Tales of the Three Kingdoms: Silver Falcon Falls

We made camp as far away from Uncle's manor as we could, but based on the state we were all in, that wasn't very far. The dark woods closed around us, and I could still make out the trail that would lead back to that scene of slaughter and evil. For some reason, we didn't dare make a fire.

Windstopper had a dozen gashes from blades and spearpoints, and the breastplate of Elai shown through more than a few slashes in his traveller's attire. Brass Bell curled around herself clutching her daggers, and River shivered in the cold, eyes distant.

She flinched at my touch but then after a long moment of looking up at me as if she didn't recognize me, she pulled me tight around her, our damp furs mingling to provide paltry warmth.

"What was that?" Brass Bell finally asked, breaking our long, shocked silence.

"Bandits," I answered, brusquely.

Brass Bell hissed a bitter laugh, "I know bandits. Those were no bandits."

There was another long moment of silence as I scowled at Bell and she scowled back at me.

"The Classic of Mountains and Seas would call it a Xiang Liu." I looked to the woman in my arms, startled that she spoke with such cold clarity despite her shaking. "If anyone comes across the complex they'll call it a plague. Or perhaps they'll see the water and the bloat and say a flood came through. Others will say it was the work of a poison hydra. But the words of the Gray Dowager are probably the most apt. 'Demons from the abyss.'"

"Where did they come from?" Bell asked.

"The abyss," I answered flatly, arms around River.

"Does this look like the abyss to you? What are they doing here?"

"They Came Out Of The River." said Windstopper.

River lifted her gaze to meet Bell's. "My Mandate calls to them."

It was the obvious answer and we all knew it. This was the work of her 'Shadow River' Mandate. Anyone who had seen River's card or her pendant could guess at what that line meant, but now we all knew, with startling clarity just what she could do.

"The Gray Dowager found me the morning after I manifested. She saw the bodies of the whole village around the one girl who remained and guessed at what I had done. Maybe that was her own Mandate, to see the 'gifts' of others. In any case, she told me of a place, far into the eastern sea, at the bottom of the ocean, where a river of shadows could be found beneath the waves. She said the souls of all those who drown find their way there eventually. And she said the army of the drowned is always looking to grow their ranks. Sometimes I believe her. Sometimes I convince myself I never had a Mandate, that it was all just a bad dream. Tonight…"

River's fell words hung in the air between us, chilling our bones yet further.

"You were a girl," I said to her, breaking the silence. "You had no control over it."

"Why didn't they harm us?" asked Bell. "Why are we still alive?"

River shook her head and would not meet the other woman's eye. "I've never been able to control them, only call them. Until today, I thought only I was safe. But in my heart, I know even that's not true. Every time I call them, I'm never sure that they'll go back. I've always known that one day, when they come, they might take me too. It could be the next time I call them or it could be a hundred years from now, but one day, I will drown on my feet and become one of them. There are no gifts from Heaven. Only monsters like me and my demons."

Brass Bell narrowed her gaze. "You didn't know if those things would take us? And still you called them?"

"We were dead!" I snapped. "All of us! She made the only choice left to her, which was to take those bastards with us. Or maybe you don't remember where you were when the shadows came."

Brass Bell flinched at that and pulled her arms tighter around herself, knuckles white on her knives. It was cruel of me to mention, but it was true. River had been forced to make a horrible choice and there were no good options. For me and Windstopper, we would have died horrible deaths but we would have died fighting. For the two women in our party… for all the women in Uncle's complex…

I gripped the Son-of-Heaven Saber that I had reclaimed from the muddy riverbank, furious that we could have asked River to make such a choice for us. Remembering the empty look in her eyes as she called upon her Black Star Mandate, I was furious at myself for being so weak and stupid as to be helpless to save her. I was furious at my Uncle for whatever role he might have played in all this.

I had said before that I'd kill him for it…

Even as I formed the thought, an old, doddering figure shuffled up the road.

