David Gibbins - The Tiger warrior

Great is the virtue of our emperor

Who pacifies all corners of the earth,

Who punishes traitors, roots out evil men

And, with profitable measures brings prosperity.

Tasks are done at the proper season,

All things flourish and grow;

The common people know peace

And have laid aside weapons and armor;

Kinsmen care for each other,

There are no robbers or thieves;

Men delight in his rule

All understanding the law and discipline.

The universe entire

Is our emperor’s realm…

He repeated the final phrase. The universe entire is our emperor’s realm. His clipped accent and precise vowels sounded in keeping with the message, everything ordered, in its place, in control. He inhaled slowly, then relaxed completely. He hardly needed to breathe. He felt the blood drain from his heart. The power was within him, the power of shuide. He seemed to levitate again, far above the clouds and peaks, to the very edge of space itself, to the liminal zone between heaven and earth. Above him was darkness, suddenly suffused with a million brilliant stars, the constellations revolving in slow motion. Below him the earth was reduced to a featureless sphere. But then as he watched the surface began to sparkle, and was suddenly coursing with rivers, streams of quicksilver. The hundred rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtse, and the seas surrounding them. The sparkle came from a thousand palaces and temples, from a million precious treasures. He seemed to swoop down, and to float above a misty stream, among geese and swans, cranes and herons, with tinkling music in the background. Then the scene disappeared, and the warriors were there, all around him, extending off in ranks as far as he could see, waiting. Some held spears, some wore armor. Generals stood in front of foot soldiers, cavalrymen held horses at bay. The protectors of the universe. The army of the Qin. They who would rise again, who would march forth when heaven and earth came together, when the power of water was replaced by the power of light. The power that he himself would wield.

The man tensed in anticipation. There was a blinding flash of green, then blue, as if the sun had been caught in a giant revolving prism in the darkness above. Then the two colors seemed to commingle and become a dazzling white. The rivers of quicksilver flowed again, sparkling and shimmering. Reeds shot up beside them, vivid green, trembling with life. Birds arched their necks upward, drawing in the light. And all around him the warrior army seemed to stir, the gray monotone becoming pastel, colors more defined with every second-flesh glowing, robes of vivid blue, armor shimmering silver, banners of red emblazoned with the roaring golden tiger that furled and rustled like the river reeds. He could feel the warmth. He reached out, exultant.

Then it was gone. He was sitting in a dark chamber again, alone in front of a low table like a raised tomb. He let his hands drop onto the surface. It was cold, hard, real. Everything before had been a phantasm. A phantasm he had created. But it was a premonition of what was to come. The celestial jewel would shine once again.

He looked at the low table, its polished surface gleaming. He could see the Chinese characters carved in front of each place, six on one side, six on the other. Xu, Tan, Ju, Zhongli, Yunyan, Tuqiu, Jiangliang, Huang, Jiang, Xiuyu, Baiming, Feilian. He reached out and traced his fingers in the lines, faultlessly cut by laser into the marble. They were the twelve, the Brotherhood, the trusted guardians of Shihuangdi, the First Emperor, those who awaited the return. One place would be empty. He clenched his fists until the knuckles were white. The one who had strayed. The one who had been tempted to search for the jewel himself, who had succumbed to his own greed, had taken his eyes off the true path. They had hunted him down, as they had hunted down all who had failed to follow the path of Shihuangdi.

He relaxed his hands and closed his eyes, suffused by the power of the Qin, the all-encompassing. Soon the empty place at the table would be filled again. They had found another whose ancestry traced back through the clan, to those who had ridden, armored, weapon-girt, over the steppeland from their homeland to Xian, at the side of he who would become Shihuangdi, First Emperor. The initiate had been taught the skills of zhishau, the swordsmanship of the Qin, how to strike mortal fear into the heart of all enemies of Shihuangdi, how to vanquish them. He would complete the murderous task that would assure him his place at the table. The place of the tiger warrior.

The man touched the control pad, and the thin shaft of light spread outward to reveal a crossed pair of swords lying in front of him, their blades shimmering as if they were speckled with a thousand jewels. He put his hands into the gleaming gauntlets, curling his fingers around the crossbars, feeling the power of the blades as they extended out from the snarling tigers that adorned each fist. He tensed, and he was suddenly there, among the heavenly steeds, thundering over the steppe, foam-flecked, cutting through the mist of red that streamed off their necks, the glistening sweat of blood. He felt the exaltation of the warrior, of knowing that all would be swept before him. He felt himself cry out, and all he saw was crimson, all he heard was panting, rearing, stamping.

Then the image was gone. He sat back, letting the swords down. Soon there would be a sixth power. The power of light. Just as water had conquered fire, so light would conquer darkness, the light of the celestial jewel, the light of his own soul, the reborn emperor. The man breathed in deeply, and pulled off the swords. Ahead of him a crack of light appeared in the doorway, and shadowy forms began to file in, silently assuming their places at the table. The Brotherhood was reunited. The jewel would be found. The tiger warrior would ride again.

Jack sat in his day cabin below the bridge deck of Seaquest II, his hands behind his head as he contemplated the old wooden traveling chest against the bulkhead in front of him. He had removed the wooden frame that had been used to batten down the chest during the monsoon, and had opened the third drawer down so he could see the contents. It was one of his most prized possessions, an officer’s traveling chest of the eighteenth century, made of camphor wood that still exuded a faint smell of the Orient. For generations his ancestors had taken the chest to sea with them, from the merchant adventurers who had built the Howard family fortune in the early years of the East India Company to his own grandfather, who had carried it with him through the Second World War and last brought it ashore more than forty years ago. No Howard had ever suffered shipwreck before the loss of the first Seaquest in the Black Sea two years before, and Jack had made the decision to install the chest when the new vessel was under construction. But the chest meant more than just good luck. It contained the clues to a quest that Jack had yearned to follow since he was a boy, when his grandfather had first shown him the contents of that drawer.

Jack felt a surge of excitement as he looked at the chest. Hanging on the wall behind it was an old East India Company musket, and below that was the sweeping steel blade of a tulwar, an Indian sword with a distinctive circular pommel and handguard. Both had been the possessions of the first Howard to live in India, the colonel of a regiment of the Bengal army at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Below the sword were two Victorian photographs, one showing a woman and a child, the other a well-dressed young man with dark features and full lips, and a twinkle in his eye. The features came from the man’s Portuguese-Jewish grandmother, the wife of the Bengal army colonel. Below the picture in elegant handwriting were the words Royal Military Academy 1875, Lieutenant John Howard, Royal Engineers. It was the graduation picture of a young man brimming with Victorian confidence, about to set out on the greatest adventure of his life. Yet a mere four years later something would happen that would transform those eyes, and give them the unfathomable look that Jack sometimes saw in his own daughter. Finding out what happened to his great-great-grandfather had been a personal quest of Jack’s for as long as he could remember.