Where clouds gathered at the edge of the sky, spring thunder rumbled.

Mist drifted through the mountain ranges; gyrfalcons soared overhead, silently patrolling the misted land below. Through the trees, the view flickered in and out, occasionally revealing traces of recent slaughter.

Blood pooled on the ground, thickening into a half-congealed film, then trickling down into the mountain streams in the pale early morning. On the grassy slopes were scars of explosions, the smell of gunpowder already fading, corpses skewered on long spears.

A small squad picked its way through the bodies.

“Regiment Commander Luo’s gone off to the east already, one last search…”

“The Jurchens could show up any time—no wounded here, we pull out…”

“Looks like there’s no one left alive.”

As they searched among the dead, someone lit a fire striker, and by its bean-sized glow, snatches of conversation drifted up now and then.

“Commander Luo fought this one well—most of these are Jin men…”

“Look like Xi people—hundreds of them, right here.”

“That’s Commander Luo working with the Fourth Division. Word is Chen Tian led that side personally—soon as the fighting ended, the Fourth Division moved on to the next engagement, and Commander Luo pushed ahead a ways in pursuit…”

“Talking big again—how would you know all that so clearly?”

“I asked when we linked up with the third squad earlier. They handled the wounded, we’re just cleaning up along the way…”

Mid-conversation, a hawk’s eye flashed across the night sky, and a moment later a figure came crawling forward. “Gyrfalcon—the Jurchens are coming from the north.”

“Second Young Master…told you to stay put over there—”

“No time for that, scold me later.” The crawling figure twisted his neck, shook out his wrist, looking entirely at ease about it. A grown man beside him grabbed hold of him at once.

“Old Yu, take everyone south. Second Young Master, what are you planning? You’re coming with us too.”

“I’m not done talking, Uncle Zheng. There aren’t many Jurchens—a small scout team, probably a forward party come to check the situation. I’ve already spotted them all. If we take them out, the Jurchens go blind in this area, at least for a day or two, don’t they?”

“If anyone’s eating them, it’ll be me. I promised your father—”

“No—I’m the one who’s small and light on my feet, that’s why I could get close enough to spot them all. If you don’t bring me, they’ll spot you the second you move. There’s no time, don’t be so fussy about it. Uncle Yu, you all pull back. Uncle Zheng, come with me—stay hidden.”

The boy speaking slipped away like a loach, a flick of his hand and he’d already slid off. Half his body was in camouflage, bits of bark and moss stuck to his skin, and though he crawled with his limbs moving in tiny motions, he moved like a spider, like a turtle—from any distance, he was practically invisible. Zheng Qiming had no choice but to chase after him with the others.

The youth running ahead was, of course, Ning Ji. Rascally as his manner was, his eyes carried nothing but seriousness and vigilance. Having roughly pointed out the Jurchen scouts’ position to the others, his figure had already vanished into the trees ahead. Zheng Qiming, being larger of build, sighed and slipped off in the other direction.

Before long, killing broke out in the thick fog just before dawn.

The Jurchen scouts were no pushovers—though somewhat spread out, they’d crept close quietly, but the instant the first man dropped with an arrow in him, the rest snapped to alert. Figures darted through the trees, blades flashing in the darkness. Ning Ji pulled the trigger on his hand crossbow, then lunged at the target he’d already marked.

The Jurchen scout shifted his stance, dodged the bolt, and slashed with his blade. In the dim light, Ning Ji’s frame was shorter than most adults; the steel blade passed just over his head, and his own knife was already buried in the man’s belly.

The Jurchen scout wore soft armor beneath thick clothing, so the blow didn’t go deep. With a grunt, the man’s hand shot out to grab the flat of the blade, his other hand swinging back with his own knife. Ning Ji released the hilt and stepped, stepped, stepped around behind his opponent.

The Jurchen roared and spun to follow, but Ning Ji moved faster—in the blink of an eye he was up on the man’s back like a monkey, one hand gripping the top of his head. Sensing the danger, the scout heaved himself upward and slammed backward toward the ground.

In the spinning instant of the fall, Ning Ji clasped both hands around the man’s head and curled his body into a defensive crouch. There came a heavy thud—his back hit the ground, mud splashing up—but the Jurchen’s head was cradled safe in his arms.

