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| Posted By : erazmus - 2/9/2008 9:11 AM | C.W. asked me to give you a preview of what is coming up in our next issue.
This story originally appeared in AlienSkin
Mo the Mountain
By Michael D. Turner
"I tell you there's no way to go around him!" The laborers clustered together under the koba trees along the edge of the clearing. Travelers in various groups dotted the clearing-- roads bearing off in six different directions had assured its popularity as a rest stop.
"We could go south to Da-peng and then east to Jin-po. Then we wouldn't have to cross his damn bridge!"
"Too long," another declared. "It would add another day, and our pay would be the same. We'd eat more rice than Mo steals, going around."
"Besides," the first said. "Who's to say if the road from Da-peng is free of bandits? We could be robbed or even worse going that way."
"That’s the risk we run every time we take a job," returned one of the others.
"We know Mo is on his bridge," said the one who wanted to go around. "We can deal with whatever is on the Da-peng road when we get there . . ."
Lying nearby, a swordsman listened with growing interest to the carters as they argued. Finally he stood and looked them over with a amused expression. After a few moments the men noticed him and fell silent as they turned to stare back.
He saw a group of twenty or so carters, their carts lined up beside the road, resting their weary arms and shoulders while they engaged in some long held debate. He knew they saw a well built man of above average height, clad in worn but finely tailored silks in shades of grey, a common rain cloak thrown over his shoulders. His weapon was no heavy, curved soldier's knife but the finely crafted straight sword of an aristocrat or a scholar. Few wandering fighters chose it.
"What banditry is this you speak of?" he asked.
One of the carters, bolder than the others or wishing to be thought so, shouldered his way to the front of the group. "He calls himself Mo, Mo the Mountain! He's the biggest son-of-a-bitch I've ever seen. He squats on a foot-bridge over a ravine on the road to Jin-po. There's no way to Jin-po from here except by that bridge, and everybody who wants to use it has to pay him or he won't let them by."
"He didn't build the bridge? Or buy it?"
"The bridge's been up forever," one of the others said. "The villagers built it long ago, to connect them to the rice farms so they didn't have to buy rice from Da-peng. Mo just showed up last month."
"It's an old game," the bold carter added. "Some bandit sets up somewhere people have to pass and shakes down everyone who comes by for whatever he can get."
"How much does this one get?" the swordsman asked.
"Enough!" the man said. "Two bowls of rice for each cart, merchants get hit for goods, other travelers for money. They mostly go around, but rice carters can't afford to. The rice is part of our pay; we get three bowls a day plus ten yuan a week. So if we pay, we go hungry. If we go around it adds another day to the trip, and we get short of rice anyway."
"Tell me about this bandit."
The men looked at one another and shrugged. The bold fellow seemed to be elected spokesman.
"He's one big guy, like I said. Probably not quick on his feet, but that doesn't matter when his feet are planted on that bridge." He paused and scratched at his beard, then added, "He claims to be a disciple of a demon out of the hidden valley. That's probably bullshit, but maybe not. Two trips back, one of the coolies tried to stand up to him and got slapped silly for his trouble. Mo took his whole cart. He just picked it up and tucked it under his arm like it was a small child. Six hundred pounds of rice! After that we just paid, but we're getting sick of going hungry on these trips."
"From the hidden valley of demons, huh?"
"That's what he said."
"I think I want to meet this Mo," the swordsman said. "You say he's up this road?"
The men all nodded; plainly flabbergasted the young mercenary should want to seek out such a bandit. The leader stared into the swordsman's eyes a moment, then asked, "What is your name, stranger?"
The young man smiled. "My name is Li Tsu-yen, but they call me 'Swordsman Li'."
"Swordsman Li?" The man shrugged." Never heard of you, but if you can get rid of Mo the Mountain, rice carters will sing your name from Nin-da to Jian."
Li swung his pack onto his back. "Try to sing in tune."
*****
He certainly is big. I don't even come up to his armpits. Li was a reasonably tall man. The fellow standing in the middle of the bridge, however, was gigantic. With a neck like an ox and shoulders as wide as two men, he was easily four times as massive as any man Li had ever known. Still, he was only a man.
