Starved for Blood
The wind whipped through Bai Qingyun's blood-matted hair, sending it fluttering briefly as he streaked past. His blood-soaked fingers, sprawled limp beside Xiao Ruohai's body, twitched weakly.
Bai Jingyan surged forward, her eyes rimmed with red. Bound tightly to Xiao Ruohai's back with cloth, Bai Qingyun wore Xiao Ruohai's outer robe — and of all the skin exposed on him, save for his face, not a single patch was unmarked. For one blinding instant, Bai Jingyan felt her eyes would tear themselves apart.
She could only imagine what savage punishment and humiliation her brother had endured. Fury boiled up through her chest, and she snatched her bow from its case. She wanted to slaughter every last one of Xiliang's dogs and swine who had dared lay hands on Qingyun.
"Get Qingyun out of here! Now!"
Xiao Ruohai nodded, clenched his teeth, and squeezed his horse's belly hard. "Hyah!"
The horse's back heaved violently, and Bai Qingyun, slumped against Xiao Ruohai's back, forced his eyes open with tremendous effort. Through the haze of his fading vision, he seemed to see Bai Jingyan sweeping past him on horseback.
Eldest Sister? Is this a dream... Why would she be here?
"Eldest Sister..."
His lips parted. But his frail voice was swallowed whole by the bloodcurdling battle cries that shook the sky.
The killing intent blazing from his eldest sister's eyes was sharp as a hidden blade suddenly unsheathed. Her crimson cloak billowed like a hawk spreading its wings wide, and in her hand she gripped the Sun-Shooting Bow — every inch the fearless, invincible sister he remembered.
"Eldest Sister..."
Bai Qingyun twitched his fingers, trying to catch the hem of her fluttering cloak, but grasped only empty air. His body would not move. He shifted his dark eyes to look back at Bai Jingyan, but amid the jolting motion he was drifting farther and farther from her — and then darkness swallowed his consciousness.
Has Eldest Sister really come to save me?
But she's been ill — how could she be holding the Sun-Shooting Bow? I must be dying. That must be why I'm dreaming...
What a beautiful dream this is.
Before I die, I even get to dream that Eldest Sister came for me. She never gave up on me, even though I was only a son of a concubine. Even if it's just a dream, I have no regrets left in this life.
He knew. If his eldest sister were truly here, she would have come for him without fail — just as she had rescued him every time he knelt in the ancestral hall to take punishment.
If only there really were a next life.
In the next life, he would be born a son of the Bai family again.
In the next life, he would become a warrior of the Bai clan again.
If only his seventh brother were still alive. As long as the legitimate heir lived... the Bai family's line would still have hope of passing on its name.
All his life he had sneered whenever he heard that a son of a concubine must spend his days shielding the legitimate heir — but now, at the true brink of life and death, he finally understood. He finally understood the family's rules, and why the concubine-born existed to protect the legitimate line.
It wasn't that Grandfather favored the legitimate heirs. It was simply the way of this world. Only the legitimate line could carry on the true bloodline.
The legitimate son of the Bai family must not die!
Bai Qingyun felt the bright lights of Chuishanguan's fortress receding, farther and farther from him. He assumed it was only because death was closing in. Now, the single greatest regret left to him was that he could not know whether his seventh brother still lived.
Inside Chuishanguan, Bai Jingyan led a hundred men and crushed the enemy. She cut down enemy heads with her long blade, hauled her soldiers and Dong family guards onto horses, and fell back swiftly into the high mountain terrain. Then she took up her bow again to cover the Haoying Battalion soldiers and Dong family guards climbing the slope behind her.
Bai Jinchi ran her long spear clean through a Xiliang soldier. The man's eyes flew wide open, and then his hands clamped down hard on her silver spear. Bai Jinchi gritted her teeth and wrenched at the weapon, but it would not come free. When she saw Xiliang soldiers closing in from all sides with blades raised, her breath stopped and her mind went white. She could only scream and scream, hauling uselessly at the spear.
"Jinchi! Catch!"
Bai Jingyan roared the words, then charged to Jinchi's side, nocked three arrows at once, and drew.
