Chasing the Phoenix (36 page)

The common room was large, dark, and empty. There was no fire in the hearth. Once, there had been decorations on the walls, but they were long gone. The places where they had been hung before being taken down, presumably to be sold, were lighter than the walls around them.

“Landlord!” Surplus cried. “Service, please! We bring you business!”

But when the innkeeper emerged from the back, she took one look at the Dog Pack and cried, “No room! No room! Full up!”

“Look about you. The building reeks of guestlessness,” Surplus said. “So we know you are lying. Therefore you, knowing now that we know that you know we know you lie, will give us every room you have. But first we must eat. Build a fire and bring us as much food as twenty and one ravenous appetites can make disappear.”

“It is not possible. There is no food. None at all.”

“There are a horde of us, and we are on an expense account,” Darger said. “This should not be a difficult decision for you.”

“Also, we are all skilled and murderous soldiers, and my brother, Vicious Brute, has an uncontrollable temper,” Fire Orchid said. “Step forward, little brother, and let her see how big you are.”

Blushing, Vicious Brute did so.

The innkeeper quailed, ducking her head and wrapping her apron convulsively about her hands. “Sirs! Please!” she cried, the tip of her nose turning pink. “There is no food to feed such a crowd. Go away, please.”

“First there was no room. Now there is no food. Will you never run out of new things you do not have?” Surplus could feel himself about to lose all patience with the creature.

The innkeeper began to cry. “Sirs! Oh, sirs! Please go away. You will destroy me.”

Softening, Fire Orchid said, “I will be the grown-up here. Everybody but me go outside and look for food. Also, find where the firewood is hidden. I'll speak to this lady and make everything all right. You too, sweetie. I think maybe she is afraid of dogs.”

*   *   *

BY THE
time Fire Orchid emerged from the inn, Surplus had located the firewood, a winter's worth easily, hidden under tarps and then covered over with thick layers of leaves so that it looked like an earthen garden wall, and Terrible Nuisance had found a sack half-filled with dried yams hanging in a toolshed. “Okay, let's get the fire started,” Fire Orchid said. “Little Spider, you can carry more than that. Delicate Thistle, get the spices out of your saddlebag and give the innkeeper a hand. I think maybe the food here is going to need a little flavor.”

Inside, Surplus saw that their landlady's family had come out of hiding to help her work. There was a stout daughter with a limp, three underage grandchildren (one male), and a wizened old man who could only be her husband and whose role seemed to be to issue orders nobody obeyed while getting in everybody's way as often as possible.

A fire was soon roaring in the hearth. Uncle Gentle Mountain stood off to its side, holding out his hands to cast shadow animals on the wall. One by one, the Dog Pack's musicians got out their instruments and began to play.

“How much is this evening costing us?” Surplus asked quietly.

“Plenty,” Fire Orchid said. “I had to pay black-market prices for the food. But that is the only way to get fed. Otherwise, we take food away from her family that she cannot replace and she will put nasty things in it.”

The meal, when it came at last, was sorry stuff—dandelion greens, yams, and wild roots, served on millet rather than rice. But the Dog Pack got the innkeeper and her family to eat with them, and by the end of the meal, they were all on good enough terms that Surplus was able to coax the woman into telling her story.

“You will be gone tomorrow,” the innkeeper said, “so I will not tell you my name. In such times as these it is dangerous to give such information to strangers. Were you to be taken as spies and tortured, you would willingly give up every name you had ever heard just for a temporary escape from pain. So much for that.

“But you should know that this inn was once renowned for its hospitality. We had pigs that fed on nothing but kitchen scraps and consequently had layer upon layer of fat, which made our cured pork particularly superior, and a roasting fowl that produced layers of turkey, duck, and chicken meat, one over the other. We brewed our own beer, fermented our own wine, and cloned our own signature line of hallucinogenic mushrooms—very gentle, very refined.

