“Do you come here to pull the tiger’s whiskers? Shall I let you starve? Have I ever let you starve? I have my plans made ready and food is due at any hour from foreign lands. But no, you are rebels — you would not trust me!” And he gathered up all his anger and he gave a great shout to his guards, “Kill me these six rebels!”
Then those six young men fell on their faces to beg for their lives but Wang the Tiger did not dare to spare them. No, for the sake of his son and himself and his household and for the people of that whole countryside whom they might turn to maraud if he lost his command over his men, he dared not spare them, and he would not let his mercy free now. He shouted,
“Shoot, you men, to right and left!”
Then those guards shot, and the whole great room was filled with roar and smoke, and when the smoke lifted, those six men lay dead.
And Wang the Tiger rose at once and he commanded, “Take them back now to those who sent them and tell them it is my answer!”
But before the guards could stoop to lift the bodies of the young men a strange thing happened. That son of Wang the Tiger’s, he so grave a lad and seeming usually to see little of what went on around him, now he rushed forward in the wildest distraction such as his father had never seen upon him, and he bent over one of the young men and stared and he went from one to the other of the young men, touching them here and there swiftly, looking at them with great wild eyes, staring at their loose-flung limbs, and he cried out to his father, standing to face him, and not knowing what he did,
“You have killed them — they are every one dead! This one I knew — he was my friend!”
And he fixed such despairing eyes upon his father’s eyes that Wang the Tiger was suddenly afraid in some strange way because of the look in his son’s eyes and he looked down and he said to justify himself,
“I was compelled to it, or they might have led the others and risen against me and so killed us all.”
But the boy choked and he muttered, “He did only ask for bread—” And suddenly his face broke into weeping and he rushed from that room, and his father stared after him stupefied.
As for the guards, they went to their business and when Wang the Tiger was alone again, he sent out of the room even the two men who were always with him day and night, and he sat alone and held his head in his hands for an hour or two and he sat and groaned and wished he had not had to kill the young men. When he could not bear it any longer he called out that his son was to come to him, and after awhile the boy came in slowly, his face bent down and his eyes veiled from his father. Wang the Tiger called to him to come near, and when he was come he took the lad’s strong slender hand and fondled it a little as he had never done before and he said in a low voice,
“I did it for you.”
But the lad made no reply at all. He had hardened himself and bore his father’s love silently and stiffly and Wang the Tiger sighed and let him go, for he did not know what to say to his son or how to make his son understand his love. So Wang the Tiger’s heart was very sore and it seemed to him that of all men he was the most alone in this whole world, and he suffered a day or two. Then he, too, hardened himself again and let this pass also, since he did not know what to do, and he planned that he would do something for his son to make him forget. Yes, he would buy him a foreign watch or a new gun or some such thing and so win the boy back to him. Thus Wang the Tiger hardened himself and thus he comforted himself, also.
Nevertheless, the coming of these six men out of the army did show Wang the Tiger in what dire straits the times had brought him, for he saw that he must find food if he was to hold his army true. He had said falsely that he had already found food for them from foreign parts, but now he knew he must go out somewhere and find such food. Then once more he thought of his brother, Wang the Merchant, and he told himself that in such an hour brothers must stand together and he would go and see how the times were in his father’s house, and what help he could secure.
He sent out the word, therefore, among his men that he went to find food and silver for them and he promised them a plenty, and when they were all cheerful and expectant, and freshened somewhat in their hope and loyalty to him, he chose a good guard and put them over his house and he commanded his own guard to prepare for the journey, and on a day he had set he called for boats to be brought and with his son and his soldiers and their horses all in these boats, they prepared to ferry across the waters to those parts of the road where the dykes still held, and there they would mount their horses again and ride to the town where Wang the Tiger’s brothers lived.
Upon those narrow dykes their horses took their pace slowly, for the water spread in a sea on either side, and the dykes were crowded with huddled people. And not people only, but rats and serpents and wild things struggled to share that space with the people, and these wild things forgot their fears and tried with all their feeble strength to contend for space. But the only life these people showed was in such brief angers as rose in them when the serpents and beasts grew too many and they struck at them spitefully. But sometimes for long spaces they did not even so contend and the serpents curled and crawled wherever they would, and the people sat in their stupor.
Through these Wang the Tiger marched, and he had need of his armed guard and of his guns, for these people would have fallen upon him otherwise. As it was, here and there and often a man rose, or a woman, and twined about his horse’s legs in silence and despair, yet with a faint last hope. And Wang the Tiger was gentle enough in heart with them, and he drew his horse and would not trample them down. No, he waited until one of his guardsmen came and took the wretched creature away and threw him on the ground again, and Wang the Tiger passed on without looking back. Sometimes the man lay where he had been thrown, but sometimes he gave a wild howl and leaped into the water and so ended himself and his woe.
All the way the lad rode beside his father, and not one word did he say, nor did Wang the Tiger speak to him, since there was the coldness between them of the six dead men, and Wang the Tiger feared to ask his son anything. But the lad’s face was bowed down except sometimes when he seemed to steal a look sidewise at the starving people, and such a look of horror came into his face that Wang the Tiger could not bear it and he said at last,
“These be but very common folk and they are used to this once in a few years or so, and there are tens of thousands of such as these and the ones that die are not missed in a handful of years. They spring up like new rice again.”
Then the boy said suddenly, and his voice was changing now like a fledgling bird’s, and it came out in a squeak because he was so charged with his feeling, and with his fear lest he weep before his father,
“Yet I suppose it is as hard for them to die as though they were governors and men like us.” And as he spoke he tried to fix his mouth hard and firm, but indeed these were sorrowful sights and his lips quivered, do what he would.
Now Wang the Tiger would have liked to say some comforting word, but he was astonished at what his son had said, and it had not come to him that these common folk suffered as he might suffer, since men are born as they are born and one may not take the place of any other. And he did not wholly like what his son said, because it was too soft a thing for a lord of war who may not stop to put his own heart into any man who happens to suffer hardship. So Wang the Tiger could not think of any comforting word, for it was true that nothing could be fed these days except the carrion crows that circled and whirled again slowly in great wheels above the waters, and he said no more than this,