Han Im moved swiftly towards the room where Yang Kuei-fei was sleeping and opened the door. A single lamp was burning in a corner; by its light he saw, first, the two porcelain stools which had rolled to one side of the room. One had broken into three large pieces. On a little table lay Kuei-fei’s hair-comb, broken very deliberately into halves, side by side. Through the oiled paper window the faint light of early morning gleamed dully.
He took the sword from its sheath and touched the taut bowstring. It gave out a deep low note. He cut it, and the girl’s body fell to the floor. She must have broken her neck when she jumped from the stools, he thought, for Kuei-fei’s face was still beautiful in death, without the red, sullen flesh which Han Im had seen in the faces of others who had thus solved with a bow-string the problems which were too strong for them. He lifted her head and cut the gut of the bow-string where it touched her throat. The sharp sword cut also the fine skin of her neck, but no blood came out.
Han Im threw the girl’s body over his shoulder, put the sword back in its sheath and strode out into the light of the expected sun. Somewhere outside the farm walls he could hear the noise of horsemen in movement. In the courtyard a groom was adjusting the girth of the General’s horse. Han Im stepped up to him and put Kuei-fei’s body over the saddle. Then, as he put his own foot in the stirrup, the groom took him by the arm. Han Im swung himself into his seat behind the body, drew the sword and with one movement, from the height of the horse’s back, cut down through hair and skull. The groom fell, and Han Im, flogging the horse with the flat of his bloody sword, moved out of the open gateway on to the slope of Ma Wei. So, he thought, many an Emperor’s messenger had urged his horse. But this was no Emperor’s message. The world was in ruins. Han Im only knew that, somewhere out there, amidst the slowly wheeling mass of horsemen moving like ghosts in the dawn, Winter Cherry was trying to take the place of the girl whom she thought the Emperor loved.
Winter Cherry, gaudy in the robe which she had taken from the room of the sleeping Yang Kuei-fei early last night, wearing in her short hair the kingfisher hair-pins, walked on, towards the line of horsemen. It would be quick, she thought. One crash, and blackness. She hoped that they would not look too closely at her body afterwards, for some fool might see that they had killed the wrong girl. Still, the clothes and the famous hair-pins should convince men, if they did not look too closely. If Han Im could only keep Kuei-fei quiet at the farm until all this trouble had passed, until the Emperor, back from this journey into the further provinces, should, returning, meet her whom he loved. She remembered the Emperor’s face, at the time of their first meeting—pale, other-thoughtful, remote. Even later he had still seemed so, even when he had fallen asleep beside her and she had crept out to freedom and . . . to what else? Who was she, to alter the ways of the Gods?
Then she stopped walking, for from one flank of the horsemen a figure moved fast towards her, a figure somehow familiar, with a burden at his saddle-bow. At the same time another horseman, whom she recognised as the Captain of the Guard, rode more slowly towards her from the centre of the line of horsemen. He and Han Im met beside hen
“This is Yang Kuei-fei,” Han Im said. “She has killed herself. The other is a fool girl called Winter Cherry, who thought to alter the will of the Gods. So she dressed herself in the other’s clothes. . . . Help me, quickly. We shall say that I came to kill the Lady Yang mercifully. Then do with me what you will. Only, that the Emperor may be comforted—for he would not have liked this—your men had better ride over her body thoroughly. Then the marks of the bow-string will not be seen. Good, the girl has fainted. That makes easy what before would have required words of explanation. Change their clothes.”
The two horses from which they dismounted served as a screen from the ring of horsemen. Soon Yang Kuei-fei lay on the ground in her own robe, the kingfisher hair-pins in her hair. Han Im swung Winter Cherry where the other girl’s body had been.
“When I have restored this girl to her parents,” Han Im said, “I shall be at your pleasure.” He mounted behind the unconscious girl and rode off, back towards the farm. As he rode, he thought how long it was since he had felt a horse’s saddle between his knees. He thought, too, of other things which he had not felt for a long while. Winter Cherry opened her eyes, and he patted her on the shoulder as he rode.
“Go to sleep,” he told her. “The Gods were too strong for you.”
Behind them, clearer now as the light rose, the line of men formed into two ranks, then into four. Thus, in four waves, the line moved forward stirrup to stirrup with gathering speed. Ahead of them a coloured patch lay in the grey dust. The horses in the first rank tried to avoid it, but those of the second, following closely, had no time to do so. Nor the third, nor the fourth. Then they wheeled about and cantered back over the same ground.
When Han Im reined up the horse in the courtyard, he found General Tung standing waiting for him beside the groom’s body. General Tung said amusedly: “You take my horse, you slay my groom, and then you bring back the beast in a lather. It seems to me that an explanation is possible.”
Han Im answered, as he stood Winter Cherry on her feet: “The explanation is a simple one. This girl tried to take the place of the Lady Yang, not knowing that the Lady Yang had hanged herself. I found the Lady Yang’s body, came out here and borrowed your horse. The groom tried to hinder me, and as time was precious, I took what steps you see.”
“But for a eunuch to carry a weapon,” the General protested, “is a contradiction in terms. Have I not seen that sword before?”
Han Im replied: “It was given me by Father Peng, who had overheard the conspiracy and felt that I, a younger man, was more fitted to cope with action than he. Also, I felt that your soldiers were more likely to listen to me, in their present rebellious mood, if I bore with me some form of argument.”
“And this groom, Seuen?” the General asked.
“It seems to me,” Han Im answered, “that he, the cause and centre of the conspiracy, at once its focus and excuse, could best pay by his death for the privilege of having written history. Besides, you will see from this girth, which is indisputably slack, that Seuen, whatever else he may have been, was not a good groom.”
General Tung observed: “Yet, at a time like this, all men are useful. We are short of officers. The rebels are moving towards us, and we, therefore, move on before them. I should value your cooperation, if only”—he laughed—“in return for the loss of my groom. And now, girl, you can go and tell the Emperor of the death of the Lady Yang. None of us dare do so. Tell him that we move in the time it takes to prepare his carriage.” When she had gone, he went on to Han Im: “We must find you a horse, suitable for your weight. Come.”
“You must keep the sword,” Father Peng said to Han Im, “for it will be used in the service of our Emperor, and I am too old to use it myself. You are younger: you have no distractions to take your mind from the duty of a soldier, as have ordinary men. Study of the military art demands a wholehearted attention. Women divert the minds of generals from the correct disposition of their forces, so that they become more skilled in scaling a bed than in attacking a city.
Han Im replied: “I have led a soft life. The affairs of the palace have claimed my attention: my muscles are not as hard and tireless as a soldier’s should be. And yet, when I felt my knees on the horse’s saddle this morning, when the wind past my ears sang a song of action, I was once again my younger self Perhaps with exercise and training . . .”