Chapter 60: Reincarnation
In a way, the few who returned were the smart ones.
Wolf Skin and his warriors were in pursuit, and to keep running meant getting lost in the wilderness. To flee was to die. A small group was no match for a wilderness teeming with wolves, tigers, and leopards; a tribe of less than a dozen couldn't survive. These people were accustomed to tribal life and had no idea how to survive alone in the mountains and forests.
The horned deer had limited stamina and needed to stop frequently to chew their cud. During one of these rests, the defectors made their decision. They stunned Red Fish, tied her up, killed the few old and young men who remained with her, and forced the women to turn back.
They knew that escaping into the forest was a death sentence, while they themselves might yet live. That was their reasoning. Avoiding the eyes of their original kin, they dismounted from the horned deer a safe distance from Chen Jian and placed their hands on their chests to show they were unarmed.
Several of Chen Jian's warriors were holding back the furious former slaves, who were unwilling to accept the traitors who had betrayed their own people. Many of Chen Jian's own tribespeople were also confused, wondering why he would allow them to return. People like that deserved exile, but for the sake of the women and the horned deer, they held their tongues, merely spitting contemptuously or jeering.
Chen Jian, however, felt they were still useful for now. If left to the crowd, they would be torn to pieces, but killing them here and now would be meaningless. He needed to leverage the prestige of this victory to accomplish several things, chief among them making all nearby tribes understand the price of betrayal and the consequences of breaking an oath. Killing the chicken to warn the monkey is useless if the monkey isn't there to watch.
Besides, he needed interpreters. His plan was to use these captives as slaves, which would free up more of his own people from labor.
He waved the defectors forward. They approached, found that Chen Jian truly didn't seem intent on killing them, and began crying that they had been forced into it, that they would have died otherwise. Chen Jian, looking impatient, clearly had no interest in their excuses. They quickly changed their tune. "We captured the priest of that tribe! It's this woman."
Chen Jian glanced over and saw that the bound woman was staring back at him. Red Fish had not expected her first meeting with the man called Jian to be like this. She had spent days imagining what the leader of such a powerful tribe would be like, but he was just an ordinary-looking young man, seemingly just past adolescence and not particularly strong.
She cursed at him in a language he couldn't understand. He ignored her and asked one of his men, "You've been here for a few days. Can you understand them?"
"A little."
"Ask them if they want to live or die. I've burned their village and rolled that great stone of theirs into the river. Everything they had is gone. If they want to die with their village, they can say so now. If they want to live, they will stand over there."
He pointed to a spot, then looked at the sun. "They have until the sun reaches that peak."
The few translators relayed his message with a clumsy mix of words and gestures, and the captives finally understood.
The prisoners nervously contemplated their fate. Of course they wanted to live, but they had no idea what kind of life awaited them. They instinctively looked toward Red Fish, hoping for an answer from their priestess. They knew how they had once treated their own captives, and now, that fate had come back to them.
Red Fish stared at the ruins of her village, at the huge pit where their sacred stone, their people's anchor of belief, once stood. Now there was nothing. The stone that recorded the myths of their ancestors had been thrown into the river by these invaders.
She glanced at her own people. The young children hid behind their mothers, too frightened even to cry. The men who had been bound no longer had any fight in them. A child whispered timidly, "Aunt Red Fish, I don't want to die."
Red Fish suppressed the fear in her heart. She had abandoned these people when she fled, yet they still looked to her for answers. The child's trusting eyes felt like the sun, stinging her own, and she couldn't bear to meet his gaze.
Using a gentle tone she hadn't employed since becoming a priestess, she told the child, "We won't die. We won't die. We'll all live."
The child pointed at the former slaves. "We used to hit them and kill them. Will they hit us now?"
"Don't be afraid. Your mother and I will protect you..."
She longed to touch the child, to offer the only comfort she had left, but her hands were bound. Before she could say more, she was interrupted.
Chen Jian heard Red Fish muttering to the others. It was clear the captives still looked to her for guidance. He turned to his translator. "Tell that woman not to speak again until she learns our language. And since they listen to her, have her tell her people this: from now on, anyone who speaks their own language will be caned. Anyone caught more than five times will be killed."
After the translation, Red Fish and the other adults understood. They all fell silent. But a child, not comprehending, opened his mouth to ask a question.
