Desert Rhapsody - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Abal had said there was “no need to give it your all,” and Jiang Yuan spent two days turning those words over in her mind on the road. The young bandit leader of the Blood Eagle Bandit Group did not look like a narrow-minded man. Besides, Arabia had once been tribal, and even in modern times, traces of those customs remained. They despised petty, despicable men and sang praises of bravery and generosity. To risk life and limb for friends and family was the highest moral code.

Abal had no reason to say something like that. He had abandoned his family and, at the age of ten, led a group of children almost his own age to build something from nothing and strike out on their own. A man who did not understand unity could not survive in the harsh desert. What was more, Faisal and Jamal ought to be the people he trusted most. Unless he had other considerations-and no matter how Jiang Yuan thought about it, those considerations did not feel good.

She stopped thinking about it. The long camel caravan traveled through the desert for a very long time, roughly ten days or more. Jiang Yuan soon realized that asking for a one-month leave might have been a mistake. She had still underestimated the pace of travel in the desert. Even if she did not follow the caravan and could move twice as fast, the blazing sun was merciless. If she did not want to be roasted alive, she would have to choose routes with shade and oases. Subtract the return trip, and she only had half a month. How far could she possibly get? Abal had very sinisterly tricked her.

Jiang Yuan also wrapped herself in a cloak and changed into a long robe from Arabia. Under the scorching sun, she drank from her waterskin. She rode a camel, with her little mare tied behind it, swaying along beneath the sunlight as she did her best to enjoy the faint breeze brought by their movement. The injury on her foot gradually healed, and the peeling skin on her hands, feet, and face was improving too. The only problem was that her backside was going numb. Every day she had to sit with her legs spread apart, and when she stepped onto solid ground, she wobbled. She even bought medicine twice to rub on her chafed thighs. Before she could decide whether she was going to keep playing a man or a woman, her period came.

They reached a small town. Rather than a town, it was more like a village. There was grass here, but it was withered and yellow, the soil poor and barren. Low stone walls enclosed the place. Hunters, craftsmen, merchants, and women gathered around, calling out greetings and laughter. Jiang Yuan realized that this was probably where they “fenced the goods.” The bandits scattered from the town entrance like flowing water, while another group of lightly armored warriors came over.

They were also Blood Eagle’s men, only they had been sent elsewhere to “work” and had not been with Abal. They looked older and more vicious, as though they were already grown men. One by one, they looked Jiang Yuan over with measuring expressions. Jiang Yuan was wrapped in a robe, thin and expressionless, with no beard yet. She looked as if she could not even eat two chunks of meat. What ability could she possibly have to teach them?

Jiang Yuan had expected this. Expressionless, she unloaded a wooden board from the camel. She had obtained it during the journey and shaved it into shape with a knife. She gestured to Jamal. “Hold this.” Then she had him take the proper stance. “What for?” Jamal asked, but he still held it. Abal truly did treat Jiang Yuan like an honored guest. Jiang Yuan took two steps back, measured the distance, gathered her breath, sank her strength, shouted, and stepped forward into a side kick.

The board split cleanly in half in Jamal’s hands. Jiang Yuan had tampered with it-the grain was slightly thinner in places, and the break looked almost as clean as if it had been cut by a blade. Several bandits stared, dumbfounded. Jiang Yuan picked up a second board and told Jamal to hold it flat… He grew alarmed. “What are you trying to do?!” Jiang Yuan did not wait for him to react. She pressed her fingers together into a blade and chopped the board in two with the edge of her hand.

Dislocating someone’s bones for no apparent reason and then putting them back in place was something that seemed like sorcery, but chopping wooden boards required far less technical skill. The new little bandit crew understood that this was a show of force. “What the hell is that bit of strength good for? I could do it with a knife too!” “Bah! Who knows if that board was tampered with?” “Oh,” Jiang Yuan said. She was not about to give them time to find a new board. Casually, she added, “If you don’t want to use a board, that’s fine. Which of you wants to come up here and test it with your neck?”

