The night wind carried the unique earthy stench of the wasteland as it blew into his face.
He Minghu grabbed a handful of coarse gravel and rubbed it violently between his palms, scraping until the skin broke and bled, feeling it finally rid him of a trace of the lingering, nauseating stench.
He snatched up the large chopping knife thrown on the ground, gripped the handle tightly, and turned his head to warily scan the pitch-black wilderness around him.
Ma Jin'an stood two paces away, lifting his sleeve to his nose to take a sniff, his face instantly turning pale.
This imperial censor, who normally insisted on using a white jade cup even for tea, could only stoop over, retching repeatedly, as he fought to suppress the sour bile churning in his stomach.
The two men panted for breath in the tangled weeds, battered and disheveled.
"Throw away that bundle of yours," Ma Jin'an suddenly turned his head and pointed at the bulging pack strapped to He Minghu's back.
He Minghu was stunned. Instinctively, he hugged the pack tighter and backed up two steps. "Throw it away? Lord Ma, you're talking nonsense! This is my entire fortune—I'm counting on it to recruit troops and buy horses when we go to the Khitan territory!"
"Recruit troops and buy horses? You still dream of being a great general?" Ma Jin'an let out a snort of ridicule, raising his hand to point at the low hill to the north. "Chen Changfeng is suspicious by nature, and he's an old fox who won't even release a sparrow until he sees a hawk. Do you really think he'd come personally to this desolate wilderness tonight to meet us? Dream on! The people coming will be nothing more than the vanguard scouts he sent out."
Ma Jin'an looked He Minghu up and down, his tone dripping with contempt.
"In our current state—like stray dogs on the run—if we're carrying heavy bags of gold and silver, they won't bother taking us back to the royal court. They'll just cut us down right here in the wild, grab the loot, and silence us!"
Hearing this, He Minghu ground his molars in frustration.
Having spent ten years on the border, he knew Ma Jin'an was speaking the brutal truth. He had seen far too many Khitan kill for wealth.
Reluctantly, he untied the pack, letting clattering gold bars tumble out onto the grass, keeping only a few high-denomination banknotes, which he crumpled and stuffed inside his undergarments.
"My gold is gone—what about the city defense map we brought?" He Minghu pressed, stepping closer.
Ma Jin'an didn't answer. Instead, he reached into his robes and pulled out the rolled sheepskin map.
He gripped the top and bottom edges of the scroll, then tore it apart.
This map, upon which the lives of tens of thousands in the northern garrison town depended, was ripped cleanly in two.
He Minghu's eyes widened; the chopping knife nearly fell from his hand.
"Are you insane!" He Minghu growled in a low, furious voice.
Ma Jin'an carefully folded one half and tucked it back into his chest, patting it with a cold laugh.
"If we don't hold something back, how do we buy our lives? If Chen Changfeng won't see us, we use this half to buy a way out. Once we meet someone with real authority at the royal court, we'll use the other half to trade for wealth and glory."
Ma Jin'an's calculations were sharp and precise.
"Otherwise, why would the Khitan bother to feed us like kings?"
No sooner had he spoken.
From behind the low northern slope came a dull rumbling vibration.
The sound grew closer, the pounding of hooves crushing gravel in the silent night stirring an electrifying tension.
Within the time it takes to half a cup of tea, twenty Khitan war horses in heavy armor charged down the slope, spreading into a crescent formation that trapped the two men against the edge of a dry ravine.
The lead rider was a powerfully built man, wearing a wolf-skin felt hat, wielding a steel-tipped lance.
The spearpoint glinted coldly, pointing directly at Ma Jin'an's face.
This was Aletan, a thousand-man commander in the Khitan royal army's vanguard.
"Mr. Chen said there would be a great gift sent out of the northern garrison town tonight, so he had me bring men to welcome it," Aletan said, looking down at the two men, his nostrils flaring theatrically before he grimaced and covered his nose and mouth in disgust.
"Where's this great gift? All I smell is two piles of dog shit."
The heavily armored cavalry burst into raucous laughter.
For ten years, He Minghu had thrown his weight around the border pass and had never endured such humiliation. Rage flaring, he raised his chopping knife half a foot, ready to charge.
Ma Jin'an was quicker, grabbing He Minghu's wrist and yanking him back.
He stepped forward, straightening his stinking robes, and made a show of cupping his hands in a respectful salute.
"I am Ma Jin'an, the Grand Inspector of the Great Qian court, and this is He Minghu, deputy commander of the northern garrison," he declared, his tone neither humble nor arrogant, deliberately adopting the airs of a court official.
"We seek an audience with Lord Chen Changfeng. The great gift from beyond the pass is on me, and I must present it to Mr. Chen in person, or to a special envoy of the royal court."
