"That's not as much comfort as you might think."
Ein caught up on the other side of the bandit, and stared up at him. Then The Emerald Wind stopped and his image blew away like petals on a wind that wasn't there. Cho startled as he reappeared on the other side of her, calmly walking on as though nothing had happened. Ein stepped in to fill the space he had left.
"You said he's a monster. Flaming Fist. So why follow him?" Ein asked.
The Emerald Wind laughed bitterly. "The thing about this world, the way to survive, is you either become the worst monster you can be, or you find someone else willing to be an even worse monster, and make yourself useful. I learned early in life there are some things I'm just not willing to do, to others and to myself. So I found someone who was."
"How very heroic," Cho said, keeping pace. She rested one hand on Peace's at all times.
"I never claimed to be any sort of hero," The Emerald Wind said. "Quite the opposite actually."
"But you can be," Ein said. "You can live up to the stories I read about you. The good ones."
The Emerald Wind shook his head. "The Nash have a saying, boy. Tomorrow is just more of yesterday. I'm no one's hero. The sooner you realise that, the sooner you can release me from this suicidal quest of yours. Because I'm not going to help you kill the Emperor of Ten Kings. I'm going to betray you the first chance I get, and if that doesn't work I'll take the second chance, and the third, and every other chance I can find." With that The Emerald Wind stalked ahead, putting some distance between them.
Cho and Ein walked in silence for a while, a few steps behind the bandit. "I believe he is telling the truth," Cho said eventually. She knew full well that the best option available to them was to give The Emerald Wind his second death before he became a problem.
Ein shook his head. "It takes a lifetime of evil to be a villain, and only one moment of good to be a hero."
That seemed to be all the boy would say on the matter, and Cho spent some time mulling over his words. It seemed to her the boy had it backwards.
They didn't reach Flaming Fist's camp that night, and The Emerald Wind blamed Ein for setting such a slow pace. It seemed unfair to blame a boy for the length of his legs, but the bandit was in a foul mood and it only seemed to get worse the closer they got to their destination. Cho almost believed he didn't want to return to his life of banditry. Almost.
There were no dreams where Zhihao went when he closed his eyes, only darkness. It was, perhaps, the best sleep he had had in many years. Usually his dreams were full of the things he had done and seen. Sometimes a reoccurring dream from his childhood: the death of his cat, a little black moggy with bright eyes that had followed him everywhere he went in Ban Ping. Some people claimed their dreams were a welcome escape to a better world, or a pathway into their true selves, a way to fathom what their own minds hid from them. Others still, claimed dreams to be portents of the future. Zhihao believed none of it. His dreams were nightmares sent to torture him for all the wrong he had visited upon the world, and all the wrong he continued to visit upon it despite those tortures. So he counted it a welcome respite that he no longer dreamed, and believed that perhaps being only mostly alive came with some benefits.
But he woke, surrounded by the dark with only their small, crackling fire for light, and all thoughts of respite fled. The boy was watching him. Not from across the fire, nor even from his own cloth cloak. The boy was sitting close, just an arm's length away, and watching him. In the dark his stare looked empty, like two pools of icy death reflecting nothing at all.
Zhihao's breath caught in his throat and he found himself unable to move. He was locked in place, watching the boy watching him. Fear had ever come easy to Zhihao, and his miraculous resurrection did nothing to stem the tide of it that rose up now and threatened to wash all reason from him. He tried to move, struggled against his own flesh, and found himself a prisoner of whatever terror it was held him in place.
Very slowly, the boy leaned forwards. He wore no expression, just that blank, fathomless stare that led all the way to the void between the stars. When he finally spoke, his voice was a whisper so quiet Zhihao barely heard it.
"I am the worst monster you know."
The boy held Zhihao's stare for a moment that seemed a lifetime, and then turned away and crawled back to his cloak where he curled into a ball.
Zhihao found himself able to move again and immediately rolled away and rose to his feet. He was just about to launch into a sprint to anywhere but there, when he realised the truth of it. He couldn't run. He was bound to the boy until one or both of them were dead. He crept back to his own pallet and sank down onto his arse. Accepting that sleep was well and truly beyond him, Zhihao settled in to take his turn keeping watch, though in truth he watched nothing but the boy. Worst of all, the boy watched him back, never sleeping nor even blinking. All night they stared at each other until the sun broke free of the horizon.
Chapter 9
Fist's lookouts saw them coming, just as The Emerald Wind had said they would. It was impossible for them not to with the sun high and the morning bright as it was, and the approach to camp long and wide open. They walked over flattened blade grass, crushed into mud and dried into unstable, crumbling footing. It was the most direct route up the steep the hill, and the only one with an opening in the stakes set around the top. It seemed to Cho that Flaming Fist knew his stuff when it came to defending a position, and the nearby forest had felt many an axe to create the fortifications.
With the hill so steep, Cho could see little of the camp at its summit. For all she knew they could be walking right into the midst of an army ready for combat and bristling with energy and sharp objects. If that was the case then so be it, she would walk in with her head high and Peace sharp and ready for the bloody work at hand. Her sworn oath would not let her turn back. She could not abandon this one.
Ein stumbled on the approach, stubbing a toe on a rock. He didn't curse, nor make a sound at the pain, and neither Cho nor The Emerald Wind stopped to help him back up. Cho had no wish to repeat the feeling from the last time she had touched the boy, the memory of it was deterrent enough. The boy got his feet back under him and hurried to catch up, walking alongside The Emerald Wind despite the man constantly shying away from him. Cho walked behind them, readying herself for the fight.
She counted only three lookouts. One was a fat man with hairy jowls, a crooked nose, and lank grey hair. The other two were thinner and looked like brothers, perhaps even twins, both sporting heavily lined faces weathered near to leather by too many years under an uncaring sun. The easiest jobs were often left to the oldest soldiers. Even so, it seemed a scant number to be watching such a large camp.
"Who is that?" shouted the fat man as they drew closer.
Far from the busy hive of activity Cho expected, the camp seemed more full of ghosts than soldiers. She saw a couple of dozen tents, flapping in the slight breeze, and almost as many fire pits, long since burned to cold ash. A single line of dark smoke twisted upwards farther in, and the smell on the breeze was not of cooking but of unwashed bodies. It was far too small a camp to house the hundreds who had sacked Kaishi. Cho wondered if Flaming Fist had designed it that way, knowing that so many would die in the assault. Above the camp loomed the standing stones, each as tall as twenty men, with stories carved onto every surface. Together they told the history of Hosa; all the wars, all of the marriages between the great kings and queens, all of the plagues that ravaged the lands. The standing stones were Hosa's history carved into rock to last an eternity.