She raised her knife-hand to her chest, as if ready to begin at any moment. But no one dared to actually test whether their neck was as brittle as the board.

After they left, Jiang Yuan decided it was better to remain a man for the time being. Unless she had some authority here and could make her word absolute, letting these bandits find out she was a woman would definitely not end well.

She did not know when Abal would return, but whether he was here or not did not actually matter much. She asked Jamal for a roll of cotton cloth and settled down temporarily in the little town. The bandits still had to deal with the loot, sell off gold, silver, and jewels, hand the slaves over to the merchants who offered the highest price, even select some new recruits to join the bandit group, as well as seek pleasure with the town’s prostitutes. In this era, there was not much difference between bandits and mercenaries most of the time. There were still many wars on the frontiers-against Rome, Central Asia, Western Europe, and even scattered rebellions and suppressions within the country. Once there was money involved, there was not much difference between where one went and whom one killed.

Jiang Yuan rented a small house and stayed there. She rarely went out, and since her mysterious reputation had spread here too, no thugs were quite bold enough to barge into her house and make trouble for her. She had to go out every day to find food, after all. This place was too hot, and food would not keep. Every day, she cut pieces from the cloth to use and change out, then threw the soiled ones into the fire to burn. After a few days, her period was gone, and Jiang Yuan could go out and hunt for treasures among the merchants.

These traveling peddlers roamed everywhere and were responsible for transporting stolen goods in all directions. They might not have goods as exquisite or abundant as the merchants of Baghdad or Damascus, but they did have things those merchants did not. They brought coarse, potent tobacco; raw liquor they claimed had been stolen from a brewery; boots stripped from the feet of a dead man with an enormous dick, along with his dried dick; and even treasure maps.
Jiang Yuan bought two of them.

They were covered in dust, tucked away in an old wooden box. On tattered parchment were scrawled incomprehensible symbols, along with strange poems. Legend had it that tribes of Arabia had once perished after being buried deep in the desert by a sudden storm, leaving behind countless treasures of gold and silver they had not had time to move. As long as you collected every piece of the map, led a camel into the depths of the desert, you would be able to roll around in piles of gold and silver, wealthy enough to rival a nation. The only task left in your life would be spending money.

The merchants took her for an easy mark and pushed their wares hard, not knowing that Jiang Yuan only wanted to see what treasure maps looked like. After buying two, she stopped. This world she had never seen before was revealing one corner of itself to her in its own way. Jiang Yuan also listened to them boast of the splendor of cities, the vicissitudes of Greece, the beauty of Khorasan, the towering walls of Damascus, and Baghdad near its harbor, with the Tigris River running through it. There, they said, the trees were green and shady, birds sang among fragrant flowers, and the boats on the river and the laughter of young girls seemed to drift up into the clouds.

She also wanted to buy a handwritten manuscript to read in her spare time, but for one thing, she could not afford it, and for another, traveling merchants did not carry such things from place to place. Jiang Yuan occasionally wandered around the town, and the women there soon learned that she was not interested in women and preferred interesting little trinkets instead. They stopped blocking her path to solicit business, and Jiang Yuan became fascinated with chatting to an old woman who knew divination.

The old woman was around fifty. In this era, fifty was already the end of a lifetime. It was said that she had once sold her body as well, and when age took her beauty, she made a living through divination instead. With fingers as dry as dead branches, she drew on the sand, marking out points and lines. Borrowing the power of spirits, she read fortunes, unraveled omens, and made charms.

Incidentally, the charms were also made of sand. She would write the charm’s symbols into the sand, scoop up a handful, mix it with water, and drink it down. Jiang Yuan refused this method of dispelling misfortune, which was extremely unfriendly to her digestive system. The old woman was furious and thought Jiang Yuan was looking down on her. Even so, she told Jiang Yuan that this was Arabia’s Geomancy. She also knew a tiny bit of astronomy. Astrology was a very famous part of Arabia’s culture: the Lot of Marriage and the line of life and death, the star charts and calendars of the West. They began in Babylon and were perfected through the combined achievements of Rome and Arabia. The Tarot cards that would later spread among the Romani people had their origins here as well.

