The chamber at the top of the gate tower had no window, and no furniture but a stone table and four stone stools, and in its center a brazier of the same pale blue fire that burned on the cliffs. It gave no warmth. But the dead did not seem to mind, and after a time, neither did Li Xuan.
He sat with his back against the wall and his robe open at the chest. A broken rib, the Marshal had said, and a second cracked; he had pressed his rough palms against them and set them with the brisk, careless skill of a man who had done it ten thousand times on a battlefield, and Li Xuan had not made a sound. Then Gu had put a sliver of the Marrow-Cleansing Pill, no bigger than a grain of rice, into a cup of water, and watched him drink it, and said nothing about how he came to have it.
On the other side of the table sat the ghost captain. His split helm lay on the stone before him. Without it, his face was the face of a man of forty with a long jaw and tired, level eyes, and the scar of an old sword cut that ran from his temple to his chin.
"Tie Shan," he said, when Li Xuan asked. "Captain of the Seventh Banner. It was my father’s name. He was an ironsmith." His voice was still the voice of wind in an empty hall, but it seemed gentler now. "I did not expect to be asked."
"I like to know the names of the people who hold the doors," said Li Xuan.
Tie Shan looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at Gu.
"Marshal," he said. "You have not told him."
"No." Gu was turning a cup between his palms. He had not touched a drop of wine since the milestone. "I have not told anyone. I have not said it aloud in fifty years."
He was quiet for a time.
"The Ash Khan came at the dark of the moon," he said at last. "Two hundred thousand riders from the Great Wilderness, with wolf-banners, and a sorcerer for every hundred men. It was a hard winter. The court sent no grain. We had thirty thousand soldiers, and by the third month, we had eaten the horses."
Tie Shan said nothing. His hand rested on the stone table, and the blue light trembled upon it.
"On the night before the Khan’s last charge, a man came to the gate in a plain scholar’s robe, on foot, with a jar of wine in his hand." Gu’s mouth twisted. "He said he was an envoy from the capital. He was courteous. He was old, though not so old as he looked. I let him in. I was a fool. I was a very tired fool, and I wanted to believe that someone had come."
Li Xuan knew the name before he heard it.
"The First Ancestor," he said.
"Aye." Gu poured two cups from an empty jar, in memory, and set one before the ghost captain, and one before himself. "He sat at this very table. He poured the wine. He said that the court had been slow, but that the Ancestors had woken, and would break the Khan if the Western Army would do one thing in return. Swear a blood oath to the throne, so that the Ancestors’ great array might draw upon the army’s strength and shield the Pass. Thirty thousand men, one oath, and the Khan’s army would be burned to ash by dawn."
"And you agreed."
"I agreed. I drank to it. He drank to it. He said, ’To the pact between the throne and its sword.’" Gu’s voice shook very slightly. "I thought it was a shield."
The blue fire wavered.
"At dawn, thirty thousand men cut their palms and swore. The array woke over the capital, three hundred li away, and the Khan’s army burned. A hundred thousand dead in a single night. I saw the sky go red from here." He closed his eyes. "I thought we had won."
"And then the oath closed," said Li Xuan, quietly.
"Like a trap." Gu opened his eyes. "An oath of blood is a lock. The throne held the key. The army was summoned to the capital the next week, to be ’honored,’ and the men were folded into the Royal Guard, and there they have stayed. Their sons, too, have been sworn in their turn, and their grandsons. Every one of them draws a little blood for the great array each month, and none of them knows why he is so tired."
Li Xuan sat very still.
A hook in the heart. An old woman’s sister, in a village on the western road. Thirty thousand royal guards who walked like sleepers beneath a red dome.
"They are the Western Army," he said. "The thirty thousand. They are your soldiers."
"Their fathers. Their sons." Gu looked down into his empty cup. "I rode to the capital myself. I went to the Sanctuary, and stood before the First Ancestor, and I demanded that he release the oath. And he smiled at me, boy. He smiled, and he said: ’You gave me your army for a cup of wine, Marshal. I am very grateful.’"
He set down the cup, very gently.
"I drew my sword. I got as far as the third step before the Three of them put their hands upon me." He touched his clouded eyes with two fingers. "They sealed my meridians, and then my sight. They were afraid to kill me, because the oath is tied to the Marshal’s life, and while I breathe, I could break it, if I ever had the whole of the tally."
"The tally."
"A wolf, cut in two." Gu drew the bronze from his coat. "Half to the Marshal, half to the captain of the gate. Both halves, joined, can command the dead, and unbind any oath that was sworn to the Western Army in the Marshal’s name. I kept my half. Tie Shan kept his." He looked at the ghost across the table. "And the Ancestors could not find it, because it was locked in a lacquer box in this tower, and not one living hand could lift it."
"I tried," Tie Shan said. "Every year, for fifty years, men came, in the dark of the moon, to take it. The Ancestors’ spies, and the Khan’s. The box sat upon the stone and did not move. The dead would not let it."
He turned his blank, pale eyes on Li Xuan.
"And then you laid your hand upon the gate, and it came to you."
Li Xuan was silent.
The System chose it, he thought. The System knew where the left half lay. The System knew who could lift it. And I do not know why.
He pushed the thought down, and laid it away with the others, upon a shelf in the dark. There would be time.
"For fifty years," Gu said, "I have drunk myself to sleep every night in a cellar, and told myself it was because the world was stupid and I was old. It was only that I could not bear to hear them in my dreams." His clouded eyes lifted. "They are still there, those boys. Each one of them. Every month, when the array drinks, I feel it. A little more of them gone."
"You kept the tally," said Li Xuan.
"I kept it. I did not use it. A half is nothing."
"It is not nothing now."
Gu looked down at the whole wolf’s head in his hands, and for a time he did not speak.
"I want it done, boy," he said at last. His voice was very low. "I do not want revenge. I have had fifty years of that, and it tastes of nothing. I want my boys to wake up and go home."
"Then we will do it," Li Xuan said.
He said it simply, as he might have said that the tea was ready. Gu stared at him.
"You do not even know what you are promising."
"I know that the oaths can be broken with the whole tally, in the place where they were sworn, which is the Sanctuary. I know the Sanctuary is full of three old men who will not let us in." He drew a slow breath. "And I know I told the Saintess that I would come at the first snow. It seems we have more than one reason to be punctual."
Tie Shan gave a sound that was almost a laugh, dry and terrible.
"When the Marshal calls for the Seventh Banner," the captain said, "the Seventh will march. A thousand of us, no more. The rest must hold the gate, or the Horde will come through." He rose, and set his split helm upon his head. "We have been holding for fifty years. We can hold a little longer, if we are told it is for a reason."
"It is," said Gu.
The captain bowed, and went to stand at the narrow arrow-slit. Out beyond the wall, three hundred small fires burned on the edge of the world.
"They come at the dark of the moon," Tie Shan said, without turning. "Every month. Five or six hundred of them, riding at the gate, and the Seventh throws them back. They are not an army. Not any more. They are what is left of one. The grandsons of the Khan’s riders, and the sons of the sons."
"The dark of the moon," Li Xuan said slowly. "That is the night of the Blood Levy in the capital."
"We cannot be in two places," said Gu.
"No." Li Xuan looked at the narrow window, and at the little fires, so patient and so far away. "But perhaps the Horde does not need to be thrown back. Perhaps it only needs to be asked what it wants."
Gu stared at him as though he had spoken in a foreign tongue.
"Boy, they will kill you."
"I do not intend to carry a sword." Li Xuan took up the broom that leaned beside his stool. His ribs ached when he moved, but his eyes were calm. "I only intend to sweep."