Chapter 34: Severed Arm

Gao Xian was fine, which robbed Liu Chengzong of an excuse to mock him.

Turned out he'd walked back because his horse was spent. Earlier, outside Ansai City, Gao Xian had stayed mounted at a distance to keep an eye on things, afraid the bailiffs might clash with Liu Chengzong.

On the return trip he'd ridden barely half a shichen when they startled a wolf; the warhorse had the heart but not the strength, its legs finally giving out and dumping Gao Xian hard on his backside.

Liu Chengzong wasn't the least bit worried about Gao Xian fighting a wild wolf — they were both wearing armor, and even if the craftsmanship had fallen short of the required standard, it was still frontier garrison gear, with a certain guaranteed quality.

Against a wild wolf, as long as you didn't stick your ankle or face out for it to bite, anywhere else it bit would only cost the beast a few teeth.

Besides, Gao Xian was a veteran who'd been guarding the border since before Zhang Wu fled Yubao, and his hand-to-hand skills were solid — nothing to worry about.

And indeed, that's how it turned out: even thrown to the ground by his horse's kick, Gao Xian still fought the wolf to a draw.

The wolf bit him twice; he stabbed the wolf twice.

He was fine — two plates on his left-arm iron vambrace were slightly warped, and the wolf had torn a bit of old, years-old cotton batting out of his padded jacket sleeve.

The wild wolf paid with its life.

Still, the column's pace had definitely slowed. These past days they hadn't skimped on Red Flag's rations, but this chase had taken a real toll on the mounts' stamina.

Liu Chengzong dared not ride anymore; Gao Xian's mount had collapsed, and even the two warhorses pulling the cart were exhausted and rolling their eyes. For the rest of the journey, the two cavalrymen had to lead their horses and walk slowly.

They dared not delay on the road. After bleeding the three wolves, they pressed on, not stopping until dusk past Mudan Creek, where they pitched their tent camp and only then dressed the wolf meat.

The corpse they had spotted on the way in past Mudan Creek was gone — whether claimed by family or eaten by wild beasts, who could say. Life is fickle, and with no ties to the dead, no one in the wagon party gave it a second thought.

"Camp" was really just two tents. Yang Dingrui's family of five slept in one; the other went to Guo Zhashi and his son, whose clothes were thin.

As for Liu Chengzong and Gao Xian, they had their own method.

They split the broken door plank they'd brought along into two halves. At dusk they dug a pit — the early-spring ground was rock-hard, and with no pickaxe, it took them the better part of a shichen just to gouge out a shallow pit a foot deep, big enough for two to lie in.

They stuck the door planks into the ground on either side of the pit, laid firewood inside, and roasted the wolf meat, which was smeared only with coarse salt and hadn't been properly bled. They wolfed it down, and by the time they finished, the sky was completely dark — but their work still wasn't done.

They gathered some firewood and charcoal to build a separate campfire nearby for warmth, then spread sand from the riverbank over the fire in the shallow pit to smother it. That became a warm, toasty ground-bed for the night.

Through the night the two took turns keeping watch and feeding the campfire. They slept until the sky turned pale green at dawn — just right.

If nothing else, at least when it came to food, few people in northern Shaanxi at this time of year could eat as freely as they did.

There were hardly any villages left that could still make scallion flatbread.

As for the roast wolf meat... better not to speak of it.

Wolf meat is rank and gamy to begin with; to prepare it properly, you absolutely need a few heads of garlic.

Best of all would be to grab great handfuls of the ornamental chili peppers grown in the prefectural magistrate's rear courtyard and throw them into the pot to stew with the meat.

But Liu Chengzong, afraid the smell of blood would draw people, had missed the optimal time to bleed it; he lacked seasonings, had only coarse salt, and on top of that, possessed none of Cao Yao's professional culinary skill.

His cooking was, at best, a little saltier than that of a raving caveman, which made the purpose of eating the stuff exceptionally pure.

Survival.

It was purely for survival.

That might be putting it a bit harshly, because in the latter half of the night, Gao Xian wrapped the remaining meat in salt and began smoking it.

