Chapter 16: The Desperate Fight

Guo Yi hit the rocky ground hard, a sharp stone driving the air from his lungs. The surge of adrenaline that floods a person in a moment of crisis is a marvel. He rolled, scrambled, and found cover behind a large boulder. In that brief, chaotic minute, he had already seen Sarlina, an arrow protruding from her body, lying motionless on the ground.

Xue Ziliang was even quicker. His height made him an obvious target, and most of the arrows had been aimed at him. He took four or five in rapid succession. Guo Yi watched, mesmerized, as he slithered across the pebbled ground like a fish, shrugging off his own backpack while snagging the strap of Sarlina’s, dragging her towards him. Arrows continued to rain down, but their aim had grown wild.

“Guo, shoot!” Xue Ziliang roared, his face a mask of contorted muscles. The sight snapped Guo Yi, a man grown soft from years behind a desk, out of his daze. He raised his pistol and fired a volley in the direction of the attackers. He lost count of the shots, but a scream from the tall grass told him he’d found his mark.

In that brief respite, Xue Ziliang had hoisted Sarlina onto his back and was running, crouched low. Guo Yi scrambled to follow. He felt a sharp impact from behind, as if an arrow had struck him, but he didn’t dare to look back.

A dozen figures erupted from the woods and grass, charging with a ferocious roar. They brandished seven-foot-long white wooden staves, swinging them wildly. Caught off guard, Guo Yi took several blows, his backpack absorbing the worst of them. He fired two more shots, felling one attacker and forcing the others to hesitate.

“Forward!” Xue Ziliang bellowed. He snatched a fallen staff—its owner, dressed in strange, tattered clothes, was writhing on the ground, groaning. Despite the woman on his back, his confidence in his own strength was unshaken. He knew that to turn back was to die; their only hope was to break through the encirclement.

Guo Yi’s head was spinning from a blow. In the chaos, he’d dropped his empty pistol. But then he saw a man in a blue robe, directing the attackers with a long saber, and a surge of desperate energy filled him. With a guttural roar, he charged straight at the leader. The man didn’t flinch, raising his saber to meet the charge. For a split second, Guo Yi’s mind reeled—was he in a historical drama? The man’s hair was in a bun, his robes were long and flowing. In that moment of hesitation, the saber slashed down, biting deep into his shoulder blade. The pain was blinding, nearly causing him to drop his staff. Others swarmed him, their staves a blur of motion. Guo Yi fell, desperately trying to protect his head, swinging his staff blindly. His mind, in its panic, was crystal clear: he was about to be beaten to death. In his despair, a thunderous roar echoed through the clearing:

“Son of a bitch!”

The head of the man in front of Guo Yi exploded, a grotesque spray of blood, bone, and brain matter showering him. The image of that red and white mist would be seared into his memory for decades to come.

Xue Ziliang, who had already broken through the line, had seen his companion’s plight. He’d quickly set Sarlina down and rushed back, smashing a man’s head from behind with his staff. The ferocity of the attack momentarily stunned the attackers, and in that instant, Guo Yi scrambled away.

But the group didn’t scatter. At a shouted command in a language he didn’t understand, the remaining men regrouped and charged again. Xue Ziliang, delayed by having to retrieve Sarlina, was caught. Staves rained down on him, but the blows landed on the woman on his back. She cried out, blood spraying from her mouth, coating Xue Ziliang’s face.

Seeing that Xue Ziliang was about to be overwhelmed, Guo Yi ignored the fire in his veins and charged back into the fray, his staff a desperate shield. The men in front swung their staves at his head like a downpour of rain. At this moment of life and death, Guo Yi went berserk, his wild swings forcing the attackers back.

His heart steadied. He saw that his opponents were gaunt and emaciated, a full size smaller than himself, and a flicker of courage returned. Their wild, artless swings left them wide open. As they fell back in disarray, he took a large step forward, channeling the bayonet training he’d received in the military. He thrust with all his might. The staff, though blunt, shattered the man’s chin and nose. The man screamed, clutching his face as he rolled on the ground.

