Chapter 17: Fa Zheng (2)
The waning hours of night, dim moonlight shedding a soft, faint glow.
"Haaah..."
A man rose from his bed. Song Yang, jolted abruptly from sleep, reached for the half-finished liquor on the table and drank as he brooded over his miserable lot. He had taken a commission — on the orders of one of the court's lofty eunuchs — to abduct a renowned scholar, yet no reply had come telling him what to do with the man. And the eunuch's manner, all brush-offs and open contempt, galled him to the bone.
"Me! The man whose name once rang out among the very warlords who held the vast reaches of Guanxi in their grip — and here I am, playing lackey to somebody in a rat-hole like this!!"
Thud! With a fury-driven hand, he brought it crashing down on the table.
He ached for the days when his name had blazed under Beigong Boyu's banner — the old life, when he answered to no government troop's gaze: plundering the people of Guanxi, squeezing them dry, running wild as he pleased. A world beyond the court's reach, shackled by no law, where the strong taking everything for themselves was simply the way of things. He had left that paradise to burrow into a mountain like this because of those turncoat bastards.
Han Sui. And Ma Teng.
After Beigong Boyu fell to those degenerates — men who had latched themselves onto a crumbling dynasty — and fled Wuwei in haste, Song Yang had been scraping by as a bandit in Yongzhou. Branded a rebel with a warrant out on his head, unable to show his face in his homeland again, this life of hiding left him stifled to the core.
"Those damned bastards... someday I'll... Hm? What's that?"
A commotion had broken out outside, and from somewhere, it seemed, came the smell of smoke. His sleep-fogged mind was slow to catch up.
"Hurry up!! Quickly!!"
Alarm prickling at the desperation in that voice, Song Yang hurried out of the main hall.
"Wh-what in the—!!"
The instant he stepped past the door, his eyes fell on the storehouse, violent flames surging from it. His men were dashing toward it with buckets of drawn water in hand, and one of them broke away, wheeling toward him at a dead run.
"Boss!!"
"Wh-what's going on?! Why is the storehouse—!!"
"We don't know!! Someone set it on fire!!"
"What?! D-don't tell me — the government troops have come?!"
"It's too dark to make anything out!! But judging by the number of arrows flying over, they're few — that much is certain!!"
Fwoosh-fwoosh!!
Fire arrows came spilling down from the star-strewn night sky, slamming one after another into the rooftops, and the wind carried the flames straight across to the main hall standing beside the storehouse. The narrow gaps between the buildings — laid out that way as a precaution against night raids — had become the very root of the disaster.
Fwoooosh.
It was no longer just the storehouse. Now the main hall itself was burning.
"The Boss's quarters are on fire! Put it out, quick!!"
"The storehouse comes first!! Aren't the food and the valuables what matter?!"
The uproar in the dead of night sent the bandits sliding into pandemonium. Even the tethered horses went stamping wild with their tails ablaze — no wonder nobody could keep a clear head.
"Calm down!! You lot — go catch whoever's loosing those fire arrows from out there!! The rest of you, put out the fires on the storehouse and the main hall!!"
Still half-drunk, Song Yang drew his sword and barked his orders. At the sight of their boss flashing steel and roaring, the men cowered and fell in line.
Ever since he'd been branded a rebel and a warrant put out on him, Song Yang had kept sentries posted at all hours, never knowing when the government troops might come crashing down on him. But fire arrows instead of an encirclement told him one of two things: either the enemy knew nothing of the captive he held — or they weren't government troops at all.
"Move it!!"
"Sir!!"
He split his force across the fortress. A little over fifty men set out to run down the attackers loosing the arrows, while the rest called off their watch and threw everything they had into fighting the flames. The bandits of the stockade set to their firefighting for what remained of the night.
Somewhere in the frenzy of it, the fire arrows stopped coming; and by the time they finished, the flames that had gripped the fortress had burned through what they could and been doused to the last ember.
"...Whew. Any damage to the storehouse?"
It was a question that put property above human lives — but not a soul there had the gall to talk back to their boss.
"None, sir. Only the outer walls of the wooden buildings burned. The goods inside are untouched."
"...Good."
But the party that had gone after the attackers still hadn't returned, and by the time they'd woken even the men sleeping in the outbuildings to help beat out the flames, the first light of dawn had crept in and the sky was slowly brightening.
"Ah! The scholar we took captive — is he still where he was?"
"I sent a man to check just now, but..."
"We have a problem!!"
A subordinate came pelting from the jail, wheezing that disaster had struck, and Song Yang's face knotted as he snapped in irritation.
"Now what?!"
"The scholar we held captive is gone!!"
"What?! How?! Didn't I tell you to keep a proper watch on him?!"
"Th-that is... while every eye was fixed on the fire, someone appears to have slipped in and taken him."
"...And how, exactly, was that possible!!"
The buildings of the fortress stood packed close together, close enough that any intruder would have been marked at once, and timber palisades ringed the place — there was no way in but the gate. However absorbed they'd been in fighting the fire, a man in strange dress should have been spotted the moment he showed his face.
"It looks as though someone stole our clothes and came in wearing them!!"
"...So then."
