Ashes of an empty hearth, p.1
Ashes of an Empty Hearth, page 1
Ashes of an Empty Hearth
Tales in the Realm of Hua Hsia
Hanson Wong
Published by Space & Time Books, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
ASHES OF AN EMPTY HEARTH
First edition. November 18, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 Hanson Wong.
ISBN: 978-0917053405
Written by Hanson Wong.
Table of Contents
BEFORE THERE WAS A WORD FOR CHINA
INTRODUCTION
THE REALM OF HUA HSIA
FIRST SCROLL: RAG MEN
ANNALS
SECTION 1
SECTION 2
SECTION 3
SECTION 4
SECTION 5
SECTION 6
SECTION 7
SECTION 8
SECTION 9
SECTION 10
SECTION 11
SECTION 12
SECTION 13
SECTION 14
SECTION 15
SECTION 16
SECTION 17
SECTION 18
SECTION 19
SECTION 20
SECTION 21
SECOND SCROLL: ROAD WARRIORS
DAY ONE
DAY TWO
DAY THREE
DAY FOUR
THIRD SCROLL: SLAYERS
SECTION 1 ‘ROAD KILL’
SECTION 2 ‘INN RESPITE’
SECTION 3 ‘FRIENDS OF EARTH’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
COPYRIGHT PAGE
OTHER TITLES FROM SPACE & TIME BOOKS
CITH
The group that prodded this guy with their stylistic ge for more than a quarter century to finish writing these stories.
With thanks and appreciation.
INTRODUCTION
Before there was a place named China, there was the realm of Hua Hsia. Set between Heaven above and Earth below, no mortal of the realm had a voice that might touch the gods so high above or so far below.
Only the collective voices of tens of hundreds ancestors from mortals passed away down in Hua Hsia could hope to reach the ears of gods.
Such was the Mandate of Heaven. Ancestral voices directed by the Zhou wang to the ear of the appropriate gods, who might then send to the living descendants their divine beneficence. When that mandate was sundered, havoc ruled the realm.
The valor of nobles riding their chariots into battle have been recorded in family annals. The service of their retainers have not.
These are stories about the ordinary folk, road rats who fought and earned the right to be road warriors and not end up dismissed and forgotten as ‘chariot crumbs.’
ANNALS OF THE HOUSE OF HSOU.
THE TWELVETH YEAR OF HSAIO TIEN,
NAN OF THE HSOU BARONY.
“The ancestors favor us with their bounty. Summer’s end brings us good weather and bountiful harvests. Our men, now returned from the hills, report their encounter with an unusual tribe. While hunting in the foothills of the Tai Mountains, they chanced across a village of women with infants slung to their hips, scraping leather hides, and children at their feet harvesting leaves and fruits. The only men were those too old to hunt or harvest and boys not ready to depart from their mothers. All in the village put up great resistance to our incursion. Those who were not killed, we gathered up and brought to this House to be our slaves.”
ANNALS OF THE HOUSE OF CHUNG.
THE NINETEENTH YEAR OF WEI GONG,
NAN OF THE CHUNG BARONY.
“Calamity strikes the neighboring House of Hsou. Every day smokes rises over the horizon of their lands. Every day our guards in our watchtowers report the same. Our concern is great. We fear an attack, but neither see nor hear nor know of any troops or retainers sent into the field this spring. Thus, we sent over a chariot force to investigate.
“The smoke results from Hsou villages that have been burned to the ground. Men, pigs, goats, even chickens, all lie where they have been slain. Women too old for child bearing and girls not entering maidenhood are also found slain. All those of ages in between have been assaulted. Those who have not killed themselves in shame claim that hairy, animal pelted men came in the night and did these deeds. Further, that these creatures did kill the babies and infants and make a stew with their bones and flesh. Indeed, every hearth was littered with infant skulls and every cauldron contained tiny splintered bones.
“Such women as remained coherent and able, we gathered up and brought to this House to be slaves.”