Li was in the trees on the hill above the bridge. The road followed along the thickly wooded hillside until it came to the bridge, then looped back along the opposite hillside. The bridge itself was tiny, barely eight paces long, and the ravine wasn't very deep, though rocky and steep. For a man with a cart full of rice it would be impossible to pass, without the bridge. Also very difficult for anyone who wasn't young, healthy and unencumbered.
On the other hand, Mo brandished no weapon and had not, so far as Li knew, killed or even seriously injured anyone. He was a bully and an extortionist, and a robber. The code of the blade, which Li'd sworn to uphold when the famous Sword-Saint Pei had taken him on as a student, was clear: He could not just walk up and butcher an unarmed man no matter how big a bully he was. Nor could he let this bandit prey on the weak and helpless without a fight. He would have to confront Mo the Mountain and see if he couldn't find a path to resolving the problem, which meant getting down off the hill and onto the road.
Li centered himself and used his breath to direct his chi, searching out the slow, deep chi of the hill and brought his own to it, merging with the hillside. Then light as a feather he raised up both his chi and his body in the near glide his master had called the feather-step. Moving swiftly and silently he ran down the steep slope, not disturbing so much as a leaf. He came to rest behind a huge tree that sat alongside the road not ten feet from the bridge's end. Casually he stepped around the tree and onto the road.
Mo's eyes widened for just an instant before his face resumed its molded pattern of piggish contempt. Li concealed a smile. The feather step, done in heavy cover, gave the effect of appearing from no where. He'd used the trick before and usually it unsettled his opponents, though this Mo didn't seem too bothered.
"Heh, heh, heh, heh," the giant chuckled with a voice like gravel. "Some fancy footwork you got, pretty-boy. Snuck right up on me. I guess that means you're limber enough to pick your way across the rocks."
"What if I don't want to climb over the rocks?"
"Hah, hah, hah! You want the mountain to move?" The giant tapped his chest with one enormous thumb. "I'm Mo, the Mountain, and I only move when I want to. Pay me, or go around."
"What if I go through you instead?"
"Try it."
Li certainly didn't need his sword to deal with an overgrown ruffian. Instantly he streaked forward, focusing his chi into the index-and-middle fingers of his right hand and striking as if those fingers were his sword. He launched a series of pin-point blows along the giant's main meridian; liver point, kidney point, a thundering palm across that huge belly. The brigand didn't even raise his hands to defend himself. He just smiled and let Li hit him.
Then he let out a shout. With it came a wave of force that picked Li up off his feet and flung him clear of the bridge. He landed in a roll and was instantly on his feet and on guard. Mo hadn't rushed in to take advantage; he hadn't even moved.
"Hah, hah, hah, hah! Might as well go around, little swordsman, and save yourself some time. I studied in the hidden valley of demons; nothing and nobody can get me off this bridge unless I want to go!"
Li slowly wrapped his hand around the handle of his sword and drew the blade. It sang as it cleared the scabbard, the voice of the dragons whose image lay in the faint patterns of the folded steel blade.
"You are just like a mountain all right, Mo. So I'll move you like a mountain, one pebble at a time."
Mo held his palms at his side and raised his arms. "You're threatening an unarmed man with a sword? What are you, some sort of brigand?"
"A student of the hidden demons doesn't need a weapon to be dangerous," Li said, stepping on to the bridge with his blade held ready.
"Too right." Mo brought his hands forcefully together in front of him. Li _felt_ the wind of their movement and instinctively reached out his chi to root himself to the earth. The shovel-sized hands met and a wave of force like nothing Li had ever experienced erupted from the big man. It severed Li's connection to the earth, sending him, and several hundred pounds of the road-bed, flying toward the trees.
Li felt like he was riding a landslide. The great tree he'd come down behind loomed and he knew he was going to be squashed like a beetle. In desperation he molded his chi into a layered ball, a hard shell on the outside with a resilient center. The impact shattered the shell and buried him in the great trunk. Then he let the avalanche-like wave pass through him and on into the tree, and the hill behind it
.
It worked. Li found himself sprawled in a crater of crumbling earth, the giant tree reduced to splinters, the hill beyond a mess of shattered trunks and stripped foliage. His hat was crushed. With that the only damage, he knew he'd gotten off lightly. Using his scabbard to knock the worse of the dirt from his clothes, he walked back onto the road.
"Most impressive."
Mo gaped at him for a full second, and Li smiled.
