In Liangzhou, Li Gu was right at her side — yet Xie Yuzhang had no opportunity for private contact with him. The five days passed.

National Preceptor Abazha had earlier dispatched a messenger back ahead of them, and the reply now returned: Ashina Khan had broken camp and was personally coming to the border to receive the princess of Da Zhao.

Xie Yuzhang’s party set out at last.

The day they departed Liangzhou, great snow fell from the sky, as though the world had been washed clean, turned to a vast silvery white — pure and pristine.

Before boarding the carriage, Xie Yuzhang said, “Lord Li, please take care of yourself.”

Li Ming was moved. “Your Highness, please take care.”

Xie Yuzhang was about to step up into the carriage when Li Ming suddenly called out to her: “Your Highness.”

Xie Yuzhang turned back.

With a look of tender concern, Li Ming said, “With this old minister here in the northwest, Your Highness… need fear nothing.”

The world before her eyes blurred for a moment. Xie Yuzhang turned her face away, and when she turned back, though faint traces of tears still marked her porcelain-white cheeks, she smiled — like a magnolia blooming — and said, “In this life, I am not afraid.”

The convoy set off. One great carriage after another, the heavy loads pressing the wheels to carve deep ruts into the road.

Li Qi grumbled to his father: “Such a beauty, wasted like this.” It was all his father’s fault for being useless — he should have brought Princess Baohua home as his bride.

Li Ming sighed: “We old bones fight and scramble, and it’s the flower-like young girls who pay the price.”

He shook his head, swung up onto his horse, and rode back into the city.

The carriage moved along the road. Xie Yuzhang kept hearing hoofbeats — now distant, now near — moving with great speed. She paid no attention at first, but when it happened again and again she sensed something was off and asked: “What is happening outside?”

The guard escorting the carriage reported: “General Li is drilling Wang Captain and some of our people.”

Xie Yuzhang was surprised. She lifted the curtain to look outside — only a boundless white expanse. The hoofbeats she had just heard were gone now, not a single figure in sight.

She asked the guard for more detail, but the guard did not know much either, and said only: “General Li took a squad and called for Squad Captain Wang, then they were gone.”

A squad numbered fifty men. On this journey, Li Gu had been ordered by Li Ming to escort Xie Yuzhang through Hexi to the border, where he would hand her over to Ashina Khan, and had brought five hundred men of the Flying Tiger Army.

The Flying Tiger Army were all cavalry — they came and went like the wind, killed without a trace.

Xie Yuzhang was a little worried. “Can Wang Shitou and the others keep up with them?”

The guard was also worried: “Unlikely.”

Cavalry were too precious — the Emperor and the Privy Council officials were not willing to provide her with any. Xie Yuzhang’s five hundred guards were all infantry. Wang Shitou and his men were also from infantry backgrounds, and Wang Shitou had previously been nothing more than a squad leader. Xie Yuzhang could not help but worry.

But worrying served no purpose. She could hardly call out to Li Gu and tell him not to push Wang Shitou so hard. Least of all because it was at her request that he was being so thorough and diligent about this. Someone else in his place — who would go to all this trouble?

She let the curtain fall.

She sat alone in the carriage in the quiet dimness. After a long while, for no reason she could name, a faint smile crept to the corner of her lips in the half-dark.

She herself did not notice it.

The next time she heard hoofbeats approaching it was near midday. The rhythmic thunder of those hooves on the ground made one’s own heartbeat quicken in response.

Xie Yuzhang pushed back the curtain — and saw, slanting out of the snowy expanse, a black mass of cavalry charging straight and swift as a razor-sharp steel blade aimed directly at the convoy, as if to slice right through it and cut that long column in two.

The horses in the convoy grew unsettled. But the Flying Tiger Army was arrayed in escort formation along the convoy, and the warhorses beneath the Flying Tiger soldiers showed no alarm whatsoever. With these warhorses anchoring the line, the convoy’s horses were uneasy but did not bolt.

The banner with its great double-winged flying tiger declared that this charging force was none other than the Flying Tiger Army — the terror of Hexi. The convoy had been warned in advance, and even knowing full well that this was General Li who was guarding Princess Baohua, everyone’s heart was still pounding frantically at that breathtaking speed and power bearing down on them.

