Chapter 62: A Sweet Scent

In the north courtyard of Wang Family Fort, only two guards stood on the fort wall.

Before they could even register where the thunderous blast had come from, the border troops shot arrows that forced them to crouch behind the inner parapet.

One of them hunched over to run and raise the alarm, but Gao Xian shot him down with a single arrow.

The other threw down his bow and shouted his surrender.

After that, they stormed the south courtyard simultaneously from the two courtyard gates and both sides of the fort wall.

Liu Chengzong took no part in this simple battle.

He had lost his ability to fight and was running back and forth through the deep halls and great compound of Wang Family Fort like a wild bull stabbed in the rump.

The blast of the Happy Stick, amplified and reverberating inside the sealed cellar, had hurt his ears and left his head buzzing.

It took a long time for the effects to gradually fade.

But after they and the acrid smell of gunpowder smoke in his nose and mouth receded, what replaced them was a strange, sweet fragrance that permeated everywhere.

Liu Chengzong felt his body had been wrecked by the blast.

This worried him so much that he grew frantic to escape the range of that scent, to prove he was not injured.

Yet the scent was everywhere, and growing thicker by the moment.

Gao Xian came running with his blade: "Lion, what were you doing in the rear quarters? Couldn't find you anywhere. You smell that fragrance?"

"It's ruined."

Liu Chengzong could not grasp the principle behind it — it was too bizarre: "Your nose got wrecked by the blast too."

Gao Xian paid no mind to the scent's effect on himself and said the fight was over.

The defending troops had decent skill but were a bit lacking in equipment; still, they had eaten their fill for a long time and were well-trained, wounding several of their men.

The fort steward also had a very strong will to fight.

Shot in the chest by Liu Chengzu's arrow, on the verge of death he still warned the defending squad commander that he must fight to the end even if he died, because if the fort was lost, none of them would live.

It was precisely those words that brought too much pressure.

Before the steward had even breathed his last, the defending squad commander surrendered, and for good measure slit his throat with a blade to offer a pledge of allegiance.

With the steward dead, even if they held the fort they would die — better to be bandits and die a little later.

Cao Yao had negotiated with the two bandit leaders outside: forty percent of the fort's goods had to be left for them.

Liu Chengzong frowned the moment he heard this: "Brother Cao is still outside the fort?"

Gao Xian said it as if it were only natural: "Right, down below the fort."

Liu Chengzong ignored him after that, and stopped fretting about his nose problem; he dashed up onto the fort wall in a single breath.

Without a word he had someone toss down a rope, then drew his bow and nocked an arrow, shouting downward: "Whoever moves, I'll shoot dead!"

Cao Yao was down below talking with people; seeing this, he understood at once, turned around, grabbed the rope, and climbed up.

In just a few moves, he flipped himself over the high wall and jumped down.

Clutching his bruised backside, he raised a hand and pointed all around, his face full of misery: "Aiyo, you lot — what am I supposed to say to you? Didn't you think to let me come up first!

What kind of deal could I possibly negotiate with them from down there?"

Down there he was practically a hostage, his life and limb held in their hands; he was no master of alliance and stratagem — he couldn't negotiate any good terms.

Once he was up, though, Cao Yao became formidable.

Leaning through an arrow slit, he shouted down: "You two groups, pull back to the south bank. We'll give you each ten percent — we will not go back on our word!"

With five or six hundred men blocking them below, it was very hard for them to leave; better to spend their way out of disaster.

Up in the mountains they still had over forty village recruits with no combat experience; they'd have to rely on them to haul the grain. If a fight broke out and people died, or they got chased down halfway through the haul, they'd lose whether they won or lost.

Haul the grain away, and no matter how much or how little, it was all profit.

This was road-buying money.

The reverse was true as well: although Cao Yao had whooshed right up, the two bands of bandits below were still happy to get some money and grain.

The three sides haggled for a while across Wang Family Fort, and in the end the deal stayed the same; only then did they slowly withdraw to the south bank of the river.

Not until not a single bandit could be seen within Wang Family Fort's field of view did the border soldiers' revelry begin here.

After the long hunger at Yuhe Fort, after the nerve-wracking fear at Black Dragon Mountain.

Like a pack of beggars who had never seen the world, they ran wild through this vast, manor-like fortress.

Everywhere, costly ornaments met the eye, and strange, exotic objects dazzled them.

Someone draped a sleeveless brocade jacket over his shoulders like a cape and strutted through the crowd with his head high.

Even when others said it was women's clothing, he paid it no mind at all — so long as it was a piece of cloth, it could cover up the mandarin-duck battle coat with its cotton padding spilling out.

The soldiers ransacked chests and cabinets, unearthing piles of gold and silver ware.

They used gold hairpins as throwing darts, silver fine-tooth combs to comb out lice, filled their bellies with wine, and some even stripped naked and lay down in wooden tubs strewn with flower petals, peeling off the thick crust of grime from their bodies.

Many gathered wordlessly around the table in the main hall, every gaze and every bit of attention fixed upon the tabletop.

