A strange calm befell Jun as he was borne back to Warrior’s Park in the shaded silence of the sedan chair. Looking down at his hands, he turned them over and admired the way his muscles and skin flexed smoothly over his knuckles, how they did not shake. It was as if a storm had passed through him, wreaking destruction, yet leaving in its wake an unnatural clarity.
He would be lying to himself if he said he hadn’t been tempted by Cobu’s bribe. Yes, he’d wanted all the trappings and rewards of being the Guardian—even when he’d told himself he wanted them for his father. And he was afraid of Leopard, he could admit that. He would be a fool not to be. Cobu had offered a lifeline to Jun and Ren. He could have seized it and been sure to live.
But finishing the tournament was not about him, not anymore. It wasn’t even about saving Chang and Ren. It was much bigger than that—it had been from the start; he simply hadn’t understood. Cobu’s story had made it clear. One Guardian could alter the course of history. Jun was part of a powerful current as surely as every living thing was part of Dragon’s Breath. Win or lose, he had a part to play—he was certain of it. Nothing General Cobu said could change that.
Just as nothing could bring back the dead.
Alone in the competitors’ pavilion, he was able, at last, to eat a proper meal and sleep for two hours. He awoke an hour before the final match to the taste of impending rain in the humid air, the late afternoon sun shrouded by clouds, and the burble of arriving spectators. Fewer than there had been in the morning; Ghostface’s riot had scared some people off, but many, it seemed, weren’t willing to let anything deter them from the final match of the Guardian’s Tournament.
Jun drank water and stretched. A fight later in the day when he ordinarily had the most energy ought to be to his advantage, but his body was so sore and worn down from the past three days that he gave himself plenty of time to warm up, coaxing his protesting muscles into movement. “One more fight,” he muttered in promise. “Just one more fight, and then, either way, rest.”
When the time was near, he went to the weapon racks and picked out the first weapon that spoke to him, a sturdy spear. The spear was called the king of weapons for a reason. Versatile and powerful, wicked fast, effective at short and long range. Most importantly, it was a weapon Jun knew well, having begun training with the staff from an early age as the foundation for spear work. He didn’t know what his opponent would be armed with, but the more space he could keep between himself and Leopard, the better. Things didn’t go well for Leopard’s foes when he got close.
“Ten minutes,” warned an attendant.
Jun sat down cross-legged, eyes closed, spear resting across his lap, and cleared his mind of everything except the task ahead. Thoughts tried to take shape in his mind: His father. Ren and Sifu Chang. Yin Yue. His home in Cheon. His long-lost mother and twin brother back in the East.
He turned away from all of them, centering his attention back on his breath and the unique energy that Master Chang had taught him to recognize within himself. Trust your body, Master Chang had told him. He had no choice but to do so. He opened his eyes. There was nothing left to prepare.
He walked out of the tent and into the arena for the last time. All his life, he’d dreamed of this moment, imagined it in obsessive detail, anticipated the incredible thrill that would lighten his feet as he stepped forward to face his destiny. Instead, he was weighted with tragedy and grim solitude. He was surrounded by people, but he might die this afternoon unobserved by anyone who truly cared for him.
Despite that, he felt no despair. He was about to do what he did best. This week had taught him he didn’t know much about anything, but he knew one thing. He knew how to fight.
The sun was low in the sky and the weak light seemed to wash out even the brilliant colors of the emperor’s silk robes and the faces of the court officials arrayed behind him. The Scroll was back in its stand, Guardian Yama and General Cobu impassive in their chairs. When Jun entered the arena, there was silence at first, and then a chorus of cheers rolled down the slope through the assembled masses, into the hollow of Warrior’s Park. “Little Dragon! Little Dragon!”
Jun closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. The warm, stirred Breath inside him mingled with the cauldron of Breath surrounding him, the collective anticipation of so many people swollen like a ripe fruit near to bursting. He remembered what Ren had said about the power of a martial name, chanted by thousands of voices, filled with Breath, carrying a wave of energy and hope. His heart swelled with gratitude. He wondered if this was a little bit of what Master Chang felt all the time—an overwhelming amount of life, a sense of wonder and smallness.
Leopard entered the arena carrying a guandao, a metal polearm mounted with a heavy notched blade. He gave the massive weapon a few easy warm-up swings, then set the spiked end of the weapon on the ground with a thunk, staring at Jun with flinty disregard, head tilted as if surprised anyone would willingly show up to fight him by this point. The white bandages binding the sword cuts on Leopard’s arms and legs and bare torso merely accentuated his ropy muscles and made him seem all the more dangerous. The Red Scarves, some of them sporting bruises from the earlier crowd violence, cheered and stamped their feet for General Cobu’s champion.
