The Art of War Read online

  DAVID WINGROVE is the Hugo Award-winning co-author (with Brian Aldiss) of Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction. He is also the co-author of the first three MYST books – novelizations of one of the world’s bestselling computer games. He lives in north London with his wife and four daughters.

  1 Son of Heaven

  2 Daylight on Iron Mountain

  3 The Middle Kingdom

  4 Ice and Fire

  5 The Art of War

  6 An Inch of Ashes

  7 The Broken Wheel

  8 The White Mountain

  9 Monsters of the Deep

  10 The Stone Within

  11 Upon a Wheel of Fire

  12 Beneath the Tree of Heaven

  13 Song of the Bronze Statue

  14 White Moon, Red Dragon

  15 China on the Rhine

  16 Days of Bitter Strength

  17 The Father of Lies

  18 Blood and Iron

  19 King of Infinite Space

  20 The Marriage of the Living Dark

  The Art of War was first published as The Broken Wheel in Great Britain in 1990 by New English Library.

  This revised and updated edition published in special edition hardback, trade paperback, and eBook in Great Britain in 2013 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © David Wingrove, 1990, 2013

  The moral right of David Wingrove to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 9 780 85789 070 2

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 071 9

  E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 423 6

  Printed in Great Britain.

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  PROLOGUE The Sound of Jade – Summer 2206

  PART TEN The Art of War – Summer 2206

  Chapter 43 The Fifty-Ninth Stone

  Chapter 44 Conflicting Voices

  Chapter 45 Connections

  Chapter 46 Thick Face, Black Heart

  PART ELEVEN Shells – Autumn 2206

  Chapter 47 The Innocence of Vision

  Chapter 48 Compulsions

  IN TIMES TO COME…

  Character listing

  Glossary of Mandarin terms

  Author’s note

  Acknowledgments

  Book Five

  ‘Keep away from sharp swords,

  Don’t go near a lovely woman.

  A sharp sword too close will wound your hand,

  Woman’s beauty too close will wound your life.

  The danger of the road is not in the distance,

  Ten yards is far enough to break a wheel.

  The peril of love is not in loving too often,

  A single evening can leave its wound in the soul.’

  —Meng Chiao, ‘Impromptu’, 8th century AD

  For Rose and Ian

  ‘A new sound from the old keys.’

  INTRODUCTION

  Chung Kuo. The words mean ‘Middle Kingdom’ and, since 221 BC, when the First Emperor, Ch’in Shih Huang Ti, unified the seven Warring States, it is what the ‘black-haired people’, the Han, or Chinese, have called their great country. The Middle Kingdom – for them it was the whole world; a world bounded by great mountain chains to the north and west, by the sea to east and south. Beyond was only desert and barbarism. So it was for two thousand years and through sixteen great dynasties. Chung Kuo was the Middle Kingdom, the very centre of the human world, and its Emperor the ‘Son of Heaven’, the ‘One Man’. But in the eighteenth century that world was invaded by the young and aggressive Western powers with their superior weaponry and their unshakeable belief in Progress. It was, to the surprise of the Han, an unequal contest and China’s myth of supreme strength and self-sufficiency was shattered. By the early twentieth century China – Chung Kuo – was the sick old man of the East: ‘a carefully preserved mummy in a hermetically sealed coffin’, as Karl Marx called it. But from the disastrous ravages of that century grew a giant of a nation, capable of competing with the West and with its own Eastern rivals, Japan and Korea, from a position of incomparable strength.

  By the turn of the twenty-second century, Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom, had come to mean much more. For more than a hundred years the Empire of the Han had encompassed all the world, the Earth’s bloated population of thirty-six billion contained in vast, hive-like cities of three hundred levels that spanned whole continents. The Council of Seven – Han lords, T’ang, each more powerful than the greatest of the ancient emperors – ruled Chung Kuo with an iron authority, their boast that they had ended Change and stopped the Great Wheel turning. But war, famine and political instability, thought to be things of the past, returned to Chung Kuo with a vengeance.

  A new generation of powerful young merchants – Dispersionists, formed mainly of Hung Mao, or Westerners – challenged the authority of the Seven, demanding an end to the Edict of Technological Control, the cornerstone of Han stability, and a return to the Western ideal of unfettered progress. In the face of assassination and counter-assassination, something had to give, and the destruction of the Dispersionist starship, The New Hope, signalled the beginning of ‘the War-that-wasn’t-a-War’, an incestuous power struggle fought within the City’s levels. The Seven won that War, but at a price they could ill afford. Suddenly they were weak – weaker than they had been in their entire history, four of their most experienced members having died in the space of six short years. In their place, the new T’ang were young and inexperienced, while the older T’ang had lost the confidence, the certainty, they had once possessed.

  In the long years of peace before the War it had seemed inconceivable to challenge the Seven. But now…

  For the Dispersionists, too, it was a costly war. Five years of struggle found them with most of their major leaders dead and more than two thousand of their number executed. One hundred and eighteen of their great Companies had ceased trading – their assets and holdings confiscated by the Seven – while many more, numbering hundreds of thousands, had been demoted ‘down the levels’ for being sympathetic to their cause.

