FOUR MONTHS LATER
Every morning just after dawn, Lin Chong began the day’s fight drills for the hundreds of bandits of Mount Liang.
Hundreds, and growing.
She had become a teacher of teachers now as well, entrusting parts of her curriculum to staunch assistants—Hu Sanniang instructing tentative wives and mothers in basic footwork, Lu Da bellowing jolly admonishments in the training of strength, Yang Zhi running precise, disciplined classes on formation combat. And others still, each imparting their own expertise to those who lacked it, all part of Lin Chong’s carefully organized school of the fighting arts. The Zhang and Ruan siblings led exercises in swimming and fighting on the water, Shi Qian of the Three Fleas shared practices in acrobatics and balance, and some of the newer recruits had themselves proven wildly distinguished—such as Hua Rong the archer, who had pierced three eagles with a single arrow before their very eyes. Lin Chong had immediately seized upon her skill to help develop the rest of the bandits in ranged weapons.
Others of their new members had never closed a hand on bow or blade before they arrived on the mountain, but that was no matter. Liangshan judged neither past transgressions nor inexperience. All a tentative newcomer needed to succeed in the training Lin Chong had built here was respect and willingness.
Respect, willingness, and a belief in their cause.
The only days Lin Chong did not wake with the light to head down to the fighting ground were the days she was not on the mountain. On those days, she turned over her drills to the hands of some capable assigned lieutenants, while she rode with their kindred into the rocky landscape of Ji Province. Ranging out from the mountain to do what needed to be done.
In a perfect match of more than half a dozen times before now, a remote spill of ridges and valleys had its quiet evening rent asunder. A roar of weapons and horses and righteousness descended upon the rancid opulence of the county magistrate’s compound where it stained the autumn forest. Thick and barricaded doors tore from their frames, smashed in by the hooves of a rearing mount or splintered by the fury of a tattooed monk’s god’s tooth. A raiding party composed of two dozen of Liangshan’s finest led that same number in local citizens, bursting apart the compound to pour inside and scour every room and corridor.
Some of those within tried to fight. They failed. Flesh parted sweetly on the blade of halberd or axe or saber. Bodies that were soft with unearned wealth broke against walls and floors, flung by chain or lasso or the scholar’s skills of a former arms instructor.
Some tried to flee. They likewise met death—sword and staff and trident licking after them too fast, with arrows driving straight and sure to bury themselves in any who broke through.
Only those who surrendered themselves to Liangshan’s mercy were spared.
Today one of these was the magistrate himself, cowering on the polished floor of what had been his hall of judgment. He bobbed on his knees, hands working over themselves, his rich robes and great headpiece askew.
Such repugnance. One man—one worm—who had caused such hardship for so many. Who had torn families from each other for no reason beyond imagined insult, confiscated goods until farmers and merchants were starved into poverty, forced more than one young woman into terrified marriage with a friend or crony … the bandits of Liangshan had learned of it all, those acts that had been written in blood upon the local villagers.
The bandits of Liangshan let that blood fill their ledgers, and this time it was they who rendered judgment.
It was no accident, either, that the men who had been placed here generation after generation were those both too lazy and troublesome to be trusted, and too entitled to hereditary power to be ignored—the worst type of combination. Like in many counties of northern Ji, this magistrate position was nearly one of punishment, even as it gave a man a title: rural, far from the capital, with no space for advancement or glory. A place for the Empire to shuffle off those it found disgraceful or embarrassing, and let them abuse people who weren’t important enough to matter. Where venal men could revel in petty acts of power, and the Court could wash its hands of responsibility.
All too common in these remote county courts. Lin Chong understood that now.
She left Lu Da, Hua Rong, Xie Bao, and four of the locals to finish securing their new prisoners and strode for the compound’s cells, while reaching out with her senses in a scan that now took no more thought than breathing. She was pleased—everyone from the mountain had followed her directives and stayed perfectly to form, adhering to the training and discipline she had been molding into Liangshan’s methods. Even Li Kui the Iron Whirlwind had gone where she was told this time, which was a most definite improvement. Lin Chong noted all of their successful positions with satisfaction.
The local people Wu Yong had trained were a bit more desultory, rushing in tumultuous overexcitement, but they had done their part admirably, and Lin Chong could make no complaint.
