Chapter 4: Sixteen

"Brother Lion?"

Liu Chengzong had just unstrung his longbow and laid it on the cold brick bed, stuffed the sinew bowstring into his shirt, and blown out the oil lamp. Hearing someone call him from outside, he had no choice but to get up, throw on the tanned leather jacket spread over his quilt, and say, "Door's not bolted. Grab a fire stick and light the lamp."

Outside the door was a kid, just nine years old, named Sixteen, his little scalp shaved gleaming-bright.

Sixteen was from Mizhi. The year before, he'd followed his parents south to flee the famine.

Whether from northern Shaanxi or Henan, since ancient times, when trouble struck, people always ran for Guanzhong.

Actually, Guanzhong's per-acre yields weren't outrageously high. There was a reason for that.

In ancient times, people prayed for favorable weather. In an era of poor infrastructure, they lived entirely at the mercy of the elements — one slip and it was drought or flood. Guanzhong had fewer natural disasters than other places, so they fled there. Once a man arrived, he'd become a long-term laborer; a woman would remarry. Either way, people could always find a way to survive.

But when too many people headed south, there wasn't enough food along the road to sustain their flight from famine.

His parents both starved to death on the road. Sixteen, dazed and uncomprehending, followed another group north and ended up at Yuhe Fort.

The Liu brothers had gone out recruiting soldiers. Seeing he truly had no other way to live and no skill to protect himself — and that left among the refugees he'd sooner or later be eaten by someone mad with hunger — they scooped him up and brought him back to the fort, begging He Renlong to let him stay.

Anyway, he was small and ate little. If every soldier in a squad ate half a mouthful less per meal, they could fatten him right up.

That's how he got his name. The unit Liu Chengzu commanded had thirty-two men. Every day when they opened the mess for meals, Sixteen would hold out an empty bowl, and each man would ladle half a spoonful into it. Whether dry or watery, the ration was fixed at sixteen spoonfuls — so they called him Sixteen.

There were many ways to start a fire: sulfur-tipped matches, fire splints, the fire sickle you strike for sparks, or the fire tube — none of them cheap or trouble-free enough.

In a place where many people lived together, the most cost-saving way to get fire was to keep a live ember: the ever-burning stove.

The ever-burning stove was a little clay-plastered furnace. The principle was much the same as a fire tube: minimize the air entering the fire chamber to keep it in a smoldering state. When you needed it, one puff and the flame rose.

Before long, a rustling came from outside. The wooden door was pushed open. In the moonlight, a little bald head poked cautiously in, holding a fire stick. He lit the oil lamp, went back out, scraped the stick dead on the ground, set it beside the stone lock by the door, then turned and came back inside.

When Sixteen first arrived at Yuhe Fort, his matted hair had grown three inches long, and his whole head was crawling with nits — all lice eggs.

Liu Chengzong combed him with a fine-toothed comb several times but could never get him completely clean. Afraid he'd spread them to others, in the end he simply shaved his head.

Normally, kids in the Ming dynasty would have the sides shaved, leaving a little tuft or braid on top, and only bind their hair up when they grew older. But shaving it all off wasn't unheard of either.

The fort was full of big, rough soldiers. No one was that fussy. Later, whenever they saw Sixteen's hair growing long, someone would naturally shave it for him.

"Brother Lion, you're so strong, using a lock that big. How heavy is it — a hundred catties?"

On the cold brick bed, Liu Chengzong, wrapped in his jacket, folded his arms and grinned. "Only seventy catties. I used to play with it a lot, but I don't feel like it anymore. It's out there guarding the house."

"What's guarding the house?"

"Scaring off ghosts."

The little bald head looked envious. "So awesome. When will I be able to play with a seventy-catty stone lock? I can't even lift a three-and-a-half-catty saber — I can only drag it along."

Struggling to swing a three-and-a-half-catty saber was perfectly normal. Light as it was, the blade's weight was forward. Liu Chengzong had found it heavy too when he first started learning the saber.

"It'll get better. Once you grow as tall as me, you'll be able to handle it." Liu Chengzong asked, "So what are you here for?"

"Oh, Uncle Tian told me to bring you some beans. He and Squad Leader Cao are playing leaf cards in the barracks. He sold the mirror and told me to deliver the beans."

That made Liu Chengzong frown. How come Tian Shoujing was "Uncle" but he was just "Brother Lion"?

As he spoke, the little bald head produced a cloth bag and set it on the table. "I'll go boil them and crush the fodder."

Liu Chengzong saw the bag held quite a few beans and said happily, "So the old crook really was hoarding grain. Go ahead and boil them. Once they're cooked, eat some before you head back. Tomorrow there'll be wild goose soup."

Squad Leader Cao was named Cao Yao. He was also a former household retainer of He Renlong's — a veteran in his thirties.

