and his body dropped. He did not sense the impending blow to his neck, nor hear the aspiring assassin behind him scream and fall backwards as that forged steel tip sliced through his face, cleaving bone from sinew. He did not feel the hulking weight of adversary crush out his last breath, whispering through arrow holes as it crashed down and buried him.
The lower jaw clung precariously by shredded flesh to its place upon the general’s features. It tried to form the order to find and remove the library, but it could not. Through the pain and the fog of seething hatred, the general looked back to where the last monk had stood. The giant lay dead and fallen, and the monk as if by magic had vanished into the thin morning air.
The general surrendered to the darkness.
In the aftermath of battle the monk was nowhere to be found. This ruined monastery was now a place of fear and phantom. In great haste what remained of the battalion left the mountaintop. The dead, even their own, were left where they had fallen, and the living were gone before the sun had set. They tied their wounded general securely to his horse, and for the next three days and nights he slipped fitfully in and out of consciousness. The image of the fearless monk never left his mind. It haunted him in his delirium—the specter of his own inadequacy.
While this young general lay recovering from his open wound, the emperor’s own men had reported that the scrolls had not been found. There may have once been a library, but a pile of bodies and barren shelves were all that remained. The empty structure was carefully combed from floor to ceiling for any clue, but the timeless collection of sacred knowledge had vanished as though it had never been. The black feather of a nameless bird went unnoticed by the men who searched unsuccessfully for scroll, silk, and parchment.
The vision of the Son of Heaven does not compare to the sight of an ordinary man. For the sake of a people, it must be clear from western desert to eastern ocean and from icebound northland to wild and humid southern jungles. The emperor stared through the wounded soldier that lay before him. He assessed the condition of the butchered general, and with his mind’s acumen he surveyed the success and failure of the mission.
The monks were dead. The threat of their great metal was now removed. The method of its making destroyed beyond any skill of resurrection. The loss of this art was a regrettable casualty of war, but the security that it afforded balanced well against the deficit. The mind of the emperor did not stop there. It browsed within the missing library, and it hungered.
Throughout the ages its secrets had been guarded by the cloistered hands that held it, its reputation grown freely in rumor. This was not just the usual collection of monastic sutras and scripture. It was so much more. In reverent tones it was said to hold the wisdom of the ages, from both this land and places far away. Its fading pages were thought to have descended from the time of the First Emperor. It was whispered that among its yellowed parchments, the arts of war rested peacefully beside the way of enlightenment, and that even the enigma of immortality was recorded on its pages. Like the methods of their metal this treasure, too, was gone, but this loss could never find a balance.
The general moaned, fighting his way to consciousness only to feel the sting of his emperor’s words. “You are an efficient killing machine, but much was trampled in the fray.” The swollen eyes of the general blinked slowly as the emperor continued. “You are now the Supreme Commander, but do not dare think this a promotion for a job well done. It is not. Consider it merely a gift from the times. The people need heroes, and luckily your face destroyed in the service of your emperor has made you one.”
It was officially recorded as a successful completion of mission, but it had taken one hundred and seventy three lives to do it. More accurate but unrecorded was the truth that under the direction of an ambitious and untested leader, the strength of the enemy had been grossly underestimated, and that the value of what had not been recovered far outweighed the measure of anything that had been gained.
The pain of the emperor’s harsh rebuke and the emptiness of his movement up the ranks did not fade with the healing of his wounds. The commander, however, embraced the power of his title despite its dubious origin. When the wounded leader had healed enough to slur an order, a permanent sentry was posted at the site, but no order for search or salvage was ever issued.
The presence of a guard assured the new commander that the cinders of truth would never again be stirred, and he hoped that by taking no plunder he might seal up the ghosts of his past. For the next twelve years, the commander’s man on the mountain had nothing of any consequence to report.
The commander had changed much in the twelve years since the slaughter. His oily black hair sat in a topknot, and he had grown a beard to try and hide his ruined face. The armor that he now wore at all times was ornate and polished. His memory of that day had not faded or softened. The dead monks upon the mountaintop were silent and forgotten by most, but the figure of the last spectral monk still haunted the general. Hatred had taken root in the darkness of his soul and grown like a twisted leafless tree.
The sentry entered the hall of the commander and dropped in servitude like a stone. He moved forward on hand and knee, face to ground, grateful at least not to look at the grotesquely slashed features of the commander’s face. He made his factual report of all that he had seen from his hiding place seven days before. He spoke of monk, woman, and wagon, the collecting of bones and the building of their resting place. He spoke of the prayers for the dead. Still prone, he finished his monotone and waited to be dismissed.
He did not hear the sound of the Supreme Commander’s sword being drawn or the sound of his own severed head hitting the cold stone floor. He heard only the thud of a fated rock, dropped on the ashes of a distant and dying night fire many miles away.
The execution was justified by sighting cowardice, lack of initiative, and for not knowing the exact direction of travel. In truth, however, the commander was undone. To hear the monk still lived, and was indeed a mortal man, exhumed the buried demons of his past, and hatred had driven him. He felt the pain again as if his wounds were fresh. His right hand squeezed the razor sharp sword tip that hung like a jewel from a chain around his neck. He stared back into the darkness of events long past, oblivious to the blood dripping from hand to floor and joining the dark pool forming around the sentry’s headless body.
For every two eyes there is one mouth, and three full seasons would pass before a tale found its way to the ears of the commander. He listened intently to the story of a monk of great stature and a fair young woman far to the west claiming and transporting the human refuse of war’s far-flung campaign. This thieving monk from first meeting had come away the victor. He had stolen his place as aspiring novice, robbed him of his greatest victory, and now purloined the spoils of war. The commander sat, a hollow disfigured leader in a command that he had not earned by deed or merit.
He waited impatiently over the next season for more information, but none came. Here the trail would grow cold, not a whisper not a rumor, as if the earth itself had swallowed them up. The commander found this silence deafening. He knew by instinct that where this monk rested the scrolls of the lost library would be found, and that his redemption in the eyes of his emperor lay in their recovery.
Amid the rugged beauty of the highlands, forge and stable were sheltered under one thatched roof. While most of the men were raiding, the orphaned child stayed with the smith and worked as best he could for a meal and a sleeping place within the straw. Not family as most would know it, but these were all he had.
