One day he sat by and watched the lad in the court as he fired at a target under his tutor’s direction, and although the lad stood quietly and lifted his arm quickly and did not hesitate to pull firmly upon the trigger when the call came, yet it seemed to Wang the Tiger that he saw his son brace himself and a look come over his smooth boy’s face as though he hardened himself within, so that he might do what he must, because he hated it so much. Then Wang the Tiger called to his lad and he said,
“Son, put your heart into it, if you would please me!”
The lad looked quickly at his father then, the pistol still smoking in his hand, and a strange look stole into his eyes and he opened his lips as though to speak. But there sat Wang the Tiger, and he could not look gentle if he would, those brows of his heavy and black, and his mouth sullen in his stiff black beard even when he did not mean it so, and the lad looked away again and sighed a little and he said in his patient way,
“Yes, my father.”
Then Wang the Tiger looked with vague pain at his son, and for all his stiff hard looks his heart was soft, but he did not know how to speak out of his heart. And after a while he sighed and he watched in silence until the lesson was over. Then the lad looked doubtfully at his father and he said,
“May I go now, my father?”
And it came to Wang the Tiger that this lad of his went often away somewhere alone and many times he slipped away and Wang the Tiger did not know where, except that he knew the guard he had appointed to follow his son wherever he went followed him doubtless. But Wang the Tiger on this day looked at his son with a question in his mind, whether the lad went where he should not, and he saw him that he was a child no longer, and smitten with a sudden jealousy, Wang the Tiger made his voice as gentle as he could and he asked,
“But where do you go, my son?”
The boy hesitated and hung his head and at last he said half afraid,
“To no one place, my father. But I like to go outside the walls of the city and walk about the fields awhile.”
Now if the boy had said he went to some bawdy place Wang the Tiger could not have been so taken aback and he said astounded,
“Now what can be there for a soldier to see?”
And the boy kept his eyes down and he fingered his little leather belt and he said in a low voice, in his usual patient way,
“Nothing — but it is quiet and pleasant to see now when the fruit trees are abloom, and I like to talk with a farmer sometimes and hear how he plants his land.”
Then Wang the Tiger was completely astonished and he did not know what to do with this son of his, and he muttered to himself, that here was a strange son for a lord of war to have, who had hated from his youth up the ways of farmers upon the land, and suddenly he shouted out more angrily than he meant to do, because he was somehow disappointed and yet he did not know why he was,
“Do what you will then, and what is it to me?” And he sat on awhile heavily, for his son had slipped, swift as a freed bird, away from his father.
Wang the Tiger sat on and he meditated painfully, and yet he did not know why his heart was so sore, either. At last he grew impatient and he hardened himself somewhat and he told himself that with such a son he ought to be content, since the lad was not profligate and he did what he was told, and so Wang the Tiger put the matter away from him once more.
Now during these several years there were rumors of some new great discontent shaping itself up into a war somewhere, and Wang the Tiger’s spies brought back tales of young men and young women in the schools of the south shaping themselves in a war and they brought tales of common folk upon the land shaping themselves for war and such things had never been heard of before, because such things are the trade of lords of war and have nothing to do with common people. But when Wang the Tiger in astonishment asked why they did battle and in what cause his spies did not know, and Wang the Tiger told himself it must be some school or other where some teacher did a wrong, or if it were the common people it must be some magistrate too vile and the people could not endure him more and they rose to kill him and put an end to what they could not bear.
But at least until he could see how new war shaped and how he could fit himself to it Wang the Tiger waged no wars of his own. No, he conserved his revenues and he bought such tools of war as he wished. Nor did he need to ask his brother Wang the Merchant to help him for Wang the Tiger had now his own port at the river’s mouth which he owned and he hired ships and smuggled his own weapons in from outer countries easily enough. If there were those above him who knew it they were silent for they knew he was a general on their own side and every gun he had was a gun for them in the struggle that must come one day, since peace cannot last forever anywhere.
In such ways did Wang the Tiger strengthen himself as he waited, and his son grew and came into his fourteenth year.
Now these fifteen years and more that Wang the Tiger had been a great lord of war he had been lucky in many ways and the chief way was that there had been no great whole famine in his regions. Small famines there had been in one place or another, for thus it must ever be under a cruel heaven, but there was no famine over all his regions together, so that if one part starved, he need not press hard upon it, but he could raise his taxes in some other part where the people did not starve, or at least not so bitterly. This he was pleased to do, because he was a just man and he did not willingly take from dying people the little they had as some lords of war will do. For this the people were thankful and they praised him, and many throughout his region said,
“Well, and we have seen worse lords of war than the Tiger, and since there must be such lords, it is lucky we have this one who only taxes us for his soldiers and he does not love feasting and women and the things that most such men love.”
It was true that Wang the Tiger took care to be just to the common people as much as he could. To this day no new magistrate had come to take the old one’s place in that court. There had been a certain one appointed, but hearing how fierce a man Wang the Tiger was he delayed his coming, saying that his father grew old and that he must wait until the old man died and was buried before he could come. So until he came Wang the Tiger very often dispensed his own justice in the court and he heard people who came before him and he defended many a poor man against a rich man or a usurer. The truth was that Wang the Tiger did not need to fear any rich man, and he would clap the rich man into gaol if he did not pay what Wang the Tiger would have of him, so that it came to be in that town that landlords and usurers and such people hated Wang the Tiger very heartily and they went to great lengths to avoid bringing a case before him. But Wang the Tiger cared nothing for their hatred, since he was powerful and did not need to be afraid. He paid his soldiers regularly and well and if he was harsh sometimes with a man who committed some liberty too great, still he paid them their monthly wage and this was more than many a lord of war did, who must depend upon a looting to keep his men about him. But Wang the Tiger was not driven to a war for the sake of his men, and he could delay if he pleased, and his position in that region among the people and among his own men was very good and secure by now.
But however well men do establish themselves, they have always a perverse heaven with which to reckon, and so also did Wang the Tiger. In the fourteenth year of his son’s age, when he prepared the next year to send him to the school of war, there fell a very heavy famine upon every part of Wang the Tiger’s regions, and it spread from one part to another like a dire disease.
It came about that the proper rains of spring fell in their season, but when the time came for their cessation, the skies rained on, and the rains held day after day and week after week, and even into the summer they held, so that the rising wheat mouldered in the fields and sank into the water, and all those fair fields were pools of muddied water. The small river, too, which was by nature but a placid stream, went roaring along swollen and furious, and it tore at its clay banks and overran them and rushed against inner dykes and burst them apart and then went sweeping down its course and poured all its mud into the sea, so that the clear green waters were sullied for many a mile out. As for the people, they lived in their homes at first, building up their tables and beds upon boards out of the water. But as the waters rose to the roofs of their houses and the earthen walls crumbled, they lived in boats and in tubs and they clung to such dykes and mounds as still stood above the water, or they climbed into trees and hung there. Nor did people so only, but wild beasts and the snakes of the fields also, and these snakes swarmed up the trees and hung festooned upon the branches and they lost their fear of men and came creeping and crawling to live among them, so that men did not know which was the greater terror, terror of water or terror of the crawling snakes. But as the days went on and the water did not fall, there was yet another terror and it was the terror of starvation.