Under Heaven (44 page)

If there was a morning in the world, this is the way it looked
. And that is not a thought natural to her people.
They start south. Li-Mei looks to left and then right, and sees the lead wolf beside them. The others are out there, she knows. But this one is always near.
BY MIDDAY the land begins rising, the grass is shorter, differently textured, darker, and there are clumps of green and silver-green shrubbery, and then bare rock in places. When she sees a stand of poplar trees it is almost shocking. She realizes she isn't fatigued any more.
They cross a shallow river. On the other bank Meshag halts to let the horses drink. He refills the water flasks. Li-Mei dismounts as well, to stretch her aching legs. She keeps looking at the sky. More wind today, the clouds moving east. Sometimes they pass before the sun and a shadow slides along the land and then away.
She says, "Do you know how close they are, behind us?"
He stoppers the flasks. He takes the line that holds the four horses behind his and makes the changes needed to give each of them new mounts. He swings himself up and Li-Mei does the same.
He says, "Most of a day. I think we are enough ahead."
She is afraid to ask him how he knows this. But she also thinks she knows the answer: not all the wolves are with them here.
"Thank you," she says.
They begin to ride again, south, under the high sky and the coming and going of light and shadow across the changing land. One more stop, mid-afternoon. He switches their horses again.
They see a swan, late in the day, flying too high for an arrow. A little after that they crest the long, steady rise of land they have been climbing. There is a downward slope in front of them.
Beyond it, stretching to the ends of sight, west and east, lit by the long, late sun, is the Wall.
He has brought her home.

Tazek Karad had never made any real distinction between the nomads of the grasslands, however much they might have hated each other. He looked out over Shuoki lands now, having been abruptly shifted two hundred
li
east of his normal gatehouse on the Wall.
Both the Shuoki and the Bogu were domesticated, nose-wiping sheep-herders to him. Their women dominated them in their yurts, by day
and
by night. That, his fellow Kislik joked, was why so many of the steppe-men slept with their sheep.
They might boast of their thick-maned horses, of battling grassland wolves, hunting gazelle, but what did these things mean to a Kislik? His were a people of the desert, where men murdered for half a cup of water, and sometimes drank the blood of the victim, too. Where you'd have to drag your camel down to the ground and shelter against it, wrapping your face completely, to
try
to survive a sandstorm.
The deserts killed; these steppes nurtured life. You could make a guess, couldn't you, as to which land produced harder, more worthy men?
Tazek would have denied it if someone had called him bitter. Still, when it came to talking about
worthy
you could make a case that command of only fifty men in the Kitan Sixth Army after twelve years along or north of the Wall was not even close to showing proper respect. A
dui
was nothing. He ought to have had two hundred or more, by now.
True, Kitai and its empire had fed and clothed him since he was fifteen, and had made women and wine (or
kumiss
, more often) available for soldiers posted along the Wall. True, he had not died in desert sand as his father and two brothers had.
Serving the Kitan emperor was a way of life, and not the worst. But surely anyone worth being named a man wanted to
rise
, to move nearer the centre. What sort of person would come this close, and look, and say, "It is enough, what I have. I don't need more."
Not the person Tazek Karad was, at any rate.
Add the fact--it was on his record--that he'd accepted, uncomplainingly, doubled six-month shifts at outpost forts in the grasslands three times, and you had to concede that the officers either had it in for him, for some reason, or they were just too incompetent in the Sixth District to recognize a man ready for promotion.
Not that he was bitter.
Part of the problem was that the flaccid sheep-lovers of the steppe were too quiet these days. The Bogu had become a subject people of the emperor, selling him horses at the spring gathering by the river's loop, requesting Kitan intervention in their own squabbles, but not fighting nearly enough in those to let good soldiers engage in the sort of actions that got you promoted.
The Shuoki were more contentious, and the forts in their lands--Near Fort and Far Fort, the soldiers called them--saw some combat. The nomads here had even tried to break through weak places in the Wall on raids. A mistake, and they'd suffered for it. But the two outpost forts and the Wall below them had been manned by soldiers of Roshan's Seventh Army, so the glory (and citations) from that fighting didn't get anywhere near Tazek Karad or his fellows in the Sixth.
In the Sixth Army they supervised horse trading, heard whining complaints about sheep raids levelled by one rancid-smelling tribe against another, and let long-haired Bogu riders through with furs and amber, destined for markets in Xinan or Yenling.
It was predictable, safe, unspeakably dull.
Until four days ago, when
dui
commander Tazek Karad had received urgent orders to lead his fifty men east to take up a position at the gatehouse and towers directly south of Near Fort.