Without a moment's hesitation, I got up, strode out of the woods and stood before it in the road, sword bared.

It was, indeed, my Uncle, somehow having survived the demons when no one else had but us. He stood there blinking at me, looking frail, cold, and lost. It took him a moment to even realize I was there. It took him even longer to recognize me.

"Sparrow. What…"

I looked over his robes, covered in dark water and bile, and said nothing.

"They're all dead. There's… no one left. There's nothing left."

Still I said nothing. I didn't so much as move.

"How did you… Why, you?" he asked. I knew what he meant. He wanted to know why I had survived when everyone else in his complex had drowned. I knew what he was thinking, too. He would have traded my life for any one of them. I knew he was capable of anything now. He had been sent away by my father. He had lost the only thing left to him. He was the shell of a man, and…

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Uncle's eyes flicked down to my bared saber, mud mingled with blood on its blade, and I wondered at how much he knew, or how much he could guess. He licked his lips.

"Make it quick," he rasped. "Plea-"

It was quick at that. My blade whipped around, the light leaving his eyes even before he had finished the word, even before his head began to topple from his shoulders. I stood there for a long time over the body of my uncle, blade outstretched and steaming with hot blood. Was it just my shaking body, or did it seem that the Son-of-Heaven Saber flickered in my hand, on the verge of vanishing?

It didn't matter now.

When I finally did walk back to our cold, dark camp and stuck my sword into the ground, resuming my position beside River, I didn't meet any of my companions' eyes, but rather stared at the mist rising from the sword as if it were a thing alive.

Wasn't it, though? Hadn't its Imperial card said as much? Hadn't I felt compelled to complete the act of killing my Uncle, just now? I kept waiting for it to disappear in front of me. But even if my own sword could not tolerate to be held by me for my lack of virtue, that act would have been worth it. Killing Uncle was necessary, I told myself, even a mercy.

Clearly Brass Bell didn't see the logic, because, when I failed to explain myself, she finally asked, in low menacing tone, "What have you done?"

My gaze flicked to her and I could see the accusation in her eyes.

"What happened back there was horrible," she went on, when it was clear I wasn't going to answer straight-away, "but it was chaos and struggle. We still don't know what set it all off. We still don't know who our real enemy there was. But that just now was murder! Cold-blooded murder!"

When the Son-of-Heaven Saber finally cooled enough to stop steaming and I was satisfied that it wouldn't vanish, I pulled it from the earth and began cleaning off the grime.

"That man was dead already," I explained. "There was no life left in him. And if that's not enough for you, consider this. He could have wandered these woods for the next few days, lost and alone. Wild animals might have found him. Maybe a pack of dogs. Maybe a pack of wolves. Maybe he just sits down and slips away in the cold. Or. The Gray Wolves find him and he doesn't have enough left in him to resist. He tells them what he saw. He tells them what he knows. And if we're lucky… only if we're lucky, we've made it far enough away from here that it doesn't matter what he says. Because I can tell you one thing for sure, it didn't matter to that man any longer whether he lived or whether he died. So I did what had the best chance of keeping us alive."

"And you can live with that logic?" she spat.

My gaze flicked to my impassive bodyguard, to the woman beside me that I hadn't been able to protect, who had needed to call upon a terrifying, indiscriminate power in order to save the four of us. Finally, I met Brass Bell's eyes, remembering something River had said once. I twisted the words only slightly.

"I'd rather drown the world than let the world drown me."

Brass Bell for her part looked aghast, then her face hardened and she moved away into the night, seeking solitude.

But River, upon hearing my words that vaguely echoed something she had once told me, looked up at me to meet my eyes. Those dark deep pools held me for a long while, the thoughts behind them complex and unreadable. Finally, she pulled herself tighter to me.

