NOT LONG AFTER THAT, eight Kanlins ride west out of the pass, through the assembled armies of the Second and Third Districts. The armies are stirring. Orders have been given.
The eight riders go swiftly once beyond the canyon, with the wide river on their right and hills to the left—the features that make Teng Pass what it is, vital for so long in Kitai.
Two of these riders are bound for the Kanlin sanctuary at Ma-wai with three of the records of the morning. From there, two scrolls will be sent on to other sanctuaries, for greater security.
Two of the other riders will go only as far as Xinan, with the scroll for the Ta-Ming Palace, along with newer ones: the just-dictated words of General Xu Bihai, sent to the imperial heir and the Beloved Companion, but not to the first minister.
Three of the riders are escorting the last one farther west, and south, because of a promise made at Stone Drum Mountain. These four will branch off halfway to Xinan.
That last one, wrapped in fear and doubt as they ride, is the daughter of General Shen Gao.
There have been many chronicles of warfare in Kitai, from the First Dynasty onwards.
Disagreements as to strategy and tactics, not surprisingly, are everywhere in the texts, and a component of the civil service examinations is for students to analyze two or three such writings and express a preference for one of them, defending that choice.
Victory or defeat in battle can be attributed to many different elements. Some writers stressed the (somewhat obvious) point that numerical superiority, all else being relatively equal, could usually determine a combat, that a prudent general would wait for such superiority, decline to engage without it.
Others noted that all else was rarely equal.
Weaponry, for example, made a great difference. An often-cited example was the fate of an army in the northeast some time ago, an incursion into the Koreini Peninsula: undone before the crucial battle by a sudden rainstorm that soaked their bowstrings, eliminating the archers from playing any role, leading to a terrible defeat.
This incident was also cited in the context of preparation. The fact that the leaders of the expedition had failed to anticipate the rain was judged significant. All of the surviving generals were later executed, or ordered to kill themselves.
Other writers placed emphasis on terrain, positioning. The army with higher ground or territory protected by natural features would have a significant advantage. The capable commander sought such terrain.
Supply lines played a role. Food, clothing. Horses. Even boots for a marching army. So could the ratio of infantry to cavalry, and the quality of horsemanship. Experience, in general. Battle-hardened soldiers were worth much more than new recruits.
Surprise, whether by way of an unexpected assault (at night, in difficult weather, sooner than anticipated) or a battle conducted using new tactics, could make a difference. There were examples. Those taking the examinations were expected to know them.
Morale and passion were seen as important, and were linked to leadership.
There was a very old tale of a commander who committed his army to battle with a river in spate behind them, having refused to move forward from the edge of the water to better ground, waiting for the enemy there.
His soldiers had no possible retreat.
They did not retreat. They won a famous victory that day against significantly greater numbers. When men have nowhere to escape, the lesson went, they will fight more bravely, and often prevail.
So, too, will soldiers who are aware that defeat for them is decisive, and likely to mean death.
On the other hand, an army that knows there need not be (for them) finality to a given field, that flight is possible, is less likely to engage the enemy with the same ferocity.
This last distinction, it was subsequently agreed with a degree of consensus, was the best explanation for the victory of the An Li rebels against the forces of the Second and Third Armies in the battle joined east of Teng Pass.
The imperial army had an advantage in numbers, and they did surprise the rebels—who’d had no thought that General Xu Bihai would lead his forces out of an impregnable pass and onto a sun-broiled battlefield.
The initial appearance of the emperor’s troops caused extreme consternation in the rebel ranks. General Xu had increased this likelihood by moving most of his men into position outside of the pass during the night, so the rebels woke to see their enemies gathered, and then had to face a charge.
This surprise changed, swiftly, to something else. Something that could be described as hope, or even joy. Short of an attack such as this (a mistake such as this) they had been almost certainly fated to withdraw from here and face the uncertainty of autumn and winter with too little ground gained, a large army to feed and house through the cold months, and unrest in their own base. All the while learning of the steady mustering of even greater numbers of imperial forces, readying themselves for the resumption of fighting in spring.
The attack out of the pass, once the initial shock was over, presented itself to An Li and his forces as what it was: a gift, an opportunity unlooked for.
It was a gift they did not fail to grasp.
There were a great many casualties on both sides that day. There were more in the imperial army. When the dead and wounded reached a certain number (there is always such a number for any army), the soldiers of General Xu Bihai broke and fled.
They raced back up Teng Pass, pushing through the rearguard left to hold the pass, running over them, pursued with triumphant ferocity by the rebel cavalry, into the pass, and along it through shadows, and out the other end into light again.
At the end of that day, more than half of the Second and Third Armies lay dead east of the pass or within it, or overtaken in flight to the west.
Most of the others were scattered in their frenzy to get away—to let others take on the burden of resisting these rebels while serving a court that issued commands that made no sense, forcing them out of a secure position into unnecessary battle.
General Xu was one of those who escaped the wreckage of that battlefield and headed west, riding at speed with his guards towards Xinan, which lay open now, undefended before Roshan.