“But then recruiters came through, looking for young men to join the army. They made many promises. My oldest son was an adventurous boy, and, against my pleading, he enlisted. For a time he wrote letters. Sometimes they included money. Then he was sent to fight monsters in the Western Hills, and the letters stopped.

“A woman from the army came and said that my son was dead and that, as he had not fulfilled his term of service, I owed them another son. I tried to stop her, but she took my other son away.

“A year later, the same woman returned to say that my son was still alive, but they needed more soldiers so I owed them my daughter. This time I attacked her with a kitchen knife. That was how my daughter-in-law, the widow of my first son, got that limp. She tried to protect me and so received the punishment intended for me.

“You see before you all the family I have left, unless someday my two surviving children return. But I doubt that. The army will keep them until they are dead.

“Mine is a sad story, but not a special one. Every family I know has a similar tale of woe. As a result, there aren't enough people to harvest the crops. Farms fail. Trade dwindles. Travelers grow fewer. The amount of money raised by taxation shrinks accordingly. So the soldiers—our sons, remember!—are sent to punish us for not being as rich as we once were. Every year is worse than the year before. Soon there will be nothing in all the countryside but emptiness and desolation, with nobody to raise the food the armies require. Then, I think, the armies will turn on one another, and it will serve them right.”

“Your story saddens my heart,” Surplus said.

“It is common, when times are hard, for people to say they have no future. But I think I can safely say that I have no present either. All I have is the past, and that grows smaller and less convincing with every passing day.”

With great dignity, the old woman stood.

“Enjoy the fire. Converse among yourselves. My family and I will place clean linens on the beds now. We shall inform you when they are ready to be slept in.”

For a long time, no one spoke. At last, Darger moved to Fire Orchid's side and said quietly, “By my accounting, four of the Dog Pack are children.”

“Don't you let them hear you say that,” Fire Orchid said. “They are growing up fast, particularly Little Spider. And Terrible Nuisance saw his first murder last week.”

“That is commendable, I suppose. But the fact remains that something should be done about them.”

“Something is being done about them. We feed them and look after them and teach them useful skills.”

“No, what I mean is that they should be sent away to someplace safe.”

Fire Orchid looked at him incredulously. “Safe? In a war? Nowhere is safe. At least when they are with the family, we know they are not reading naughty books and picking up bad habits.”

“We are going into an extremely dangerous situation.” All against his will, Darger heard exasperation beginning to creep into his voice. “The children need to be protected.”

“That is why there are adults in the family. To defend the children and make sure they are safe even in dangerous situations.”

“Yes, but…”

“You are sweet. But very misguided. Don't you worry your ugly foreign head about any of this.” Fire Orchid walked over to Terrible Nuisance and said, “Don't think I didn't see you poke your sister with your chopsticks. Go and help our hosts wash the dishes.”

Darger turned away from her and saw Surplus silently shaking. “What are you laughing at?”

“Laughing? I? Well, perhaps I am. I am simply amused to witness Fire Orchid's dazzling command of logic happening to somebody other than myself,” Surplus said. “That's all.”

*   *   *

THE NEXT
day, they reached the Grand Canal and turned north. The road, again, was not in good repair. But it was wide and only lightly traveled, so they made good time.

“We're being watched,” Little Spider said in a low voice. “I have very good eyes, and I am sure of it.”

Surplus, who had matched his mountain horse's gait with Little Spider's at her urgent gesture of summons, smiled. “Do you mean the two riders far to the left of us, or the one that appears occasionally on the horizon up ahead, reassures herself that we are still on course, and then disappears northward again? She's the only woman, incidentally. The others are both male.”

“Okay, so maybe your dog senses are better than mine,” Little Spider grumbled. “It's rude of you to rub it in.”

“You are a promising artist, a decent musician, and your aunt tells me that someday you will be a first-rate pickpocket and card sharp. Nobody's best at everything.”

“What will we do?” Little Spider asked.

“Nothing. Everything is as it should be.”

