Homeward
Their Marshal had returned from a crushing defeat, and through every corner of the Xiliang camp drifted whispers and muttering, a thin haze of dread settling over it all.
Then a single burning arrow slammed into the wooden board outside the Marshal's tent.
In an instant, terrified cries erupted from every quarter of the camp.
"The enemy's breached the camp!"
"Fire! Fire!"
"To arms! Someone's stormed the camp!"
Yun Paxing started up in alarm, only to collapse right back down as a tearing agony radiated up from his ruined knees.
"Grandfather!"
His eldest grandson hurried forward to catch and steady him.
"Father, rest easy and see to your wounds first. I'll go out and take a look myself! I'll find out who dares to storm our Xiliang camp!"
Scimitar drawn, Yun Paxing's eldest son strode out of the Marshal's tent, several generals at his heels.
Outside, he found thirty or so riders thundering into the Xiliang camp, raising a great cry as they came.
"Loose! Shoot those bastards dead with arrows — now!"
"Vice-Marshal!"
A Xiliang soldier came scrambling up to report.
"The arrows are all spent! Our armory has caught fire — every bow and crossbow we have is inside, but the blaze is too fierce to get near. And now someone is setting fires outside as well!"
"Damn it all!"
Yun Paxing's son spat out the curses, then pressed on. "Run them through with the long spears, then!"
At those words, Yun Paxing could no longer sit still. "Get me up — quickly!"
"Grandfather, Father said you are to have your wounds treated first."
Yun Paxing's seventeen-year-old grandson said it with a sob caught in his throat.
"What are you crying for? The Bai family's grandson faced death at ten years old without so much as a blink — and you've lived seventeen! How long is this old man to go on coddling and shielding you? The warriors of Xiliang bleed, but they do not weep! Wipe your face and get me up!" Yun Paxing roared.
"Grandfather, your grandson was wrong. Please — don't be angry."
Supported by towering Xiliang soldiers, Yun Paxing emerged from his tent — just in time to see Bai Jingyan bearing down on it at a hard gallop.
His eyes went round. The Bai army's Xiao Baixiu? Hadn't he granted her three full years? Why, then, had she come storming his camp without warning?
Beside Bai Jingyan — an arrow already nocked to her bow — Xiao Ruogang slaughtered the Xiliang soldiers pressing in from every side.
Bai Jingyan took aim at the rope that bound her father's head, and loosed.
The arrow flew clean between the wooden posts, the fletching at its end trembling ever so slightly.
The moment her father's head dropped from on high, Bai Jingyan hauled the reins with all her strength, swung down from her steed, and broke through the ring of Xiliang soldiers. In a single motion she caught her father's head and pressed it tight to her chest — and the tears came streaming down.
"Father, I came too late!"
She ground her teeth.
"Father, I'm taking you home."
Choked with fury and grief, forcing back her tears, Bai Jingyan wrenched the reins around with one hand. Tearing off her crimson cloak, she wrapped her father's head swift and careful, strapped it to her back, then drew an arrow and nocked it to the Sun-Shooting Bow — taking aim at a Xiliang soldier driving his long spear at Xiao Ruogang. The arrow punched straight through the man's temple. As red blood sprayed, the soldiers encircling Xiao Ruogang stumbled back two paces in a single, shuddering wave.
That day their Marshal had marched out at the head of an army more than a hundred thousand strong. The sky above Wengshan Canyon had turned red, and Yun Paxing and his men had crawled back to camp in pitiful ruin.
No one needed to ask what had happened. Fifty thousand had broken a host of well over a hundred thousand — the Xiliang army could feel in its bones how savage this enemy was. And now those very soldiers had chased Yun Paxing into his own camp, appearing before their eyes. How could they not be afraid?
Outside the camp, the Bai Family Army covering Bai Jingyan set the Xiliang camp alight on her orders, loosing burning arrows in a dense, hissing hail. Fire sprang up wherever they fell, and the flames clawed at the sky once more.
Inside, the camp dissolved into a cauldron of chaos — men scrambling to fight the fire and repel the enemy all at once, tangling and trampling one another into utter bedlam.
