The merciless heat of late summer slowly relinquished its hold on the desiccated countryside as autumn drew on. The days shortened as Chang helped the men and women of Hongshan gather in the vegetable and millet harvests in preparation for the return to their winter settlement. They had been compassionate and generous to him, helping him build a small hut for himself, and giving him a full share of the harvest, meager though it was, thanks to the persistent drought. In return, he spent many hours hunting, providing Hongshan with venison and the meat of wild buffalo and boar. And the hours were numerous indeed, for the chase was arduous. The game had retreated from the crucible-like heat of the valley to more comfortable feeding grounds in the cool hills, but he pursued his quarries relentlessly, all the while nurturing the plan he had made, nourishing it, and watching it grow.
He became popular amongst the villagers, but he kept to himself as much as politeness would allow.
“Sharpening your spear again?” the villagers would ask, with a cheerful wave, seeing him sitting on a four-legged stool outside his hut, patiently honing the blade with a flat piece of black basalt he had found one day as he stalked a deer. It was the perfect hardness, and after that he polished the metal to a gleaming finish with a thick piece of boar’s hide he had cured for the very purpose. He nodded and waved in return, but as he stroked the blade with the stone, his thoughts dwelt not on the hunt, but on plunging the weapon into the heart of King Jie of Xia.
At summer’s end, the villagers urged him to accompany them to their winter settlement.
“Make your home with us,” they said, and eventually he agreed. He had first thought to return to his own winter village, but as he pictured it, he could not face living in the house he had once shared with his wife and son. He saw himself alone throughout the bitter days and black nights which were to come, with wind-driven snow scouring the land, and the ground as hard as stone. For all that he desired solitude, it was more than he could bear. He had no fear of loneliness itself, but what he did fear were his own thoughts and memories. Sweet memories of living in that house in winters past with his small family around him. Far from sustaining him in his sorrow, he feared those memories would drive him mad.
* * *
In the middle of the ninth month, the residents of Hongshan departed, leaving their bamboo summer houses to collapse under the inevitable burden of winter snow. Preparations for the trek had been underway all the previous week. Carts were loaded with wooden boxes of grain, large earthenware jars of dried fruit and pickled vegetables. Bamboo cages were fashioned for raucously protesting chickens, quacking ducks, and squealing pigs. There were boxes of clothing, and two carts reserved for spades, hoes, obsidian-bladed reaping knives and saw-edged sickles, hammers, chisels, and a multitude of other tools and accoutrements which made life possible. One cart had been piled high with stools and small pieces of furniture, while each family carefully packed its own cooking pots and wooden utensils. It was an immemorial ritual, performed every autumn, and again in the spring for the return. Everyone knew what had to be done.
On the day appointed by the men of the village for departure, a day selected in consultation with shamans who themselves consulted the spirits of the land and forests, oxen were yoked to the heaviest carts, while men assembled to push or pull the lighter ones. Women and older children walked with bundles on their backs, while youngsters rode in carts. Elderly villagers sat on the loaded ox carts, many of them holding a bundle on their knees or in their arms. Everyone helped who was able to, and the procession moved off down the dusty track at mid-morning amid much talk and laughter, the cacophonous cackle of poultry and livestock mingling with the squeaking of wooden wheels on inadequately greased axles.
Ten men, Chang amongst them, acted as guards, carrying nothing apart from spears and wooden clubs. Two walked at the head of the column, two at the rear, and three ranged on either side. Many villages were on the move at this time of year, and bandits abounded, but the greater menace by far was the marauding squads of soldiers, eager for easy plunder, very little of which, if any at all, was ever presented to the king as it should have been.
Casting his gaze about him constantly asty he walked, Chang was reminded of why this summer village was named Hongshan — Red Mountain. Behind the expanse of level ground enclosing the houses and fields, there rose a low hill covered in thick stands of deciduous trees, their autumn leaves turning the slopes into a patchwork of vivid reds and golds. The day was cool, but it made the walking easier. Although the drought had finally broken, albeit too late to help the crops, there had been several days without rain prior to departure allowing the track to dry out, for which small mercy everyone gave grateful thanks. A single day’s rain could turn the road into a morass of viscous, yellow mud which sucked and grasped at everything that walked through it, bringing even the oxen to an exhausted standstill.
