Chapter 17: - The Taste
“Put out the fires! Curfew!”
Every night, once the hour grew late enough, soldiers came through the camp ordering the civilian laborers to extinguish their bonfires and go to sleep.
The desert had a large temperature difference between day and night, but in this season, with tents for shelter, the cold was not yet unbearable.
“Got it!”
Xue San fetched some water, doused the fire, then ducked into the tent.
The other three nameless extras had their own makeshift tent. The civilian laborers had all been conscripted in a hurry, and they were not nomads, so most of the tents in the labor camp were tiny, little more than symbolic shelters.
The soldiers’ tents, on the other hand, looked much better. One glance was enough to tell they were proper military issue.
“Master sleeps inside. I’ll sleep by the entrance.”
Liang Cheng laid his blanket down at the mouth of the tent and stretched out.
Zheng Fan did not argue. Liang Cheng was a zombie. He probably was not afraid of the cold anyway. Still, Zheng Fan looked curiously toward Xue San.
“San’er, you’re not sleeping in here?”
Xue San shook his head with a grin. He picked up the wineskin he had secretly brought into the tent, then pointed outside.
“Master, I’ll sleep out there. I already dug myself a hole. I’m short, so digging a pit is convenient.”
After Xue San went outside, Zheng Fan lay down as well.
But no matter what, he could not fall asleep tonight.
His saber lay beneath his blanket, close enough that he could reach it with one hand.
Strangely enough, that cold piece of metal was the only thing that seemed capable of giving him any real warmth.
“Master can rest. We’re keeping watch,” Liang Cheng said.
“All right.”
There was no need for more conversation.
Zheng Fan trusted Liang Cheng’s judgment.
The supply column they were traveling with was definitely not here simply to transport grain.
Liang Cheng believed this baggage train was most likely being used as bait. And since the camp had deliberately chosen such a suicidal piece of terrain tonight, barring some accident, this should be the night the bait was finally put into play.
Even if they warned the Centurion commanding the transport camp, there was a good chance the man would quietly dispose of them first.
Judging from the strange behavior of that cavalry force over the past several days, the regular soldiers escorting the transport camp almost certainly knew what their real mission was.
As for telling the innocent laborers the truth and leading them all in a mass breakout to save their lives...
First of all, this was the desert, four days’ march from Tiger Head City on the frontier.
If the labor force panicked and scattered, whether they ran into Barbarian riders or Yan cavalry, the result would be a one-sided massacre. Very few of them would ever make it back to Tiger Head City alive.
And if Zheng Fan and the others really did that, the three of them would instantly become unregistered fugitives. Worse, the Blind Man, Fourth Lady, and everyone else back in Tiger Head City would be implicated too.
No one here was a saint.
Zheng Fan had never intended to learn how to become one.
And from another perspective, if one allowed oneself to be a little colder, using two or three thousand civilian laborers as bait to annihilate the enemy and achieve the campaign’s objective might be a terrible bargain for those laborers, but for the greater situation...
It was a muddled account.
And when the account itself was muddled, even someone who understood what was happening could only learn the art of “rare muddleheadedness.”
Zheng Fan kept repeating the same thing to himself.
I’m only a civilian laborer.
Just a civilian laborer.
Nothing more than a civilian laborer...
On a battlefield, keeping himself alive was enough.
Mm.
And if conditions allowed, he would not mind scraping up a few benefits for himself along the way.
Still, the day’s march had consumed a great deal of strength.
Once he lay down, Zheng Fan found his eyelids growing heavy after all.
He could only try to keep the edge of his consciousness somewhat alert while allowing himself to doze as much as possible.
Liang Cheng, sleeping at the entrance to the tent, opened and closed his eyes from time to time.
Outside, hidden inside the shallow pit he had carefully covered, Xue San slowly sipped from his wineskin, occasionally running his tongue across his lips.
Perhaps, for Zheng Fan, this was a tormenting wait.
But for those two, this was the thing they had anticipated most in half a year.
Let the night grow deeper still.
...
Behind a dirt slope outside the camp, a cluster of dark silhouettes appeared.
They gathered there, then dispersed with astonishing speed.
Slowly, they crept toward different sides of the encampment, eliminating the sentries in their respective directions before infiltrating deeper inside.
