Finally, he heard the emperor's procession leave and dared to stand. When he went to the pavilion door, he found Pe and his subordinates waiting.

"What now?" the adjutant asked, bowing.

"We march," Batu replied, scanning the faces of his subordinates.

This time, no one questioned his orders.

7

The River Fleet

After the emperor left, Batu placed all twenty-five of the noble armies under Tzu Hsuang's command. He also entrusted the Mirror of Shao, along with the wagon required to carry the Ministry of Magic's bulky artifact, to his father-in-law. A few of Kwan's lords grumbled about nepotism, but the general didn't care. His father-in-law was the only noble with whom he had more than a passing acquaintance, and he needed someone he trusted in command of the contentious lords.

Tzu Hsuang took his forces and marched to the river docks in Tai Tung, where he loaded his fifty thousand pengs aboard a fleet of barges assembled for that purpose. Hsuang's orders were to sail up the Hungtze as far as the river would carry him, then march west toward the enemy. If the war proceeded according to Batu's plan, Hsuang and the nobles would engage the barbarians just west of Shou Kuan.

Batu took the five provincial armies and went north along the Spice Road. As the general had feared earlier that morning, the afternoon quickly turned hot and dusty. The men, unaccustomed to grueling marches, tired quickly. More than a few fell victim to heat exhaustion.

Nevertheless, Batu did not relax the pace, even when evening fell. Instead, to the unspoken surprise of his stoic subordinates, he continued marching. The general did not call a halt until midnight, when his five armies reached a tiny backwater village that had been mysteriously deserted. It was Chang Tu, the town that he had asked Ju-Hai to evacuate. The hamlet was also where he had ordered his fleet of cargo junks to gather.

As soon as he arrived, Batu ordered the first units onto the junks, issuing strict instructions for all pengs to stay in the cargo holds. Under no circumstance was any soldier to appear on deck, where he would be visible to river traffic or bystanders on the shore.

He could have easily loaded the entire army in a day or two. Instead, Batu took his time, allowing only two or three boats to leave the village every hour. The general felt the extra time was well spent. His intention was to camouflage his troop movements as merchant traffic, hoping that any Tuigan spies in the area would lose track of his army.

Eight days later, Batu and Pe boarded the last junk with the last unit. The oarsmen pulled the little ship into the current, and it started down the Ching Tung River. Any doubts that Batu had about this phase of his plan quickly disappeared. On the exterior, even he could not differentiate his troop ships from the thousands of cargo junks already traveling Shou Lung's river systems. More important, he did not think the addition of five hundred ships over the course of a week would seem remarkable to river watchers, especially considering the boost in commercial activity to be expected when a country mobilized for war.

It took four days for the general's junk to reach the mouth of the slow-moving river, only half the time it had taken to load the fleet. The junk slipped past the city of Kirin at dusk, then entered the dark, rolling waters of the Celestial Sea and turned north toward the flotilla's rendezvous point. Batu's stomach grew queasy once they hit the open sea and, within thirty minutes, he wished that he had never set foot on a ship deck.

Six days later, the general finally felt well enough to leave his bunk. He told Pe to summon his subordinates, then dressed and went up on deck. After the rancid smells of the bilges—stale water, moldy ropes, unwashed boatmen—Batu found the sea air invigorating. He leaned on the gunwale and looked out over the Celestial Sea. To the west, a tiny crag of rock floated on the horizon.

Pe joined him and, noticing the direction of Batu's gaze, said, "That's the Horn of Wak'an. According to the sailors, sighting it means we're within four days of Lo'Shan and the Shengti River."

Without taking his eyes off the sea, Batu grunted an acknowledgement. The prospect of another four days of seasickness almost drove him back to his bunk.

However, with his subordinates on their way to meet him, retreat was not an option. Batu stayed at the gunwale, breathing deeply of the salt air and studying the sea. The sky was as blue as the water, with a favorable wind blowing from the east. Between the general's ship and the Horn of Wak'an, the five hundred sails of his motley armada bobbed upon the water like so many prayer flags. The skiffs carrying his five generals were fighting through the white-capped waves toward Batu's pathetic flagship.

"The barbarians will never think to look for us here," Pe said cheerfully. With his good arm, he leaned on the gunwale next to Batu.

Frowning at the boy's jovial manner with jealous contempt, Batu responded, "Of course not."

Sensing his commander's testiness, Pe withdrew his arm and assumed a more formal stance. "I didn't mean to offend—"

"You didn't," the general said, waving off the adjutant's apology. "I'm still ill, and that makes me petulant."

As Batu watched the rowboats approach, he wondered how the first meeting with his subcommanders would go. Today would be the first time he had seen them since loading the fleet, and he still had not informed them of his plan.

A few minutes later, the first boat arrived. The occupant was Kei Bot Li, the only one of his generals Batu knew. Despite his stocky body, Kei Bot climbed out of the boat and scrambled up the rope ladder with the agility of a monkey. As he stepped aboard, Kei Bot greeted Batu by bowing deeply.

"A great pleasure, Commanding General," he said.

Batu returned the bow, his queasy smile a weak imitation of his subordinate's. "The pleasure is mine, General."

Noting Batu's squeamish expression, Kei Bot asked, "The sea does not agree with you, my commander?"

Embarrassed by his inadequacy, the second-degree general reluctantly nodded his head. "I would never have thought lying upon a comfortable bed could be so difficult."

Kei Bot laughed heartily, but before he could respond, the other generals arrived. The four men bustled aboard with an air of impatience. After trading a few perfunctory pleasantries, Batu led the men down to the junk's galley. It was the only compartment on the ship large enough to hold even this small conference. While Pe served tea, the commanding general spread his campaign map on the table, then prepared several writing brushes and bottles of variously colored ink.

The map showed the northern half of Shou Lung. A black line running across the northwest corner marked the location of the Dragonwall. A red arrow showed where the barbarians had breached the wall and were now advancing toward Yenching. Just south of Yenching, a blue line wormed its way horizontally across the paper, dividing the upper third of the map from the lower two-thirds. This was the Shengti River, which crossed the entire breadth of northern Shou Lung, and which was the cornerstone of Batu's plan.

In the center of the map sat Shou Kuan, a black star with a circle around it to show that it was a fortified city. Toward the map's right side, at about the same latitude as Shou Kuan, was Tai Tung. The Hungtze River ran through Tai Tung to a blue area at the eastern edge of the map: the Celestial Sea.

An instant after the commanding general laid out his map, Kei Bot and the other provincial generals leaned over and examined it at length. Batu almost chuckled as he noticed each man, in turn, glance at him in surreptitious puzzlement.

Finally, he said, "It's time I explain what we're doing in the Celestial Sea while the barbarians press the attack a thousand miles away."