The border fortress.

Li Chi watched the Black Wu forces pull back like a retreating tide. He could finally breathe.

The Black Wu had launched a sudden assault on the fortress two days ago without pause, throwing themselves straight into a fierce siege. Over those two days they had been driven back more than a dozen times, yet each lull lasted only so long before the next wave came crashing up.

They were racing against Ning — convinced, in their arrogance, that a Ning army in the northern wastes could never hold against a million-strong encirclement. Or perhaps they were racing against their own other columns, to see who would break Tang Pidi first, or who would be first to capture the Ning Emperor alive.

“Your Majesty.”

Yu Jiuling lowered his voice. “Please go down and rest a while. You haven’t left the wall in two days and two nights.”

Li Chi shook his head. “As long as I am here, anyone else may step down — but not me.”

“The soldiers rotate off to sleep in shifts. If Your Majesty keeps on like this, you might wear yourself—”

Before he could finish, Li Chi clapped him on the shoulder. “If you’re worried I’ll wear out, go find me something to eat. I’m not afraid of exhaustion. I have always been afraid of hunger.”

Yu Jiuling’s heart clenched. He spun on his heel and ran down the wall, muttering as he went.

“Every other emperor stays safely at the rear — who else does what you do? Who else is like you!”

Halfway down he ran straight into Gao Xining, who was leading a large group of people, each carrying a food basket or hoisting a carrying-frame between them.

“Where is His Majesty?” Gao Xining spotted Yu Jiuling and asked at once.

“Big bro— no, Your Highness the Empress, you have to do something about His Majesty. I can’t talk him down. He simply won’t come off the wall.”

“Who could ever talk him down? If no one can, then no one does.” Gao Xining waved her hand and led her people onward toward the wall. Yu Jiuling saw the look on her face and panicked.

“Your Highness, you’re going up again?”

“Of course I am.” She called back over her shoulder as she walked. “His Majesty is up there — how can his wife not be? I can’t fight, but I can make sure every brave soldier of Ning on this wall gets a hot meal.”

From the moment the fighting started, Gao Xining had not left the supply and provisions camp, working side by side with the field cooks.

“Let me go in your place,” Yu Jiuling said urgently.

“I am the Empress. Me going up to bring food to the soldiers is different from you going up.” She gave him a smile. “Big bro knows you’re worried — but big bro is the Empress now. An Empress must look like one.”

With that she ran toward the wall, and her people ran with her.

This was perhaps a scene that had never once appeared in all the long history of the central plains — the Empress herself, with a great train of palace maids and attendants, baskets and carrying-frames in hand, running up to deliver meals to the border soldiers.

Yu Jiuling was not a man of learning. He could not have put into words any great and stirring truth.

But in that moment, only one thought moved through him: a Ning like this — how could it ever fail to be great?

With an Emperor and Empress like these — how could the victory in this battle ever belong to the enemy?

Up on the wall, Gao Xining and her attendants hurried to distribute food to the soldiers, her eyes all the while quietly searching. When she spotted Li Chi in the distance, scope in hand, peering out over the wall, she snatched up a basket and ran to him.

“We’re not fighting right now — eat while you can.”

She held the basket out to him. Li Chi grinned, took it, and looked inside. Steaming hot buns — just the smell of them was enough to set his mouth watering.

There were few people in this world who knew what Li Chi feared most. Two knew him best — one was Gao Xining, the other was his master, the Daoist Changmei. He had set out on the jianghu roads while still in swaddling clothes and spent more than a decade on them since. What he feared most — was hunger.

And Li Chi was genuinely starving right now. The fighting had gone on so long, the physical toll on every soldier enormous, and Li Chi had never left the front. His expenditure was greater than anyone else’s — in the time it took an ordinary soldier to loose three arrows, he could loose seven or eight. Over the course of this battle he had held the line for dozens of men combined, since the soldiers rotated down to rest while he did not.

Among all those on this wall who had fought through more than a dozen of Black Wu’s assaults, Li Chi was certainly among them.

He grabbed a large bun and shoved it in his mouth. One bite, and his cheeks puffed out like a squirrel’s.

“Get down soon,” he said between muffled mouthfuls, his eyes full of concern. “The Black Wu are moving their troops around over there — they’ll probably come again before long.”

Gao Xining gave a soft sound of assent. “You eat. Don’t talk while you eat. Fill your stomach first. I’ll go down as soon as I’ve seen you finish.”

Li Chi grinned and ate with great, sweeping bites. In short order, the ten-odd buns in the basket were gone.

“And my little extra?” he asked with a sly look.

Gao Xining reached into a small cloth pouch and produced a piece of candy, unwrapped it, and pushed it between his lips. “Right here.”

“Heh heh…”

The candy melted on his tongue. Li Chi raised an eyebrow at her. “Your man has a battle to fight. Go on, get down.”

He held out his hand. “Give me tonight’s little extra too. Don’t come up again tonight.”

Gao Xining made a noise of mock disdain. “Dream on. I didn’t come here for you — I came to feed the soldiers. I just happened to bring you something on the side.”

She turned and left.

A few steps out, she looked back and smiled at him. “Fight well, you. Don’t you dare get hurt.”

Li Chi laughed out loud. “Got it, woman. Now go, go.”

He turned to Yu Jiuling. “Hurry up and see your big bro off.”

Yu Jiuling went forward quickly and walked Gao Xining toward the steps. Everywhere she passed, the soldiers cheered for her.