But just as that black blade seemed on the verge of cleaving the convoy in two, it suddenly became like water — flowing, formless. The horses pivoted, changed direction, and swept back along the convoy against its direction of travel, hugging the line as they galloped, decelerating, then swinging around again to resume the same steady pace as the convoy itself.

Like a fist driving toward a wall that at the last instant twisted and grazed past the surface.

It let a person breathe again.

At midday, the convoy halted to make camp and cook the noon meal. Xie Yuzhang sent someone to call for Wang Shitou.

She asked: “How was it? Can you manage?”

Wang Shitou’s face was flushed and radiant. “Managing fine! Just fine!”

He looked as though he had drunk stag’s blood — which actually surprised Xie Yuzhang.

Wang Shitou, flustered, explained: “This chance won’t come twice. There won’t ever be anyone like General Li willing to teach me like this again.”

He’d gotten so worked up he’d let his native dialect slip through — “俺” had come out in place of the official speech.

Xie Yuzhang let out a quiet breath. “That’s good, then.”

One willing to teach, one willing to learn.

“Your Highness.” Wang Shitou lowered his voice. “General Li told me that after we get out there, we must absolutely start raising horses — warhorses — and gradually train our people up…”

Xie Yuzhang listened with close attention, the snow’s reflected light making her eyes shine bright.

Compared to Wang Shitou’s excitement, Li Gu’s face was deeply grim. He took the thick flatbread wrapped around braised meat that his aide passed him and ate in large bites.

“General, will this actually work?” one of his subordinates said. “That group of men has never seen blood.”

Li Gu was inwardly restless as well.

Wang Shitou was an ordinary man.

He had come up through the infantry, had only taken part in one suppression of bandits, which at least meant he had seen some blood. Most of the others had spent their whole careers guarding city walls — a lifetime of seeing battlements and never seeing blood.

At most half a month of road remained ahead. In such a short time, turning even Wang Shitou alone from infantry thinking to cavalry thinking would be difficult — let alone the rest of the men.

Yet infantry were useless on the grasslands.

On the grasslands, cavalry were the only guarantee of safety.

Princess Baohua would not understand these things. Ma Jianye was not her man. That left only Wang Shitou. Wang Shitou was not a bad person, and not exactly dim-witted — but he was starting from the beginning, with no practical experience to draw on, and even Li Gu could not guarantee how much he could actually absorb.

All he could do was teach as much as could be taught.

Li Gu wolfed down the rest of the flatbread, wiped his hands, and stood up. “Where is Wang Shitou? Tell him to hurry up!”

Time was far too tight. There was not enough of it. The only way was to keep bearing down on Wang Shitou and hammer it in by force.

That evening, the convoy stopped at a small town. The largest family in the town had already cleared out their residence at midday, yielding their whole estate to the Princess for lodging.

The snow had not yet stopped.

Even Nanny Xia was muttering: “How long is this snow going to keep falling?”

Xie Yuzhang replied: “A couple of days of snowfall — that’s perfectly normal. Beyond the frontier, when the snow is heavy, it can bury you past the knees.”

The room fell quiet. Even the maidservant in the middle of carrying over a box of refreshments paused mid-motion.

Nanny Xia was silent for a moment, then raised her head and smiled: “Then we’d better sew a few more pairs of high-shafted deerskin boots for Your Highness — and knee warmers too. Best get started right away, and get out the hides first.”

Xie Yuzhang smiled gently.

The momentary freeze in the room seemed to thaw. The expressions of the maidservants softened, and somehow the place they were going no longer seemed quite so frightening.

When everyone was together, it was not so frightening after all.

Within Hexi’s territory, how many li to cover each day, and where to spend each night, were all arranged by the local authority — Li Gu. The estate of the wealthiest family in a small town was only so large, and Li Gu had arranged himself on the other side of a shared wall. He stood in the snow at the base of the wall, wrapped in his great fur-lined cloak, and listened as Xie Yuzhang’s courtyard suddenly came to life. Faintly — he could actually hear the sound of maidservants laughing.

It was only when the mistress of a household was in a good mood that those who served her dared show smiles.

Why was she in a good mood? Did she know what kind of life awaited her up ahead?

Li Gu stood in the snow, motionless.

His aide, bundled in a sheepskin coat and arms tucked inside his sleeves, stood under the eaves with every intention of calling him in — but then saw that General Li’s topknot and shoulders had gathered a thin layer of snow, and was struck for a moment, not daring to make a sound.

