chen sat in the makeshift cell, his hands tightly bound, two guards watching him from the doorway. They had stripped him to his loincloth and cautioned him, then they had left him for an hour while they sought instructions.
The guards were uneasy, he could sense that, but he kept silent and did not look at them, not wishing to make their task any harder than it already was. It was not their fault that he felt the way he did. Not their fault that the system was corrupt and evil. When Captain Jacobson returned, he stood, facing him. “Well?” Jacobson looked down, unable to meet Chen’s eyes. “We are to take you back to Bremen. General Rheinhardt wants to interview you.” “Rheinhardt... Ah ...” Chen nodded. “Is—is all well out there?” Jacobson glanced at him, then looked away again. “It’s quiet now. We’ve removed the body, but I’m going to keep a double guard posted just in case.”
Chen nodded. It was what he himself would have done. “I’m sorry, Captain.
I’ll say in my report that you had no pan in what I did.” Jacobson looked up. “Thank you, sir.” Then, awkwardly, he added, “We understand what you did, sir. Many of the men have children. They”—he swallowed, then went on—“I guess what I mean to say is that if you want a character reference, sir, I’ll speak for you. And there’s two dozen others who’ll do the same.”
Chen looked down, moved by the unexpected offer. In all the time he had led this Banner of the Security forces, he had never once felt really close to his men. But now that he was about to be stripped of his command he felt suddenly. . . related somehow. Tied to them by way of blood and suffering. Even so, it had taken the death of three children and an old man to do that. Death—Si—marked everything, it seemed. He looked up and smiled. “That’s kind of you, Dan Jacobson, but I must fight my own battles. What I did, I did out of choice. And what we choose to do we must pay for, neh? Whatever happens, I was glad to serve with you. You’re a fine officer.”
Jacobson smiled, saluted, then backed away. “Free the Major’s hands and give him back his uniform. Then escort him through. We must be in Bremen two hours from now.”
li yuan rolled over and sat up, his ears ringing, then looked about him. Tsu Ma lay at his side, groaning but clearly conscious, his eyes open, staring up at the sky. Near by Hou Tung-po lay dead, his face bloodless, splinters of bloodied metal jutting from his neck, shoulder, and upper arm. Beside him Wei Chan Yin lay still and ominously silent. “Aiya ...” he whispered, and took a shuddering breath. The firing had stopped, but there were shouts from somewhere behind him, and from the far side of the landing pad came a fierce crackling as a clutch of burning cruisers sent a thick pall of smoke up into the blue. Just in front of him, no more than twenty ch’i from where he sat, a wide but shallow pit had been blown in the lawn where the frog-hopper mortar had exploded. Another jump and it would have landed in their midst. Earth and debris lay everywhere.
“Chick Hsia!” someone shouted distantly. “Chieh Hsia!” Quickly he examined himself. His silks were ripped at the side but that seemed all. He put his hands up to his neck, then felt his scalp, fearing that numbness had concealed some wound from him. There was a moistness on his cheek, but when he drew his hand back from his cheek and looked it was only earth.
He shivered, then looked back at his fallen cousins. Tsu Ma, he saw now, was in great pain, his face contorted in silent agony. His foot. . . Li Yuan gasped, then swallowed hard. His foot had been blown right off! “Tsu Ma,” he said, leaning over him and touching his cheek gently, trying to reassure him. “Tsu Ma, are you all right?” Then, realizing that blood was still pumping from the wound, he pulled off his jacket and wrapped it tightly about the stump, trying to stanch the flow. “I’ll get help,” he said, crouching over Tsu Ma again. “Hold on. I won’t be long.”
He looked at the palace. A group of men were running across the grass toward them. He gestured to them, urging them to hurry. “Come on!” he yelled. “Quickly now! He’s bleeding to death!” He stood, searching the nearby grass with his eyes. There... he saw it. It lay eight, maybe ten ch’i away, like a discarded shoe. He went across and, careful not to touch the damaged flesh, picked it up and carried it back. Crouching over Tsu Ma again, he looked down into his pain-wracked face, grimacing at him. “You’ll be okay, Ma. They’ll save it. They’re very good.”’
But Tsu Ma barely seemed to recognize him. He groaned, then, tears forming, closed his eyes.
Li Yuan shuddered. The men! Where were those men?
He turned, ready to yell at them again, but they were upon him.
“It’s his foot,” he said, pointing to it. “He’s lost his foot.”
One of them leaned over Tsu Ma’s great barrel chest, listening, then
looked up, his face ashen, and murmured something to one of his
colleagues.
“What’s that?” Li Yuan asked, noting the look that passed between them.
“What’s wrong?”
“Chieh Hsia,” one of them said, turning to him. “You must be seen to.
We’ll look after the T’ang. He is in good hands now.”
“What’s wrong?” he said again, more insistently.
The man took a breath, then answered him. “It is his chest, Chieh Hsia.
There’s damage to his chest.”
Li Yuan frowned. “No. It’s his foot. Look!” He held it up. “Chieh Hsia,” a voice said from behind him, “you must do as the surgeon says. You must get help.”
He turned. It was Nan Ho.
“Master Nan,” he said, relieved to see his Chancellor safe. Then, with a shock, he remembered how the attack had begun. “Kuei Jen!” he wailed, the severed foot dropping from his hand, forgotten suddenly. “Where in the gods’ names is Kuei Jen?”
tolonencamein from the north, ordering the young pilot to fly in slow and low over the Palace. Even at a glance he could see that the damage on the Southern Lawn was extensive. The fires were all out, yet the wreckage of at least twenty craft still smoldered on the far side of the landing strip. Elsewhere there was major crater damage, and from the number of shrouded figures laid out on the grass beside the burned-out marquee, fatalities were in treble figures.
He sucked in a breath, his worst fears confirmed. Only an elite Security squad could have done so much harm in so short a time. “Set us down by the East Gate,” he said, pointing past the young lieutenant. “And patch Rheinhardt through when you can reach him. I want his input on this straightaway.”
He patted the boy’s arm, then took up a position by the hatch as the craft slowly settled. They had been half an hour out when the news had come. He had turned the craft at once and flown straight back. Half an hour... it was not long, and yet it had seemed a small lifetime, especially when the channels had been jammed most of the time, and what reports they had got from Tongjiang had been confusing, contradictory. As the hatch began to lift, he ducked under it and ran, making his way toward the East Gate. There were guards before the gate. They raised their guns, meaning to stop him, then, seeing who it was, backed away, bowing their heads. He ran through, then, at the top of the marbled walk that bordered the Southern Lawn, he stopped, looking across. He saw Li Yuan at once and felt relief flood through him. The young T’ang was sitting beside a mobile medical unit, his son nestled in his lap. “Thank the gods,” Tolonen breathed.
Just across from Li Yuan, Tsu Ma was sitting on a camp chair, holding his arm while a medic attended to him. There was a bloodstain at his elbow and the white of bone could be glimpsed through the torn material of his jacket. Not only that, but his right leg was in a portable splint unit, as if he’d broken it. He was talking to Li Yuan, laughing through the obvious pain of his injuries, making jokes to ease the shock of things. But Tolonen, knowing him, knew that there would come a time of anger, and of reckoning.