Other officers and men went with them, some halting sooner, some going farther east, thinning the numbers at their own guard posts. Along the way, changing orders overtook a number of them, causing confusion. There was an apparent need to move quickly.
The emerging report was that the soldiers of the Seventh along the Wall had been withdrawn. All of them. They were gone. The gates and the watchtowers between gates were undefended. It was almost inconceivable.
No one told them why. No ranking officer (in the Sixth Army, anyhow) would bother telling a lowly commander of fifty men anything.
Nor did anyone explain why, just two days ago, the garrison soldiers of the Seventh and Eighth, posted in Near Fort and Far Fort, had come marching and riding back, both armies together, thousands upon thousands of them funnelling through the Wall section Tazek now controlled. They disappeared south through a curtain of dust that took most of the morning to settle, leaving an eerie, empty silence behind.
Soldiers had asked soldiers what was happening as the garrisons passed through. Soldiers didn't know. They never did.
And although army life was almost always lived in a state of ignorance and one grew accustomed to that, there were times when sudden and shifting orders could unsettle the most dour and steady of minor officers, even one with the western desert in his blood.
The sight of the Seventh and Eighth garrisons approaching his gate and passing through and disappearing south had done that for Tazek Karad.
He felt exposed, looking north. He was commanding an important, unfamiliar gate, he was undermanned, and he was above Shuoki lands now. A man might want the chance to fight the barbarians, earn a reputation, but if the nomads raided right now in any numbers he and his men could be in serious difficulty.
And with both forts emptied out, there was a good chance the Shuoki
would
come down to, at the very least, see what was happening here. Tazek didn't even want to think about what they would do to the two forts. Not his problem, until someone made it so.
He stood in the wooden gatehouse at sundown and looked east and west along the rise and fall and rise of the Long Wall of Kitai, to where it vanished in each direction. They'd used rammed earth to build it here above the grasslands, pressed between wooden frames, mixed with lime and gravel carted north. They'd used stones, he'd been told, where the Wall climbed towards mountains over rocks.
It was a staggering achievement, difficult to think about. They said it stretched for six thousand
li
. They said four hundred thousand men had died in building and rebuilding it over the centuries. Tazek believed that last part.
He hated the Wall. He'd lived twelve years of his life defending it.
One of his men said something. He was pointing north. Tazek sighted along the man's extended finger.
Two traders approaching, still far off, a string of horses behind them. Here in Shuoki lands this was uncommon. It was the Bogu who went back and forth, who had the spring meeting by the Golden River's bend where thousands of horses were brought and bought and led away south for the Kitan army's endless need.
The Shuoki traded more sporadically. Often the goods were stolen horses--often from the Bogu. It wouldn't surprise Tazek if that were so now. As the pair drew nearer he saw four horses in addition to the two being ridden. In theory, he could arrest the would-be traders, hold them for tribal justice (which was never pretty), and keep the horses as the price of inconveniencing Kitan soldiers.
In reality, they tended to let traders through. Standard army policy these days: horses mattered too much, you wanted the nomads to keep bringing them, they would stop if it meant being captured. The usual practice was for the gate commander to accept discreet compensation for looking the other way while stolen goods went into Kitai.
He waited for the thieving Shuoki to get closer. He had questions to ask. He needed information more than the horse or the handful of coins they'd likely offer. Their mounts were tired, he saw, even the ones being led on a rope. They'd been ridden hard, probably confirmation they were stolen. Tired horses sold for less.
Tazek stared stonily down at the approaching riders. He wasn't a happy man.
The two men came up to his gate and halted below.
They weren't Shuoki. First sign of the unexpected.
"Request to pass through with horses to sell," the larger one said. He was a Bogu, you could see it in the hair. He spoke Kitan like the barbarian he was. The smaller one was hooded. Sometimes they did that, out of fear in the presence of Kitan soldiers.
Well, fear was
proper
, wasn't it.
This was a father and son, Tazek decided, stealing together. But it was a surprise to find Bogu this far east, especially just a pair of them. Not his problem. His problems were different.
"What have you seen to the north, thieving Bogu?" he demanded.
"What do you mean?" No reaction to the insult, Tazek noted.
"The garrison!"
"Fortress empty," agreed the big man. He was bare-chested, kept his eyes cast down. This, too, was normal--and appropriate. These were barbarians talking to an officer in the Sixth Army of Kitai.
The man said, "Tracks of horses and men go this way. They not come here?"
That was none of his business, was it?
"What about the other fort?"
"Not go so far. But many soldiers go this way. More than one fort. Two days, maybe?"
He didn't look up, but he had it right. The nomads knew how to read their grass.
"Anything happen up there?"
"Happen?"
"You see any Shuoki?"