Seeing this, Red Fish screamed in her own tongue, "Don't talk! Don't cry! Live! Stand over there!"
*Crack! Crack!*
A cane struck her fiercely across the face. Chen Jian held up four fingers. He trusted a priestess would understand his meaning.
Enduring the burning pain, Red Fish clamped her mouth shut.
Seeing that she was silent, Chen Jian glanced up at the sun. The prisoners all walked to the place he had designated.
"Do you want to live?" the translator asked her. "Nod if you do, shake your head if you don't."
Red Fish nodded, but said nothing.
"Untie her and bind her with the others, in groups of five or six."
His men cut her rattan bonds. The moment she was free, Red Fish ignored her swollen cheek and bent down to find a stone. One of the guards, thinking she meant to resist, raised his stone axe. But she immediately put the pebble in her mouth. She mumbled something unintelligible, pointed to her mouth, waved her hand to show she wouldn't speak, and even held up four fingers to show Chen Jian she understood.
She wanted to survive. More than that, she wanted to see with her own eyes how this tribe lived.
She had heard that only a season ago, back when the apricots were yellow, they were no different from her own people. How had they become so powerful in such a short time? She wanted to know. She wanted to see how they fired such massive pottery, how they built the houses she'd heard about... But to know these things, she had to live. As long as she had her eyes, she could one day understand.
Her tribe was gone. By abandoning them, she was no longer Red Fish, the priestess protected by the gods. She was just an ordinary person. And as an ordinary person, there was so much she wanted to know before she died. Before, she had wanted to learn how the great pots were made so her tribe could eat more easily. Now, she was no longer Red Fish, the priestess, but she still wanted to know... simply because she wanted to know.
At dinner, she finally saw the great earthen pot with her own eyes. It truly was huge. A freshly slaughtered sheep was stewing inside it—a sheep that had belonged to her tribe just that morning.
Chen Jian had already sent messengers downstream with news of their victory. Men were now towing the boats back, loaded with plunder, ready to depart at dawn.
The scent of roasting meat wafted through the camp. Those who had been slaves that morning were now free. They combed their hair into buns, gave thanks to their ancestors and to Chen Jian, and ate their first real meal of meat in two months.
The dead were gone, but the living had to go on. They asked Chen Jian what their future would be, and he promised them an answer when they returned to the village.
After the meal, more than a dozen pieces of mutton and dried fish remained. He pointed to the meat. "Sheep," he said in his own language, then, "Fish."
He had his translators tell the captives that whoever learned to say these two words first would get to eat. There was only a limited amount, and anyone who learned too late would get nothing. Each portion was small, perhaps half a catty by Yu Qian'er's measure—not enough for a full meal, but enough to sustain life.
Famished after a day without food, the captives immediately began mimicking the strange sounds. Red Fish, however, kept her mouth shut. She knew that since this man Jian hadn't killed them, he wouldn't let them starve to death either. Why else would he go to the trouble? She hoped the children would get some food, but they didn't. The tribesmen who earned the food snatched up the meat and devoured it instantly.
A watch was set for the night. At dawn the next morning, Chen Jian had the captives line up in their groups of five.
He asked each group a single question: "Did anyone speak in your own language last night?"
Through the translators, they all learned to shake their heads, and they did. Chen Jian asked nothing else.
After questioning everyone, he randomly selected one group. He had his warriors lead them away, telling them, "Someone just told me that you spoke your language last night."
The group frantically shook their heads, but the canes fell anyway, cracking against their skin.
When they returned to the others, their backs burning, they scanned the faces of their fellow captives, trying to figure out who had betrayed them. Of course, they couldn't. An atmosphere of mistrust settled over the prisoners. Everyone became wary of everyone else, and all of them kept their mouths tightly shut.
Song approached Chen Jian and asked quietly, "Did they really speak?"
"No," Chen Jian replied with a smile. "But now they won't dare to."
He then called over a few young men from his own tribe and some from the allied groups, gave them horned deer, and said, "Ride together and go first. Inform the leaders of the other tribes to come to our village within five days."
"Should we notify the tribes that broke the oath?"
"No. They broke their oath. We will notify them in a different way."
Chen Jian patted the stone axe at his hip. It was time, he thought, for those tribes to learn the meaning of awe. The days when tribes could live in isolation were over.
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