Chapter 59: Sparrow Receives a Message from Noble Lion But Once Again Refuses Orders
A messenger found his way to us just as we were mounting up again. He was a young man, as most messengers were, but an excellent rider, which was, again, essential when thousands could live or die based on the transference of information. I did, however, find this messenger's choice of horse and attire for delivering that message through the mountains in the dead of night a bit upsetting. The lad practically gleamed as he made his way up the trail.
Many of Flashammer's men carried shortbows with them behind their saddles, as was their habit as former bandits, and they had taken up positions atop the boulders to either side of the gorges and gullies that led to our lakeside camping ground.
"Ease," I ordered them as I walked over to meet the messenger, leading Windshear by the reins.
The creak of bows was an almost disappointed sound.
I had pushed the men hard to make it this far into the western mountains. They were eager for the blood at the end of the hunt.
"Orders from Noble Lion," said the messenger, dismounting.
I held out my hand.
The messenger shook his head. "Verbal only. He considers this enemy territory."
"Hm. He must have great faith in you, then, to trust your intellect as well as your loyalty. Your name?"
He didn't bow as he still eyed my men, soot-stained and filthy, who hadn't unknocked their arrows, but he held out his pendant.
It was ivory, or more likely, antler.
Zhao Yun
RANK 2: Distinguished Peasant
WORTH: 100 dan
CLAN: None | STAR: Unknown | FATE: Leaf-Sky "Small Harvest"
MANDATE: None
The man before me was young still, but well past the age where he would normally have manifested a Mandate and earned a courtesy name. A late bloomer? Or, like me, would he have to survive on wits alone? I was about to hand it back, when…
"By Heaven how often is this going to happen?" I grumbled to myself as the pendant shone with a brilliant white and green light, then changed before me.
The Quilin
RANK 993: Hero of the Times
WORTH: 500,000 dan
CLAN: Green Dragon | STAR: Brilliant Silver & Green | FATE: Leaf-Sky "Rootless"
MANDATE: Rootless Wind
I had long since surmised that the prophetic text on these changing pendants – and the shining, colorful lights that came with it – was visible only to me. When I handed the pendant back to the young messenger, who would one day be named for one of the most fabled beasts of lore, the faces of those around me all but confirmed that they had seen nothing out of the ordinary. In the darkness of the cold lake campsite, flashing magical lights would have been impossible to miss. There could be no doubt. They had not seen it change. But for every question about this mystical system that I answered it seemed two new ones arose.
Who was this Green Dragon clan that would eventually claim the loyalty of so many of the greatest heroes of the times, and was the fate of these men already cast in iron? Was it fruitless to try to win them to my side or was such a fate mutable, dependent upon key points, or "crossroads of destiny," as a man with a prophetic Mandate once called them?
At the moment, however, I didn't have time to ponder destinies and plot the course of Heaven. I had a war to win.
"Well?" I looked at the messenger who didn't balk at my gaze. By Heaven he already held himself like the highest of generals. "The message?"
"I'm to certify your identity."
I grumbled about Noble Lion's paranoia as I held out my pendant to the lad.
The lad looked up and nodded, taking note of my features, no doubt, before he spoke.
"The army is exhausted. We cannot support you out here. You are to fall back and regroup at the City of Lanterns."
"Fall back? We're almost two full day's ride ahead of them. If Dreadwolf gets to the City of Tombs-"
"Lion said you'd say that. He said to remind you that this is an order."
My chin inclined at having just been interrupted by a damned messenger boy. Whatever he might be in the future, at present, I was seven ranks ahead of him. I could take his head and no one would bat an eyelash at it.
My men were thinking the same thing because their bows – still knocked – creaked. I held up my hand to them again.
The lad was doing his duty, if a bit overzealously. I wasn't arguing with this Qilin. I was arguing with Noble Lion through him. But the thing about arguments is that you had to actually be there to argue.
"Ok. You've delivered your message. Well done. You're dismissed."
The lad blinked at that.
"You…" He started but I cut him off.
