Path of the Eclipse (22 page)

Saint-Germain watched Rogerio go until he entered the stable; then he stepped back inside his quarters and brought out a large, heavily padded box about half the height of a man. There was a crude sort of harness attached to the box, and this Saint-Germain fitted around his shoulders, securing the crossing leather belts on his chest. He pulled the door of his quarters closed for one last time, feeling a moment of the most profound regret. This he deliberately set aside, putting his mind on more pressing matters as he crossed the courtyard for the unguarded gates.

Many of the farmers in Oa-Du valley had been unfortunate enough to be taken alive by the Mongols, and were now being used by them for cruel and ghastly amusement. One man, a militiaman, judging by his boots, for the rest of his clothing was in tatters, had been tied around the chest and dragged behind a galloping pony while eight mounted, drunken men chased after him, trying to slice him with their swords when they came near enough to lean out of their saddles. The militiaman was hardly conscious and had stopped screaming some time before.

Another party had taken a dead horse, gutted it and sewed three farmers inside it, and were now roasting the terrible thing over a slow fire. Not far from a smoldering barn, a young man, a farmer’s son, was being mutilated by three Mongol warriors. Most of the Mongols stood around a bonfire, laughing, eating and drinking, and occasionally tossing a severed human limb onto the blaze, commenting on how well this leg or that hand burned and crackled.

Saint-Germain had kept to the edge of the fields, but his night vision made the whole grisly scene unmercifully clear. Rage welled in him as he watched and searched for a vantage point.

He came upon an old barn, fallen into disrepair and quite deserted. With caution he approached the building, and when he had satisfied himself that the rickety place was safe, he crouched low and ran with uncanny swiftness to the barn, huddling there while he loosened the buckles over his chest.

The riders chasing the militiaman came down the field at a disorderly run, their shouts high in the air.

Saint-Germain listened, waiting, as he reached so very slowly into the padded box he carried and drew forth a ceramic cylinder. It was meticulously sealed, but using a small dagger, he peeled away the hard wax from one end, and in the next moment, he had hurled the container directly at the Mongols.

The rush of air ignited the substance in the cylinder, and the container exploded with a muffied sound no louder than the bursting of a pine cone in a fire. Flying bits of eerie, gold-burning material fell in tendrils through the sky, beautiful to see. One of the Mongol warriors pulled up his pony to stare at the long, splendid rags of light as they drifted toward him. A scrap of the stuff dropped onto his shoulder, soft and graceful as thistledown, and where it touched, it clung and burned.

Almost at once the others screamed out as the Greek fire wafted among the mounted warriors. Pieces that fell in the grass set it alight, and in a very little time a quarter of the field was in flames.

Satisfied, Saint-Germain took up his padded box and moved back into the shadows of the trees at the edge of the field. No one noticed his swift, silent passage away from the abandoned barn.

The next container was flung not far from where the farmer’s boy writhed under the ruthless Mongol knives. Screams and imprecations burst from the three torturers’ lips, but before others could rush to their aid, another cylinder burst apart above the bonfire. Now there was so much chaos that none of the Mongols was able to take charge. Men rushed blindly, tearing at the vinelike material that seared garments and flesh equally with scorifying heat that seemed to devour even bone. It was useless to try to dislodge the deadly fibers, for they held fast everything that touched them. Men shrieked in agony as the Greek fire consumed them with a rapacity greater than any they themselves had shown in battle. Horses reared and ran and burned, mouths and flanks foaming. Even the steadfast Mongol ponies were filled with terror and rushed aimlessly through the blazing night until a filament of Greek fire would bring them down.

Saint-Germain did not like killing the horses and ponies. It was only the Mongols he hunted. Yet he threw two more cylinders before he was certain that the invaders would not live to see sunrise. He took little gratification from this, for his hatred was hot as his Greek fire, not calculating and frigid. He knew beyond all doubt that this was an empty gesture, an act of defiance that would go unnoticed in the horror of the invasion. He was also aware that this would not restore Chih-Yü. She was beyond any act of his. Yet, now that his first task had been completed, he turned to the second and more difficult one.

