Chasing the Phoenix, page 13
“Can you seduce someone of superior rank?”
“I suppose I could. It would not be easy.”
“It is possible,” White Squall said, beginning to unbutton her blouse, “that it would be easier than you think.”
* * *
IN RETROSPECT, it should have been obvious to Darger that their pleasure boat was intended for exactly the sort of pleasure they now put it to. The cushions were wide and soft and provided excellent support for their gymnastics. The silk walls billowed and parted just enough to allow a gentle breeze to pass through without allowing anything to be seen by those on the shore. And there was sufficient distance from the city for White Squall’s moans of pleasure to go unheard by any but he.
Also, there was a built-in compartment for the cruet of contraceptive oil with which White Squall anointed herself before guiding him inside her.
Time passed.
At last, sated, they drew apart to sprawl naked and untouching on the cushions. White Squall stuck an arm under the silk and trailed a hand lazily in the water. She really was, Darger had to admit, quite lovely. Gazing upon her moon-pale body, partially covered by drifts of snow-white hair, while soft strains of music played in a waterfront pavilion and the stars danced overhead, he thought this moment quite the most romantic he had ever experienced.
“Well,” Darger said eventually. “You said you had a favor to ask of me, but you still have not told me exactly what it is.”
White Squall slid her hand from the water and sat up, crossing her legs. She leaned forward to rest her arms upon her knees and said, “I am in love with Prince First-Born Splendor and I want your help seducing him.”
Darger sat up in astonishment. “Madam! I am gobsmacked. If you are in love with First-Born Splendor, then what on earth are you doing here? In this boat, I mean, with me, and postcoital to boot. It hardly seems productive on your part. Quite, I might say, the opposite.”
“On the contrary,” White Squall said. “I wish your sincere aid in seducing him. You are a wily and twisty fellow, however, and quite capable of fobbing me off with empty promises. If I settled merely for your word, I could never be sure that you were working toward my ends rather than your own. This way, you are in a position to prove that we had intercourse. You could describe the birthmark I have here and the other one here, partially obscured by my breast. You have seen the small tattoo I received as a baby, as a safeguard against kidnappers, in a place that no honest woman would reveal to you. Therefore, I am completely at your mercy. That being so, having me as the consort of the prince of Southern Gate will be extremely useful to you. I would, perforce, be your spy.”
Wonderingly, Darger said, “I see now that there is no limit to what a woman in love will do. I—”
“I am not finished. I, in turn, have seen your body. In the morning, I will write out a detailed description of how you molested me, including a catalog of such scars, moles, and other physical traits as could have been observed in no respectable manner, and give it, sealed and dated, to a trusted colleague. That way, I will have proof should I ever decide to publicly confront you with your crime.”
Carefully, Darger said, “Why would you do such a thing?”
“You are a cunning man and perfectly capable of creating some seemingly innocent accident which would expose your body to the court and destroy the value of my testimony. This protects me from that.”
“No, I mean why would you accuse me of an outrage we both know I did not commit?”
“I thought that it would be obvious that I want to have the power to make you regret it if you do not do what I want. How strange that it is not.”
White Squall waited. At last, having mentally run through his options and found none that would rescue him from this crisis, Darger said, “I see that I have no choice. I will win for you your prince—though I confess that I have no idea how I will go about it. I … Excuse me. What is that for?”
From a small compartment built into the side of the boat, White Squall had drawn a jar of something golden and a spoon. “It is a jar of honey, laced with aphrodisiacs. How strange that a man as worldly as you seem to be should not recognize it.”
“But you already have what you want from me.”
“Then let us enjoy this night while we can,” White Squall said. “My virtue having been thoroughly compromised, I do not see that repetition will make matters any the worse.”
8.
When Mountain Slope had been defeated, there was some confusion as to which of the prisoners were high officers and which were merely recruits and thus blameless. “Let them all be executed,” Powerful Locomotive commanded. “Heaven will know its own.”
