My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 262: The North Slope Shoulder

Qi Qi crouched at the edge of the Old Herb Garden's fence, untied his shoes and tied them again, the second time tighter than the first. Half the fence had collapsed, and a path had been worn through the gap by feet—the grass flattened, long since trampled solid.

A red glow showed through the window paper of the Medicine Hall, and the charcoal stove rattled inside. Cheng Banshan sat on a low stool by the stove with the furnace hook laid across his knees. He didn't look up at the sound of footsteps. "Where it's steep, don't step on pine needles. Step on rock. Rock doesn't slip."

"I'll remember."

"It's frozen now, and frozen makes for good walking." Cheng Banshan pushed the hook a little toward the furnace door. "Once it thaws, that's a different matter. We'll talk when you're back."

Qi Qi left by the northwest side behind the Medicine Hall, walked past the last plot of herbs, and turned to push aside an old vine hanging on the fence. No one from the mountain followed; the hall's smoke eased out through the cracks in the window paper, slow and straight. The plots behind him had long since been harvested, only a few dried stalks still standing.

The gully mouth sat at the base of the slope. The rock walls on both sides closed in, the path ended, and the ground underfoot turned to stone. The floor of the West Gully was all stone. Water ran through the cracks between rocks, its sound larger than the water itself. A layer of moss grew over the stones—dry and whitish in places, wet and black in others. He made a point of stepping only on the whitish ones. Qi Qi climbed up along the stones for a stretch, and the slope rose higher, the sides changing to pine.

The pine needles lay thick, a foot sinking to the instep with every step. At the base of the slope was a patch of loosened soil—pits where herbs had been dug. A small trail pressed out by feet climbed up the slope beside the pits, then broke off beneath a cluster of low brush. Under the brush sat a stone someone had used as a seat; the grass on its surface had been flattened and half grown back.

The herb pickers turned back here.

Beyond this, there was no path.

Qi Qi sat on that stone for a little while and replayed the route in his mind: the collapsed fence gap, the narrowing at the gully mouth, the third crossing over the water on stepping stones, the dug-up herb pits at the slope's base, then this low brush and this stone. He memorized the landmarks he recognized—a pine halfway up the slope, dead on one side; a stone by his feet white as if dusted with salt; a horizontal line of water at the gully bottom. On the way back, following these, he wouldn't go wrong.

He stood and looked up. The North Slope was steep, studded with pines. The shaded face carried a crust of ice, and little light reached in. He avoided the open slope, moving instead from tree root to tree root, one step at a time: foot first to test, then hand to grip. A dead branch he grabbed broke with a crisp snap, slipping free at once. He seized the small pine beside him, and the needles pricked a row of welts across the back of his hand.

He stopped on the slope to catch his breath, rubbed his hand against his clothes. Red spots rose where the needles had struck, and pressing them brought a faint numbness. Higher up, the pines shrank, the rocks multiplied, and the wind came from the north, pouring in through his collar and down his spine until he hunched.

The slope ended at a stone ridge running crosswise. Almost no trees grew on the ridge—only a few clumps of grass hugging the ground. Qi Qi climbed up on hands and knees and lay flat, raising his head to look beyond.

The ground fell away before him.

A gap lay below, the mountains stepping back on either side. A broad road came up from the south, passed through the gap, and went out again to the north; farther north it narrowed and narrowed until it vanished from sight. West of the gap rose a mountain spur, bare rock with no large trees. East of it lay a ridge with pines on its slopes, and the back of that ridge faced Qingya's northern slope, pushing outward layer by layer.

A few stone houses were scattered along the roadside at the valley floor—slate roofs, dry-stacked walls, every door facing the road.

He came down off the stone ridge and crossed a stretch of loose rock. His foot slipped, and he slid two steps before catching himself, his knee knocking against a stone with a dull thud. He got up, brushed off his trousers, and followed the loose rock all the way down to the valley floor, where his feet landed on the main road.

The road was packed hard. A shallow groove ran down its middle, worn by cart wheels; hoofprints lined the edges, most of them old. The road ran south out of the valley, dropping at an angle from beneath the gap, wide enough for two carts abreast. Follow it south and you'd reach Luoxia Town—the clerk had said twenty li.

He looked at the houses first. The first one's door planks were rotted, one still hanging on its frame, the other leaning against the inside. He pushed the door open and went in: a stone platform inside, a pile of grass ash in the corner. He reached in and felt it—cold, dry and powdery underneath. All three houses were equally empty. Nothing hung from the beams. The stoves were built of stone, their fireboxes swept clean.

Behind the westernmost house was a well. Its mouth was ringed with stones, worn with several grooves by the well rope. The rope was coiled over the stones, lively the moment he tugged it, with a wooden bucket tied to one end—half rotted. He lowered the bucket until its bottom struck the water with a sound, though he couldn't see the bottom. The water he drew up came out yellow; left to settle on the well platform a while, it cleared on top. He cupped a mouthful and drank. It tasted of earth.

A layer of loose dust lay over the threshold. No footprints.

How many sides the pass actually had, the order hadn't said. He looked at it section by section. The pass was right underfoot: the road ran past the doors, northward, out through the gap, all the way to the farthest point his eyes could reach—no one anywhere. No fresh cart ruts on the road, no fresh hoofprints, no footsteps. A thin trail climbed the western spur, pressed out by feet, following the ridgeline upward, and vanished halfway. On the eastern ridge the pines thickened, and at the slope's base a dry gully curved around from the other side and wrapped behind the ridge, running toward the Qingya north slope.

He went back to the easternmost house's threshold and sat down. He broke off half the flatbread from inside his clothes. The bread was coarse grain with a little spirit rice worked in, cold and hard; he bit off a piece and held it in his mouth until it softened. The crumbs scattered over the threshold, and no birds came down to fight for them.