The fires of Wengshan had not yet died, and beneath that blood-red sky the Xiliang troops shook with terror. What did they fear most at this moment? Fire. Nothing but fire.
Seeing the camp plunged into pandemonium, Yun Paxing's son — the quickest among them — threw himself onto a horse, scimitar in hand, and roared:
"Out of the camp! Fall bac—!"
The words had barely left his mouth when an arrow from who knew where punched through the skull of his warhorse. The animal reared in agony, and Yun Paxing's son was flung to the ground.
"Withdraw!" Bai Jingyan shouted, snatching up the Sun-Shooting Bow and ordering her soldiers to run for the edge of the Xiliang camp.
This raid had one purpose: to recover her father's head. Not to crush the enemy.
With her father's head recovered, the mission had already been fulfilled. She had no wish for what remained of the Bai Family Army to lose their lives here.
The moment Yun Paxing's son hit the ground, soldiers swarmed around to shield him. Before any of them could tell where the arrow that had killed his horse had flown from, a fierce charger sailed clean over their heads — and a line of cold light flashed past with it.
Yun Paxing's eyes bulged toward the spot where his son stood, and he screamed until his throat threatened to tear.
"A'ya — look out!"
"Father!"
Yun Paxing's grandson very nearly fainted on the spot. His legs gave out beneath him, and he crumpled to his knees.
Xiao Ruogang's swift blade severed Yun Paxing's son's head without an inch of error. Red blood spattered against the hooves of the horse still arcing through the air; the head sailed a long way before it struck the ground far off — and even after it landed, its face still wore an expression of stunned, uncomprehending shock.
Xiao Ruogang plucked up an arrow, skewered the head of Yun Paxing's son — Yun Duoya — upon it, and hauled hard on the reins, wheeling his horse about. Eyes scarlet, he looked toward where Yun Paxing stood, then drew his great bow on Yun Paxing's grandson.
Swish!
An arrow tore clean through the young man's chest.
The grandson looked down at the shaft jutting from his chest, eyes going wide. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, every scrap of strength drained from his body, and toppled to the ground.
"Gr... Grandfather..."
In the chaos, Yun Paxing had just opened his mouth to give an order when he saw his grandson fall.
"A'yu! A'yu!"
Pain crashed over him like a knife carving out his chest. Shoving off the two soldiers who held him up, he dropped to his knees and gathered the boy into his arms.
"A'yu! You're all right! Grandfather's here — I'm right here!"
Bai Jingyan galloped to the mouth of the camp and hauled the reins taut, turning her horse to look back through the roaring flames. When her eyes met Yun Paxing's, a killing intent that could freeze the very heart poured out of them.
She lifted high the arrow bearing Yun Paxing's son's head — as if to tell Yun Paxing that three years from now, on this very day, she would do the same to every last one of his sons.
At the sight of his son's head — the boy killed before he could even shut his eyes — Yun Paxing felt his hair stand on end and the corners of his eyes split. Blood surged up his throat; he nearly vomited it where he stood. He was the very picture of grief and despair caving in on themselves.
"Bows!" Yun Paxing roared, glaring in Bai Jingyan's direction. "Kill that woman!"
"Marshal, the armory is burning — every arrow has gone up with it!"
The Bai army had carried off the greater share of their arrows the day before, when they lay in ambush along Wengshan Canyon and the winding passes of Jiuqu Peak. The few that remained had been stored in the armory — and now all of them had burned.
His son lost, and now his grandson torn from him in the space of a breath, Yun Paxing's blood boiled over — and at last he vomited it, red and hot.
"Marshal!"
"Marshal!"
Blood welling between his teeth, Yun Paxing roared in a voice thick with grief and rage.
"Fang Zhonghui! Take every rider we have and run them down! You must take back my son's head — and kill every last one of those bastards!"
"I obey your command!"
Fang Zhonghui raised a fist-and-palm salute, then bellowed, "Cavalry — muster and make ready, now! Ride with me and drive back the enemy!"
The two hundred who had ridden in with Bai Jingyan came back out without losing a man, and without a moment's delay they spurred their horses down Weiping Road.