SECTION 1
“THEY WON’T FIGHT. Look at them. Bare legged farmers. They know the quality of pigs. The timing of the rains.” From the other side of the road, I yelled at the drillmaster who was whacking his conscripts to march in some kind of formation. “You want fighting men? Pay me. Or them.”
‘Them’ were about half a dozen men, carrying weapons, shields slung across their backs, loitering among the traders camped outside the manor walls. All of the other loiterers wore rags of mismatched colors. They just looked hungry.
My taunt went over better than I expected. Hands grabbed me from behind and dragged me over to the drillmaster. He glared at me. “So, this rag boy is an experienced soldier. Let us test your mettle.”
Retainers grabbed me by the arms as if they were going to pull me apart. Instead, they stretched me only enough for their leader to lash my back with his bamboo rod. Tears blinded my eyes, but rage choked off my voice.
Another voice spoke up. “Drillmaster Ding.” And a chariot clattered across the road and stopped behind us.
Drillmaster and conscripts all bowed to the speaker. “Shi-ren.”
Suddenly released, I crumpled to the ground, wrapped my arms around my chest, and tried not to writhe in pain.
The voice from the chariot spoke again. “The campaign begins soon. Gather them all. We can test them soon enough.”
Drillmaster bowed. “This shu ren obeys.”
I twisted up to look at the shi-ren and caught a glimpse of hair flecked with gray from eyebrows to chin. Pouches sagged under his eyes as if they had collected a lifetime of tears.
^^V^^-^^
“WHERE ARE THE MEN WITH SPEARS, WITH BOWS AND SHIELDS?” I yelled at everyone penned in with me. “Didn’t the drillmaster sweep up everyone loitering by the gate?”
The tall, skinny one responded. “Most slipped away once they heard you hollering at him. Only the curious ones stayed. So, we—the dumb and curious ones—got caught.”
I kicked the straw on the floor of the pen. “Yah, I wasn’t pointing to you loiterers. You don’t even look like fighters!”
I leaned against the bars of the pen. The wooden vertical bars were thicker than my fist and firmly tamped into the earth. The horizontal bars were nailed to the vertical ones and bound with leather strips. No easy way to break out.
The tall one continued speaking. “Wah ... fresh straw. Dust watered down in the walkways. Signs of a good homestead.” He walked around the pen, kicked together a pile of straw, and slowly set himself down. After grinding his backside into the pile, he threw his head back and stretched. “So much more comfortable than lying under a tree limb, or behind a rock wall.”
“Are you a hen dropping eggs, or just a rooster claiming his spot?” I muttered. Half his tunic was blue, the other half gray. His trousers might have been white at one time, but now they were patched with strips of ramie, wool, and bark cloth.
He cocked his head, squinting at me. “I can be a rooster.” His rough-cut hair did stand up like a rooster’s comb.
Roosters were fierce when someone tried to wring their necks. I still had peck marks to prove that. Was a fighter hiding under those rags?
“A rooster without a sword? No spear? No bow?”
The self-identified Rooster shrugged. “The shi-ren will hand me a weapon when he is ready.”
A head taller than me, lean, with neatly trimmed hair carefully tied at the top of his head, this one was shaking with anger. “Stupid loudmouth! Sheep-sticking bastard...what have you done?”
He dressed like a royal. I could only stare at his robe: it was all one piece, one color, hanging smoothly off his shoulders as if the cloth had been pressed with a warm stone. I felt shabby in my patched tunic and trousers.
I glanced around. How’d he get dragged in with us?
The gates of the enclosing outer wall opened to the south. A courtyard separated those gates from the manor house gates. The east wall of the manor house faced our pens, which were built against the outer east wall. To our left was a well and the cooking area. Storage units lined that southeast corner. A watchtower stood to our right, with animal pens at its base. Everything practical here, no carved columns, no paving stones. Rooster was right. This was a well-run homestead.