Considering the disaster of the previous match, it was no wonder the arena announcer seemed nervous, adjusting his hat and patting his brow with a handkerchief as he took the stand and spread his arms. “Citizens of the West, children of Dragon, subjects of his Imperial Majesty, welcome to the final match of the Guardian’s Tournament! The winner of this contest will take up the time-honored position as Guardian of the Scroll of Heaven. Who will prove himself the greatest warrior in the land? Will it be Li Jun, the young talent from Cheon, named Little Dragon for his exceptional abilities in the ring? Or will it be Leopard, a man who rose from poverty and suffering to become as fierce and unrelenting as his namesake? By the time the sun sets on Xicheng, we will know the answer!”
“Oh, good!” From his seat, higher than everyone else overlooking the arena, Emperor Tandu clapped his hands and turned to General Cobu. “I hope this is as exciting as you promised!”
The first drops of rain began to fall. The gong sounded.
The two men clashed before the ringing had even begun to fade, neither the type to cede the initiative to a foe. Jun crossed the arena faster than his opponent, spear held close and centered, his vision tunneled, focus narrowed to a single point. The length of the smooth wood shot through his hands as he lunged forward, the head of the spear flying for Leopard’s face.
Leopard batted away the incoming strike with the back end of the guandao and continued the motion in a vicious arc, the thick blade of his weapon swinging down in a diagonal chop meant to sink between Jun’s neck and shoulder like a cleaver into a chicken joint. Jun pivoted out of the lethal path, deflecting the guandao into the ground with the shaft of his spear and thrusting the butt end into Leopard’s stomach. With a grunt, the man went staggering, but he gave Jun no opportunity to land a follow-up blow; weight on his back foot, he ripped the blade of the guandao upward, forcing Jun to leap backward to avoid being disemboweled vertically from groin to chin.
The crowd was shouting encouragement, but Jun could hear nothing besides the muffling crash of blood in his own ears. Leopard came at him roaring, swinging the guandao like the axe of a deranged tree cutter. There was no technical finesse to Leopard’s attacks, but what he lacked in training he made up for with raw power and ferocity. Any one of the blows would take off Jun’s head if it connected; it was all he could do to get out of the way, ducking, parrying with both ends of the spear, speed fueled by pure desperation as Leopard forced him down the length of the arena. The droplets of rain sprinkling their heads and bare shoulders began to come down harder. The thought of Yin Yue’s severed hand lying on the ground flashed horribly into Jun’s mind.
You’re burning too hot. Can you feel it? Master Chang’s voice came into Jun’s head, pushing aside the rising edge of panic with the tone of wry, scolding observation that Jun remembered so well from daily practices on the road. Energy is wasted on tension, fear, and haste.
A snarl lay twisted on Leopard’s face and his small eyes bulged with murderous determination. He didn’t have the benefit of Master Chang admonishing him to maintain control of his energy and his emotions—he was giving all he had to finishing Jun. The guandao was a formidable weapon, able to chop off the legs of a charging horse, but heavy and difficult to handle even for those with training. Leopard’s next overhead swing was slower and wider, easier to evade. Jun twisted his body and watched the blade pass in front of him like a gleaming steel fan.
Everything seemed to slow; the clarity of the fight emerged. The momentum of Leopard’s weapon told Jun where the man would take his next step. Jun’s body moved without thought, dropping low, whipping the spear around himself, slamming it into the backs of Leopard’s calves.
Leopard went tumbling forward onto his knees, his broad, scarred back exposed.
Now! Jun brought the spear hurtling down.
The spearhead went plunging into the dirt a handsbreadth from its target as Leopard rolled deftly to evade the killing strike. One did not survive years of labor camps and pit fights without an exceptional survival reflex. Before Jun could pull his weapon free of the ground, Leopard posted on one hand and threw his hips and legs up in a side kick that slammed into Jun’s chest.
All the air rushed out of Jun’s lungs as he went hurtling backward, pain exploding in his rib cage. Leopard rolled backward out of the high kick and was on his feet again, lunging for his fallen weapon. Sucking a painful breath through what he was sure were broken ribs, Jun sprinted and grabbed for his upright spear stuck in the ground. Leopard’s wild, low, one-handed swing with the guandao missed Jun’s legs but cut through the pole of the spear, leaving Jun holding three-quarters of the weapon in his hands with the amputated iron tip still sunk into the earth.
A short stick was still a weapon—as Leopard came back around with a big overhead swing, Jun ducked out of the path of the blade and smashed the wood down, aiming for Leopard’s elbow but catching him across the wrist instead. It was enough; the heavy polearm went spinning out of Leopard’s rain-slicked hands and into the ground at the edge of the arena, the metal clanging against the pavers. Jun kicked the bouncing hilt, sending the weapon rolling out of bounds.