Xu Bihai was seen to be weeping as he rode, though whether the tears were of rage or grief no man felt able to say.
It was a catastrophe for Kitai, that battle, leading to chaos that would last a long time. The ensuing nightmare ended eventually (all things end), but not before the changing of the empire and the world.
Beauty was not easily sustained in that time, nor music, nor anything that might be linked to grace or serenity. Not easily sustained at the best of times, those things. Sorrow lasts longer.
WORD OF THE DISASTER reached the Ta-Ming in the dead of night three days later.
The glorious emperor was awakened from sleep and informed as to what had happened. At all costs, Taizu, beloved of heaven, had to be saved. Xinan had fallen before. It could be lost and retaken. But not if the dynasty fell.
With little time for decision-making, with Roshan’s army of hardened soldiers approaching and Xinan wide open to them—and with panic certain in the morning when these tidings became widespread—a small imperial party, escorted by some of the Second Army who had been left with them, proceeded in secrecy out a northern gate of the palace into the darkness of the Deer Park, and then through another gate in the walls of the park, on the road towards Ma-wai, under stars, with the wind rising.
CHAPTER XXIV
Wei Song woke him in the dark of night.
The Kanlins had never let Tai bolt his chamber door in Xinan. There were entrances to his bedroom through sliding doors from porticoes on two sides; these were guarded, but they needed to be able to enter, at need, or so they’d told him. He’d thought about making a jest about needs in a bedchamber but never had.
He’d been deeply asleep, not dreaming. It took him time to fully rouse to her voice and her touch on his shoulder. She stood by the bed, holding a can
dle. Her hair was unbound. She’d been sleeping, too, he realized.
“What is it?”
“You are summoned. To the palace. An escort is waiting.”
“Right now?”
She nodded.
“What has happened?” He was naked under the bedcovers.
“Trouble east, we think.”
East meant the rebellion. There should not be any trouble there now, not with two armies blocking Roshan in Teng Pass.
“Who sent for me?”
“I do not know.”
She handed him the scroll she carried. She ought to have done that first, he thought. She never did things properly.
He took it. Sat up. “Do you know what this says?”
She nodded. “A Kanlin brought it. That’s why we’re allowing you to go.”
Allowing. He ought to correct her, but there was no point. If any harm came to him his Kanlins would die.
He untied the scroll, read it by the candle’s light. It clarified nothing: was simply a command to come immediately, with a permit to pass through the ward gate and up to the Ta-Ming. The permit was signed by a senior mandarin, not a name he knew.
“Get Dynlal for me.”
“It is being done.”
He looked at her. Sometimes, not often, you were reminded of how small she was, for someone so fierce. “Then go put up your hair and let me dress.”
She looked embarrassed. It occurred to him that Song might be as uneasy about a middle-of-the-night summons as he was. With armies in the field, the times were deeply troubling. She put the candle on the table that held his washbasin and went to the door.
On impulse, he added, “Is Master Sima here?”
He never knew whether the poet had come in late or lingered wherever else he’d spent the night.
She turned in the doorway and nodded.
“Please wake him, Song. Say that I would like him with me.” The please and her name were an apology.
In the courtyard, another thought came. He hesitated. He might be making a large thing out of a small one, but trouble east, and a summons under stars carried weight, didn’t they?
He saw the poet, rumpled as ever, but moving quickly, alert, walk into the courtyard. Zian had his sword across his back. Tai felt a measure of relief, seeing him.
He beckoned Lu Chen, the leader of his guards, and arranged for two of the Kanlins to carry a message. He called for paper and ink and wrote that message, quickly, by torchlight, on a small table brought on the run into the courtyard. Then he sent the two Kanlins to deliver it to Spring Rain, by way of the crippled beggar who lived in the street behind Wen Zhou’s mansion.
The two guards had been there before, the night he’d met her in the garden, they would remember how to find the man. He instructed them to be respectful, request his aid, then stay until there was a reply. If they saw the Lady Lin Chang (that was her name now) they were to guard her life as surely as they’d been ordered to defend his.
He could give that order. He could assign them as he chose. There was no time to shape a better plan. Possible danger, he’d written, in hurried, ungraceful script. Be very alert. Two Kanlins in street behind garden awaiting word from you.
He didn’t sign it, to protect her, but the reference to Kanlins probably undid that measure, if anyone saw this. There wasn’t time for clearer thought. He didn’t have a clearer thought.
He rode out of the gate on Dynlal, taken again—always, in the moments when he mounted up—by the sensation of being on such a horse, his bay-coloured Sardian.
They went down the night street of the ward, and through the ward gate, then north towards the Ta-Ming along the starlit main avenue of Xinan. Tai saw Gold Bird Guards at their stations, patrolling. Then a handful of people on the far side of the wide street, increasing the sense of emptiness. Their horses’ hooves were the only sound.
The Kanlin who’d brought the summons was with them. At the city-side gates of the Ta-Ming another was waiting. The gates were opened at a signal, then closed behind as they rode through. Tai heard the heavy bar slide shut.
