The Jing Province Gentry (9)
The banquet was in full swing that night. At the hour when lanterns blazed and lit the night streets bright, a group moved on foot in secret.
"Move quietly."
Perhaps to avoid drawing the eye, they wore dark clothing and crept forward, strangling every sound of their own footsteps like mice.
Reaching the building where the banquet was being held, they paused to take stock of the situation.
One man glanced back over his shoulder and spoke.
"Boss. Security out there is vicious."
"You little punk. Didn't I tell you not to call me that right now?"
"Well then, what am I supposed to call you?"
When the man called Boss rapped him over it, he grumbled.
"Quiet. Anyway—vicious security, you say?"
"Yes, sir."
Hearing the report, the boss swept his gaze over the banquet building. The banner marking the General-in-Chief's elite troops flew above it, and soldiers who could only be his personal guard kept watch over the surroundings with eyes wide open, though the sun had long since gone down.
"...Hah. Not even a bug could crawl through there."
If they botched a clumsy attempt and got spotted, there would be hell to pay. Shaking his head, the boss turned his steps around.
"Eh? Boss, where are you going?"
"Can't get in there, so we go somewhere else. Obviously."
Reconstructing the building's interior in his head, the boss went on. "The General-in-Chief's men may be elite, but their numbers are thin right now. They can't watch every inch."
"......"
"There are bound to be gaps in the watch. All we have to do is slip through one, in step with the men on the inside."
His subordinate nodded along. "That's our Boss for you. All them years of banditry haven't gone to waste."
"The strange one here is you, who can't even manage a thought that simple."
Do these idiots have nothing between their ears but gold and treasure?
The boss clicked his tongue at his muscle-brained underlings, men who knew nothing but throwing their strength around.
"Tsk. How the hell did I get dragged into this?"
A man who knew exactly when to strike and when to bolt, the boss had scraped out a living on nothing but his born nose for trouble, fleeing from one corner of the world to the next. He'd boasted he'd lived remarkably long for a bandit—but the moment word arrived that the current General-in-Chief had become master of Jing Province, he'd nearly shot clean out of his seat.
What manner of man was the General-in-Chief? A raving madman, famed far and wide for how his eyes rolled back at the mere sight of a bandit, that was what! Naturally, the terrified boss had clasped hands with the Jing Province gentry—his own kind, more or less. By now, countless men in Jiangling were working with the gentry for exactly the same reason.
He'd have staked his life on it: every mountain bandit and river pirate in Jing Province had poured into this city. A general under the General-in-Chief might be called a Match for Ten Thousand, but no one could truly hold off ten thousand men alone. Picturing just how many outlaws had gathered here, the boss muttered,
"...Surely a few hundred would be too much even for them."
He shuddered at the thought, then made a show of ignoring it and led his bandits onward.
As they circled the building hunting for a way in, a man from within came out to make contact. Dressed as a household servant, he gave the group a single appraising look and nodded.
"You've the look of our side. This way."
Under the man's guidance the bandits stole through the dark, and before long they reached the staging point for the operation.
"So—when the signal sounds, we torch this place and seal off the escape routes. That it?" the boss asked, glancing around.
"Just so. Follow the plan as written, and treasures beyond counting are promised."
The boss flashed a grin. "Good. Just leave it to us."
"I place my trust in you."
With that, the man melted away without a trace.
The boss watched him recede, then muttered under his breath. "Ha. Fence the General-in-Chief in and burn him alive, is it..."
"......"
He nodded to himself, picturing the sheer scale of the building. "Setting a mansion this grand up as a burial plot—guess the General-in-Chief's name really is worth that much."
"Hey."
"...?"
A voice I've never heard before.
"Hey, now—this guy you were talking about, who...?"
The boss whipped his head toward the men standing nearest him.
KHARGH—!
No sooner had he turned than the subordinate in front of him vomited blood and sagged to the ground.
"Wh-what the hell!"
The boss scrambled back, putting distance between them.
"Man, you lot looked shady from the get-go, so I tailed you here in secret, and..."
A general with rare black hair bound to one side swung the long spear in her hand sideways with a whoosh.
CRASH!
The subordinate sprawled there with a spear run through his chest rolled across the dirt.
"I can't believe I just heard something that stupid with my own ears."
"......"
"Say it again."
The woman who had appeared out of nowhere bored her blood-red eyes into the boss.
"Who is it you're going to kill, and how?"
Cold sweat poured down the boss's spine, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
South of Jiangling Castle lay a harbor, quietly prepared by the gentry as insurance against the worst. There, with their ships moored, a crew of river pirates sat sprawled in comfortable spots, killing time out of sheer boredom.
