Just as Cui Jingyu had said, this match was not theirs to win.

After Cui Jingyu successfully picked the flower, the expression on Yuan Xiu’s face was indescribable. There was nothing else to be said — he had only one command: “Lao Qi. You’re on.”

The one called Lao Qi took the field, and the tide turned immediately. As Luo Yong said when he saw him the first moment: “Now there’s a true battle commander. Why is he staying in the guards and not going to the frontier to serve?”

Lao Qi had never been to the frontier, but he was more than enough. Though Cui Jingyu remained just as formidable as before, under a three-way press from Lao Qi, Yuan Xiu, and Old Yuan, gaps were frequently torn open in the Northern March Army’s back line. Yuan Xiu even managed to score another goal, and knocked one of the Northern March Army’s flower-balls from their pole.

“Much obliged,” Yuan Xiu said, mimicking Cui Jingyu’s manner — cold even after taking the flower — as he rode back to his own half. “Again.”

True to form, the next exchange went the same way. Yuan Xiu’s side had both the men and the horses; and although Cui Jingyu held off Lao Qi and Yuan Xiu, the other two, Wei Yushan and Luo Yong, could not stop Old Yuan between them, and he forced through another goal. By the time they moved to defend the pole, it was already too late — Yuan Xiu spurred forward and leapt for the flower just as Cui Jingyu had done, though with somewhat less mastery, landing on his feet rather than the saddle. But the audience and the ladies in the gallery, not knowing the finer points of such things, cheered just as warmly.

Wei Yushan was now truly desperate.

He would not have felt this urgency if Cui Jingyu had not scored that first goal — but now he was convinced his side really should be capable of winning, and that conviction made him all the more stubbornly insistent. He immediately turned on Luo Yong: “What’s wrong with you? I told you to box him in, and you left a gap for him to run through.”

“I was worried about damaging the horse,” Luo Yong replied with an embarrassed grin. “His horse is so powerful — what if mine gets hurt in the collision? My Hei Zi is already getting old.”

“Then don’t bring an old horse onto the field!” Wei Yushan snapped. “The Emperor gave you a new horse — why didn’t you ride that?”

“I’m not the kind to discard the old for the new,” Luo Yong said, covering Hei Zi’s ears. “Keep your voice down — Hei Zi’s old and already sensitive about things. If he knows you’re looking down on him, he’ll stop eating his oats when we get back, and how will you compensate me for that?”

Wei Yushan was ready to burst with frustration but could not do anything to him, and could only hurl his mallet down hard. Cui Jingyu rode up, took one look at him, and said flatly: “A general cannot act on impulse.”

“I know,” Wei Yushan said — Cui Jingyu was his model, and his words were listened to — but his face was still flushed red with indignation. “I just can’t stand the thought of losing to that crowd of wealthy young masters!”

Cui Jingyu laughed.

“Who says we’re losing?”

Wei Yushan looked at him in astonishment, following his gaze toward a spot at the edge of the field. Understanding dawned immediately.

With an answer in hand, his spirits lifted at once. Light in spirit and quick on his horse, he immediately rode up to Yuan Xiu and even took the initiative to goad him: “Is relying on numbers against fewer what you call your method of winning?”

Yuan Xiu was not the type to concede a point: “Oh? Aren’t we five against five? When did our side gain an extra player? I must have missed it.”

He was a man of the palace — however proud and arrogant, there was always something in his words that worked on two levels. To Wei Yushan’s ear it came across as arch and sneering. Wei Yushan had already been at odds with him since the Caihua Banquet, and hearing this, immediately retorted: “I’ve heard that men who serve in the imperial presence have all had a certain part cut off below. Is that true? No wonder the way you talk is so strange!”

Yuan Xiu was a palace guard — the yellow fringe on his jade pendant marked him as imperial clan, so of course he was no eunuch. But Wei Yushan deliberately asked it that way, and Yuan Xiu was only seventeen or eighteen, a young man — hearing such words, how could he not be furious? “My speech is strange? You Northern March soldiers are the real brutes — all brawn and no brains, that’s why you can’t beat us!”

“So you already know we can’t win?” Wei Yushan goaded him immediately. “If we do win, it’ll prove you’re the cowards here. With horses as fine as these and you can’t do anything with them — you’re even worse than eunuchs!”

