They stayed at Dai for a couple of months. The farmers needed something to eat, now that their crops were spoiled. The Wei family went to the ruined land and forced some crops to grow in time for the harvest. They were so successful that the granaries of Dai were overflowing.

The Emperor decreed that the extra be sent to Chang’an. That made most of the population angry, but they obeyed. With groves littering the forest, things were looking up for the people of Dai. But they didn’t forget why their crops failed in the first place, and so the Wei family wasn’t very popular in the region.

As for the famine ritual, it turned out they had picked the wrong person for it, depending on who you ask. The man had been thrown in prison for cannibalism, and so wasn’t disturbed in the slightest about eating his fellow prisoners. He had welcomed it, in fact, and had sung the Emperor’s praises to anyone who listened.

That made the Emperor pleased, but it worried Nikola. For if the man lived for another thirty years, and it was shaping up like this as he was eighteen years old, then there would be a famine for the next thirty years.

 The Emperor had killed off all the prisoner’s minders, so the truth won’t come out, and had ordered that the man be given a room in the magistrate’s palace, with his health becoming the magistrate’s priority.

Already they heard rumors about whole herds in Xiongnu falling ill and dying. Soon the war would break out over food, if nothing else. With its bountiful harvest, the Han Empire was going to prove a prime target for raids. Already the Wise King of the Left, the Chanyu’s eldest son, was saying how this plague had come from China.

He was right, but few wanted to believe him. Ever since the reign of the current Emperor’s father, Han Wudi, China was in a better position than before. They no longer paid tax to Xiongnu or sent their noble ladies to be married off to the Chanyu’s, the Emperor of Xiongnu, relatives. With their newly acquired cavalry and using infantry, archers and chariots as support, China was more than prepared to face Xiongnu for the final time.

The New Year passed and news came of the Wise King of the Right raiding near Xianbei for food. The royal progress was cancelled and Wei Caihong, Penemue and the remaining children, were sent to Chang’an with the Emperor’s wife. Han Guo was named crown Prince, to ascent as Emperor if Emperor Han died. And Wei Caihong took his seat as a regent.

Marching together with the Emperor, Nikola checked what he had to work with. An army of a hundred thousand strong: fifty thousand infantries, five thousand chariots, twenty-five thousand archers and twenty thousand cavalries. But added to that were a hundred dragons flying up in the skies, a hundred manticores and Fenrir himself.

It had been hard to convince Loki to let his son go to war, especially for a country that didn’t worship him, but the alternative was for Fenrir to remain chained in his cave. A punishment from Odin for a crime Nikola knew not. It must have been something silly like the giant wolf’s birth. Odin disliked Loki, and the two barely kept the ruse of brothers.

Fenrir, who had been imprisoned for centuries before, jumped in front of the army and behaved like a puppy. The soldiers treated him like a mascot, and many petted him when they finally reached him. Everyone’s morale was high because of the beasts. What came on the bright morning of their arrival at Dinging caught them unawares.

The city was burning. Its walls were torn down, and the people were slaughtered. A horse’s tail, with a red ribbon tying it to a spear, flew above the ruined walls. The Wise King of the Right had already been here, and they had been too late.

“You sent your beasts and burn their land!” Yelled the Emperor at Nikola. Nikola had no qualms about doing so, but the creatures had to be near him to follow his orders. He told the Emperor this and was shown the tent’s exit.

“Then go ahead! You are immortal, Emerald Emperor. And you have more than one trick up your sleeve. Take a flag with you and teach the Wise King of the Right that his actions have angered me!” Nikola bowed his head and stood up. With only two hundred monsters and Fenrir, he would need to be sneaky. As he understood it, he needed to reach Longcheng and burn it to the ground. Once the capital fell, so would Xiongnu.

Outside, Fenrir waited for him. Nikola patted his maw as he told him of their task.

