Jade Empire Read online

  Oh, how he and Dev used to argue over things like that. Dependable Dev, who attached such importance to information and order and yet lost to a well-placed poke with a stick from Jai every time they sparred. What would Dev say if he could see Jai now?

  The teacher sighed. ‘You are not the defiant Inda boy who came to our academy all those years ago. Your captor believed you would be dead within days and yet you found odd reserves of strength and willpower that have seen you not only survive but rise to be among the best. Yet there are aspects of you that have not changed. You are still wilful and insolent. You are lucky to have had me for a teacher, I think. Many of the others in this place would not have put up with you so easily. Why did you come back?’

  It was a good question. Jai had left the academy four years ago, with one of the highest grades ever awarded. He had been given his pick of assignments and could have entered the cavalry or infantry, or even the imperial guard, with his qualification. But he had eschewed the grand and the renowned. He had no wish to blaze a path through the ranks of the empire. Instead, he had joined the Jade Empire’s scout service and been with them ever since, rising through rank and reputation with impressive rapidity, but refusing transfers to more prestigious careers. His had been a successful, but peripheral, career, patrolling the edge of the lands from which he had come over a decade ago. Once or twice he had considered returning home, but he was no longer truly Inda and, while he recognised that fact and accepted it, he was not at all sure how his father would receive it. If his father was still alive, that was.

  A week ago he had received a summons from the regional governor, and had ridden to the fortress town of Yuen in answer. He had spent much of his training time in Yuen, at this very academy, and the coincidence of his being summoned here was interesting. He was needed at the Palace of Arms, but he had ridden fast and felt certain he could bend the rules long enough to visit his old academy. Why he felt the need he could not say, but it was good to see his teacher again, and the chance to practise against an Ishi master was not something one encountered every day.

  He smiled at the teacher.

  ‘I think I needed to know I was still good. Many of my skills are tested with the scouts, but my mastery of the forms of steel are not, and I feared they might have atrophied.’

  ‘Clearly they have not.’

  Jai smiled and then glanced up as the clong of a bell rang out across the academy.

  ‘I have tarried longer than I intended, Master. I must leave. My compliments once more on your teachings and patience.’ He bowed respectfully with clasped hands.

  The teacher bowed in return and smiled as Jai hurried from the courtyard, through the halls and corridors and out into the main square of the fortress town. The Square of Four Winds was typical of Jade Empire architecture. It was, like the people of this land, both hard and delicate, martial and beautiful. Its smooth stone lines and gentle curves surrounded a flagged square that showed the wear of a million booted feet at parade. The plants and trees and small gardens surrounding it were magnificent and well-kept, and only from above could a man realise that they spelled out the four names of the war gods. The Jade Empire was a place that had fascinated Jai ever since he came here. He had quickly realised that there was more to these people than the simple bandits who crossed the border and took Inda goods. They were an enigma and Jai was not yet close to unpicking the knot of their world.

  The heavy tramp of many feet caught his ear, and his interest was piqued at the sight of a spear unit crossing the other corner of the square and descending the Stone Lion Stairs towards the Gate of the Painted Stars. Like all Jade Empire units, they were impressive in their uniformity. Each man dressed and armed identically, moving identically. When one man looked left, all men looked left. Training was harsh and rigid in the empire’s schools, but it produced soldiers that worked well as a unit.

  All morning, military divisions had been moving through the town, and he had passed numerous units on his journey south to Yuen. Something big was happening, clearly. His pulse quickened at the notion that he would be involved in whatever it was. It was too much of a coincidence for him to be summoned to this place where so many armies were massing without the two being connected.

  He hurried across the square to the Palace of Arms, showed his documentation to the guard and was admitted. The building was grand and constructed of dark-grey granite, every corbel and antefix decorated with lions and dragons, the twin symbols of the Jade Empire’s westernmost forces. Each office in the building was well signed but it still took him precious moments to find the room to which he had been ordered. The door lay wide open as he arrived and he stood in the doorway, feet planted firmly apart, back straight, waiting.

  ‘You are late,’ said the man in the red and black uniform standing by the window opposite.

  ‘My apologies, General. I was visiting the academy and a practice bout with an Ishi master overran. It is my error.’

  ‘Ishi masters are always slow.’

  The man turned, arms clasped behind his back, and stepped into the room. ‘You are the master scout Jai of the Inda. You come very highly recommended by some, while others tell me you are too troublesome. An interesting quandary. Come in and close the door.’

  Jai did so, falling back into the same stance as before.

  ‘Why should I choose you above your peers, Master Scout Jai?’

  ‘To answer such a question, General, I would need to know for what I am to be chosen?’

  The General smiled. ‘A good answer. Excellent. We have made a promising start.’

  Jai studied the man before him. General Xeng Shu Jiang was a man approaching fifty summers, his black hair now silver at the temples. He was tall. Jai was tall himself, but the true-blooded sons of the Jade Empire were not lofty men in general, so the man’s stature was striking. And there was about him an energy one did not often see in high-level command, like that of an acrobat tensing, ready to spring. Jai liked him already. Most importantly, though, the man had questioned him and had approved of his inquisitive reply. Another attribute unusual among the general’s peers.

