Tales of the Three Kingdoms: Silver Falcon Falls

I quickly realized how this looked. I was alone save for my bodyguard, standing over an old man with my hand on my sword. To make matters worse, I had every reason under Heaven to want Swaying Willow dead. And they all knew it.

It would just be so convenient for me if he disappeared in the mist, I could almost hear the other lords East of the Pass thinking.

But I would be a murderer again, and an oathbreaker, besides. I had sworn to put aside all past enmities in favor of our common goal as a Coalition. If my blade had even been half a span out of its scabbard, Noble Lion would be within his rights – no, he would be obligated – to put me to death without so much as a summary trial. That was military law. And I had bound myself to it, willingly. We had all bound ourselves, willingly, to Noble Lion. And in turn, he was just as bound to maintain order among us.

Noble Lion's hard-set jaw told me all of this in a heartbeat. Had he not announced his presence…

I looked back to Swaying Willow. He took no pleasure in seeing me so chastised, even wordlessly, but his gaze was stern at how poorly I had conducted myself. He gestured again toward the seat beside him. With as much dignity as I could muster, I took it once more.

"Your orders," said White Stallion coldly, handing me a roll of paper, then striding around the arrayed chairs, along with the other generals to take their own seats in the mid-morning fog.

These orders were much longer than the ones I had given my own forces, and I puzzled at that even as I broke the seal.

No, I realized as I began to unroll it. The orders were simple. But everything else about them was… convoluted.

***COALITION MISSION BRIEFING: TOURNAMENT FOR TIGER CAGE PASS***

Primary Objective: Defeat the Demon in single combat.

Fail Condition: All of those listed in the roster are slain.

ROSTER: CHAMPIONS OF THE COALITION EAST OF THE PASS

FIRST………….Wardrum

SECOND………Silverfish

THIRD………….Velvet-winged Moth

The list continued for some time. It was as if Noble Lion and his ministers had compiled a list of every single person within the war camp who even had a chance against the Demon. Wracking my brain to place some of those first names, it appeared that some of those listed didn't even have an honest chance. I skipped to the end, seeing that the last few names were each of the generals themselves.

EIGHTY-SEVENTH…Noble Lion

EIGHTY-EIGHTH……The Tiger of the Southlands

EIGHTY-NINTH………Spotted Lynx

There were several others, who were not champions, per se, but powerful leaders with powerful Mandates. Eventually it turned to the more… administrative leaders within the Coalition.

NINETIETH………….Golden Goat

NINETY-FIRST………Orchid Mantis

NINETY-SECOND…..Swaying Willow

NINETY-THIRD………Saber Oak

NINETY-FOURTH……Sparrow

NINETY-FIFTH……….White Stallion

This… this was all wrong. It made no sense. I mean, yes, it made a sort of sense. It was telling every single general in the Coalition East of the Pass that we will all die here if we cannot beat back the Demon. Noble Lion would go first, most likely, but the rest of us were hereby ordered to follow. Noble Lion's own brother would go just before the old men. But why was I second to last?

I'm a soldier. I can fight. Certainly better than Swaying Willow. Maybe not as good as…

That's when it hit me.

Noble Lion hadn't just taken White Stallion as a lover. He was in love with her. If I was compiling a list of what order those I cared about would die, would I not also have put River last on that list, for whatever slim chance it could possibly gain her?

My heart stopped in my chest, and I quickly scanned the list in its entirety.

There she was. River's name. Twelfth. River would face the Demon twelfth, right before Windstopper, then the rest of my Mandated officers.

I launched to my feet, trailing the roster.

"Lion there's been a…"

"Back in your seat, Sparrow." That was White Stallion rising up from her seat beside her lion.

"Oh go ahead, Stallion. Cut me down for not sitting nicely. Let's see how long this all lasts after that." I waved the banner of paper in the general direction of the now seated lords.

Stallion was gripping her sword. They had expected some resistance to the list. They were primed for it, in fact. Maybe there had even already been some clash of wills back in the camp. But Stallion had not expected any insubordination to come from me. All she could do was repeat her order. "Back. In Your. Seat. Sparrow."