His hometown was in Henan. When he was young, he'd been transferred to Baoding to serve as a soldier. His skills weren't bad and his luck was decent — he made it into the capital army's firearms battalion.

Then the Sarhu campaign happened, and he was sent to reinforce Liaodong. He was under Wang Xuan's command. They met the Jurchens in battle and were routed by Nurhaci.

The routed troops from every column fled south. Cao Yao had wanted to flee with them back to his hometown in Henan, but in Henan, Grand Coordinator Zhang Woxu hit them with an attack. He couldn't get into Tong Pass and didn't dare return to the army, so he could only flee into Shanxi and Shaanxi and turn bandit.

Many of the roving bandits in the Shaanxi area nowadays were precisely those veterans routed from Sarhu back then — weapons in hand but no proper identity, they took to seizing mountains as kings, raiding homes and plundering houses.

By the time he reached Shanxi, Cao Yao couldn't run anymore. He was a bandit for a while, then brought a dozen or so brothers to accept amnesty and become border troops at Datong. Who could have guessed that in the Tianqi years they'd be sent to reinforce Liaodong again? This time, he absolutely refused to run to a battlefield to starve, so he deserted again, crossed the Yellow River west, and entered northern Shaanxi.

He'd also had a stretch of living as a mountain outlaw in northern Shaanxi before He Renlong later recruited him, gave him a squad-leader post with fifty men, and he did a decent job of it.

They were all quite familiar with each other. Liu Chengzong had even learned wrestling from Cao Yao for a while, though he never mastered it — it was just for fun.

While little Sixteen went to boil the beans, Liu Chengzong noticed his bowl was empty, so he went to the vat, ladled another bowl of water, and kept drinking.

These days, the soldiers on night watch in the fort got no food, so they'd grown slack in their duties. Even the night patrol and watch-call sounded faint.

He was afraid he'd sleep too soundly to hear it and miss getting up at night to feed Red Banner, so he drank extra water before bed.

The men were hungry, and so were the horses. He had to get up three times a night to feed it.

A while back, one night Liu Chengzong had only fed Red Banner twice. He didn't get up at the third watch, and the beast used its mouth to work the rope loose, nudged the stable door bolt open, got out, and gnawed a crenel off the Defense Command post. When it went back, its belly was bulging like it was six months pregnant.

At the time, it made the old soldiers in the courtyard absolutely delighted. One by one, they watched eagerly, counting down the hours till Red Banner's stomach burst.

No one cared anymore about the Wanli-era regulation mandating the burial of warhorses.

At least among the Yuhe Fort border troops in these famine years, that was the cavalry's privilege: when a warhorse died for any reason, everyone got a meal of stewed horse meat.

And if you had a special talent with culinary skills — like Cao Yao, who'd soldiered in Baoding Prefecture in his early years — you could even make fragrant, sizzling horse-meat shaobing.

In the end, Red Banner didn't give everyone their wish. It digested the crenel all on its own.

Ever since, Liu Chengzong had been even more careful not to let it overeat. He fed it three times during the day and three times at night, and at night he locked the stable with a gourd lock to keep it from letting itself out again.

Little bald Sixteen, young as he was, worked with remarkable efficiency. Before long, he came back clapping his hands clean and said, "Brother Lion, I've got the beans boiling. The horse grass is chopped and salted too — you can just add it straight at night. I'll leave once I've turned off the fire."

That said, the little bald head tucked his hands into his sleeves and crouched by the wall. His two hands traced patterns toward the doghouse. From the look of it, he was doing the Thirty-Two Postures of the Fist Canon with decent form — just no power behind it.

Liu Chengzong grinned. "Who'd you learn boxing from?"

"Heh, sneaked a look at the squad leader and picked it up."

"What's a little monk like you learning boxing for? Us soldiers all have armor. You pound away with two fists half the day and can't kill anyone. Very cruel."

"Then what should I learn?"

"First courage, second strength, third skill. No need to rush learning. Eat more, sleep more, run and jump more. In a couple of years, pick up a stone lock and train your power. Once your body's limber, then learn things."

Liu Chengzong thought for a moment, then said, "When the time comes, find old crook Cao and get him to teach you wrestling. Grab a man, say an Amitabha, and slam him into the ground. The heavier the armor they wear, the harder they fall — direct salvation. Isn't that more interesting than this fist style or that fist style?"

Little Sixteen half-heard him. He reached out as if to practice a throw on Little Whirlwind by the doghouse, but didn't dare, and just stood there grinning like a fool.

He paused a long while before lifting his head again and asking seriously, "Brother Lion, I heard Big Brother Gao say the general's coming back tomorrow. Once the pay's issued, he's going to buy his wife back. When the general returns... will we have food then?"

The smile on Liu Chengzong's face froze. Only after a moment did he let out two dry laughs, raised a hand to point outside, and said, "I don't know either, but you've got food right now — the beans are ready, go scoop some up."