“Just us? Can we do it?” Asked the wolf, and Nikola wondered the same thing. Xiongnu was in the steppe. There were some rivers, but not enough for him to make drowning the defenders a common tactic.

“We have to. You can stay with the army if you wish,” Loki would be furious if Fenrir died, and Nikola didn’t want to test the trickster God. “In fact, stay and guard the Emperor. Please.”

Added the last one, Nikola, as Fenrir was about to argue. The wolf nodded, and he sat down by the tent, dwarfing it.

Getting to the dragons, Nikola chooses a smaller one who looked nimbler and got on it’s back. The dragon took off with a single kick from Nikola, and Nikola stirred it this way and that using the creature’s horns.

They found Shuofang prepared for a siege. Nikola used the manticores to draw the defenders out of the city while he got the dragons to burn it. The Wise King of the Right was not there. Nikola had not known what those titles meant, and so on of the few prisoners of war that the manticores have spared told him about the three leaders of Xiongnu.

The Emperor was the Chanyu. The Wise King of the Left was the crown prince, to become a Chanyu in case the current one died. His responsibility was the army, which made the attack by the Wise King of the Right strange. The man was more of a Prime Minister and a Magistrate. Even so, both wise kings had the right to raid.

Nikola had no way to keep the prisoners contained, and no time to wait for the main army to reach him. There was no one important in Shuofang. Or if there had been, they died in the fire. So, Nikola put all the survivors to the sword, or rather dragon fire, and flew on.

The steppe was an endless field of snow, broken by the occasional hill. By the second month of flying and burning villages, Nikola knew he was lost. He knew that there was a great lake near Longcheng, but his manticores couldn’t find it on the ground, and he was unable to see it in the sky. When he saw the rocks and the ocean, he cursed, as he knew he could be anywhere. He was not in China, as the villages looked like they belonged to nomads.

One thing did hinder Nikola’s progress more than his lack of knowledge of his surroundings. He ran out of paper. The nomads were expert archers, and so they choose to snipe the dragons and manticores while on their horses. Now Nikola simply had the dragon he flew on and twenty manticores. As some of the villages he flew overlooked like they might belong to a different nomadic nation entirely, he didn’t attack them. His best bet was to return to China, and so he flew south, following the coast.

Another month passed and Nikola found himself at Danyang. He had heard that Xiongnu was vast, and so he only flew over the beach. When magistrate Kang Lei welcomed him, Nikola immediately asked for the progress of the war.

“The Emperor reached Longcheng and laid a siege on it,” said Kang Lei. “Did you know that the Wise King of the Right tried to track you, but couldn’t find you?”

“I didn’t know where I was. I should have brought a map. I flew over the ocean. It is good that Danyang is so close to the coast.”

“The wolf you left with the Emperor, the talking one, is said to be wounded,” said Kang Lei and Nikola paled. This was the worst-case scenario.

“I have to get to Longcheng immediately!” Exclaimed Nikola, and he was halfway to his dragon when the magistrate stopped him.

“You need a bath, and not one in salt water. Your robe clings to you. I will send you with the next supply train going to the siege. You won’t get lost that way.”

Nikola enjoyed Kang Lei’s hospitality for three days and then left with the supplies for the army. When he reached Longcheng, Fenrir had an infection from a gaping wound on his stomach. Beginning to heal it immediately, Nikola nodded along to the angry yelling of the Emperor.

“How could you get lost! You used to rule the world!”

“Many things changed in the hundred years while I was on the bottom of the ocean,” said Nikola distractedly. So far, the Emperor had no victories and the siege was going nowhere. Fenrir opened his eyes as his wound closed, and Nikola smiled at him.

“Hey, big guy. How do you feel?” Asked Nikola, and Fenrir raised his head to look at him.

“You have to know of the thing that wounded me.” Said the wolf.

“And what was that?” Asked Nikola, wondering what could have wounded the giant wolf himself.

“A necromancer on the side of Xiongnu. They call the boy the Maggot.”