Mouse (3 page)

Charles stopped to untie the sailcloth bag from his back and saw Ying already walking up the creek, keeping to the dense cover on one side. Ying had obviously done this type of thing before. He motioned for Charles to hurry.

Charles did not normally take direction from someone nearly his own age, but he decided to let Ying run this mission for now. After all, it was Ying's mother they were trying to save. That morning, Tonglong had triggered an avalanche inside a cave beyond his mother's house, and she was still trapped inside.

Charles removed the items from the waxed bag and retied it across his back, slipping the spyglass and one pistol into the folds of his robe. With his second pistol in hand, he silently hurried after Ying and the others. In no time, they reached a cluster of low trees
near a bend in the creek, where Ying brought them to a halt. They ducked behind the foliage.

As Ying stared around the bend, Charles glanced at the towering hillsides that seemed to have sprung up from nowhere. By the river, the land was flat. Here, there was nothing but steep tree-covered slopes and rocky outcroppings. Ying moved to one side, and Charles fixed his gaze beyond him. He saw a small brick ruin that must have been Ying's mother's house.

Charles pulled the spyglass from his robe and focused it on the smoldering structure. He saw tendrils of black smoke drifting from gaping holes in a green tile roof, and ornate stone dragons at each of the roof's four corners that had cracked and crumbled from intense heat. The front door was missing, and all the wooden window lattices and shutters had been burned away.

“There's been a fire,” Charles said, lowering the spyglass.

“I see that,” Ying replied. “What do you think, Pussy cat? Is it empty?”

Fu's eyes narrowed, and he turned one ear in the direction of the house. After a moment, he said, “I don't see or hear anything.”

Ying nodded. “I thought I sensed something, but maybe it's just my anger giving me confused signals. The house was not like this when I left. Someone has burned it since.” He spat.

“What should we do?” Malao asked in a nervous tone. “Maybe it was soldiers.”

“It probably was,” Ying replied. “I doubt anyone is here now, though. I don't think this is a trap. If it was, they wouldn't have burned everything. They would have left the house intact to draw me in. I'm going in, regardless. We're going to need light to see inside the cave, and I'm going to try making some torches. You can all wait here.”

Ying stood suddenly and strode out into the open, heading straight for the house at a brisk pace.

“Wait!” Hok called, but Ying didn't stop.

Charles, Hok, Fu, and Malao all scanned the surrounding hillsides, looking for trouble. Ying passed into the house without incident.

“I don't see anything strange,” Hok said.

“Me either,” Fu said. “But it feels wrong to me. Let's hurry up and help Lizard Boy. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

“Yeah, let's hurry,” Malao added.

Hok nodded and stood, stepping out into the open. Fu and Malao stepped after her.

“You three go on ahead,” Charles said, scanning the area with his spyglass. “I'll keep a lookout until you're inside the house.”

“Good idea,” Hok said. She and the others jogged over to the house. Once they were inside, Charles lowered the spyglass, sat back, and scratched his head. Like Fu, he had an uneasy feeling.

If I was going to set a trap for Ying,
Charles thought,
how would I do it?

He decided that he probably
would
burn the
house. If the house was left untouched, Ying might have little reason to ever enter it again. However, if it had been torched, he would likely enter it to inspect the damage.

Charles also concluded that he would not bother to set up an ambush inside the house. Instead, he would post a sniper in a well-concealed location outside, preferably high up. Every ship he had ever sailed in had snipers aboard, men who would climb high aloft in the rigging and rain musket balls down upon enemy ships. A person high overhead armed with a musket could cover a surprising amount of ground.

Raising the spyglass to his eye once more, he looked both high and low this time. It took nearly a quarter of an hour, but he finally found him. Perched in a tree directly opposite the rear of the house sat a man in a silky red and green robe and pants that blended almost perfectly with the autumn foliage. The sniper had one musket raised to his shoulder, trained upon the house, and several more in a large sling next to him. Charles realized that the house must have a back door, and if anyone stepped through it, they would be dead.

Charles needed to act. He raised his pistol to better gauge the distance between himself and the sniper, but it was just as he'd suspected. He was too far away to have any hope of his lead ball reaching its target.

