Chapter 13: The Pursuers

Not far from her side, another scream rang out.

Catherine stared blankly, watching the mounted guard in front of her spray blood from his neck and topple off his horse, clutching at the wound.

Bailangzai flicked his Japanese saber, and the blood on the blade traced a single line across the ground.

The few passersby nearby who witnessed this horrifying scene cried out and scattered in all directions.

A bit further off, a dozen or so Han Chinese wielding blades burst out of the treeline, charging into the crowd without a word and cutting down four Spanish civilians.

These four were Catherine's shadow guards.

On ordinary days they dressed as commoners, mingling around Catherine, and changed their clothes every day—had Lin Qian not observed them for a long while, he truly would have found them hard to spot.

The boatmen were cleaning up the battlefield as Lin Qian strolled over to Catherine's dead horse and stomped the wooden box to pieces, sending several cockroaches scuttling out from within.

If Catherine had opened the box while on horseback, she would most likely have been startled into falling off, which would have let the matchlock muskets shoot down the two guards.

Lin Qian had been planning this ambush for a long time, drafting no fewer than ten different versions of the scheme.

He had scouted four or five possible ambush sites alone before finally settling on this road.

This spot lay between the Cavite shipyard and Manila—beach to the west of the road, forest to the east—the perfect place for murder and robbery, and with a successful strike, one could retreat quickly by sea.

Lin Qian had scouted this location many times.

Catherine gradually came back to her senses, and seeing that Lin Qian wasn't looking at her, she quietly shifted her exhausted legs.

Bailangzai laid the Japanese saber against her neck, and Catherine went rigid.

"Tie her up," Lin Qian said flatly.

Bailangzai pulled rope from the sand and bound Catherine's hands behind her back.

Lin Qian and his companion's weapons had also been hidden beneath the sand, retrieved when the gunfire rang out.

It both put the Spanish guards at ease and caught them completely off guard.

The rough hemp rope chafed Catherine's delicate wrists, and the pain knit her brows tight.

Her voice trembling, she cursed: "Criminals, pirates, madmen! The guards will be here soon, and you'll all be hanged!"

Lin Qian's expression stayed calm as he said unhurriedly, "It'll take the guards at least half an hour to get here. We have plenty of time to leave, don't worry."

When Lin Qian's group first arrived in Manila, the Han Chinese interpreter had slandered them as pirates. The reason Lin Qian hadn't bothered to refute it and had let his brothers bicker among themselves was precisely to clock how long it took the guards to muster—fifteen minutes.

This spot sat exactly midway between Manila city and the Cavite shipyard, so no matter which direction they came from, the journey would take twenty minutes each way—at least half an hour in total.

Of course, the guards could also ride horses.

But from Lin Qian's observation, Manila produced no horses locally; the only mounts were the few the Spanish had brought over from Europe.

And because matchlock muskets were too heavy and cumbersome to carry on horseback, the Spanish cavalry mainly used sabers.

Lin Qian's side, meanwhile, had two matchlock muskets, more than enough to deal with a small number of cavalry.

"You can speak our language?" Catherine suddenly realized, her face full of shock.

Lin Qian ignored her—his men had already dragged two sampans out of the treeline.

"Get on the boat," Lin Qian said to Catherine.

"In your dreams!" Catherine turned her head away stubbornly.

Lin Qian gave Bailangzai a look, and then Catherine took a heavy punch to the stomach.

She curled up like a shrimp, stomach acid rising in her throat, able only to let out thin gasps of breath through the pain as tears streamed down her face.

"I'm not inviting you," Lin Qian said coldly.

Catherine was carried onto a sampan, and the group split into two boats, rowing out toward the mouth of Manila Bay.

A little under half an hour later, the sampans reached the side of the Fujian junk. Catherine was hoisted up by rope first, then the rest boarded.

The two sampans were left adrift at sea.

"Hahaha, Brother Lin, you really are something." Lei Sanxiang set down his matchlock musket and clapped Lin Qian on the shoulder. "I really thought that bitch of a foreign woman had cast a spell on you."

