The prairie fire burned itself out during the morning. Tian had expected something more dramatic- rain falling and steam rising and… something. Instead, the fire had just burned for a while, and no longer driven by a hot southern wind, it stopped spreading so quickly. All the little thatched dead grass it was burning was consumed. The fire transformed the wood into earth, nourishing the soil. All that burned was what was above the surface. The roots were safe, nestled deep in the cool ground. They would drink up the rain, building nourishment and life within them. Soon, green shoots would rise, stronger than ever.
It was the cycle of the elements. Metal testing everything, as it always did, the cycle turning through the grasslands as it always did, fire and water and wood and earth and metal, all turning, mutually restraining and nourishing each other. The disaster was a blessing. Death held life. Tian knew there were other ways to understand the world, but he couldn’t see the point of them. Yes there were spirits, but wasn’t it clear that Daoism was the right answer? Didn’t it perfectly describe the universal cycle? How could you be content studying what one little flower might be hiding, when you could look up and see the beauty in the whole world?
Tian lost himself watching the smoke spreading into a haze in the sky. Black was the color of water in his books, but artists painted it in blue, and when he looked at it in a porcelain bowl, it was clear. A thing that took its shape from what it was held in, and perhaps its color too. Or it got its color from what was held in it. He cupped his pale hands and looked at the emptiness within them. Clear as could be. Air like water, water like air. There was a principle there he wasn’t understanding, but that was alright. He had spent twenty years on the ground looking up. It was time to study the heavens from the inside, and learn all he could.
He tossed the contents of his hands overboard.
“What was that?”
“I’m bailing out the boat.”
“We are in the sky. The sky. There is no water. The boat is not leaking.”
“What color is the sky, Sis?”
“Blue. Obviously.”
“Are we in the sky?”
“Yes. Also obviously.”
“Is the air blue?”
Liren paused, opened her mouth, then paused again. “Maybe it’s a sort of… blue shell on top of the air or something? Like a duck egg?”
“Does the shell come off at night and come on again with the dawn?”
“It could be a second shell, painted with… no that doesn’t work, the sun and moon would have to fit inside of the shell, and they are supposed to be huge when you get up close to them.”
“Oh? How huge?” Tian asked. He hadn’t read about that.
“Dunno exactly, but there is supposed to be an osmanthus tree on the moon, and a palace big enough for a goddess, and a jade rabbit and all kinds of other things. So it’s a big place. And the sun has all kinds of creatures living on or in it. Three legged crows, fire sparrows, vermillion birds maybe, and you always hear about fires or fruits that have traces of the sun’s power so I have to assume there are even more of them on the sun than there are on the earth. Again, it has to be a big place.”
Tian reckoned that checked out, though he wasn’t sure why Grandpa was muttering about “Damned Daoist cosmology and folk traditions.” He’d say something if it was important.
“How are… mmm. Weird.” Tian’s voice trailed off into muttering.
“What is?”
“I almost said ‘How are the kids,’ and I’m pretty sure Gongsung is older than I am.”
“He is, but not by much. Twenty four or twenty five, I guess.”
“So, roughly an extra quarter of my life. And yours.” Tian shook his head. “Is that young to be a captain?”
“No idea. But the youths of all ages are looking ragged. There is a creek up ahead, with what looks like a good camping spot. I’ll have Little Han lead them over there.” Liren’s eyes went distant.
“Good. We won’t get much sleep tonight.”
“Oh?”
“Threadcutter wants the red horse, and so do the Boruski. We’ll have company, and it’s coming sooner rather than later.”
She grunted at that. “Didn’t you say that the Great Wolf Shaman said the Wolf and the Horse both were patrons of Wuusan?”
“Yes? Oh.” Tian frowned. The Great Horse Spirit led the red horse directly to Gongsun. It gave him a trial, but anyone else would be lucky to even catch a glimpse of it. The spirit horse wasn’t an animal to be hunted and caught. It was a blessing of the steppe. One that had been bestowed on a foreign soldier.
“Where is the White Horse Army based?” Tian asked.
“The northeast. They have wide planes up there too, though I don’t think the nomads who live up there are related to the Yuu. Or maybe they are, damned if I know.”
“He came clear across the width of the country with a company of troopers, just to support Hanshen and stabilize the situation in the south?”
Liren shrugged. “Politics.”
“Yeah, but no, there is more to this.” Tian drummed his fingers on the wood of the folding boat. “All I can think of is that the horse is forcing the sides to fight. But they were going to fight anyway. An extra reason to fight is kind of pointless. It’s been teasing people with glimpses of the red horse around here for months now. Almost a year.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“It also feels sneakier and more political than I associate with whatever it was that we just saw. A giant horse made of smoke and starlight.”
They scudded through the sky in silence for a while. Daoist Ma calmed down, slipping into sleep. They let him be. Tian looked over at Liren. The noon sun was shining down on her. From where he was sitting, the yellow straw on her hat looked golden. A sort of aggressively humble, yet fancy, crown. Was now the time for the secret weapon?
No. No, a great schemer must know when to seize the moment, and this wasn’t it.
A crown. Kingship. Damn. “It doesn’t know about politics, it knows about kings. At least as the Yuu define kings. Powerful tribal leaders.”
“Yes? So? We knew that. It’s not like Gongsun is in the line of inheritance for the throne. Or at least, if he is, I haven’t heard about it.” Liren tilted her head a little as she looked at Tian.