As Charles contemplated what to do next, Malao wandered out the front door, staring at his toes. He stopped and lifted one foot all the way up to his nose,
wiggling his toes and giggling loudly as the others began to scold him from within the house. They told him to stay out there because his feet stank so much. How his feet could still smell so bad even after swimming in the river, they would never know.

Charles looked back at the sniper and saw with horror that he was repositioning his musket. It seemed he had a clear shot at anyone coming out the front door, too.

Charles leaped from the undergrowth and rushed toward Malao, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Ahoy! Malao! Sniper in a tree! JUMP, MATEY!”

Malao sprang high into the air. At the same moment, a cloud of dust mushroomed beneath his feet, followed by a loud
CRACK!
that pierced the chilly air.

“We're under fire!” Charles shouted. “Take cover!”

As he headed for the front door, hoping to reach it before the sniper took up another musket, Charles watched to see where Malao landed. However, Malao never hit the ground. Charles looked up, astonished, and saw Malao scrambling about the rooftop.

“Hot, hot, hot!” Malao screeched.

Roof tiles exploded next to Malao, followed by the crisp report of the sniper's second musket. Those lead balls were fast. They were making impact before their blast could be heard. The man in the tree had top-notch equipment and fresh powder.

Charles watched Malao drop into the house through one of the large holes in the roof. Charles looked back at the sniper and saw that the man had taken up a third musket. This one was aimed directly at Charles.

Charles raised his pistol and cocked back the flint-tipped hammer, assuming the worst. The sniper was stationary with a long-barreled musket that was guaranteed to be far more accurate than Charles’ short pistol. What was worse, Charles was barely within range for his weapon. By all accounts, he didn't stand a chance.

A tremendous growl suddenly filled the air, and with his eyes still fixed on the sniper, Charles saw a large piece of stone sailing toward the tree. The sniper saw it, too, and the instant the man's head shifted slightly in the direction of the flying object, Charles fired his pistol.

Bang!

Thud.

The sniper hit the ground in a heap.

Charles raced toward the man, but Fu got there first and gave the sniper a swift kick to the kidneys. Charles was not surprised when the man didn't budge.

Fu rolled the man over, and they saw that the lead ball had passed deep into the center of his chest. A fallen piece of one of the stone dragons was lodged in the sniper's forehead, the skin around it blistering curiously.

Fu growled, softer this time, and Charles saw that he was holding his right hand. Fu's palm was swelling fast. Charles realized that the stone shard Fu had thrown was burning hot.

“I can't believe you threw hot stone,” Charles said as the others hurried over. “Thank you, Fu. Nice throw.”

Fu shrugged.

Hok took Fu's injured hand in her own, inspecting
it. “You'll be fine,” she said. “Go dip it into the cool water of the creek. I'll make a salve and wrap your hand as we walk to Ying's mother.”

Fu grunted and headed for the creek.

Hok shifted the waxed sailcloth bag containing her herbs and turned to Charles. “Are you okay?”

“I'm all right,” Charles replied, “but I'm worried about Fu. Malao, too. He was jumping around barefoot on those hot roof tiles.”

Malao hobbled over, grinning. “You're worried about me? Don't bother.” He lifted a small dirty foot and wiggled his toes. Other than black ash on his sole and a few blades of burnt grass wedged beneath his toenails, Malao's foot looked fine, though its smell left something to be desired.

“It would take a lot more than a little heat to get through my thick soles,” Malao said. “Besides, I've danced across hot roof tiles before.” He giggled. “The same thing goes for Fu's hand. All his years of Iron Palm and Tiger Claw training have thickened his skin and killed most of his nerve endings. I bet he didn't feel a thing.”

Charles shook his head. He never would understand these foreigners.

“Thanks for saving me, by the way, Charles,” Malao said.

“No, no,” Charles replied. “We should all thank Fu. If he hadn't—”

Ying stepped up to the group. “You can congratulate each other later. Right now, we need to keep
moving.” He glanced down at the sniper and paused, bending over. He seized the sniper's left forearm and said, “Did you notice this?”