At her cry, Xiao Ruogang's head snapped around. His body moved before his mind did — he hurled himself forward, scattered the Xiliang soldiers, then reached up, seized the head of Bai Jinchi, who stood frozen and hollow-eyed, pulled her into his arms, and took the Xiliang soldiers' blades on his own back.
Of the three arrows, one punched through a Xiliang soldier's chest, one tore through another's throat, and the third flew off into empty air.
A cold gleam of steel dropped toward Xiao Ruohai's shoulder — and nearly sheared off Xiao Ruogang's arm in the process. He roared, spun, and swept his sword in a single arc, taking the Xiliang soldier's head.
"Jinchi!"
Bai Jingyan flung out her hand.
Xiao Ruogang clenched his teeth, gathered Bai Jinchi up, and passed her over to Bai Jingyan. Only when her fingers closed around her sister's armor did Bai Jinchi come back to herself.
"Eldest Sister..."
Bai Jingyan lifted her head and saw the valiant soldiers of the Haoying Battalion in the distance cutting into the Xiliang army, hauling Shen Liangyu's group onto horseback and galloping back through the rain of arrows. She shouted the order.
"Fall back!"
Shen Qingzhu returned her dagger to its sheath, glanced once at her riderless, panicked horse, then seized the saddle and swung herself up. Her command rang out across the slope.
"Retreat!"
"Retreat!"
The Haoying Battalion and the Dong family guards took up the order, grasped the hands of their comrades struggling toward them, pulled them onto horses, and climbed swiftly up the steep mountainside.
Bai Jingyan bent down, wrenched an arrow from a fallen corpse, and loosed it into the Xiliang soldiers below. Then she roared to Shen Qingzhu, who was galloping toward her.
"Go on ahead! Move!"
Shen Qingzhu clenched her jaw, nodded once, and spurred her horse swiftly up the slope.
Seated atop her fine steed, Bai Jingyan gripped the reins with white-knuckled hands and stood frozen like a statue carved from stone, watching the horses bearing the Haoying Battalion and the Dong family guards race up the mountain — her back to the summit, her eyes fixed on the slope below.
From the high mountainside, arrows came pouring down — pouring down past Bai Jingyan's back and into the enemy. Wherever the shafts struck, Xiliang soldiers fell shrieking in their death throes.
Before Li Zhijie's party even reached Chuishanguan, they heard the ferocious clamor of battle rolling out from within the fortress walls. Flames seemed to be clawing at the very sky.
The Xiliang general leading the way up front called an immediate halt and sprinted to Li Zhijie's carriage.
"Your Highness, something has happened inside the city! Grant me but a moment, and I will go and find out what it is!"
With the procession halted before even entering the city, Liu Chentuo grew uneasy. He glanced once at Li Tianfu, who had wept herself to sleep, then raised the carriage curtain and raced off toward Li Zhijie's carriage.
"Your Highness! What is happening?"
Li Zhijie had already dismounted at the news of disaster within the city, and was in the midst of investigating alongside Xiliang's commanding eunuch troops. Seeing Liu Chentuo riding up, he waved him over.
"Come with me!"
The moment the city gates opened, the guards who had been trapped inside, unable to slip out, rushed forward in desperation.
"Your Highness — someone came and took the prisoner!"
Li Zhijie's grip tightened on the reins. "Who?"
"The Bai army. The Haoying Battalion."
"Where are they now? Did you take them?"
Li Zhijie's eyes went wide. The tendons stood out like cords across the backs of his hands.
The whole reason he had never offered a man of the Bai family as a condition of the peace talks was that he meant to use that man as bait — bait to lure Bai Jingyan to her death. But if the Bai man had already been rescued, or if he died, then the entire arduous journey to bring him here was for nothing.
"Your subordinate does not know, Your Highness!"
Li Zhijie's guard bowed his head as he answered.
"Master Yanda sent me to deliver word to Your Highness. But the gates of Chuishanguan could not be opened — your subordinate could not get out!"
Liu Chentuo's breathing turned ragged. Unable even to wait for Li Zhijie's order, he wheeled his horse around and galloped straight for the inn where the Bai man had been confined.
