The eighth day, close to noon.

As the scorching sunlight beat down from the sky, the mountain path lay silent.

The traces left behind by the great crowd that had passed through were now clearly imprinted along this mountain road—wicker baskets, shoes, clothing, bundles, banners, even wooden furniture of every size. Human footprints and the tracks of various livestock spread out in disorder, flattening the grass and tangling the underbrush. When the mountain wind stirred faintly beneath the shade of the trees, scraps of cloth spun and fluttered up into the air.

Two figures emerged from the tree shade, surveyed the scene for a while, then exchanged hand signals and made their way down into the valley to examine the direction the crowd had gone.

When the wind died down and the two men’s bodies were exposed to the sunlight, it became clear that each carried weapons—one with a bow slung across his back, the other a crossbow. Because of the heat, both wore only light single-layer clothing, but even so, their garments had a patched-together, makeshift look to them. Only from their quick, agile movements did they resemble hunters from the mountain wilds.

They were, of course, not hunters.

The scattered scene of abandonment in the valley had been left behind by the refugees fleeing the military catastrophe at Hangzhou. With so many people and so little order among them, it was in fact quite easy to make out the general direction they had gone. One of the two men walked ahead, while the other searched among the tangled grass and the discarded belongings, occasionally bending down to pick something up before tossing it aside again.

By the time the man ahead had climbed the slope on the far side and was looking forward into the sunlight, the man in the grass suddenly discovered something. He bent down abruptly, picked it up, examined it, and wiped it against his sleeve. Not far off, his companion, having looked over the traces ahead, turned back from the hillside; this man too waved his hand and raised the object he held. In the sunlight, it turned out to be a string of fine, precious pearls.

Having waved it, the man bent down again to search through the grass, but after searching a while longer, found nothing else of value. He stood up and looked at his companion, who was walking toward him. Suddenly, his body shuddered—an arrow had pierced diagonally into his chest, its fletching trembling in the air. In the glare of the sunlight ahead of him, he saw his companion lunge forward and collapse—another arrow had streaked past like a dark shadow. That was the last thing he saw.

The man holding the pearl string swayed for a moment and then fell in the valley. From the grass, another figure scrambled up and fled at top speed. Another arrow whistled past. From the trees on one side, two figures burst out, running while drawing their bows. Another arrow grazed the fleeing man’s side, drawing a spray of blood.

The fleeing man turned and loosed an arrow of his own before dashing into the forest; one of the two pursuers gave chase. The other ran to the corpse in the valley, turned it over, and carefully pried open its fingers to retrieve the pearl string. He glanced around, then searched the body further, finding some loose silver. He muttered a curse, then searched through the surrounding grass and brush for some distance more. By the time he had covered a fair stretch, his companion who had chased into the forest returned. The two of them looked over the pearl string together, searched the valley a while longer, apparently finding two more items of value, and then vanished off in another direction.

Not long after, under the blazing sun, a mass of dark figures appeared at the mouth of the valley. The crowd advanced without much order; a few at the front rode horses, while the rest walked on foot. Someone at the head listlessly carried a banner—the larger one bore the character “Fang,” proof that this was a force following Fang La’s rebellion, while the smaller banners were a hodgepodge of characters like “Li” and “Lu.”

Their clothing was likewise irregular; most simply had a filthy red cloth wrapped around their heads, and some, tired from walking, took the cloth off to wipe away their sweat. Each carried one or two weapons of every conceivable kind—swords, spears, and halberds, certainly, but also plenty of hoes and rakes. Most showed little in the way of morale; if one were to call them bandits, only a small number among them actually carried anything like the legendary ferocity of bandits—most simply gave the impression of being farmers, some thin and weak, dragging their weapons under the blazing sun, drenched in sweat, trudging along listlessly. Compared to the fierce troops under Fang La that Ning Yi had seen wreaking havoc and killing inside the city of Hangzhou, this group fell far short.

A hundred men, two hundred, three hundred… By the time the ones in front had entered the valley, the rear of the column still stretched on outside it. They were clearly tracking the traces of the fleeing refugees. The few men on horseback at the head studied the traces in the valley, pointing and murmuring to one another; as the column passed through, men instinctively kicked at the grass along the way and poked around, then were shoved forward by their companions behind them. By the time the column had made its way roughly halfway through the valley, the man in front finally turned and pointed his riding crop toward the woods to one side, and some of the men headed that way.