They continued north through the vast palace complex with its hundred buildings and courtyards. No paths were straight here, so that demons (who could travel in a straight line only) might be forestalled in any evil designs against heaven’s beloved emperor within his palace.
The emperor, Tai learned, was not in the Ta-Ming any more. He was on the road, heading northwest.
He exchanged a glance with the poet.
They reached the northern wall of the palace complex, and passed through another gate into the Deer Park, and rode through that. Continuing north, they’d have eventually reached a stone wall by the riverside. They turned west instead, led by their Kanlin escort. Song was at his side, Tai realized, hair precisely pinned, swords on her back.
They passed a bamboo grove on their right, an open space, an orchard, then they came to a western gate in the park wall and went out. They began riding quickly now, in open country.
Not long after, they saw the imperial party ahead of them on the road. Torches under moonlight.
Fear and strangeness were in Tai as they caught up with the others. He saw Prince Shinzu near the back of the small procession. It was shockingly small, in fact: two carriages, some riders from the court. Twenty or thirty cavalry of the Second Army guarding them. No more than that.
Normally, the emperor would journey to Ma-wai accompanied by two or three dozen carriages, preceded by an army of servants and five hundred soldiers, and escorted by five hundred more.
The prince looked back, hearing them approach. He slowed when he saw the Kanlins. He greeted Tai, who bowed in the saddle. Briskly, with nothing in the way of warning or preamble, Shinzu told them of the disaster that had happened east.
Or the first disaster.
With Teng Pass fallen, there was much more now to come.
Tai felt his mouth go dry. He swallowed hard. Had the world, their world, come to this? The emperor, they were told, was in the carriage just ahead—no kingfisher feathers. Jian was with him. The prime minister was riding at the front of the party.
“It is good that you are here,” said the prince. He was riding a handsome stallion, though it was almost a full head smaller than Dynlal.
“I don’t understand,” said Tai. “What can I do?” He felt lost. This night ride felt dreamlike, as if through some star-world not their own.
“We need your horses, Shen Tai. More than ever. As cavalry mounts, or for couriers. We are going to be spread very widely. Distances will need to be covered swiftly. When we reach the posting station ahead I am going to propose we head north to Shuquian. The Fifth Army is still mostly there, and we will summon the First Army from the west now. I think we can hold Roshan in Xinan while other forces come up from the south. We … we have to do that, don’t we?”
Don’t we? Why was a prince asking him? Was he waiting for a considered answer? A disagreement? What was Tai expected to know?
It was obvious the prince was shaken. How could he not be? It was the middle of the night. They were fleeing the capital, the palace, with twenty or thirty men, and an army of rebels was behind them, would be approaching Xinan unopposed. Was the mandate of heaven being withdrawn right here? Could the shape of the world change in a night?
“I am to go to Shuquian with you?”
He was confused, himself. The prince shook his head.
“You will take riders southwest to the border. You must claim your horses, Shen Tai, then bring them as speedily as possible to wherever we are.”
Tai drew a breath. Precise instructions were good, they freed him from the need to think. “My lord, there are a great many of the Sardians.”
“I know how many there are!” said the prince sharply. There was a half-moon shining but it was hard to see his eyes.
Another voice: “My lords, let the Kanlins do this. Take fifty of us, Master Shen, from our sanctuary ahead.” It was Wei Song, still beside him (she was always
beside him through that night, he would later remember). It made sense, what she said.
“Are there enough of you? At the sanctuary? Will they release so many?” Tai was calculating quickly. “If they are good with horses, we can do this with sixty, five horses behind each rider, ten to guard us.”
“There are enough,” she said. “And they will be good with horses.”
The prince nodded. “Attend to it, Kanlin.”
“This is why you sent for me, my lord?” Tai was still wrapped in strangeness, struggling to believe what had happened.
“I didn’t send for you,” the prince said.
It took a moment. They looked ahead, at the nearest carriage.
It wouldn’t have been the emperor. Once, perhaps, in his burnished, brilliant youth, new to the throne or ready to claim it, but not now. Not any more.
It was Jian who had summoned him, Tai realized. Awakened in the middle of the night herself, amid panic, preparing to fly from all they knew, she had thought of this.
A question came. It ought to have been, he thought, his first. “My lord, forgive me, but I don’t understand. How was there a battle? General Xu held the pass. He would never have—”
“He was ordered out,” said Shinzu flatly.
And then, very deliberately, he looked ahead, towards where a handsome, moonlit horseman rode at the front of their small procession.
“In the name of all nine heavens!” exclaimed Sima Zian. “That cannot be. He would not have done that!”
“But he did do that,” said the prince. He smiled, mirthlessly. “Look where we are, poet.”
It seemed as if he would say more, but he did not. The prince flicked his reins and moved up beside his father’s racing coach, then they saw him go past it to ride with the soldiers guarding them.
Just as the sun rose on a summer morning they reached the posting station by the lake at Ma-wai.
TAI HAD BEEN WARNED that the soldiers were beginning to murmur amongst each other as the night drew to an end.