—STRANGE TALES OF THE SECOND WARRING STATES PERIOD
THE LONG River campaign began with a series of assaults on the towns on the shores of Three Gorges Lake. The nations of central China had been more or less continually at war with one another for over a century, and in this time both their resources and their zest for slaughter had been badly depleted. Inevitably, upon the approach of the Hidden Emperor’s forces, the outnumbered enemy would retreat within the nearest fortified city and prepare for a long siege. This was a strategy that would have worked against an ordinary army. Unfortunately for them, though Ceo Powerful Locomotive had publicly scoffed at Cao White Squall’s resurrected technology, he now threw those same exotic weapons at the cities with fierce abandon and watched while, one after another, their walls crumbled and their defenders fell before him. Nor was he particularly merciful in dealing with the survivors.
So great was the carnage that Surplus was hard-pressed to find ways of keeping himself out of it. On the day that Powerful Locomotive attacked the city of Mountain Slope, he settled on a predawn excursion upon an outlying village. Far earlier than he would have preferred (but any later and he would have run the risk of encountering an early-rising superior), he led the Dog Pack out of camp. Silently, they followed him through the morning mists and up into the mountains.
Wanton destruction of insignificant targets Surplus had found to be an excellent way of keeping on Powerful Locomotive’s good side; it satisfied the ceo’s bloodlust without in any way detracting from the glory of conquest that he considered to be rightfully his own.
Following roads that were little more than forest trails, the raiders made their way to a village nestled in a high valley. From above, they looked down on its tidy fields and modest houses. Chickens foraged in the yards. Wisps of blue smoke rose from the chimneys. A land orca pulled a plow. The scene could hardly have been more bucolic.
“A few words before we attack,” Surplus said. “I know that I can trust you all to be terrifying…”
“Yasss!” his mountain horse said.
“Be quiet, Buttercup. However, please remember to only knock down things that are not difficult to repair—porches are fine; pottery is not. Terrible Nuisance, if I see you trying to snatch a girl’s blouse off her again, I’ll let your sisters choose your punishment.” Three young women grinned sharkishly. “Now. Let’s go!”
Whooping and hollering, the Dog Pack burst into the village, cutting clotheslines, toppling racks of rakes and shovels, overturning cauldrons of laundry, sending pigs squealing and hog toads hopping away in terror, upending baskets of produce, and setting cabbages to rolling down the street.
Mothers scooped up children. Men and women young enough to be impressed into the army disappeared into cellars and woodlots. Leaving only the old and infirm out in the open. These last the Dog Pack herded into the dirt square at the center of the village. Sternly addressing them from his saddle, Surplus said, “War has washed over your nation and yet here you are, models of peace and prosperity! Half of you should be blind, legless, or grotesquely mutilated, yet you are not. I am ashamed of the lot of you. I ought to kill you all.”
“But my husband won’t,” Fire Orchid said. “Because he is so merciful.”
“Hahhh!” Buttercup said.
“That remains to be seen. I am in the mood for slaughter today, and in the absence of enemy soldiers I may very well make do with innocent civilians.”
“Excuse me, sir,” an old man with a black cloth wrapped around his eyes said in a trembling voice. “Are you Three Gorges soldiers or invaders from the Abundant Kingdom?”
A brief, cold, hard silence. Then Surplus said, “What conceivable difference could that make to you?”
“Husband,” Fire Orchid said. “You will frighten these poor people. Allow me to answer the question.” Leaning forward to bring her mouth closer to the blind man’s ears, she said, “We are the demonic, baby-eating monsters from the west, led by the infamous Dog Warrior, of whose bloodthirsty deeds you have doubtless heard.”
A wail went up from the crowd.
“Silence!” Surplus shouted. “Tell them what they must do to avert my just and righteous wrath, Fire Orchid.”