The blue-robed leader, shouting incomprehensibly, charged forward, saber raised. Guo Yi pivoted, executing a “left-side defense,” and brought the end of his staff around in a vicious arc, smashing it into the man’s face. With a scream, a black and white eyeball popped from its socket and flew through the air.

The remaining attackers, seeing their leader fall, his face a bloody ruin, were suddenly gripped by fear. With a collective cry, they dragged the blue-robed man and fled, disappearing into the wilderness. For years to come, the locals would tell the story of how Guo Yi and Xue Ziliang, two men against a dozen, had fought like demons, their staves sending their enemies fleeing in terror.

“Well done! Guo, you’re practically Bruce Lee!”

Guo Yi waved a weak hand and collapsed, panting. He had been on many missions, but he had never been so close to death, had never felt the cold breath of hell on his neck. Now, with the adrenaline gone, his body was a symphony of pain. His face was wet. He touched it and his hand came away covered in blood, whether his own or his attackers’, he couldn’t say.

“Guo, we have to go, quickly! They might come back!” Xue Ziliang urged.

“I need to check the bodies,” Guo Yi said, using his staff as a crutch. He limped towards the fallen, determined to search them and find his pistol.

After another kilometer, they were all exhausted, the pain from their wounds intensifying. There was no sign of pursuit, so they decided to find a place to rest and tend to their injuries. The river made a wide bend ahead, a rocky beach where the water roared over the stones. They found a small cave in a pile of rocks, hidden by tall grass and dense woods.

Xue Ziliang used a rubber water bladder to fetch water from the river, washing the blood from their wounds. Though he’d been struck by several arrows, none had penetrated his flesh. Most had hit his backpack; the rest had been stopped by his bulletproof vest. Aside from a few scrapes, he was unharmed.

Guo Yi had also been hit by arrows, but his stab-proof vest had saved him. One arrow had struck his arm, but the thick fabric of his training uniform had cushioned the blow, and it had only gone in shallowly. Xue Ziliang pulled it out, shaking his head at the rusty arrowhead before disinfecting the wound.

“Guo, you need a tetanus shot,” he said. “This arrowhead…”

“I know, but there’s nothing we can do now…” Guo Yi was utterly spent. His head throbbed, and a cut on his scalp needed stitches. For now, all they could do was clean, disinfect, and bandage it. The saber blow to his shoulder, though blocked by the vest, had left him unable to lift his arm. He feared he had broken bones or internal injuries, but for now, he felt nothing unusual.

Sarlina’s condition was worse. An arrow had wounded her leg, though it hadn’t gone deep. But she had taken several blows to the back while being carried by Xue Ziliang, and she seemed to have internal injuries. She was also running a fever, likely from a cold. Xue Ziliang dissolved a fever reducer from the first-aid kit in water and fed it to her.

A light rain began to fall. The cave was small, and with Sarlina lying down, their legs were exposed. Xue Ziliang draped a waterproof tarp over them.

Guo Yi’s head ached, his mind in a turmoil. The fight had been a brush with death, but it had also brought a new, unsettling certainty. His attackers, from their clothes to their hairstyles, were undeniably ancient. He had pulled at the hair bun of a dead man, and it was real. Their crude weapons were not props; the leader’s saber was real iron, not machine-made steel.

He had found nothing on the bodies but a few copper coins and some small, curious items. He examined the coins for a long time, finally making out the inscription: “Tianqi Tongbao.” What year was Tianqi? He couldn’t recall, only that Tianqi was the second-to-last emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Almost every man had a small pouch containing a curved piece of iron, a stone, and some cotton-like grass. Guo Yi couldn’t make sense of it.

“It’s a fire striker,” Xue Ziliang said, leaning over.

“A what?”

“A fire striker. You’re Chinese, and you don’t know? It’s how your ancestors made fire.”

“Damn it, aren’t your ancestors Chinese too?” Guo Yi muttered. “How do you know?”

“There’s a display at the Met in New York. I’ve seen it. Look—” Xue Ziliang took the striker and the small stone. He held the flint in his left hand, pressing the tinder against it with his thumb. With his right, he struck the flint with the iron. Sparks flew. “I’m out of practice. The guy at the museum could light the tinder in a few strikes. It’s amazing.”

A chill ran down Guo Yi’s spine.