Now those citizens would reap their rewards. This was the part Lin Chong wished to see.
She slipped into the back building where the prison cells packed up against each other and positioned herself in a corner, not stepping in to offer help. She would not take the joy of this from them. Already the residents surged between the barred doors, wielding hammers or hatchets or stones picked up from the ground, any tool they could find to strike against the ancient locks—locks that were rusted through to corruption at their cores. The rotted metal broke easily, and prisoners tumbled into the arms of their loved ones, weeping and laughing.
Wu Yong and Song Jiang had been the ones to devise this lengthy scheme of claiming county courts for the local populace. One or the other of them would travel out and find disgruntled and overtaxed farmers, or stouthearted wives whose husbands had been locked away on a pretense … or parents who feared for their daughters, or children who feared for themselves. These first counties were selected with great savvy—ones that sat too far away from any noble landowner for an armed estate to exert convenient dominance; ones that were out of the way of any interest of powerful military governors; ones that the weak provincial government barely acknowledged. Places where the local magistrates’ words were law, and no one else cared.
Liangshan came and offered a listening ear. And then they offered resources, and training, and aid, in preparing a fistful of handpicked citizens to take back those same towns and villages.
Take them back—and then oversee them with stability, those citizens’ oversight over their fellow villagers supported and coached at every step by chieftains from Liangshan. Respected members of these rural communities would now also become saviors, assuming the mantle of leadership in a way none around them would question.
Liangshan’s reputation had begun to glow beyond the brightest sun. The heroes of the people, who descended like beneficent spirits to oust the oppressors and return the land to its rightful citizens …
An undeserved reverence. Wu Yong and Song Jiang’s methods less returned the land to the people as it did manufacture and install allies to Liangshan in these positions of power over the rural counties. These offices became run by new masters, ones who owed the mountain everything. Ones who would, if asked, swear loyalty to Song Jiang from now until their deaths and beyond.
The bandits fed the legend that they brought freedom, while creating their own outposts across the province.
Lin Chong had not protested it. It was not the worst Liangshan had ever done, and the good they brought to these villages was genuine. The people would prosper more under the hand of a local trained by Wu Yong than beneath the crushing power games of these gutless local magistrates. Besides, when the Empire did come for Liangshan …
They would need all the strength they could gather.
It would not even be long before they would not have to pick their targets so cleverly. Once Liangshan’s allies began to surround the noble landed estates on all sides, those same nobles would hesitate to challenge them, even as they saw the bandits encroaching on the illicit fiefdoms they had claimed. Upcoming winter snows might slow the effort some, but Lin Chong strongly suspected the nobles themselves might fall next in Wu Yong’s plans.
Unless those nobles decided to surrender and turn ally.
Liangshan would accept, if asked. The mountain was very forgiving of past sins.
Eventually, even the military governors and provincial governments might begin to fear. After that …
The future was one of luxurious possibility.
Challenging nobles and governors. The very notion might have seemed absurd to Lin Chong a year ago, unthinkable, but those titles had somehow ceased to inspire their automatic deference. Stripped of a title, such people would become only ordinary men, like any other.
A smile touched her lips as she watched the embracing, weeping families of the county that had been chosen this time. The warmth made her feel whole in a way she never would have expected to find after that day so many months ago in White Tiger Hall. She slipped back out before any of the villagers could find eyes for her again to try to express gratitude.
No matter its other motives, Liangshan had done good here.
Lin Chong had thought, the first time they did this, that she would find the greatest gratification in the justice they would bring to a corrupt and lawless magistrate, a dull echo prickling through her of her own forced confession in the courts. Instead, she found herself … indifferent to their fates. It was a powerful sort of indifference—a freeing one—the knowledge that pitiful men like these no longer held sway over her own thoughts, such that even their deaths mattered so little to her.
An oddly shaped victory. But a victory nonetheless.
She left the prison to return to the front of the compound, but ran into Lu Da and Hua Rong escorting the erstwhile jailers, headed to immure them in the same cells those men had used so brazenly as tools of their power. Monk and archer had become fast friends, and their pairing was a study in contrasts: First marched Hua Rong, as short as Hu Sanniang and as dark as Li Kui, her hair a fierce black halo and the slender bow in her hand nearly reaching her own stature. After her came Lu Da, grinning and whistling and poking their prisoners with her staff as she ambled behind. Lu Da was not quite twice Hua Rong in both height and girth, but at times it seemed that way.
