Such were Tao Hua and Kan Te, of the Dragon. Kan Te was a tall young son of the Guardian of the Morning Gate, an excellent youth of straight limbs and a bright glance, and a brave heart; and Tao Hua, as splendid a young woman as Kan Te was a fine youth, daughter to renewed artists in inks. They were soon to be married. All the world was good to Tao Hua and Kan Te, and along with the rest of the cheering city, they turned out in optimism, standing on the walls by the western gate to wave cheer to their comrades and to take in the spectacle. Their hearts lifted for the brave display. The fighting was something beyond their imaginations, for while they were soldiers, they had never fought in earnest. Usually there were shots fired at a great distance and a few of the barbarians would fall and that would be the end of the war. It was all very tidy and none of the flower-decked armor was sullied; in fact, in the last encounter, much before Tao Hua and Kan Te were born, the army had come back with its flowers unwilled, unstained and victorious.
There were drams and cymbals, and the dragon dancers chained along at the army's side as they passed the gate.
"Perhaps we will be called up," said Tao Hua.
"Perhaps," said Kan Te, marking the size of the cloud; and the least fear was in his heart, for he had heard his greatgrandfather talking with his grandparents and parents after coming from council. "The council was divided about whether to send more."
"Lion and Phoenix are very brave," said Tao Hua.
"They are not enough," said Kan Te, surer and surer of this. He should not bear tales, things heard in family, but Tao Hua bore them no further. He took her hand in his and they watched the dust with the light of the dying sun piercing it with strange colors. "Some wanted to defend the walls from inside and some wanted to march out in all our strength; and the result. . . the council sent only half, and left half behind. To send more, they said, would panic the people unnecessarily."
Tao Hua looked up at him, her face quite serene and golden in the sun, and he thought again how he loved her. He was afraid, perceiving a shaking in his world, as if it were the tramp of hooves and feet, foretold in the dust.
"I dreamed," he said further, "that all the grass of the plains was gone; I dreamed that the Earth swarmed with men and beasts and that they were much alike; I dreamed of tents and campfires like stars across all the plain of the world; I dreamed that the moon fell, and the moon was the hope of the city."
Tao Hua gazed at him, her black eyes reflecting the shifting clouds, and he thought again of the moon which fell, no bit comforted to have told his dream. There had always seemed time enough: the end of the world crept on at a leisurely pace, and in its ending there were beauties enough. There was no ambition left, but there was time. . . all the time human lives needed: it was only the Earth which had grown old. Love had not.
For the first time the thought of death came between them.
The column moved slowly, inexorable in its flow across the plain of the world, a flow which had begun years ago in the Tarim and surged to the western rim of the world-plain; which now flowed back again multiplied until the eye could not span its breadth, let alone its length. The general rode at the head of the column: Yilan Baba, his men called him, Father Serpent, but snake he had been from his youth, cunning and deadly in his strike. Now he was very old, braced in the saddle with furs and the habit of years on horseback. It was an old pony that carried him, a beast he called Horse, which was one in a long succession of shaggy high-tempered beasts of similar bay color. . . how many, Yilan had forgotten; and this one had grown patient over the long traveling, and quiet of manner, tired, perhaps, as Yilan was tired, and old, as Yilan had gotten old. . . but that was not the complaint which gnawed at Yilan. He was thin beneath the quilted coats and leathers and furs, thin to the point of gauntness. His mustaches were grizzled; his braids were gray, his narrow eyes were lost in sun-wrinkles and his cheeks were seamed and hollowed by age and by the wasting disease which had come on him in this last year. But if he looked, squinting, through the sun-colored dust which swirled about them, it seemed that he could see this place of his dreams, the Forbidden City, the City of Heaven. He imagined that he could see it, as he imagined it each dawning, when the sun rose out of the east and the colors streamed through the dusty wind. The wind out of the east breathed of green lands, of beauty, of wealth. . .
. . . of ending. A place to rest. Beyond, was only the sea.
"Give me the city," he had asked of the hordes which he had gathered. For all of a lifetime he had gathered them, he, Yilan, the Snake, from his mastery of his own tribe to mastery of all the tribes which rode the world-plain.
They came with tents and with wagons, with oxen and with swift horses and with patient feet, men and women and children of the hordes. With the drought on the plains he might have lost them, but he stirred them now with visions of final paradise, with a dream which he had prised from the lips of a man who had actually seen the City of Heaven.
He had gathered power all his life, which had been fifty-nine seasons, and which—he knew—would not be another. He wanted this thing, he wanted it—ah, beyond telling. And the flesh grew thinner and the pain of his bones against the saddle grew all but unbearable; he bled from the saddlegalls, he was so thin, and his eyes watered so that much of the time he rode with the shame of tears on his cheeks.
"Drink, Yilan Baba," said a voice by his side. He looked into the young face of Shimshek, dark and fierce as a kite, who offered him kumiss and rode his pony close to Horse, so that he might steady him. He drank, and the liquor warmed him, but his hand was now so weak that he could not stopper the skin or long hold it. Shimshek caught it from him in time, and reached to grip his shoulder as they rode knee against knee. "Hold firm, Father, we will stop soon."
"The City will be in sight," he said, and comforted by the presence of his young lieutenant, he focused his mind and his eyes, and thought how long by now the plume of their dust might have been seen. "Hawk and Fox will go out with all others you can persuade," he said, his voice cracking; he steadied it and lifted his hand eastward, where he would send the forces. "And you must lead them. I no longer can, Shimshek."
"Father," Shimshek mourned. There was great sadness in his eyes, a genuine sorrow.
"I have taught you," said Yilan. Shimshek was not, in fact, his son; he had no son, though his wife's belly swelled with life. He loved this man as if he were a son, and trusted him with all that mattered. "Go," he said. "This time you lead."
Shimshek looked behind them, at the column of wagons which groaned after them, having in his eyes that look which was for the woman they both loved, and for things he could not say. There was fear in Shimshek's eyes that was not for the enemy, not for anything that he would yet name. Good, thought Yilan. Good, he knows; and yet Shimshek said nothing, because there was nothing which could be said. The task was for doing, and there was no help for it: he had himself fought his last battle, and knew it; and Horse knew it, who was also aging. . . by now Horse would have known the enemy, would have flared his nostrils and thrown his head and walked warily and eagerly with the scent of strangers and strange land coming on the winds. But he plodded, head hanging.
"Go," he said again, and Shimshek pressed his shoulder and then raced off full tilt, drumming his heels into his pony's side, shouting and kicking up the dust. "Hai ahi hai," he yelled, and the Wolf standard moved to Shimshek's summons, for Wolf was Shimshek's clan. Hawk and Fox moved when Yilan lifted his arm and waved those units toward; the warriors thundered past to the Wolf banner. More couriers went out on their swift ponies, rallying the others, a vast horde gathering to the command of Shimshek the Wolf in this the first skirmish of the campaign. Another horseman rode to be near Yilan, dour and frowning, of Yilan's own years, but hale and powerful. Yilan envied him the power and the years yet left to him and looked him in the eyes. Boga was this one's name, gray and broad: bullwas his name, and he had led all the hordes of the Danube.