A moment later, shouts suddenly erupted from within the woods, the cries surging to a fever pitch, as though thousands of men were hiding there and now pouring out. The mass of men in the valley fell into momentary confusion, but some shouted orders, some gave commands; the men on horseback drew out their long-handled weapons, and those in the column who carried bows nocked their arrows, aiming at the forest. The first to stumble out in a panic was the companion who had gone into the woods earlier. Right behind him came a mass of men pouring out, their clothing likewise a hodgepodge, shabby-looking, with earth-yellow headscarves. A good many had bows drawn, aiming down at the group from higher ground. Strangely enough, the main banner carried by this group emerging from the forest was also, unmistakably, the character “Fang”—only the secondary banners bore characters like “Si” and “Yao.”

The leader of the group in the valley, holding a broadsword, raised his weapon in front of his men in a gesture meant to calm them. He looked up at the men above and, after a moment of silence, spoke: “Yao Yi! What are you doing! We’ve had no quarrel or grudge between us these past days—we’re both under Marshal Fang’s orders marching north—how dare you lay an ambush for me here!”

The crowd in the woods stirred; after a moment, a group parted to let one man step forward. He was thin, with a sharply pointed chin, and looked down at the men below with his head tilted back in a show of contempt. He pointed to a banner off to one side. “Ambush you! Lu Qiao, if I’d really meant to ambush you, I wouldn’t be flying this banner at all—you’d already be dead!”

Yao Yi’s voice was somewhat shrill; as he spoke he waved his hand and even gave a little jump. “I’m not going to kill you today! I, Yao Yi, put righteousness first—I wouldn’t stoop to the disgraceful business of secretly attacking a friendly force! But today you’re going to hand the man over to me! Who are you people, really, sneaking around and killing my scouts—”

The man in the valley, called Lu Qiao, was stunned for a moment, then cursed in his local dialect. “Damn it! Yao Yi! Your head’s full of shit! You don’t even know what you’re talking about! You say you put righteousness first—if that were true you’d have named yourself ‘Righteous Yao’ instead of putting ‘righteous’ at the end of your own name! What sneak attack, what scouts—I don’t know a damn thing about it…”

“Screw your mother! Lu, your people are the closest ones around here. Let me tell you—not all of my men died. One made it back and told me it was your people! But he’d barely finished talking before he dropped dead from poison—snake venom, which happens to be your side’s specialty. Am I wrong to blame you—”

The two sides traded curses, closing the distance between them more and more, until under the blazing sun the tension seemed ready to snap. Off to one side, along the foot of the mountain, a pair of eyes flickered past unseen. Several miles from this spot, in a stretch of woods, another army was resting at that very moment, waiting for the hottest part of the day to pass before setting off north again…

At that same moment, in a forest dozens of miles away, two men carried a stretcher while a third led a horse, all moving quickly along a waterway that cut through the trees. On the stretcher, naturally, lay a sleeping figure—Ning Yi himself. Su Tan’er walked alongside, fanning him as she went, trying to drive away the heat. The one leading the horse was Bodyguard Geng, who had repeatedly urged Su Tan’er, now that she was pregnant, to ride the horse instead, but Su Tan’er only shook her head silently in refusal.

They had lingered too long at the camp behind during the morning and had, by now, been left behind by the main column.

For them, it had truly been a morning of mixed and complicated feelings. First had come the confirmation that Su Tan’er was pregnant, and right on its heels, the news that Ning Yi’s wound had become infected, leaving everyone nearly at a loss for what to do. Such an injury was common enough on the battlefield from blade wounds, and the mortality rate in this era exceeded fifty percent even for that—an injury that soldiers accustomed to years of fighting could barely survive, let alone Ning Yi, who at this moment was in the midst of a desperate flight with no time whatsoever to rest and recuperate.

Ordinarily, with Ning Yi present, the household had always had someone steady to rely on. Even when he had spoken to Juan’er that morning of how dire the situation was, she and the others hadn’t been too worried, because their young master was simply too formidable—there seemed to be nothing he couldn’t manage. But this sudden turn of events left even Su Tan’er stunned for a moment, unsure what to do. Yet it was Ning Yi himself who, only moments after learning the state of his wound, calmly began issuing instructions.

