Chapter 1091 — The Flute

CHAPTER 1091

The Flute

The Lower Pine villagers were waiting in the snow at the south mouth of the basin.

All three hundred who had gone out through the seam were there, crowded beside a herders’ camp of six felt tents. They had waited since the grey dome went up the night before, wrapped in the herders’ blankets. Nobody had gone home.

When Qin Wuyan came round the last bend with Shi Feng on his back, the whole crowd went silent.

Then a small boy broke out of it and ran.

“Grandpa!” the boy shouted. “Grandpa!”

Tan Ershu had talked without stopping for twenty li. Overjoyed, he dropped to his knees in the snow and caught the boy. He held him for a long time. Then he pushed the boy back, wiped his own face with his sleeve and held out the flute.

“Here,” Tan Ershu said gruffly. “You left it in the cave. Again. Do you know what your grandpa went through to get it back?”

The boy took the flute in both hands and stared at it.

Tan Ershu got up and turned to the crowd. His voice was loud again at once.

“Listen, all of you!” Tan Ershu shouted, and pointed at Shi Feng. “When the sky went grey, who pushed you out through the crack? Him! Before he went himself! Then he stayed inside with the masked devil, and he fought him on the ice, and he cut his hand open! I saw it! I saw all of it from the top of the cliff!”

“The alchemist?” a woman said, staring. “He was the one who pushed my children through first.”

“He stayed behind for us?” a man asked.

“Good people get repaid in the end!” an old woman called. “My grandmother always said so!”

“Is he dead?” a child asked. “He looks dead.”

“He isn’t dead,” Shi Feng said from Qin Wuyan’s back, without opening his eyes.

The crowd laughed, too loudly, in relief.

One of the herders pushed forward. He was a broad man in sheepskin, with a face burned dark by the wind of the frozen waste.

“We saw it from the camp,” the herder said hoarsely, and pointed back at the basin. “The grey sky first, all night. Then this morning there were two skies at once. One grey and one red, over the basin. Red like a forge. My father’s eighty, and he says he’s never seen anything like it.”

“Two skies! I saw it too!” another herder called.

“Then the grey one broke, and the red one went out,” a third said.

“…”

Nobody looked at Lin Langtian. He was standing at the back with a hammer on his shoulder and a twig in his hair, and none of them could imagine he had anything to do with the sky.

Qin Wuyan bowed to the herders. “This one asks for a sledge,” Qin Wuyan said. “To the Wanyan estate.”

The herders brought one at once, a low sledge with two shaggy ponies. Qin Wuyan laid Shi Feng on it, carefully, with one good arm. Then he looked at Lin Langtian.

“There’s room,” Qin Wuyan said.

“Senior Brother walks,” Lin Langtian said, lifting his chin. “Slowly. With dignity.”

Lin Langtian walked beside the sledge for about a hundred paces. Then his knees folded, and he sat down in the snow.

The villagers stared. Lin Langtian got up, brushed off his robe and kept walking as though nothing had happened.

Two li later he fell over again, face first.

“Senior Brother,” Shi Feng said from the sledge, worried.

“The snow’s uneven here,” Lin Langtian said into the snow. Then he got up again.

They went on toward the Wanyan lands as the light went yellow. The villagers followed for the first few li, and then the herders turned them back toward their own valley. Tan Ershu walked beside the sledge longest. He was silent for once, and Shi Feng was touched that he’d stayed so long.

When the last of them had turned back, Shi Feng spoke without looking round.

“The strength you used on the ice,” Shi Feng said. “Where did it come from?”

Lin Langtian walked for a while before he answered.

“It’s mine,” Lin Langtian said at last. “It’s old. And it costs more than this frontier body of mine can pay yet.” He coughed, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “That’s all you get, Junior Brother. Don’t ask the rest.”

Shi Feng chose not to press him. He had seen Lin Langtian cough blood on the ice, and he was worried. The rest could wait.

“How long have you been in the north?” Shi Feng asked instead.

“Long enough to read three Tianji issues,” Lin Langtian said, “and be insulted by every one.”

“Insulted how?” Shi Feng asked.

“Sixth!” Lin Langtian said, suddenly loud again, and threw up his free hand. “My junior brother takes the 6 Mark in front of the whole capital, and they print him sixth! Below five people Yours Truly has never heard of! I nearly went to the Tianji Mansion to complain in person!”

Qin Wuyan, walking on the other side of the sledge with his broken arm tied against his chest, made a small sound. He was trying not to laugh.

“Then you saw the grey sky,” Shi Feng said.

“From a hundred and twenty li away,” Lin Langtian said. “I was eating. I brought the potato with me. You know how that ended.”

The sledge creaked on through the snow. Ahead of them, on the edge of the frozen waste, the lamps of the Wanyan estate came on one by one.

A rider was already coming down the estate road toward them at a gallop. It was Hong Lie, alone, with no cloak and no escort, and his horse was white with frost to the shoulders.