Tales of the Three Kingdoms: Silver Falcon Falls

We didn't bother with another war council; we knew the drill.

We could outplay Dreadwolf's men in the field, but so long as he had the greatest Hero of the Times beneath his command, and the mountains still stood, we could not take the pass to begin threatening the capital districts.

The Frost Giant had been a mere test of the concept. Perhaps a weakening of our resolve, or perhaps merely a thinning of our Coalition's bravest, so that the Demon didn't need to kill every single one of our greatest warriors himself.

Once I returned to camp, saw to the disposition of my troops, my generals, my horse, my weapons and my armor, in that order, then washed myself of blood to don a fresh robe and cloak, I did send word to Noble Lion that I would like to meet with him and go over some plans that could work against the Demon.

This wasn't like the Frost Giant. I knew this enemy, and I knew what his Mandate could do. When I received a message back, succinctly declining my audience, I marched over to his tent myself.

I sent the guard inside to announce me to the Grand General of the Coalition East of the Pass but he guard didn't return. Instead, White Stallion stepped out.

"He's exhausted, Sparrow," she said. "He's not seeing anyone tonight."

"Clearly," I said, giving her a flat look.

She returned it, cocking an eyebrow.

"Really?" she asked.

She knew River. She had met her back in the palace in the days when we were all just kids trying to make a name for ourselves in the shadows of our elders and betters. When I had first met up with Lion and Stallion at our rallying point just east of the pass, I had thought the farce of my "cousin" untenable if I didn't have our two closest friends on board. I had told them immediately about my second-in-command's secret identity, and they, in turn, hadn't bothered to hide their own relationship, which had started after the night in the Hall of Sixty-Four. So who was I to hang lanterns on secret relationships within the war-camp?

"Um, yeah, sorry. Just kind of automatic sometimes. Look, I have some ideas on how to beat the Demon. I'm not sure if any of them are foolproof, but if we put our heads together…"

"Get some rest, Sparrow. He'll have orders for all of us in the morning." She made to turn back inside the tent.

I scowled at that. Noble Lion was in charge. We had sworn an oath to obey him, and he had sworn an oath to maintain order, by military law if necessary. There were too many disparate forces within our Coalition for him to limit his powers so as not to hurt feelings. I guess I had thought myself the exception to that. I wondered now if even White Stallion, the general's lover, was an exception to that.

What kind of man can give orders to a woman who shares his bed and shares his mind and holds his heart in the dark watches of the night?

Before I could put words in front of those thoughts, Stallion was gone, returning to Lion's side, no doubt, and the guard was back.

The man in gold gave me a sympathetic shrug, as he barred the entryway.

I sighed.

At least he's in good hands, I told myself. Stallion had a good head on her shoulders, and she would make sure to provide him with the counsel that he needed. For his own sake and for the sake of the Coalition, I hoped I was right in not forcing the issue.

But still… not being one of his closest counselors hurt.

It hurt enough that I found myself not returning straight to my tent, to seek rest and relaxation with River, assuming she wasn't mad at me for holding her back, yet again.

Somehow I found myself climbing the frozen steps of the Weeping Wall, pausing every time the stairs curved or switched back to see the camp growing smaller and smaller beneath me, as the sun set quickly behind the jagged teeth of the mountains that still blocked our way west. At length, as I continued my climb, all I could see was the dark flutter of banners and the bright glow of campfires far below.

"Who goes there?" rasped a voice. I turned with a start to see a shape propped up against a crook in the ice, a full tiger-fur wrapped around him, complete with paws crossed across his lap and fangs poised above his brow.

I smiled. "The only one who dares to snatch the tiger's prize from his mouth," I retorted. Then wrapping my own cloak around me – an assortment of smaller game stitched together in a motley of silvers, grays, and blacks – I sat down beside the Tiger.

I could still feel the ice beneath me, through my fur, but only just. It felt good, clean, like the fresh wind of the plains after I had been lost in a book for far too long.