"You have my best fighters too late. I just want to switch two-"

"And then what Sparrow?" Noble Lion had been massaging the bridge of his nose but now his palm slapped to the armrest of his camp chair. It was the same chair as the rest of us, but it might as well have been a throne the way he sat it, with such power and such weight.

"You think compiling a list like this was easy?" he went on. "This was always the ultimate price for a war of this kind. You say you want to make one little change, huh? How long will we sit here making one little change each. An eternity? Two?"

"There are other ways." I ground out. "Better ways."

"You've been given an order, Sparrow, by one who speaks with my voice."

Lion at least had enough nobility to not reach for his sword. The nature of true nobility is that one never has to reach for one's own sword. They have people to swing swords for them.

Stallion was in front of me again, but this time her hands were not on her sword-belt. She placed them both on my shoulders. Not forcefully. Gently.

"Trust us," she said. "Trust them." She nodded down toward the list and seeing that my resolve was breaking, began guiding me back toward my chair beside Swaying Willow.

'Trust them?' Ah, she couldn't very well say to trust 'her.' She was telling me to trust River. They didn't know what River could do, but they had guessed that it was something powerful – some martial Mandate – to have gone from an Imperial concubine to a leader in my army so quickly. Stallion was telling me to trust River…

Unlike Lion, who hadn't trusted his own lover enough to allow her to face off against the Demon at the top of the list. There was subtext there. Perhaps a lot of subtext. But Stallion hadn't even prevailed upon Noble Lion to place her up near the top, so what hope did I have to make my own 'little' change?

And yet… Stallion must be burning inside. The Demon's Mandate was Terror. Stallion's Mandate was Courage. Shouldn't hers have been the first power we threw up against this one-man army?

Working through all of this, I found that I had been guided back into my seat in stunned silence, and was now sitting as the first man on the list, this Wardrum, strode out into the mist until we could barely see him. As he did so, he began beating his own bare chest. At first he howled like any other lunatic walking willingly to his death, but slowly as he beat his chest harder and harder, his howls began to deepen and echo until it seemed as if he were beating a hundred wardrums, or perhaps one immense one.

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Aptly named, but the sound suddenly cut off, as we saw Wardrum take a battle-stance. Suddenly he stepped forward and raised his hammer…

The hammer never fell. Instead, Wardrum fell slowly to his knees, his heavy weapon sliding back over his shoulder before he fell forward, his face slapping down onto the stone with a sickening crunch.

The Demon laughed and strode out of the mist, blood covering the three points of his halberd, leading a rope of intestine back to the fallen form of the first challenger, where an ornate barb at the end of one of the blades had snagged.

"That wasn't your best was it?" The Demon stood a hundred paces before us, waiting for the next one. "There's no way that one beat Frost Giant."

I looked down and frantically scanned the next ten names before River, hoping to see the name "Carver" somewhere — anywhere — in front of her. But the first eleven were all… nobodies. They were all heroes of some minor battle or another, decently ranked by virtue of this achievement or that, but… none of them had any chance against the Demon alone.

As if reading my thoughts, Swaying Willow spoke up, voice low enough that it could not be heard several chairs away where Noble Lion watched with grim determination.

"They're cannon fodder," said the aged former minister. "Only meant to test the rules of the game and maybe tire the Demon out, if such a thing is possible. This is no better than one-man an hour."

I growled at that.

Silverfish swung and hit air, then his head continued on without him.

"Never even got to call his Mandate," mused Swaying Willow. Then he reiterated, "Cannon fodder."

Back at the Weeping Wall, I had been against sending one man an hour at the Frost Giant. The thesis of that plan had been to keep the giant awake and alert for long enough that his stamina would flag. Any hearty farmer could keep working for a dozen hours straight. So the plan necessarily wasted at least twelve lives. But a good soldier with practice could keep himself alert for two full days, maybe more before they started slipping. All in all, some of the other generals had surmised that the first sixty people sent to face the Frost Giant should be ones, "we were willing to part with." At a hundred men and a hundred hours, we had abandoned the plan. The Frost Giant could not tire any more than a frozen mountain peak could. A hundred boys and old men, killed by incompetent leaders with a grim and brutal plan, plus the ear of their lord.

