đˇÂ Chapter 56: Banquet with a Tyrant
đ November 18, 91 BCE â Late Autumn đ
â ď¸Â Content Warning: This chapter includes intense depictions of battle and its aftermath, which some readers may find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. â ď¸
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The little riverboat slid out of the night mists before dawn, lanterns low, its prow whispering through the current. To the townsfolk, it always seemed to arrive this way; no one ever saw it on the upper reaches, no stable schedule to predict. It tied up at the docks as the sky paled, and by the time the market stirred, the crew were already laying out their wares: perfumes sealed in delicate glass, oils steeped with rare herbs, cloth with a sheen like water. Buyers clustered fast; coins clinked; envy sharpened eyes.
With profit came attention.
By late afternoon, a summons arrived from the new warlord who had seized this town and others along the river. It was worded like an honor and read like a command.
Claudia skimmed the scroll and let a small, Roman smile tilt her mouth. "He smells money. He wants his share."
Junjie's face stayed calm, though Nano's dry voice brushed his thoughts.
"Control freak. Dangerous. But if he snaps the trap, boy, you can walk through his guards like paper."
Junjie almost smiled. They went to the banquet unafraid. Claudia, Lianhua, Chengde, and Junjie were no longer merely human. Whatever the warlord planned, they would walk back out.
đ The Banquet
Torch smoke drifted under the rafters. The warlord sat at the head of the table in silks stripped from captured treasuries, rings fat on his fingers, laughter wide and watchful. Soldiers lined the walls, spears upright, more display than defense.
"Merchants of wonders!" he boomed. "Sit. Eat. Tonight, you are my honored guests."
Dishes came in lavish waves, lamb shining with fat, figs split and sugared, honeyed bread still warm. But every toast carried a hook.
"These perfumes, where are your gardens?" he purred. "Which hills grow such herbs?"
Chengde's smile was even. "We have friends in many places."
"And your glass," the warlord pressed, turning a vial to catch the firelight. "No workshop in my lands can birth such purity. Where are your furnaces?"
Junjie lifted a shoulder lightly. "Trade is a river, lord. Goods flow from many mouths before they reach the cup."
The warlord's smile thinned. He drank, set the cup down hard enough to ripple the wine. "Rivers have... mouths," he said, eyes on them. "And sources. A ruler must know what runs through his lands. I dislike secrets."
Music swelled; dancers curved through lamplight. The family answered lightly when pressed, offering little and yielding nothing. They would not give him the valley. They would not give him the truth.
Later, as the hall grew loud with wine, the warlord leaned back and muttered just low enough for keen ears:Â "Rivers have sources. I will find yours."
Junjie heard it; he did not look away.
They bowed their thanks and left under the same courtesy with which they'd arrived. Torchlight shivered on the river as they reached the dock.
Lanterns on the little boat were shuttered. Lines were slipped. With only the hush of water against the hull, they eased away from the quay and let the current take them into the dark. No lamps betrayed their course. Clouds shouldered the moon. The town dwindled to a faint chain of embers on the shore.
Far upriver, well beyond any watchman's eye, the boat lifted quietly from the current and skimmed the air low over the treetops, just long enough that no one who might wander the banks at night could follow the trail. By first light, they were gone, and in the town the old rumor stirred again, the traders who came with dawn and vanished with night.
đď¸ Reflections in the Valley
Inside the stout stone walls of their hidden home, the family spoke freely.
"He is ambitious," Chengde said, unfastening his cloak. "The kind who sleeps badly until every question has an answer."
Lianhua's brow creased. "He will send men to look. We already hear of patrols in the neighboring valleys."
"Let him look," Claudia snorted. "Men of power are always looking. He'll find stones and goats."
Junjie's gaze was steady. "Nothing yet. But he is a hunter. Hunters who scent prey grow stubborn."
They were not frightened. The valley bristled with a high wall and four watchtowers. Their militia drilled. Behind the gates, Gatling guns sat under canvas, and artillery waited in their sheds. If the warlord came with spears and bravado, he would learn the cost.
Even so, none of them loved conflict. Better to remain a rumor on the river than a banner on a battlefield. They would keep trading, arriving with the dawn and leaving with the night, and watch the passes carefully. And if riders began to nose into the wrong valleys, they would know the warlord was tightening the net.
For now, the mountains held the silence. For now, the river kept its secrets.
đŚ The Search Tightens â Winter 91 â 90 BCE
The warlord issued his orders: every creek, every valley, every pass must be searched. His men moved like ants across the map. Through the snows of early winter, they probed the lower ridges, but ice and rock barred the higher trails. Patrols returned empty-handed, their only trophies frostbite and ghost stories.
By early spring, as the thaw swelled the rivers and softened the passes, the hunt began anew. Scouts fanned out with fresh vigor, their horses sinking into mud and meltwater. Still, they found nothing until one unlucky patrol pushed deeper.
