Border Pass of Yandi (1)
From the look-out point of the watchtower on top of the fortress, a petite hooded figure of Yinyue stood draped in a woollen black coat.
Her eyes scanned the misty peaks of the snow capped Black Mountain ranges from the southern borders of Yandi.
The rising sun peeped from sprawling Black Mountain ranges. From the light of day, shadows reached over the ancient primeval forests at their base. Its landscape was as dark as the circles under her eyes.
The Dayan Imperial ancestors built the rammed-earth, stone-brick encased fortress five centuries ago.
Some said the first Dayan Imperial ancestor was a god who designed and built the fortress. All the ruling families in the Central Plains claimed different gods as their ancestors. The claim was one of the many tactics to make their populations obedient.
The forbidding fortress remained one of its kind. No one, until today, could build a massive structure of this scale. Ancient builders constructed it across the narrowest gap between two soaring mountains.
It used to be an important defence point when the Dayan Empire was a small kingdom. Now the fortress was a border pass for travellers from Yandi to the Black Mountains, and vice versa.
The smaller states of Nanmiao, Gaoyang, Youyu, Taotang, and Youxiong, as well as the Xirong Empire, contested for control of the fertile valley of the Black Mountains.
Or at least, parts of it.
It took a day's ride on horseback from the fortress to reach the valley.
Hushiyi watched the lonely figure of Yinyue staring at the Black Mountains after his long climb up the slippery iced stairs of the pass. His boots' special spikes prevented him from slipping and falling.
Four patrolling soldiers bowed to him when they passed, crunching on the snow and iced sludge on their way to the other side.
Her black hair, dark eye circles and dark red lips highlighted her pale face, making her look like a walking corpse. Now two heads shorter than him when they stood together, he wondered if she'll grow taller or stunted by the damage to her body.
"Why not let me take your place?" Hushiyi asked as he placed a heavy fur cloak, made of wolf's fur, on her. "You should rest a few more days instead of rushing off to meet the border princes."
Yinyue shook her head. The meeting of the border princes improved trading between other states and Yandi.
"To catch the fish, one must cast a bait and wait."
Like playing the strategic game of Go, setting a trap required patience in studying the opponent's movement and predicting their next moves for a flawless execution. One wrong move made and the trap may backfire.
"Why?" Hushiyi asked.
"If I don't go, someone will know my injuries were serious and you know what happens…," she replied.
He stayed silent. The Dayan Empire set a maximum of six Grand Princes. If another imperial prince wanted the position, one Grand Prince must fall to give way to another.
Their Emperor-father raised the princes like feral wolf pups. He ignored them when they weren't strong enough to defend against their half siblings. Only the strongest wolf pup will rise above all, and the weakest trampled by others. At worst, killed.
In their imperial family, her injuries will draw the undue attention of their half-siblings, placing her in a more precarious position.
After the previous day's incident of seeing her bare back, Hushiyi realised what she sacrificed for the Grand Prince position — proven by the extent of the injuries she took over the years by the scars on her back, hands, arms.
At least, her face remained unscarred because she used a thick metal mask to protect her face in battle.
For a woman in their society, scars on the body made her a terrible marriage candidate, even if her face remained unaffected.
The Dayan society valued appearances over brains in a person so much that the Dayan empire would never allow a disfigured or a crippled prince to ascend the throne.
Gone was the five-year-old who giggled each time he carried her on his back. Her personality changed too fast, especially after the fever which nearly killed her in the cold palace.
"Remember when father asked us how to compensate for our time in the cold palace?" She asked suddenly, catching him by surprise, as though she read his mind.
He recalled how their father joked she had to train in the Shadow Pavilion. The Shadow Pavilion is the imperial family's training grounds for elite assassins and bodyguards.
"You told him you wanted nothing else except to be a prince," he replied. "And you wanted to fight our enemies."
Back then, her reply took both their Emperor-father and him by surprise. Hushiyi thought she would ask for a proper place to stay, food or toys.
"Do you know the real reason?"
"Tell me," he said.
"The most heartless is the ruling family…our father is no different. If he has to sacrifice us, he will," she muttered as her eyes wandered to the direction of Gaoyang state. "Only by being his sword I can choose my fate."
"A princess can choose her fate. Why even join the Shadow Pavilion?"
All princes must receive basic martial arts training in the Shadow Pavilion. Princesses didn't need to join because the training rules only applied to the male offspring of the imperial family.
"A princess, once ordered to marry, has to marry. No matter how far," she replied. "He can't order a Prince, especially a Grand Prince, to leave Dayan for an alliance marriage."
Hushiyi frowned at her answer. Did she have no desire to get married? Why would she mention alliance marriages? None of their older half-sisters underwent alliance marriages yet.
"How did you come to this conclusion that you can't choose your fate as a princess?"
"Look at father's harem. Tell me those women chose to compete for one old man's attention…"
He sighed.
"…if they are not trying to kill each other, they're trying to kill us to remove the threat to their children. Surely, you didn't think of our dear Empress as a benevolent woman," she added with a smirk. "She deliberately placed us in the cold palace to let us die!"
"I'm your brother, after training in the Shadow Pavilion…"
She asked, "Back then, could you look after me while training there? Challenge the Empress as an eight-year-old?"
Hushiyi clenched his fists. No, he couldn't. Being a child himself then, he couldn't even defend himself.
At six, she entered the Shadow Pavilion and separated from him, only seeing each other during communal meals.
"But why go through elite assassin training?"
She progressed to the elite assassin training stage. Hushiyi failed to enter this stage. Her dark red lips resulted from repeated exposure to poison during the training for elite assassins in the Shadow Pavilion.
It made her less vulnerable to poison, but not invincible.
Hushiyi heard rumours about the sheer brutality of the elite training — something about killing several child-trainees to survive to the next stage. Yinyue never told him about the details, even when he asked. Their two older half-brother princes died undergoing the same training as she did.
The training turned his younger sister into a killer and a very cunning one. Instead of charging into the enemy's frontline like the rest of their older half-brothers waving their spears, she crippled their enemies before the battle even started.
He recalled how their Emperor-father used to lament, 'pity, she's not a boy'. However, their Emperor-father kept his word and granted her princely status. Yinyue is the only female offspring of an emperor in the history of Dayan to hold the title of 'Prince' as a reward for entering the elite training stage.
She leaned forward towards him and whispered in his ear, "I want to kill our enemies, my dear brother. A good enemy is a dead one."
A chill ran up his spine from the iciness of her voice. He often wondered how she, even as a young child, spotted the hidden dangers in their situation. Death awaited at every corner in the Empress's form.
"Look at where I'm now. From a trained assassin to someone in control of military troops, including 100,000 cataphracts. Real power in our empire comes from military power," she added.
(Con't…)