Notwithstanding the absence of mud, progress was still slow. Frequent rests were necessary, and while the lumbering brown oxen plodded along steadily enough, they certainly did not do so speedily. An entire day was lost when a woman went into labor, and in the afternoon was delivered of a healthy son. There was much jubilant rejoicing, but the wailing of the new-born infant tore at Chang’s heart. He, his wife and son, along with the rest of Liushu village, had made the journey to their winter settlement many times, but this year he was alone, bereft, in spite of the kindness shown him by those he now walked beside and guarded.
As the journey progressed, however, the birth brought him an unexpected solace, slight though it was. The cries of the new, tiny being heralded the perpetual renewal of life, and Chang, sitting one day under the spreading branches of a gnarled old oak tree, found himself reflecting upon the unquenchable strength of life. Despite whatever disaster might befall mortals, life itself endured, eternal and tenacious. Was this the will of heaven, he asked himself, or was it simply the Dao, the irresistible way of nature? As he raised his eyes to the massive branches of the mighty tree above him, he blessed the woman’s child as he had blessed his own son on the day of his birth. He did not know how to explain the world, but for better or worse, the world was where mortals found themselves, so they must live in it as best they could. But that small glimpse into the unfathomable did nothing to palliate his inflexible determination to avenge the horror of what had been done at his village. He thought again of the words spoken by the elders and shamans he had heard so often before, but which had now become his creed.
“Kings rule at the behest of heaven, but heaven’s mandate may be withdrawn if a king is prideful, unjust, or disobedient to the dictates of heaven.”
“How do men know the will of the gods?” he had once asked. “To whom does heaven speak?”
“Heaven speaks to no man,” was the quick reply, “but heaven shows its abandonment of an evil ruler by bringing upon his kingdom great misfortunes and catastrophes. Storms, floods, droughts, even earthquakes. Heaven’s anger is unleashed upon all.”
Then surely, he said to himself, listening again to the crying child, men must have the right to act as the instruments of heaven and overthrow an evil ruler. There have been months of drought, and they say there have been terrible storms of wind and dust in the western regions that have buried fields and killed the crops. Is not this the time? If Jie has displeased the gods, as surely he must have, then I shall bring about his downfall. This child shall grow up in a better world than the one into which he has been born. I pledge it to him.
* * *
The people of Hongshan called the collection of meager mud-brick houses huddled close by the walled city of Li, Dongtian de zhusuo, the Winter Dwelling Place, or Dongzhu for short. After seven toilsome days, during which Chang and the other guards repelled two attacks by brigands on the open road, a child was born, and a chicken and two ducks died, the tired and footsore villagers reached their home. Chang had no possessions apart from his treasured spear when he arrived in Hongshan, but now he owned a stool, two cooking pots of different sizes, and a reaping knife of his own manufacture. These items were carried for him to the winter settlement on a small handcart pushed by a ten-year-old lad for whom he had fashioned a bow and five arrows in a deerskin quiver. Now they had arrived he stood alone by the cart, for he had nowhere to take it. He had thought about this from time to time during the journey and decided he would try to find a vacant hut somewhere nearby and take work in the city as a carpenter or maker of tools. As he scanned the scene before him, however, his eyes ranging along the line of houses to his right and left, he saw no unoccupied dwellings. Families were dispersing to their homes. People moved in and out of the houses unloading carts and unpacking boxes, young children played outside, and wisps of blue smoke were already beginning to curl up through chimney holes. He would have to build a shelter of some kind for himself, he decided, but where was he to obtain the materials?
“Do not worry, my friend,” said a hearty voice from behind him, as though someone had divined his thoughts. Turning in astonishment, he saw Zhou Ma, an elder of the village, approaching with a broad, gap-toothed smile on his thin, wrinkled face.
