"You have traveled well, Mai'ili?" he asked.
She nodded, glanced at Shai, and after a sip at the sharp da ventured a few words. "My heart is the only part of me that is bruised, Captain. It is difficult to leave your family behind."
"So it is," he agreed. "Is it well that your uncle Shai accompanies you?"
"It is well." She bit her lower lip, took in a breath as she glanced at Chief Tuvi, and tried again. "Will we always camp like this? What can be expected?"
He had a steady gaze, kept on her but not intrusive and greedy, more watchful. "Mostly we will stay at posting houses, which have corrals for livestock and some fortification. We should have traveled farther today, but I don't want to push the horses and bearers at this stage. We'll have to take some night journeys once we reach the borderlands."
Mai laughed suddenly. Her laugh could charm water out of sand. "I had my chest packed, but my mother and aunts insisted on repacking it. There was nothing I could do. I'm sorry we left so late. I know you came at dawn. Would we have reached a posting station if we'd left earlier?"
Anji exchanged a glance with Chief Tuvi. "We would have. No matter, Mai. The Qin have a saying: When the river changes its course, get out of the way or drown. This is not the first time my plans did not go exactly as expected."
Mai blushed abruptly, responding to a certain passionate tremor in his voice, to his ardent gaze, and she looked away from him. No doubt she was afraid.
Shai cleared his throat and groped for a topic of conversation to draw attention off of her. "Have you made this particular journey many times, Captain Anji? You seem to know the way well."
"Only once, and that traveling west," said the captain. "But every troop such as mine takes scouts. They're soldiers trained to know the routes and water holes and landmarks along every road our armies travel. Chief Tuvi has been this way before."
"So I have," said Tuvi, an entire world of implication flowering in three words.
"May we know where we are going?" asked Shai, feeling bolder as the conversation unfolded so amiably. "Where we are traveling so far?"
"No. Not now." Anji's tone did not invite further questions on the topic.
There was an awkward silence, broken by Mai. "How could you only have traveled once, and that west? The Qin come from the west. You would have to have gone east and come back."
"Ah," said the captain with a pleased smile. "You have caught out the flaw in my story." He offered the barest nod to Chief Tuvi, whose answering frown seemed resigned and amused.
Mai had a most charming way of looking puzzled, eyebrows drawn together, cherry lips pressed together winsomely. Much of her beauty was her lack of self-consciousness. Other beautiful women could not compare because they arranged their faces to suit the needs of their audience. "Will you explain it to me, or is it something I'm not meant to know?"
"Not now. Uncle Shai, have you traveled well?"
"I am a little sore," he said, rubbing his thighs.
"It will be worse tomorrow," said Chief Tuvi with a laugh. "But you stuck it out well for a flatfoot."
"You must learn to ride as well, Mai'ili," said the captain. "The palanquin slows us down, but it was expected by your family."
"Learn to ride? A horse?" She stared at him. "But that's forbidden! There was a man in Kartu Town who was hanged for riding."
"So there was, but you and your uncle are under my command now. I need you to learn to ride."
"Do Qin women ride?" Shai asked.
Anji's smile had a pleasant tilt. He seemed an easygoing man in some ways, and yet Shai did not think he was. "They do. My mother taught me to ride. It is a mother's duty to teach her children to ride. When we have sons, Mai'ili, you must be the one to teach them, not me."
She put a hand to her mouth and glanced toward the palanquin, racked across parallel rows of fallen stones to keep it off the ground for the night. The twilight shadowed her expression, but Shai guessed that she was frightened, thinking of what normally passed between man and woman on their wedding night.
"Ah. "Anji raised his forefinger. Chief Tuvi set his da bowl on the table and retreated, strolling out into camp. "Uncle Shai, stay please." He rose and went into the dusk.
Priya crept forward and knelt at Mai's feet. Mai clutched her hand and wiped away a tear, and the slave whispered into Mai's ear words Shai couldn't hear.
"Is it wrong of me to be frightened, Shai?" Her voice was so steady, but her hands, gripping Priya's, shook. "How will he treat me? I'm afraid, but I know I have to endure whatever happens. He is my master now. I will not shame Father Mei and our clan."
Shai did not know what to say. No one ever asked him for advice.
"Shhh, Mistress," hissed Priya. "He returns."
Her hiss lengthened strangely. From out of the night erupted a shout of alarm and a series of sharp slaps. An arrow skittered over the ground, coming to rest at Shai's feet. He gaped. Mai's eyes widened. Calls and shouts rousted the camp, and men went running out of sight but well within hearing. That whistling hiss was the song of arrows rushing out of the dark, and Qin arrows-white death-streaking outward in reply.
"Down!" Priya pushed Mai down between couch and fire. "Crawl over to the house! The walls will give protection."
Captain Anji appeared at the edge of the fire's light. "Mai! Take shelter!" He tossed a glittering object toward her, and it smacked into the dirt beside her. A knife in a sheath, curved at the tip. Jewels studded the hilt, catching the firelight. "That's for you, Mai. Shai! Come with me!"
Shai grabbed the arrow and staggered after Captain Anji. His thoughts were disordered; he couldn't think straight. The captain brought him to a mud-brick wall eroded to chest height, where Chief Tuvi oversaw the chaos. Out in the gloom, figures circled on horseback, keeping just at the edge of the distance arrows could reach. At intervals one would ride in, shoot, and turn hard to dash back out again. It was impossible to judge how many there were, but surely there were more than twenty, and less than fifty.
"Can you use a bow?" asked the captain.
"No."
"A sword?"
"It's forbidden."
The captain snorted. "A staff? You shepherds haven't even sparred with your staffs up in the hills where we can't catch you?"
Shai burned with shame and anger. "It's forbidden, Captain. Men were hanged for weapons training."
"Sheep!" said Chief Tuvi with a bark of laughter. "No wonder they were so easy to fleece."
"Take this spear." Captain Anji thrust the shaft into Shai's hands. "Don't disgrace my bride by showing yourself a coward."
Then he was gone, moving off into the ruined village to direct the fight elsewhere.
Shai found he had moisture enough in his mouth to speak. "Are they bandits?"
"They're not ghosts, but they might be demons." Tuvi lifted his bow, tracked one of the circling horsemen, and released the arrow. It flew, its white fletching visible as it streaked through the dusk and buried its point into the breast of one of the riders. The man reeled but did not fall.
Arrows hit all at once around them. Shai ducked down behind the wall as a half-dozen arrows struck the uneven top, flipped end over point, and slid down to land at his feet. Chief Tuvi didn't move but calmly sighted with his bow again and loosed a second arrow. Shaking, Shai rose to his feet in time to see a second man take the impact. This one fell, but his foot caught in the stirrup. His body flopped and dangled from the stirrups as the horse galloped out into the night.
Behind them, on the other side of the village, Captain Anji shouted a command.
His soldiers, all together, cried out: "Hu! Hu! Hai!"
The shout resounded; it echoed off distant hills. Shai shivered down to his feet. The Qin were the fiercest warriors in the world. They had swept in from the west as a wave of black banners and white death.
Now that shout faded into the night, but surely it had given the bandits a better guess at their numbers. The riders circled once more before vanishing into what was now night. The moon's glamour illuminated the hills and flats, but the shadows swallowed the bandits so quickly that Shai would have doubted whether they had ever been there at all, except for the evidence of the arrows scattered throughout camp.