Breaking Bamboo Read online

  That to be in Dying Ground is like clinging to a leaky boat, like curling up in a burning house. How might we find advantage in such a plight? The answer – disguise your potential and assault the enemy on both sides at once, roaring and beating the drums.

  Between lectures they had conducted lengthy rites in honour of the Academy’s heroes and those deities who favoured soldiers. Mostly they had drilled with sword, bow and halberd.

  And in all these things Guang had excelled. Now on Dying Ground, his training met instinct. He acted without thought.

  First Guang pretended to panic and hid behind the girl, so that she formed an obstacle between himself and the two Mongols. Their swords were drawn, they were advancing slowly.

  Then he pulled the cord of smouldering hemp from his fire-pot. The match glowed as the breeze caught it.

  He thrust the girl to safety. They were almost upon him.

  He lifted the bamboo staff as though about to surrender, then lit the fuse protruding from the metal canister tied onto the side of its end section. The Mongols were sure of him now, rushing in close. There was a sudden flash as the fuse lit. Guang pointed the staff and flames shot out a mixture of noxious lime, arsenic and pellets of gravel straight into the face of the nearest enemy. He wasted no more time on the wretch. In the moment of surprise he stabbed the second Mongol, who had leapt back, lowering his guard. The man fell. Then he turned to the first, who was on his knees, blinded by the fire lance’s blast.

  Despite the precariousness of his situation – at any moment more of the barbarians might appear – Guang circled the wounded man. He was crying pitifully, scrabbling at the place where his eyes and half his face had once been. Guang silenced him with a kick.

  Then he listened. Dogs were barking furiously in the Mongol camp. The whoosh of the fire lance and sounds of fighting could not have gone undetected. He stepped round the sobbing girl and melted into the darkness, hurrying towards Whale Rock Monastery.

  Was it weak of him not to kill the girl? After interrogating her, Khan Bayke would soon guess his destination. But Guang shrank from such cruel prudence. Now he must move swiftly.

  Dawn promised more than the certainty of a new day. They would hunt him like a deer until they dragged him down – and everyone knew how the Mongols loved a hunt.

  *

  At dawn Guang reached the narrow valley where Whale Rock Monastery nestled beside a series of waterfalls. The journey of thirty li along twisting mountain paths had depleted much of the nervous energy sustaining him. Yet he could afford a brief rest.

  Guang slumped against a broad maple trunk and closed his eyes. When he awoke his error became obvious. A single glance at the sun told him the morning was well-advanced. Smoke rose lazily from a cooking fire in the monastery below. He could hear distant voices.

  Guang leapt to his feet, senses alert. Banks of grey cloud were scudding west – there would be rain later. Birdsong all along the valley, just as he remembered from boyhood. Then came the low clanging of a gong. It was summoning him to Father.

  Although impatient to descend to the monastery, Guang opened his pack and removed a thick leather bag with a narrow neck. He fashioned a crude funnel from paper and inserted it into the neck of the bag. Collecting numerous sharp pebbles cost further time. As he worked Guang cast fearful glances at the road winding in the direction of Wei Valley. If Khan Bayke had ridden out with his men at dawn, it would take at least half a day to reach the Whale Rock, even if they rode hard. The footpaths Guang had taken, though steep, were direct; horsemen would be forced to take a tedious detour before they could even join the road to the monastery.

  Guang filled a third of the bag with gravel. Then he opened a hidden compartment at the bottom of his pack and gingerly ladled out black powder, using the paper funnel. When the leather sack had been sealed with hand-moulded wax, a crude thunderclap bomb was ready. Guang knew from experiments he had conducted in Nancheng that the design possessed virtue.

  Finally, he lit the slow-burning match in his little fire-pot and attached it to his belt.

  Staff in hand, he hurried through the trees, jumping the lime-stone steps of waterfalls until he reached the gates of Whale Rock Monastery. The bronze-hinged doors inscribed with prayers were closed. Guang hesitated. He was well-known here, but in days like these who could guess the monks’ true loyalties?

  Guang had first approached these gates at the age of nine, a year after Shih’s banishment from Three-Step-House to a destination no one would reveal and for reasons no one dared mention. It had been around the same time kindly Aunt Qin vanished in the middle of the night.