Someone had set the fortress alight on purpose to dull their senses — and while they floundered, slipped inside dressed as one of their own? There were a good two hundred men in the main hall, among them faces only lately recruited, which made an infiltrator that much harder to pick out. And with the fortress burning right before their eyes, every mind was swallowed whole by the flames; a stranger could have walked among them unnoticed.
Chewing over fury and bewilderment at being played for a fool, Song Yang finally leveled a look brimming with murder at his men.
"Find him. Now!!"
"Sir!!"
At his word the men scattered into frantic motion, hunting whoever had made off with the hostage.
Then—
Doom-doom!!
The men readying themselves to seize the rat who'd stolen Fa Yan away froze at the sound of drums rolling in from somewhere. Song Yang's body locked up at the sound as well, his heart hammering like a fish flopping on a deck. It was a sound he knew all too well.
"B-Boss! Those are the drums of the government army!!"
As the government troops' signal drums rolled through the mountains, every soul in the fortress was thrown into dismay.
"Those cursed bastards!! Why now, of all times!!"
He swept his eyes over the men around him, counting roughly. Barely a hundred and fifty here. If it truly is the government army...
And with the captive Fa Yan vanished as well, there was no one left worth holding as a hostage.
"Halt the pursuit! Prepare for an assault!!"
At Song Yang's order they took up bows and slung quivers of arrows, and waited for the government troops to charge the fortress. The moment they set foot inside, a rain of arrows would turn every one of them into a pincushion.
And yet...
"...Why is no one coming?"
The drums had sounded a few times, and that was all. He waited a long while — and not the faintest shadow showed itself, let alone an army.
"Were we deceived again...?"
None of his men answered. Chime in carelessly at a voice gone rabid over being fooled a second time, and they had a feeling the sparks would land on them.
As an aside, the pursuit party never did come back — not even by morning.
Fa Zheng and I were waiting by the tent we had pitched in haste, and before long two figures dressed as bandits came in.
"We've brought him."
The moment Yan Xing and Fa Yan — fresh from the mountain fortress — stepped inside, father and daughter fell into each other's arms, tears of joy at their reunion soaking their faces.
"Father!"
"Xiaozhi!!"
Fa Yan had been in the bandits' hands, but beyond exhaustion and a worn, haggard face, he mercifully showed no signs of torture or mistreatment.
Watching the father and daughter find each other again, I felt a quiet warmth settle in my chest — and found myself recalling the stratagem Fa Zheng had laid before me the day before. Hers was a simple design: do not march troops into the fortress. Instead, loose a fire attack on part of it to sow confusion, and in the same breath send in a single warrior of exceptional skill to pull Fa Yan out. For the infiltration, I had named Yan Xing. Two bandits keeping watch nearby were quietly subdued and stripped of their clothes, and Yan Xing walked into the fortress wearing them.
Now he came up to me and aired his grievances over the filthy errand I'd handed him.
"...Young Master, I was scared half out of my wits in there. You had plenty of others. Why did it have to be me you sent?"
"There's not a general alive who wears bandit's garb as well as you, brother. Sending the bodyguards in would've been asking for trouble, and Ma Chao or Pang De can't exactly stroll through the gate."
Send women with faces like flowers, even in men's dress, into a den packed wall to wall with men, and the odds of being made inside a heartbeat were far too high — that was why I'd sent him. And more than anything, I trusted Yan Xing to walk out again with a hostage in tow without a scratch. In our army, only Ma Chao and Pang De could give him a real fight.
The others had played their parts to the letter as well. Pang De, that master of the bow, had led our men to seize the right ground and rain fire arrows down until the fortress burned, playing her part admirably; and the fools chasing Yan Xing would still be too busy reeling from the ambush of Ma Chao's riders — no one better on horseback — to gather their wits. The soldiers under the two of them numbered barely twenty riders between them, but with two generals worth a hundred men apiece, annihilating a pursuit force would hardly strain them.
"What will you do now? You've got the hostage scholar out — will you strike them down as things stand?"
"I ought to ask them, I suppose."
I walked over to the father and daughter, still wrapped up in each other, and asked after the road ahead.
"Young lady — what do you plan to do now?"
"And what of you, my benefactor?"
"Once I've seen you both safely on your way, I intend to meet them in open battle."
I couldn't leave a threat like that festering at my back. If we asked the authorities for reinforcements ourselves instead of leaving it to Fa Zheng, aid would surely come — but in the interval before it marched, the bandits might well abandon the mountain and slip off to some other lair. Better, I had decided, to simply fight them here. With Ma Chao and Pang De at my side, defeat wasn't in the cards anyway.
"No, my benefactor. I have another road in mind. When the two generals return, I will tell you then."
"What — you have yet another scheme?"
"Yes. Leave it to me. And honestly... I find myself rather wanting to make those who took my father suffer."
Fa Zheng's eyes flashed cold as bare steel, and a deep smile curled at the corners of her mouth.
"I will annihilate the enemy while keeping our own losses to the barest minimum. Order the soldiers to rest well through the day."
That smile of hers — the gratitude of a woman repaying her debts, turned full upon her enemies and shining bright as a honed blade — sent an inexplicable chill crawling down the spines of everyone there.