It would be difficult to call them professionally trained, because every man used a different method.
Yet they moved in true silence, penetrating the camp without causing any major disturbance.
These were instincts honed through years of hunting.
The desert was harsh.
The Barbarians had been tempered by nature itself into warriors.
A century earlier, even Yan’s iron cavalry had relied on superior equipment and tactical discipline to resist them during the Great Yan–Barbarian Wars.
The civilian laborers sleeping in this camp, men who had still been holding hoes not long ago, could never be their opponents.
Three black shadows silently entered one tent.
Three men were asleep inside.
The infiltrators crept soundlessly to the laborers’ sides.
In the darkness, only the faint gleam in their eyes seemed enough to communicate their intent.
All three struck almost simultaneously.
One hand clamped over the victim’s mouth.
Before the sleeping laborers could even wake, the knife in the other hand sliced directly across the throat.
“Pshk!”
“Pshk!”
“Pshk!”
No screams came.
And it was not happening only here.
The same infiltration and silent killing was proceeding in orderly fashion across several other parts of the camp.
Once the three shadows finished this tent, they slipped back outside and moved toward the next one.
One of them first lifted the tent flap and glanced inside to count the occupants.
He was slightly surprised.
There was only one man sleeping by the entrance.
No choice, then.
Deal with this one first.
The shadow crouched.
Like a veteran craftsman on an assembly line, everything that followed was merely repetition.
Reach out.
Clamp a hand over the target’s mouth.
The man below seemed to awaken.
No matter.
The other hand brought the knife across his throat.
Scrape...
Scrape...
A grinding sound came back through the blade.
The shadow froze.
For some reason, cutting this man’s throat felt like sharpening a knife on a whetstone.
And the expected spray of hot blood never came.
Almost instinctively, the infiltrator sawed his knife back and forth across the man’s neck several more times.
Scrape...
Scrape...
Scrape...
By the Barbarian God!
Was this even a human neck?
Why was it so hard?
His confusion did not last long.
A hand suddenly closed around his own throat.
Crack!
Bone snapped.
The shadow’s neck was crushed, bringing his head and shoulder into the closest embrace they would ever share.
The two shadows outside seemed to hear the noise from within.
Alarmed, they were just about to react when a head slowly emerged from the earth behind their feet.
A smile curled across Xue San’s mouth.
His entire body sprang from the little pit where he had hidden.
As soon as he reached the proper height, the daggers in both hands swept forward.
Pshk!
Pshk!
Both shadows collapsed.
Xue San rolled his neck.
It had been far too long.
The feeling of killing someone.
If the situation had allowed it, Xue San would have loved to moan in sheer pleasure.
Better yet, howl like a wolf a few times.
Awooooo...
The tent flap lifted from inside.
Liang Cheng and Zheng Fan walked out together.
Liang Cheng was holding a bloody human head in one hand.
He looked at Xue San.
“Cut the heads off.”
“Got it.”
At that exact moment, the shrill whistle of a signal arrow tore apart the false tranquility of the night.
The infiltrators had opened the camp gates.
From outside came the sudden thunder of galloping warhorses.
More than a thousand riders charged toward the camp’s front gate, and another thousand toward the rear.
They roared and howled as they poured inside, attacking straight into the encampment.
The sentry posts had already been eliminated.
The outer defenses had been compromised during the infiltration.
Under those conditions, the two cavalry forces smashed into the main camp with almost no resistance.
The sleeping laborers jolted awake.
Some stared around blankly, unable to understand what was happening.
Others saw the savage figures in animal hides charging toward them on horseback and immediately began screaming in terror.
Exactly as Liang Cheng had predicted, the camp broke almost instantly under the night raid.
More than a hundred regular soldiers had been stationed around the central area.
But the fleeing laborers shattered their formations from within.
Then the Barbarian cavalry crashed through them and began hacking men down.
Under the night sky, the camp instantly became a riding ground for the Barbarian horsemen.
They swung their sabers wildly, slaughtering the prey fleeing in every direction.
Kill all the prey first.
After that came the beautiful moment of dividing the spoils.
Liang Cheng walked in front.
Xue San followed behind.
Zheng Fan stayed between them.