"What are you doing out here at this hour?" I asked the Tiger, once I had arranged my cloak around me.

"Meditating on the five essences of an army," he drawled, putting a waterskin to his lips.

I made a face at that. It was a very un-tiger-like thing to say. This was the same man who favored sharp, simple strikes, both on the battlefield and in the council chamber? "And… how is that going?"

He took another pull from the skin. "I think I've got 'em?"

"You have… what?"

"The five essences of the army, of course."

"Oh… and?"

The Tiger nodded and sucked his teeth. After another long moment he took another drink. He took so long in responding I thought he wouldn't, but he finally said, looking out over the camp of our combined Coalition.

"The dust of the march," he gestured to nothing in particular but the pass before us.

"The steel of our swords." He patted his waist.

"The fires of our camps." He merely looked out over the many lights that marked our army and the long darkness before the lights of the ruined wall at the far end.

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"The wood of our spears and banners." He looked up over our shoulders to where one of the dozen banners of our Coalition flew – in the darkness I couldn't tell whose.

Then, when he didn't say anything else, I looked over to see why he had stopped. It looked as if he had forgotten the last. In the shadows, his face was twisted up in thought beneath the tiger-mouth.

"You're missing water," I prompted.

"Ah!" he held out the skin before us, pointedly.

"Somehow," I chuckled, "I don't think that's water."

He took another long swig and then passed it to me. I took it with thanks and had a sip. It was a struggle not to cough. Definitely not water.

"You decide on a banner yet?" His voice was hoarse, probably from shouting orders to his men, maybe even roaring in the heat of battle.

"What's wrong with my father's?" I asked.

"Well it's not yours, for one."

"Why is that important? I do represent my father and the Silver Falcon clan, after all. I may be his heir, but it's still his army. Even if we are rebels, for now."

He sighed and took another pull, then grimaced, sucking his teeth. "I know your father, Sparrow. I respected the hell out of him. I still do. But those men down there flying his banner. They're not following him. They're following you. Now. You made damned sure of that in the last two battles. Two battles like that and your father is just a memory to them. A fond memory perhaps. Or at the very least a formative one. But you're their leader now, not the shadow of a man hundreds of li away."

I very quickly realized that the Tiger was right. Some of the men might once have thought of me as 'that talentless boy.' But most of them had been bandits in my father's territory, flouting his authority the moment his power-base had crumbled. Those men probably didn't have a clue as to who I was and what I could – or couldn't do – until a year ago. Some might have respected my father. Once. Others might have feared him. But that was all in the past. That was before I had made conquerors of them. Now, few remembered the might of a man who was their lord merely on paper. Or perhaps not even, if Dreadwolf had bothered to use his control of the capital to alter the Imperial system.

I sighed, perhaps signalling to the Tiger that I would not fight him on this, because he nodded and went on, advancing his argument like an army, more experienced and more sure of itself.

"Men need the dust of the road to remind themselves that they'd rather be home, tilling their fields and planting babies in their wives. They need the comfort of their fires and their tents, because for some of them, that's the only home they have left. They need this!"

He held the wineskin up before himself like a trophy, then his voice dropped, "To help them forget the things they did when the bloodlust was upon them." He thought for a long while again, and then at length his arm snapped up over our shoulders to point up at the flag behind us. "And they need that to remind themselves that it was all worth something in the end. If you don't have any one of these things, you don't have an army. Not for long, anyway."

I thought about that for a long time, the silence stretching between us. When he passed me the wineskin and I took a swig to pass it back, I realized something was bothering me.

"You forgot iron," I said.

He punched me in the shoulder good-naturedly. "Oh the swords are self-evident, smart-ass? Nothing figurative about them." Then he sobered again. "If you don't have a banner, Sparrow, how can you be their leader?"

He was right again, I knew immediately. I was a quick study after all. But I also knew that when I responded too quickly, older people assumed I was dismissing them, or hadn't taken their words to heart. So I waited an appropriately long time before responding.

"I'll think on it," I said, honestly.