He had the physician treating him prepare medicine and get ready to operate—to cut open the wound and scrape away the rotting flesh—and had the household prepare alcohol, needle and thread. In truth, when it came to wound infections, even without penicillin, the practice of Chinese medicine in this era was not entirely without recourse; there were still certain medicines and methods that could offer some degree of relief. Among the stream of refugees there happened to be physicians who had brought medicinal materials with them, and through Qian Haiping’s connections, the medicines were gathered and brewed on the spot. At the same time, he had the physician treat the wound a second time—disinfecting it and stitching it closed with needle and thread—tasks he worried the physician might not handle skillfully enough on his own, and so he even had Su Tan’er and several of the maids stand by. In fact, he never even saw who ultimately stitched the wound closed; with no anesthetic, partway through the procedure he gave up resisting and let himself pass out.

Because of the time spent treating the wound, by the time the column set off again they could not keep up. But by now Su Tan’er had regained her resolve. She left behind only three bodyguards and two horses—one for the physician who had treated Ning Yi, so that he could catch up with the column quickly afterward—and with unwavering firmness sent Xiao Chan, Juan’er, and Xing’er ahead with the group that departed first. Knowing she was pregnant seemed to have doubled her resolve, and none of the household could argue against her. And so, once the wound was treated and the medicine brewed, they fed a little of it mouth-to-mouth to the still-unconscious Ning Yi, and only then did the small group lift the stretcher and set out. Because of the heat, Su Tan’er fanned Ning Yi the entire way.

The afternoon sunlight filtered down through gaps in the trees, and a faint breeze gradually rose, cicadas singing along the road. The Su family’s few remaining bodyguards were, in the end, a cut above ordinary soldiers, and the two men carrying the stretcher moved swiftly. Feeling the cool breeze, Bodyguard Geng once again tried to persuade Su Tan’er to mount the horse. She shook her head. “It’s fine.” She paused a moment, as though thinking of something, then added, “Fang La’s men can’t possibly catch up this fast…”

“But… my lady… you’re carrying a child now. Think of the young master—he wouldn’t want you to…”

“I’d rather not think about this child at all!” She turned her head sharply, one hand trembling as she gripped Ning Yi’s hand on the stretcher, her eyes glinting faintly with tears as she kept pace with the stretcher’s brisk stride. “Right now… all I want is for him to get better! I… I’m not so delicate, Uncle Geng, don’t worry about me…”

“But…”

Before Bodyguard Geng could finish, another voice spoke up. “Ah… my wife isn’t so delicate, I know that already…”

Ning Yi gripped Su Tan’er’s hand back, slowly opening his eyes on the stretcher, then drew a deep breath. Waking abruptly on the stretcher, he used a modern turn of phrase without thinking, but of course no one paid it any mind. Everyone grew excited, and after they had walked on a little further, Ning Yi raised a hand from the stretcher and said, “Stop… stop for a moment…”

That morning, Juan’er had thought he only had a mild cold and that everything else was fine, but his fainting during the surgery had naturally given everyone quite a fright. Now, though he looked a little unsteady at first as he sat up, he soon gave a yawn and gradually came back to himself. “That was a good sleep. Thank you all…”

Having said this, Ning Yi walked out of the woods to a nearby stream to wash his face. Su Tan’er followed and touched his forehead, but it was still burning hot. Ning Yi drank down what remained of the herbal medicine he had brought along, then embraced Su Tan’er by the stream and pressed his ear against her belly. Su Tan’er began to cry, shaking her head. “It’s not far along yet, not far along at all—I’m perfectly fine.”

“I know… This morning, I could have pushed through it and stayed conscious, but I deliberately let myself faint. Now, after resting a bit, I’ve recovered my strength. I know your body is strong, so we need to hurry and catch up with the column, and then get some things done, all right?” He smiled as he said this, then let out a breath. “You’re carrying my child now. No matter what, I’ll see to it that you’re both safe.”

“Are you all right? The physician said… the physician said…”

“I’m fine for now. I know my limits, don’t worry.”

Answering her this way, he mounted the horse together with Su Tan’er, told Bodyguard Geng and the others to hurry and catch up, and set off after the fleeing column.

