them live.

Dread clenched his stomach. He wasn’t sure how many men he might have to face. He was determined to use the wizard warrior Jiang Ziya’s wolf strategy of battle — to attack when least expected, at the weakest point.

Stepping carefully now, Huang Fa strode over the sparse prairie, with only the barest of grass. There was no rustling of feet, no brush of his pants woven from silky China grass as he rushed into the camp.

One barbarian, wearing a hairy vest of musk ox hide and a fur cap, sat on guard, but had fallen asleep with his back to a nearly leafless saxaul tree. Another lay nearby rolled in a blanket. The two had camped without a fire.

In the gloom, Huang Fa heard a sound and dully registered that a snow pheasant was already up, thundering down from a rocky summit to take cover in the rocks. To the south, in the hills beyond a glacial river, a wolf howled.

Huang Fa strode angrily to the young barbarian on guard duty, grabbed his own bronze battle ax from the young man’s sleeping hands, and smashed the man’s face before he had even a chance to rouse. Blood blackened the man’s chin, and he choked out a “Gah!” as he tried to hold himself upright. Huang Fa struck another blow to the skull to finish him.

The thief’s bow-legged friend must have heard the skirmish, for he gave a yelp of warning and hopped out of his blanket, then leapt over the stones like a jerboa.

Want to race? Huang Fa thought. He hurled his ax. A blow to the right lung knocked the barbarian to the ground, and there was no fight left in him. Huang Fa went to the man. “You think it funny to steal a man’s horse and his sandal too? Laugh now.” He split the man’s skull with his bronze ax.

The deed would haunt him. He might make a joke while killing another, but it was a foul thing to have to do. Damn the horse thieves.

He flipped the man over to make sure that he was not breathing. What he saw sickened him. It was not a man, but a boy — barely thirteen, just gaining his adult size. He lay back, gazing blankly at the pre-dawn gray, and his eyes were fixed. His teeth had all been filed down to points, and a tattoo upon his chin showed the trunk of a tree in black, rising up to his forehead. Branches from it spread out upon either side of his cheeks and forehead, creating the holy symbol of the Tree of Life.

Huang Fa wished that he had never seen that face. He wondered if the boy was a shaman. He went to the other barbarian, found that he too was nothing more than a child, and that his teeth had been filed to points, and that he bore the same tribal markings.

Only five years ago, Huang Fa thought, I was their age.

No words could adequately describe how much their faces disturbed him. Though his stomach was empty, he lurched away from camp and did not return until his heart quit pounding. He avoided peering into the faces of the dead.

“Bojing,” Huang Fa softly called to his mare. “Are you all right?” He stepped close to let her catch his scent. She nuzzled the hollow beneath his chin, and he stroked her neck gratefully. She was the finest horse he’d ever seen. He had bought her from an Arab band, and now he stroked her side fondly. For weeks now he had only walked her over the mountains, afraid that the hard journey might cause her to lose the foal.

It would have been a shame to let the barbarians eat such a majestic horse.

Huang Fa checked his saddle packs, where he retrieved his left sandal. “Ha, ha,” he said to the dead barbarians.

His paltry supplies were intact, except that the boys had eaten the last of his wrinkled apples. But the silver was there, with precious ointments of frankincense for Yan, and opium tar and a single dragon’s fang to sell to the apothecaries.

The Taoist crept up to the camp at last. “May I fix us some beans?” he asked humbly.

Huang Fa fumed. The monk was not a coward. He was heading back from Persia, where the Emperor Qin would likely cut out his tongue because of his religious views. The emperor hated Taoists and Buddhists.

But the monk had refused to fight the barbarians. A man who would not kill animals, who would not even eat meat, could not be counted on in a fight. Right now, Huang Fa did not feel any more tolerant of the Taoist than the emperor did. Damn the Taoist and his compassion.