So-Dui valley was an abattoir. Parts of the ground were caked hard with blood. Insects had converged on the loathsome feast: things that scuttled, that crept and flew and buzzed. It had begun with flies in the afternoon, before the last of the battle. Now there were many more varieties going about their scavenging work.

Repugnance threatened to overcome Saint-Germain, but he thought with goading irony that he, of all men, should not be distressed at the sight and scent of blood. He stumbled over a headless trunk, and wondered how many of the militiamen had been beheaded. It was a common Mongol practice to place piles of severed heads near their battlefields. He had hoped that they would wait until the next day, when the killing and feasting were finished, to assemble their hideous trophy.

Because many of the corpses had been decapitated, Saint-Germain went slowly among them, feeling his way. He could see far more than he wanted to, but not enough to distinguish the one female body in this charnel field. Cold, stiffened men were tumbled with their fallen mounts. Bodies and parts of bodies had been tossed into a heap at one place. With all his senses deadened, so that he worked with mechanical efficiency, Saint-Germain picked his way through that abhorrent tangle without finding Chin-Yü.

When at last he found her, it was by the sheerest accident. He had been following a drainage ditch that ran beside one of the fields, and at the edge of a deadfall was what appeared to be a heap of filthy sacking. He almost passed it, when he recognized the brass insignia on a dented piece of armor. Slowly he touched the material, and felt metal under the blood-matted cloth. His chest grew tight and hot as he turned the body over.

He told himself that he was pleased that the Mongols had not cut her head off, but the dire expression that was frozen on her face was harrowing to see. A broken lance was still clutched in her cold right hand and her scabbard was empty. He tried to brush the caked blood from her face and found that half the skin had been sliced away from the side of her head. He was incapable of weeping, for that had been lost to him when his essential nature changed, long ago, and so the sound that tore through him was more like a howl than the beginning of tears. He pressed the dangling skin back into place and held it there. He dared not move his hand for fear the wound would gape once more. With difficulty he used his other hand to get out of the harness that kept the padded box on his back. When that was done, he removed the last of the Greek-fire cylinders, setting the box on the ground.

For some time he worked at putting her into the box, his mind resolutely shut to the grimness of the task. Once, as he pried her fingers from the shaft of the lance, he recalled with overwhelming intensity the way that hand had touched him the night before, and her promise, that if she survived the day, she would share blood with him this night. He staggered away from the box, his hands covering his face until he mastered the despair that transfixed him.

When he was finished, the night was far advanced, but the Warlord Ten Chih-yü lay in a grave that had been dug as a deadfall, Saint-Germain’s padded box serving as her coffin. Her name and rank had been carved into the side of the box, and the date and manner of her death. Instead of laudatory verses, Saint-Germain had put the one-character “valor” to recommend her to her ancestors.

Shortly before dawn, Saint-Germain trudged up the path to the fork in the road where Rogerio waited with the goat cart. He was sickened and weary from the appalling night, yet he was grateful that he would have to go far that day, for his fatigue numbed him, and he was grateful for that numbness.

There was the brazen clunk of a bell, and then Rogerio stepped out of the shadows. He said nothing as Saint-Germain pointed up the hill and away.

A letter from Wu Sing-I, Shu-Rh District Magistrate, from the town of Bei-Wah, to the Secretariat of Defense at K’ai-Feng.

On the eve of the Festival of the God of Hearths and Furnaces, the Year of the Ox, the Fourteenth Year of the Sixty-fifth Cycle, to the Elevated Officials of the Defense Secretariat in the capital of K’ai-Feng:

This most unfortunate Magistrate must inform the Officers of the Secretariat of the latest disaster which has befallen this most unhappy district. Without doubt some of your number are aware that this most unworthy person has, in the past, beseeched those in high places to see that we in this District were adequately protected from our foemen. At such times as the Elevated Officials deigned to answer this unworthy person’s requests, it was to assure him that there was no danger whatever to Shu-Rh District. When this unworthy person took it upon himself to provide information to the contrary, it was ignored or set aside for the more pressing business of reclaiming Pei-King. This most unworthy Magistrate was not accorded the courtesy of aid, and the plans to send a military inspector to this District were set aside when some of your number decided that there was not sufficient reason to do so.

