Waking the Dragon River

The slain soldiers were strewn on the frozen pond like gutted fish, their wounds fresh, their bodies warm. Crimson rivulets snaked their way across the ice, and with the occasional hiss, seeped through areas where the ice had been churned to slush.

A boy, blue-skinned from perpetual cold and exposure, picked through the bloodbath with a weariness and resignation unbefitting for a child of eight winters. With chapped fingers, he examined the bodies of the fallen men. To his surprise, there were Imperial soldiers among the dead, their heavy metal armor glaringly obvious compared to the simple attire of the others.

Who had dared to fight against the Imperial Army? The boy might have wondered, but hunger and cold invaded his mind too pervasively to allow for such musings. He continued his search among the bodies, wishing that winter game were as easy to encounter as dead people these days.

Unbeknownst to the boy, the battle that had started at the frozen pond was continuing a few miles to the west. Continuing, and perhaps, ending soon. The cavalry of the Imperial Army, several hundred strong, were lined up along the edge of a gorge with their swords drawn. Trapped between the army and the gorge was a small group of rebel fighters. Their leader, a broad-shouldered youth, was wrapped in a white pelt drenched with blood. He carried on his horse his second-in-command, whose life was fading away with every passing moment.

He looked behind him – far below, the Jiulong River was a slow, sluggish murmur, a mere babbling creek in the wintertime while the lake upstream remained frozen. The river was not the source of indecision. A narrow hanging bridge connected their side of the gorge to the mountain pass on the other side. The bridge, suspended high above the rocky river bottom, looked as though it would hardly hold the weight of a child.

Let alone that of a man and his steed.

–

Earlier

Yongli raised his hand above his head in a closed fist. Stop. Observe. His men crouched behind him in the forest undergrowth, their footsteps muted by the fresh snow.

The last snowfall of the year had transformed the war-torn countryside, masking the Imperial Army’s scorched-earth tactics like a fine coat of sugar. The white expanse was broken only by two features – the mountain range to the north that rose steeply and abruptly from the lowlands, and the towers of smoke from the Imperial encampment to the east.

A low whistle came from the direction of the camp. Two high notes followed. It was Erzhen, his second-in-command, who had sneaked in to scout out the locations of the granary and pantry. Guard rotation. All clear.

Yongli opened his raised fist. Proceed.

Half of his men followed as he left his crouch and headed for the encampment. The other half remained in the shadows with their horses, ready to rescue or flee as needed.

–

Two miles west of the encampment, in the rural village of Dongyuan, Le’er watched as the red-faced general flogged his father with a horsewhip.

He did not step in or say a single word. His father had told him to pretend to be a servant, so that in case of trouble, Le’er would not be implicated or used for intimidation and negotiation. For all anyone knew, his father’s only son had passed away in the harsh winter.

Besides, Le’er knew better than to intervene for a thief. Thieves were flogged, but dissidents of the Imperial Army had their tongues cut.

The present beating was over a basket of salted fish. The soldiers had found it hidden under the bed, covered with old rags, during their routine confiscations. The red-faced general wanted to know, why were they hoarding their food?

His father pleaded that there was no intention to dupe or hide, but that his family’s lives depended on what little food they had remaining. The rations were not enough.

The general sneered, had he heard right? Not enough food for an old man and his wife? Not unless he were planning on feeding someone outside his family. Perhaps the rebel tribes from the northern mountains? Could the old man be hiding something from the Imperial Army? The general towered above the slight, broken frame of his father.

His father trembled. Le’er shrunk into the corner of the room as the general lashed at his father once more.

A soldier entered the room in a hurry and whispered in the general’s ear. A satisfied smile emerged on the man’s crude features. He gestured at the basket of salted fish, and the messenger dutifully picked it up before the two men left together.

Le’er watched wistfully as the fish was taken away. His stomach grumbled. Then he remembered, with guilt, that the thief bleeding on the floor was his father. He rushed to help him up.

–

Yongli paused at the edge of the Imperial Army’s encampment. Everything had been too easy. They had managed to sneak in and out of the camp without any trouble. In fact, the camp had seemed empty. Guard rotations aside, he couldn’t believe that the food and medicine rooms would be left wholly unattended for even a few minutes. Especially when the Imperial Army was intent on starving out the rebels.

It had been a long winter, and the rural villages on the outskirts of Lanzhou were suffering. The villages had always been civil, if not friendly, with the mountain tribes in the north, and in their attempt to starve out the rebels, the Imperial Army had turned on their own civilians, cutting and confiscating supplies to prevent trading or raiding of any kind. As sacrificial pawns, the rural villages held no other purpose than to ensure the survival of the capital city. And to bring down an enemy pawn or two.

The Imperial Army had been sitting on a stockpile of goods – food, herbs, medical supplies, winter gear – taken from the villages. And those goods were now loaded into wagons and carts, ready to be hitched to their horses and taken back to their mountain homes.