As we continued looking at the manor layout, and eyeing each other, the troop returned and the outer gates slammed shut. The chariot was set before the manor house. Its four takhis were unhitched and led past us, to the stabling pen below the watchtower.
Two more prisoners had been thrown in with us. One was a boy who seemed to stand no higher than my shoulder, like me, clutching the wooden bars of the pen. Opposite him, leaning against the back wall, was a woodsman dressed in stained, oily leathers. He looked like a dark patch of forest that had suddenly sprung up inside this pen.
“You stupid...!” The might-be-royal-born waved a pair of wooden clapper s in front of my nose, still yelling.
Slipping my stone knife from my tunic, I pretended to aim for those clappers. “Stone cuts wood.” That made him step back—and shut up. I turned to Rooster. “Call me Stone.”
Rooster chuckled. “So I guess he’s Clapper.”
A guard unlocked the chains and swung open the bars of the pen. He prodded the woman carrying a tray. She took a few steps in, then dropped a platter onto the straw, scattering the millet cakes. She turned immediately and ran out, as if afraid we would see the brand burned into her forehead.
Rooster smacked his lips. “Food. Fresh food. Not stained by grass or smashed by hoof. Not even ransacked from night soil.”
“You’ve eaten off people’s waste piles?” It was the boy asking. His face was smudged, his hair roughly cut, his hands dusty but clean.
“Got to live.”
“Broken into royal tombs to get the foodstuffs left inside as offerings,” I added.
“Then you are cursed...the guardian spirits... the ancestors of the dead. They have all marked you for death!” Clapper sounded horrified as he backed against the wall, next to the woodsman.
“Must be. Cursed to be alive, long enough to serve in this coming war,” Rooster said.
“Have you eaten people, too?” The boy moved closer to the platter. My tunic was patched but his robe was just tatters, sleeves frayed all the way up to the elbows. He was barefoot and wore no trousers.
“You get hungry enough, everything is eatable.”
“What...what did it taste like?” The boy stood wide-eyed, head spinning from Rooster to me, jaws wide open.
“Pig. Tastes like pig.” The woodsman said, approaching the platter.
“Makes sense to me. Knock a man down onto his hands and knees, and he doesn’t look any different from a pig,” Rooster added.
“Are we going to end up eating people flesh?”
“Only if we lose the battle. Then we run for our lives, and eat anything that comes our way,” I declared.
Rooster plopped down and picked up a millet cake. Between munches, he looked as if he was happily chewing roasted pig. Clapper kicked together some straw, smoothed his robe, and sat, exposing bare knees. He placed millet cake in his left palm, using it like a bowl, and broke off pieces with his right hand to pop into his mouth.
The boy hunkered down and reached for a whole millet cake. But he stopped, eyes flickering to everyone around him, then started to scrape together some of the broken pieces.
With a squeak of leather, the woodsman squatted next to him, and flicked over a full cake. He scraped up some of the crumbs with his left hand and raised it to his forehead. He then pulled a white amulet from beneath his jerkin, touched the millet, then tossed the crumbs into his mouth. “Ancestors,” he said, reaching for another millet cake.
^^V^^-^^
“ARE WE GETTING BRANDED AS SLAVES?” the boy asked.
“I thought you were local,” Rooster answered. “Why would they brand you now?”
The boy turned away, mumbling. “Everyone says I was dropped on the roadside. Been there ever since.”
“From the time I could stand up, I started walking. Walked animal trails, farmers’ pathways, and now this road.” Rooster stretched.
We watched the slaves being herded into the pen next to ours for their evening meal. Two buckets of broth, platters of steaming millet. They huddled around the food until all was gone, then broke up into smaller groups. The women and children were probably locked up by the cooking area, in the yard area to our left.
“I saw only one chariot, the one the shi-ren was riding. He’s expected to bring twenty-five foot retainers when he’s summoned to war. There weren’t twenty five practicing out there today.” Clapper was finally talking, if quietly.