  A quick glance around the room intrigued him. He had met two types of senior officer in his time among the empire’s scouts. Some decorated their office with paintings and poetry. They were old-style officers of ancient blood, who considered it important to proclaim the culture of their ancestors even on their walls. Others had maps spread everywhere and lists and records in piles. Not disorganised men, as such, but officers who were as interested in maintaining their army as in commanding it – ‘hands-on’ men. Both types of officer had their advantages and their disadvantages. General Xeng Shu Jiang’s office was plain and unadorned, the surfaces clear, all records locked away. It gave away nothing about the man’s personality, and that intrigued Jai.

  ‘You have a reputation,’ the general said. ‘Can you surmise what that reputation is?’

  Jai nodded. He was well aware of his reputation. ‘I do not know, General, who you have spoken to, but they will have called me insolent, probably undisciplined, argumentative, possibly even untrustworthy, and proud. But they will have grudgingly acknowledged that I am also the best at what I do. It is a reputation with which I have lived throughout my time in the empire.’

  The General nodded. ‘You missed arrogant. Although perhaps what you think of as proud, others see as arrogant.’ Jai acknowledged as much with a nod. ‘Are you aware of my reputation, Scout Jai?’

  Jai frowned. ‘Little beyond the fact that you are reckoned the hero of the Shanshan peninsula, where you suppressed the bandit kings in two months, something no general has been able to do so for centuries.’

  The general waved aside the campaign and the compliment as if they were meaningless. ‘I am also highly regarded and considered troublesome. I have never embarked upon a campaign without succeeding. But I am unorthodox at times in my approach. I do not like to conform to the rigid rules of our ancestors if there is a more sensible way avail
able, and you will know, I’m sure, how popular that can make a man in the empire. I fear you and I are somewhat alike.’

  Jai smiled then.

  ‘I have a problem, Jai,’ the general said suddenly, straightening and flexing his fingers. ‘And I fear I need help with that problem. Help, I think, that you can provide.’

  ‘General?’

  ‘I need to speak plainly with you, Jai. Not with the formality of office. I suspect that of all the souls in Yuen, you are probably the only one who can accept that notion without it sending shivers through you. To circumvent the strictures of social and military formality is not in the nature of the Jade Empire. But then you are not of the empire, are you?’

  Jai nodded his head. ‘I am Inda-born, General, and Jade Empire-trained. I am a child of two worlds, and I would like to think I have taken the best of both.’

  ‘Good. I have been given a commission, Jai. A task. I received the orders from the hand of the Jade Emperor himself one month ago at the capital. A commission from the emperor is not something that can be refused. Not more than once, anyway, as a headless body talks little. I am to lead a grand campaign. One of the biggest in many years.’

  Jai felt a chill run through him. A suspicion.

  ‘Yes. You can see it, can’t you, Jai? You are perceptive. I have been ordered to conquer the lands of the Inda.’

  He huffed and leaned on the table. ‘Suddenly you are conflicted,’ the general said quietly. ‘And if you were not, then you would not be half the man I believe you to be.’

  Jai swallowed. In truth he had seen this day coming since the moment he had been taken by the foragers. Possibly even before that. He had put off thinking about it, but it crept into his mind in the dark of occasional sleepless nights and lodged there. He had never yet reckoned fully what he would do if called upon to wage war upon his homeland. He twitched just a little.

  ‘I swore to serve the empire, but to conquer the lands of my fathers is not a pleasing prospect.’

  The general nodded. ‘And simply because of this potential conflict within you, I am not binding you to my service, but offering you a place by my side. I will understand if you do not have it within you to campaign in your homeland, but there is a role for you and I dearly hope you will take it, for I need you, and I think that you need to be there. But I will not force it upon you. I am not the emperor. My commissions can be refused without the rolling of heads.’

  ‘Why do I need to be there?’ Jai asked, more curious than nervous.

  ‘Because there are men who conquer with gusto, Jai, carving their reputation in the bodies they trample. I am not one of them, but if I cannot surround myself with good men then I will inevitably end up with their sort, and this conquest could turn into a bloodbath despite my best intentions. I hope to enclose and add the Inda to the empire, rather than crushing and occupying them. And I will find that easier with men like you by my side – men who are clever and innovative, and who have a vested interest in the survival of the Inda.’

  Jai was nodding now. ‘I understand. But you said you had a problem. The nature of your officers is not the problem of which you speak, I think, General.’

  ‘You are perceptive, Jai. Good. Yes, there is a huge problem here. As a scout who has served on the western borders for the past two years, you will be as aware as anyone that the Inda have never been more readily conquerable. They are poor and weak and divided. We have made them so over the decades. This is imperial policy. It is how we weakened and then annexed the lands to the south-east of the empire, and it is a very effective method.’

  Jai tried not to feel the old bitterness rising – the memory of his jade and gold peacock that had been a birth gift taken away by that forage officer. He kept his face carefully blank.

  ‘My, how you struggle with that,’ the general said, not unsympathetically. ‘It is a hard thing, and I am sorry for your troubles. But we all have roles to play in this great theatre of life. Yours, I think, was defined when you were taken. Now you can use that to help minimise the troubles for your people.’