Velvet-winged Moth seemed to disappear then reappear on the far side of the Demon, as his halberd cut through dust. Moth raised her dagger and the Demon dropped on hand from his haft, backhanding his opponent. Velvet-winged Moth, spun and spit teeth, her daggers clattering to the stone somewhere in the mist.

"No, w…" was as far as she got before the halberd plunged into her chest, the Demon lifting both polearm and corpse off the ground with only one hand. Everything about him, from his strength to his demeanor, was inhuman.

I didn't fault Noble Lion for following such advice. We were leaders in a time of war. Every decision we made carried with it the weight of lives. A hundred lives? A dozen? These were good outcomes when fighting battles at such a scale as we did now. Noble Lion may have lost two thousand or more taking that wall, purely to split the Frost Giant's forces so that I could punch through a single point with my cavalry. He had paid for his tactics with his own mens' lives so that I didn't have to. And now he had placed me just before his own lover in the order of which we could die.

If I wasn't more worried about the twelfth name on that list, I might have been relieved.

The fourth and fifth died without forcing the Demon to block even a single blow. They had combat Mandates but nothing worth mentioning. Swaying Willow's silence was grim.

Ok, Sparrow, think, I said to myself. If these fighters were meant to tire the Demon out, who were they tiring him out for? Where was the first true hero on the list? If he wasn't first, where was Carver, that tall man in green who had cut down the Frost Giant before the wine served to the challengers had even grown cold? I think I spied him somewhere behind us so far back at the edge of the mist that he was almost lost in it. I didn't bother counting but checked the list. He was in the fifties.

Six strode out to meet the Demon and there was at least a clang of metal before their death rattle echoed through the mist and their throat bubbled their lifeblood out onto the scree. Seven prepared themselves, grim-faced and sweating. Noble Lion's order must have been delivered to all ninety-five names on that list, because they had actually lined up.

I locked eyes with River and she nodded. She looked… eager. She was swathed in her padding and armored on top of that so I couldn't really see much of her. But I knew my wife. She was nervous but ready to unveil her powers. To her, this was less about taking down the Demon and more about finally revealing how horribly destructive she could be. As soon as she did so, assuming she was right about her ability to call upon her own powers before the Demon closed on her, she would become the most powerful and most sought-after Hero in the Land Under Heaven.

I just wanted her alive.

As Seven fell – I couldn't think of these soldiers as people anymore, save for River; it would have been impossible to hate the man who ordered this otherwise – River adjusted her helmet to see better. She was locked in on the Demon's movements now, and frustrated that she hadn't been able to take him out first, before almost a dozen lives would be lost. But she was too realistic to waste her time trying to change Noble Lion's mind. She was too pragmatic to waste the opportunity to study her opponent.

Eight fell.

Wait. River was confident she could beat the Demon. After everything she had seen from him and having lived with her own Abyssal power for her entire life, she thought she could win. But was a hundred paces enough to survive River's power?

Nine fell.

"Windstopper!" I called. But he was in line – somewhere in the thirties, I guessed – and as soon as he made to step out of line, the soldier's in gold reached for the weapons. Windstopper looked at me questioningly, but I shook my head, cancelling the order. He'd never get past them. None of my generals would.

So, that's why River kept looking over at me. She wasn't comforting me. She was past that. She was telling me that when she strode out there and her gaze turned black, that I needed to get far enough away that her demons couldn't get to me. But how far was that? The only time I had seen…

Ten fell. He was little more than a boy with a Mandate for making the mist around him change colors. He used it…for all that was worth in the face of the Demon. The young man's rainbow died with him.

The only time I had seen River's power it had covered an entire river, and coursed up the Riverbank for more than a hundred paces. By Heaven, was her range fixed or did it spread out over the nearest body of water? Did a cloud of mist count as a body of water for the purposes of her Mandate? Did she even know?!

"Lion!"

"Enough Sparrow!"