He had said what he needed to say, then spun his horse around and rode off.

Yuan Xiu’s face had gone scarlet with rage. He reined in his horse and shouted his retort: “Then if we win, it proves your Northern March Army are all useless! What unparalleled merit? If the Imperial Guard went to fight, we’d beat the Northern Rong just the same!”

Wei Yushan had ridden close to say his piece, and then left — so Yuan Xiu’s return volley, in order to be heard, had to be shouted. Half the spectators heard it perfectly clearly. Even Pingjun Prince, in his role as host, felt a touch of awkwardness.

The Rui Prince was utterly unruffled — accustomed as he was to exceptional treatment, he had long since grown impervious to such things. Yuan Xiu’s excesses were his doing to begin with. Hearing all of this, he was still calmly sipping tea.

The Northern March Army officers, however, had no feel for the social hierarchies of the capital, and every last one of them was immediately inflamed. They clamored to take the field: “General Wei, send us on — let’s cut that arrogance down a notch.”

But Wei Yushan was in no hurry. In the army, taunting before a fight to stir up fighting spirit was common enough. He rode in front of them, looked them over as their blood ran hot — then passed each one without choosing, until he reached a man in a grey-blue robe at the edge of the crowd, arms loosely folded, with a thoroughly unhurried air. “They’ve gone this far. Can you really just sit there?”

“And if I can’t just sit here, then what?” Pei Zhao replied with clear-eyed calm. “You just want to provoke me into taking the field. Does elder brother not know your own mind?”

Wei Yushan was caught out and felt a little sheepish: “It wasn’t me provoking him — that young man was looking down on our entire Northern March Army from the start, or he’d never have said what he did.”

Pei Zhao’s own easy equanimity held, but the fire-battalion officers at his side were less patient — one muttered: “Always calling on Commander Pei to clean up after you. It’s been like this every time — the hard battles are for Commander Pei to fight, and the credit goes to your Mountain Battalion…”

“When was it every time? It was just that one time at the Mingsha River…” Wei Yushan thought of how desperate things had been then and felt his confidence waver. He lowered his voice: “Anyway, it’s already like this — if you don’t come on, we all lose face together.”

Pei Zhao only smiled. But those who knew him could see his mood was very poor.

“You want me to do you a favor, and you talk like that?” He was smiling, but there was not a trace of warmth in his peach-blossom eyes. Wei Yushan felt something like unease looking at him. In the whole Northern March Army, there were only two men he feared: Cui Jingyu and Pei Zhao. He feared the former because he was like an older brother; the latter because he was simply impossible to read.

If he hadn’t had this particular grievance stuck in his throat that he absolutely could not swallow, he would not have gone to Pei Zhao for help.

But Pei Zhao, changing tone abruptly, did not press him further — instead he glanced toward the gallery and said with an indolent air: “You want to ask someone for help and you can’t even say something pleasant. Call me elder brother and let me hear it first.”

Wei Yushan relaxed — knowing the irritation was not directed at him, he felt emboldened enough to reply: “In your dreams. They’d have to cut my head off first — call you elder brother…”

“Hey,” Pei Zhao said, answering as if that were exactly what he’d been called, a faint cool smile on his lips as he held out his hand. His attendant passed over a mallet — he caught it lightly. It was a long-handled one. Wei Yushan felt three parts reassured, and then heard him say with a smile: “Little Wei, bring elder brother a horse.”

Since Pei Zhao was willing to take the field, Wei Yushan had no patience to argue over the liberties being taken, and asked: “Why don’t you ride Jueying — that really is a fine horse. Let those effeminate fellows have a look at a true purebred.”

“For these people, does it take Jueying?” Pei Zhao laughed, and swung himself up onto the horse his deputy had led over — one of the imperially granted steppe horses. The others had also avoided riding their new horses out of unfamiliarity, preferring what they knew. But Pei Zhao was always unusual in his ways.

Say what you would against him — he was capable at everything. He was skilled in riding and archery, skilled in close combat. Before the great battle at Mingsha River, at the campaign for Dulongcheng, Wei Yushan had once happened to serve alongside him as paired guard escorts for Marshal Wei, and had seen his battlefield strategy — strange in approach, yet devastatingly effective, almost as if guided by some unseen force, entirely unlike Cui Jingyu’s style.