Why had the General been standing there for so long without leaving?

What was on the other side of that wall?

Princess Baohua was on the other side.

That knife of star-iron — how much the General had cherished it — and still he had given it away.

To whom had he given it?

To Princess Baohua.

But that beautiful princess was going to be married away to the frontier — and there was nothing the General could do about something like that.

The aide quietly found a sheltered corner under the eaves to crouch in, rubbing his hands and breathing into them for warmth, keeping his General company in this moment of helpless longing.

Just as Xie Yuzhang had said, the snow fell for two full days before stopping. Because of the accumulated snowdrifts on the ground, the convoy moved considerably slower than expected.

Li Gu was always away with Wang Shitou, appearing and disappearing unpredictably. The Fifth Prince and Prince Shou exchanged a few murmured words, and Prince Shou, by virtue of his responsibilities, went to find Li Gu: “General, your frequent absences leave us uneasy.”

The terrain of Hexi was broad and open, with a bold folk character very different from the area around the capital. With its heavy provisions and presence of women, young children, and even a small number of elderly, the convoy’s unease was entirely understandable.

Li Gu, however, was unconcerned. He only said: “This is our territory. His Highness need not worry.”

Seeing that Prince Shou was about to say more, he raised his riding crop and pointed upward: “Does Your Highness see that?”

Prince Shou looked in the direction Li Gu’s crop was pointing — and saw only the Flying Tiger banner snapping in the clear sky after the snow, its double-winged tiger soaring in the wind.

“Elsewhere this subordinate would not dare make such a claim.” Li Gu’s voice was measured and firm. “But in Hexi, wherever my Flying Tiger banner flies, no petty troublemaker will dare come near. Your Highness need only rest assured.”

Prince Shou was about to say something more when Li Gu had already swung up onto his horse, made a formal salute: “This subordinate still has business to attend to on Princess Baohua’s behalf. He must take his leave.”

With that, a whole column of riders swept away in a thundering rush.

Leaving Prince Shou standing there, staring in speechless astonishment.

And then he heard one of the Flying Tiger cavalry guarding the convoy’s flank say with a laugh: “I’m so envious of those who get to gallop — these past days have been so slow, even the horses think it’s dull.”

Another rider consoled him: “We rotate daily — maybe tomorrow’s our turn.”

The first replied: “Then I’ll ride until I’m satisfied.”

That evening, as they stayed the night in the county town, the Fifth Prince complained to Xie Yuzhang: “What is Li the Eleventh so arrogant about?”

Xie Yuzhang said nothing.

Later, when Li Gu had pursued his conquest of the realm, wherever the Flying Tiger Army’s banners flew, it was not merely petty troublemakers that trembled — from the great rivers to the south to the north, wherever the royal standard reached, no one dared to be without fear.

Even now, young as Li Gu was, he already possessed this quality of spirit.

What he lacked was only the moment. And in a turbulent age, heroes are forged — that moment, sooner or later, would come.

The realm under heaven — it would belong to whoever had the ability to claim it.

The Fifth Prince continued complaining: “I asked him to take me for a gallop, and he said he had no time. What does he have to be so busy with? Isn’t his whole duty just to escort us?”

Xie Yuzhang looked up in surprise. “Fifth Brother argued with Shiyi Lang?”

“Of course not — what do you take my status for?” The Fifth Prince said, disgruntled.

Good — that was a relief. In the future, when their positions were reversed, she was working so hard to draw closer to Li Gu — she certainly did not need her fifth brother moving in the opposite direction.

She offered an explanation on Li Gu’s behalf: “He is indeed occupied with something I asked of him. My escort unit has no one truly capable in it. I asked him to take advantage of traveling together to help bring along the captain who leads them. You know how it is — they are all infantry, but the grasslands are cavalry country.”

There was no need for Xie Yuzhang to explain further — the Fifth Prince understood. Who would not want cavalry? The strongest cavalry in all of Da Zhao was right here in Hexi.

The Fifth Prince hesitated for a moment, thinking of how expensive cavalry were to maintain, and how having money alone could not produce good cavalry — yet he feared saying so would disappoint Xie Yuzhang.

When Xie Yuzhang spoke of cavalry, her eyes held light.

Not the kind of light that belonged to a princess sent against her will to a marriage alliance in a distant land — more like the look of someone full of hope for the life ahead.

It made a person reluctant… to shatter her dream.