“Did you think we would leave you to the rats, Master Hunter?” said he, clapping Chang on the shoulder with a strength belying his age. “Come.”
Pushing the small cart, Chang followed the old man to a small house with a tiled roof, into whose single interior room he was ushered with a flourish of Zhou’s boney hand. The floor was bare earth, pressed as hard and smooth as polished stone by generations of feet. Zhou left the door open for light, there being no window openings. The room was unfurnished save for a clay stove in one corner, but it was by no means unoccupied. There were other living things already in residence. Chang could smell them, even if he could not yet see them; the acrid, sickening stench was unmistakable. He could hear them as well. A rustling susurration filled the dim space. His eyes growing used to the half-light, he looked around, certain of what he would see, and sure enough, it was as if the very walls were moving. They undulated, almost writhed. He saw exactly what he expected to see. An uncountable multitude of black cockroaches swarming thickly everywhere, disturbed, no doubt, by the unheralded appearance of human intruders in the domain they had hitherto called their own.
It did not concern him unduly, however. Such pestilential invasions were commonplace, an inescapable part of life, and he knew what would have to be done. A torch of blazing pitch would drive out the hordes of sharp-jawed insects, leaving thousands of them dead. He had done it many times in his own house every autumn, but no sooner had that recollection come to mind than it was supplanted by the realization that this was not his house. Then what of its real owners, he wondered.
“This is where you shall live,” announced Zhou, answering his thoughts for a second time. “The owner of this house died a year ago, and it has been unoccupied ever since. We have decided to give it to you.” Zhou gestured expansively towards the open door, and said, “See what now comes.”
As Chang watched in mute astonishment, a group of men carried in a wooden table and four stools, while women brought boxes and pots of preserved food; dried fruit, grain, meat, both dried and pickled. More than enough to last him through the hardest winter. He would have no need to work.
“All for you,” said Zhou, as the men grinned, and the women giggled at his bewilderment. “We wish you to stay here and be one of us, good Master Chang, and later,” he went on, more diffidently, “later you may find a wife from amongst our daughters…”
Chang could no more think of marrying again than he could of flying to heaven to converse with the gods. He was only twenty-seven, and a wife and children would normally have been an urgent goal, but his bereavement was still too recent, too raw a wound, and in any case, there was something he had to do before ever he thought of resuming the life of a simple village hunter and farmer. Nevertheless, he recognized the generosity of his new friends, and was touched by their abundant kindness.
“I give you all my deepest thanks,” he said to Zhou and the others who had assembled in the dim interior of the small, mud-brick house. “I am moved by your invitation and your goodness. I would be honored to dwell here.” And he bowed.
They received his words with smiles, nods, and happy laughter.
“You shall be my brother,” said Zhou. “It is we who are honored. You shall venerate our ancestors, and we shall venerate yours.”
“You are all very kind,” he said, and then, looking at the floor and seeing the army of cockroaches approaching his feet, he went on hastily, “but before anything else, I should be most grateful if someone would bring me fire with which to purge my new home of its present tenants before all is lost.”
Zhou laughed and said, “It seems you have many tenants, but I fear they pay no rent.”
He gave an order to a couple of young men who scurried away, returning a few minutes later with blazing torches, and the house was soon filled with black smoke and the vile, stomach-turning stink of the burned insects. Chang and his two helpers coughed and gagged as they scoured the walls and the inside of the clay stove. After twenty long minutes they were finished, and the three of them staggered outside to draw grateful gulps of fresh air into their congested lungs. Finally, Chang, finding a broom made of rice straw amongst the household utensils he had so recently been given, ventured back inside to sweep the dead and dying cockroaches, each one looking like a shard of charcoal, into heaps which the two men shoveled outside and buried. They had won this battle, but Chang knew the war was never-ending; the black insects were as tenacious as they were numerous, and they were as numerous as the stars. There were a thousand replacements for each one killed, and they would invade again almost immediately. Once he was in residence himself, however, their legions could never overwhelm the house as they had when it was empty. He stood in the middle of the floor and surveyed his house in the light of a tallow lamp on the table and was content.