Li Zhijie clenched his teeth and led his soldiers after him, toward the inn.
Before they even drew near, flames were already leaping into the sky, and a thick reek of blood assailed their nostrils. Xiliang archers knelt at the base of the mountainside, taking turns loosing shot after relentless shot up the slope.
Li Zhijie spurred his horse toward them and hauled hard on the reins. The animal screamed and reared, halting dead. The furious beast pawed lightly at the ground, straining toward the steep slope above — as if it meant to wage a battle to the death against the figure looking down on them from on high.
Li Zhijie wrestled the horse under control, then stared up the mountain through his deep peach-blossom eyes — and suddenly his eyes blew wide. Bai Jingyan!
How did she know the Bai man was here? And she came herself? How could she have gotten here so fast?
Only moments ago, I saw Bai Jingyan following the Crown Prince of Jin. How did she reach Chuishanguan ahead of us?
Li Zhijie abruptly recalled the maid named Tianzhou. Could that woman truly be a spy planted in Xiliang by Great Jin?
No — even if she is a spy, how would she know the Bai son was hidden here? Then how in the world did Bai Jingyan learn where the Bai man was being kept? And why would the Crown Prince of Jin permit her to come rescue the Bai heir — when he should be sending men in secret to kill him!
Li Zhijie's heart pounded like a war drum. It felt as though Bai Jingyan were staring down at him with eyes starved for blood.
Recalling her ninth brother's wounds, Bai Jingyan wanted, at that very moment, to tear Li Zhijie limb from limb. She wanted to repay her brother's suffering a hundredfold.
Beneath the clear moonlight, Bai Jingyan's gaunt frame raised the Sun-Shooting Bow and aimed it straight at Li Zhijie. Though no arrow was nocked, the killing intent she radiated seemed like that of a rakshasa risen from the depths of hell, cutting through the wind heavy with blood to reach him where he stood. Li Zhijie's fine steed sensed the murderous aura and backed away sharply.
Bai Jinchi, seated behind Bai Jingyan, locked both hands around her sister's waist. Then, looking down at the Xiliang soldiers firing wild shots from below, and at the Prince of Yan himself who had ridden all the way to the foot of the mountain, she spoke.
"Sister, let's go!"
At Jinchi's voice — and at the memory of Jinchi's own wounds — Bai Jingyan lowered the Sun-Shooting Bow and wrenched the reins hard.
Li Zhijie's breathing grew rough. There was nothing he could do but watch as Bai Jingyan rode away.
Liu Chentuo clenched his teeth and turned his horse's head.
"Your Highness! Give me only a hundred men — I will pursue them!"
Li Zhijie closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his peach-blossom eyes were calm and deep.
"Even if you chased her down, you would never kill Bai Jingyan. You'd simply be handing her a few more soldier's lives! Atuo, calm yourself. I want that woman dead far more than you do right now. If we leave her alive... the next time our two nations go to war, calamity will come down upon Xiliang!"
Liu Chentuo's heart hammered in his chest. He turned his head and looked up at the heights once more.
"But..."
"Assassination is out! We must find another way!"
Li Zhijie's face had gone a sickly shade of blue.
He surveyed the corpses strewn across the ground around him. Among them were ordinary Jin family guards and men of the Haoying Battalion. His eyes narrowed to slits.
"Bai Jingyan will never dare tell the Crown Prince of Jin that she rescued the Bai heir! She must have brought these people here in secret. Make sure the Jin guards' bodies and the Haoying Battalion corpses are well preserved. Right now — this very moment — I shall take these corpses to the Crown Prince of Jin and demand he answer for this!"
With that, Li Zhijie bent down, pulled a Haoying Battalion dagger from the body of a dead Xiliang soldier, and drove it into his own shoulder.
"Your Highness!"
"Your Highness!"
The Xiliang soldiers stared in horror and disbelief.
Li Zhijie clenched his teeth, wrenched the blade free, and passed it back to Liu Chentuo, then clamped his hand over the wound. Red blood welled up between his fingers, and the tendons stood out on his forehead against the pain.