As the dreadful day draws to its close, the grave-digging continues, while the rest of us return to camp.  The smell of smoke still hangs in the air.  The Commander posts double guards and calls the officers and sub-officers to his tent. 

“You come too,” Liang Zhou says to me.

The look on all our faces is strained.  I’m surprised to see Mo Jiang there.  The Commander looks round quickly and says, “Tomorrow, I’ll be announcing that I’ve promoted Mo Jiang to the rank of sub-officer.  And Young Master Yan will be named medical assistant to Doctor Liang, at sub-officer rank.”

There’s a rustle of surprise and approval.  I gasp, while Mo Jiang looks modestly at his feet.  The Commander goes on, “We were hoping to get water and supplies here, but we’ve all seen the situation.  Food’s not such a problem, but water’s critical.  The nearest water’s more than a day’s journey away.  Any ideas?”

“Send a wagon to get water and bring it back?”  Lin Chen suggests diffidently.

“That would take too long,” says the Commander.  “And the wagon would be vulnerable to attack.”

“Is the water in the well usable?” Mo Jiang asks.

“There’s been a body in it for a couple of days.”

I hear myself ask, “Could we boil the water?  Would that purify it?” 

Everybody looks at Liang Zhou.

“We’d have to filter it too, but yes, we could.  I’m not sure if we could get enough to water all the animals, though.”

“What about digging another well?” Shao Ru says.  “Right next to the first one.”

“Might take too long, but worth investigating,” says the Commander.  “Anything else?” 

I open my mouth, then close it, feeling rather reluctant to speak up again.

“Out with it, Young Master Yan” says the Commander.

“Well, it’s just that I noticed that although the surrounding countryside’s very dry, the hill behind the village is really green.  So it’s possible that…”

“…there are springs up there,” the Commander finishes.  “Good.  Anyone else?  Right, Liang Zhou, get a team started on boiling the well-water.  Work in shifts.  Look for cauldrons in the houses.  I’ll get the engineers to check out the possibility of digging another well.  Searching for springs will have to wait till it gets light.  The rest of you get some sleep.”

Outside in the heat, there’s a round of congratulations for Mo Jiang and me, but none of us feels much like celebrating, so we quickly disperse to our respective beds.  But it’s so hot and the day’s events are so fresh in my mind that I only fall into a half-sleep.  I think longingly about Liang Zhou’s sleeping potion, but we’ve been warned we might be needed during the night, so that’s not an option.  I wake as it’s getting light, dazed with half-remembered dreams.  But our situation, unfortunately, is no dream.  I get up and walk towards the village.  The grave has been dug and the bodies laid inside.  All that remains is to cover them up.  Next to the well, fires have been lit and iron cauldrons are bubbling under Liang Zhou’s direction.  I go over.  He’s half-asleep.

“How much?”  I ask.

“Not enough.” He sees my look of dejection.  “It was a good idea.  Don’t be downhearted.”

“Are we – are we going to make it?”

He smiles tiredly.  “I expect so.  At a pinch, we can make it to the next watering place, but the horses haven’t been watered since noon yesterday.  In this heat, they’ll start collapsing.   And a cavalry troop without horses isn’t much use.”

“Suppose…..”  I hesitate, but then press on, voicing a creeping fear that has disturbed my sleep.  “Suppose the situation’s the same at the next watering place?”

“It shouldn’t be.  This is only a mountain stream here, but at the next place there’s a sizeable river.  There’ll be some water in it, even in the drought.”

The light’s growing now.  The storehouse is a pile of blackened rubble, still smoking slightly and giving off heat.  The doctor looks exhausted.

“You should get some sleep,” I say.

He smiles.  “I think I’ll do that.”

He hands the supervision of the water-boiling over to Lin Chen and accompanies me back to the encampment, where breakfast’s being handed out.  There’s only a mouthful of water for everyone.  As we’re eating, the Commander comes over.

“Ah-Zhou, get some sleep.  Young Master Yan, take a couple of men and check out the hill.  Keep your eyes peeled in case those bandits come around again.”

“Me?” I say, surprised.