Thus, Chang the Hunter became a man of the Hongshan people. Zhou and his kinsfolk, both men and women, treated him as a true relation, and, in his turn, he assumed the roles of brother, nephew, brother-in-law, cousin, and uncle. Throughout that winter he learned to be a part of his new extended family. Using his skill as a maker of wooden furniture, boxes, and other necessities as a means of contributing to the village, he did his best to settle into the community. As an adopted member of Zhou’s family, he took part in the many ceremonies of ancestor worship and the winter festivals honoring both the spiritual and natural worlds. But, in spite of it all, he felt himself an outsider, an observer rather than a true participant. He lived in a house but could not feel he had a home. He kept his spear by the door, reminding him of what he had promised himself to do. And so, during the long, cold nights of winter, as bitter winds from the north and west raked the countryside and heaped the snow into mountains, he sat alone, his house warmed by the clay stove and lit by the yellow glow of tallow lamps, planning, encompassing in his mind the death of King Jie, and the extirpation of the House of Xia.
* * *
Protected by the walls of the city of Li beside which Dongzhu was built, the nobility and other wealthy landowning families dwelt in lavish houses. They lived their lives in easeful contentment, surrounded by legions of slaves and servants, and guarded by men armed with bronze weapons. To venture inside the walls without a legitimate reason was to risk a fearful flogging, or worse, but Chang had neither wish, nor reason, to explore the city. His interests lay not within the walls, but outside them. Outside, their year-round houses built right against the high walls, lived the common folk. These people were not hunters or farmers but workers who derived their sustenance from serving the urban gentry. They were shopkeepers, metalworkers, carpenters, potters, jade and ivory carvers, sellers of silk, stone cutters, gem merchants, and other artisans and tradesmen. Chang spent many hours cultivating friendships amongst them, for the information he gleaned held the key to his plans. He wanted to hear the rumors and stories these people told, those laborers whose daily toils and moils made possible the excesses of the arrogant, heedless few living in their walled fastness.
Although the world of the wealthy was a foreign place to him, Chang did not question its right to exist, nor did he believe that wealth itself was intrinsically illegitimate or evil. He shared the general understanding that a few men were favored by the gods in the circumstances of their birth, and the rest were not. It was a simple enough proposition. Such was the way of heaven, and such was the consequent way of the world beneath heaven, capricious though heaven might sometimes seem.
What he did question, however, was the wanton and abhorrent cruelty of those favored few. Was there not a moral and honorable way to live amongst one’s fellow beings, he asked himself, without regard to a man’s rank or the size of his house? Should wealth and privilege be granted to men for no better purpose than the oppression of others less fortunate? Did gold, lapis, and jade give men the right to kill? Most people, rich and poor alike, seemed to think they did; the rich believing in their innate and indisputable superiority, while the poor believed they could do nothing, save endure in silence.
As winter swooped down like a predatory bird, sinking its frozen talons into the shivering ground, Chang spent as much time as he could talking to his new friends living against the city walls. He found a kindred spirit in the person of Lai, the jade carver, a wizened, gray-bearded old man of nearly sixty years — a prodigious age — who was much celebrated for his technique and artistry. When the summer weather was kindly, neither too wet nor too hot, Lai walked from city to city, hawking his wares or delivering pieces to those from whom he had received commissions.
“It is all that walking which keeps my legs strong and my heart young,” he told Chang, with a cheerful laugh.
Lai, a man of keen perception, invariably returned from these expeditions with his head full of information, and Chang rapidly discovered how valuable it was. One cold, snowy evening, just after the mid-winter festival, Lai and Chang sat talking together in Lai’s small workshop house, sipping steaming cups of herb tea and warming themselves over a clay stove. To one side of the single room stood a stout workbench Chang had made for his friend out of durable blackwood, after seeing him working cross-legged on the earthen floor. Several lumps of raw jade, some emerald green, others white or variegated, lay on the bench along with an array of chisels and grindstones which were the tools of Lai’s trade. Around the bench, shards of jade, many of them as sharp as a fine bronze sword, littered the floor.
