Chapter 46 of 90
The Promise at Ling Snake Mountain
"Uncle Zhong!"
Li Yuguo was already running.
The old man was lying where he had been sitting, at the edge of the nearest ditch. Jun Xue's bandage was still around his head, neat and firm and white. That was the first thing Li Yuguo saw. The bandage. Clean, and carefully tied off, with a little knot over the ear.
"Uncle Zhong. Uncle Zhong, wake up!"
His eyes were closed. His body was cold. There was a huge wound in his chest—a great, ragged, gaping thing, as if someone had driven a spear through him and twisted it on the way out—and the blood had soaked his coat black from the collar to the hem.
He was dead.
The blue veins stood out on Li Yuguo's forehead.
He gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached. He did not let himself close the old man's eyes. He did not let himself do anything. He looked up, and around, over the wrecked field and the bodies and the blood, looking for one thing—a small figure, a gray dress a size too big, a head of white hair.
Nothing.
There was no trace of Jun Xue anywhere.
"Young master!"
A man was coming toward them across the field. A farmer, one of the hundred—Li Yuguo knew his face, though not his name. His head was covered in blood. He was clutching his own left arm with his right hand, and the arm was black with blood from shoulder to wrist, and he was staggering, step by step, dragging himself over the broken earth toward them with enormous difficulty.
"Young master… as soon as you left…" He was gasping. "A gang of thieves came. On horses. Big ones. They came straight for her. For Miss Li Jun Xue. They grabbed her and threw her across a saddle. Uncle Zhong—Uncle Zhong and a few of the others tried to stop them, they tried to hold the horses, they had their hoes, they—" He could not go on. "They killed them…"
He fell to his knees in the dirt in front of Li Yuguo, and the tears ran down through the blood on his face.
Ta-ta-ta-ta.
Hoofbeats. Fast and hard and many, drumming over the dry earth.
More than a dozen fine yellow horses came over the far rise at a gallop, kicking up a long brown plume of dust behind them, and swept down into the field. Their riders wore the red-trimmed armor of the Nalan City garrison. And at their head, on the biggest horse of all, with a long spear across his saddle and his handsome face set in lines of grave concern, rode the captain of Nalan City.
Li Yutang.
He saw Li Yuguo. And behind his concern, so quickly that only a man who was watching for it would have caught it, he smiled.
You brat. I finally have a handle on you. He reined in. Bringing a gang of water bandits out here. What were you looking for—protection?
He had wanted an excuse for so long. A reason to arrest the King of Soft Rice that even Nalan Meng could not argue with. And now the boy had handed it to him, wrapped in silk.
Fuck you, he thought. I didn't even have an excuse to arrest you. And now you've given me such a good one.
He swung down from his horse. He drove the butt of his spear into the earth so that it stood upright beside him, quivering.
"Yuguo," he said, loudly, so that everyone could hear. "Explain. Why are you here with the water bandits?"
Li Yuguo narrowed his eyes.
He had already guessed. This was Li Yutang's plan—the shape of it was obvious now that he was standing inside it. Draw me off. Take the girl. Leave the bodies. Arrive just in time.
"It's quite a coincidence," he said. "Something happens with your front foot, and your back foot shows up right on time."
"What do you mean by that?" Li Yutang's voice rose. "Do you mean to say that I killed these people?"
He turned to his men, and to the crowd of villagers behind them, and spread his hands, and his face was full of grief.
"Brother. I can't help you this time. You've privately allied yourself with water bandits—and you've done such a cruel and ruthless thing to the common people!" He raised his arm. "Men! Take Li Yuguo down!"
The garrison soldiers were already moving. They came down off their horses and spread out and closed around Li Yuguo in a ring, with their swords drawn.
"Li Yutang!"
Niu Er came pushing through the soldiers. He was still holding his broken mace. His face was purple.
"Li Yutang, it really is you," he said, through his teeth. "You lied to us. You told us to take the villagers—take them, that's all, we clearly agreed. We didn't want to touch anybody! And now you want to put the blame on our village? On the north water stockade?"
Li Yutang looked at him for a long moment.
"So it's the chief of the north water stockade," he said slowly. "You and Li Yuguo, in collusion. And now you want to frame this officer as well?"
Murder came into his eyes as he said it. Plain and cold.
"It was you told us to do it!" Niu Er shouted. "You said when it was done, you'd give us three hundred taels. You—how come you don't recognize anybody now?"
The moment those words were out, the crowd began to murmur.
"Could it really be? Did Lord Li—Master Li Yutang—really have us taken?"
"No. No, Master Li is a good man. How could he do something like this to us?"
"Well, in my opinion, the young master looks more like the good man. Didn't you see? Going into the water village alone, by himself, to bring our people back—that's a real hero!"
The whispering spread. It ran through the villagers and out into the ranks of the soldiers, and Li Yutang heard it, and lines ran across his handsome forehead, deep and dark.
He pulled his spear out of the ground.