“First, food—meats, vegetables, fruit, all of good quality. Also, military items. Some of you have served in the Three Gorges armies. Don’t try to deny it. In an era of war, recruits are taken from every village, whether they wish it or not, and some of them survive to return home. Veterans return with mementos, and it is those we require: uniforms, armor, weapons of all sorts. Trophies of a more intimate nature—strings of dried ears or various other mummified body parts—are neither required nor desired. You may leave them where they are. You should be ashamed of yourselves for having them.
“And that will be all.” Fire Orchid smiled. “I told you my husband was merciful.”
The terrified elders in short order produced three helmets, a tattered battle flag, a motley assortment of uniforms, and (to Surplus’s absolute lack of surprise) no weapons at all. Vicious Brute, meanwhile, had chosen the oldest and scrawniest of the cattle that the villagers had not had time to hide from them and slit its throat. Several tunics, the helmets, and the flag were stained with its blood and set aside to dry. “You’ll want to butcher this old fellow quickly,” Vicious Brute mumbled, “and preserve the meat.”
Little Spider, meanwhile, had filled a firebox with coals from a household fire and, after consultation with Surplus and Fire Orchid, sped off into the woods upwind from the village. When she returned, not long after, the forest was ablaze behind her.
By then, the food—enough for a leisurely feast on the way back to camp, but no more—and the newly created war trophies had been stashed away. As pillaging went, it was negligible. But Surplus knew that it would grow mightily in the telling. “We are leaving now and we shall not return,” he declared. “If you start cutting a firebreak at the outskirts of your village immediately, you can stop the fire before it does any serious damage.”
Smoke billowing up behind them, the Dog Pack snatched up their bloodstained trophies and thundered up the trail leading back to the Three Gorges encampment. “I’ll report that the village was completely destroyed,” Surplus said. “The smoke will corroborate my report. And there will be no reason for anyone from the army to ever come here again.”
“These people will not thank you for your mercy,” Fire Orchid remarked.
“They will curse me for a monster,” Surplus agreed. “But at least I will not have their deaths on my conscience.”
“Anybody else would have robbed them. I think it is very sweet of you to be so softheaded.”
“Softhearted,” Surplus corrected her. “At any rate, robbing peasants is like feasting on sparrows. There’s not enough meat on them to make it worth the effort.”
“Hahhh!” Buttercup said derisively.
* * *
SURPLUS RETURNED to camp to find the city of Mountain Slope in flames and his long-absent friend Aubrey Darger, accompanied by Cao White Squall, aghast at the sight of it. “When I left, this was a perfectly civilized war,” Darger said. “What in the name of heaven has happened to it?”
With that question, Surplus’s mood turned solemn. “In a single name—Powerful Locomotive. As it turns out, he is a firm believer in the efficacy of brutality and terror. Worse, his strategy appears to be working. So the Hidden Emperor, having no need of anybody else’s advice, no longer solicits it and there is no way to meliorate the ceo’s cruelty.”
“Such wanton destruction is undesirable, for logistical reasons if for no other,” White Squall said. “A city is a treasure trove of supplies and materials that an army on the move requires.”
Darger shook his head in wondering agreement. “As I understand it, the only defensible justification for a war is so that men of enterprise may have the opportunity to loot cities. This before me is waste, pure and simple.”
“What would you do instead?” Surplus asked.
“Rather than waste our strength destroying the river cities, I would bypass them and proceed directly to the capital city of Crossroads, so named because it is there that all the roads of central China meet. Once it was taken, the lesser cities would have no choice but to sue for peace.” A wide road led from the camp to the burning city. Halfway down it, crude, X-shaped wooden frames were being erected. The faint sound of hammering could be heard in the distance. “Please tell me those are not what I think they are.”
“They are what you think,” White Squall said. “But I have never seen them in such numbers.”
“Alas, Powerful Locomotive also believes in the deterrent effect of crucifixion. But enough of that. Dwelling on the negative only gets in the way of a proper appreciation of the myriad joys of life. Welcome back, my friends! Was your journey a success?” Surplus asked.
