Chapter 796 — The Ford

CHAPTER 796

The Ford

The Gu banner had made themselves comfortable.

The ford was wide and shallow, a stretch of pale stones where the stream ran ankle-deep across the trail. On the far bank, five hunters sat around a little iron stove with a kettle on it. Their flag, a red tiger on black, was planted in the shingle. Beside the flag stood a rack of spears with red tassels.

When the princess’s banner came out of the pines, all five stood up together.

“Late,” the Gu captain said, looking at the sky. “We expected you an hour ago.”

He was a broad young man with a square jaw and a scar through one eyebrow, and the pressure of peak Deity Transformation came off him steadily. He picked a spear off the rack and walked to the middle of the ford, where the water ran over his boots.

“You know the Hunt’s law,” the Gu captain said. “What’s hunted belongs to whoever carries it out. Hand over the cores and nobody gets hurt.”

“And if we don’t?” Hou Tieshou demanded.

“Then somebody gets hurt,” the Gu captain said reasonably, “and we still carry out the cores.”

His four hunters spread out along the bank behind him. Two had spears. One had a heavy saber, and one held a short bow.

“Five against four,” Yue Shaoan whispered. “And one of the four is me.”

Shi Feng looked at the Gu captain’s belt. A fat leather pouch hung there, tied with a red cord. It was a lot fatter than his own.

“That’s a heavy pouch,” Shi Feng said. “Did you hunt all that, or did someone else hand it over before us?”

“Three banners came through this ford today,” the Gu captain said, smiling. “Yours is the fourth. Thank you for waiting, alchemist.”

Shi Feng walked into the water.

The Gu captain lowered his spear. He let Shi Feng come within reach, and then the spear came straight for the chest.

Iron Banner Spear. Shi Feng had seen it before, from Gu Yanxing in the Lake Stage bracket. This was the same art, a little slower and a lot heavier, and every thrust trailed a long red ribbon of qi like a war flag snapping in the wind. Three thrusts came in two breaths, chest, throat, thigh.

The grey Sword turned all three. Iron River ran each thrust off to one side, and three long splashes went up from the ford.

“Not bad, for a cook!” the Gu captain said, and swept the spear round at knee height.

Shi Feng stepped inside the sweep.

It put him chest to chest with the Gu captain, so close that the spear was useless. The Gu captain’s left hand came off the shaft at once to strike him, and Shi Feng’s own left sleeve brushed past his waist.

The red cord parted under his fingers. The fat pouch went into the Quiet Sleeve, and the Gu captain’s belt felt exactly the same as it had a breath before.

The Gu captain’s palm hit Shi Feng’s shoulder. Shi Feng let it push him back three paces through the water, and stopped.

“You can stop now,” Shi Feng said, withdrawing his sleeve. “You’ve already lost what I came for.”

“What?” the Gu captain said.

Shi Feng held up the pouch by its cut red cord.

“The cores,” Shi Feng said, holding the pouch where all five hunters could see it. “You told us the rule before I stepped into the stream. I’m carrying them now.”

The Gu captain’s hand went to his empty belt. His face went red, then white.

“Get it back!” the Gu captain roared.

His four hunters charged into the ford. The short bow came up first, and Jiao Lanyin’s arrow split it in the archer’s hands before he’d drawn. The saber man went for Hou Tieshou, and Hou Tieshou caught the saber on his stone-skinned forearm and punched the man into the stream. The two spearmen came at Shi Feng from both sides.

He let them come. At the last moment he stepped back, and the two spears met each other in front of his chest with a crack. A tap of the grey Sword’s flat on each wrist, and both spears dropped into the water.

The Gu captain lunged once more. Shi Feng put the sole of his boot on the spear’s shaft as it passed, trod it down into the stones, and walked up it. His knee met the Gu captain’s chin, and the captain sat down in the middle of the ford with the stream running into his collar.

It was over in under twenty breaths.

Shi Feng tucked the Gu pouch into his belt beside his own and looked down at the five of them, wet and groaning in the shallows.

“Keep your weapons and boots,” Shi Feng said. “We’re taking the cores. Follow us, and you won’t get to keep the rest.”

He turned and waded to the far bank. His banner followed him, Hou Tieshou laughing so loudly that birds flew up from the pines.

Halfway up the bank, Yue Shaoan stopped and pointed at a pine. A small bronze disc was nailed to its trunk at head height, and the number three was cut into it.

“Brother Shi,” Yue Shaoan said faintly. “That’s the third Mirror. The whole stand saw that. The whole city saw that.”

On the Tally Pavilion, the third Mirror showed a stream, five wet men in it, and a young alchemist wading out with two pouches at his belt.

For a moment, the stand was silent.

Then somebody laughed, and the laughter spread down the benches and out to the crowd beyond the ropes.

“He let the captain hit him!”

“To take the pouch! The captain never noticed!”

“Did you see the captain’s face?”

The Gu banner’s lord, an old man with a red tassel on his cap, set down his teacup very hard.

Long Caili’s veil didn’t so much as stir. She picked up her brush and made a small, neat note on the paper in front of her.

“Eleven cores of ours and the Gu’s whole morning,” Long Caili said. “Tell the scribe.”

Four seats away, the Third Prince hadn’t laughed either. He wasn’t looking at the third Mirror at all.