Andre Norton & Susan Shwartz
Imperial Lady
1
Vivid bronze and green against the slanting rays of the winter sun, the pheasant darted up from its cover in a flurry of snow. Just as swiftly, Lady Silver Snow raised her bow of wood and horn, released an arrow. The heavy bird dropped into the underbrush. She nodded, and one of her escort rode off to retrieve it.
“An excellent shot, most worthy lady!” cried the old trooper Ao Li, his voice as bluff as if he spoke to a recruit. “Not even the women of the Hsiung-nu . . . this one humbly begs your forgiveness. The women of the Hsiung-nu are harsh, ill-spoken, but the thrice-worthy lady ...” His words trailed off, and his weathered face flushed with mortification.
None of the others cheered her, as they might one of their fellows. Old soldiers all, they had campaigned with her father, and now, close to the borders of their ancient enemies, the Hsiung-nu, they guarded her.
Even as Silver Snow held up an imperious hand, Ao Li flung him self from the saddle to her feet in abject shame, yes, and fear of his general who, disgraced and enfeebled though he might be, was still master in his own house.
Lady Silver Snow turned, her gloved hands so quick upon the reins of her shaggy northern pony that it almost reared. Snow cascaded from its coarse mane and pelt.
“Rise, please,” she commanded, smiling at him to excuse what he believed as a grave fault. “How should I be offended?” she asked. “Your words honor my lord and father, who taught me. Have I not always heard that the women of those beyond the Purple Wall hear the language of birds and can even gather meaning from creaks of stones and wood, while the most powerful among them even hear the shadow language of the untimely dead calling from their graves?”
Her breath steamed, a pale mist against a white jade sky, and her feet, in stitched boots of heavy felt, tingled from the cold; but her cheeks burned as crimson as the blood of the fowl that Ao Li scooped up and tied to the board of his saddle, wrought according to the fashion of the Hsiung-nu, who, barbarians though they were, without a doubt were also mounted warriors beyond compare.
Even as she gravely commended the old guard’s skill in tracking and appraised the plumpness of the pheasant that her bow, lighter and more supple than those of the steppes, had brought down, she blinked away tears of grief and of anger at lierself. She was ungrateful. The Son of Heaven might well have executed her father’s entire household for treason; for, if its head turned to evil, how could anyone ever trust the body?
Thus far, however, they lived; she and her father; lived and even, after a fashion, had been content. At times, she could even forget that they lived, existing solely upon a whim, which even a cup of heated wine could change to death.
A horncall rang out, followed by a cry, so shockingly loud that Silver Snow expected to hear the crystalline snap of icicles falling from trees. It brought Ao Li around, one age-spotted hand snatching at his swordhilt, the other pulling at his pony’s reins. His mount whinnied a protest as he forced it between his general’s daughter, whom he had sworn to protect with his life and soul, and this intruder.
She saw, before she felt, Ao Li’s apologetic touch to her horse’s harness.
“Lady,” he dared to whisper.
Behind her, men strung bows and drew swords. Silver Snow shivered, despite the warmth of her sheepskins. They had ridden out far today; had the Hsiung-nu seen them and decided to attack?
She turned to follow Ao Li’s pointing finger. Though she had always thought him fearless, his scarred hand was trembling now.
Silver Snow nocked her bow with even greater speed than she had used when she brought down the pheasant. She groaned inwardly and stole a longing glance at the gleaming, curved spine of the Great Wall. It might, she thought as her heart froze and sank within her, be the last thing that she would ever see. Beyond it lay plains and freedom of a sort—as her father had no doubt discovered during his years of exile. Perhaps he should have stayed there, unfilial and ungrateful wretch though she was for daring even to harbor such a thought. For conquered and disgraced though he was, his choice of surrender rather than massacre caused the downfall of ministers in shining Ch’ang-an. He had remained with his captors for ten years as had the deplorable Li Ling, general and traitor. Like General Chang Ch’ien, who had lived among the Hsiung-nu, wed and even bred among them, yet, in time, he too had fled back to the land of the Han.
Now, riding toward her on a sweating, steaming horse, came such a messenger as she had feared for ten years. What if he came from Ch’ang-an, the capital, where the Sun of Heaven sat in glory on the Dragon Throne and voiced his edicts against those houses he perceived as traitorous? Perhaps this messenger had already delivered the scarlet cord to her father and rode now to order her also to take her own life. Did Chao Kuang’s body now hang cooling on a tree, or lie contorted by poison, or bleeding from a swordcut? She would not survive him long, she vowed; and that choice was not dictated by the will of the Son of Heaven, either.
Despite the iron control in which she had early been schooled—first as a child growing up in a sad, poverty-stricken inner court, then as a girl raised by a grim, injured father—one tear streaked down her cheek, hot, but rapidly cooling. She forced herself back to a hunter’s stillness as she stared out across the border between Ch’in and the steppes. Guardian of Ch’in since the reign of the First Emperor, the Great Wall curled about the land like a sleeping dragon. That ridge of stone and rammed earth rising grimly above the plain showed pale now, silvered over with fresh drifts and windblown gusts of the translucent snow from which, before she had died of sorrow and solitude, Lady Silver Snow’s mother had named her child. Nor had the lady any living brothers. Sons of a senior wife, those all had died on the frontier, hoping to expiate their father’s sin. For he had been a marquis and general who had failed the Son of Heaven’s trust. Not only had he surrendered the bleeding remnants of an army of Han warriors to the barbarians, but, having done so, he had dared to remain alive.
Ao Li gestured sharply, sending the others riding out to flank her, their instant response possible because all of her protectors had campaigned together since before she was born. Silver Snow glanced at the old man, then quickly away. His fintire life had been governed by the code of military obedience. Would he really dare to order an attack upon a messenger from the Son of Heaven? Could she, her father’s daughter, draw bow upon such a man?
She parted trembling lips and swallowed, nerving herself to order Ao Li to hold off. Then, she gasped. Her eyes were younger, quicker than those of the troop leader, despite the way that tears of thankfulness now blurred them when she perceived that the rider whose steaming horse slid and stumbled up the track wore the shabby livery of her father’s men.
She flung out a hand and touched Ao Li’s, and the old man recoiled as if he had brushed a coal. “A friend,” she murmured, and reined somewhat farther behind her escort, donning proper female shyness like an extra fur cloak.
The rider would have left saddle to kneel when a growl from Ao Li stopped him. Very young, the boy dared to glance up at her only for an instant. Then he had lowered his eyes to the snowy ground, offering her more the homage due an Empress or a marquis’ first wife, not properly to be given the shabby and unbetrothed virago daughter of a disgraced soldier.
As winded as his horse from the speed of their coming, the messenger gasped harsh lungfuls of the thin, cold air, then coughed until Silver Snow flinched and vowed silently that that very night, she and her maid Willow must brew herbs against lung-fever. “A ... a proclamation ... an edict from the Son of Heaven ...” He prostrated himself until Silver Snow could scarcely hear the words that he forced out between coughs. “Your most-honored father the general summons ...”