“Elder Sister!” Lu Da called. “Did you feel me using my tooth? Did you? Were you watching?”
“I was,” Lin Chong said.
“Smooth as a baby’s cheek, wasn’t I?” Lu Da grinned at her drill instructor, waiting expectantly. “Could you feel the difference? Tell me you could!”
Lin Chong relented. “You did very well.”
“I did! I did, didn’t I?” The Flower Monk twirled her staff from the prisoners to poke Hua Rong in the shoulder—gently, but it almost knocked the archer off her feet. “Did you hear that, Sister Hua?”
“Careful where you point that thing!”
Lin Chong shook her head. Discipline was, apparently, still a work in progress. She gripped her sword hilt just in case any of the prisoners took this opportunity to become rowdy, but they all seemed too cowed.
“Wait,” Lin Chong said, her eyes scanning across the bound men. “Where’s the magistrate?”
“Oh, him.” Lu Da was cheerful. “Sister Li killed him. I told her you’d be mad, but I was a bit late at saying so, as she’d already chopped his head off him.”
“He did deserve it,” Hua Rong put in. “He tried to bribe us to let him go.”
“Are you mad?” Lu Da asked Lin Chong. “See, I said she’d be mad…”
Lin Chong sighed. Definitely a work in progress.
She returned to the audience chamber to find it mostly empty, except for two of the local citizenry, a swath of blood in a half-smeared pool on the floor, and Li Kui—who had balanced the magistrate’s great wide headdress upon her hair, draped his embroidered robes over her broad shoulders, and taken it upon herself to perch upon the magisterial chair.
“You must make one up, then!” she was demanding of the locals when Lin Chong came in. The ornate and bloodstained robes caught and tore on her battleaxes with every gesticulation. “Make up a fight, and I shall rule on it! One of you will go free, and the other shall be executed.”
“Madam?” squeaked one of them.
“Ignore her,” Lin Chong cut in. “Sister Li, please get down and go back to only your own clothes. You two may go,” she added to the local men, who scurried out of the room as soon as the words left her mouth.
“Sister Li,” Lin Chong said more seriously, when they had gone. “We must speak about the magistrate. What have we told you? Time and again.”
“But the scurrilous cur, he tried—”
“I heard. You must stop killing those who have surrendered. Sister Song will hear of this.”
It was, truly, the only punishment the Iron Whirlwind ever seemed to fear. She harrumphed and climbed down from the magistrate’s seat to slouch out of the room, tearing off the swooping headdress and letting it tumble to the ground.
Lin Chong followed more sedately, stepping out into the cool forest evening. Her padded coat kept the dropping temperature at bay, but a late-autumn snap burst inside her with every breath in a pleasant chill. They would stay here tonight, and depart the next morning, with Wu Yong’s trainees safely ensconced. So far, Bianliang had sent no replacements to these remote wild county courts that Liangshan had targeted. No new magistrates, nor any detachments of the Guard dispatched to remove the competent locals and install new villains chosen by the Empire’s ministers.
Either these posts weren’t worth it to them, or they had become stiff with panic about what Liangshan might do. Or both.
“That’s eight now.”
Lin Chong turned slightly.
Wu Yong sidled up with that usual predatory grin, chain dangling from one hand, and leaned against the outside wall next to Lin Chong. “Eight counties, and more to come. A good day.”
“Bianliang will have to try to stop us eventually,” Lin Chong said. “They must know what they risk letting us continue. One of these will be one too far, when they’ll no longer be able to sit back and pretend countryside disputes are beneath notice.”
Despite the truth in the words, she felt the tranquility with which she spoke them. Whenever the Empire came, they came.
Liangshan would be ready.
“Ooo, let them try!” Hua Rong tumbled out next to them, having heard Lin Chong’s words. The flush of their victory still radiated from her. “The cowards won’t have it easy. This whole land is becoming Liangshan!”
She whooped and ran to catch up with Li Kui, who was tearing off bits of the magistrate’s robes and leaving them on the path like silken feathers shed from a bird’s plumage. The two traded japes and laughed together. Lu Da jogged up to join them, followed by Shi Jin the Nine Dragons and Zhang Qin the Featherless Arrow, who had both joined Liangshan at the same time as Hua Rong.