But it was too easy. And that made him uneasy.

They had just mounted their horses when a slow drum beat began to emanate from the camp, and armor-clad foot soldiers emerged. A horn blared, low and ominous, from the west, and he both heard and felt the cavalry of the Imperial Army thundering towards them, blocking off their escape routes. A trap. They must have known that the tribes were going to raid. They had been lying in wait for them all winter.

“Go, take the supply wagons north through the mountain pass! Our archers are stationed in the thicket there. They’ll take care of anyone that follows.” A third of his men obeyed, turning back the way they had come and disappearing into the forest with the supplies.

Yongli spurred his horse on. “Everyone else, follow me! We’ll head off the cavalry, lure them onto the lake. We have more men on the opposite side.”

–

Le’er was hungry. His stomach protested louder against the Imperial Army’s injustices than he or anyone else dared to. As he knelt by his father’s bedside, cleaning his wounds, he wondered if they would live past this winter.

His father was feverish despite the cold. He mumbled and twitched in his sleep, his face spasming between terror and pain.

His father needed medicine, and Le’er needed food. He wondered what had called the red-faced general away in such a hurry. His stomach grumbled again, and Le’er decided that against his father’s wishes, he would try his luck outside of town. Perhaps he would find some small game. Or perhaps some fish.

–

The clash of swords and whistle of arrows resounded on the frozen lake. Yongli swung his broadsword at an Imperial soldier. Blood spilled from his throat, and the man fell from his horse. His body was trampled in the melee.

An arrow narrowly missed Yongli, and found its target in Erzhen instead. His second-in-command looked down at the arrow embedded in his chest in astonishment, and began to slide from his steed. Yongli disabled two more soldiers before he reached Erzhen and dragged him onto his own horse. He yanked out the arrow and pressed his fur pelt against the wound, staunching the flow.

A shout from across the lake made him look up. Riders, dressed in pelts like his, crossed the ice to join the fighting, clearing a path for Yongli to escape with Erzhen. He urged his horse into a gallop, and hoped that at least a few others would make it out.

Hooves thundered after him, and he continued riding downstream, following the trickle of the Jiulong River.

Until he found himself at the edge of a gorge, facing a narrow hanging bridge.

–

Le’er had looked through all the bodies on the frozen pond. He had found nothing edible, nothing useful except for a worn fur pelt that was slightly warmer than his tunic.

Frustrated, he grabbed a discarded sword and began to hack away at the ice. Why did the soldiers take their food away? Le’er wondered what life in Lancheng, the capital city, was like. He imagined a basket of salted fish that never went empty.

He smashed the ice with the hilt of the sword, trying to break through the surface. His mouth watered. Never mind salted fish, he was so hungry he would eat any type of fish he found.

Suddenly, a loud crack, like a booming thunderclap, broke the stillness of the frozen landscape. Instinct told Le’er to scramble off the ice as quickly as he could. Though the boy did not know what was happening, any loud noise resembling that of a horsewhip against flesh signaled danger.

In truth, it had been a long winter, but that winter was nearing its end, and the ice was thawing. What the boy had initially thought to be a small frozen pond was in fact the massive Jiulong Lake, concealed beneath a few inches of powdery snow from the night before. The battle between the Imperial Army and the mountain tribe had cleared the snow from a small portion of the lake, revealing the ice beneath. Revealing, yes, and weakening.

And now, the boy’s frantic beating of the ice was the final straw. The surface of the "pond" collapsed, and the splinter began to stretch and snake its way across the entire lake.

As ice and snow melted, water levels in the lake surged, transforming the stagnant trickle downstream into the roaring Jiulong River.

–

Yongli chose to take the bridge. Whatever the consequences, he believed fate to be a gentler master than the Imperial Army.

The bridge held. Yongli’s men followed, and the army pursued.

As he neared the opposite bank, the sound of galloping was suddenly overshadowed by a rumbling roar. It was the sound of a great beast, a dragon of myth and legend, awakening from its deep slumber.

In that moment, time held still to welcome the beast. Soldiers and rebels alike, paused to watch as a tidal wave rushed into the gorge, bringing with it a wall of corpses, the fallen soldiers from the lake, like regurgitated food from the belly of the dragon.

The wave was headed straight for the bridge.

Yongli forced his fear-stricken steed forward and screamed at his men to cross.

He did not dare spare another glance behind him until he had cleared the bridge with his men. But he turned just in time to see the surging river sweep the hanging bridge away and swallow the entire cavalry of the Imperial Army.

Yongli and his men sat in silent awe as the Jiulong River continued its way downstream. Then, they shook themselves back to reality and headed northwards for their mountain home, where they would make plans to redistribute the stolen goods to the rural villages.

–

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

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