  But the War was merely the first tiny sign of the great disturbances to come, for down in the lowest levels of the City, in the lawless regions ‘below the Net’ and in the overcrowded decks just above, new currents of unrest – darker and deeper than those expressed by the War – have awoken. Currents which, inflamed by the ever-mounting burden of population pressures, threaten to tear Chung Kuo itself apart…

  PROLOGUE

  THE SOUND OF JADE

  SUMMER 2206

  ‘At rise of day we sacrificed to the Wind God,

  When darkly, darkly, dawn glimmered in the sky.

  Officers followed, horsemen led the way;

  They brought us out to the wastes beyond the town,

  Where river mists fall heavier tha
n rain,

  And the fires on the hill leap higher than the stars.

  Suddenly I remembered the early levees at Court

  When you and I galloped to the Purple Yard.

  As we walked our horses up Dragon Tail Way

  We turned and gazed at the green of the Southern Hills.

  Since we parted, both of us have been growing old;

  And our minds have been vexed by many anxious cares;

  Yet even now I fancy my ears are full

  Of the sound of jade tinkling on your bridle-straps.’

  —Po Chu-I, ‘To Li Chien’ (AD 819)

  It was night and the moon lay like a blinded eye upon the satin darkness of the Nile. From where he stood, on the balcony high above the river, Wang Hsien could feel the slow, warm movement of the air like the breath of a sleeping woman against his cheek. He sighed and laid his hands upon the cool stone of the balustrade, looking out to his right, to the north, where, in the distance, the great lighthouse threw its long, sweeping arm of light across the delta. For a while he watched it, feeling as empty as the air through which it moved, then he turned back, looking up at the moon itself. So clear the nights were here. And the stars. He shivered, the bitterness flooding back. The stars…

  A voice broke into his reverie. ‘Chieh Hsia? Are you ready for us?’

  It was Sun Li Hua, Master of the Inner Chamber. He stood just inside the doorway, his head bowed, his two assistants a respectful distance behind him, their heads lowered. Wang Hsien turned and made a brief gesture, signifying that they should begin, then he turned back.

  He remembered being with his two eldest sons, Chang Ye and Lieh Tsu, on the coast of Mozambique in summer. A late summer night with the bright stars filling the heavens overhead. They had sat there about an open fire, the three of them, naming the stars and their constellations, watching the Dipper move across the black velvet of the sky until the fire was ash and the day was come again. It was the last time he had been with them alone. Their last holiday together.

  And now they were dead. Both of them, lying in their coffins, still and cold beneath the earth. And where were their spirits now? Up there? Among the eternal stars? Or was there only one soul, the hun, trapped and rotting in the ground? He gritted his teeth, fighting against his sense of bitterness and loss. Hardening himself against it. But the bitterness remained. Was it so? he asked himself. Did the spirit soul, the p’o, rise up to Heaven, as they said, or was there only this? This earth, this sky, and Man between them?

  Best not ask. Best keep such thoughts at bay, lest the darkness answer you.

  He shivered, his hands gripping the stone fiercely. Gods but he missed them! Missed them beyond the power of words to say. He filled his hours, keeping his mind busy with the myriad affairs of State; even so, he could not keep himself from thinking of them. Where are you? he would ask himself on waking. Where are you, Chang Ye, who smiled so sweetly? And you, Lieh Tsu, my ying tao, my baby peach, always my favourite? Where are you now?

  Murdered, a brutal voice in him insisted. And only ash and bitterness remained.

  He turned savagely, angry with himself. Now he would not sleep. Bone-tired as he was, he would lie there, sleepless, impotent against the thousand bitter-sweet images that would come.

  ‘Sun Li Hua!’ he called impatiently, moving the curtain aside with one hand. ‘Bring me something to make me sleep! Ho yeh, perhaps, or tou chi.’

  ‘At once, Chieh Hsia.’

  The Master of the Inner Chamber bowed low, then went to do as he was bid. Wang Hsien watched him go, then turned to look across at the huge, low bed at the far end of the chamber. The servants were almost done. The silken sheets were turned back, the flowers at the bedside changed, his sleeping robes laid out, ready for the maids.

  The headboard seemed to fill the end wall, the circle of the Ywe Lung, the Moon Dragon, symbol of the Seven, carved deep into the wood. The seven dragons formed a great wheel, their regal snouts meeting at the hub, their lithe, powerful bodies forming the spokes, their tails the rim. Wang Hsien stared at it a while, then nodded to himself as if satisfied. But deeper, at some dark, unarticulated level, he felt a sense of unease. The War, the murder of his sons – these things had made him far less certain than he’d been. He could no longer look at the Ywe Lung without questioning what had been done in their name these last five years.