"Boldly harassing the people," he said. "Spreading slander. Trying to defame this officer!" He leveled the spear at Niu Er's chest. "You're looking for death!"
And he struck.
The spear went out like a striking snake, its point bright and its wake cold, and the wind of it hissed across the field.
At that exact moment, another spear came down out of the sky.
Clang!
A crisp, ringing sound, like a temple bell struck once in the frost. A long spear had fallen from above and driven itself straight down into the earth between Li Yutang and Niu Er, and Li Yutang's spear-point had struck its shaft and skidded aside, and the shock of it ran back up into his arms and numbed them to the elbow.
There was a shadow in the sky.
The shadow came down. Light as a falling leaf, it landed on the butt of the upright spear and stood there, balanced on a point no wider than a coin, with one foot on the shaft and the other drawn up behind it.
It was Nalan Meng.
She was wearing her light armor. Silver plates over crimson, chased with the five-clawed dragon of her father's house. Her long black hair was tied back. Her arms were folded. She stood on the end of her spear above the wreck of the field like a winter plum in the snow—straight and proud and alone, blooming in the cold where nothing else could.
"Lord Commander," she said. Her voice was very cool. "This matter has not even been investigated yet. And you're going to kill again?"
"County Lord! It's obvious—this is Li Yuguo's trick," said Li Yutang. "He colluded with the water bandits, and then he slaughtered the people!" He raised his arm and pointed at the bodies, at the blood. "Can't you see such an obvious thing?"
"What I see," said Nalan Meng, "is that you were about to kill someone."
She looked down at him from her spear.
"Before, at the City Lord's Mansion, you killed ten men in the guest room. Ten witnesses. All at once, before anyone could ask them a single question. I wondered then why it happened so conveniently." Her eyes did not move from his face. "And now here you are again, trying to kill another key witness before he can speak. It makes this County Lord wonder whether there's some secret behind all this."
She stepped down off the spear and landed lightly on the earth.
She had been near the city gate, earlier. In her plain gray robe, with a scarf over her hair. She had seen the flour. She had seen Li Yuguo standing on the edge of the dry ditch, talking to the King of Thieves about her. She had heard him say she's not a bad person.
She had misunderstood him once already. Over the salt. She had stood in the guest room and looked at him with contempt in her eyes while he was being framed.
She did not want to misunderstand him a second time.
"And more importantly," said Li Yuguo, into the silence, "if I wanted to hurt the people—why would I bother giving them work? Why would I bother paying them? Out of my own pocket. A dou of flour, every day." He looked around at the villagers. "And why would I let my own maid Jun Xue be carried off? Isn't that cutting off my own hand?"
Everyone looked at him.
What he said was impeccable. Everyone there knew who had paid for the flour. Everyone there had eaten it. There was no reason in the world for a man to spend his own money feeding people with one hand and murder them with the other. Nobody could do that.
"You're only trying to clear yourself of suspicion," said Li Yutang. "Before, you were accused of private salt—and now—now it's murder!"
There was sweat on his forehead. A great deal of it. He knew—he could feel it, the way you feel the ice crack under your foot—that if Li Yuguo could not be convicted this time, Nalan Meng would start to doubt him. And after that, she would never stop.
At that moment a man stepped forward from among the soldiers beside him.
Zhang Wei.
He was a Martial Teacher, a full rank above Niu Er. A lean, long-jawed man with small eyes and a soft voice, and he was Li Yutang's most trusted subordinate—the shadow that walked a half-step behind him everywhere.
"If my uncle wants to prove himself innocent," said Zhang Wei smoothly, "then let him go and find the real murderer, and confront him face to face." He bowed slightly toward Li Yuguo. "The villagers just explained it themselves, didn't they? It was horse thieves who took Miss Jun Xue."
"Yes! Yes, it must have been Ma Daha!"
A villager had pushed forward. An old woman, with blood on her apron. "Ma Daha of Ling Snake Mountain! That horse thief is so hateful! Every year he comes down and snatches the harvest out of our hands!"
"No."
Nalan Meng said it at once. Sharp.
"Ling Snake Mountain is a dangerous place," she said. "There are monsters all through that mountain. It's precisely because of them—because there's no end to them—that we've never been able to root the bandits out. And Ma Daha himself is at the peak of Martial Soul. He's only half a step from Martial King. He has a great many tricks." She looked at Li Yuguo. "Rushing over there will only throw your life away."
"Jun Xue is under my protection."
He said it so quietly that only the people nearest him heard. And then louder:
"She's my person, and I'll naturally go and save her. As long as I capture Ma Daha, then who the real man behind the scenes is will be clear at a glance."
Li Yutang let out a long, slow breath.
It was a sigh of relief, though he hid it well. He turned his head a fraction toward Zhang Wei and nodded—once, approvingly, so slightly that only his lieutenant saw it.
Ling Snake Mountain was one of the few forbidden places around Nalan City. Its slopes were steep and its ravines were deep and the monsters in its forests had eaten whole patrols. Even Li Yutang would not have dared to go into it alone.
And the King of Soft Rice had just promised to.
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