On an unexpectedly cool summer evening in the Empire of Song, Cai Jing’s army of ten thousand gathered at the border of Liangshan Marsh.
Lu Da watched from a high outcropping, along with three dozen of her fellows gathered across the various vantage points and watchtowers. Far across the water, the army’s camp stretched like rows of tiny bugs, the subtle ripples of its movement a disturbing reminder of its contained power.
“So many men for us piddly little spitwads,” scoffed Li Kui the Iron Whirlwind.
“They must be very afraid of us.” Hu Sanniang’s eyes narrowed, her hand spinning one of her sabers in long habit.
“Not saying I mind,” grunted Li Kui. “More men for me to kill. This’ll be glorious. They’ll write poems.”
For once Lu Da didn’t disagree. She stretched her fingers against her iron staff.
“Quiet,” called Commander Yang. “Stay ready. Drill Instructor, what do you think?”
“If they cross the marsh in the dark, they’ll lose one in ten men,” Sister Lin said with a frown. “Dawn is the tactical play. They must know we have the advantage of terrain.”
“No.” Wu Yong stepped forward between them, gaze piercing, as if fire could shoot from a person’s eyes all the way down to where Cai Jing made camp. “They’ll attack tonight. Cai Jing will take any risk for a cleaner victory. He doesn’t care how many men the marsh swallows, if he has a chance to cut our throats while we sleep.”
The others all oriented on their chief strategist, silence falling over the group on this outcropping. A flutter of excitement flicked up Lu Da’s insides.
This was no longer a ponderous possibility, but real.
They were going to battle.
I wonder what it will be like, Lu Da thought. Not very different from raiding parties, probably.
The excitement burned hotter. She thought it likely she would be very good at it.
Wu Yong nodded to Sister Lin and Commander Yang. “Take your people now. When they come, we’ll be waiting.”
Lin Chong gathered the haojie under her command on the bank of the water, where the mountain descended into the marsh. Liangshan’s naval chieftains, as it were. A number of them had come to the mountain as families. The Ruan brothers, of course, then the Tong sisters who had been salt smugglers or the Zhang siblings who had run a murderous ferry to steal their fares’ treasures … Mu Hong the Unrestrained and her younger sister Mu Chun the Slightly Restrained, then some lone miscreants like Li Jun the River Dragon, who had been a friend of the Tongs … an eclectic group to be sure.
In the short time Lin Chong had been here, she had come to know every one of them. Thieves, killers, and heroes, all rolled together in a chaos that no longer seemed to contradict itself.
In the days they’d had to prepare—their small, precious delay before the army arrived—these haojie had all proved thirsty students and ready warriors. Lin Chong was proud to have them at her back.
Proud to be one of them.
“Remember,” Lin Chong ordered her unlikely navy. “Any time you can avoid engaging, do so. The marsh will do our work for us. You know the bird calls for the formations. You’ll hear Sister Chao’s whistles from the mountain, but let me worry about those. Listen for my signals only.”
The bandits—the heroes—all nodded and gave each other too-hard slaps on the shoulder for luck. Lin Chong still had some bandaging under her clothing, but she joined in anyway.
Wu Yong had provided wooden whistles to the three commanders, since they would be so many spans of distance from each other. In their brief preparation, the coordination had somehow fallen out naturally, as if they were all organs of one body. Now, as dusk dusted the reeds and lilies along the shoreline, Lin Chong’s haojie all slipped eagerly into small fishing sculls that could zip in and out of the Liangshan waterways.
Each of these bandits knew those waterways like a map of their own skin. Each knew the position they would start in, the places their other boats lay hidden in waiting, as well as the combustible traps they’d set and the underwater paths these fishlike haojie could traverse even in the dark.
They would flay the threat to Liangshan until they could do no more.