“No, that doesn’t matter. Or it makes it better, maybe. Look, Wuusan and the Yuu may want the red horse, but they don’t need it. I guarantee that Wuusan already has a spirit horse, and he doesn’t need any more proofs of kingship. The spirits may or may not even know that Threadcutter exists, but fair to say they probably wouldn’t care about whatever he is doing in the desert. It’s not really ruling or leading from the front like a horse does with a herd.”
“With you so far.”
“It was looking for someone from the kingdom. It understands, at least, the concept of non-Yuu people.”
Liren hummed. “The soldiers had seen it often enough to find it ordinary. It must have been showing itself to them as bait. Trying to lure in someone it could use.”
“Right.” Tian nodded. Liren slowly smiled. It looked grim on her.
“Rebellion. It’s hoping that a new king will rise to challenge the old, and its chosen champion can sweep in and take advantage of the chaos.”
“Grandpa, just how smart are these spirits?”
Highly variable. This horse spirit is being venerated as a deity, so I wouldn’t be shocked if it had some sort of approximation of human intelligence. It will not, and this is vitally important, WILL NOT necessarily think like a flesh and blood human or a flesh and blood horse. It is, first and foremost, a being made of energy that has slowly taken on a specific shape and adapted.
“Should we kill the red horse?”
You can if you want to.
Tian frowned. That was one of Grandpa’s pet phrases, and it almost always indicated that he was considering a big decision without realizing it.
“How… what am I missing?”
Think about what you know about the spirit horse. Consider, particularly, that it chooses its rider.
Tian puzzled at it for a while, and couldn’t seem to come up with anything relevant. “I don’t get it.”
It’s a mortal creature. Magical, but mortal. Horses live a long time, and this one will live even longer, but it’s still mortal. It will die.
“How long do horses live?”
Bigger the horse, shorter the life. The red horse is bigger than a pony, but a little on the small side still. I’d say… twenty five to thirty years, well cared for, if it was a normal horse. This one might live forty or fifty years. Not the important thing, though. The important thing is that it is flesh and bone, and can make choices.
“Is it sentient? No, I mean the other thing. Sapient. It awakened its spiritual wisdom?”
Probably not that advanced. Close to where Burning Heaven was before she awoke, maybe.
Tian drummed his fingers on the side of the boat, then put his other hand next to it. He drummed his fingers, each rising and falling in turn, the little wave running back and forth across his hands. He somehow never got tired of looking at them.
“It would be killing an intelligent mortal not for something they did, but because of something a friend of theirs might do, or what people might think their friend might do. The horses don’t make someone a king, they are just proof that a person could be a king.”
Yep. Up to you, though.
Tian just shook his head. He might not have a consistent moral framework on what animals he was willing to kill and eat, but he wasn’t going to kill the horse because other people were insecure. Even if it meant all hell breaking loose later.
“What do you think he named the horse?” Tian asked.
“Steppe Fire. What other name would possibly fit?”
“Not Little Red?”
“I suspect that would be a violation of horse law, one that would see your legs broken and you being dumped in the middle of the steppes.”
“Tsk! Hidden dangers everywhere.” Tian shook his head. “Is nowhere safe from these ravenous discipline squads?”
They spent a few days shadowing the mortals back to Burning Flag City. To Tian’s supreme irritation, the horse was, in fact, named Steppe Fire. His irritation became more thoughtful when he learned that, somehow, the horse had told the young captain that fact. Not with words, but a feeling and an image. Tian summoned Han to the courtyard for a debriefing.
“Why didn’t you fight Gongsun for the horse? You would have won.”
Han shook his head and wrote quickly on his slate. “She wasn’t meant for me. We could both feel it.”
“Interesting. Anything else?”
“Yes. The giant horse spirit in the sky said I wasn’t ready yet. One day, I will come back to the Steppes and my horse will find me.”
Tian let the words swirl around them for a moment, before standing and clasping his hands behind his back. “Fate? Destiny?”
“Something like that.” Han held up a battered looking card.
Tian followed a little sparrow as it hopped from branch to branch, then flew over the courtyard wall. “Starsieve, the third generation sect master of the Ancient Crane Monastery and the most powerful diviner I have personally met, once described fate as a river. You can fight against it, you can direct your boat to either side, but in the end, the river didn’t change. Just your experience of it. Quite profound, I thought, as befits someone older than the kingdom. Here’s the thing, Student Han. Starsieve was a diviner, studying the heavens and the commands of fate. He should have been the preeminent expert on living well, in conformance with the will of Heaven.”
Tian let his eyes casually lift, following the quickly moving clouds coming from the south east. “Yet, before he died, he made it very, very clear that he had utterly waisted the majority of his life, had committed inexcusable sins against more people than can be easily counted, and ultimately committed suicide to kill the master of Blackiron Gorge in a working who’s purpose and scale I still struggle to understand. It looked like the whole of the Redstone Wastes were being ground in a mill, Student Han, and Sister Hong and I were there to witness it.”
He smiled up at the sky, hands still clasped behind his back. “Fate, destiny, you can’t control them, so don’t worry about them. Do your best with what you have, where you are. For everything else, simply enjoy your time on the river. I may be prejudiced, but I think the journey is more pleasant when you have someone to laugh with along the way. Rest. Tomorrow we resume training. We have very little time left.”
Tian was quite proud of that speech. It sounded exactly how an ancient immortal full of wisdom should. It even had a teaching lie with the river metaphor. He was glad he rehearsed it in advance. He always did better with a script. That hadn’t changed in all these years of acting human.
His act was further vindicated when, a week later, a messenger raced to the city lord’s mansion, screaming that he had a military report. The Yuu had taken Vermilion Bird Fort, and three more besides. The war had begun.