“Some of those farmers looked more familiar with an adze than a polearm.” I turned to look at everyone. “That’s why I yelled. I figured the shi-ren might need some experienced hands.”
“And your hands are ‘experienced’?” Clapper eyed me from head to feet.
I shrugged. “Everything I learned, I learned from a one-chariot nan. He barely had enough farmers to support him, and no one to call his retainer. I had to know how to do everything: fight, mend wounds, cook, even sew.”
Clapper continued, “Death might have claimed members of this nine-plot farm land. Families work eight plots, the ninth is farmed for the master. They collected five of us. Can it be that his holdings have five families unable to provide men for the troop? That might explain the need for slave labor here.”
Toad looked up at Clapper. “That’s a lot of talk about shi-ren.”
Clapper looked down at Toad. “Talk is my weapon.”
“So, you don’t think they’re looking for more slaves?” Rooster asked. “If everyone goes to war, a slave’s life around here might look pretty comfortable.”
Clapper threw up his hands. “Talk is easy! Why are we listening to you?”
“Show me your hands, Clapper,” Rooster demanded.
“Why?” Clapper asked, but he kept his arms to his sides as he stepped away from everyone.
“Show me your hands, Stone.”
I put my hands out, palms up.
Rooster craned his neck for a closer look, then turned to Clapper. “Sure enough. Calluses on the fingertips, like they were swollen. Band of calluses across the palm.”
Clapper held out his right hand. The fingertips were flat, the thumb calloused maybe from practicing with the wooden clappers, but there were no calluses across his hand.
“This Master of Chariot doesn’t need a musical troupe. He’s preparing for war. There’s no time for music. Stone’s the leader. His hands show that he has fighting experience.”
“That’s ridiculous! Farmers have calluses on their hands. No one accepts them as leaders.” Clapper huffed indignantly.
“Well...you’re marching with us, Clapper. Not riding in a chariot with the shi-ren.”
“We follow Stone,” the woodsman said.
^^V^^-^^
THE COLD NIGHT WOKE ME. I could feel the chill sinking through my skin and settling into the bones—at least that numbed the aches across my back. No one else seemed bothered. Rooster nestled down into the straw. The boy curled up like a puppy. Even Clapper lay stretched out, unconcerned now about wrinkling his garment. The woodsman sat in the shadows, away from the moonlight. I couldn’t hear, or see, his breathing.
I loosened my tunic so I could pull my arms out of the sleeves, then ran my fingers across my back. No wetness, no cloth sticking. No bleeding. Hopefully, the welts would just swell up and slowly fade. I patted the wad over my chest, which held everything I owned: moss, clean cloth, flint knife.
Scat clog my tongue, Shakti, what’d I do? I thought your signs meant this shi-ren was going to a war. A fight I was good enough join. Got to admit some of those farmers looked like they knew how to wield their weapons. I wasn’t expecting these road rats to be swept up with me. Now they’re clamoring that I should lead them, like it was my fault they were all dragged in here. What if they’re the ones who can’t fight?
I juggled the sack of pebbles hanging off my waist, took one out, warmed the stone with my breath, then tossed it between the bars. That stone clattered long and far into the night, Shakti. Did that get your attention? Or, is it a sign of many more nights like this?
SECTION 2
“LUNGE!”
The opposing line stepped forward and pushed their ges, standard polearm of all chariot masters, at us. We were the defending line.
“Lunge means you THRUST the top end of the blade into the bowels of your enemy! Thrust! Don’t just push. Your enemy will be protected by armor. Thrust past the armor.” Drillmaster Ding alternately yelled and paused to explain.
We had progressed from marching in formation outside in the fields, splitting into two groups to protect the flanks of the chariot, and planting our ge shafts in the ground to ward off attackers. Now, three weeks later, we were in the courtyard between the pens and the sheds, practicing face to face combat.