“Your idea, you carry it out.”  He looks round and picks out two men who have just finished their breakfast.  “You two, accompany Young Master Yan.”

I hastily finish what I’m eating, explain the situation to the two sturdy soldiers who have been told off to help me, and we head once again for the village.  The grave’s being filled in now.  We don’t even know these people’s names.  No-one will ever know who’s buried here.

The hill’s not large, so it takes little time to explore it.  We do indeed find a spring, but it’s a mere trickle emerging from a slit in the rock and forming a tiny puddle before spilling out and soaking into the ground.  We all take a welcome drink and fill our water-bottles, but this isn’t going to be much help for more than two hundred horses and oxen.  I walk to the northern side of the hill and stare out, depressed. 

Down below are fields, divided into sections by what look like ditches.  They’re arranged in an arrow shape, converging on one larger ditch that runs north. 

“Funny-looking ditches,” says one of the soldiers, coming up behind me.

“Nah, we’ve got ditches like that in my village,” the other says, joining us.  “They’re for watering the fields.”

Irrigation channels! 

I stare at my two companions.  “That means – there could be a water source down there.  Come on, let’s take a look”

We plunge into the undergrowth and force our way down the hill and into the fields.

“Young Master, what are we looking for?”

“A well, a spring, anything that could be the source of the water.  Just follow me and keep a lookout for trouble.”

We follow the main channel north.  My hopes rise as the land slopes gradually uphill to a rocky crest.  We see what looks like a low wall in the distance.  As we get close we see that it is indeed a drystone wall, with a gap in the centre where the irrigation channel emerges.  One of the soldiers pushes forward, grunts in surprise and turns with a gap-toothed grin.

Inside the wall is a huge rectangular stone reservoir, half-full of muddy water.  A battered pump stands next to the irrigation channel, together with leather buckets and ropes.  No wonder the villagers had such a good harvest!  We look at each other in triumph.

When we get back to camp, our news causes a gratifying stir.  However I’m puzzled.  How could a village like this possibly have a reservoir that large?

“The engineers reckon the army built it.” Shao Ru says, “This village used to be a staging post for Imperial couriers, so they needed to keep horses here.  The courier routes changed about twenty years ago when new roads were made.  The villagers must have just gone on using the reservoir for their crops.  It’s saved our hides, anyway.  Good work, Young Master Yan.”

“The men deserve the credit.  They were the ones who put me on to it.  But will there be enough?”

“With all we’ve scraped together, just about.”

It takes time to give every animal a bucket of muddy water and to fill the supply-wagon barrels. The men fill their water-bottles at the spring on the hill.  But by early afternoon, we’re ready to move away from the desolate village.  We won’t make it to the next watering place today and there’s a danger that the bandits are still around and might try to attack us.  There’s no way we’ve escaped their notice, not with the wagons we’re guarding and our slow pace.

“They’d be fools to attack us in the open,” Shao Ru says, “but they might try an ambush or a night attack.  Be ready.”

I’m riding in the column again and it’s a very unsettling thought that we could be attacked at any moment.  What am I supposed to do if it happens?   As if my thoughts are written in the air, the Commander ranges up alongside me and says, “If there’s an attack, the wagons will circle and the men will fight on horseback to defend them.  You should get inside the circle of wagons and keep your head down.”

”Yes sir.”

A pat on the shoulder and he’s off down to the head of the column. 

And in fact, that’s precisely what happens, when we’ve barely been on the road for an hour.  The bandits haven’t gone far and, despite what Shao Ru said, they feel bold or greedy enough to take a chance.  We’re passing a range of low hills when there’s a sudden burst of yelling and whooping and a body of men pours down the hillside waving swords and lances.  But they’ve misjudged the distance, and we have time to get the wagons into a circle, as our men swing into formation and start firing arrows.  I leap off my horse and bring him into the circle, where the wagon-men, who aren’t trained fighters, are already crouching with their heads down.  Liang Zhou appears from the medical wagon, eyes sleepy and hair in disorder, and I rush over to join him.

“Stay down,” he says.