“Don’t shout ‘long live the Empress’ at me — what’s the use of shouting that? If you’re going to shout, tell me what you want to eat, and I’ll make it and bring it up!”

“We love everything the Empress brings!”

“That’s right! Anything!”

Gao Xining laughed. “Then you’d better be quick about it — at least faster than His Majesty. He can really eat.”

The soldiers all laughed.

“Take care of yourselves, every one of you. Kill as many as you can — and stay alive, all of you. That would be even better.”

“We’ll be good!” One man roared at the top of his lungs. “We’ll all do as the Empress says!”

“Pah! You do as His Majesty says!”

When she came down off the wall, Yu Jiuling tried to urge her to go and rest. She refused, and went straight back to the cook fires.

“I can’t do anything else, but what I can do, I’ll do well. His Majesty is the first Emperor of Ning — he won’t shame that ‘first.’ I am the first Empress of Ning — I won’t shame it either. Do you know what it means to be first? It means we have to set an example for every generation that comes after us.”

She patted Yu Jiuling on the shoulder. “Jiumei — go back up to the wall. Big bro is counting on you to protect His Majesty. I don’t need you looking after me.”

“Yes!” Yu Jiuling answered, and ran back toward the wall.

Less than a quarter-hour after the meal, the Black Wu came again, wave after wave, as though they did not know the meaning of death.

Their method of siege assault had no particular cleverness to it — only this ferocious, relentless tide, heedless of how many fell.

At the stroke of midnight the assault pulled back again, perhaps because the darkness of the northern wastes was too absolute and they could no longer find their footing.

The garrison on the wall took the opening to rotate shifts, soldiers who had fought through more than a day and a full night going down to rest while fresh Ning troops moved quickly into their places.

“Your Majesty—”

The commander of the imperial guards, Ye Xiaoqian, urged Li Chi: “It looks as though the Black Wu won’t come again in the second half of the night. Please go back and rest — even if you return at first light, that would be fine.”

“No need.” Li Chi looked around and pointed to a nearby spot. “Bring that oilcloth over. I’ll lie down right here on it.”

Ye Xiaoqian opened his mouth to press further, but Li Chi had already lowered himself against the wall. “If you want me to stop talking, don’t make me say another word. I’m tired. I want to rest.”

Ye Xiaoqian felt something sting at the back of his eyes. He hurried over, and together with his fellow imperial guards folded the oilcloth as neatly as they could manage, laying it out on the cold, hard stone of the wall.

Li Chi lay down on it and slowly let out a long breath. “If anything happens, wake me at once.”

The words were barely out of his mouth — Ye Xiaoqian had not even had time to answer — before the sound of soft snoring reached his ears.

This was the third night the Emperor had fought the enemy on the wall without coming down. Ye Xiaoqian stood with one hand on the battlements, and a voice inside him repeated itself again and again.

Ning — you must grow strong. Stronger and stronger still, until it is the Black Wu Emperor who stands guard on a wall at night, unable to sleep soundly.

Ning — there will come a day when Ning’s generals lead a million soldiers through Black Wu’s own territory, answerable to no one.

“Ye Xiaoqian—”

“Your servant is here.”

Li Chi had fallen asleep only moments ago, yet now his eyes were open again. He lowered his voice and said, “Go and find me something to eat. I had dinner, but I’m hungry again.”

Ye Xiaoqian quickly sent someone to the cook fires, and before long they came back with some steamed buns and salted vegetables.

Li Chi was not particular about what he ate — he simply could not sleep soundly on an empty stomach.

Between bites, Li Chi asked Ye Xiaoqian, “Do you know where the northern frontier of Chu stood, at the height of its power?”

“Baishan,” Ye Xiaoqian answered.

“No…” Li Chi shook his head. “Further north than Baishan. At its greatest reach, Chu’s territory stretched all the way to Luojia Lake, north of Baishan…”

He drank a mouthful of water and went on: “When this battle is over, we’ll push the frontier back to Baishan. After that, we’ll find the chance to take back Luojia Lake as well.”

He smiled a little. “They say there’s a kind of fish in Luojia Lake, the finest in the world. How can something like that stay in Black Wu hands forever? Given how Black Wu people eat, they’d ruin any good ingredient you put in front of them.”

Ye Xiaoqian said, “We’ll take Luojia Lake back someday. We’ll eat fish on the shore.”

Li Chi laughed for a good while, then said, “We won’t live to see that day. You’ve seen Black Wu’s strength here — they could throw a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers into the field without a second thought. Ning has a long way to go to catch them. But we needn’t rush, and we mustn’t rush. Gain a little on them today, gain a little more tomorrow, and one day we’ll close the distance. One day we’ll surpass them…”

Ye Xiaoqian felt a tightness in his chest — the Emperor had just spoken aloud the number: a hundred and fifty thousand. And the Ning forces that had come to the northern frontier, nearly everything Ning could muster, numbered barely fifty-odd thousand, or with the troops already stationed here and the volunteers who had come of their own accord, perhaps sixty thousand in all.

“Get some sleep too,” Li Chi said, and lay back down on the oilcloth. “Rest well. We’re waiting for the Grand General’s triumphant return.”

At those words, Ye Xiaoqian felt something shudder inside him.

His Majesty had said it with such certainty.

The Grand General’s triumphant return.

Ye Xiaoqian drew in a long, slow breath. Yes. So what if the enemy outnumbered them many times over? So what if that enemy was Black Wu?

We have the Grand General.

—