Gao Sheng had never seen a horse weep until now.
Fleeing for their lives, they had driven their team without rest, day and night, until one of the beasts collapsed, its heart bursting from exhaustion.
"She was old," his mother murmured, her voice stripped of emotion. "When the young one was foaled, it was her milk that kept it alive."
On the road ahead, the surviving foal whimpered without end as it ran. The biting alpine wind shredded its cries, scattering them through the valley like the keening of ghosts.
Could a mere beast feel such profound grief?
There was no time to dwell on it.
The creature's mourning was so loud that it would draw the assassins straight to their necks.
Shifting his weight against the saddle, Gao Sheng lunged forward. He seized the bridle and jammed the bit violently into the horse's jaws, choking the tragic cries down its throat.
From behind the carriage curtain, his mother's voice cut through the wind with absolute authority.
"You will smother it. Abandon the carriage!"
He obeyed instantly.
As the carriage careened around a perilous cliffside bend, Gao Sheng's instincts took over. Anchoring his footing, he delivered a devastating kick, sending the entire coach hurtling over the precipice. In the same breath, he caught his mother as she vaulted from the plunging cabin, sweeping her into a natural stone alcove hidden within the rock face.
In the dark, he listened to the horse's despairing shrieks fade into the abyss below. Moments later, the thundering hooves of their pursuers swept past the ledge, swallowed by the depths of the mountains.
Gao Sheng hastily walled the alcove with loose stones, his racing heart finally beginning to settle. If not for his mother's ruthless, split-second judgment, they would be dead. The plummeting carriage had drawn the hounds away, buying them a fragile reprieve. But their burden remained heavy; they still had to reach Mount Tai, and quickly.
As a deathly silence reclaimed the wilderness, his mother spoke, her tone chillingly grave. "The woods are still crawling with blades. Keep your mind strung tight as a bowstring with every step. You are the only child I have left by my side. You cannot perish. I will protect you to the very end."
She raised her hand a fraction of an inch, and Gao Sheng yielded instantly. He lowered his head, resting it gently upon her lap like a feral beast tamed into utter submission. After a long time, his muffled voice broke the quiet: "I will never let you perish."
No blood bound them.
His adoptive mother was an ascetic of the Fengling Palace, a woman who had spent her life within the imperial walls. He, by contrast, was the ruined scion of a fallen noble house, cast into the labyrinth of the inner palace as a eunuch. Blessed with peerless martial skill, he was courted endlessly by the lords of the Northern Directorate, men who saw him as nothing more than a finely honed butcher's blade. But his mother was different.
He was but rootless driftweed in the vast, treacherous palace. She was the deep, unrippled pool that kept his fractured spirit afloat. Even when he committed the most monstrous sins, she did not recoil in disgust. Instead, she continued to shelter and nurture him with a meticulous grace that left him trembling with a profound, unsettled awe.
To obey her, to believe in her, had become an instinct carved into his very marrow.
Resting his head upon her lap, he listened to her softly chant the sutras of blessing, letting his mind drift back over a lifetime of her teachings.
"May the departed emperor ascend on high, his divine spirit calming the heavens..."
She taught him absolute devotion to the Buddha. But hers was not a Buddha of gentle mercy. It was a wrathful deity that wielded slaughter to end slaughter, cleaving through illusion to protect the Way.
"May the ancestral altars stand unbroken, the dynasty's reign endure eternal..."
She taught him absolute devotion to the Law. Not the vigilante justice of the jianghu, but the iron mandate of the imperial court and the sacred decrees of the ancestral shrines.
"May the realm know tranquility, the beacon fires of war burn no more..."
She taught him absolute devotion to the Tang Dynasty. Not to a vague notion of the realm, but to the late emperor's dying breath and the rightful bloodline of the Crown Prince.
He had long known that he was no different from the countless other orphans she had taken in over the years. He was merely a meticulously placed pawn upon a grand and terrible board. Yet, for years, he had swallowed this truth as though it were the sweetest wine.
Her fingertips traced slowly through his disheveled hair, smoothing the tangles as she breathed a quiet prayer: "May this journey to Mount Tai lay bare the truth of the hidden treasure. Though stealing the artifact defied the laws of the realm, it was done for a greater righteousness. I beg the Buddha for mercy and absolution."
A sudden, venomous thought coiled around Gao Sheng's heart.
The path to Mount Tai was shrouded in deadly peril. If the days ahead led them into an inescapable snare, would his mother truly trade her life for his?
Terrified by the treacherous nature of his own doubt, he jerked his head upward.
The hand in his hair stilled instantly. Lowering her gaze, she murmured, "What is it?"
Desperate to hide his racing thoughts, Gao Sheng muttered that it was nothing and let his head sink back onto her lap.
The moment the taut bowstring of his heart finally went slack, the crushing exhaustion of their relentless flight crashed over him. His mind drifted, scattering into the dark, until he surrendered to a heavy, dreamless sleep.
Gao Sheng awoke to find his mother already asleep, but a sudden, sharp instinct pulled him taut. Drifting down from the ridge above came the crackle of a campfire and the heavy, rich scent of roasting meat.
Had the hounds doubled back?
He was on his feet in a breath, his fingers locked around the hilt of his sword.
But before the blade could clear its sheath, a phantom wail, terrible and familiar, tore the night asunder.
Gao Sheng vaulted the cliff's edge. A slaughter awaited him.
The foal. The very beast that had plummeted into the abyss to lead their pursuers astray had somehow clawed its way back from the depths. Its mane was slick with gore, its eyes burning with a rabid, feverish red. With iron hooves, it scattered the campfire, hurling itself at the feasting scavengers in a blind frenzy. It was a tempest of snapping teeth and bone-crushing kicks, a blood-soaked fight to the bitter end. The men shrieked, bringing down clubs and blades in a desperate rain, but the animal did not yield a single inch. It fought until every last traveler lay trampled and broken in the ash.
When the carnage finally stilled, the horse faltered. It took a few trembling steps before collapsing heavily to the earth.
Only then did Gao Sheng look closely at the spit roasting over the scattered embers. It was charred horseflesh. Beside the fire lay a freshly flayed pelt, the remains of the old mare who had died of exhaustion days ago. The surrogate mother that had nursed this very foal. The travelers must have stumbled upon her carcass along the road, and in their greed for a free meal, invited their own grisly demise.
If a mere beast knew to lay down its life to avenge the mother that nursed it... He had been sheltered by his own mother for years, yet...
Gao Sheng's face burned with a sudden, searing shame. He had actually dared to doubt her. He had actually wondered, if only for a fleeting second, whether she would abandon him to save herself when the noose tightened.
How could he harbor such a treacherous, unfilial thought?
In the pooling blood, the young horse clung to a ragged breath. Its dark, glassy eyes found Gao Sheng, letting out a weak, agonizing whimper.
A rare pang of pity pierced his chest. Unconsciously, his hand reached out to comfort the dying creature...
"Leave it."
His mother's voice cut through the dark, cold and unyielding as iron. "Take their horses. Let's go."
To obey her was instinct.
The hand that was halfway extended snapped back to his side. The brief flicker of warmth in his eyes died, freezing over into a hollow, wooden apathy. Turning his back on the dying beast, he gathered the reins of the dead men's surviving mounts.
He hoisted his mother into the saddle, then vaulted onto his own. With a sharp crack of the reins, they vanished into the night toward Mount Tai, leaving nothing behind but the silence of the dead.