He sat and watched the wind flatten the dry grass by the roadside and then let it spring back up, watched the gray-white expanse beyond the gap. The grass had yellowed, all the way out to where his eyes couldn't reach. He couldn't make out anything moving.

At the Horse hour, he headed back.

Back at the stone ridge above the North Slope, he broke off a pine branch and wedged it into a crack in the rock, drove it deep, stepped back two paces to look, then shifted half a step to one side and set it straight. He ate the remaining half of the flatbread there, and when he was done, he turned for one last look: the gap sat in that stretch of yellow grass, like a hole.

The Sheep hour, the Accounts Room.

Qi Qi stood just inside the door, looked down at his shoes. The uppers were caked with mud, the soles bristling with pine needles. Xu Yan pushed the ledger aside, pulled a sheet of wasted paper from under the ledger rack and turned it over, dipped his brush in the inkstone.

"From the Old Herb Garden, west along the gully to the North Slope, three li," Qi Qi said.

Xu Yan drew a vertical line on the paper.

"Over the North Slope shoulder to the pass, ten li in all. One shichen."

"Three sides," Qi Qi added. "The pass, the western spur, the eastern ridge."

Xu Yan drew a horizontal line below the vertical, a slant at its west end and another at the east, then let the brush rest on the paper. "Which way does the eastern ridge face?"

"Toward our North Slope."

The brush tip dotted the place marked "eastern ridge." "How many houses?"

"Three. Doors facing the road. Empty. Stoves cold."

"Water?"

"There's a well behind the westernmost house. The water's muddy, but it clears if you let it settle. Drinkable."

"Beyond the pass?"

"No one."

"That stretch of road to the south," Xu Yan asked. "The part you walked—did anyone come up it?"

"No. The road was dry. The hoofprints were all old."

Xu Yan laid the brush on the inkstone's rim and studied the paper. The three lines were crooked, but everything that belonged was there: a road entering from the south, passing through that horizontal gap and heading north, a spur and a ridge pinching in on either side. He ran a finger from the mountain base northward to the horizontal line, then along the eastern slant, stopping above it.

"The back of the eastern ridge," he said. "It faces us."

"Yes," Qi Qi said. "Looking up from the North Slope, what you see is the ridge's back. At the ridge's base there's a dry gully that curves around from the other side and wraps behind it."

Xu Yan added a few small characters for this line, then turned the paper over and wrote a date on the back. He folded it twice and tucked it into the stack behind the ledger.

"What other stretch gave you trouble?"

"The loose rock below the stone ridge," Qi Qi said. "I slipped twice coming down and knocked my knee." He lifted his trouser leg to show Xu Yan—a bruise on the knee, skin unbroken.

"The West Gully floor?"

"Step on the rocks, not the edges. The edges give way."

"Good."

Qi Qi walked to the door, looked down at his shoes again. "Past the North Slope shoulder, there's no path. I trampled one out."

"On that path—did you leave a marker?"

"I broke off a pine branch on the stone ridge and wedged it into a crack."

"If someone walks it tomorrow, will they recognize it?"

"They will. Looking from the north, that one's still green. All the others have gone yellow."

Xu Yan nodded once.

Afternoon, the Front Courtyard, the usual routine. Bai Xiaoman came out of the West Wing carrying a wooden box, sat on the box's bottom as if it were a stool, and looked up. "Sect Master, the road to the pass—can a cart get up it?"

"Ask him," Xu Yan said.

"A cart can't make it," Qi Qi said. "At the third crossing you have to step on rocks to cross the water. A wheel won't pass. After that it's all slope."

Bai Xiaoman hugged the box to her knees and thought for a moment. "So anything we send up from now on, we carry on our backs?"

"On our backs," Qi Qi said.

Shao Ming came over from the Ancestral Hall and stopped Qi Qi at the Medicine Hall door, asking the same two questions from the night before.

"How many houses at the pass?"

"Three."

"Water?"

"One well. Let it settle and it's drinkable."

Shao Ming nodded and headed toward the West Wing. Du Xiaochuan was adding charcoal to the stove in the outer room of the Medicine Hall; when he finished, he stood and clapped the ash from his hands. Cheng Banshan sat by the stove, the furnace hook across his knees. "The pines on the slope—do the sunny-side ones grow thick?"

"They don't," Qi Qi said. "The sunny-side pines grow short, hugging the ground."

Cheng Banshan made a low sound in his throat and asked nothing more, sliding the furnace door almost shut, leaving a crack.

Lamp-lighting time, the Main Hall.

Qian Duoduo set out thirteen pairs of chopsticks. Twelve people sat at the table. A Sui carried a bowl over to the low hut by the Mountain Gate, then came back and sat down. "There are houses at the pass. Are we going to live there?"

"No," Xu Yan said.

"Then who are those houses being left empty for?"

"For whoever ought to be holding the pass." Xu Yan laid his chopsticks flat. "We've looked at the pass now. One shichen to reach it."

No one at the table asked further. Jiang Wan finished first and pushed her bowl forward a little. "One person going is one shichen there, another back."

"Once you know the route, it's faster," Qi Qi said.

"Once you know the route, someone still has to take over after." Jiang Wan said.

Xu Yan didn't answer that one. He drank the last of the broth left in his bowl.

After the meal, Qi Qi rose to clear the bowls, stacking them stack by stack in his hands.

"Qi Qi." Xu Yan called him back.

Qi Qi stopped, the bowls still in his arms.

"From now on, every third and eighth day, go up to the North Slope shoulder and take a look."

Qi Qi answered, "Mm."

"Look, then come back. Don't go down to the pass."

"Mm."

Xu Yan said no more. Qi Qi carried the bowls into the Kitchen.

At the table, no one picked up the thread.