Lin Chong, not at home on the water herself, had chosen Seventh Brother’s boat as the one she would join and command from, a decision that made the young man puff up with pride. She stepped onto planks that bobbed beneath her, and Seventh Brother pushed them off with the excitement of a boy about to attend his first Lantern Festival. He was stripped to the waist, feet bare and sure on the planks, all the better for flitting in and out of the water with the speed of a salamander. Most of the water captains were similarly attired. Lin Chong wore a light battle dress and carried a short blade and a crossbow, the better for the type of fighting most likely to result out here, though with any luck, they wouldn’t engage the enemy directly at all. The more important consideration was for nothing to weigh her down if she met the water.
“Do you swim at all, Drill Instructor?” Seventh Brother had asked during their practice.
“Not well,” was Lin Chong’s answer.
“Don’t worry. If we capsize, I’ll pull you out!”
Lin Chong had permitted herself a small smile. She did not think drowning was the way she would die tonight. Besides, she had not been assigned to the water for her swimming abilities.
Trust yourself, Chao Gai had urged. Do not fear your own skills.
They pushed out under Seventh Brother’s sure hands, out onto the twisty, hungry marsh that so protected its nest of outlaws. Soft blue-black crept over the water as the sun set, the insects phasing from their evening chitter to the buzz of the nocturnal. The moon lay absent, the stars brushed bright against the black like crushed diamonds. Down in the boats, the darkness became almost total.
They waited in the boat, rocking gently in the bosom of the marsh, staying quiet and still, until somewhere past midnight. Then the expected whistle rang out from the mountain—high and short, and then long and low.
Cai Jing’s army was coming.
Whoever commanded the soldiers had good instincts. Lin Chong had seen no torches glinting through the night, heard no massive shuffle of troop movement from the far shore. If the army had decided to sacrifice all in the deadly darkness for the dubious advantage of a surprise ambush, then any light or sound would render that pointless.
Of course, the bandits up on the mountain were watching closely for any sign, and someone—likely Wu Yong—had seen them anyway.
Lin Chong began to count. Slowly. One number per heartbeat.
They had timed, yesterday, how long a boat took to cross, either at speed or with caution.
“There,” whispered Seventh Brother, hearing the same muffled splash and curse Lin Chong did. She let out a cautious coo across the water, the call of a wood pigeon and the signal to wait.
Close now. Very close.
She might not have the skills of underwater action, but in their practices she had managed something equally important, exactly as Chao Gai had urged … She closed her eyes against the night, breathing in the marsh air. Cool humidity filled her lungs. She felt Seventh Brother’s wiry presence beside her, the beat of his heart as he thrilled to defend his home. Insects trilled to each other, calling mates to them, while small fish flicked below the surface and larger ones lurked in the muddy depths. Snakes and turtles and frogs and the nests of small birds, all packed hiding among the dense clusters of swamp vegetation that weighed into the water on all sides, roots tangling in mud. Some of those tiny animal heartbeats fluttered in fearful sleep, still alert for predators, and others twirled in their nightly romps.
Then—very still among the wildlife, twelve boats with a different haojie’s heartbeat on each one.
Lin Chong’s senses stretched further, and found the oncoming wall of humanity. Pressing inexorably forward, the smaller critters going silent and diving deep out of the way from this unknown and monstrous wave. Oars dipped and splashed, hurriedly muffled. Hot sweat beneath armor. Prickles of fear at this place they did not know, where they kept having to turn back at blockades and dead ends, where it was so easy to lose their fellows and commanders. Two boats right next to each other might become divided by a mudflat or a stand of reeds and in navigating around it, be lost from each other completely …
Several already spun in darkness, separated, mud sucking up against them. Lin Chong felt the distant panic of their oarsmen, the desperation as they turned, and turned again, always moving in the wrong direction somehow, always further lost in this great wetland wilderness.
The marsh was many li wide and many long. Even in daylight, one shore could not be seen from the other, and a boat stuck in its maze might circle in endless dead ends forever, no matter whether sounds of battle shouted the way.
One in ten boats lost might not have given the marsh enough credit, at least on this initial foray. On the other hand, once the soldiers found a path …
The haojie were here to make that prospect as painful as possible.
Closer. Closer.
Now.
Lin Chong filled her lungs and belted out her best imitation of a loud green frog. On the boat nearest to the approaching vanguard, Second Brother Ruan sprang up and shouted.