Before Lin Qian could answer, Catherine, who had recovered her breath, burst into a torrent of curses.

"Curse me again and I'll strip you naked," Lin Qian threatened.

Catherine immediately deflated and fell silent.

"Tie this woman to the mast."

His men obeyed, binding Catherine to the mainmast, lashing her tight with mooring cable.

The mooring cable was thick and stiff, its surface rough to the touch, normally used to secure a ship to shore bollards—bound as she was, Catherine could never break free no matter how she struggled.

"The Franks are making a move," Chen Jiao said.

Lin Qian pulled out a telescope and looked toward the harbor, indeed spotting a three-masted warship bustling with activity, its sails on the masts gradually being lowered.

Raising and lowering the anchor on such a sailing vessel was extremely complicated—large ships even needed a hundred men turning the capstan for an hour or two.

That was why the Spanish hadn't immediately left port.

Lin Qian lowered the telescope and called out loudly: "Raise the sails—first clear the bay, then set course due south."

The boatmen answered with loud acknowledgments and hurried to their posts.

Moments later, the Fujian junk slowly got underway.

After sailing for an hour, the lookout shouted: "Off the starboard stern—the Franks' ship is catching up!"

Lin Qian pulled out his telescope and gazed into the distance. The sun hung low on the horizon now, the sea surface coated in a layer of golden water, the shimmering waves stabbing at the eyes.

Lin Qian squinted and saw, about twenty li away where sea met sky, a black dot cutting through the waves.

"Damn it!" Chen Jiao said in a low voice.

"What's so damn bad about it?" Lei Sanxiang was baffled. "They're still far off, if you ask me."

"The Franks' ships are fast. Once they've locked onto us, it'll be hard to get away," Chen Jiao said through gritted teeth.

"Then let's fight them!" Having just killed six Spanish guards, Lei Sanxiang's morale was high, and he figured these foreigners were nothing special.

Chen Jiao knew what he was thinking and sneered: "The sea is different from the land. The Franks have sturdy ships and powerful cannons—they'll never give us a chance to board. Once they catch us, we're shark food."

"Then what do we do?" Lei Sanxiang asked, frantic.

Chen Jiao, his one eye fixed on Lin Qian at the helm, muttered to himself: "Wait a little longer."

Another hour passed before the lookout shouted: "Off the starboard stern, enemy ship at ten li."

The boatmen grew restless at these words, unease written plainly across their faces.

An hour went by, and the Franks' vessel had only drawn closer—at this rate, they would soon be fish food.

Lin Qian raised his telescope and looked astern. The Spanish galleon had grown much larger in his field of view, its three masts billowing full of wind as it raced at full speed.

That was the Spaniards' San Felipe, which Lin Qian had seen once when it put into port.

Calculating from their relative positions, the San Felipe was about three knots faster than their own ship and would catch up with them in two hours and forty-two minutes.

The worry on Chen Jiao's face deepened, his brows knitted tightly together.

Though he could not calculate the exact time, he had been a sea bandit in his early years and was rich in experience—he knew things could not go on like this. He could not help but say: "Sixth Brother, our ship is too heavy. How about we toss some of the cargo overboard?"

"We can't toss anything." Lin Qian's eyes were fixed on the wind vane, his tone calm.

Chen Jiao was anxious inside. He stepped forward and said: "If we keep going like this, they'll catch us sooner or later. We can't delay any longer."

Lin Qian withdrew his gaze and looked at Chen Jiao: "Has Eldest Brother forgotten the Five Prohibitions we set down at the start?"

No one may defy the helmsman's orders.

Chen Jiao naturally remembered.

At sea, nothing was more taboo than divided commands—this was not merely to uphold the helmsman's authority, but for the lives of everyone aboard.

But at this moment, every soul on the ship was in mortal peril, and Chen Jiao could hardly stand by unmoved. He was just thinking that today he would break the prohibition if he had to in order to persuade him.

Then Lin Qian spoke: "Turn due east, starboard into the wind, change sails!"

"What?"

It was not only Chen Jiao who was utterly astonished.

Even Lei Sanxiang, who knew little of ships, stared wide-eyed.

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen