Chapter Text
During the day, the wounds hurt so bad that Pei Xiu could barely stay in the saddle, managing it with nothing but a burning desire to get out of this greedy desert, wild, disgusting, gloating, taking away the most precious and reluctantly giving in return the questionable glory drenched in blood.
During the night, it was worse.
Day, night, day, night, and they’re on the edge of this cursed place, and those survived soldiers of the two miserable thousands provided to destroy the kingdom naively rejoiced that the merciless sun stopped trying to burn them to the ground, that ruthless nights were no longer freezing them to the bone. Pei Xiu wouldn’t actually reject such a fate.
At any time of the day, the body hurts from wounds, the body hurts from fatigue due to endless riding, the body hurts from memories as well as the soul. At night the general wished to sleep without dreams so that he would not have to revive the memory of how he, having rejoiced in victory, found his executed childhood friend, almost like a younger sister for him. But instead he lay motionless and looked into the ceiling of his tent.
Pei Xiu will be home soon. And Ban Yue will never come back.
The sharp rustle outside made him cautiously grasp the sword lying beside and freeze. The young man suspected that there might still be survivors in Banyue, who, as befits mindless barbarians, abandoned everything and rushed after them for revenge. And on who would they take revenge? Of course on him, on the general of the enemy troops. Although it was a bit of a surprise that the desert people had tamed their temper for sneaking into the camp instead of attacking it with a loud, blunt cry.
Someone quietly came into the tent, bringing too much light that hurt his eyes, and there was no doubt that this was an outsider. His own soldiers would not come to him at night, silent and uninvited.
Kill first, deal with the rest later. Pei Xiu, clutching a faithful sword discreetly, waited patiently for the mysterious stranger to approach him with a light, carefree step, as if he were on a simple pleasure trip, and then, unsheathing the weapon, he attacked his uninvited guest.
The young man may be wounded, exhausted, and actually wouldn’t mind being stabbed in the sleep, but such insolence is impossible to bear, and he has spent his whole life training how to protect himself and the people he loves.
His heart is aching again, with renewed vigor.
The strike is clean, strong, honed by years of practice, devoid of even a drop of doubt, but it is still repelled with a little surprised exclamation.
No problem, after the first one comes the next, also repelled, another, and it goes on like this until Pei Xiu’s sword is knocked out of his hands. He, realizing already from this short exchange of blows that the enemy was much stronger, was momentarily at a loss, and it was enough for the intruder, self-confidently throwing his weapon away, to get closer in one step, firmly grasping his chin, making Pei Xiu look up at him, lifting up his other palm, on which the flame seemed to flare, illuminating the dark tent with a flicker of uneven light.
From such a position, it is too easy to grab by the throat and start strangling, which made Pei Xiu freeze warily in an attempt to watch every move of his likely killer. This is not at all easy, because from an unwanted fight the pain in the wounds, that just began to subside, has inflamed with new force, mixing the consciousness with dirt and not allowing even a blurred look at the face of the enemy.
“And what is that? You’re not even handsome,” the intruder noticed, looking at the young man extremely meticulously, and, deafeningly, so that it was heard even through the heartbeat in the ears, he tsked. “What a disappointment.”
Pei Xiu got a very strange killer. While he, with obvious dissatisfaction in his voice, was distracted from the fight, talking trash about his appearance, criticizing everything, the young man, with his last strength, punched him in the gut.
He hoped that the intruder would bend in half, let go and go back a couple of steps, giving time to shout out loud and wake up the soldiers, which Pei Xiu simply did not manage to do during their rapid exchange of blows, but the man did not even move or flinch, as though a delicate maiden had patted him gently on the belly, though the general’s knuckles immediately got numb and the pain has shot through to the forearm.
As if he tried to knock down a wall with a fist.
“A little weak, don’t you think?” with a cold mockery, the intruder asked him and, not thinking for another moment, showed what a real punch to the gut was.
Pei Xiu, bent in half and fallen to his trembling knees, would have wished he had been stabbed with a sword while there was an opportunity, but he could neither breathe nor move nor think of anything other than the terrible pain that had gripped his entire body, forcing the mind to fearfully hide behind the wall of doom. The wounds he suffered in the last battle, even though they had been healing like on a dog, were opened again.
And it was only recently that he was unhappily thinking that he had finally got to such a position, on which he did not need to change the bandages himself, as before.
“And that’s all?” the intruder asked in a bored tone, giving him only a few immeasurably short seconds to come to his senses. “And I thought we had a good start.”
One shouldn't come to a badly wounded person when wishing for a decent fight. Pei Xiu swallowed these words along with the blood in his mouth, wanting no favors or compassion, and gave his opponent the fiercest stare he could muster under such circumstances, hoping he did not look like a puppy whimpering from pain.
From stubbornness, he climbed to his jelly feet, barely staying up, and took a hopeless swing to get another indifferent blow that was seemingly stronger than the previous one.
Fell to his knees again, got up again, and so once more. In the corner of his mind, he had a persistent thought that this man must have simply enjoyed his suffering, wanting to beat him to death like this, wanting to see how many strokes would suffice, so that the young man could not recover and remained on the ground to die in a puddle of his damned blood of the exiled criminal’s son.
A general killed in his own tent in the middle of a camp of peacefully sleeping subordinates, what a shame.
It took too few strokes to stop him from even being able to kneel and make him fall to the ground, and at the same time these strokes dragged on forever, each one leaving behind a white flash of pain and a taste of blood in his mouth.
Blood is everywhere. It already stained the shirt, forcing it to stick to the body, and Ban Yue too is covered in blood, can not be saved, he could only bury her in her favorite place...
Pei Xiu froze. The palm of his hand went into the ground as he was trying at least to sit up, not to die lying, but his hands were shaking to such an extent that even this could not be done.
“How frail you are,” the intruder said in a bored voice. “Are you really that Pei Xiu? Even a mere mortal should be able to withstand a few blows... Ling Wen must have been crazy to think you have as much talent as Xiao Pei did…”
Whoever this man was, he obviously liked to talk to himself, because Pei Xiu couldn’t understand what he was saying, let alone answer. However, the intruder was probably not too accustomed to such silence, as he, having waited for a long time and having gotten no reaction from his interlocuter, lifted his chin with the toe of his chillingly cold boot, looking critically at him.
“But you can ascend, so I can work with it,” the man irritably admitted with a lazy reluctance in his voice, and took his foot away. “Get up, we’ll talk.”
Pei Xiu himself would be happy to get up, he tried to. But his mind was slipping away from him like a loose fish, and his body, heavier than ever, was numb, and the young man, finally coughing his stinging blood, hopelessly stained these gorgeous boots with it, losing consciousness while hearing a surprised shout.