Backlit by the setting sun and a forest of leaves that had gone aflame with autumn color, the group seemed one of true siblings—embracing each other, cheering each other on, challenging each other. Zhang Qin and Hua Rong had soon begun a friendly contest, in which the Featherless Arrow let fly stone after stone from the sling that had given him his nickname, and she shot them out of the air with her bow. She hadn’t missed one yet, and the cheers from the others grew louder every time.
Hu Sanniang eventually came out to join them as well, walking with two of her martial siblings—the former constables Zhu and Lei who had heard the tales of Liangshan and given up their posts to pursue true justice on the mountain. With them also were two of the local citizens, the first of whom Lin Chong recognized: Mistress Gu Dasao, the long club she’d shown her strength with now resting casually against her shoulder. The other, the thin man, must be the husband she had just worked to free from the magistrate’s cells.
Stout, jolly, and flush-faced, the fierce Mistress Gu had been an innkeeper here—and would now be Wu Yong’s chosen successor to the magistrate who had met his untimely end on the blade of Li Kui’s axe.
It was a good choice. Mistress Gu would do well in her new post.
The Tactician did have an eye for skill.
The five newcomers joined the growing crowd, adding to the roars every time Zhang Qin sent a stone higher and faster or spun the sling behind his back or released two at once—and every time Hua Rong’s arrowheads sped to smack into those stones, arrow meeting rock in the air at all speed for them to pair and fall away, like a mating dance of phoenixes. The small archer’s bowstring never stilled, so quick was she in drawing one after the other, the moves overlapping with no space between.
Only a single season ago it had been, when Gao Qiu had failed to best them at Liangshan Marsh, when Hua Rong and so many others had first joined their number. Already the time before that seemed of a different age. Hua Rong and Zhang Qin and Shi Jin and everyone who had come to them then—so quickly had they become embedded in the spirit of Liangshan, and so deeply, that it was difficult to remember what the mountain had been like before them.
Lin Chong did not think she had fully understood what it meant, before, to be haojie. Loyalty, honor, courage—death before betrayal—these were nothing more than words. True heroism was both smaller and bigger: this, here, the young blood of brash idealists; hotheaded, delinquent, imperfect … but who took up arms to defend the weak, with no promise of name or credit or reward. Even as it made them criminals. Even as they crossed the lines of law and dared an Empire who could crush them with a thought to turn its ponderous eyes upon them.
Today still more new heroes would follow them back—it always happened so—and their population would continue to swell, both on the mountain and across the land. Such would include those who planned to remain here, like Gu Dasao and her husband—they would maintain their communication with Liangshan, sending reports and receiving advice and requesting aid if needed. In the other direction, the chieftains at Liangshan would range out periodically to return in person, to bring these villages rice or coin or textiles or whatever else they had need of, and if Liangshan ever called them to come ride in defense of others, all of these local citizens would rally to arms with no second thought. Like Noblewoman Chai on her estate, like Zhu Gui at her inn, like in seven other rural counties … like so many other allies burgeoning across the land …
Hua Rong had spoken truly. Bit by bit, the entire countryside was becoming of Liangshan.
These days, even those who had never met the bandits might well whisper the name Liangshan in the dark and promise their hearts to the cause.
“Such noble work we do,” Wu Yong murmured next to Lin Chong, gaze also on their compatriots. “Fit to make the heavens smile. Don’t you think the Empire would agree, Drill Instructor?”
The tone of the question was sly, a joke meant to be shared. But Lin Chong had a serious answer.
For in a way, it no longer mattered if the Empire came for them tomorrow, or if they never came at all. Liangshan had become more than a few dozen scratching bandits. More even than its expanding web of power, of allies and outposts and recruits and military strength—more than a legend, or an idea.
Liangshan had become change. Had become the future.
The future of a changing Empire.
No matter what the Empire did, now or later, no matter how it came at them—such an act would only be an attempt to repress a part of its own self. The marrow of its own tomorrow.
“Didn’t you know, Tactician?” Lin Chong said mildly. “We are the Empire.”
Wu Yong laughed. They stood together until the sun kissed against the mountains, watching the citizen bandits who would change the world.