The heavy staff rushed down on the shaman. The shaman didn’t seem to mind. His old hands were steady as the green furred horse moved below him, the tip of his arrow never wavering from Tian’s chest. The string was released, slapping into the leather arm guard with a crack.
Tian had been watching and waiting for this moment. He leaned far to his left and sent the flying sword dipping at an angle. The timing was split-second, and very nearly not enough. The bone tipped arrow scraped along his shoulder, leaving a deep cut with a lingering curse. Tian grinned and pressed forward, not stopping his strike. Since when did he fear curses? He used the instant after the attack to lunge in, and bring the iron tipped staff down on the shaman’s head.
The shaman didn’t cooperate. The green furred horse moved almost as lightly as Tian did on the sword, keeping just out of distance. The shaman held the bow in his left hand and drew a short, barely curved saber with his right. Tian had barely enough time to try and block with his staff when an impact slammed into him. Whatever it was sent him spinning in the air, flying back until he slammed into, and through, someone. Tumbling in the dirt, the flying sword spun off somewhere, and only the instincts of a brutal life kept him moving the second he could regain his feet.
It was good he did. His eyes hadn’t quite sorted themselves out when he heard arrows thudding into the ground around him. The Moon Crossing the Lake was proving itself yet again. He poured more effort into it, desperately blinking and trying to get his eyes on the shaman.
Tian raised his staff in both hands, guarding his front. There was a notch cut into it, nearly half an inch deep. The staff had clearly saved his life. Despite that, what came to mind was “I just got this thing! I just got it!”
He didn’t have time to let his mind wander. Liren was battling the ghostly wolves and seemed to be holding her own, but her eyes were tight, and her breathing was harsh. The wolves wouldn’t stay dead when she killed them. Summons of some sort, then. Some sort of ghostly thing. Tian knew the cure for that. Kill the spell caster. It worked in the wasteland. It would work in the steppes.
The Shaman punctuated the thought with another flying arrow. Tian shifted across the grass, relying on instinct more than sight or sound to dodge. There was the faintest prickle on the edge of his awareness, just caressing the side of his neck. Tian swore and ducked while spinning the staff in a roaring blur. He still felt the arrow brush the side of his neck. A bare fraction of a second slower, and it would have pierced through.
The curse on the arrow still managed to burrow into him. Thin tendrils of yin power bored in, hunting for his spine and heart. The Hell Suppressing Sutra ripped apart the curse, but it left a lingering fear behind it. He wasn’t beating the Shaman. He was, currently, surviving him.
Tian rushed in. The Shaman was on a magical horse, with a bow in his hand. There would be no running away. It was win or die, and for him, victory could only be found at close quarters. The shaman knew it too. The horse moved around the edge of the battlefield, keeping well back. Tian wasn’t going to catch it. He rushed forward anyway, calling the flying sword with his mind and a pull of qi.
The Shaman drew and loosed another arrow, every motion effortless and flowing. The arrow bent a little to the right, before sharply curving back towards him. Tian felt that same little touch of foreign qi on him, this time on his chest. He spun the staff again, as fast as he could while violently dodging. The arrow still struck true, barely intercepted by the staff. The arrow wasn’t knocked away clean- it deflected upward and bit through Tian’s robes and into his ribs before falling away. A long gash started bleeding into his robes. He could feel the curse trying to widen the wound and stop the blood from clotting.
The flying sword arrived and dove into the ground, rough earth clouding the bright blade as it slid under Tian’s feet. Once he was standing on it, he exploded forward. No careful manoeuvers, he charged straight at the shaman and his horse. He crouched low, staff held out like a trooper’s lance.
The shaman didn’t laugh. A smile didn’t crease his face. Tian could see he had the old man’s full attention. But there wasn’t an ounce of fear in the shaman. It was an old hunter’s care that the rabbit didn’t slip his grasp at the last moment, nor bite his hand when he looked dead.
Tian roared. “DIE FOR ME!” as he raised the battered staff high. The shaman coolly drew another arrow, knocked it, and brought the string back to his cheek. Tian felt the touch of qi on him once more, this time pressing against his forehead. Tian’s face pulled into a rictus grin. He gave no outward sign, only moving his qi. The Heavenly Swallow darts he had sent to kill the hawk swooped down, drilling at the shaman’s head from above.
The darts were inches from the back of the shaman’s head. Just inches. Then they spun away, bouncing off a ghostly blue wolf’s head, covering the shaman like a helmet. For a moment, he really thought he had done it. For a moment, it looked like his ambush worked. The shaman didn’t even crack a victorious smile. He simply loosed the arrow.
Tian knew where it was coming. He just wasn’t fast enough to get the staff all the way in front of the arrow. The arrow tore another deep gash in his staff, deflected upwards, and ripped along the side of his head. Tian staggered back, falling off the flying sword again, blinded by bursts of stars and a sudden ringing sound.
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“ZIHAO!” Liren was screaming. He had to do something, Liren was screaming. It was just, it was so hard to concentrate, to see anything past the bursts of light and that damned ringing sound!
There was a sound like the sigh of a god, and a rip like tearing silk. Then a crunch, like bones under a heavy boot.
