“You are a very proper man not to bear insult and no good fellow will. I am glad to have so good and brave a man with me. Go back, then, and tell your fellows and all the soldiers that I will take them under my own banners, all who surrender themselves and their guns, and not one of them shall be killed. As for you, you shall be a captain in my army, and I will give you two hundred pieces of silver and five pieces to every man with his gun that you bring also.”
Then the man’s twisted face lightened and he cried warmly, “You are such a general as I have been searching for all my life long, and I will surely open the gate to you at the moment when the sun is at its zenith on this very day now dawning!”
With this the man turned abruptly and went back and Wang the Tiger rose and went out of his tent and watched the man as he climbed nimbly and skillfully over the wall, catching hold of the roots and the gnarled trees as a monkey might, and so he climbed and disappeared over the wall.
By now the sun rose like a copper rim over the edge of the fields and Wang the Tiger commanded his men to be roused but quietly and without any noise lest some enemy see a commotion and suspect a new plan. But many of the men knew already that one had come out of the city and they had risen in the night and made ready without lighting a single torch. And indeed the light of the moon had been so bright that it was like a pale sun and the men could see such things even as how their triggers were set and where a string should pass through the eyelet of a shoe. By full sunrise every man was in his place and Wang the Tiger gave orders that to each meat should be given to eat and a full deep drink of wine to make his heart warm and brave, and thus fed and comforted the soldiers waited for the drum to beat that would send them forward.
Then as the sun rose high and full and beat down with a breathless heat upon the plain where the city lay, Wang the Tiger shouted from where he stood and his men gathered as they had been told to do in six long lines and when they heard their general shout every man shouted also, and the noise ran like an echo among them. And as they shouted every man lifted his weapon in his hands, each man a gun and a knife, and they all ran forward. Some crossed the moat by the bridge, but many ran across the shallow moat and clambered dripping up the further bank and they pressed against the city wall and clustered about the north gate. But the captains would not let Wang the Tiger stand too near the front, for they did not know at this last moment whether the man would be true or not or whether there would be treachery. Yet Wang the Tiger trusted the man because he knew that revenge is the surest sort of hatred.
Thus they waited, and not a sound came out of that city, and there was no sound of guns upon the city wall. Then as the sun swung upwards into its place in the zenith, Wang the Tiger stood stiff and watching, and he saw that great iron gate swing a little and one stooped and peered and there was a little crack of light along its top. He shouted once, and they rushed forward and Wang the Tiger with them and they pressed against the gate and burst it wide and they poured into the streets of that city like water freed from a dam, and the siege was ended.
Then Wang the Tiger did not stand a moment, but he commanded to be led instantly to the palace where the robber chief lived, and he shouted and roared at his men that they were not free yet and not until he had found the old chief. Then swiftly because of the haste of their greed his men hurried him to that palace, asking as they went and laying ruthless hold on any terrified man they saw. But when Wang the Tiger entered the courts of that palace with a great flourish of drums and bugles it was empty, for the robber chief had fled. How he had known of the betrayal could not be said, but as Wang the Tiger’s men had poured into the north gate the old robber and his loyal followers escaped out of the south gate and were fleeing across the countryside. Wang the Tiger hearing this from soldiers who had not gone with him rushed upon the south wall of the city and looked out and far in the distance he could see but a flying cloud of dust. He was in two minds for a while whether or not to pursue it, but it came to him that he had what he wanted and it was the city and the key to this region, and what did a robber and his few men mean?
So he went down then and back into the deserted palace, and there the many soldiers of the enemy who were left came to do obeisance and to beg his protection. He was pleased to see their number, for they came to him as he sat in the chief hall, and they came in tens and in twenties, the thinnest, most haggard men he had ever seen except in famine years. But they had their weapons and when they knelt before him and held out their hands to show their submission, Wang the Tiger accepted them and ordered that every man be fed as much as he was able to eat and that he be given five pieces of silver. But when the man who had betrayed the robber chief came in at the head of his company Wang the Tiger gave him the two hundred pieces of silver he had promised him and he gave it with his own hands and he commanded that captain’s garb be brought and given to the man, too. Thus did Wang the Tiger remember what the man had done for him, and he rewarded him and took him into his own ranks.
When this was all finished then Wang the Tiger knew that the time had come when he must redeem his promise to his men, for he had held them as long as he could and they would not be longer held. And Wang the Tiger gave the command for their freedom, wishing he need not while he did. It was a strange thing that now that he had what he wanted his anger against the people was gone, and he shrank from making them suffer. Yet he must keep his word, too, to his men, and when he had given them their freedom for three days he shut himself into the palace and closed the gates and he was alone except for his bodyguard. Yet even these hundred men or so were very restless and demanded their turn, and at last Wang the Tiger had to tell them off and call others back in their place, and when these others came in with their eyes all red and lustful and their faces dark and flushed so that they could not subdue their wild looks, Wang the Tiger turned his eyes away and he would not think of what was going on in that city. When his nephew, whom he kept always by him, grew curious to go out and see what was to be seen, Wang the Tiger burst out on him, glad of one on whom he could with reason fix his anger, and he roared, “Shall my own blood go ravening out like these coarse and common men?”
And he would not let the young man move out of his sight, and kept him busy about his person fetching this or that to eat or to drink or some change he must have in his garments, and when weak cries came through even into the fast closed courts, Wang the Tiger was more imperious and more angry than ever with his nephew, so that the youth was kept all in a sweat with his uncle’s temper, and he did not dare to answer him a word.
The truth was that Wang the Tiger could not be cruel unless he was angry, and indeed this was a weakness in a lord of war that he could only kill in anger, whose means to glory is death, and he knew it was his weakness that he could not kill coldly or carelessly or for a cause. And he thought it weakness that he could not keep his anger against the people and he told himself he ought still to hate them because they had been so dull and stubborn and had not thought of a way to open the gates to him. Yet when his soldiers came sheepishly to ask for their food, he cried at them in a confusion of fury and pain,
“What, must I feed you even when you loot?”
To this they made answer, “There is not a handful of grain in this whole city and we cannot eat gold and silver and silks. These we find but no food, for the farmers are still afraid to come in with their produce.”
And Wang the Tiger suffered and was sullen because he saw that what they said was true and he could not but order them fed, although when he did, he shouted in his surliest tones. But once he heard a hearty rude fellow cry coarsely,