Chapter 55: Rob Early, Die Early

The coffin-maker did not weep, only stared in disbelief.

A lifetime spent making coffins, and in the end this craft was used on his own son.

At dusk, horse-faced Du Laowu was called back from Old Temple Village by Cao Yao.

He took three handfuls of millet from the coffin-maker, lit an oil lamp and worked so busily he missed supper, doing his best with limited materials to make the young man's corpse, barely past twenty, presentable.

Liu Chengzong had no deep impression of this youth; he only remembered him once asking, head lowered and voice soft, about the experience of being a soldier, saying he did not want to be a coffin-maker.

Yet he was no coward — quite the opposite, he valued the land above his own life, and in the end died of courage.

The refugees sent by the county office proved useful: the suona player, the fate-reader and grave-site diviner, the stone-carver — all found work.

The clan's elderly folk hauled out the ice they had stored in the mountain cellars for their own use, laid it beneath the mourning hall and covered it with cotton quilts.

Weeping drowned out the hushed whispers of clansmen uncertain of their future. Liu Chengzong, impatient with such scenes, changed into ragged clothes, took a lantern, and went out to the wilds of the northern hills.

The lantern flame flickered; no one was around; corpses lay strewn across the ground; the wind was cold and the blood had chilled.

His palms grew moist, then dry again, time after time; the skinning knives went from sharp to dull, one blade after another.

Until he was panting for breath, dragging the last headless body into the pit, then tramping through the mud toward the river beyond the hills.

The moonlight cast upon the ground inexplicably made him want to weep.

Self-reproach. Grievance.

To feed fifty mouths, to make life better, he had poured out the family fortune to buy land.

The land was bought, but then eighty more mouths appeared to care for, and it drew bandits as well.

The fields the clansmen had toiled so bitterly to plant — in less than half a day, all ruined.

The bandits had never met them, bore them no grudge, did not even possess the basic skills to wield a weapon — they were ordinary folk, commoners so common they could not be more common.

Yet they had to be killed until corpses littered the field, and dead, their heads still had to be taken.

In that other memory, nothing could be used as a reference; no matter how much he knew, it was all useless.

What kind of world is this, after all?

At night, Black Dragon Mountain was more terrifying than ever; Guo Zhashi's voice, shouting for him all through the valley, trembled with fear.

The pig-butcher, steeling his nerve, brought over clean clothes.

Liu Chengzong said nothing. He washed clean in the river, shallow to the wrist, changed into the clothes, and went back to sleep.

Over the next two days, Liu En of Mule Household went to the county office to report and still had not returned, making people wonder whether yet another Black Dragon Mountain clansman had died out there.

Liu Chengzu was so busy his feet never touched the ground. After their first taste of battle, the village militia had polarized sharply.

Some, no matter what, refused to take part in any more fighting; some trained harder than ever; and some even demanded daily drill.

In any case, the fields were ruined, so they had plenty of time.

Old Master Liu was supposed to be resting, but in truth he could not. First, a tenant farmer had driven himself into a dead end; seeing no way to pay the rent, in the night his whole family had hung themselves from the roof beam.

Then clansmen began fleeing — the next night, six households ran away.

The clansmen gathered in the ancestral hall to discuss it, and only then learned that two households had already tried to flee the first night, but at the mountain pass they encountered a ghost baring fangs and brandishing claws. Thinking their ancestors had manifested to stop them from leaving, they came back.

The descriptions were uncannily vivid.

Liu Chengzong suspected that might have been himself, bathing bare-assed in the river, spotted by someone.

Black Dragon Mountain's fields were severely damaged; the yield, already poor, would now be reduced by another six-tenths.

What the starving folk actually cut and took away was not much — the sprouting panicled millet they carried off at least got eaten.

What was most agonizing was that the vast majority of the fields had been trampled as the starving folk gathering millet fled between the furrows.

People still remained here only because they hoped Liu En could bring back good news from the county office — a little money to serve as travel funds for fleeing.

Old Master Liu returned all the borrowed grain. There was no point anymore.

The crops in the fields would not even supply enough seed for the summer tax and autumn grain levies; for all of Black Dragon Mountain, running out of food was only a matter of sooner or later.

That was also why many of the clan's young men trained so relentlessly — to learn the skills to waylay travelers.

