Tales of the Three Kingdoms: Silver Falcon Falls

As we made the last turn at the end of Tiger Cage Pass and the fog finally began to fully give way, the air took on a strange hue. Months, it seemed we had spent in the cold blues and grays of the mountains, and silver-whites of fog and mist. Now, moments away from getting our first glimpse at the valley beyond, our prize, and the City of Lanterns that presided over it, the palette shifted from cool colors to hot, from the colors of sky and ice and mountain, to the orange and red of flame.

Our horses continued onward at a sustainable canter and soon the glow became too bright, too intense for it to simply be those hundred-thousand lanterns for which the city had been named.

Our first glimpse of the eastern capital proved that nothing in the Land Under Heaven was sacred to Dreadwolf, and that he would go to any limits to ensure that he alone held power. It also proved that Dreadwolf was once again one step ahead of the Coalition East of the Pass.

The city beneath us blazed.

I could feel my eyes dilate at the sudden, impossibly large glow, feel the dry, cracking warmth even from here.

Millions of people had lived here, when I had left over a year ago. When I had first laid eyes on this city it had claimed the greatest fortifications known to man, the most prolific and productive peasantry to support it, and the highest rank in splendor. The greatest city in every way that mattered.

Now, I watched as the heart of the Imperial palace caved in on itself, taking with it the Imperial records and the Hall of Immortal Knowledge. Knowledge might be immortal, so long as there were minds to carry and transmit it, but books and scrolls were not. A thousand years of history, wisdom from more than one empire and more than one great dynasty… all gone in an instant because one power-hungry monster refused to give over gracefully.

The Hall of Sixty-Four would be next, the way its roof blazed. And after that, the Hall of Paragons with its cultural artifacts and any riches Dreadwolf might have missed.

If the City of Lanterns could not be his, Dreadwolf had said, it would be no ones.

Now I saw why the Tiger and his men had met no resistance. Now I saw why the Tiger had never turned back. Down across the several li of once-productive fields that patterned the valley, along the only side of the city that had not sported sixty-span-high walls, the Blue River ran. And in the shallows of that river that I had come to know so well in my time in the capital, the Tiger and his men plunged buckets, vases, gold-plated drinking bowls into the dark waters that danced in the firelight. Anything that could hold and transport water from the river flats to the city proper, they made use of to fight the fires as best they could.

The Tiger had transformed his crack-troops and his blood-bay warhorses into an elite bucket-line. Though to what end, I could not tell. He might be able to save a mansion or two, maybe one of the great buildings that hadn't already succumbed to the inferno, but every city block and corner of the palace complex, without exception, streamed great tongues of fire that lapped the sky, and belched plumes of smoke that covered the horizon for dozens of li around. He did not have the manpower to fight such a conflagration. A million men might not be able to stop this.

This… this was the true meaning of pyrrhic victory. We had won the pass, at great expense to our troops and our morale. And what had we gained? Nothing. Smoke and ash. An entire city's-worth of it.

The City of Lanterns would now be known as the City of Ash.

Even so… I had a thousand men and horses behind me… Surely that could buy another few buildings, another few sacred family shrines, maybe a few records whose recorders had not survived the cull…

The order to assist the Tiger and his men and save what we could was on my lips when River pulled up her horse alongside mine.

"The boy's song," she said, voice low for only me to hear. "You recognize it?"

I thought back to the words the blinded boy had been singing before he had displayed a Disappearing Mandate. He had sung:

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A throne for my brother;

A noose for his queen.

The wolf flees and blunders,

To tombs where none can see.

"Not specifically, no," I said to River. "But it seems familiar. It has a similar form to the others that broke out among the people. You don't think…"

River nodded. She didn't need to say it.

"But Emperor Shining Light is dead. How could he be responsible for this song?"

River just looked at me from within the shadow of her helm.

"You think his Mandate can live on after his death?" It was a question I had raised before. But the last time we had heard a song from the late Emperor Shining Light's Mandate, it had been about his death. It would have been plausible that he had composed and delivered it to the minds of the people with his dying breath. Now, this song was undoubtedly posthumous, speaking of the Dreadwolf's failings and his fleeing the city, and there was no way Shining Light still lived after so long, deposed and powerless as he was, in the wolf's clutches.

River was staring at me, waiting for me to work it out.

I was always good at puzzles, but best at physical ones, the kinds that lent themselves well to supply lines and troop formations, even the color-coded seating arrangements in one particularly high profile meeting of the clans. Word games were River's domains. She had practically been raised on double meanings, secret codes, and clandestine affairs within a hostile court.

When I looked up at her, she wordlessly pointed to the far side of the burning city, the hills and mountains on the far side where another set of narrow passes protected its western flank.

"Tombs where none can see? He falls back to the old capital in the west? The City of Tombs?"

River nodded.

"It makes sense. It's closer to his powerbase in Wolf's Hollow and it could still be seen as a legitimate seat of power in the Land Under Heaven. The mountains are even higher around it. The passes are tighter. If he makes it there, we'll never root him out. But…"

Even as I thought aloud I heard the Tiger's voice in the distance bolstering his men. He was, himself, knee deep in the River handing bucket after bucket to his cavalry, or those on foot forming a long chain back to the nearest burning building.

"Catch our enemy or fight for our history?" I looked at River, the burning city, then the western pass that led, eventually, to the City of Tombs.

"Save our past or save our future?" She reframed it.

"An easy choice," I said, "when you put it like that."

I turned back toward my men, the eleven hundred light cavalry beneath Flashammer and the forty elite Screaming Cavalry beneath River. If we pushed forward any further we would have no supplies. No support. We would not only be missing our center, but our rearguard as well. those supply lines I thought myself so good at would be absent.

There was no help for it.

It would be hours yet before Windstopper caught up with his cart, or Tongs caught up with his thousand archers on foot. Castellan might find his way to us eventually, with his trappers who seemed to move through rough and wooded terrain as easily as most men moved over paved roads, but I didn't count on it.

"Fall in!" I shouted to my mounted men. "My orders stand! We catch our enemy before they dig into their new city. And any man who brings me Dreadwolf's head…"

I tried to think of a suitable reward — that was within my power to grant — for saving the Land Under Heaven. I came up empty. "I'll give him the Bronzesong Hills!"

The men behind me chuckled darkly. They knew the Hills were no longer mine to give. It wasn't much of a reward if they had to go take it from some unknown rebel lord after I granted it to them. But it was something. A chance at a sliver of hope.

"Now! Fly!"

"Aiaiaiaiaiai!"

***SPARROW'S MISSION UPDATE: RACE TO THE CITY OF TOMBS***

UPDATED Primary Objective: Stop Dreadwolf before he reaches the City of Tombs.

Secondary Objective: Kill the Demon himself, and capture as many of his men as possible.

Bonus Objective: Kill Dreadwolf himself.

UPDATED Fail Condition: The Coalition fails to reach Dreadwolf in time or is pushed back out of the passes.

ROSTER: ARMY OF THE SILVER FALCON CLAN

GENERAL: Sparrow of the Silver Falcon Clan

VAN……………...Sparrow, Shadow River, Flashammer

LEFT FLANK……

RIGHT FLANK…

CENTER………..

REAR……………