Chapter 279 — Let's See You Bill a Beast Tide

CHAPTER 279

Let's See You Bill a Beast Tide

The drums began at dawn.

Shi Feng was helping Wen Bo and Fu Heng search a boar’s ash when drums sounded from the north. Deep beats rolled over the flats, each followed by a wet crack. He stopped digging. The rhythm was coming closer.

The reeds began to shake.

“That isn't thunder,” Shi Feng said, and stood up.

A red-and-black banner showed on the far rise, above the black water. Under it stood a dozen Martial Palace disciples around a huge drum on a cart. Two men pounded it in turn, and a third poured a thin trail of pale powder from a sack along the bank.

At the front, Hou Ping sat on a boulder with one leg crossed. Shen Ji stood behind him in his gold-collared robe.

The reeds parted.

Ash boars came out of them in a grey wall. Hundreds, mixed with cinder hounds, all driven mad by the drum and the powder, and all running in one direction.

Toward the flats.

“Back to the ridge!” Sima Lan shouted from the slope. “All of you! Now!”

The cohort scattered. Eleven juniors ran for the dry ground, slipping and wading and dragging each other up by the arms. Qiu Bao went last, with the cauldron bouncing on his back and his mouth open in a silent scream.

Wen Bo and Fu Heng were forty paces out on the flats. Neither was running. Wen Bo had caught his boot in the ashes, and Fu Heng was pulling at it with both hands.

“Leave it!” Shi Feng shouted.

“It's my boot!” Wen Bo shouted back.

The herd was sixty paces away. Then fifty.

Shi Feng crossed the mud in four strides and grabbed both juniors by their collars. He hauled until Wen Bo’s foot came free of the boot, then threw them toward the slope. They landed together at Sima Lan’s feet.

He turned.

The first boar was ten paces away, tusks down, eyes red. Behind it came the whole grey wave.

Shi Feng thought, A blade can't stop two hundred. Water can.

On his left, the bank of the black channel rose a man's height above the flats. The mud-and-root wall was all that held the water back. He swung the Stone Splitting Slash at its base with both hands.

The bank split. A sheet of black water fell out of the channel and across the path of the herd.

The lead boars hit it at full speed and went down in a screaming, floundering mass. The ones behind swerved to avoid the pile-up, and the whole stampede split in two and poured around the ridge on either side.

Ash boars slammed into the dead trees and shattered them. One went straight through the rain sheet. Another rammed Qiu Bao's cauldron with a clang that rang across the marsh. Qiu Bao went down, and the cauldron went over him like a shell.

“I'm alive!” Qiu Bao yelled from underneath. “Don't touch me! I'm alive!”

On the stone at the top of the ridge, Lin Langtian was standing up.

He had a sweet potato in one hand. The other hand was raised, fingers half-spread, and the grey ash in the air around it hung perfectly still. For once he was not smiling. When the stampede broke around the base of the ridge and the black water carried the last of it away, his hand dropped.

He looked down at Shi Feng, and the smile came back.

When the herd passed, the flats were churned into black mud. Shi Feng checked the cohort. Nobody had died, but Wen Bo’s wrist was cracked. Wu Qiang emerged from a latrine trench, filthy and silent. Nobody asked why he’d chosen it.

“Trash!” Hou Ping screamed across the water.

Hou Ping had come to the very edge of the far bank. His face was flushed, and his finger was pointing, and he was laughing so hard that his voice cracked.

“Artificer Hall trash!” Hou Ping shouted across the water. “A mantis trying to stop a cart! Hunters die here every year. Let’s see you write a bill for a beast tide!”

Shen Ji laid a hand on Hou Ping's shoulder, and the shouting stopped.

“Accidents happen in the marsh,” Shen Ji said evenly. His voice carried well over the water. “Heaven has its sudden storms, and men their sudden woes. The Palace takes no responsibility for hunters who ignore the drums.”

“There were drums?” Lin Langtian called down, delighted. “We didn't hear any drums! Zhu Liu, did you hear drums?”

“I heard a lot of drums,” Zhu Liu said. “I wrote them down.”

Shen Ji's gaze moved slowly from Lin Langtian to Shi Feng and rested there. Then he turned and walked away, and the Martial Palace banner followed him back into the reeds.

Shi Feng sheathed the knife, angry now that the juniors were safe. Hou Ping had deliberately sent the herd at them, then called it an accident. The shouted challenge wouldn’t stop him recording exactly who was responsible.

Zhu Liu came down the slope, mud to his hair, with the receipt book held above his head like an offering.

“Senior Brother Shi,” Zhu Liu said. “I counted. Two hundred and six beasts. Ninety-one of them went through the latrine trench.”

“Item,” Shi Feng said. “One beast tide. Cause, Hou Ping.”

“Witnesses, eleven juniors and one cauldron,” Zhu Liu said, writing.

A third thunderclap cracked from the east, closer than before. The ash on Shi Feng's sleeve rippled.

He turned toward the sound. “Take them back up,” Shi Feng said to Sima Lan. “Wen Bo needs a splint.”

“And you?” Sima Lan asked.

“I'm going to fetch the heart,” Shi Feng said.

Lin Langtian tossed a roasted sweet potato down the slope. Shi Feng caught it one-handed.

“Don't be late for supper!” Lin Langtian called.