The Dog Pack proceeded northward, stopping at inns and monasteries when they could and commandeering farmhouses when they could not. Always they paid well, behaved couthly, and left behind assurances of the Hidden Emperor's benevolence. Ever were they greeted with fear and bade farewell with relief.

They followed the Grand Canal Road. Only rarely did they see a half-laden barge go by, pulled by a team of canal lizards. When one did, it had burly guards squatting to the front and rear, looking alert and suspicious. Clearly, trade was almost nonexistent and banditry was common.

That evening, as they were making camp, a murmuring arose among the Dog Pack. Someone pointed and said, “Look—flames!” In the darkness beyond the distant fire, there was another sudden glint of light, rendered much smaller by distance. “And more!”

“Those are beacon fires,” Fire Orchid said. “We are being tracked, and our progress is being reported ahead.”

“That, too, is as expected,” Surplus said.

“I'd be alarmed if we
weren't
being tracked,” Darger added.

“Maybe so,” Fire Orchid said. “But I think I'll set out guards to keep watch at night from now on.”

On the horizon, another beacon fire flared to life.

*   *   *

IN THE
end, the Dog Pack never got anywhere near Everlasting Peace, for the leaders of the three armies came out to meet them.

One day the scout who appeared and disappeared in the distance ahead failed to disappear. When they caught up to her, they found that she was a dark, slender woman with a piratical cast to her features. She was accompanied by thirty-five cavalrymen. It was a carefully nuanced force: large enough to intimidate the Dog Pack, but not so much so as to make them feel overwhelmed. Very politely, the woman informed them that they were expected to voluntarily go no farther.

“We are the soul of cooperation,” Surplus assured her. “What do you wish of us?”

“Simply to wait here for certain parties who wish to consult with you. Oh, but please don't make any sudden moves toward your weapons. My people have seen more than their share of combat and are prone to misunderstanding the simplest gesture.”

“We make camp here,” Surplus told the clan. “If you need to chop wood or perform some similar act involving a tool such as an axe or a hatchet, please give ample notice of your intentions to our hosts beforehand.”

“That would save us all a great deal of unnecessary violence,” the pirate woman agreed.

In relative comfort, they waited until sunset. Then riders came to take Darger—and no others—into a distant wood. There a road led up to a house of no great distinction. The building was little more than a hut—a hunting lodge for a not terribly rich man, abandoned with the advent of war.

The negotiations did not go at all the way that Darger had expected they would. After a welcoming ceremony and a formal cup of tea, Ceo Nurturing Clouds of the East Mountain army said, “Rumor of the Hidden Emperor came to us months ago, so naturally we sent out spies to learn what we could of this new danger to the Yellow Sea Alliance. We had people in Crossroads when it fell, and they reported how gently the conquered city was treated. So too with South. Further, we have heard of the relatively painless absorption of entire nations into your empire and have formed a positive opinion of this new ascendant power.”

“That is most gratifying to hear,” Darger said. “For our part…”

Nurturing Clouds held up a hand. “Please. Let me continue. You must think us terrible people to be allied with North. But when the four nations first combined, it was a true union of equals. Over time, however, while the other lands focused on farming, fishing, trade, and manufacture, North put the bulk of its resources into its military. At first, we were happy that so much of the burden of defense was taken on itself by our northern brother. But with time it became obvious that North's military strength was greater than all ours combined. Which is when they began to demand first tribute and then obedience from us.”

“I assure you that I don't…” Darger began.

“The situation must be seen from our perspective,” said Ceo Laughing Raven. “North made it clear they would retaliate against our relatives, spouses, and children if we did not cooperate. That is simply the way they ruled. Worse, they then demanded that we build up our own military forces—not enough to threaten their supremacy, of course. But enough that the burden of taxation to support both their army and our own is ruinous. You have traveled through our lands. You see the results.”

“Then obviously…”

“I was ordered to destroy my home village of Orchard,” Ceo True Path said. “There was a labor strike. It had closed down one city and looked likely to spread. I came in, killed the leaders, and terrified the rest into going back to work. I thought I had done well. North disagreed. This was their punishment.