The women of Chiyaden, the young women, going stoop-shouldered and fearfully about the riverside—
Taizu, in front of him at the porch steps: Teach me, master Saukendar. .., .
Taizu, in the rain, flailing away at the tree, Taizu lying in the mud, under the lightning-flashes—
—Taizu with that demon's look on her face, white and wet and terrible—
—Riding beside him, absolute in her intentions as he had never known how to be: Justice, master Saukendar . . .
He was not sure what justice existed in the court at Cheng'di, but he had a notion what justice he would take from the fools who marched the youth of Chiyaden off to border wars and plundered their own land and maintained their power with hired soldiers—
Who used the young men of the provinces as coin to buy alliances, supporting one barbarian king, fighting another—and called it affairs of state—
Cut off the head of this monster and that was only half the battle: the rest of its coils were threaded through every province of Chiyaden, and apt to die hard, working destruction as far as mercenary bands could reach.
But no worse than he saw around him.
There was no way to extricate that beast from the land; and gods help the people when they struck the blow.
Gods help the people if they did not.
That was the way he kept thinking, with every stride the horses took. Five more days beyond this one, and Reidi was going to put his neck out and with him every hope of opposing Ghita's regime.
Five days beyond this one and that bridge at Lungan had damned well better be open. He knew no way, this side of the river, to get one of the men back to Reidi in time to say otherwise, and he wished to hell he could, now, strongly suspecting, by everything he had heard from the Fittha, that Ghita was well warned and prepared to draw a battle-line at the bridge at Lungan.
That said something about the north, that Ghita reckoned the Imperial Province well in hand, so that he could hold at Lungan, without worrying about anything coming at his back. So much for the hope that the Imperial troops in the province might mutiny, that some wave of rebellion might come in from the borders, at least sufficient uncertainty to make a difference: in that case Ghita would pull back behind Cheng'di and across the Chaighin, to his own land in Kenji and Angen, where he could virtually section off Ayenden, Shangei, P'eng and Yijang, where the mercenary forces were thickest and where his supporters held lordships—a slow, nasty kind of war, but better than fighting it out in the heart of Chiyaden.
But Imperial troops had evidently not defected, the Hisei and not the Chaighin was the line of defense Ghita chose, and the Emperor and the capital were firmly in Ghita's hands.
Decidedly not what he had hoped for.
The sparse traffic on the Lungan road had a desperate look, a few traders, anxious gentry in fancy, flower-painted carriages and countryfolk in plain farm carts, or just poor townsmen walking with baskets and bundles. When they saw soldiers they pulled over to the edge of the road and inched along, or stopped altogether and made respectful bows from which they did not look up at all. Taizu just rode coldly past them, watching, watching all the while, wary as he had taught her to be, sharp eyes above the mask of filthy bandage, while the men, some of them, rode silent and avoided looking at the people: ashamed, Shoka thought; or feeling too much.
Himself—he tried to figure out what he felt, who—he could not shake the feeling—might have come earlier, might have planned better, and, by the gods, on his side, might have had a damn lot more help from these same people—if any number of them had been willing to take matters in their own hands. He was not sure whether he loved them in the aggregate or wanted to do them violence; or wanted simply to ride off and let them talk their way out of their disaster, the way they had talked the emperor to the throne and Ghita into power and himself out of favor and then turned around and deified him right into the mess he was in, his whole life carried one direction and another on the breath of the people; and all the virtue he had went to refraining from what they deserved—
—except Taizu was one of their number. And he could not forget that, whenever he saw some poor soul struggling along with a basket or bundle, all that was valuable, all that was possible to save out of a lifetime. The lords fought, the banners flew, and the gray lines of desperate people trekked the roads, with their meager world on their backs.
Taizu believed less in gods after knowing him. She began to know what the people's heroes were made of—exaggeration, desperate wishes and superstition—and still stayed with him, caught in the same nets, while at the bottom of his heart he was terrified that she would get up sane one morning and see an ordinary, lame, forty-year-old man with a nasty disposition and too little patience with people.
He hated power over people. He truly hated it. And sometimes he hated them, that was what he was profoundly ashamed of, hated them because they thrust off all the virtues they admired on some poor idol, and stopped expecting them in themselves.
He wished he did have a visible god or two to shove matters off on—but if the gods were accessible, it seemed only fair not to do to them what he complained about in others: as well, then, to shut up and carry matters on his own as far as he could. Then the gods might be happier about coming through in a pinch. That was the sum of his religion, and he was thinking earnestly about it this afternoon, on the way to getting all of them killed.
Well, Celestial Lord, I'm not sure this mess is solvable. Ghita's invited the foreigners into the heart of the Empire. He's a fool. Of course the foreign kings are helping him, while Chiyaden's army fights their wars. But there are far too many of them, aren't there, Ghita's gotten himself into a trap he has to understand by now—too much unrest to trust the army home, so much he needs the foreigners to keep order, and he has to know if they find a leader of their own, it won't be a border war any longer. So he has to keep the border war going not only to keep the army officers busy, but keep things stirred up so his foreign allies need Chiyaden's army. He can only do that so long, before the whole stack of bricks falls down.
Chiyaden will pay for what he's done, down the years. We've shown the barbarians too much about us. They know our foolishness. Mend that, Celestial Lord, and save us from our own short-sightedness: that's what we can't do ourselves.
It was the only conversation he had had with the gods in ten years; but this afternoon he was down to that. He had no notion yet what to do, what they were going into, what their enemy's preparations had been—
And all along the road they were passing people who might have that information, who had come out of Lungan or its surrounds. The refugees, he thought, the people who shied off from them on the road—knew things that were life and death to them; and might, if he told them the simple truth, carry that rumor back to mercenary units on the road behind them.
He watched one cart on its way to disaster, a girl with a baby, a young boy, an old man—the cartwheels squealing under the misaligned load of household goods and the old horse working hard to make headway.
On impulse he blocked the dray's path with his own, and, seeing the fugitives panic, bowed in the saddle, courteous and not crowding them himself, but his anxious company drew close on the side and behind him.
"It's all right," he said in soldier patois, and held both hands in plain sight. "We just have a question or two about the road ahead. Come all the way from Lungan?"
Heads nodded.
"Is the Regent at Lungan?"
Terrified stares.