The approaching army realized immediately they had been discovered, and abandoned stealth. Shouts rose up, and bowstrings twanged as arrows flew to thunk hard into the wood of Second Brother’s boat.
She had already jumped off the side, diving into the deep waters of the marsh, swimming through known tunnels in the reeds and roots to take up her next post.
A block of the army’s boats broke off in disarray, following the bait.
Farther down, Li Jun the River Dragon did the same. A shout, a dive, arrows. On the right flank, the army had dissolved without help, losing itself among the deep, hidden waterways in that section of the marsh, but on the left flank, Mu Chun the Slightly Restrained and her older sister baited still other boats into a large lake. They would be swimming to climb up on Fifth Brother Ruan’s boat behind, while the Guardsmen shouted and slashed at the water, flailing for this unseen enemy …
This time the signal was an approximation of the northern whistling duck: two notes, sharp and long. Light it up.
Out in front of the army’s vanguard, Zhang Shun, the best swimmer in all of Liangshan, plunged toward the straw floats they had set the day before. Lin Chong motioned to Seventh Brother, and he carefully began poling them crossways, in case their position was suspected.
On the right, immediately in front of the vanguard—sudden, startling fire leapt toward the sky, flames licking up against the darkness. Men shouted—in shock, then panic.
Lin Chong whistled again.
The Tongs had the left flank, where the Guardsmen had been lured to circle on a great glassy lake, trying to find their way out. Those soldiers, too, spun to find every side suddenly become a wall of fire.
Lin Chong could not read their thoughts. Only emotions jumped at her, their heat and fear, but she knew the story of what they must see. Fire all around them, scarlet and gold against the oil-black water of the night swamp, heat flashing against their faces—and then not just around them but approaching them, the hungry floating bonfires pushed from beneath by bandits who could swim like eels.
Men began to scream. Splashes sounded through the crackling flames as soldiers dove out of doomed boats, wailed as they tried to tear off armor first and didn’t have time. Splashing, more splashing, desperate pleas for help—many who couldn’t swim at all grasping for aid and finding nothing but fire. Even the ones who could swim breathed heat and smoke and flame and began to tire, struggling to peel helmets and boots and clothes from themselves before the muck swallowed their exhaustion.
In every direction the marsh became clogged with pain and bodies, fire and water and men dying in the night. The corpses went silent and swollen in droves, floating down into the deep where the bottom feeders would feast.
Unfortunately, behind the first wave came another. Steadily, inexorably. Never-ending men on never-ending boats, rowing and poling through every crack they could find, turning from the fire to find another way, loosing hailstorms of arrows whenever they caught the fleet limb of a bandit disappearing below the surface.
Lin Chong gave the signal to retreat to their secondary positions. The way through for their foes would be harder now, choked with their fallen brethren along with abandoned boats and burning debris. Their only chance across had narrowed to a mere handful of safe paths, ones they still had to find. Ones where Lin Chong and her haojie would be waiting in ambush.
The first boat that struck through to their secondary line was met with Li Jun bursting out of the water like her namesake the River Dragon. She somersaulted up among the soldiers, her knife flashing to open throats before she dove off the other side.
Coming on a boat just behind, the division commander shouted for men to get overboard, to grab and end her. A disorderly exodus followed, the men who could swim stripping down but then hesitating in anguished fear, the dark waters waiting to eat them in every direction. The commander yelled again, hurling imprecations at his men.
“Get down there! Finish off the swamp bandit or don’t come back at all!”
Lin Chong was close enough to see and hear through the reeds now, the boats backlit by the fires they had escaped. Still the men hesitated, their bared feet shuffling on the planks of their boats, until one stepped off and plunged, then another.
Zhang Shun was waiting for them beneath.
When the first men did not surface again, the others began bleating in fear. Their commander railed, lashing out with his command staff and knocking two more of his men into the water.
They, too, did not resurface.
Lin Chong did not have to reach out with her other senses to know Zhang Shun wielded a dagger down in the dark with the fluidity of a creature of the deep. Blood would flow free until the waters of Liangshan swelled with it.