One night isn't enough to smoke it properly, and there wasn't enough salt anyway. After drying it to preserve it, they'd have to take it back to Black Dragon Mountain and continue smoking it there.

They might only truly feel they were still alive when they came to eat those smoked, rank, gamy strips of meat.

All three wolves were good-sized, but like the people of these times, they didn't carry much flesh on their bones. They'd lived pitiful lives — when they cut open the wolves' stomachs, there was dried grass and leaves inside.

Apart from the portion Gao Xian took to smoke, they ate two meals' worth. The remaining ten-plus jin, Liu Chengzong stuffed into a stomach for preservation.

Not his own stomach, of course — his stomach only speeds up decay, it has no preservative properties. He stuffed the wolf meat into a wolf's stomach, planning to take it back and trade it with villagers who still had small livestock for some other kind of meat, even if it was just a chicken.

Truth be told, encountering prey, even wild beasts, at this juncture was a kind of good fortune.

Further north, you could search and never find a thing.

The prey weren't large, but they had plenty of fur and hide. Once they got home, they could soak the pelts for over a month in the saltpeter water the village had swept out around last year's Mid-Autumn Festival, and make linings for two short jackets. With luck, the leftover hide might even make a fur lining for a helmet.

The Central Plains dynasties were never short of saltpeter earth; it's found north and south of the great rivers. Shandong earth-saltpeter, Shanxi salt-saltpeter, Shu's river-saltpeter, the south's cave-saltpeter, and of course the northwest, which produces saltpeter mines.

At the Mongol markets beyond the frontier, you could also trade tea for saltpeter earth. The north is a land without yellow sulfur — not necessarily lacking it, just unable to refine it — but it does produce plenty of saltpeter. A pity they had no use for it, since they couldn't make gunpowder.

The art of tanning leather with saltpeter is ancient. Xingping Village had its own saltpeter tanner; every Mid-Autumn they collected saltpeter earth, boiled and refined it themselves, enough to tan their leather.

Following the Mudan Creek riverbank downstream, they weren't far from Panlong Creek. They saw no strangers along the way, and the horses couldn't sustain a forced march anyway.

When they set out the next day, Liu Chengzong's party was in no hurry.

After all, none of them had a proper livelihood right now, and the steadily worsening outside world weighed on the spirit. Walking slower was a way to ease their minds.

That was, until they reached Panlong Creek.

The shallow Mudan Creek merged into Panlong Creek at a small sandbar, and the water's color changed.

A broad streak of pink ran through the clear water. Liu Chengzong waved Gao Xian to take the wagon across the bridge while he rode through the shallows beneath the wooden bridge. When he rejoined Gao Xian on the eastern bank, his expression was complicated.

"There's an arm under the bridge. From the clothing, it's a woman's."

He turned his face north and nodded with certainty. "Washed down from upstream."

In the wagon, Yang Dingrui's wife heard the words from outside and let out another shriek through the bamboo curtain, making Gao Xian roll his eyes at Liu Chengzong.

A perfectly fine official's wife — how could she act like some sheltered young lady who'd never seen a thing, shrieking at every little shock?

Yang Dingrui leaned out and asked, "Lion, you mean there are bandits upstream?"

Liu Chengzong shook his head silently. How could he know what had happened upstream? He had no clairvoyance or wind-reaching ears.

Besides, Red Flag was still recovering. For a warhorse, the fact that its best feed had come after leaving the army was, in itself, deeply embarrassing.

If his mount had its full, peak-condition strength right now, he really would have wanted to ride north along the river and scout the situation. But in Red Flag's current sorry state, if they ran into bandits, they wouldn't even be able to flee.

"Let's head back first. Once I've seen you all home, I'll take two horses and go north to see what's going on."

Seeing that severed arm in the river beneath the bridge, Liu Chengzong had a premonition: the brief, comfortable life after leaving Yubao was probably about to end.

That thought was only reinforced when he saw, on the distant loess hill ridge belonging to Xingping Village, rows of wooden palisades had been erected, with figures holding long poles standing behind them.