The Wandering God

36 Lead A Dog Into the Village 1/4

引狗入寨
Yǐn gǒu rù zhài
To lead a dog into the village.
To introduce a potential source of trouble.

It had always amazed Zakhar, how quickly the lands of the north could change.

It had seemed as they travelled north that the plains would go on forever. Low hill after low, golden hill.

And yet they had not travelled half a day north-east from Changsha Fortress when huge forest covered mountains appeared on the horizon.

"They sneak up on you, the mountains of the north," a one-armed mercenary Zakhar had fought with once said. Zakhar couldn't remember the man's name, but remembered he had died.

It was true. First the mountains seemed too distant to be reached. But by evening the road they followed wound among the forested foothills.

The forest was made entirely of aspen, naked of leaves, stretching up into the slate sky. The trunks of the aspen were skeletal white and eerily identical. Zakhar knew that beneath the soil, the aspen's twisted roots entwined together so tightly that they prevented any other type of tree from surviving.

"Killer trees," someone Zakhar had known had called them. Perhaps the same one-armed soldier. The man had liked to talk a lot. Maybe that was the reason he was now dead. Though probably the lack of an arm had contributed.

They camped among the white aspen that night. Zakhar, Ao, Sanli and Kageyama tethered their horses to the trees and set up camp, finding fallen branches and trunks to build a big, roaring fire, over which they cooked a fat pheasant Kageyama had shot earlier in the day and carried across his saddle.

Captain Duan made his own camp, and his own fire, a short distance away. He hobbled his dun colored horse and let him roam free. Then the man took dried meat from his saddle bag and ate that for his dinner.

To Zakhar's surprise the man did not strike a tent, and instead rolled out his bedroll on the open ground.

"He will freeze, without a tent. His fire is too small, and will not last the night," said Ao. Her face was filled with anticipation at the prospect. She was beside their own roaring fire, sat as close as she possibly could without singing her clothes or skin.

"He's used to the cold, no doubt," said Zakhar. "And he's mu'ren. They can withstand more than we can."

Ao wrinkled her nose. "Even when I was mu'ren, I could not withstand cold like this." She huddled closer to the fire.

Zakhar volunteered for the first watch. Before turning in, Kageyama pulled Zakhar aside.

"One of us needs to have eyes on him at all times," said Kageyama, nodding to where Captain Duan lay by his campfire.

"You don't need to remind me. I'm surprised you agreed to let him come with us," Zakhar replied.

"Rather him than a whole company of soldiers with questionable loyalties," said Kageyama. "And that collar will make it much easier to control him." As Kageyama and Zakhar watched, the man yawned and scratched at his collar, as though he had heard what they spoke of.

"Aye," agreed Zakhar. But after Kageyama had left Zakhar added to himself- "Though a mad dog with a collar on is still a mad dog."

Zakhar remembered Ao's desperate face, as he had caught her at the window the night before. His fists tightened. He fantasized hooking a finger through the metal band around Daquan's neck and pulling till the man gasped out his last breath. A savage joy filled him-

-stop. Do not think this way, or you will be as mad as he is.

Zakhar kept his eyes on the Daquan, as the man got ready for sleep. Even after the dog had curled up, beneath his bed roll, head pillowed against his saddle, Zakhar continued to watch from the corner of his eye. But the man didn't stir.