Chapter Sixty-Two: The Sweet Aroma

In the northern courtyard of Wangzhuang Fort, only two soldiers stood guard atop the fortress wall.

Before they could even react to the thunderous explosion, border troops had already loosed a volley of arrows, forcing them to cower behind the low wall inside. One of them, hunched over and trying to raise the alarm, was brought down by a single arrow from Gao Xian. The other dropped his bow and shouted his surrender.

After that, the attackers pressed in on the southern courtyard, advancing simultaneously through both gates and along both sides of the fortress wall.

Liu Chengzong took no part in this one-sided skirmish. Robbed of his fighting strength, he ran frantically through the deep halls of Wangzhuang Fort, like a wounded bull goaded into a frenzy.

The blast from the explosive rod reverberated with doubled force in the confines of the cellar, making his ears throb and his head ring. The sensation lingered for a long time before it slowly faded. But even as the gunpowder’s smoke and taste ebbed from his mouth and nose, a strange, pervasive sweetness began to suffuse the air.

Liu Chengzong felt as if his body had been damaged by the shock. Panic seized him; he was desperate to escape this scent and prove to himself he was unhurt. But the aroma was everywhere, and only grew stronger.

Gao Xian came running, knife in hand. “Lion, what are you doing in the back courtyard? I looked everywhere for you. Do you smell that fragrance?”

“We’re in trouble,” Liu Chengzong replied, baffled by the phenomenon. “Something’s wrong with your nose, too.”

Gao Xian paid no mind to the scent or its effects on himself; instead, he announced the fighting was over. The garrison had fought well—though poorly equipped, they were well-fed and well-trained, and managed to wound several of the attacking soldiers. The steward of Wangzhuang showed remarkable resolve; though felled by an arrow to the chest from Liu Chengzong, as he lay dying he warned the commander that if he fell, they must fight to the end, for if Wangzhuang was lost, none would survive.

Those words weighed heavily on everyone. Before the steward had even breathed his last, the garrison commander surrendered and, as a show of loyalty, slit the steward’s throat. With their leaders dead, the soldiers knew that even if they held the fort, death awaited them. Better to become outlaws and delay the inevitable.

Cao Yao had already struck a deal with the two bandit leaders outside: four-tenths of the fortress’s spoils would go to them.

Liu Chengzong frowned at this. “Brother Cao is still outside the fort?”

“Of course, he’s down below,” Gao Xian replied as if it were obvious.

Liu Chengzong ignored him and the issue with his nose, darting up to the top of the wall. He wasted no words, ordering someone to throw down a rope, then nocked an arrow and shouted down, “Anyone who moves, dies!”

Cao Yao, who had been negotiating below, understood at once, grabbed the rope, and scrambled up. In a flash, he vaulted over the high wall, rubbing his bruised backside and gesturing in exasperation at the others. “Really, you lot—couldn’t you let me up first? What was I supposed to negotiate down there?”

Down below, he was little more than a hostage, his life in the hands of others. He was no expert in intrigue—there was nothing good he could bargain for. But up here, Cao Yao came into his element.

Gripping the loophole, he called down, “You two, withdraw to the south bank. Each of you gets a tenth, and my word is good!”

Five or six hundred men clogged the area below—leaving was difficult, but better to lose some wealth than court disaster. On the hill, more than forty peasant soldiers with no battle experience waited; they were needed to haul grain. If fighting broke out, blood would be spilled and the grain lost, regardless of who won.

As long as the grain was taken, any amount was profit. It was, in essence, a toll to pass.

Even though Cao Yao had scaled the wall in an instant, some money and food could still be wrung from the two outlaw bands below, who were quite content with the deal. The three parties haggled across the breadth of Wangzhuang Fort, but in the end, things settled as such, and the outlaws slowly withdrew to the southern bank.

Not until every last bandit vanished from sight did the border troops break out in wild celebration. After the long hunger at Yuhe Fort, after the constant fear on Heilong Mountain, they ran like beggars who had never seen such riches, dashing through the vast manor-like fortress.

Everywhere lay precious decorations, strange and dazzling objects. Some draped themselves in brocade armor like capes, strutting proudly through the crowd—even if someone called it women’s clothing, they didn’t care; any cloth was better than the worn-out cotton jackets they’d been wearing.

Soldiers rummaged through trunks and cupboards, piling up stacks of gold and silver. Hairpins became darts, silver combs fished for lice, and after drinking themselves full, some even stripped and soaked in tubs strewn with flower petals, peeling away layers of grime.