  The general waved his arms, taking in the elegant room in which they stood. ‘There is yet hope to be found in all of this. The Inda have been all but ruined over the decades. If they can be enclosed within the arms of the Jade Empire, there need no longer be poverty and starvation. Instead there will be order and comfort. There will no longer be lords – the rajahs of old – but imperial governors instead. The lot of the people will be better. That, though, is in the future. More immediately, we have the tiresome task of attempting to conquer with care. No matter how much I try to instil control, soldiers are soldiers and armies are armies, and men will attempt to rob, rape and kill, whatever the orders from their general. This will not be pretty, but we need to keep control as best we can.’

  ‘Yet this is not the problem of which you speak either, General.’

  General Jiang chuckled. ‘Perhaps too perceptive for your own good. Correct, Jai. I really do hope you will accept a place with me. No, the big problem is what lies across the world, beyond the Inda.’

  Jai pursed his lips. ‘You mean the western empire, General?’

  ‘I do. If their mad emperor – what’s his name?’

  ‘Bassianus, sir.’

  ‘If Bassianus is advised that we are conquering the Inda, there is a very good chance that he will not let us do so with impunity. Despite the readiness of the Inda for conquest, I fear our own Jade Emperor has made a mistake with this policy. We will move across the Inda and take control, but the western empire will not simply sit back and watch us annexe lands right up to their river border. The Inda have always been the buffer between our two great empires. Remove that barrier and the two biggest powers in the world are facing one another.’

  ‘You think there will be war with the western empire?’

  ‘It is inevitable, one day,’ General Jiang replied. ‘I had hoped it would not happen in my lifetime, but now I suspect we are about to begin that very process. And the Jade Emperor is no fool, so I can only assume that this policy and the conquest of the Inda is a deliberate beginning to the process of taking on the great opponent across the world. There is no other good reason for wanting the Inda lands.’

  ‘They say the western emperor is mad,’ Jai noted. ‘That he is but a shadow of his predecessors and is as dangerous to his own people as to others. The mad cannot be predicted. Perhaps he will not react to our invasion?’

  Our invasion? Why had he said that? When had he made the decision that he would be part of it?

  ‘Perhaps,’ conceded the general. ‘But the problem is that even mad emperors have sensible officers and advisers. Generations ago there was another mad emperor in the west, and their empire collapsed and all but vanished under his careless brutality. Yet the soldiers of that land rebuilt it from the ruins and began a new dynasty that has grown and flourished. You cannot write off an empire because of one man, no matter how powerful or how mad.’

  ‘The Jade Empire’s army is much larger than the western empire’s, as I understand?’

  The general straightened from the table at last. ‘So we believe, but we cannot be certain of that. The western empire is not as rigidly organised as we are. And though at times we have had spies in their court, they do not last long, for our people are simply too cultured and disciplined to pass well as westerners. What we know of their military and capabilities is gleaned as much from rumour and educated guesswork as it is from espionage and factual report. What we do know is that they have no knowledge of the black powder and how to use it in rockets and cannon.’

  ‘Do they have spies in our court?’

  ‘More than likely they have had, though in much the same way I am sure they would be uncovered and removed quickly. The westerners could no more masquerade as one of us than we as them. Such things are not to be known by men such as us, though. We are soldiers. Matters of imperial security are kept within the capital and the palaces.’

  There was a long pa
use once more.

  ‘I fear we are about to make a grand, world-changing mistake, Jai, and I very much hope it is not the final one. We must go west. We must take the Inda lands or die trying. We cannot refuse the emperor. But the stakes are high. If we succeed in doing this without provoking the west and we can secure the Inda lands, then we ensure safety and power for many years. If we make just one mistake, we might see a conflagration that ends the world. And as much of this rests upon our western foe as it does upon us.’

  The general turned and strode back to the window. ‘Come.’

  Jai fell in beside General Jiang, slightly behind as was fitting for a subordinate in the military. His breath caught in his throat. He had known that units had been gathering, but nothing could have prepared him for what he was seeing in the valley below Yuen.

  The entire valley floor was a sea of gleaming armour. Rank upon rank of infantry in their columns and squares, their banners hanging limp for lack of wind. Archers in their hundreds, cavalry gathered in huge blocks. Even rocket units and cannon – twenty cannon or more – sat at the periphery. There had to be twenty thousand men down there. It was the largest single gathering of soldiers Jai had ever seen.

  ‘That must be the entire army of the western province, General?’

  General Jiang laughed. ‘You have served in the scouts on the periphery, Jai. You have not experienced much of the true imperial military. This is just one muster. This and two places like it are gathering to form the core of the First Army. That will number sixty thousand. Two other armies of like number are being mustered in the northern and southern areas of these provinces. And other ancillary units will be attached in due course. We will have just short of two hundred thousand men when we cross the border. And that is less than a quarter of the forces upon which the emperor can draw. This is the number the imperial court believes to be sufficient for the conquest of the Inda.’

  Jai’s eyes were still wide. ‘And is it?’