“Now look, my friend,” said Chang, gesturing towards the workbench, “you carve a fine piece of jade and sell it to some rich man or other, and what does he pay you for it? He pays you barely enough to buy food for a week. Am I not right? It is an unjust and dishonorable thing that is done to you.”
“At least I eat that week,” said Lai, with a rueful smile. “But that is the way of things. He is what he is, and I am what I am. What can be done? Nothing at all. Is that not so?”
“He feeds you for that week, yes,” said Chang, nodding, “but what of the week after, and the one after that?”
“The next week,” Lai said, with a shrug, “I sell something else. I told you, it is the way of the world, and who can change it? I cannot hunt as you do, my friend, nor do I know anything of crops and livestock. Heaven, therefore, has graciously provided me another way by which to live.” Lai paused, then added, “I am a jade carver, and few men have my skill. The gods have been generous to me in their own way.”
Chang sipped his tea, contemplating what Lai had said. He, Chang, could track an animal and bring it down with a sure throw of his spear, but if he were to try to carve jade, he would not know even how to begin. The gods had not deserted their people, but why, then, did heaven allow the rape and pillage of peaceful villages, and the murder of innocents? Why were the rich allowed to enslave defenseless folk, or pay a pittance for a fine carving? It made no sense to him, but he left the subject for the time being, resolving to dwell further upon it at a later time.
“Have you heard anything recently?” he asked Lai. “What is being whispered elsewhere?”
“Well now,” said Lai, finishing his tea and casting Chang a conspiratorial glance, “I do have news which may be of interest.”
“Go on,” said Chang, his eyes wide with anticipation. “What is it?”
“I have not been able to travel much since the end of the summer, but I hear the Shang village of Bo, twelve day’s walk to the west of here, has been savaged by the soldiers of King Jie of Xia. Many died, and many more were taken as slaves.”
“That evil man is the worst of tyrants,” Chang growled. “My heart overflows with hatred for him and his people. I would have them consumed by a plague, had I the power to command it.”
“It is said the destruction of Bo was an act of revenge,” continued Lai, pouring himself more tea from a copper jug steaming on the stove.
“Revenge?” Chang held out his own cup.
“Just so,” said Lai, nodding. “Revenge for Jie’s defeat in battle.”
“He has been defeated in battle?” Chang was exultant. At last. King Jie is not invincible after all. He is not mightier than heaven “Are you sure?” he asked, half afraid Lai would say it was all rumor or mere wishful thinking.
“Yes,” said Lai. “There has been a battle. I have a friend who journeyed back from the river which yields up her jade to us, and he found a wounded soldier who told him of it before he died. It was not a great battle, mind you, really a minor skirmish, I gather, but the soldiers of Jie were routed by warriors of the Shang. Bo was attacked in reprisal.”
Chang’s eyes glittered in fierce delight. Was heaven finally turning against him?
“And who led the men of Shang?” he asked.
“Well,” said Lai, stretching out his calloused hands to the warm stove, “it seems a powerful Shang king has risen far to the west, whose name is Tang, although many now call him Da Yi. He is the leader of the clan of Zi, the hereditary rulers of all the Shang, but until now, no Shang king has ever been strong enough to unite the Shang peoples and challenge the House of Xia.”
“I have never heard of this king,” said Chang, “but if he is the enemy of Xia, then perhaps he is a man to watch.”
“I cannot say,” answered Lai. “The man I spoke to could tell me very little of the battle itself. He said he believes many smaller clans and lineages are coming under Da Yi’s sway, either willingly or by conquest. It is said Da Yi is a mighty man, just and honorable, who declares he has the mandate of heaven to rule all people.”
“So also says King Jie,” replied Chang, angrily. “But think now…if what you were told is true, perhaps we shall see which of them is right.”