  Shortly after her disappearance it was discovered that he, not Shih, was Eldest Son and therefore the true heir to Three-Step-House. Father never explained how such a mistake had come about, other than to mutter terse remarks about fox-fairies and confusion at birth. After all, he and Shih were mirror images of each other.

  At nine years of age the separation from his twin brother formed a deep, hidden wound. A wound that bled inwardly, even to this day. Guang had not complained but spent more and more time alone. Often he sat in the tiny cave above Wei Village until hunger drove him home. At last, Father grew angry, shouting that he was ungrateful, that everyone was ungrateful, and Guang was sent away to live in Whale Rock Monastery so that he might learn to read and write.

  Guang didn’t care to dwell in the past. Weaklings are obsessed with what was. Bamboo feeds on the wind. But the monks had been kind – one especially, a young novice, had taken particular care of him, encouraging him to join the other children in their games. Sometimes he caught Novice Jian watching as he staged elaborate battles with stick-swords and imaginary enemies, pretending to be Great-great-grandfather saving the illustrious General Yueh Fei, or Great-grandfather Yun Cai freeing his noble friend Second Chancellor P’ei Ti and beheading a hundred rebels. One day he had grown self-conscious and asked the monk: ‘Master Jian, why do you pity me?’

  Jian had pursed his lips.

  ‘Do I pity you?’

  ‘I am the heir to Three-Step-House and will inherit property for a hundred li around,’ Guang had declared haughtily. ‘I am my Father’s heir!’

  Jian scratched his shaven head.

  ‘Perhaps that is why I pity you. None of those things will earn you a favourable rebirth.’

  ‘Father gives a present of silver to the monastery each year,’

  said Guang. ‘To buy a good reincarnation in his next life.’

  At first Jian would not reply, then he said: ‘One can only purchase virtue through good deeds and meditation, otherwise there is no avoiding hell and karma. Go! Play with the other children. You spend too much time alone.’

  An oriole had landed on the wall above where the monk and earnest boy sat. Guang had thought, in the strange way children imagine things, the bird was Shih visiting him. Then he had wept uncontrollably and, when pressed, dared not explain why in case Father learned of it. Later that day he picked a fight with a boy several years older and received a sound beating. It was as though he wished to bring a punishment down on himself, as though he, Guang, was in some way to blame for Shih’s banishment.

  Guang rapped on the doors of Whale Rock Monastery with his bamboo staff. The sound echoed briefly, drowned by the constant splash and murmur of the waterfalls. At last there came a scraping of bolts. Guang might have laughed out loud if he hadn’t felt so grim, for there, as though summoned by his memory, stood Brother Jian, his face coarsened and lined by twenty years of contemplating the nothingness of this illusory world.

  Guang bowed and the monk, after his initial surprise, looked round anxiously.

  ‘You have finally come,’ said Jian, in wonder. ‘Quickly, enter.

  Before you are seen.’

  Guang slipped inside and waited as the doors were barred.

  The monastery was silent. In the courtyard tall grass grew between paving stones where weekly markets had been held when he was a boy. An aged monk observed the
m from a doorway.

  ‘What has happened here?’ he asked. ‘Where are my Mother and Father?’

  ‘Come with me,’ said Jian. ‘We must be circumspect. It would be dangerous if Khan Bayke heard you were here.’

  Guang followed, wary of mentioning what had happened in Wei Valley.

  The monastery had supported twenty monks and as many servants when he was a boy, now the prayer cubicles and cells were empty. A smell of mildew and decay hung in the air.

  ‘What has happened here?’ he repeated.

  Jian paused. They were by the entrance to the temple; all the prayer wheels were silent.

  ‘I am Abbot now,’ he said. ‘Why did you take so long to come? Had you returned earlier you would know that Khan Bayke seized all our lands. We have no income. It is not as it was when men like your father supported us. Many of the monks have been forced onto the roads. Plague carried away most of the others.

  Guang asked eagerly: ‘How is Mother? And Father?’

  ‘You will see.’

  Jian led him deeper into the monastery, down corridors painted with scenes of transcendence and eternal torment.