The old witch taught her how to identify stars, and Jiang Yuan, in turn, casually told her the constellation myths she knew. The old woman listened very seriously, and at the end, asked Jiang Yuan, “Where did these stories come from?”

Jiang Yuan told her, “From Greece.”

A few days later, Jiang Yuan heard the old witch tidy up those stories and incorporate them quite convincingly into her own Geomancy, using them to fool people out of their money. Jiang Yuan only smiled and said nothing. Perhaps the witch also felt a little embarrassed. Jiang Yuan seemed to be an important figure in the bandit gang, after all. She said to Jiang Yuan, “Let me divine your fortune.”

Jiang Yuan said, “I don’t want to drink sand.”

The witch said unhappily, “A lion is always a lion. Even if it does not bury its head in the sand like a mouse, it can still stand proud and battle the storm.”

She muttered under her breath, communicating with her good spirit and asking it for revelation. She squatted on the ground, her feet like old tree roots exposed beneath her worn robe. With fingers like twigs, she scratched across the earth. If one moved close to her, one could smell the grease and rank odor of long-unwashed skin. The hair wrapped beneath her headscarf was tangled, filthy, and full of sand and dust. Jiang Yuan squatted beside her and watched her hands. The old woman drew points and lines Jiang Yuan could not understand, calculating her Part of Fortune. At the end, she told Jiang Yuan solemnly:

“This reading signifies a ‘great upheaval’ for you.” She warned her, “A great upheaval is happening in your life.”

Jiang Yuan laughed.

The witch watched her silently, perhaps not quite understanding how she could laugh after hearing such news. But wasn’t that exactly right? What she was going through now was a great upheaval, wasn’t it?

Jiang Yuan took the last few copper coins from her pouch and gave them to the witch.

The witch said, “I’ll make you a charm.”

Jiang Yuan said, “No need.” She clapped her hands and stood. “Thank you. I should go back for dinner.”

The Sun was about to set. The witch remained squatting on the ground, glaring at her, probably thinking that an ungrateful person like Jiang Yuan would die a violent death sooner or later.

A sheep had been slaughtered in the little town today, and Jiang Yuan managed to buy a decent piece of lamb leg. The bandits had robbed a pile of spices, and through her connections, she was able to set aside two small bottles from the haul. She poured the last bit of Sichuan pepper into a small copper pot and boiled it together with the lamb. She tended the fire until the night had fully darkened, then fished out the tender, falling-apart lamb. Using two date-palm twigs as chopsticks, Jiang Yuan ate with great satisfaction.

To be honest, “great satisfaction” was just something she said to comfort herself. There was only beef, lamb, and dates here. Her mouth was so bored she could practically taste feathers. After eating, Jiang Yuan moved around for a while, then went to sleep.

Before dawn, she woke to the sound of noise and looked out through the window. In the distance, dust and sand rose into the air. Many riders were hurrying toward the town. After a while, a falcon flew into the town ahead of them, letting out a piercing, imperious cry. Many people were still drunk or asleep, but the patrolmen were already cheering.

“Chief! Chief!”

Abal had returned.

Only half an update today because of overtime. Actually, I’ve been working overtime every day lately, but tonight I got a little stuck and couldn’t finish writing. That’s it for now. Kisses, everyone.

The second volume of Demon has already taken shape, so updates should resume soon. Because of overtime, I can only spare at most 3,000 words a day for writing novels. Once Demon starts updating again, this one will stop updating for a while. I’ll let everyone know in the comments when that happens. This week is overtime plus the annual company party, so I basically have no free time. I’m not sure about next week yet. Please forgive me.

Going to sleep.