Peng Yong looked at William curiously. The man was gazing at his reflection, open-mouthed, a stunned expression on his face. Suddenly he noticed Peng Yong and the other soldier watching him, and turned towards them in a daze.
He looked undone, almost embarrassed. When he spoke he did so in a quiet, faltering voice. Although Peng Yong didn’t understand what he had said, he could guess. It was there in the man’s expression, his body language, his tone of voice.
Clearly, coming from a primitive country, he had never seen himself before, had never seen what he looked like, and was ashamed of his appearance. Peng Yong was not surprised. Brave though the foreigner undoubtedly was, he looked like a beast. He was caked in blood and filth both new and old, his clothes were a patchwork of disgusting rags, and his hair and beard were matted and dirty. His face, raw from the heat and cold, was ingrained with dirt, his eyes were bloodshot and his lips were dry and chapped.
He smelled too. He smelled very, very bad—and not only because of the fresh Tao Tei blood that stained his skin and clothes.
Nevertheless Peng Yong, having witnessed the courage of this man and his companion on the battlefield, had developed a great respect for them.
Cupping his hands he said, “Thank you for saving my life.”
The foreigner—William—looked at him for a moment. And then, as if he understood what Peng Yong had said, he smiled and nodded, his teeth very white in his filthy face.
Fires burned on the watchtowers all the way up and down the line of the Great Wall. Lin Mae, too restless to sleep, prowled the parapet, making a midnight inspection. The fires, evenly spaced, stretched out on either side of her as far as her eye could see. The furthermost ones were nothing more than sparks winking on the horizon, but she knew that there were more fires, unseen from here, that stretched further still, that many more thousands of soldiers were manning the Wall for miles in both directions, all of them knowing what had happened here today, and all of them ready and nervously waiting for a Tao Tei attack.
Right here, though, directly opposite the Gouwu Mountain, which glowed a sickly green in the darkness, was where it had always been thought the Tao Tei would make their first incursion—if not concentrate their entire offensive campaign—and so, up to now, it had proved. Several hundred soldiers of the Nameless Order had been maimed or killed in the battle today, but already reinforcements were being drafted in from other Corps regiments to fill the gaps.
Lin Mae had known many of the dead personally—had grown up with them, trained with them, eaten with them, laughed with them—but for now she was keeping her emotions in check. While the Tao Tei were a constant threat, she had no time to mourn. That would come later, when the war was over and the enemy had been vanquished.
That didn’t mean she could sleep soundly, though. She had tried—her body felt exhausted enough—but each time she had closed her eyes the memory of the battle had been there waiting for her, the clamor and horror of it seemingly magnified in the darkness, threatening to wriggle insidiously into her very core and devour her from the inside out.
And so finally, giving up on sleep, she had decided to walk the parapets, to occupy her mind with more than her own thoughts. The minute she had stepped out into the cool night air she had known she’d made the right decision. Because despite what had happened out here today, she felt instantly becalmed. She sought the still point at the center of her being, and was gratified to discover it remained intact.
For now, at least.
Already the evidence of that day’s battle had been erased. The dead had been taken below to lie on cold stone slabs in special chambers that had been constructed underground. The blood had been sluiced away with gallons of water, which had then arced from drainage slits to spatter on the sand hundreds of feet below. Now, having been baked by the last of the day’s sun, the stone ground under Lin Mae’s feet was dry again, as was the desert sand at the base of the Wall.
As she walked she passed soldiers on guard, many dozens of them, their tense eyes fixed on the distant valley where the jade mountain glimmered like something diseased. The soldiers worked in groups of three, on rotational shifts, each one standing on guard for two hours, then resting for the next four until their turn came around again. Behind each soldier, with some of whom she exchanged brief nods, were therefore another pair of soldiers, stretched out on thin mats on the hard ground, sleeping beside their weapons. Some of them twitched in their sleep. One or two moaned, their faces creasing in horror or distress. Many, she knew, would be suffering nightmares tonight. Even though the Tao Tei had departed for now, the night was still full of teeth and claws.
Lin Mae rounded a bend in the Wall and halted at an unexpected sight. There, sitting cross-legged in the shadows, his back against a buttress, was the large, dark figure of a man, curls of steam shrouding his face. The steam was rising from a dainty china bowl that he held delicately in one huge, gnarled hand. Lin Mae moved closer and the man looked up. Despite the shadows and the steam, she could see that his bearded face looked drawn, haggard.
“General Shao,” Lin Mae said gently. “You should be resting.”
Shao took another sip of tea. “I’ve slept enough in my life.” He turned his attention back to the Gouwu Mountain glowing poisonously in the distance. “Strategist Wang was right. He told us the Tao Tei would change. His warnings went unheeded.”
Lin Mae sat beside him. She wondered about placing a hand on his arm, a touch of reassurance and support, but decided against it.
“We were ready,” she insisted. “You prepared us well.”
“We were prepared—we are prepared—for the enemy of sixty years ago. Pray that that’s enough.” His eyes flickered towards her again. After a moment he said, “You should know, Lin Mae, the Emperor’s Council has done more than just doubt Strategist Wang. Forcing me to fight to keep him as my advisor… Sending Shen to spy on us…” His features hardened in distaste.
Lin Mae’s face hardened too, in sympathy with her commander’s. Decisively she said, “We will prevail as we have always done.”
Shao smiled at her spirit. Then his expression grew somber again. “Keep the foreigners close. Make them comfortable. We will take what they can offer… but they must never leave here alive.”
There was a beat of silence between them. Then Lin Mae cupped her hands in a sign of acceptance and obedience.
William flew awake, sensing danger. It was not something he had trained himself to do, but something that came instinctively to him after decades of sleeping among cutthroats, brigands and mercenaries.
And as always, his instincts were proved right. On the other side of the stone chamber, his gaunt features glowing a jaundiced yellow in the lamplight, was the wiry Westerner, perched on his haunches like a cat about to spring.
The Westerner did not flinch or jump back. Instead he regarded William coldly.
“You don’t smell like heroes,” he said.
His voice was a gravelly drawl, but it was enough to pluck the softly snoring Pero from sleep. He came awake as William had done—suddenly and violently. Jumping to his feet, he grabbed for the non-existent knife at his belt, calling out a challenge in Spanish.
William raised a hand. “Calma,” he said.
The Westerner shuffled closer, reaching out a sinewy arm to prod at the equipment heaped on the table—their travel bags, their swords.
“They’ve given back your weapons. That’s a most positive sign.” He looked both impressed and mildly surprised. Then he fixed his darting, bird-like eyes on them and began to tell them his story as if they had asked him for it.