Leopard didn’t bother going after it; he tackled Jun around the waist. Jun sprawled frantically, hooking his arms under Leopard’s grip, feet scrabbling for purchase, trying to keep from being unbalanced and thrown onto his back. They clinched, both men panting, heaving, wet from rain and staggering about the arena like two stags with their antlers locked, neither able to overcome the other or free himself. Leopard’s hot breath and sweat filled Jun’s nostrils. His back foot slipped in wet grass and he went down to one knee. Not good. A white flash of blinding pain exploded in Jun’s skull as Leopard’s knee popped up and connected with his falling chin.
The world swam, darkness closing in from all sides. He had the sensation that his teeth had been driven up into his sinuses. The taste of blood filled Jun’s mouth. Feebly, he put his hands up to protect his face, and barely got them up in time to prevent Leopard’s other knee from smashing into his mouth a second time. His head was yanked back hard by the hair, and he was suddenly staring up at Leopard’s merciless face, the last thing he was sure to see before the man’s next blow crushed his exposed throat. His mind emptied of all thought in the heartbeat before death.
A flash of connection—pure instinct took over the body when the brain was out of time.
“How you train is how you will fight.” Master Song’s words over many years of hard conditioning in the Iron Core school.
“Controlling Breath,” Sifu Chang had said, “means knowing how to let go of control when it matters.”
His father, first teaching him how to punch. “Where is your target, Jun? Strike past it.”
Sai, always a step beside him. “Show me what you can do.”
With no time or space to load a blow, Jun’s fist shot straight into Leopard’s side, surging everything he had left into one last shattering short punch, striking the bandaged spot where Yin Yue’s sword had earlier pierced between the two smallest ribs.
“Between the two of us, we can defeat him.” That was what Yin had said last night.
Leopard’s torso caved sideways under the blow; Jun felt the reverberation through the man’s entire frame, the grip in his hair suddenly falling away as Leopard wobbled and swayed as if swooning limply into a waiting embrace. Jun regained his feet before Leopard could recover his balance; he fired a headshot at his foe, then another, both of them connecting forcefully, rocking Leopard’s misshapen face back onto his neck.
Go down, dammit! How could Leopard even still be upright? How was it possible that despite the half-collapsed rib cage and the blood washing down his face with the rain, he was still shaking away the fog, grunting with pain and determined hatred and coming after Jun, step-by-step, like an implacable demon?
Jun bounced two steps back to gain distance, then launched himself forward with a scream of effort that filled Warrior’s Park. Leopard’s body was worn down, his reflexes slow, too slow to avoid the flying sidekick that Jun rammed into his midsection. Leopard was thrown backward, arms windmilling for balance. His heels skidded on the wet grass, and he crashed onto his back.
There was an awful fleshy thud. Leopard’s body froze in space and became rigid as a wooden stake erupted from the front of his bare chest, skewering him to the ground.
Jun was already midstep, ready to throw another strike or pivot away from a counterattack; for a second, he didn’t understand what had happened. He pulled himself up short, staring at his prostrate foe.
Leopard had fallen squarely onto the severed end of Jun’s spear, still lodged tip-first in the earth. The guandao blade, having sliced through the wooden pole at an angle, had left a spike that had punched through Leopard’s back, but the wider bottom wedge of the metal spearhead hadn’t passed through. The man’s body was stuck, staked just slightly off the ground. Jun gaped in disbelief as Leopard wrapped his hands around the bit of wood protruding from his chest as if, through sheer will, he could pull the spear tip out and free himself, even though the result would rip apart his insides.
Jun walked forward slowly. Silence followed him save for the patter of rain on the canvas roof over the emperor’s pavilion. The thousands of spectators and the dignitaries watching from above seemed to be as stunned as he was; Jun felt strangely alone as he looked down at his feebly struggling adversary. Leopard’s eyes lost their focus and also their fierce hatred, leaving only the fear that had animated him through all his hard, bitter life.
Pity rose up in Jun and blotted out even his relief. In another life, Leopard’s superlative fighting talent might’ve made him a hero or a master instead of a killer and a hapless tool. Instead, he’d been a victim, of both the East and the West.
Leopard’s mouth slackened. His bloodied hands fell away from the wooden stake and dangled lifeless at his sides. A final spatter of rain fell on Leopard’s still face, then stopped. A single ray of light broke through the clouds and illuminated his unseeing eyes.
Jun turned away and began to walk out of the arena. He made it half a dozen steps before the adrenaline crashed out of him and he sank to his knees with a strangled noise, his last bit of energy escaping like rainwater running into a ditch. He slumped forward, barely aware of the rising tide of noise from the stands, the building crescendo like an unstoppable tsunami of emotion and sound.
“The winner, and the new Guardian of the Scroll of Heaven … Li Jun, the Little Dragon!”