"Was there more of the message for you to deliver? No? Did you have orders to bring me back in fetters? Also no? Lastly… No, I have no response for you to deliver to him so you can return to your master and report your duty fulfilled. As for my own duty, it extends beyond my clan or my general. I swore an oath to follow him, it's true, but I swore an oath to rid the world of Dreadwolf before that. You seem an honorable lad. Messengers need to be or they spill their guts too easily and get men killed. So let me ask you this? What do you do when honor demands two different courses of action?"
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The lad was taken aback. He was a confident youth, but he was still a youth. Anything he could have said to me I had already levelled at myself a dozen times over in the sleepless nights that followed disillusionment. Any argument we could have had, I had already had with my tutors, my father, my uncle, my wife. Once, I had been the ambitious young man, out of my depth and struggling to grasp the greater games of my betters in Grand Marshal Oxbloods meetings. Now, the veteran of a rebellion, a coup, and an all-out war, I had been arguing with far more seasoned men than this. Recognizing that the Qilin's wits were not a fair match for mine, I had made the moves for both sides of the gameboard while he had just watched, dumbstruck. By the time I had asked him a question that I actually wanted him to answer, he was still catching up.
"Well?" I asked. "How do you choose between two oaths?"
The lad was at least smart enough to know he had wandered into my trap, but he couldn't help but answer honestly. "You choose the higher of the two ideals."
I nodded, letting his own answer hang in the air.
"Lion's will?" I held out one hand to my left then did the same with my right. "Or the will of Heaven?
The lad dropped his eyes. He finally saw the conflict – perhaps not just within his master's order but within our entire Coalition – and whatever his internal logic, I could tell his gut told him he was on the wrong side of it.
The wind picked up across the lake and rustled the scales of our armor, reminding me that my forces were armoured up and mounted, waiting for me to stop toying with this young man so we could get on with the war. But there was a point to all of this – not just for me and the messenger but for all my forces arrayed around me and listening – and it would only take another half-moment to get to it.
"Now," I said to this unnamed lad who would one day be called Qilin, "you have two choices. Return to your master and report that Sparrow once again disobeyed a direct order because he thinks he knows better. Or. Find a master with the will to see things through. Even when the men are tired. Even when his own Mandate's exhausted. Even when people he once loved and cared about are slaughtered like so many pigs in a sty."
I looked up at my men around me. They seemed to be hanging on my every word and I was not deluding myself to say that many of them now sat straighter in their saddles, determined eyes burning within tired and dirty faces in the predawn darkness. My eyes found River last, and though I could not read her features, I could tell this last had struck a chord with her. This is what she had wanted to hear from me. This is the resolve she had found back outside the Gray Moon-moth manner, where the Demon, under orders from Dreadwolf, had slaughtered an entire clan, River's adoptive mother included. This was the resolve of revenge that would not be denied.
This was the resolve of a mother, and of a father, together, who were willing to drown the world in shadow if it meant their child would live in a time of peace.
I mounted up, leaving the messenger – who would one day become the seventh most powerful warrior in the Land Under Heaven – stricken in place.
"Or are your oaths more clear-cut than mine?"
I called over my shoulder as I turned Windshear and kicked him into a canter, his armor and harness jingling like the rustling of so many coins.
***
The next day we got a taste of what the Crimson Tiger vanguard had feasted upon in the first official action of war: nothing. Our supply lines had been broken by the vast mountainous distance. We filled our bellies with water and what little we had brought with us in our saddlebags. Once again I cursed the speed of our cavalry, and the relative slowness of the rest of the army.
It would have been so easy to throw up my hands and follow orders. It would have been the prudent thing to do, following Noble Lion's command to turn back and await the rest of the army. Prudence had won us every battle, but somehow had us still losing the war.
I myself would have loved a hot meal, some wine, and a night in my tent with my wife, alone, followed by a sunny morning with our child. I would have loved to hide behind the structure of the army so that I could do the easy thing, not what I knew needed to be done.