The three left their tent and headed directly toward one corner of the camp.
Behind several wooden carts piled with “grain and fodder” stood a section of camp palisade.
Together, the carts and fence formed a crude defensive position.
They had already scouted it before nightfall.
Zheng Fan gripped the saber in his hand with all his strength, every nerve stretched taut.
Xue San sat down atop one of the carts and casually swung his short legs.
Then he looked back toward Zheng Fan.
“Master, why don’t we take advantage of the chaos and slip away now? This place is still pretty dangerous.”
Zheng Fan shook his head.
“I trust Liang Cheng’s judgment.”
This supply column was bait.
The fish had already bitten.
The net should be coming soon.
Using several thousand civilian lives as bait was certainly cruel.
But since the arrangement had already been made, what Zheng Fan and his people needed to consider was how to survive as safely as possible with the advantage of foreknowledge, and while they were at it, how to obtain something of practical value for themselves.
For example, Barbarian heads.
As for running away?
What a joke.
Running now would be like defecting to the Nationalists in 1949.
Seeing Zheng Fan insist, Xue San stopped trying to persuade him.
When he turned back around, his gaze met Liang Cheng’s.
The same satisfied understanding passed through both men’s eyes.
Master was not pedantic.
Once they realized the fate awaiting this labor column, Zheng Fan had not shouted that they had to warn everyone and save all those innocent lives.
Instead, he had immediately brought up something else.
“The day before yesterday, while we were escorting the grain, I heard two soldiers say Barbarian heads can be exchanged for reward money and military merit.”
Xue San smacked his lips.
As expected of the man capable of drawing people like us into existence.
Master might still be somewhat nervous and unaccustomed to all this because he was an ordinary person, but that heart of his was genuinely black.
“Woooooo!”
Two Barbarian cavalrymen came chasing a soldier toward them.
The rider in front spurred his horse forward and cut the fleeing soldier down.
Then both men noticed Zheng Fan and the others standing between the carts and palisade.
“Woooooo!”
They gave excited howls.
Their horses surged forward again.
The two riders charged toward their new prey.
Liang Cheng silently rose to his feet.
Xue San closed his eyes.
His earlobes twitched.
Zheng Fan swallowed instinctively.
Before this, he had only read in books and articles that cavalry were absolute kings of the cold-weapon battlefield.
Only two horses were charging him now.
Yet the sense of impact was no weaker than standing in the middle of a road while an off-road vehicle came barreling straight at him at full speed.
The thunder of hooves blended with the sound of breathing.
Slowly, everything seemed to decelerate.
Slower... slower... slower still...
Time itself seemed to enter slow motion.
Even then, Zheng Fan did not run.
He did not dodge.
He simply continued gripping the saber in what was probably not even a very proper stance.
The distance closed.
Xue San moved first.
His body suddenly dropped low.
Then, in a way that seemed physically impossible, he sprang upward directly in front of the charging horse.
The Barbarian rider instinctively slashed at him.
The blade cut only air.
Xue San had already appeared beside the rider, and he was still rising.
His dagger was held in a reverse grip.
Wrist lifted.
Blade drawn diagonally.
Pshk!
The dagger entered beneath the Barbarian rider’s jaw and buried itself almost instantly.
The rider’s vision turned red.
Then everything went dark.
On Liang Cheng’s side, he did not move until the other rider was almost on top of him.
Perhaps in that Barbarian’s eyes, the man in front of him was about to be trampled into meat beneath the iron hooves of his warhorse.
Instead, Liang Cheng swung one fist upward in an almost impossible motion and punched the horse squarely in the head.
Bang!
The horse’s front legs buckled immediately.
Its own terrifying momentum hurled the rider forward.
Liang Cheng caught the man by the animal-hide clothing on his back and slammed him face-down against the wooden cart.
Then he suddenly raised his head and looked at Zheng Fan.
“Master!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAH!”
Almost purely on instinct, Zheng Fan raised his saber and hacked down at the Barbarian rider who had already been completely subdued before him.
Pshk!
Blood sprayed.
Red.
Hot.
Scalding.
Zheng Fan’s mouth fell open.
His eyes widened.
His body swayed slightly.
And then, slowly, he tasted something else.
Sweet.
[End of Chapter 17]
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