High noon in the Red-Sand Wastes was hot enough to bake an egg on a flat rock.
Out on the scorching salt trail leading west from Salt-Pool Town, two hundred heavily armed men of the Black-Arrow Mercenary Company marched through the shimmering heat waves, their iron-studded leather boots kicking up a thick yellow dust cloud that rose fifty feet into the air.
At the front of the column rode Captain Hu (Hu Biao) on a tall dapple-grey stallion, his black iron scale-armor clinking with every step. Behind him rolled four massive, four-wheeled siege carts pulled by sixteen sweating mules. Strapped to each cart was a twenty-foot tree trunk wrapped in iron bands, tipped with a solid cast-iron ram head shaped like a snarling wild boar. Each battering ram weighed a full thousand pounds.
Sitting backwards on a donkey right beside Captain Hu's horse was Steward Liu. Since his bare feet were still covered in blisters from yesterday's twenty-mile run in his underpants, he had wrapped both feet in thick white bandages like two giant steamed buns, and he wore a borrowed patched coat that was three sizes too big for him.
"How much further, Steward Liu?" Lieutenant Ma—Captain Hu's second-in-command, a burly Rank 2 Early Martial fighter carrying two heavy iron axes—grunted irritable as he wiped sweat from his neck. "We've been marching under this demon sun for four hours! My canteen is already half empty, and the water from Boss Qian's well tastes like donkey piss!"
"Just over that next sand ridge, Lieutenant Ma!" Steward Liu pointed eagerly toward a low line of red dunes half a mile ahead. "Once we break into Dry-Well Village, you can drink all you want! That exiled brat's well water is colder than mountain snow and sweeter than honey! And he has ten acres of giant red potatoes that smell like roasted lamb!"
"Potatoes that smell like lamb?" Captain Hu snorted disdainfully from his saddle. "Steward Liu, did the sun bake your brains yesterday? Next you'll tell me their mud wall is made of gold!"
The mercenaries around them burst into rough laughter.
"Even if it's just clean water, it's worth the march," Captain Hu said coldly, resting a hand on his six-foot iron longbow. "Remember Boss Qian's orders, boys! Kill the one-armed guard and the nomad chief first. Break the ninth young master's legs so he can sign over the land deed, and put the rest of the thousand villagers in iron collars! Every healthy slave we bring back to Salt-Pool Town's kilns gets us an extra fifty copper coins of drinking money!"
"ROAR! Long live Captain Hu!"
Two hundred bloodthirsty mercenaries raised their iron spears, ghost-head sabers, and heavy crossbows, cheering loudly as they crested the final sand ridge.
And then, as the view below the ridge opened up, the cheering stopped as if someone had grabbed all two hundred mercenaries by the throat.
Half a mile ahead, right where a miserable collection of thirty-five broken mud huts should have been, stood a massive, twenty-foot-high fortress wall that stretched across the oasis basin from left to right!
Behind the wall, lush green willow sprouts and neat rows of grey stone roofs gleamed in the sunlight, while the cool, refreshing scent of damp earth and sweet spring water drifted on the breeze even half a mile away.
However, what made Captain Hu and his two hundred mercenaries squint in disbelief was the wall itself.
Even though the wall was twenty feet high and eight feet thick, its outer surface looked like the crudest, cheapest, most pathetic yellow mud wall in the history of the world! Patches of dry straw stuck out at odd angles, fake mud cracks zig-zagged across the front, and right next to the main eastern gate, someone had taken a bucket of red paint and slapped a huge, crooked circle on the mud wall with giant clumsy letters:
[ WARNING: MUD STILL WET HERE! DO NOT HIT HARD! ]
For three seconds, the entire mercenary army stared at that giant red warning sign in total silence.
Then, Captain Hu threw his head back and laughed until his black scale-armor rattled.
"Bahahaha! Look at that!" Captain Hu pointed his iron bow at the red circle on the wall. "Steward Liu! You told me they built a wall yesterday, and I thought they at least used sun-baked bricks! They literally piled up wet yellow mud twenty feet high and painted a sign begging us not to hit the soft spot!"
"Wait... that can't be a real warning sign, right?" Lieutenant Ma scratched his bald head, squinting at the wall. "Captain, nobody is stupid enough to paint 'DO NOT HIT HARD' on the weakest part of their own wall! Could it be a trap? Like a hidden pitfall in front of the red circle?"