They followed the upper river. It grew narrow, hemmed by cliffs. Then they came upon blackened ruins: stone foundations of houses, a half-collapsed shrine, timbers charred to ash even after years of weather. The wind moaned through broken doorways. It felt wrong, but also promising, proof that people once lived here. And people always need water.
One scout noticed something strange. Behind the ruins, a faint trace of an old trail. Grass covered it, brush grew thick, but the slope looked cut, not natural. He followed it uphill. The trail vanished at times, but the line was still there if you had the patience to look.
Hours later, as the sun lowered, he crested a ridge and froze.
Before him lay the impossible, a wide, green valley, fertile and sheltered. And across the throat of the pass stood a wall, not a crumbling barricade of stone, but a towering bulwark bristling with four square towers. The setting sun turned the battlements red like flame.
The scout's heart pounded. He didn't linger. He didn't dare. He ran back the way he came, half-tripping down the old trail, until the blackened ruins were behind him.
Dust still clung to his clothes when he knelt before the warlord. Breathless, wide-eyed, he stammered out the story: the ruins, the hidden trail, the valley, the wall.
The hall fell silent. The warlord leaned forward, rings gleaming, eyes hungry. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then his smile spread slowly and sharply.
"You have found me a kingdom," he said. He dropped a purse of silver at the scout's feet, and then, in the same breath, warned him, "Speak of this to no one. If you breathe a word, I'll have your tongue nailed to the very gate you saw."
His laughter rolled through the hall. Already, he was calling for banners, drums, spears. Already, he dreamed of treasure.
đĽÂ The March â Late Spring 90 BCEÂ
When the high passes cleared and the rivers shrank back into their banks, the Warlord's host wound upward through the narrow defile, a column of spears and banners, boots thudding in steady rhythm. The cliffs pressed close, funneling the men tighter and tighter as they marched. The river foamed at their side, cold and fast, its hiss drowned beneath the steady pound of drums.
At last, the trail bent, the cliffs opening suddenly into a wider throat of the valley. Men poured out of the defile and into a broad apron of earth, bare and clean of trees. At its far end rose a wall.
It stretched from cliff to cliff, stone blocks fitted sheer, towers at its corners, a great gate sealed tight in the middle. The river hammered against an iron portcullis at its base, spray hissing through the bars. Four towers loomed above, watching.
The soldiers muttered, adjusting shields. They had expected hamlets, fields, and villagers fleeing. Instead, they faced a fortress bristling against the sky.
The captains barked orders. Ladders were shouldered. Archers filed to the front. Rank upon rank pressed into the clearing, shields overlapping, spears thrust upward in a forest of iron. The Warlord smiled from his perch further back, gold flashing on his fingers. To him, this was nothing but stone. Stone could be starved, battered, taken.
Then a horn sounded from the towers.
âď¸ The Wall Awakens
A horn blared from the towers, deep, metallic, and unearthly. The sound rolled through the valley like thunder trapped in stone, shaking dust from the cliffs.
Men clapped their hands to their ears; horses screamed and reared. Even the captains flinched.
Then the world split open.
Artillery roared, shells shrieking into the ranks. The first explosion flung bodies into the air, raining blood and dirt. Gatling guns screamed from slits in the towers, a chattering roar that echoed off the cliffs until it became a single wall of sound.
Men were cut down in neat rows, shields torn apart like kindling, flesh shredded before they had time to lift their swords.
The noise was unbearable. Every blast slammed into the chest, rattled the teeth, drowned the shouts of captains. Orders vanished under the grinding roar of the guns. The air filled with white smoke and the copper stink of blood.
The first ranks ceased to exist.
The soldiers behind faltered, eyes wide, staring at men bursting apart with no arrows in sight, no catapults overhead. Only sudden thunder, invisible death.
Screams rose. Men stumbled, dropped ladders, tried to push back. But the column behind pressed them forward, crushing them into the killing ground. Horses reared, throwing riders into the mud.
Captains hacked at deserters with swords, but fear spread faster than steel. Panic rolled backward through the ranks as men clawed for the narrow trail they had come through. The bottleneck jammed with bodies, hundreds trying to squeeze through the same gap, trampling one another in blind terror.
Still, the guns fired.
The killing zone became a churned pit of corpses, smoke so thick it burned the eyes, thunder so loud it broke the mind.
â ď¸Â Death from Above
And then, as if the slaughter were not enough, the wall birthed a shadow.
From behind the battlements rose the Sky Leviathan. Its three masts towered into the smoke, sails glowing with power, its armored hull yawning with gunports. The very air seemed to bend beneath its weight.
The men who still stood froze, necks craned, mouths open in silent horror.
The Leviathan drifted above the wall, guns turning, and the Ghost Mind came awake. Nano's voice brushed Junjie's thoughts with chilling calm:Â "Continue sweep. Eliminate the remainder. No survivors."
The Leviathan's guns opened in concert.