Charles looked down and saw that the man had a jellyfish tattooed on the inside of his left wrist. “Does it mean something?” he asked.

“This region is controlled by the Southern War lord, a man called HaiZhe, or Jellyfish. I was introduced to him at a fight club once. This man works for him.”

“What is he doing here?” Hok asked.

“I have no idea,” Ying said. “We'll have to figure it out later.”

Ying led them back to the ruined house, where he had assembled several torches. They were fashioned out of furniture legs wrapped with cloth and soaked in some kind of liquid. Beside the torches was a small container that held a glowing ember.

“There is one bedroom that didn't burn,” Ying said in response to Charles’ questioning glances. “In it we found a pot of lamp oil, plus some bedsheets and a few wooden chairs. That's how I made these.” He picked up the torches. “I want to save them for inside the cave, so let's try to reach it while there's still daylight.”

After nearly an hour of climbing in the waning daylight, they reached the small back entrance to the cave where Ying's mother lay. Charles volunteered to guard the entry with three muskets that they'd taken from
the fallen sniper, while the others lit the torches and rushed into the cave, armed with thick tree branches to use as levers.

Charles sat down with a heavy sigh and glanced about in the dim light. The coast appeared to be clear. With one corner of his robe, he began to clean his pistol as best he could and felt like kicking himself for not having brought additional shot, powder, and wads for reloading.

He had hardly finished wiping down his pistol when the others came plodding out of the cave. They were dusty and sullen, and Ying's mother lay limp and motionless in Ying's arms. Charles saw streaks running down Ying's cheeks where tears had wiped strips of his dirty face clean.

Charles knew better than to ask questions. They had arrived too late. Bitterly disappointed, he grabbed his pistol and the muskets and followed the others silently down the steep hillside. It took them longer to get back to the house in the dark. Fu went in ahead of them to investigate with his extraordinary low-light vision and declared that all was secure.

Once inside the house, Charles stood with his back against one of the brick walls, which was still warm from the house's demise. It provided some relief from the ever-increasing chill of the night. His clothes, like everyone else's, were still damp. Fu and Malao set about gathering kindling for a fire, while Ying took his mother into the undamaged bedroom. Hok walked over to Charles and began to rummage
through her herb bag. Where they stood, a sliver of starlight shone through one of the gaping holes in the roof, providing at least some light.

“This is really sad,” Charles said.

Hok nodded but didn't reply.

“What was Ying's mother's name?”

“WanSow,” Hok said. “It means ‘Cloud Hand.’ Ying said that she was a
Tai Chi
master.”

“What is
Tai Chi
?
“
Charles asked.

“It is a Chinese martial art that combines moving meditation with specialized breathing techniques.”

“What is so special about breathing?”

Hok stopped rummaging and pulled out a section of evergreen branch. She looked deeply into Charles’ eyes. “If you stop breathing, you stop living.”

Charles didn't know how to respond to that.

Hok continued. “But imagine if you could control your breathing to the point where you almost stop but don't.”

“I don't understand,” Charles said. “Is there a difference between almost stopping and actually stopping? I mean, how do you
almost
stop breathing?”

“For most people like you and me,” Hok said, “no, there is no difference. For WanSow, however, there may be. Come watch.”

Hok led Charles to a small room, where they found Ying kneeling beside his mother. Fu and Malao had started a fire nearby, and they were already beginning to warm themselves near it. Hok kneeled next to Ying, beside WanSow.

“This is a branch from the
xiang mu
tree,” Hok said, showing it to Ying in the flickering firelight. “No living person can inhale the odor of its sap without stirring.”

“Let me do it,” Ying said.

Charles watched as Hok handed the small branch to Ying. Ying bent it several times, back and forth, then twisted it around and around upon itself. Charles could just make out a tiny bubble of liquid that had risen where Ying had bent and twisted the branch. Ying waved the bubble slowly beneath his mother's nose, and to Charles’ surprise, she stirred.

Ying pulled the branch away, and WanSow weakly opened her eyes. She blinked twice at Ying, slowly, and Charles thought that he saw the slightest hint of a smile on her face before her eyelids drifted closed once more.