CHAPTER ONE
The Return
The dead knew his name before the living did.
That was what they said about Wei Zhanyuan — that the battlefield whispered his name to fallen soldiers as a final cruelty, a reminder of exactly whose hand had ended them. Poets had written about him. Mothers used him to frighten disobedient children. Enemy generals had been known to weep openly upon receiving word that the Marquis of Beiyuan had been deployed against them.
None of this concerned Wei Zhanyuan in the slightest.
He rode at the head of his column with the unhurried certainty of a man who had never once considered the possibility of losing — because he never had. His black armour caught the afternoon sun and threw it back like an insult. His horse, a massive grey stallion that had thrown three handlers before submitting to him alone, moved with the same calm authority as its rider. Behind him, ten thousand soldiers marched in perfect order, still carrying the dust and blood of a victory that would be sung about for generations.
Wei Zhanyuan had not yet decided if he cared about that either.
The city gates of Beiyuan came into view as they crested the final hill, and the sound reached them before the sight did — a rising tide of voices, drums, the sharp bright notes of ceremonial horns. The people had turned out in force. They lined the road in colourful masses, throwing flower petals, waving silk banners, calling his name with the particular reverence reserved for men who kept them safe while they slept.
He acknowledged none of it. His expression remained exactly as it had been on the battlefield
— composed, distant, carved from something harder than stone.
Then the singing began.
They had arranged women at the main entrance. Of course they had. A double row of them, dressed in flowing robes of red and gold, their hair adorned with jade pins and silk flowers, voices lifting together in a praise song that had clearly been rehearsed for weeks. They were beautiful in the
way of careful, deliberate things — chosen for their faces, their grace, the way they moved like water as they bowed in perfect unison.
Wei Zhanyuan rode past them without a single glance.
His eyes had already moved ahead to where his personal guard waited near the inner gate, and specifically to the man beside them holding a covered bundle with the careful reverence of someone transporting something sacred.
His bow. Recovered from the field and cleaned, as ordered. Something in his shoulders eased by a fraction.
Liu Dazhu, riding three lengths behind his general, watched the entire thing with the expression of a man experiencing a very specific kind of suffering.
He had been awake since before dawn. His armour chafed in four places. He had not eaten since yesterday morning and there was a woman in yellow at the end of that row who had just looked directly at him with the kind of smile that rearranged a man's priorities — and he could not stop to appreciate any of it because he was on duty and also because his general had just bypassed the most beautiful welcoming ceremony the city had ever assembled in order to look at a bow.
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A bow.
Liu Dazhu pressed his lips together and said nothing. This was not new. This was, in fact, deeply characteristic. He had followed Wei Zhanyuan through three campaigns and he had learned early that the man's relationships with his weapons were more reliable and considerably less complicated than his relationships with people. The bow was always where he left it. The bow never required managing. The bow had never once created a diplomatic incident.
The bow, Liu Dazhu thought darkly, had a better understanding with his general than any living soul in this kingdom.
Beside him, Chen Xiaopi had twisted in his saddle to watch the women as they passed, his young face cycling through emotions with the transparency of someone who had not yet learned to hide them.
"That one in red," he said quietly, "has been holding that exact pose for what I estimate has been forty minutes. Her neck must be — "
"Don't," Liu Dazhu said. "I'm only saying —" "Don't."
Chen Xiaopi faced forward again. A pause stretched between them, filled with the sound of drums and singing and ten thousand pairs of boots on stone.
The third member of their small misery, Tang Wuyan, said absolutely nothing. He never did. But if Liu Dazhu had been able to read the man's thoughts — which, mercifully, he could not — he would have found something along these lines:
That woman in gold just threw a flower petal directly at the General's horse. The horse looked at it. The General did not. I have witnessed this man walk through actual fire with less interest than he is currently showing these proceedings. There is something deeply, philosophically wrong with a person who can inspire that kind of devotion and feel nothing about it whatsoever. I should have become a farmer. My father wanted me to become a farmer. A farmer would be watching this from the crowd right now, eating something warm, going home to a wife who —
"General."
The head of his personal guard fell into step beside him as Wei Zhanyuan dismounted at the inner gate, presenting the bow with both hands. Wei Zhanyuan took it, turned it once in his grip, ran two fingers along the string with the focused attention he gave to very few things in this world.
"There is a hairline stress fracture at the third grip point," he said. "Have it seen to before morning."
"Yes, my lord."
"The eastern flank's equipment reports?" "Awaiting your review in the war room, my lord."
"Good." He handed the bow back. "I'll review them within the hour."
Liu Dazhu stared at the back of his general's head as the man walked through the gate, already talking logistics with two officials who had rushed forward with scrolls, already back to the business of war before the victory celebration had even properly begun.
Somewhere behind him, he could still hear the women singing.
They had spent weeks on that song, he was fairly certain. Someone's daughter had practiced until her voice gave out. Someone had spent a small fortune on those robes.
Liu Dazhu dismounted, handed his reins to a stable boy, and followed his general through the gate with the resigned loyalty of a man who had made his choices and would see them through to the very end.
Chen Xiaopi hurried to keep up. "Do you think he noticed any of them at all?" "No."
"Not even the one in —" "No, Xiaopi."
"Right." A pause. "Healthy, though. Dedication to one's craft. I respect —" "Walk faster."
Tang Wuyan walked behind them both in perfect silence.
Somewhere out there, he thought, there is a woman this man cannot simply walk past. He does not know it yet.
The thought should have been funny. Instead, Tang Wuyan found it settled in his chest with the strange weight of prophecy.
Above the gate, the banners of Beiyuan snapped in the wind. The drums rolled on. The women's voices rose into the clear autumn sky, praising the name of Wei Zhanyuan, Marquis of Beiyuan, undefeated general, terror of the north.
Inside, the man himself was examining a hairline fracture in a bowstring. Perfectly, entirely, characteristically himself.
For now.
~ End of Chapter One ~
Next: Chapter Two — The Pearl of the Shen Family