But then say what you might in his favor — he seemed to put his heart into nothing. He excelled at warfare, yet accumulated no military merit. He excelled at riding and archery, yet had never won a hunting competition. Even with those looks of his, he wore the same languid grey-blue robe day after day.

The ladies in the gallery, though, were quite taken with exactly that air. The moment he appeared on the field, the upper floor broke into commotion — the young ladies themselves were too reserved to show it openly, but the maids and older serving women made no such restraint, calling out: “The young general in grey-blue from the other day at the viewing gallery has taken the field!” At once everyone pressed forward against the railing, and even some of the older married women and nannies came straight down to the field-side for a closer look, all wanting to see him for themselves.

Yuan Xiu, though he didn’t know the newcomer’s background, was immediately wary of the reaction. He watched Pei Zhao ride out — and noticed that instead of going toward the front line, Pei Zhao headed for the back, pulling up alongside Cui Jingyu and positioning himself there.

Cui Jingyu and he had fought as comrades at Mingsha River. Although the two of them had rarely been in the same space since, they recognized each other’s thinking immediately.

“You want me to guard your flank?” Cui Jingyu asked.

Pei Zhao sat on his horse with an unhurried slouch, mallet resting loosely in his arms, smiling a smile with an edge of cool amusement.

“You’ve been playing for half a shichen and you can’t even bring down a few guards. If you don’t guard my flank, who will?” Only he could taunt Cui Jingyu so openly and not get struck for it. “Go on then — win back two goals and we can make it back to camp in time for supper.”

It was not unwarranted, Pei Zhao’s swagger — he truly had the grounds for it. With Cui Jingyu gone, only Pei Zhao remained in the back line. Yuan Xiu, curious to test his limits, deliberately bore down on him with Old Yuan at his side, saying pleasantly: “Can Commander Pei hold this alone?”

Coming up close, he was struck by how remarkable Pei Zhao’s features were. In the imperial guards, a face like that would have drawn powerful patrons’ favor the moment it appeared. And the man made not the slightest effort at presentation — no formal hat, hair simply bound, while the capital nobles wore gauze caps and embroidered headbands in layers — yet none of them could match the easy elegance of a few loose strands of hair drifting across his face in the evening breeze.

Dressed so carelessly — he hadn’t even changed into proper equestrian attire — it was evident he had not taken this polo match seriously from the start. Yuan Xiu was still inwardly annoyed when he heard Pei Zhao give a light laugh: “Polo, of all things? It’s a pastime. Is it worth talking about attack and defense?”

Before his words had even finished, Yuan Xiu found the ball gone from his hand. Conventional wisdom said that the long-handled mallet was powerful and forceful, the short-handled one nimble and variable — everyone who played polo knew this. But Pei Zhao held the long-handled mallet, and somehow managed to intercept the ball directly from Yuan Xiu’s short-handled one. Yuan Xiu, bewildered as he was, had no choice but to give chase — and had no chance of catching him.

In polo, the standard approach was straightforward: get a good horse that runs fast — no matter how skilled the opponent, you just chase and intercept the ball. Players competed on the quality of their horses, the quality of their mallets, the size of their team, and how well-drilled their coordination was — win those factors, and the result was essentially settled, with room for perhaps one or two moments of inspired individual play in ten matches.

But this was something else entirely. Pei Zhao’s horse was not as fast as theirs, and he was using the long mallet — yet with Yuan Xiu and Old Yuan double-teaming him, they still could not catch him. Yuan Xiu, astonished, simply stopped and watched, trying to understand how he was shaking Old Yuan, and slowly began to see his method.

He was not trying to race the other horses at all. He was controlling the ball himself — entirely alone. Conventional polo wisdom said you needed at least two players working in combination, passing back and forth to advance toward the goal. But Pei Zhao seemed to be passing to himself. By all logic, Old Yuan’s faster horse should have caught the ball he struck forward — but just as Old Yuan was about to intercept, the small clay ball curved on the ground, changed direction, slipped right under Old Yuan’s horse’s belly, and seemed almost sentient. Pei Zhao, who had been waiting at ease for exactly this, received it with his mallet, then sent it gliding forward again with a gentle touch.