He seemed satisfied by that answer, maybe even gratified. "And then you'll need a flag chariot to fly it of course."

"A flag-chariot?" I asked. Chariots hadn't been effective in warfare for around four hundred years. Not since crossbows and more advanced polearms had proved to be such effective counters to them, and a mounted archer on a good thoroughbred proved much more reliable.

Flag-chariots, specifically, hadn't been mentioned in any war treatises I had read. All of the factions East of the Pass had many banners throughout their armies, but I also noticed that somewhere among the supply train, or perhaps in some strategically defensible position, or maybe even all the way back at the eastern entrance to the pass there was the banner.

Sometimes the banner was attached to a single chariot with a few chests of the commander's personal effects. Sometimes, in times of peace, I had seen it fly over the wagon that carried the man's wives and small children. For the greater officers within the Coalition East of the Pass, it flew above some hulking monstrosity of a cart, bound in iron and thick wood, pulled by whole teams of oxen or a dozen horses.

These were not the types of war-wagons you brought into battle, but placed at your ultimate fall-back position, the place you thought most safe. I had never seen Noble Lion's flag-chariot, nor had I ever seen one belonging to my father.

"Isn't it obvious?" replied the Tiger. "For the treasure."

He explained the need for the "flag-chariot," the "banner-wagon," or simply "the standard." I listened as intently as if it were any other lesson from one of the battlefield greats. Because he was. The Tiger of the Southlands was truly the one man I could have hoped to teach me in the ways of war, after, perhaps, my own father.

And when he was done, we were both good and drunk. It's a wonder I didn't immediately forget it all.

I truly don't know where the conversation turned after that, but I do remember that at some point I asked, looking out over the vast expanse of darkness to the faint glow of torches upon the ruined wall at the end of the pass. "Do you think he's still sitting there?"

The Tiger knew who I was talking about, and while he didn't sober – we were both too far gone for that – his tone did change.

"Who can say?" he said after a moment. "I do know that our man-an-hour plan against the Frost Giant failed. As did the siege horns and the waiting. You remember? It was almost like he just turned to ice when he wasn't fighting. And he'd get up and move only for as long as it took to kill a man and laugh. Something about a strong enough Mandate makes these men different from you and me. So… can the Demon sit there for days, months even, waiting for us to send a challenger? Without sleep? Without food or drink or anything to sustain him other than battle and blood and fear?" The Tiger shrugged again, as if that would be the most normal thing in the world. "He wields weapons like nothing I've ever seen before. He rides a horse that isn't a horse. Who's to say that man is still a man?"

I nodded at that.

"I have plans, you know. Dozens of them that might work against the Demon."

The Tiger took a long drink and wiped his mouth. "And I hope you never have to use them." Then he tottered to his feet. "Its fucking cold up here. Why in Heaven's name did I come up here, anyway?"

"Um, to meditate, I think."

The Tiger laughed. "I'm a Tiger, Sparrow. What in Heaven's name am I doing meditating?" He tossed me what was left of the wineskin. There wasn't much. He started back down to his tent, taking exaggerated care to descend the icy steps, given his state.

"Oh, and Sparrow." He stopped. "Call me Sun Jian."

I was struck by that. I honestly didn't even know how to respond, something like this was so unplanned for. What had I done to deserve to address one of the great warriors of my time by his given name – by his personal name.

"Uh. Um, likewise. I mean, don't call me Sun Jian, obviously. I mean you can call me…"

The Tiger waved over his shoulder and was gone.

In the morning, in the light of day and in the scope of war, before all the assembled generals East of the Pass I saw a very different man.

He was right, even if he had never said it outright. There was one man who sat with his own demons, drowning them in the dark of the night and meditating on the essences of the army. And the man who stood before his troops, who faced down the monstrous enemy, who gave into the bloodlust without a second thought so that the people who stood behind him had a chance to outlive the people who stood against him… That man was entirely separate.

One name in private. Another for the cruel world beyond. That was the way it had to be for men like us – for leaders.