  ‘Last night I killed Khan Bayke’s son,’ said Guang, as though challenging the monk to disapprove. ‘And two of his men – at least, I blinded one of them. I did not know Lord Yun was still alive until last night or I would have come sooner.’

  The monk offered no reply. They arrived at a closed door.

  ‘We have tried to bring him back,’ said Abbot Jian. ‘But the Beyond is so very dark. . . I fear his karma has unravelled early.

  Do not be distressed by what you see.’

  Guang laid a hand on the Abbot’s arm. His mouth tasted bitter as before a fight. He was trembling.

  ‘Stay with me,’ he begged. ‘Tell him I am here . . . the shock.’

  Jian sighed through his nose and turned away.

  ‘It would change nothing.’

  Guang slowly opened the door. A small room lay beyond, its single window covered by frayed paper blinds. In the gloom, he could make out a low bed and table. On the floor stood a large bowl. Cobwebs hung from the rafters. Guang understood the room’s history most clearly through his nose. It stank, as though its occupant had repeatedly soiled himself. There was sweat, too, stale and acrid, like the fox-smell of foreigners.

  Father squatted on the floor, gazing into a wide, flat bowl of circling goldfish. His long, straggling hair was matted and unkempt. Food stains covered his threadbare clothes. The old man did not look up as Guang entered.

  ‘Father,’ he muttered.

  Was this Lord Yun, once so particular about every silk he wore? Famous for his good looks and elegant manners? Lord Yun, who had turned the ladies’ heads whenever he rode through the streets of Chunming on a horse glittering with silver ornaments? Guang fell to his knees and banged his head on the floor three times, tears trickling down his unshaven cheeks. Still the old man stared at the fishes.

  ‘Father! I have come to set you free.’

  At last Lord Yun looked up, fixing Guang with a scornful, red-rimmed stare. A strange noise, half-giggle, half-sob, shook his chest.

  ‘When I needed you,’ said the old man. ‘You were not there.

  When Lady Yun died, she called out for you. But you were not there.’

  Guang fearfully brushed at his tears.

  ‘Forgive me, Father! Is Mother dead, then?’

  ‘I will never forgive you! I am almost a ghost!’

  Guang began to shake. Such words were a curse, they would echo forever. He became aware Abbot Jian stood beside him, wagging a reproachful finger.

  ‘Come now, Lord Yun,’ said the monk, sternly. ‘The demons are speaking through you again.’

  The old man glowered.

  ‘I know what I am saying. Useless boy!’

  Then, as swiftly as a cloud covers the sun, Lord Yun was sobbing.

  ‘Poor little fishes! No one will set them free. If they could fly instead of swim they would be free! They would fly to my pond in Three-Step-House and be free forever!’

  Abbot Jian touched Guang’s shoulder and he rose reluctantly.

  ‘You see how it is,’ whispered the monk. ‘Possessed by a minor demon. We have tried exorcism many times but without success. He refuses to wash or leave his room. His only companions are those fish.’

  Outside the guest room, Guang struggled to compose himself. Unworthiness licked his soul like a cruel flame. Although Abbot Jian murmured that his mother died quite contentedly, having insisted she be removed to a chamber on the opposite side of the monastery to Lord Yun, Guang did not listen.

  ‘I must take Father back to my brother,’ he said. ‘Shih will know how to cure him.’

  Jian started at the name.

  ‘Your twin is still alive? The one Lord Yun disowned?’

  ‘Yes, he is a doctor in Nancheng.’

  ‘I see. A healer. Nancheng is a long way to go. Is your father fit for such a journey? Especially through lands occupied by the Mongols. If I could advise you, I would suggest that Lord Yun stay here. After all, he is half in the next life already. You are young, Guang, and your future lies before you.’

  They were interrupted by an old monk hurrying towards them, his stick clicking on the floor.

  ‘Abbot Jian! Khan Bayke is at the gate with twenty men.

  They demand admittance. They say they have come for Lord Yun.’

  At the Western Military Academy, Guang was taught the following: ‘Swiftness is the soul of War. Abuse the enemy’s lack of preparation; assault him when he feels safe; pursue an unexpected route.’ In the decade of soldiering that followed his training to be an officer, he learned that a man prepared to die will always defeat one who values life.