The next instant, blood sprayed through the darkness. Ning Ji’s hands parted, the short blade in his grip slicing across the man’s throat.

The gyrfalcon dove from the sky; on the ground, its handler, throat slit, was still thrashing violently. The bird swooped at the boy who’d just taken its master’s life, talons striking, iron beak tearing. A moment later, the boy caught the gyrfalcon as he sprang up from the ground, one hand seizing its neck, the other its wing, and amid the creature’s furious struggling, gave a sharp wrench and snapped its neck.

He tossed the dead bird aside and was about to move to help the others when he realized the fighting in the woods had already ended. Only four or five breaths had passed since he first burst out. Zheng Qiming had already reached his side, delivering one more chop to the still-twitching scout on the ground before asking, “You alright?”

“I’m fine…” Ning Ji spat out a thread of blood from between his teeth, glanced around at the now-quiet surroundings, and said, “A gyrfalcon…look, I killed a gyrfalcon. We…”

“Liu Yuan’s been hit—” A low cry came just then. Off in the distance, a figure clutching his belly sank slowly against a tree trunk. Ning Ji froze for a moment, then ran toward him…

Injury on the battlefield could strike at any moment, and so could the sight of a comrade falling, gone forever. In all his time with the medical corps, Ning Ji had already grown all too used to things like this.

By mid-February, the front-line battlefield had become a tangled patchwork of encirclement and flight, ambush and counter-ambush, playing out among the mountains every single day.

The terrain ahead of Zizhou was too complex, and the Huaxia Army had broken its forces down to regiment level for maximum flexibility and efficiency. Ning Ji, too, kept being shuffled from front to front with the fighting—though nominally attached to the medical corps, he was liable to end up right at the front lines during any troop movement, or find himself in close quarters with Jurchen scouts. By this point, Ning Ji had taken to egging Zheng Qiming and the others on to go reap the spoils of battle together.

The men under Zheng Qiming’s command weren’t many, but most were former bodyguards who’d once followed Ning Yi himself—their combat skill was exceptional. In theory, Ning Ji’s life mattered a great deal, but in the heat of a front line pushed this white-hot, with everyone around him fighting with everything they had, no one could just stand by and watch a killable Jurchen unit go untouched.

And so, by mid-February, Ning Ji had already taken part in three separate hunts against Jurchen scouts and soldiers, adding a few more kills to his tally—in one of these, running into a seasoned Jin huntsman, he’d nearly taken a blade across the throat, and thinking back on it afterward, it still left him more than a little shaken.

Fear after the fact was only human. Had he truly been some sheltered young master raised in comfort, one or two brushes like that might well have been enough to make him never dare fight again. But on the battlefield, there was a remedy for that fear.

Watching the soldiers around him fight for their lives, one after another pressing forward without hesitation, watching brave men struggling through their wounds, or lying cold and lifeless on the field—no matter how much fear lingered afterward, it got pressed down deep inside. In a battle like this, when almost everyone was pressing forward, he couldn’t bring himself to fall back.

His comrade Liu Yuan’s knife wound wasn’t fatal, but it wouldn’t be healing anytime soon either. After the first round of emergency treatment, the group rigged up a makeshift stretcher, carried between two men. Ning Ji picked up the dead gyrfalcon and slung it over his shoulder. “Chicken for dinner tonight,” he said, then bragged on, “We’ve been going at it with Jurchen scouts this whole time—bet they haven’t killed nearly this many gyrfalcons.”

Fighting the great bird had left him with a scattering of scrapes, one of them across his face. But compared to a battlefield where death could come at any turn, these were nothing but minor scratches, and Ning Ji just dabbed on some antiseptic without giving it much thought.

“I hear hawk’s blood is supposed to be pretty nourishing, right?”

“Probably about the same as chicken blood. It’s been dead a while now, who wants to drink it?”

No one volunteered, and Ning Ji wasn’t planning to either. By now the early-morning sunlight had begun filtering down through the trees and the mist, the air damp and cool. Ning Ji and Zheng Qiming chatted idly as they walked.