At length, exhausted and haunted, River slid away into sleep. Only then did I notice the horrible stench. It was the stench of corpses and it refused to let me rest. I turned my nose into the light wind and found that the smell came from the wrong way to be the bodies in-and-around Uncle's complex.

I slid out from under River, who stirred only briefly before settling back down. Following the smell a dozen or so spans away I turned back toward my companions. I could still see River and Windstopper sleeping within the thicket, and Brass Bell rolling fitfully back and forth with her back to a tree, a little ways off.

As I took a few more cautious steps, and then backtracked, I now could tell that the stench came from directly beneath my feet. I brushed at the earth with my bare hands and it came away easily as if something had been buried here very recently. Another brush and the stench grew stronger. Stronger and stronger with each scoop of my hands until I pulled up fistfuls of soft loam and the smell of rotting flesh became overwhelming.

Suddenly, a few span down, the ground beneath me bucked as if alive and I lurched back.

When nothing sprang from the shallow hole I had dug, I cautiously peered in again. Whatever was within moved a second time, but this time I did not retreat. Another movement, and I realized that it was moving with a rhythm. No, a heartbeat. Whatever was in here… was alive. Even as I watched, the heartbeat grew weaker and then stopped altogether.

I reached into the hole and carefully brushed away the last layer of dirt until I found… a roll of leather. I reached in to pull it out only to find that the leather, or rather, the untanned pig hide, was so fresh it was still bloody. Seeing the bundle though, I had a horrible sinking feeling that I knew what this was.

I unrolled the hide, and for the first time received certainty as to Uncle's motivations and proof of my own paranoia.

***WHAT AN ACHIEVEMENT!***

TITLE: UNREPENTANT KINSLAYER

DESCRIPTION: You've murdered innocent members of your own family, whether by blood or by bond. It could have been an accident… but what are the chances so many accidents happened all at once?

VIRTUE: -100

REWARD: Youngest Brother Blade

The words were carved into the still-bleeding pig-hide, dripping red and wet.

Still-bleeding? The hide had still been pumping blood as I had found it! It had still been alive! I don't know how that could be possible but I could see, as I held the medium of flesh up to the moonlight, that the many veins lacing through it still carried slowly coagulating blood.

What sadistic Mandate could cause such a thing?

As I flattened out the ghoulish message to re-read the last lines, something thunked at my feet.

I looked down at the object, the length of my forearm, stunned. I had missed the last line upon the first read-through, but now I saw that I had received a reward for misjudging a situation so horrendously that I had killed three innocents with my own hand. When I had received my first 'achievement' I had thought it a prank. Now I could see it was all a sick joke.

In a stupor, I picked up the blade. It looked like a normal kitchen knife, weighty and subtly curved, suitable for cutting carrots or jointing an ox, except that its handle and sheath were made of leather so blood-stained as to be almost black. My hand shook as I peeled the bloody card away that had been stuck to the handle.

YOUNGEST BROTHER BLADE

TYPE: Curved Knife

WEAPON RANK: 135th

LORE: A common butcher's blade used by the youngest child of the first Emperor of Qin. He carved up his ten sisters and delivered them to his twenty-two older brothers, who each did the sensible thing and opted for simpler deaths.

LAST KNOWN OWNER: Emperor Five Ways, Second Emperor of Qin

When I had stumbled back to my companions, still clutching my prize in a stupor and a spell of unconsciousness I could not describe as 'sleep' finally overcame me, I dreamt of corpses, bloated and black, as if they had been lost at sea for a fortnight, littering Uncle's manor. There were his daughters, his wife, and his grandchildren all suffering the same horrible fate at the hands of River's demons. There were the bandits, too, who – finally having mustered the courage and the force of arms to rise against the old warlord – thought to rob him of his food and his daughters, but found only their own grizzly deaths alongside their would-be victims. And then there were the two younger men, killed, not by demons, but by a simple blade, freshly-hone knives still clutched in their hands.

A pair of fat pigs still rooted through the sty, nearby, untouched by all.