“So close, Redspear. So close. But not enough!”
“You think you can run away with my spear qi in you? Not even Grasshadow can carry you far enough or fast enough for that!”
“Ahaha. The Great Wolf will eat up your sorcery soon enough. I will content myself with one slain rabbit today. Your King of Hell and all his precious soldiers will soon be dead. Along with your little mercenaries.”
Tian blinked furiously, and turned to see what was going on. The shaman was looking a lot less casual and composed than his voice suggested. One hand was pressed to his chest, staunching the flow of blood while the other clenched his short saber. He was glaring up at a plump elder, a man with a long beard and longer spear in the white-gold robes of the Radiant Dawn Sect.
The Earthly and Mortal battle was still running hot. The Earthly cultivators outnumbered the shaman, but the shaman seemed to be stronger. At the very least, they were pinning down the Earthly cultivators, stopping them from reinforcing the mortals. The soldiers of the Kingdom could use reinforcements. Tian could see bodies scattered on the steppes. The White Horse Soldiers were elites, used to desperate battles. It was fair to say that one was a match for three. But the raiders outnumbered them five to one.
Arrows hissed from double recurve bows, biting through chainmail and finding unprotected throats or faces. When they couldn’t kill the rider, they killed the horse and ran down those on foot with their long lances. The troopers retaliated- their goat-leg crossbows pierced the iron plates and leather jerkens of the raiders with contemptuous ease. They had their own lances too, and knew well how to use them. Both sides' sabers rose and fell. But the tide was flowing in only one direction, and the raiders were getting ever closer to the wagons.
The teamsters were in it now. Some desperately defending their wagons with heavy maces, or short spears. More hiding behind thick wooden boards, or on the far side of the driver’s box. The smart ones were staying low and trying to keep their horses from panicking. The wagons were too heavy to be flipped, but a panicking horse could easily kill itself, and block the whole caravan.
There were heroes in the mad melee. Tian knew there were heroes and legends fighting desperately, even now. He couldn’t find them in the dust. It was all just suffering life, soon over. So long as the Grand Shaman was there, he couldn’t intervene any more than the Earthly experts. Censor Hanshen, a man he had become quite fond of, was sure to die. No amount of skill with a sword would save him from the spears and arrows of the Steppes.
Tian really underestimated Hanshen and the White Horse General both.
The cloth sides of the wagons fell in a flutter, burning paper talismans sending licks of blue white flame to the sky as they were revealed. Behind the cloth were wooden barricades, and peeking through arrow slits were the tips of crossbow bolts. There were dozens of wagons. Hundreds of crossbows. There was barely time to scream.
The bolts slid out like black serpents. They came one after another, not in volleys but in streams. If one bolt didn’t kill a raider, three would, and there seemed to be no shortage. In less than a minute, a thousand bolts were loosed. The battle was over less than a minute after that. The shamans were capable. Very capable. But not capable enough to stop tens of crossbow bolts, each, coming from every angle, fired by repeating crossbows and soldiers that knew how to use them. Some were quick enough to escape. Many were not.
“Redspear!”
“You are getting senile, little Wolf. You mistook a tiger for a rabbit! If you were a cultivator, you might have lived long enough to know the difference!”
“It doesn’t matter! You can’t kill me. Burning Flag City will be mine, and I will present your head to God’s Chosen as an offering!”
“I can’t kill you? Taste my spear!”
“Fool!” The shaman raised his saber, hacked out a saber light in the shape of a slavering wolf, then turned and bolted for the open steppes. His green furred horse was a blur over the rolling hills.
“DAMN! Stonebreaker, catch him!”
“I’m trying, damn it!” Another daoist in white and gold appeared from a blurred patch of air, their hands forming arcane seals and sending out waves of screeching birds made of fire.
“After him!”
The two heavenly cultivators sped off.
It had been an ambush. Tian stared out over the steppes. It had been an ambush and a damn counter ambush. Again. It was exactly what happened when he went on the commerce raid. He could taste the Cloud Grace Tea. He was sitting in Brother Long’s tent, listening to the dying hero remember his battles along the Green River, and the gentle fingers of Xiaoxiao as she played the zither in the tea house. He remembered how everyone died around the caravan, the little holes left by rains of darts in people and wood and the ground all the same. Liren nearly died, buried alive in a ‘life saving’ egg of hardened earth. He nearly died, riddled with poison and desperately trying to breath through sand and his rope dart. All so the Heavenly Cultivators could play their game of ambushes.
Tian took a shuddering breath, and forced himself back to the present. It wasn’t as bad, this time. The dead and the dying were strewn about the tall grasses, cold steel had spilled hot blood widely, but despite the casualties, one would have to call it a victory. Not everyone died this time. He forced himself to draw in another shuddering breath. Hold it. Then he firmed his guts.
“Liren, are you hurt?”
“Only my pride. And my heart. But I’ll keep. You are hurt worse.”
“Nothing that a bit of cultivation can’t fix.” Tian called back the heavenly swallows and the flying sword, stowing them in his storage ring. “No time to rest. It seems that Combat Medic Tian is needed once more. It feels like I never left.”