“Uncle Zheng, my father always says there are some people in this world who are true geniuses. That grandfather of the Liu family, they say he was once hailed as the greatest master of the blade under heaven, and he was very picky about his students—you being taken on as his disciple, doesn’t that make you one of those geniuses?”

“If we’re talking about raw talent with the blade, all of us fellow disciples were pretty good, but the one with the best natural gift was probably your Uncle Qian the Eighth. Your Aunt Gua’s formidable too—when it comes to martial arts, none of us could keep up with her or Chen Fan.”

“Mm, so…Uncle Zheng, what do you think of me? I’ve been thinking lately, I think I might be that kind of genius too, you know? Rather than being a medic, I think I’d do better as a scout. Shame I already promised my father before…”

“Ning Ji…”

“Mm?”

“The ones who survive—those are the real geniuses.”

“…Mm, but Uncle Zheng…”

“Go on.”

“You’ve also got to win the whole war before anyone gets to survive it.”

Ning Ji was at that age of hot-blooded simplicity, and some of what he said might well have been dismissed as a child’s careless prattle, but no matter how you looked at it, that particular line left Zheng Qiming momentarily unable to answer.

He looked over at the boy walking beside him. The battlefield was a place of shifting, deadly danger, and even now, in the middle of this casual conversation as they walked, Ning Ji’s body never lost its readiness and its instinct for concealment, poised to duck for cover or explode into motion at any moment. The battlefield was a crucible, but it was also, genuinely, a place that forged masters—a martial artist might train for half a lifetime, ready at any moment to face an opponent in combat, and yet very few could maintain that natural state of alertness every single day, every single hour. Ning Ji, though, had settled into it remarkably fast.

Months of tempering under conditions like these could surpass years of ordinary training and reflection.

The group pressed on, low murmurs occasionally breaking the silence.

“Hey, where do you all think the decisive battle’s going to be, when it finally comes?”

“The General Staff’s probably looking for a good opportunity…”

“I hear Wanyan Zonghan himself still hasn’t officially shown up.”

“Shaba’s his best attack dog. That column that came down from Yushui Creek—Dalai was leading it at first, then they say Zonghan was spotted on the second of the first month, and later on Shaba took over leading that column. If you ask me, Zonghan’s right there.”

“Zonghan’s fought battles his whole life—you think he doesn’t know how to make the false look real and the real look false? If they say he’s there, chances are he’s not.”

“Heh, listen to you, big dumb ox suddenly talking strategy—if you ask me, Zonghan’s probably already guessed that’s exactly what you’d think…”

“So you’re saying this time we’re not defending Zizhou—the whole plan is to go straight for Zonghan?”

“No wonder Zonghan hasn’t shown his face yet…”

“Hey hey hey, I’ve got it…they talked about it at the night classes and the mobilization meetings—our greatest strength is what they call subjective initiative. It means our people—even if we get scattered, we still know where we’re supposed to go, while their side, without a leader, would be completely lost. It’s happened before, plenty of times…like when we killed Wanyan Loushi, we just attacked first, turned it into a mess, everyone scattering every which way, and that’s exactly when our chance came. Isn’t this the same kind of thing?”

“So where do you say we should go if we get scattered, then?”

“…Go kill Zonghan.”

“That’s exactly why Zonghan hasn’t shown himself since the second—so now who do we kill?”

“His son, Xiebao, probably.”

“Why not kill Balishu instead? Say for instance—right now Xiebao’s harder to kill and Balishu’s easier, and the General Staff decides to go after Balishu, but you go off to kill Xiebao instead—doesn’t that mean this whole ‘subjective initiative’ thing is useless…”

“Yao Shubin, you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing…”

“Mr. Ning’s word for that—contrarian.”

“A contrarian to end all contrarians.”

“Hahahaha…”

“No, but seriously, it’s worth thinking about—what if we really do get scattered. Ning Ji, why don’t you settle this…”

“I…I don’t know either…but this time it should be different.”

“Alright, I think this time…”

“Shh—”

“…”

“…”

“Take cover…”

In the pale morning light, the comrade scouting ahead signaled back from a distance. Everyone in the group moved into their own positions.

“…”

“What’s going on…”

“Look, someone’s there…”

“Jin dogs…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…Yao Shubin, you jinxed it.”

……

……

“…Damn it.”