"Do Qin women ride?" Shai asked.
Anji's smile had a pleasant tilt. He seemed an easygoing man in some ways, and yet Shai did not think he was. "They do. My mother taught me to ride. It is a mother's duty to teach her children to ride. When we have sons, Mai'ili, you must be the one to teach them, not me."
She put a hand to her mouth and glanced toward the palanquin, racked across parallel rows of fallen stones to keep it off the ground for the night. The twilight shadowed her expression, but Shai guessed that she was frightened, thinking of what normally passed between man and woman on their wedding night.
"Ah. "Anji raised his forefinger. Chief Tuvi set his da bowl on the table and retreated, strolling out into camp. "Uncle Shai, stay please." He rose and went into the dusk.
Priya crept forward and knelt at Mai's feet. Mai clutched her hand and wiped away a tear, and the slave whispered into Mai's ear words Shai couldn't hear.
"Is it wrong of me to be frightened, Shai?" Her voice was so steady, but her hands, gripping Priya's, shook. "How will he treat me? I'm afraid, but I know I have to endure whatever happens. He is my master now. I will not shame Father Mei and our clan."
Shai did not know what to say. No one ever asked him for advice.
"Shhh, Mistress," hissed Priya. "He returns."
Her hiss lengthened strangely. From out of the night erupted a shout of alarm and a series of sharp slaps. An arrow skittered over the ground, coming to rest at Shai's feet. He gaped. Mai's eyes widened. Calls and shouts rousted the camp, and men went running out of sight but well within hearing. That whistling hiss was the song of arrows rushing out of the dark, and Qin arrows-white death-streaking outward in reply.
"Down!" Priya pushed Mai down between couch and fire. "Crawl over to the house! The walls will give protection."
Captain Anji appeared at the edge of the fire's light. "Mai! Take shelter!" He tossed a glittering object toward her, and it smacked into the dirt beside her. A knife in a sheath, curved at the tip. Jewels studded the hilt, catching the firelight. "That's for you, Mai. Shai! Come with me!"
Shai grabbed the arrow and staggered after Captain Anji. His thoughts were disordered; he couldn't think straight. The captain brought him to a mud-brick wall eroded to chest height, where Chief Tuvi oversaw the chaos. Out in the gloom, figures circled on horseback, keeping just at the edge of the distance arrows could reach. At intervals one would ride in, shoot, and turn hard to dash back out again. It was impossible to judge how many there were, but surely there were more than twenty, and less than fifty.
"Can you use a bow?" asked the captain.
"No."
"A sword?"
"It's forbidden."
The captain snorted. "A staff? You shepherds haven't even sparred with your staffs up in the hills where we can't catch you?"
Shai burned with shame and anger. "It's forbidden, Captain. Men were hanged for weapons training."
"Sheep!" said Chief Tuvi with a bark of laughter. "No wonder they were so easy to fleece."
"Take this spear." Captain Anji thrust the shaft into Shai's hands. "Don't disgrace my bride by showing yourself a coward."
Then he was gone, moving off into the ruined village to direct the fight elsewhere.
Shai found he had moisture enough in his mouth to speak. "Are they bandits?"
"They're not ghosts, but they might be demons." Tuvi lifted his bow, tracked one of the circling horsemen, and released the arrow. It flew, its white fletching visible as it streaked through the dusk and buried its point into the breast of one of the riders. The man reeled but did not fall.
Arrows hit all at once around them. Shai ducked down behind the wall as a half-dozen arrows struck the uneven top, flipped end over point, and slid down to land at his feet. Chief Tuvi didn't move but calmly sighted with his bow again and loosed a second arrow. Shaking, Shai rose to his feet in time to see a second man take the impact. This one fell, but his foot caught in the stirrup. His body flopped and dangled from the stirrups as the horse galloped out into the night.
Behind them, on the other side of the village, Captain Anji shouted a command.
His soldiers, all together, cried out: "Hu! Hu! Hai!"
The shout resounded; it echoed off distant hills. Shai shivered down to his feet. The Qin were the fiercest warriors in the world. They had swept in from the west as a wave of black banners and white death.
Now that shout faded into the night, but surely it had given the bandits a better guess at their numbers. The riders circled once more before vanishing into what was now night. The moon's glamour illuminated the hills and flats, but the shadows swallowed the bandits so quickly that Shai would have doubted whether they had ever been there at all, except for the evidence of the arrows scattered throughout camp.
Captain Anji appeared beside Tuvi, holding a bow and a lantern.
"They hadn't more than thirty men," said the chief. "But we'll keep a double watch for the rest of the journey. I'm surprised that group hasn't been tracked down and slaughtered like the wolves they are."
Anji shook his head. The wind fluttered the ribbons in his hair. "They weren't bandits. They were demons, pretending to be men. I saw at least ten take hits, but we'll find no bodies in the morning."
"If they are demons, then why would arrows stop them?" Shai demanded, finding now that he was shaking as relief hit. Still alive! He would see the new dawn! "How can you tell the difference between men, and demons pretending to be men?"
"Demons fight silently. Sometimes they use bone whittled down for the shafts of their arrows." He picked up one of the bandits' arrows and twirled it through his fingers with the ease of a man who has long familiarity with weapons. "But this is common sapwood, a little heavy for arrows but one of the few woods that can be found up in the northern hills. Maybe there were a few men among them."
"Men ride with demons?"
Anji glanced back toward the tidy row of tents set up as the night's camp. "Your concubine is demon's get."
"She's not my concubine!"
Chief Tuvi laughed. "If not now, she will be soon! Or else what's that stirring in your drawers?"
Nothing to say to that! Why should even talk of Cornflower get him hardening?
"Tuvi-lo," Anji said gently, "demons' get are difficult to resist. They have their spells and charms, a perfume to them, that tugs a man even if he doesn't want to go that way. But they're poison in the end. I can have the creature killed, if you like, Shai. Leave the body at the edge of the desert. Her kinfolk will collect her at the full moon."
It was tempting. Just thinking of how easy it would be to let Captain Anji remove the burr that chafed him made him sweat. But he couldn't do it.
"No. It's not her fault she's demon's get. My brother bought her in the marketplace two years back. Just like any other slave. He even had a holy man cast a seeing over her, and the holy man said she was as human as you or me."
Chief Tuvi shook his head, exchanging a knowing glance with the captain but addressing Shai. "These demon get are good at disguise. They look just like humans, but they're not. There's a whole tribe of them who live west of my ancestors' lands. Out there demons rule. No one dare ride past the sunset. No man who rides that way ever returns."
"What about women?"
Tuvi hesitated, glancing toward Anji, but the captain just nodded his head, giving some kind of permission.
Tuvi shrugged. "The demons fear human women, but they'll sleep with them just the same and spawn their demon get in their bellies. Some women go that way to capture a lover. Hu! I suppose the demon males pull women by their jewel the same way the demon women catch us men by the cock."