"I told you, that ninth young master is a brainless noble brat who grew up in the Marquis's backyard!" Steward Liu shouted excitedly from his donkey, his rat-whiskers trembling with glee. "Wait—I bet one of his idiot peasant masons painted that sign yesterday afternoon to warn the village ox-carts not to bump the wet mud, and they forgot to wipe it off when we showed up!"
Captain Hu spurred his horse forward to within a hundred yards of the eastern gate—just outside normal bow range—and looked up at the top of the gatehouse.
What he saw up there made the vein on his scarred forehead throb violently.
On top of the twenty-foot gatehouse roof, there were no panicked villagers pouring boiling oil or notched arrows on bowstrings.
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Instead, a neat wooden shade pavilion covered in green vine leaves had been set up right between the battlements. Underneath the shade sat a handsome seventeen-year-old youth in clean blue cotton robes, lounging comfortably in a cushioned bamboo rocking chair.
In front of the youth stood a square wooden table holding a large wooden tub filled with crystal-clear ice water (cooled with frost-salt from the well basin). Floating in the icy water were four big, round green desert watermelons sliced into bright red triangles!
Beside the table stood a fat, smiling cook holding a silver fruit knife, a fierce fifteen-year-old maid holding a brass abacus and a brush ledger, a one-armed old veteran leaning on a five-foot black-iron saber, and a burly one-eyed mason holding a brass speaking-trumpet.
Right in front of the whole mercenary army, Pei Xuan picked up a thick slice of chilled red watermelon, took a crisp, juicy bite—CRUNCH—and spat two black melon seeds over the edge of the battlement.
==================================================================== [ ENEMY FORCE DETECTED: BLACK-ARROW MERCENARY COMPANY ] * Commander: Captain Hu Biao (Rank 2 Peak Martial — Iron-Bone Stage) * Deputy: Lieutenant Ma (Rank 2 Early Martial) * Troops: 50 Heavy Archers (Rank 1 Mid) + 148 Infantry (Rank 1 Early) * Siege Gear: 4x Thousand-Pound Boar-Head Iron Battering Rams * Current Enemy Morale: 95/100 (Overconfident / Thirsty) * Average Enemy Loyalty to Boss Qian: 22/100 (Mercenary — Paid in Silver) ====================================================================
"Look at their Loyalty bars," Pei Xuan murmured to Old Wei while chewing the sweet, ice-cold watermelon. "Only twenty-two out of a hundred to Boss Qian. They aren't fanatics at all—they're just working for five hundred silver and fifty coppers of drinking money. Basically, they are two hundred future canal-diggers who walked twenty miles to apply for a job."
Old Wei took a bite of his own watermelon slice and nodded seriously. "The Young Lord has the heart of a Bodhisattva. Instead of slaughtering these two hundred bandits, you already plan to give them steady jobs and three meals a day."
Beside them, Hong Ling dipped her writing brush into an inkstone, opened a thick new book titled [Dry-Well Village Municipal Property Damage & Fine Register — Book 2], and licked her lips eagerly.
"Young Master, how much should we charge them per arrow shot at our new wall?" Hong Ling asked, her eyes glittering like a little tax collector. "The Elastic Iron-Mud Wall cost us ten thousand cartloads of clay and five hundred cauldrons of rubber sap!"
"Fair market price," Pei Xuan said generously, waving his fan. "Every arrow that touches our wall is an illegal attempt to deface village public property—twenty silver taels per arrow. Every scratch from a battering ram is five hundred silver taels. And since they brought two hundred men without buying visitor tickets, charge them two silver per head for an Unlicensed Group Parade Fee."
Clack-clack-clack!
Hong Ling hit her brass abacus beads so loud that the sound carried down to the desert floor. "Four hundred silver just for walking up to the gate! I've written it down, Young Master!"
Down below, hundred yards out in the blazing sun, Captain Hu and his two hundred mercenaries were sweating like pigs inside their hot leather and iron armor. Seeing Pei Xuan and his servants eating ice-cold, dripping-wet red watermelon on the shaded roof made every single mercenary swallow dryly.
"That little bastard is eating iced melon while looking down at us!" Lieutenant Ma growled, his throat burning with thirst. "Captain, let me take fifty men and chop that gate down right now!"