As Bai Jingyan's company thundered along Weiping Road toward Wengcheng, Wei Zhaonian and his eighteen hundred ambushers, wound tight as bowstrings, searched the far distance with unblinking eyes.
The Xiliang horsemen on her trail still had to muster and mount, and had already fallen far behind.
With Wei Zhaonian lying in wait along the road, Bai Jingyan had no fear for her back. She meant to return to Wengcheng, rest and regroup a short while — and then strike at Tianmenguan once more.
When she came home to Wengcheng with her father's head cradled in her arms, not a soul in the Bai Family Army had slept. All through the fortress they had waited — waited for their Little Marshal to return bearing the head of Bai Qishan, Vice-Marshal of the Bai army.
Shen Kunyang had given orders for a coffin with its lid still unsealed to be carried out. Inside lay a body carved from wood, dressed in Bai Qishan's armor.
Shen Kunyang had never once forgiven himself for failing to wrest Bai Qishan's body back in those first moments — the failure that had let Yun Paxing take his lord's head. Worse still, Yun Paxing had burned the Vice-Marshal's body and those of the other Bai generals, every one, to nothing but ash.
The loss had all but drained Shen Kunyang of the will to live; again and again he tormented himself with the thought that he ought to follow the Vice-Marshal into the grave.
But each time he remembered that the Vice-Marshal's head still hung in the Xiliang camp, he forced himself back onto his feet with a vow: even if it killed him, he would see his lord given a body — and only once the head came home would he allow himself to die.
And so he had watched the carpenters carve the Vice-Marshal's body from the first cut to the last, praying only that when the head was recovered, his lord might be buried whole and at peace.
And then, before he could even set that plan in motion, the Little Marshal had gone and returned. Xiao Baixiu had gone in person for the Vice-Marshal's head — of course she would succeed.
Gu Wenchang stood beside Shen Kunyang, looking down at the carved body — so lifelike it might have been real — and the rims of his eyes went red. He patted Shen Kunyang's shoulder and spoke, his voice thick:
"Xiao Baixiu will bring the Vice-Marshal's head home — I know she will! So stop blaming yourself!"
"The young marshal has returned!"
At the cry, Shen Kunyang and Gu Wenchang turned toward the camp gate. Bai Jingyan was riding in at the very front of the column on a reddish-brown steed, the reins gathered in her hand.
"Xiao Baixiu!"
The two old generals hurried out to meet her.
Bai Jingyan leapt down from her horse, her father's head clasped tight against her chest.
"Xiao Baixiu — I asked the camp carpenters to build the Vice-Marshal a body. Please, place the Vice-Marshal in the coffin. Let him be laid to rest... let him be buried whole. I beg of you."
Shen Kunyang's voice broke on a sob, and he could not finish.
Bai Jingyan nodded. Holding her father's head close, she stepped up to the coffin and unwrapped the crimson cloak.
Her father's face had been dried to leather by the wind, hollowed and sunken in places, until nothing remained of the handsome, dignified man he had been. It was like a knife being driven into Bai Jingyan's chest.
If only I had come to the Southern Border sooner — would Father have suffered less?
The Marshal had been right there before her eyes. One shot, and she could have pierced his heart through. Yet she could not kill him — could not tear his body limb from limb — and the thought was more bitter than she could bear!
Grief seared her chest until living felt worse than dying. Bai Jingyan clenched her jaw, trembling, and swallowed her tears.
In her past life, her father's head had hung in a Xiliang camp just like this one — and she had never, not to her final breath, managed to bring it home.
Bai Jingyan laid her father's head gently into the coffin. Then she gripped its edges with both hands and forced her eyes open as wide as they would go.
She stared at her father's face — a face she could scarcely bear to look upon in her right mind — and made a silent vow.
Three years from now, even if it shatters this body of mine, I will have vengeance for my family and for the Bai Family Army!
"Eldest Sister!"
Bai Jinchi tugged lightly at Bai Jingyan's arm.
"Sister, stop looking! Once we've won the war — then we take Father home!"
Yes. Once victory was won, she could bring her father home.
But what of the other Bai families, who had no bodies left to find at all? How were they to bring their loved ones home?