"Honestly. Keeping river pirates whose names alone command respect sitting on standby in a place like this."
"Fine by me. All we have to do is sit here and twiddle our thumbs."
As the man grumbled, his comrade nearby answered like it was nothing.
"Come daybreak, we collect our treasure."
"Haha! About time I lived a little fancy."
The man let out a booming laugh at that. These, too, were river pirates who had joined hands with the Jing Province gentry the instant word spread that the General-in-Chief now ruled the province.
The man turned his orders over in his mind. Keep the ships on standby, in case things didn't go to plan. Picturing the man those precautions were aimed at, he couldn't keep the sneer off his face.
"Cowards, the whole lot of them. Look how many of us are gathered in this city, and they're trembling in advance anyway."
"And thanks to all that trembling, we get handed a job sweet as honey. What's not to love?"
The two of them chattered away, loud and easy.
"Sitting around doing nothing sure gets dull. Well, at least we'll have a good story to tell—"
CRACK!
"...Huh?"
The moored pirate made a puzzled noise at the boom that split the air out of nowhere. "What was that sound?"
His comrade shrugged. "Beats me. Sounded like something snapping, maybe—"
"What, river pirates who don't even know that much?"
SHK!
"......"
The comrade never finished his sentence. He simply crumpled where he sat.
"Wh-what the—!"
His partner's throat had just been spirited away. The man could not hide his bewilderment.
"How does a river pirate not know the sound of a grappling hook slamming into a ship?"
Paying him no mind, the wild-eyed woman twirled the halberd in her right hand round and round as she went on.
"Hey. Be honest with me now. You lot aren't river pirates, are you?"
"......"
The man's face froze in sheer horror as he got a proper look at her.
"Why aren't you answering? Do I look easy to you?"
"Y-you're...!"
Meeting those rust-red eyes, the man trembled from head to toe as he shouted,
"The Silk-Sail Pirate! What in the hell are you doing here, you bitch!"
"Huh? Oh, you know me?"
At the mention of her epithet, the woman gave her still-damp hair a few brisk shakes, flicking off the water.
"Why else would I be? I changed masters, so here I am."
"......"
"Anyway, line your necks up for me. I need to wrap this up quick and get to my next job."
The Silk-Sail Pirate, Gan Ning, grinned wide and leveled her halberd at the man.
"......"
"What are you doing? Go on, drink."
Offered wine by me, Liu Du said not one word and simply kept dripping cold sweat.
I studied him for a moment, then spoke to the woman at my side. "Lü Bu."
"Hmm?"
"It seems this fellow refuses to drink the wine I poured him. What's to be done about it?"
"Aha. Is that so?"
Lü Bu nodded, then swung the Sky Piercer Halberd at a speed the eye could not follow.
"...AAAAAAGH!"
Liu Du's scream tore out in the same instant. The reason was simple enough: she had whipped the halberd's shaft around and slammed it across his waist.
Oof. She just hammered a man's lifeline without a second's hesitation.
"There. Ready to drink now?"
"...Hm."
I put on a pensive air and set the wine cup down in front of Liu Du. "Lü Bu says you should. What do you say? Do you feel like a cup yet?"
"Y-yes! I'll drink it!"
He knew that refusing again would only hurt worse. Weeping freely, Liu Du drained the cup before him in one long swallow.
The reaction came before long.
"Guhh—ghak!"
Liu Du gagged up blood in fits, pitched forward out of his seat, twitched briefly, and then breathed his last.
...What the hell.
What kind of poison works that fast?
Hua Tuo, catching my puzzlement, quietly spoke up. "...It is zhen poison."
"What was that?"
"A toxin that can be drawn from the zhen bird, a creature that dwells in the lands south of the Yangtze. It is distinguished by having no color, no scent, and no taste whatsoever."
I was dumbstruck.
Why on earth does a poison like that even exist? That's something straight out of a wuxia novel.
"The effects, as you can see," Hua Tuo murmured, calm as still water.
"......"
Seriously. That's enough to give anyone the chills.
Every soul in the banquet hall must have felt it—the moment things went wrong—because the gentry and the generals split into two very different currents of motion. The gentry began slinking away from their seats, while the generals started moving, drifting little by little toward me. Judging by the uproar that had been building outside for some time now, their confederates had swung into full motion as well.
"My lord."
A calm voice, level as always. At some point Seo Yeo had taken her place in front of me, her back turned to me, gazing dead ahead.
With the Chu Heaven Sword she always carried on her back now gripped in her right hand, Seo Yeo spoke.
"I will protect you."
"...Yeah."
I nodded and smiled.