  Guang did not hesitate. Indeed action came as a kind of release.

  ‘Tell them I forced you to take me to Father!’ he hissed to Jian.

  Recollecting the girl he had abandoned in Wei Valley, he said, ‘This should convince them,’ and punched the monk hard in the nose with all his force, so that there was a spurt of blood and splintering of bone. Abbot Jian fell unconscious to the floor.

  Rushing into Father’s room, Guang tore a strip from his own robe and brutally gagged the old man. Then he scooped him up along with his staff and pack and staggered down the corridors of the monastery. Already he could hear shouts as the barbarians searched the building, room by room. But Guang knew the ground better than Bayke. Emerging from a side-door, he followed the outer wall and deposited his father in a convenient rubbish tip. Then he peered round a corner at the front gate.

  As he had expected, the enemy’s horses were tethered outside the entrance. Now luck was on his side. In his eagerness for revenge, Bayke had entrusted the horses to two skinny youths.

  The boys were struggling to settle the steppe ponies, still excited by their mad gallop to Whale Rock Monastery.

  Removing the leather bag of burning powder and stones from his pack, Guang checked the fire-pot at his belt. Its slow-burning match had gone out! Frantically, Guang retraced his steps, aware prayer candles were kept burning in a small shrine along the corridor they had just taken. His luck held. The Mongols were still searching the far side of the monastery. It took a precious moment to relight the match in his fire-pot.

  When he returned to the rubbish tip where Lord Yun stood uncertainly, tugging at the gag with feeble fingers, Guang readied his weapons. Then, leaning on his staff like a crippled monk, he hobbled round the corner and approached the youths. One noticed him at once, shouting a warning. Guang kept going. Ten feet from the youth, he twisted the handle of his staff. Nothing happened. The spear-head had stuck!

  Undaunted, he rushed forward and smashed the iron-clad butt of his staff against the youth’s forehead. The second boy screamed to Heaven, before fleeing into the monastery.

  Guang ran back and dragged Lord Yun to a horse. There was no more time. Already he could hear Bayke’s men returning to the gatehouse. He took a bullwhip from
one of the saddles and threw his father over the seat, nimbly tying the squirming old man into place with the braided leather rope.

  He spent precious moments loosening the remaining horses’ reins. At last he climbed onto the finest beast there: from the silver tracery on its saddle, he suspected it was Bayke’s own.

  But opportunity had run through his fingers. Although he and Father were now mounted, the enemy were rushing through the gatehouse. As a hammer seems to hover before it falls, all present paused. The Mongols wore lamellar armour, bows and swords in their hands. Bayke carried a heavy mace, which he pointed, roaring a command.

  Snatching the match from his fire-pot, Guang lit the short fuse protruding from his makeshift thunder-clap bomb. It flared. Casting down the swollen leather bag into the midst of the Mongol horses, he dragged Lord Yun’s mount forward by the reins. Shouts rose behind them. Soon they were cantering. Guang’s back itched in anticipation of an arrow, even as he crouched low over the saddle. Why had they not struck him down? The Mongols were capable of shooting birds on the wing. Unless, of course, Khan Bayke had ordered that his son’s killer must be taken alive.

  A moment later the thunderclap bomb exploded with a roar that echoed round the valley. Birds flew screeching from the trees. Horses whinnied in pain and terror. As he glanced back, Guang saw all Bayke’s horses scattering through a cloud of dust and smoke, their hooves drumming the stony ground. One limped outlandishly, fell on its side, tried to struggle up, then flopped on the road.

  There would be no pursuit for a while.

  *

  As he galloped away from Whale Rock Monastery, Guang knew he had gained only an hour’s lead at the very most. The Mongols would eventually gather their horses and thunder after them. He and Father were tied to a fraying rope above jagged stones.

  After several li he halted, for the horses were too exhausted to go further. When he removed Father’s gag the old man coughed and spluttered. Guang recalled that on trapped ground one should devise stratagems. As long as they stayed on the Chunming High Road they were certainly trapped. He glanced at Lord Yun who was muttering to himself, complaining about the loss of his fish.