Aletan threw his head back and laughed, lowering his lance by three inches until the tip nearly grazed Ma Jin'an's scalp, slicing off a few stray hairs.
"Mr. Chen is a busy man with no time for stray curs like you on the run!" Aletan spat a gob of phlegm beside his horse's hoof. "Hand over the map tube, and maybe I'll let you live. Refuse, and I'll punch a few holes in you right now."
Unfazed, Ma Jin'an reached into his sleeve and pulled out half the scroll, waving it in the air.
"The map is here, but it's only half," Ma Jin'an said, slipping the scroll back into his sleeve as he spoke rapidly. "The other half is hidden somewhere secure. Without me, you'll search high and low and never find it."
"If you try to take it by force, I'll shred this half and swallow it here and now. Then we're all done for!"
This speech was one Ma Jin'an had rehearsed.
He was certain the Khitan were greedy and that dangling the map in front of them would keep anyone from killing them outright.
But he had miscalculated. Aletan was no scheming spy—he was a brute who answered only to cold steel.
"You threaten me?" Aletan waved his hand, and the twenty armored cavalry behind him drew their curved blades in unison, the scrape of steel against leather scabbards echoing across the wasteland.
"Go on, try swallowing it! Let's see if I gut you first or chop off this fat man's head!" Aletan roared, spurring his horse forward.
He Minghu could hold back no longer. With a furious curse, he raised his blade to charge.
Ma Jin'an panicked for real. These grassland barbarians didn't play by the rules of court politics.
Grabbing He Minghu around the waist, he dragged him back, shouting, "Give it to them! Give it now!"
Ma Jin'an hurled the half scroll toward Aletan.
Aletan thrust his lance forward, catching the scroll neatly on the point.
He unrolled it with his rough hands, scanning it by the moonlight.
Satisfied to see the marks of hidden doors and troop deployments around the northern garrison town, Aletan grunted in approval and stuffed the map into a leather pouch hanging from his saddle.
Seizing the moment, Ma Jin'an shot He Minghu a meaningful glance.
The two of them moved in silent coordination, backing away, their feet edging toward a nearby dry ditch, ready to slip away at any moment.
Aletan couldn’t be bothered with the two stinking defectors. He turned and waved at his deputy.
The deputy promptly pulled a slender bamboo tube from his saddlebag and yanked out the stopper.
A dusty gray steppe eagle poked its head out, flapping its wings twice.
Aletan took out a charcoal stick, ready to scrawl a message on a strip of cloth—the report of the half-confiscated city defense map to be sent back to the vanguard camp via hawk post.
…
Less than fifty zhang from the dry well, behind a gully.
Ten warhorses lay silently hidden in the shadows.
Bamboo bits clamped between their teeth, their hooves wrapped tightly in thick cotton cloth, they lay belly-down without so much as a heavy breath.
Xu Zhan knelt on one knee on the earth slope, his left hand steadily gripping a black single-edged mace forged from meteorite iron.
He stared at the Khorchin cavalry in the distance releasing their hawk, his brows knitted tightly.
His adjutant crawled up from the bottom of the slope, lying beside Xu Zhan as he spoke in a low voice.
“General, the Yellow Sparrow didn’t come. The barbarian leader’s attire marks him as no more than a chiliarch at best. Chen Changfeng never showed his face.”
Xu Zhan let out a low, muffled snort through his nose.
He understood perfectly the deeper intent behind his younger sister Xu Qinghuan’s decoy play.
Xu Qinghuan had gambled with the real city defense map, using He Minghu and Ma Jin’an as bait to lure out Chen Changfeng—the big fish who could directly sway the movements of the Khorchin army.
But now, Chen Changfeng hadn’t even shown a shadow.
That old fox was even more afraid of death than expected. He must have sensed danger and sent only these ignorant underlings ahead to test the waters.
By this point, the decoy trap had mostly fallen through.
Since the big fish refused to bite, the city defense map could not be allowed to leave the pass.
Xu Zhan slowly rose to his feet, his left hand weighing the mace that must have been a good sixty jin.
The joints in his body crackled like popping beans as he gathered strength.
“No more waiting.” Xu Zhan’s voice was grim and wooden.
“General, if we charge now, those two traitors might slip away in the chaos,” the adjutant said, drawing his horse-slaying saber, hesitating.
“They won’t,” Xu Zhan said, turning and mounting his warhorse, wrapping the reins twice around his left wrist. “Leave two alive to crawl back with the message. As for the rest of the Khorchin bastards—kill them all.”
Xu Zhan clamped his legs hard against the horse’s belly. The warhorse used the slope to launch forward like a black arrow, surging up to the top of the ridge.
“Since the big fish didn’t come, we’ll butcher the mad dogs at home first.”