"I've got to hand it to you, punk," Mo said. "You're tougher than you look. If you come at me with that pig-sticker again, though, I'm going to shove it up your arse and sell your corpse to a puppet show."
Li considered the bandit's words. This man Mo was tough, but Li hadn't touched a tenth of the teachings his master had passed to him. Thinking of his teacher, however, brought to mind the Sword-Saint's many lectures on strategy. "Battle," the old man was wont to say, "is not a matter of applying your skills to overwhelm your enemy. The key to victory is the intelligent application of prowess to accomplish your goal, despite your enemy."
Thinking this, Li smiled and sheathed his sword. Clasping the weapon before him, he bowed to the bandit.
"Decided to go around, huh?" Mo sneered.
"No, I have no desire to go to Jin-po. I came here to test myself against you." Li shrugged. "You're too tough for me, Mo the Mountain. The bridge is yours."
Li turned and walked back up the road, leaving Mo to watch suspiciously as he continued well after he'd passed out of sight. Almost a mile down the road Li paused to study the land down-slope from the road. He drew the nine dragon sword and set to work, cutting branches and tramping earth. Soon he was standing on the edge of the little ravine at the bottom of the valley. It was wider here than up at the little bridge, but not too wide. He studied the trees on his side of the ravine and frowned. None suited him.
Across on the other slope he found what he wanted. A tall, straight tree near the ravine's edge. Merging his chi into the air's around him to hold him steady, he pushed against the earth with the technique called "Dragon ascends to the clouds" and glided easily across the rocky rift to the base of the tree.
Shifting his chi's link from the air to the tree's, he used "The Lizard's footprints" to walk up the trunk. As he came to each branch his sword flashed, severing the limbs cleanly from the trunk. Two-thirds the way up the trunk divided in two and here he stopped. Each branch was bigger around than his chest. He focused his chi into his blade, merging with the dragon spirits. Two great sweeping strokes sent both halves of the tree-top to the ground. Holding his chi steady in the blade he brought it down into the tree itself, stepping off the trunk as he did.
Li glided down along the splitting trunk, landing softly beside the swaying bole. A finale strike across the base, opposite the side facing the ravine, then Li stepped back. The tree quivered, and then the trunk gave out with a crack like thunder. Both halves fell together across the ravine, landing on the soft earth with a mighty whummp!
Li studied his work. The placement was right. With a little work to shift the trunk together and wedge it tight, it would be a fine bridge. Walking lightly across it, he made his way back to the road.
*****
It didn't take long for the carters to show up. As Li had figured, once he'd gone up toward the bridge and Mo the Mountain, it was only a matter of time before they decided to follow. They saw him resting beside the new path he'd cut and stopped.
"So, did you meet with the Mountain?" the leader asked.
"Yes."
"And did you manage to drive him off his bridge?"
"No," Li said. "There was no need. Come, I'll show you." He led them down his little path.
The new path wasn't too difficult for the heavy carts. Soon the coolies stood gathered by the beginnings of the new bridge.
"You fellows get to work shifting those logs together." Li said. "Make sure you wedge them tight, so they don't shift. I'll finish the path on the other side. When you get to Jin-po, buy a couple of axes to keep in your carts.
"That big bastard may be tough, but he's not fast. He can't be in two places at once, if he comes down here, you take your rice to the old bridge. If he manages to destroy one of the bridges, build another. Without a steady supply of victims providing him food, he won't be able to stay around very long."
"Hey, why didn't we think of that?" a carter asked.
"Because we're carters," another replied. "Not carpenters. Or heroes."
Finis
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php
"Stains" in Tales of the Talisman 3-1 www.zianet.com/hadrosaur/index.html
"Morning Coffee" in Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/morning-coffee-by-michael-d-turner/
"The Jewel Below" in Flashing Swords
flashingswords.sfreader.com/issues/issue8/vol2-iss8-05.htm
"Happy Landings" in Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/happy-landings-by-michael-d-turner/
"Teller of Tales" in Every day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/teller-of-tales-by-michael-d-turner/ |
| Posted By : Dan Nelson - 2/9/2008 4:17 PM | Bravo!
Dan Nelson
King of Nothing and Emperor of Emptiness |
| Posted By : che2000 - 2/9/2008 11:13 PM | Liked it the first time I read it - like it just as much now. Great story.
"That blackguard Flashman, who never speaks to one without a kick or an oath--"
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