  He looked down sharply. Five years. Was that all? Only five short years? So it was. Yet it felt as though a whole cycle of sixty years had passed since The New Hope had been blasted from the heavens and war declared. He sighed and put his hand up to his brow, remembering. It had been a nasty, vicious war; a war of little trust – where friend and enemy had worn the same smiling face. They had won, but their victory had failed to set things right. The struggle had changed the nature – the very essence – of Chung Kuo. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  He waited until the servants left, backing away, bowed low, their eyes averted from their lord’s face, then went across and stood before the wall-length mirror.

  ‘You are an old man, Wang Hsien,’ he told himself softly, noting the deep lines about his eyes and mouth, the ivory yellow of his eyes, the loose roughness of his skin. ‘Moon-faced, they call you. Maybe so. But this moon has waxed and waned a thousand times and still I see no clearer by its light. Who are you, Wang Hsien? What kind of man are you?’

  He turned, tensing instinctively, hearing a noise in the passageway outside, then relaxed, smiling.

  The three girls bowed deeply, then came into the room, Little Bee making her way across to him, while Tender Willow and Sweet Rain busied themselves elsewhere in the room.

  Little Bee knelt before him, then looked up, her sweet, unaffected smile lifting his spirits, bringing a breath of youth and gaiety to his old heart.

  ‘How are you this evening, good Father?’

  ‘I am fine,’ he lied, warmed by the sight of her. ‘And you, Mi Feng?’

  ‘The better for seeing you, my lord.’

  He laughed softly, then leaned forward and touched her head gently, affectionately. Little Bee had been with him six years now, since her tenth birthday. She was like a daughter to him.

  He turned, enjoying the familiar sight of his girls moving about the room, readying things for him. For a while it dispelled his previous mood; made him forget the darkness he had glimpsed inside and out. He let Little Bee remove his pau and sit him, naked, in a chair, then closed his eyes and let his head fall back while she began to rub his chest and arms with oils. As ever, the gentle pressure of her hands against his skin roused him. Tender Willow came and held the bowl with the lavender glaze while Sweet Rain gave him ease, her soft, thin-boned fingers caressing him with practised strokes until he came. Then Little Bee washed him there and, making him stand, bound him up in a single yellow silk cloth before bringing a fresh sleeping garment.

  He looked down at her tiny, delicate form as she stood before him, fastening his cloak, and felt a small shiver pass through him. Little Bee looked up, concerned.

  ‘Are you sure you are all right, Father? Should I ask one of your wives to come to you?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Mi Feng. And no, I’ll sleep alone tonight.’

  She fastened the last of the tiny, difficult buttons, looking up into his face a moment, then looked down again, frowning. ‘I worry for you, Chieh Hsia,’ she said, turning away to take a brush from the table at her side. ‘Some days you seem to carry the whole world’s troubles on your shoulders.’

  He smiled and let her push him down gently into the chair again. ‘I am Seven, Mi Feng. Who else should carry the burden of Chung Kuo?’

  She was silent a moment, her fingers working to unbind his tightly braided queue. Then, leaning close, she whispered in his ear. ‘Your son,’ she said. ‘Why not make Ta-hung your regent?’

  He laughed shortly, unamused. ‘And make that rascal friend of his, Hung Mien-lo, a T’ang in all but name?’ He looked at her sharply. ‘Has he been talking to you
?’

  ‘Has who been talking to me, Father? I was thinking only of your health. You need more time to yourself.’

  He laughed, seeing for himself how free from subterfuge she was. ‘Forget what I said, Mi Feng. Besides, I enjoy my duties.’

  She was brushing out his hair now, from scalp to tip, her tiny, perfectly formed body swaying gently, enticingly beside him with each passage of the brush. He could see her side on in the mirror across the room, her silks barely veiling her nakedness.

  He sighed and closed his eyes again, overcome by a strange mixture of emotions. Most men would envy me, he thought. And yet some days I think myself accursed. These girls… they would do whatever I wished, without a moment’s hesitation, and yet there is no joy in the thought. My sons are dead. How could joy survive such heartbreak?

  He shuddered and stood up abruptly, surprising Little Bee, making the others turn and look across. They watched him walk briskly to the mirror and stand there, as if in pain, grimacing into the glass. Then he turned back, his face bitter.

  ‘Ta-hung!’ he said scathingly, throwing himself down into the chair again. ‘I was a fool to let that one be born!’

  There was a shocked intake of breath from the three girls. It was unlike Wang Hsien to say such things. Little Bee looked at the others and nodded, then waited until they were gone before speaking to him again.

  She knelt, looking up into his face, concerned. ‘What is it, Wang Hsien? What eats at you like poison?’

  ‘My sons!’ he said, in sudden agony. ‘My sons are dead!’

  ‘Not all your sons,’ she answered gently, taking his hands in her own. ‘Wang Ta-hung yet lives. And Wang Sau-Leyan.’

  ‘A weakling and a libertine!’ he said bitterly, not looking at her; staring past her into space. ‘I had two fine, strong sons. Good, upstanding men with all their mother’s finest qualities. And now…’ He shivered violently and looked at her, his features racked with pain, his hands gripping hers tightly. ‘This war has taken everything, Mi Feng. Everything. Some days I think it has left me hollow, emptied of all I was.’