With little sleep and no grazing, the horses became unruly beneath us. With another full day of following Dreadwolf's trail, but not even a skirmish to show for it, the men became jumpy. But the litter of an entire city on the march grew thicker, more prominent, and as Dreadwolf pushed that populace to their limit, he left more bodies in his wake.
If there was any silver lining to such brutality, it was that the corpses gave us an indication of how close we were coming. The one at my horse's hooves now was still fresh.
"We're getting closer," Flashammer said as he rose up from the body of the old lady he had been inspecting and remounted. "One more night at most."
I was about to move on, but Flashammer was still staring down at the body.
"Something else?" I asked.
The tall, thin former-bandit leader blinked as if he had been lost in thought. "I don't understand. Why go to such lengths to force these people from one city to another? It drags out their suffering and slows down his army."
I grimaced. The man used to rob people and raid villages to survive. It had never occurred to me that bald-faced robbery might be more honest work than what legitimate lords like Dreadwolf did to their people. "Because to an evil warlord… No, to any warlord, good or bad, people are a resource not unlike grain, gold, and bronze."
Flashammer scowled at me. "You don't believe that."
I shrugged. "I do."
"Your father, the lord of Iron Tower?"
"He does. To an evil lord, the people are just a resource. Hands to work fields. Backs to carry stones for palaces and walls. To a good warlord, they're still a resource, but they are allowed to be more than that."
Flashammer said nothing. It was a cold way to think about the people that lived on the land, about the families that grew and multiplied and made your land more fruitful or your armies more numerous. But it was true. Lords were not lords without people beneath them. Generals were not generals without armies. I hoped this truth didn't erode one of my best officers' faith in me. But I didn't have the energy just now to come up with a pleasant lie.
"He intends to march these people to death," Flashammer mused, "and then once they arrive, he'll work them to death."
I sighed. "It's an assumption, but it's a safe one, based on what I know about Dreadwolf. People aren't people to him. They're food for his ambition. One of the many reasons we need to stop him."
Flashammer nodded.
I looked at those arrayed behind me. One or two of those mounted nearest were listening intently. I gave the signal to start moving and we fell into an amble, Flashammer beside me.
"I once thought the same way as him, you know," said Flashammer after a while. "I'm no different. Before I got your summons, villages just meant a free meal. People were the fuel that fed my survival."
I looked to Flashammer, wondering at how literally or figuratively he meant those statements. In the end, it didn't matter to me. When the Emperor fails the Land Under Heaven, or those that advise him do, we do what we had to in order to survive. Some of those things are horrible, but it was no use condemning a man who had already condemned himself.
"Well… That's the difference between the wolf and the wolfhound, isn't it? The hound learns who it should bite. The wolf eats anyone who comes near."
He was silent at that. But something in the way he sat now, even after so many hours of riding – with sores on our thighs and cramps in our feet where they met the stirrups – something told me that Flashammer had followed me before. Now? Now he was sworn to me.
I would never ask him to say the words. But I don't think I needed to.
***
At noon, we crested a mountain ridge and saw the land descending before us. We had reached the high point in the western passes. As such, we could see Dreadwolf's dust trail.
It was an impossible sight. For more than ten li the people of the City of Lanterns stretched out, like an interminable ant hill. The dust cloud kept us from taking the full measure of those refugees or the forces that could be arrayed against us, so late in the game.
Even so, I was struck by something the Tiger had said about the essences of the army. I still had no banner to call my own, save for my father's silver falcon, but the dust of the road certainly made me long for home, for my son, and for happier times.
"We rest at that river bank," I said to River and Flashammer beside me, pointing to where a few creeks fed into a rushing rapid, "Then one more push and we're done."
My officers nodded.
"One more night?" I confirmed with Flashammer.
He stood over another body, this one an old man with no visible wounds. He looked as if his organs had simply given out. Blood trailed from a thin line at the corner of his mouth. "Still warm," said Flashammer. "Could be as soon as midnight."
I liked the idea of that. River seemed to, as well.
"Midnight it is, then."