Broadside fire raked the valley, mowing down knots of fugitives. Artillery shells ripped into the packed trail, blowing men and horses into heaps. The retreat collapsed into a writhing clog of flesh and iron, men trampling each other only to be torn apart in the next burst of fire.
The noise was apocalyptic. Gatlings shrieked, artillery hammered, and the cliffs spat the sound back until the valley became a chamber of thunder. No man could hear his own scream.
The river ran red beneath the portcullis, its spray flecked with flesh.
On the ridge, the Warlord's silks gleamed faintly through the smoke. His jaw hung slack as he watched his proud host disintegrate into ruin.
His guards tried to pull him back, but the Leviathan turned, drifting with slow inevitability. Its guns aligned.
The first volley erased his guard in a spray of fire. Horses screamed and toppled. The Warlord stumbled in the mud, gold rings bright against his pale hands as he raised them in a useless plea.
The thunder answered.
When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left but charred banners and broken flesh.
đ Aftermath
The guns fell silent. Smoke drifted low, choking the clearing. Not a man of the Warlord's host stirred.
The Sky Leviathan hovered above the wall a moment longer, its sails dimming, guns steaming, before slowly retreating behind the battlements. The Ghost Mind fell quiet. The valley echoed only with the hiss of the river through the portcullis.
Inside the fortress, no cheer rose. Victory was too absolute, too merciless.
Nano's voice was steady in Junjie's mind:Â "Tactical result: total annihilation. Strategic consequence: exposure is inevitable. The silence will speak louder than survivors."
And the people of the hidden valley understood: their secret had ended in thunder.
Chengde stood with his cloak still smelling of smoke. His voice was iron. "It had to be done. A valley survives only if it closes its gates."
Lianhua's eyes lingered on the haze rising above the wall. "So many lives... such waste. All for one man's hunger."
Claudia's reply was cold, her Roman profile lit by firelight. "This is the only end for men like him. Power makes them blind to the cost."
Junjie said nothing for a long moment, then only breathed out. "...The river runs red, but it keeps running. So must we."
By morning, the smoke had thinned, leaving silence and the stink of charred flesh. The gates opened with a groan, and the villagers filed out in grim silence. They did not come with spears or banners now, but with ropes, carts, and shovels. The valley had to be cleansed.
The Ore Eater was brought forth, the great machine that could chew through stone as if it were bread. Its iron jaws shrieked as it tore a trench into the killing field, the ground shuddering beneath its work. By midday, a pit yawned wide and deep, its walls black with freshly bitten stone.
The work began.
Bodies were dragged by the hundreds, dumped unceremoniously into the trench. Soldiers in shredded armor, horses twisted in broken heaps, pieces too ruined to name. The stink was overpowering, and even seasoned militiamen gagged as they worked. Scavenger birds wheeled above in eager spirals until they were driven off with arrows.
When the pit was half full, villagers stacked brushwood and timber over the corpses. Oil was poured, torches cast. The trench bloomed into fire, orange light leaping higher than the wall, black smoke churning into the sky.
The sound was sickening. Fat hissed and popped, bones cracked in the heat. The stench of burning flesh rolled down the valley throat, though mercifully the wind carried most of it away from the hidden town.
For three days, the work continued. Bodies were dragged, burned, burned again, until nothing was left but ash and fragments of bone. Every iron scrap, spearhead, shield-boss, broken buckle, was pulled aside for salvage. Everything else went into the flames.
When at last the last corpse was consumed, lime was shoveled into the trench, white powder hissing as it met the heat, tamping down the smell. The Ore Eater shoved the earth back over the blackened pit, sealing it. The ground was leveled as if nothing had ever happened.
But the people would never forget. For weeks, the valley smelled faintly of smoke and cooked meat. The crows lingered, circling overhead as if unwilling to leave. The killing ground had been cleansed, but its memory was carved into stone.
đ The River's Message
Downstream, the river told another story.
Even as the pyres burned, bodies had already been swept into the current. Bloated and pale, they drifted past the villages of the basin. Children shrieked when swollen faces bumped against ferry ropes. Fishermen cursed when their nets caught on limbs.
For days, the water ran pink, and townsfolk whispered: the Warlord marched north, but the mountain swallowed him.
Some said demons lived in the high valley. Others swore it was the strange traders, the ones with goods too fine for this earth. Suspicion spread, though no one dared speak it too loudly.
Weeks later, the little flying riverboat came again, sliding out of morning mist as it always did. Perfumes, oils, and fine cloth were laid out in the market. Coins clinked. Trade continued.
But the eyes that watched were colder now. Suspicion sat heavy over every deal. Smiles were forced. Voices hushed.
Claudia adjusted her bracelets, watching the wary glances. "Let them look," she said under her breath. "Fear will guard us better than any treaty."
Chengde shook his head, gaze lingering on the buyers who no longer smiled. "Fear cuts both ways," he murmured. "A market that distrusts its merchants is a market already dying."
None dared confront them. None dared march into the valley again.
But everyone knew.