As the next boats broke through, the two eldest Ruan brothers attacked as Li Jun had done, rising from the black like swamp creatures of legend. The commander who had so shamed his subordinates lost his throat and his life, his corpse falling to splash with the rest. Down at the next passage, the Tongs and the Mus led the other half of the water bandits in a similar gauntlet.
They could not hold forever, however. More and more boats were breaking through. In moments the wave would overtake them, blanketing the water with their numbers.
Lin Chong could feel the turning of the battle, the teetering point at which the enemy would flood through. Stay much longer, and they would be overrun.
Time to return to the mountain.
She raised the wooden whistle to her lips and sounded the piercing notes for retreat. Up on the slopes, the acknowledgment echoed back from either Chao Gai or Wu Yong.
“Get us to the rivulet,” she ordered Seventh Brother, scooping the crossbow from the bottom of the boat. They would reconvene with the other water bandits there, then take a twisting back route all the way around to where they could land the boats and climb a side path to come up behind the action on shore. The aim was for them to move fast enough to join the fight on land.
Seventh Brother gave their boat a mighty heave, guiding it expertly among hazards in the dark, now complicated by floating oars or boots or corpses. Lin Chong spread out all her senses. Six of her people on a far boat—already out of the army’s clutches, far ahead as they zipped into secret paths. The older Ruan siblings closer at hand, pausing to let Li Jun flip up on board before they too whisked backward and away. Zhang Heng alone on a third vessel, but where was Zhang Shun?
Emboldened by how natural it was beginning to feel, Lin Chong leaned hard into her newly developing scholar’s skills, plunging her senses out beneath the surface.
Zhang Shun was still underwater. Slipping between boats. Capsizing one and then yanking soldiers into the deep from another.
They had tested whether the whistle could be heard underwater—but that was without the noise and chaos of battle, the fury of bloodlust—
“Stay low,” Lin Chong warned Seventh Brother, and gave the signal again. Zhang Shun was either too far out beneath the enemy boats to hear, or was ignoring it.
“Who’s missing? Who’s still out there?” whispered Seventh Brother, tension in his voice.
“Only Zhang Shun. Can we move in without being spotted?”
“Always, Drill Instructor,” Seventh Brother answered. He maneuvered them back and then inward, the little boat flicking through reeds and roots as fast as a fishtail.
Lin Chong stayed hunched low, crossbow loaded in one hand. The enemy was on three sides now—before, behind, crossways. Buoyed by breaking through the bandits’ line, they shouted to each other in robust accomplishment, pouring past the halfway point of the marsh.
“Get ready to move fast,” Lin Chong ordered, and raised the whistle to her lips again.
This much closer, the sound struck across the water with the force of a stone arrowhead.
Lin Chong felt the soldiers orient on them. Felt every hostile energy turn their way.
More importantly, she felt Zhang Shun hear—head coming around where she swam in the deep, spinning and whipping about only to realize the enemy was on all sides …
Seventh Brother had begun moving the boat before Lin Chong gave the order. Arrows splashed against the black water where they had just been. “Inward. Toward them,” Lin Chong directed. Theirs was the only boat Zhang Shun had a chance of reaching.
Shouts up ahead. Someone giving the command to root them out. Seventh Brother twisted their path, zigzagging them into the dizzy and unexpected. More arrows missed, but the edge of the next volley grazed the boat, two arrowheads socking into the hull right next to Lin Chong’s foot. Seventh Brother ducked down and poled faster.
Up ahead—there, between and below the chaos, a white streak zipping beneath the surface of the water, pale as the underbelly of a fish—Zhang Shun swimming for them with impossible swiftness. A little closer, only a little …
More Imperial vessels honed in, this time from behind and to the side. One grounded against some reeds, but the other burst out toward them, its oarsmen stroking hard, with discipline and skill and speed.
Too much speed. Zhang Shun wouldn’t make it before the enemy was upon them.
“I’ve got this, Drill Instructor!” cried Seventh Brother Ruan.
By the time Lin Chong called for him to go, he had already dropped his pole across the boat and disappeared beneath the surface, his dive so smooth it barely rippled.