Many crowded around the central hall’s table in silence, their eyes fixed on what lay atop it. Between a jade ruyi paperweight and a fine porcelain vase stood a crystal hourglass with a tiny wooden figure inside. As the sand trickled down, the weight triggered a mechanism, and the little figure would strike a tiny drum with a mallet—thump!—sending the soldiers into peals of laughter. The little figure won a storm of applause.

Then there was the squad leader Tian Shoujing, tall and sturdy, with no parents, wife, or children, who had guarded the border for seven years and fought the northern invaders three times. When he walked into the stable, he broke down, weeping in the mud like a child. For the first time, he realized his life’s ambition should not have been to become a captain—but to be a mule. The mules of Wangzhuang ate better than the war horses of Yuhe Fort. And at Yuhe Fort, the horses ate better than the men.

Only now did Liu Chengzong realize his nose was fine. Everyone could smell the same intense, sweet aroma, drifting down from the northern mountain, seeping through the cracks in the rock, filling their nostrils.

Entering the cool mountain cavern, the scent grew ever clearer. He pushed open a heavy wooden door, and the fragrance of wine rushed out to meet him.

Piles of grain, stacked taller than a man, flanked the entrance, surging into Liu Chengzong’s vision like a tidal wave. At his feet, in the closed, fermenting air, the spoiled liquid had pooled into shallow puddles—fragrant from afar, foul up close.

Silks and brocades, gold and jewels—none could compare to the value of this grain, when whole villages starved to death like wheat being harvested, and last year’s grain rotted at the bottom of the mountain cellar because so much new grain had been piled atop it.

The hardened warriors from the northern border stared, speechless. Liu Chengzong’s mind flashed back to the day of the bandit siege on Heilong Mountain, when Shiliu squatted beside the corpse of a man who had died eating dirt, poking it with a stick, and said, “My father’s belly looked just like that.”

If only a thousandth—no, a ten-thousandth—of this grain had been taken out, Shiliu’s father might still be alive today.

“How much grain is this?” Even the wealthiest among them, Cao Yao, could not hazard a guess at the scale. The others had even less idea. None had ever seen so much, not even in Liu Chengzong’s other memories.

He took a deep, trembling breath. “Move it all. If we can’t, bring in everyone outside to help. Not a single grain must be left to those hoarders—not a single millet for the prince!”

The crowd erupted in cheers, while curses against the prince and the state echoed through the cavernous grain vault.

Carrying torches, the great procession spread out from Wangzhuang Fort in three directions, then returned again and again. People used mules, carts, even their own hands and backs, to haul out sack after sack. From night to morning, from morning to dusk, they toiled without sleep or food, until men dropped dead under their burden, blood staining the yellow earth, never to rise again.

Yet no one uttered a word of complaint. This was not just rice or flour, nor millet or cornmeal. This was fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, wives, brothers, uncles, aunts, every living soul’s lifeblood.

As long as there was grain left to move, even the spirits of the dead would rise to keep carrying.

When the last sack was finally hauled out, Liu Chengzong’s eyes were bloodshot, and though he could collapse at any moment from exhaustion, his spirit was ablaze.

The two bandit leaders, their faces drawn in the same way, blocked their horses and asked, “There’s too much grain for us to take it all. What do you plan to do with the rest?”

The four men looked at each other, momentarily stumped. Liu Chengzong replied, “We can’t take it all either. At night, we’ll scatter some at the doors of the poor—save whoever we can.”

The scholarly bandit leader clasped his fists and asked, “May I know the names of you gentlemen? In future, should trouble arise, you may find me at Nanjiashan. They call me ‘Breaker of the Heavens’.”

The broad-shouldered leader, after a moment’s pause, also clasped his fists. “I am ‘Arrow that Pierces the Heavens,’ at Tiger’s Flank.”

Now it was the four’s turn to look awkward—they hadn’t thought of names for themselves. Moreover, the places these two mentioned were not far from Yan’an Prefecture, forming a triangle around the city—yet all the grain they’d carted away had gone in the opposite direction. Clearly, everyone was cautious.

Cao Yao asked, “Whose name do we leave?”

Seeing the others reluctant, Liu Chengzong leaned from his horse and said, “Call me the Tiger General. Our place is hard to find. If there’s trouble, I’ll come looking for you.”