Captain Hu rode ten paces closer, raised his six-foot iron bow to point straight at Pei Xuan's face on the gatehouse roof, and roared at the top of his lungs:
"Pei Xuan! Listen up! I am Hu Biao, Captain of the Black-Arrow Mercenaries! Master Qian paid us five hundred silver taels to take your well and flatten this mud pile! However, I, Hu Biao, am a reasonable man! If you open that wooden gate right now, hand over all your water, grain, and silver, and crawl out on your knees to lick Steward Liu's bandaged feet, I will leave you with one unbroken leg!"
Up on the gatehouse roof, Pei Xuan didn't even bother shouting back himself. He simply nodded to One-Eyed Jack.
One-Eyed Jack grinned, lifted his big brass speaking-trumpet to his mouth, took a deep breath, and bellowed back with ten times the volume:
"ATTENTION STINKY MERCENARIES OUTSIDE THE GATE! YOU ARE CURRENTLY COMMITTING AN UNLICENSED TWO-HUNDRED-MAN PARADE ON DRY-WELL VILLAGE LAND! YOUR CURRENT FINE IS FOUR HUNDRED SILVER TAELS! IF YOU TURN AROUND AND GET LOST RIGHT NOW, LORD PEI WILL GIVE YOU A TWENTY PERCENT DISCOUNT! IF YOU DARE TOUCH OUR EXPENSIVE NEW WALL WITH EVEN ONE ARROW, EVERY SINGLE MAN WILL BE SENTENCED TO SIX MONTHS OF CANAL DIGGING IN A YELLOW DEBTOR VEST!"
The echoes of the brass trumpet rolled across the sand dunes: "...YELLOW DEBTOR VEST... DEBTOR VEST..."
Down in the mercenary ranks, two hundred hardened killers blinked in disbelief, then exploded into furious curses and howling laughter.
"A fine of four hundred silver?!"
"Sentence us to six months of digging canals?! Does that one-eyed idiot know who the Black-Arrow Company is?!"
"We slaughtered the White-Bone Horse Gang last winter! How dare a bunch of mud-farmers talk to us about fines!"
On his donkey, Steward Liu shrieked at the top of his lungs, pointing a trembling finger at the gatehouse: "Captain Hu! You see?! That's the exact same scam they pulled on me yesterday! First they make up a crazy fine, and then they try to strip your pants off! Don't talk to them anymore—shoot them! Smash their wet mud wall into dust!"
Captain Hu's scarred face twisted into a savage grin. No village chief in the Red-Sand Wastes had ever dared to mock the Black-Arrow Company like this.
"You want to charge my brothers twenty silver per arrow?" Captain Hu sneered darkly, raising his right hand high in the air. "Good! Let's see if your little girl's abacus can count fast enough before my arrows pin her to the roof!"
"Black-Arrow Archer Squad! Front rank—STEP FORWARD!"
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Fifty burly mercenary archers marched ten paces ahead of the main formation, closing the distance to just fifty yards from the twenty-foot yellow mud wall.
These were not ordinary hunting bows. Every archer in the Black-Arrow Company carried a sixty-pound horn-and-sinew recurve bow and a quiver of heavy, three-foot Black-Iron Armor-Piercing Arrows. At fifty yards, a volley from these bows could punch straight through two inches of oak wood or dry mud brick!
"Wait—aim ten arrows at the brats on the gatehouse roof, and forty arrows straight into that red 'DO NOT HIT' circle on the mud wall and the gate seams!" Captain Hu shouted, thinking that if forty heavy iron arrows punched deep into the wet mud spot at once, the whole section of fresh mud wall would crack and slump down!
"Nock Black Arrows!"
Fifty heavy iron arrowheads gleamed darkly under the noon sun as fifty bowstrings were pulled back to the archers' ears with a creaking groan of bent horn.
Up on the gatehouse roof, Old Wei stepped calmly to the front edge of the battlement, gripping his five-foot Rank 2 Heavy Mountain-Cleaver Saber in his single muscular right hand to deflect the ten high arrows aimed at the pavilion.
Meanwhile, Pei Xuan didn't even get up from his bamboo rocking chair. He just picked up another slice of chilled watermelon, while Hong Ling poised her brush over the fine ledger, whispering excitedly:
"Fifty arrows times twenty silver... that's one thousand silver taels right there! Shoot faster, you big idiots!"
Down below, Captain Hu slashed his hand downward:
"LOOSE!"