Under conditions without adequate hygiene, an infected wound in a soldier carried a mortality rate as high as fifty percent. But even in an age without penicillin, good nursing care—of the kind associated with Florence Nightingale’s medical corps—could still lower the likelihood of wound infection to below two percent. Of course, for a wound already infected, even scraping away the necrotic tissue and providing good care afterward would not change the fact that he still faced an extremely high risk of death; he could only rely on the herbal treatments available in this era, combined with his own physical constitution, to grit his teeth and endure it.

He would still run a fever, and might well slip into a coma later on, but this was no time to simply wait for death. For now, there were still things he could do—at the very least, to bring the mortality risk from this brush with the war down to its lowest possible point.

In truth, he did not much care about the child. But right now, he cared more than ever about his wife, and about the rest of his family.

Whatever it took, he would see them safely home!

The horse ran at a moderate pace, mindful of the pregnant woman it carried, out of the woods and on toward the fleeing column ahead…

…

In the afternoon, Chen Xingdu rode his horse up a hillside, opened his map, and looked down at the winding column below, waiting for the scouts to return in waves.

He was thirty-four this year, still young, and did not look like a particularly commanding figure. He was not the highest-ranking officer of the Wude Camp—not even a deputy commander. In ordinary times his standing had occupied a middling position; he was not especially skilled at working a room, possessed no outward air of dominance, nor any innate gift for leadership. And yet, through a strange twist of fate, he had now become the military commander of this scattered column of nearly ten thousand people. For him, it was an enormous pressure—but he understood, too, that it was also an enormous opportunity.

The Wude Camp had held Hangzhou for less than half a month before it collapsed, and once the reckoning came, officers from the highest ranks down to the mid-level would all be called to account—himself included. But this column now gathered together nearly half of Hangzhou’s wealthiest and most powerful people. If he could lead them safely out, and have them remember this debt of gratitude, then even if he could not leap straight to the rank of Chief Military Commissioner, a post as Deputy Chief Military Commissioner would be all but guaranteed—his future prospects difficult to measure. The trouble was that this very column was bound to become a prime target for Fang La’s forces to hunt down, and along the road to Huzhou or Jiaxing, bandits were still causing chaos. With no way forward and pursuers behind, how they were to get through, he had no idea—this sort of thing had never been his strength to begin with.

A group of scouts sent farther out had returned not long before. Several detachments of Fang La’s army had already begun marching north, their target possibly Huzhou. According to what the scouts had seen, that army had, along the way, hunted down and slaughtered a group of fleeing residents, nearly wiping them out entirely; the bandit troops, after looting whatever valuables were easy to carry, had pressed on with the killing, apparently still searching for different trails of fleeing refugees. Over the past two days, the general consensus had been that Fang La would move directly on Jiaxing, so the news that several detachments were now heading toward Huzhou instead left Chen Xingdu momentarily bewildered.

“General Chen.” A respectful voice called out from beside him. Riding up the slope alongside him was Qian Haiping of the Qian family. Chen Xingdu returned the greeting. “Brother Qian, you flatter me—I’m no general. Ah, Master Qian, you mentioned earlier that you were going to persuade the others to contribute some of their wealth as a decoy—how did that go?”

With such a massive column moving forward in this way, the trail of evidence it left behind was enormous, and occasionally people even fell behind and got lost. Qian Haiping suspected that Fang La’s army would inevitably track the group carrying the most wealth, and so he had wanted to persuade the wealthy families in the column to donate part of their burdensome fortunes. But at this point, it seemed there had been little success to speak of.

“Everyone agreed readily enough at first, but then they got caught up in endless arguments over how much each family should contribute. Even facing something like this, these people are still so shortsighted—truly… Sigh. A good many of them were the ones Liheng originally persuaded to leave the city together with us. It’s a shame he’s not here now—if he were, this would probably be easier to resolve. As it is… we should have some result a bit later.”