“An hour ago, I had thought so.” Darger rubbed his chin thoughtfully, a gesture that from long experience Surplus interpreted as meaning: There is a fiasco before us. How can we turn it to our advantage?
For his part, Surplus did not believe this was immediately possible. But, aloud, he merely said, “We can but wait for circumstances to change. Is there not a classic of Chinese philosophy that advises patience?”
“All of them, I believe,” Darger said.
As they were thus conversing, Ceo Powerful Locomotive returned from the destruction of Mountain Slope and the execution of the enemy soldiers, reeking of sweat and machine oil. Separating from his troops, he grinned at the sight of White Squall and glowered at the presence of Darger and Surplus. “Ah! You have returned in time to witness my glorious success,” he cried.
“What have you done with all my beautiful weaponry?” White Squall’s eyes flashed. “I am told that a good tenth of it is destroyed beyond any hope of repair.”
“I have but put your toys to their proper use. I in turn hear you’ve brought us something new and special.”
“We have brought the emperor his Phoenix Bride, as commanded.”
“Excellent! I look forward to seeing it in action.” The ceo wheeled his horse and rejoined his men.
“From all I have heard,” Darger murmured, “you had best pray that it is never used.”
Among the troops trudging up the road to camp were the Southern Gate contingent. Before they could pass, Darger hailed their leader. “Prince First-Born Splendor! Stop and tell us of your brave deeds and daring exploits. My tent is nearby, equipped with soft couches and chilled wine. Capable Servant will rub down your horse and see that it is watered and fed while you recover from your fighting.”
First-Born Splendor pulled up his steed. He looked weary and dispirited. “Welcome back, Perfect Strategist—and you, too, White Squall. Your offer is tempting, but I really should see that my men are restored to their quarters in good order.”
“That is what subordinates are for. Come, relax in the company of friends.”
The prince’s handsome face twisted briefly with indecision and then cleared. “You are kind, sir, and I will take you up on your offer.”
In minutes, they were all four lounging in the tent that Darger had had set up on a grassy hilltop abutting the main encampment but separate enough to ensure a degree of privacy. Prince First-Born Splendor did not recline but sat tensely upon his couch. “Now, when it is too late to turn back, I begin to doubt the wisdom of my alliance with Powerful Locomotive,” he said.
“White Squall,” Darger said. “Please pour the prince some wine.”
“Am I a servant? Do you expect me to—?” White Squall was silenced by a look. She fetched the wine and poured a cup for First-Born Splendor, who accepted it graciously.
“I am not a child,” the prince said. “I understand that war requires sacrifice and a willingness to kill. But today was mere butchery. I had to fight to keep the ceo from killing noncombatants and children.”
“White Squall, help the prince off with his breastplate. He is so weary that he has forgotten he is wearing it.”
“Am I? I suppose I am.” First-Born Splendor leaned forward so that White Squall could tug at the straps and ease away the armor from his sweaty blouse. “I thank you, cao. That is kindly done of you.”
Darger poured water into cups for Surplus and himself, setting the jug out of sight behind his couch. To White Squall, he said, “You should top off the prince’s cup.”
White Squall did so. The prince nodded his thanks.
“When the city was taken, I was sent with my troops to torch it. We rode through its streets, setting fire to all that would burn, and barely escaped being engulfed in the conflagration.”
Darger nudged White Squall and then, when she did not take the hint, said, “That must have been very hard on you.”
“A warrior must do such things, occasionally. But when we emerged from Mountain Slope, I turned back to look upon our work and saw paper balloons, dozens of them, rising from a burning workshop. There is a festival in Southern Gate, where small candles are lit beneath such balloons and they rise into the night like so many bright lanterns. When I was a boy, that was my favorite day of the year. Now, seeing the balloons spiraling up among the smoke and sparks, it seemed to me that all the simple joys of my childhood were burning. That there would be nothing good in my life ever again.”