If one truly had to name a benefit from this battle, there was indeed one.

The core strength of the starving bandits had been wiped out, and the able-bodied followers had been beaten into scattering in all directions, leaving behind a great quantity of weapons for Black Dragon Mountain.

Earlier, they could not even scrape together enough spears and blades for the front rank; now they had over a hundred long spears and short lances, not to mention the belongings of the bandit chief.

These past two days, the mountain was in utter chaos. The prudent, seasoned clan elders and seniors debated again and again in the ancestral hall, yet no one could produce a reliable plan.

Every household's rice jar and flour jar would be empty before the seventh month. Selling the new grain from the fields might just cover the summer tax, but for the wheat planted around White Dew, they would have to borrow from elsewhere.

But even if that stuff did not die from drought, it would not ripen until the fifth month of next year.

Black Dragon Mountain, not counting the few households that had fled, plus the two squads of border troops and the eighty farmstead workers, numbered over five hundred souls.

Even by the barest starvation-avoidance standard, they needed a hundred shi of grain each month.

Even if they resorted to usury, it would be hard to find a wealthy household anywhere around Yan'an Prefecture that could lend them a thousand shi of grain.

The choices left to them were few: either flee toward Guanzhong, or stay here and each find a way to forage, stubbornly enduring to survive.

At home, Liu Chengzong dismantled the blue cloth-faced armor taken from the bandit chief and fastened the plates onto his own armor.

The bandit chief's helmet was very fine; after washing it clean, he gave it to Guo Zhashi.

The plates of the cloth-faced armor were also of very good quality, but it was likewise a military coat short on plate count.

Combined with Liu Chengzong's original cotton armor, they amounted to only three hundred and eighty plates.

His mother offered to remove the cotton lining for him; he refused, only washing the inner and outer layers of fabric.

Taking the armor apart now was easy — he was only afraid that in a few months, when the cold set in, the turmoil would give him no chance to put the cotton lining back in.

Not until the fifth day did Liu En return with news from the prefectural seat.

Because a large bandit force had appeared within its borders, the city of Yan'an Prefecture had been under martial law for three days — exit permitted, entry forbidden — and only the day before were people allowed into the city.

Outside the city, chaos had already erupted. Starving bandits drifting up from the south were looting everywhere, giving the refugees outside the city tremendous inspiration.

Many refugees had been barely clinging to life on the gruel kitchens' pitifully thin, daily rations of clear broth; this closure of the city gates shut the gruel kitchens for three days, and outside the north gate alone, several dozen starved to death.

Those who still had strength banded together to loot everywhere. Among the refugees, word was spreading that people outside the city had formed gangs to secretly eat corpses.

The common folk living in the suburbs outside the city were so terrorized they lived in constant fear. Even children going outdoors had to carry a firewood knife. Families whose members starved to death dared not bury them, forced to keep the dead at home in temporary rest. When that became impossible, they placed the bodies in large vats for urn burial.

And regarding the matter of the severed heads, the county yamen likewise sent no good news.

The yamen runners were all unwilling to leave the city. The heads needed to be delivered to the prefectural seat for examination. The county yamen would report the matter up to Xi'an, but the trade routes were still impassable — whether any reward silver could be issued remained unknown.

"The county yamen has no money either. The magistrate's meaning is, if the heads are verified, what the county can handle is to grant the thirteen men a one-rank promotion, as per precedent."

Liu En sighed and said in the ancestral hall: "The Fourth Master and the two xiucai gentlemen will be granted the ninth-rank official cap and sash as an honor. The other ten will be given the righteous commoner commendation with exemptions — five years' exemption from corvée labor. If any wish to become officials, the county can arrange for Yan'an Guard to substantively appoint three squad commanders and ten file leaders."

Liu Chengzong's expression had gone beyond what could be described as unsightly.

At this point, the court giving out some Outstanding Youth title was utterly useless.

Becoming an official was even more of a joke. Setting aside whether squad commander and file leader even counted as officials — given the vacancy situation at Yan'an Guard, where officers and soldiers were throwing their lives away to flee, they were supposed to charge in after killing bandits and earning merit?

He clapped his hands together and looked at Liu Xiangyu: "Father, the way things are now — rob late and die early, rob early and die late. We can't avoid it. We have to pick one."