Amid jade ruyi paperweights and fine porcelain stood a crystal hourglass with a little figure inside, glittering and translucent, the fine sand slowly trickling down.

After a long wait, the weight triggered the mechanism on the little wooden figure beside the hourglass; it swung its drumstick and struck a small gong-drum — Thump! — sending the soldiers into roaring laughter.

The little wooden figure earned itself a hall full of cheers.

And then there was someone else — there was Tian Shoujing, a squad leader of the border troops, a man of towering stature, with no parents, no wife, no children, who had guarded the frontier for the court for seven years and fought the northern caitiffs three times. He walked into this stable and broke down.

He wept on the dirt floor like a child.

For the first time, he knew that his life's ideal should not have been to become a Battalion Commander.

It should have been to be a mule.

The mules at Wang Family Fort ate better than the army horses at Yuhe Fort.

And at Yuhe Fort, the army horses ate better than the men.

It was also only at this moment that Liu Chengzong knew: his nose was not ruined.

Everyone could smell the thick, cloyingly sweet scent.

That scent was right there in the northern hills, squeezing out from the mountain crevices and drilling straight into people's noses.

Walking into the chill-filled cave passage, that odor finally grew sharper and sharper at the tips of their noses.

Pushing open the heavy wooden door, the aroma of wine rushed to meet them.

Countless stores of grain, piled over ten feet high on both sides of the great door, crashed into Liu Chengzong's vision like an overwhelming landslide.

Beneath his feet, the putrid liquid from fermentation in the sealed environment had pooled into shallow puddles — fragrant from a distance, foul up close.

Silks and satins, gold, silver, and jewels.

None of it could compare to people dying of starvation in droves during the drought, cut down like wheat, while in this mountain cellar old grain sat untouched as new grain was added, until the grain at the very bottom had rotted.

The battle-hardened men who had left the army at the northern frontier were struck dumb; no one could utter a word.

Liu Chengzong thought inexplicably of that day they fought the bandits at Black Dragon Mountain — Shiliu crouching beside a corpse that had died eating dirt, poking it with a stick, saying his father's belly had looked just the same.

If they had taken just one-thousandth, no, one ten-thousandth from here, Shiliu's father would still be alive today.

"How... how much grain is this?"

Even Cao Yao, the wealthiest among the crowd, could not produce an exact figure from a hoard of this scale.

The others were even less capable.

No one had ever seen so much grain — not even in Liu Chengzong's other set of memories.

He drew a deep breath; even his breathing trembled.

He said to move it. If they couldn't finish moving it, then call the several hundred men outside to move it.

"To hell with the Prince! Not a single grain of millet stays for those misers!"

The crowd roared in approval; curses against the Prince and the state of the world echoed through the deep mountain grain cellar.

The mighty transport teams lit torches and, with Wangzhuang Fort as the center, dispersed in three directions, soon to return again.

People used donkeys and mules, used large carts, even carried loads by hand or on their shoulders, hauling sack after sack of grain out.

From night to dawn, from dawn to dusk.

Without sleep or rest, forgetting to eat, until men dropped dead from exhaustion, crashing heavily to the ground under their grain sacks, blood choking the yellow earth red, never to rise again.

Not a single one ever said, "I can't carry any more."

This was not white rice or white flour, not yellow millet or yellow flour.

This was fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, wives, brothers, uncles, aunts and sisters-in-law — the lives of every living, breathing person.

He could carry it. As long as there was still grain, even the souls of the dead would rise and keep carrying.

When the last sack of grain was carried out of the mountain, Liu Chengzong's eyes were bloodshot, so exhausted he might collapse at any moment, yet his spirit was intensely wired.

The leaders of those two bands of outlaws were in the same state, blocking their path before the horses — one refined in manner, one broad-shouldered and long-armed. They asked: "This grain is a great deal, and you can't take it all back. What do you plan to do?"

They were stumped. The four looked at each other. Liu Chengzong said: "We can't easily take it all back either. At night we'll toss some to the poor households — save one more if we can."

The refined leader cupped his fists and asked: "May I ask if you leaders have names by which you are known? I am Storm-the-Heavens. Should matters arise in the future, you may seek me at South Jia Mountain."

The other leader, broad-shouldered and long-armed, wore a strange expression. He stared at Storm-the-Heavens for a good while before also cupping his fists and saying: "I am Shoot-Down-the-Heavens. I am at Tiger's Waist."

Now it was the four whose faces grew complicated. They had not yet decided on their own titles.

Moreover, the places these two had named were neither far from Yan'an Prefecture city, forming a perfect triangle with their own position, surrounding the prefectural city.

But earlier, when they had been moving the grain, they had moved it all in the opposite direction.

Their guard had been quite high.

Cao Yao asked: "Whose name do we leave?"

Liu Chengzong, seeing that none of the three seemed inclined, leaned forward on his horse and said: "Call me Tiger General. Our place is hard to find. If matters arise later, I will seek you out."