"No," said the big one.
"I need a better answer!" snarled Tazek.
"No, honourable sir," the man said, which would have been funny, some other time.
"Any of those shit-eaters coming this way? You see them?"
"No Shuoki. There are Bogu behind us."
"Why?"
"We are ... we are exiled from tribe, honourable sir."
And
that
put an answer in place as to why these two were so far east. Interesting that they were being pursued, but not interesting enough. The tribes had their laws. If they stayed north of the Wall and didn't bother the garrisons, it had nothing to do with Kitai. Or with Tazek Karad of the Sixth.
It could, however, get complicated if the Bogu showed up, and he was
seen
letting these two through. There were horses. Horses mattered. Tazek looked north. Emptiness.
He nodded to the man beside him. "Open them up."
He looked down at the two riders. "Where you taking these?"
"These horses requested by Kanlins," the bigger man said.
A surprise. "You aim to go all the way to Stone Drum Mountain with these?"
"Requested by them. Three smaller horses. Some Kanlin are women."
Well, the gods send a sandstorm to blind fools! As if Tazek didn't
know
some of the black-robed ones were women? And that the women could kill you as easily as the men?
"In that case, we have a problem, my shirtless friend. Stone Drum is what, six days? I am not letting Bogu horse-thieves ride alone that far through Kitai."
"It is only four days,
dui
officer. You are properly cautious, but it is all right, we are here to escort them."
The voice was behind him. Speaking impeccable Kitan.
Tazek turned quickly--and saw three Kanlin Warriors, astride their horses, just inside his gates.
It had happened to him before: they could be right up on you, in among you, before you were aware they'd even been approaching. Two men, one woman, he saw. They had hoods down in the evening light, carried swords across their backs, bows in saddles.
Tazek stared down. If he'd been unhappy before it was as nothing now.
"How did you know they were coming?" he demanded.
The first Kanlin smiled. He seemed amused. "It had been arranged," he said. "It is not hard to watch for riders from places along the Wall."
Well, fuck your by-the-hour mother,
Tazek wanted to say. "You learn anything about the garrison soldiers? The ones who came through?"
"Seventh and Eighth Armies," the Kanlin said, promptly. "They are all moving south. Do you have enough people to deal with this stretch of the Wall?"
"Course I do!" snapped Tazek. As if he was going to admit anything to a black-robe.
"Good," the man said equably. "Be generous enough to let our horses through? And please accept, for you and your soldiers, some rice wine we have brought as a humble offering to those who defend us here. It might be better than what you have."
Might be better? It couldn't
help
but be better, because the accursed soldiers of the Seventh, the ones posted here before, the ones who'd gone away south, had taken all the wine and most of the food stores with them.
He had sent word about the stores as soon as they'd arrived. He was expecting provisions from the west, as soon as tomorrow, with luck. On the other hand, the sun was going down and a dry night stretched ahead.
He nodded to the three in the black robes, and then to the soldier beside him. The man barked the orders.
The gate bars were pulled back. The heavy gates swung inward, slowly. The Bogu father and son waited, then rode through with their horses. Three of the horses were, Tazek saw, smaller ones.
He still didn't know how the Kanlin had gotten a message, a request for horses, through the Wall to Bogu exiles. That part didn't make sense. He was trying to decide if it mattered.
He decided it didn't. Not his problem.
He looked down and saw that the three Kanlins had dismounted and were shifting flasks from their pack horse into the extremely eager hands of his own soldiers.
"Hold off opening those till I get down!" he shouted.
He'd need to count and estimate, figure out how to do this. But rice wine meant that at least one good thing had happened today. Pretty much the only good thing.
He was turning to go down the steps when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a grey shape streak through the gate.
"The fuck was that?" he roared.
"A wolf, I think," the Kanlin leader said, looking up.
"It just went through my Wall!" Tazek shouted.
The Kanlin shrugged. "They do go back and forth. We'll shoot it for you if we see it. Is there a bounty this spring?"
There sometimes was, it depended how many there were. Tazek had just arrived here. He was short of men, of food, of water and wine, and he had no idea what had happened with the Seventh and Eighth.
"No," he said sourly. There might well have been a bounty for all he knew, but he felt like saying no to someone. "Shoot it anyhow."
The Kanlin nodded, and turned. The five of them rode off, the extra horses trailing after the big, bare-chested Bogu.
Tazek watched them for a while, discontented. Something was still bothering him, a thought teasing at the edge of his mind. Then he remembered the wine and went quickly down the stairs. He never did chase down that stray thought.
When a party of Bogu riders appeared the next morning he ordered his men to begin shooting as soon as the riders were in arrow range. He was undermanned; he did