The man acting as the boat’s captain shouted an order to the archers. Lin Chong threw herself flat, but an arrow still would have speared her thigh had not some sixth sense yanked her into a roll to the side. The tiny craft rocked beneath her. She came up to one knee, bringing the crossbow around and loosing three bolts that found three oarsmen.
This time she was close enough, the flames still bright enough, to see Seventh Brother’s performance in glorious detail.
His hands came up on the rim of the boat, dagger in his teeth, and he burst out of the water in a flip that took him exactly where the soldiers thought he wasn’t. The archers scrambled for swords; the oarsmen scrambled for any weapon—not fast enough when their colleagues’ corpses fell heavy across them. Seventh Brother Ruan danced the dance of a demon, flitting between the fighters as agilely as he swam through the waves.
Lin Chong helped him out with another two bolts from the crossbow.
By then Zhang Shun had reached their boat. Lin Chong reached out to help her slide on board while Seventh Brother peacocked amid the carnage he’d just completed.
“Get back here!” Lin Chong shouted, her hands slipping on Zhang Shun’s wet forearms and water sloshing to soak her front.
Seventh Brother dove back into the water just as gracefully as before.
Another boat broke through behind the one he had just leapt from.
“Down!” Lin Chong yelled to Zhang Shun, tackling them both to the side before the arrows had even loosed. “Get us to Seventh Brother!”
Zhang Shun snatched up the pole, but it was unnecessary. Seventh Brother had reached them. Zhang Shun kept the pole thrust down ready to push off while heaving Seventh Brother into the boat with one muscled arm, and Lin Chong let fly again with the crossbow. This time the men ducked and threw up shields, and no silhouettes went down.
Lin Chong heard the next command too late.
She spun back to Zhang Shun and Seventh Brother. The arrows thudded into the wood of the boat, one at the bow, one into the hull near the stern. One whistled past Lin Chong’s face so close the fletching slashed her.
And two more slammed into Seventh Brother Ruan’s back where he climbed half in, half out of the boat.
“Brother!” Zhang Shun cried.
“Get him in!” Lin Chong ordered. Fury swirled up in her, and she let fly more bolts, but the other boat was coming at them at speed. Steel flashed in the men’s hands, the crew bristling to meet them. Lin Chong drew her long knife, and all she could think of was the arrowheads burying themselves in Seventh Brother’s body, Seventh Brother who was her kindred here on Liangshan, and him and Zhang Shun here on her boat and she had to protect them—
The knife came up and she ran.
Ran without thinking about it. Ran without questioning. Ran without doubting whether she could race across water.
Without falling. Without sinking.
Her boot soles barely splashed against the surface. The other boat saw her coming, but too many of the men froze in momentary shock, and before they could recover, Lin Chong was among them. Her knife danced. One soldier, two, three. She ducked and spun, kicking off the swaying planks of the boat’s hull to smash a heel into an oarsman, sweep an armored officer off and into the water. The power of her strikes landed before she connected, crushing into skulls and ribs and taking men overboard, each move bursting in fundamental energies and righteous rage.
In one final spin her knife thrust out, one foot stretched back against the rolling boat, her stance wide, her steel stabbing straight up into the base of the commander’s throat.
Blood welled up and down his armor. She slid the blade out, and his body fell to bounce off the boat’s edge and splash flat in the black.
Lin Chong turned back. Across the water, Zhang Shun’s white face stared at her, slack, Seventh Brother Ruan cradled in her arms.
Lin Chong did not pause or blink. She ran lightly off the boat and skidded back across the water to land alongside Zhang Shun. Their boat did not rock at all when she placed her feet down.
“Get us to the rendezvous,” she ordered a still-staring Zhang Shun, and crouched to take Seventh Brother Ruan.
Seventh Brother Ruan’s body.
His spirit had fled. She knew. Without checking, she knew. She curled the fingers of her other hand next to his nose and mouth anyway, but no air tickled the skin.
She let his blood make her battle dress sodden, holding him while Zhang Shun steered them unerringly into the narrow back waterways, the ones the Imperial army would never find.