But I’ve absolutely got to see what’s going on.  I peer eagerly through the gap between our wagon and the next.  It’s hand-to-hand fighting on horseback now, and it’s not difficult, even for someone totally inexperienced like me, to work out that fifty-odd bandits haven’t a hope against two hundred trained soldiers.  There’s a tremendous noise of metal clashing and men shouting.  A blood-soaked body crashes to the ground just in front of me and Liang Zhou pulls me down and cuffs the back of my head.  “Stay put,” he orders, “I shan’t tell you again.”

Gradually the racket dies down.  We hear the Commander issuing orders and then Shao Ru barking, “No pursuit!”  We emerge from shelter to see, once again, the ground strewn with bodies.  Several horses are down, others are wandering about with empty saddles.  Half a dozen bandits have escaped.  Another half-dozen or so are kneeling on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs.   As we watch, two more are brought over and roughly pushed to their knees.  The Commander’s sitting on his tall horse, a long sword held at an angle down and behind him.  The blade’s red. 

Shao Ru rides up.  “None of ours dead, a score or so wounded.  They were the ones all right.  They’re still carrying the sacks of grain they stole.  And we also found Yu Kang’s horse.”

The Commander nods, then dismounts and approaches the kneeling bandits.  His face is expressionless.  A chill goes down my back.  He looks like a god of vengeance.  The long sword’s still in his hand.

“You’re guilty of theft, rape and murder,” he says, “and the punishment’s death.  Volunteers!”

Men step forward from the ranks, swords at the ready.  A swordsman takes up position behind each of the condemned men.

“Do it,” says the Commander.

I close my eyes but I can’t close my ears to the sounds.  A collective growl rises from the soldiers standing round, a sound of savage satisfaction.  I open my eyes to see the ground drenched in blood.

“Justice,” says Liang Zhou softly.  He grips my shoulder.  “Come on, there are wounded for us to see to.”

Men are moving briskly about, shifting bodies out of the way, moving the wagons back into line, catching the riderless horses and dispatching the injured ones.  But I’m in a daze, unable to process the accumulated events of the past few days.  It’s all been too much.  Liang Zhou turns and sees my face.  He comes over and takes me by the shoulders.  “I know you’re not used to this, but you’ve got to keep going.  We can’t weaken now.  Do you hear me?”

“Yes… yes.  I’m sorry.”  I rub a hand over my face.

“No need to be sorry.  Come, I need your help.”

I follow him back to the medical wagon as the line re-forms and we move off.  We have neither the time nor the inclination to bury the bodies of our attackers.

For the rest of the afternoon, I mechanically follow orders.  There are a score of men with wounds of various sorts.  We wash, stitch, bandage and apply ointments as the wagons creak on.  I’m binding a flesh wound when my patient suddenly says, “It was you that found the water, Young Master?”

I nod.

“First time in a fight?”

I nod again.

“First time I was in a fight, I puked my guts out afterwards.  You’re not human if you don’t.  Afterwards you get used to it.”

I look up into a weathered brown face and shrewd, kindly little eyes. 

“Those bandits got what they deserved.  That village …….”  He stops for a moment, then goes on, “I come from a village like that.  A lot of us do.  Those could’ve been our wives and children, our brothers and sisters."

“Nobody even knows their names,” I say, rather desolately.

“Ah well, that’s fate,” says the soldier, “you live nameless, you die nameless.  That’s why I’m a soldier.  So my name’s written down somewhere.  That’s a nice neat bandage, Young Master.  Many thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” I say.  I watch him hop off the wagon onto the horse tethered to the tailgate. 

The interminable afternoon goes on.  There are so many wounded, but fortunately, only two or three men have serious injuries.  Liang Zhou looks exhausted, but his calm demeanour doesn’t change.  We halt for the night, rationing out the water we’re carrying.  We need to get to water tomorrow or the horses will start dying. 

Some time after noon next day, Liang Zhou and I suddenly hear shouts, not of alarm this time, but of triumph and relief.  The wagons creak to a halt.  We scramble out and join the crowd that’s rushing up to where the Commander and Shao Ru are sitting on their horses.  We’re on the brow of a hill.  Below in a tumbled rocky valley, there’s the most beautiful sight in the world.

A river!