Yuan Xiu understood immediately.

“His ball curves!” He called out to Lao Qi at once: “Box him in carefully — he’s a master!”

Polo was a demanding art — it had even become a dividing line between the well-born and the less fortunate. Of the four men’s banquet events, polo, archery, and horse racing were all the pastimes of noble young men, because ordinary families could not afford horses, and having bought one, could not afford to keep it. Riding required training from childhood, and polo required skills learned even younger — the mallet was long and thin, the striking face narrow, the ball small. Just being able to hit the ball while riding at full speed was no simple thing, let alone hitting it far, managing power and direction with the long mallet or deft control with the short one, passing, intercepting, redirecting, and coordinating with your teammates — the knowledge embedded in all of this ran deep.

Hitting a straight shot well was hard enough. How much harder to send the ball on a curved arc. In Yuan Xiu’s perception, every shot Pei Zhao made traced a crescent-shaped curve — when you chased him straight, the ball curved away; even if you knew it would curve, you could not tell which way; even if your horse was faster and you planted yourself in his path, it made no difference — you were simply guessing at shadows.

There was a saying that the greatest archers did not shoot straight but in an arc — all the harder to defend against. In the founding days of the dynasty, the elite Shenqi Battalion had fielded a small company of no more than a hundred men, all one-in-ten-thousand marksmen. At the great river crossing battle, they had arced fire-oil arrows across the river and burned the Little Liang King’s grain stores — the single most decisive engagement in the founding of the Great Zhou. Those who had witnessed the battle said the Shenqi Battalion’s arrow-rain had fallen like meteors from the sky, sheets of fire covering half the riverside, a scene like the end of days.

Pei Zhao’s polo had something of those Shenqi Battalion archers in it — transcendent, beyond all convention. Yuan Xiu had also heard of Pei Zhao’s three-arrow triumph at the Cui family’s enfeoffment banquet, but he had not anticipated that the Northern March Army harbored such a figure.

Had he known, he would never have lumped the entire Northern March Army into his insults — and then he would never have provoked Pei Zhao onto the field.

Yuan Xiu knew it was too late for regret. He was glad at least for his own caution in placing Lao Qi to guard him — and told Lao Qi to be watchful. Lao Qi acknowledged. Treating it like a serious threat now, Yuan Xiu called the two back-line players forward to box Pei Zhao in together.

But Wei Yushan would not have it. He charged over immediately, using his horse to force the two defenders apart, leaving Pei Zhao and Lao Qi to face each other alone.

After one exchange, Lao Qi knew the day was going to be difficult. Because Pei Zhao was still smiling.

He seemed to have found a flicker of genuine interest at last. Watching Lao Qi come at him head-on, knowing Lao Qi was set on intercepting his ball, he deliberately spurred his horse into a gallop. Lao Qi chose to hold his pace and read him — but when Pei Zhao accelerated, there was no choice but to push his horse to follow. Fortunately Lao Qi’s mount was one of the purebreds — Pei Zhao’s steppe horse was no match for it.

Yuan Xiu had put his finest horse under Lao Qi for exactly this wager. Lao Qi, knowing he could not be shaken, pressed in close and was about to break the ball away when Pei Zhao gave it a light tap, sending it under his own horse’s belly, then switched his mallet to the other hand — and the ball was on the opposite side.

That alone would not have amounted to much — just a hand switch. Lao Qi knew chasing him further would only mean another switch, so he rode ahead to cut him off, keeping Pei Zhao in his peripheral vision just behind. One moment’s relief.

Then he saw Pei Zhao, on horseback, lean his body sideways — a single hand gripping the mallet, raising it high and wide.

Lao Qi knew immediately that something was wrong. He moved to block, and far too late — Pei Zhao swept the mallet, and the small red clay ball flew like a loosed arrow across nearly half the field and straight through the goal.

In the same instant, Pei Zhao had already ridden to the flower-ball pole.

Even picking the flower, he made it look effortless. He clamped his legs against his horse’s sides and the steppe horse rose up on its hind legs; he raised the long mallet, hooked it under the flower-ball on the pole, and the bamboo pole bent down toward him. It was not he who went to the flower — the flower came to him. He plucked it from the pole with ease and tossed it to Wei Yushan, who had come riding up behind.