"We need to move back before my first champion goes. Lion! Are you listening to me? The twelfth challenger could kill us all without meaning to."

"Silence, Sparrow. You've been warned."

"A pass of corpses, Lion! Everyone dead except for Dreadwolf in his city! Is that what you want?"

"Stallion, take Sparrow back to his tent. Put him under arrest for disobeying a direct order from his general."

I looked to Stallion who didn't move. She merely looked at Lion with shocked expression.

Eleven wasted no time in stepping forward, damn him. But wait… I knew this man. He actually had a chance! His name was Lumpmace, he had been stationed in Windmarsh when everything went to shit, and we had thought him a deserter, but apparently he had stayed on with Swaying Willow. Lumpmace had the strongest Silver Star Mandate I had seen since my father. His weapon was a lump of iron the size of a horse's head and he swung it like a willow. No blacksmith had been able to make him a weapon heavy enough to capitalize on his Light-Weight Mandate so he had made his own with a cracked forge and a ridiculous amount of molten metal.

My eyes flicked back to Stallion who hadn't carried out her general's order.

"Stallion?" Lion's imperious gaze swung toward his lover and second-in-command.

Iron clanged and my gaze returned to the battle, just long enough to see that Lumpmace was actually matching the Demon blow for blow. There was hope.

I turned back to the Lion and the Stallion.

"Stallion! That's an order to you too!"

Stallion made no move.

A howl from the battlefield and the earth vibrated beneath our feet.

My eyes lept to where Lumpmace had matched the Demon for only twelve bouts before the Demon had proved a greater master with a greater weapon. Lumpmace stood clutching the stump on an arm, the severed hand still clutching the mace where it had embedded itself in the ground where it had fallen. The Demon smiled mirthlessly, not the least bit out of breath. He seemed to be savoring his opponent's pain.

Lumpmace mastered himself enough to reach his remaining hand for his weapon, but the Demon took that one too. Lumpace roared in frustration, now, his anger echoing through the mist. The Demon finally silenced him by taking the man's head.

I looked back to River. I could almost feel her smile hidden beneath her helm.

Wait! Ang! If River didn't know the limits of her own power, could her monsters of the abyss find their way all the way back to our camp where the nurses looked after Ang?

River strode forward.

Stallion rose to her feet. Lion did, as well, staring his lover down from half a span away.

The shadows around River shifted and her eyes began to cloud.

Meeting the lion's gaze from half a span away, Stallion finally said, "Fuck this."

Fuck them. I threw my chair aside and began to run for my child somewhere back in camp. Then an earsplitting whistle shot through the mist. I paused just long enough to hear a horse's hooves like gods' thunder on the stone. The line of challengers shouted and broke apart, and my mind spun for a second to put everything in perspective.

A great white warhorse came crashing through the camp with the mist trailing from his broad, rippling chest and pure white mane. But the proportions were all wrong. It seemed much closer than it should have been, until I realized what this beast was. This was the reason White Stallion wore white. This was the creature the northern barbarians of old had worshiped. This was the result of the hundreds of years of specialized breeding by the greatest of northern horse-lords, supposedly from immortal stock. This was a god-horse of the north, so named because it was so large, its back so broad and muscular, that it seemed only a god, half-again as tall as a man, would be able to ride it.

It made straight for Stallion who put her boot in Lion's chest, sending him careening backward and out of the way before he could call upon his Yellow Star Mandate.

I felt Stallion's own Mandate of Courage bolster us and with a two toned whistle her massive warhorse changed course just enough for her to catch its saddlehorn and stirrup as it streamed past.

Stallion was a tall woman, but she looked a child on the god-horse's back.

Her saber was out in a flash as the immense pure-white beast rushed past River, where her eyes had just started to go dark in her helm. My wife and my champion was so surprised by the wall of white that rushed past her, that she stumbled back and her eyes cleared.

Stallion leaned over just in time for her blade to meet the Demon's at full speed, with a clang that split the mist by sheer force.

The Demon actually stumbled backward as he parried the blow. Stallion disappeared in the distant haze and a moment later that immense white horse materialized from the mist again to stagger the Demon a second time.