It is my lamentable duty to inform the Elevated Officials that they were tragically mistaken. The Mongol attacks which we have sustained since more than a year ago have not, as certain of your numbers so confidently predicted, decreased, but have grown steadily in frequency and savagery. This most unworthy Magistrate sent you word when the fortress of the Warlord Kung fell to these invaders, and was given no response.

Now there has been another attack. The Mao-T’ou stronghold, with all its militiamen and its Warlord, T’en Chin-Yü, has fallen, and with it the two valleys, So-Dui and Oa-Du. Nothing is left there. The Shui-Lo fortress of the Warlord Tan Mung-Fa has been destroyed, and with it every farmstead and field for six li around. The Tsi-Gai pass stronghold and its Warlord, Shao Ching-Po, has been razed by a force of more than four hundred Mongols. The holdings of the Warlords Hua Djo-Tung and Suh Son-Tai are in Mongol hands even as this most unfortunate person sets his brush to the ink cake. Since the Elevated Officials have shown so little regard for the Shu-Rh District, this unworthy Magistrate seeks to remind them that the forces of these Warlords at this time constituted our entire district defenses. With the fortresses and strongholds gone, we are without the means to resist these foreign devils.

This unworthy person is unable to describe adequately to the Elevated Officials the devastation that has been visited upon this District. Everywhere there are smoldering villages and pyramids of severed heads. The sky is dark from the burning, as though heaven itself wishes to hide its face from the wreckage. The people of the District are without food, without shelter, without aid of any kind, and as such, are filled with horror and apathy, so that they will do nothing now to prevent the Mongols from killing them.

This unworthy Magistrate has a messenger standing by, and as the walls of Bei-Wah are afire, it would not be wise to delay him any longer. The records of this District have been hidden in a dry well on the south side of the walls, and may survive what the people will not.

Since this most wretched person has failed so signally in his tasks, since he has shown himself to be unworthy of the name he bears and his illustrious ancestors, and since he is without hope even of the compassion of Heaven, he will end his life as soon as the messenger has departed. He desires that his name and functions be stricken from the records of the family Wu and that no distinction of any kind mark his passing.

From the brush and hand of the despicable person who was the Magistrate Wu Sing-I, in Bei-Wah.

his chop

PART II

Shih Ghieh-Man

A letter from Mei Sa-Fong to Nai Yung-Ya and the Nestorian Christian congregation of Lan-Chow.

On the Festival of the Wine God, in the Year of the Ox, the Fourteenth Year of the Sixty-fifth Cycle, the one thousand two hundred seventeenth year of Our Lord, to our beloved Pope Nai Yung-Ya and the faithful congregation in Lan-Chow.

This brings the greetings and good wishes of Mei Sa-Fong, his sister Mei Hsu-Mo, and our dear companion Chung La:

We have reached the port of Tu-Ma-Sik, far to the south of our country. The ship we sail on, a merchant vessel, very large and bustling with activity, stopped at Vi-Ja-Ya before coming to this place at the end of a long, narrow peninsula. Here we must transfer to another vessel, for this one has accepted a commission that will not take them toward Tien-Du for several months, and we are anxious to be on with our task. The captain of the ship has introduced us to a man from Pe-Gu, who is returning through the straits here to his home port, and then will cross the sea westward to a city called Dra-Ksa-Ra-Ma, which is near the mouth of a river with the impossible name of Go-Da-Va-Ri. This place is well inside the boundaries of Tien-Du, and there is a city farther up the Go-Da-Va-Ri called Han-Am-Kon-Da, where we are told there are other Christians. We have been warned that there are various warring groups in this region and that there are those who prey upon travelers, offering their demon goddess the lives of those they take.

This is a great delusion, of course, and we will be prudent but not fearful. It is not suitable that those of us who have learned to trust in the Master would turn away from His work because there are men abroad who are most dangerous. We know that there is danger in Lan-Chow. There is danger in a safe bed at night. If the Master does not wish to protect His servants, then it is at our peril that we live at all, let alone travel so far from the hearths of those we love and who share our faith. But how timorous a faith that would be!