Chen Xingdu nodded, then quietly shared the intelligence the scouts had brought back. “That Master Ning said earlier that Fang La would go for Jiaxing, but now it looks like it’s Huzhou instead… If that’s the case, we may well be walking straight into a dead end. Not far ahead, both a place called Qingfeng Stronghold and a small town called Luo Town are said to have already been taken by rebel bandits, and we can hardly afford to take a longer detour around them…”

Qian Haiping thought for a moment. “They’re looting valuables so leisurely… no, that’s not right. If they truly meant to take Huzhou, it would have to be led by one of Fang La’s senior generals—it wouldn’t be scattered into loose groups like this. They really do mean to take Jiaxing. These several detachments must be meant to harass Huzhou, to prevent it from sending reinforcements! And once the spoils of Hangzhou’s plunder had been divided up, these men were sent out—partly to cause disorder, and partly to hunt us down as well. This is bad. Where else can we possibly turn now? If they’re taking Jiaxing and stirring up trouble in Huzhou, we need to head further toward the northwest instead…”

“But there’s nowhere left to go to the northwest now. If we change direction again, we’ll likely be surrounded by Fang La’s bandits closing in on us along the way…”

“We need to discuss this immediately.”

Naturally, among those accompanying them were plenty of men capable of serving as advisors and strategists. As soon as Qian Haiping spoke, he turned to go call for them. Chen Xingdu nodded. “I’ll trouble you for that, Master Qian. Oh, and—what of Master Ning and his wife?”

“He was lightly wounded in the fight with Shi Bao and Liu Dabiaozi at Taiping Alley, but this morning the wound turned septic—outside evil entered the body. The physician has been treating him, but they were left behind this morning… sigh…”

Chen Xingdu was taken aback for a moment. “Actually, when Master Qian mentioned them before, I didn’t listen too closely. That Ning couple is barely past twenty, aren’t they? So young—could it really be true… that he fought Shi Bao and Liu Dabiaozi head-on?”

Qian Haiping thought it over. “I didn’t believe it myself at first, either. But… if the city outside had held out just two more days, those men might well have been rooted out and caught in one sweep. At the time, we believed Fang Qifo himself was still inside the city. That clash between Ning Liheng and Shi Bao and the others was real—that day, Shi Bao himself very nearly died at his hands. As far as I know, there was a rebel leader named Gou Zheng who was killed by him on the spot. The rest I can’t confirm for certain… there wasn’t much time to look into it then…”

“…I see.” Chen Xingdu thought for a good while before finally nodding to show he understood. Just then, Qian Haiping had taken up the reins to move on when he narrowed his eyes, looking back toward the rear of the column. A galloping horse cut through the crowd, racing forward—and the rider had spotted the several men on the hillside as well. As it approached, Ning Yi and his wife, on horseback, bowed in greeting. Seeing Ning Yi had returned, Qian Haiping was quite pleased, and Chen Xingdu took a more careful look at the young couple as well. In the chaos of the past few days, he had never given much weight to someone so young; even when Ning Yi had offered ideas or predictions, they had only been accepted after being discussed and validated by others.

Of course, this was no time for pleasantries or honors. Qian Haiping went off to gather the others, while Chen Xingdu briefly explained the current situation. In truth, a straight line from Hangzhou to either Huzhou or Jiaxing was no more than about a hundred and fifty li, but the Jiangnan region was crisscrossed with waterways, and it was all too easy to find one’s path blocked—without boats, one could only cross rivers at certain fixed bridges. With bandits causing trouble and blocking the way ahead, and Fang La’s army closing in from behind, and this large a column unable to move quickly, the room left for maneuvering was growing smaller and smaller by the day.

They did not expect Ning Yi to have the power to change any of this on his own; it was simply that they had come to take him far more seriously by now, and so they could speak to him more plainly about matters. Ning Yi frowned, and after a good while, finally spoke carefully to Chen Xingdu.

“I’d like… to ask General Chen to arrange a few veteran soldiers, or scouts who understand the situation within Fang La’s army, for me. I’d like to ask them some questions. I’ll also need a map of the surrounding area, and a few people who truly know the local terrain well. Perhaps…”

He paused slightly. “Perhaps I can make things a little better…” He was still running a fever at this point, one that seemed to be growing worse, and his voice was neither raised nor urgent—only low and even, speaking these words in a flat, unhurried tone. Chen Xingdu studied him for a moment, then nodded.

Su Tan’er sat in front of Ning Yi on the horse, quietly cradling his injured arm, saying nothing. The sunlight fell down upon them, dazzling in places…