On To The Next Plan

The office of the leader of the Great Saber Gang.

Black Leopard sat up on the table with his legs crossed, taking his drink at his leisure. The lieutenant stood in front of him, back from the medicine raid with the job done and a triumphant look on his face. Black Leopard filled a cup to the brim, handed it across, and asked,

“Is the medicine safely in the storehouse?”
“Yes, Boss! I had it stored there exactly as you instructed. More than ten crates of it, and every one packed full of medicine. Sell it off and we ought to come away with a tidy sum of gold.”

The report stretched Black Leopard’s mouth almost from ear to ear. Money had been tight of late, and thanks to that greenhorn from House Yang he could breathe again. He poured himself a cup, drank it off, and said,

“That fellow from the Red Headband Hall does clean work. What did you make of them, watching?”
“I watched them in secret as you told me, Boss, and their preparation was thorough. Masks on, and they had the Yang boy’s column surrounded in perfect order. That was no common skill.”
“Is that so? I had a good feeling about him, and it turns out he has the ability as well. Did the Yang boy give the medicine up quietly?”
“Yes. The boy must have taken fright — he handed it over without any resistance to speak of.”
“Heh heh heh. Maybe I came down a little heavy on a greenhorn who isn’t even twenty. I’d feel bad if he wet the bed over it.”
“Haha, how could that be any fault of yours, Boss? He brought the whole of it on himself. He’ll have learned properly today just how fearsome a place the gangho is.”
“Right?”

Black Leopard and his lieutenant filled the office with their ugly laughter.

Don’t go thinking this is the end of it, greenhorn. This business is only the beginning.

He meant to make the boy pay in full for laying hands on his money and his men. Today’s work was no more than a word of welcome. From here on he would put him through worse than this, again and again, for a long time to come.

What sort of face would the greenhorn make when he learned House Yang had been ruined on his account? The thought alone sent a thrill through his whole body.

He filled his empty cup and spoke.

“That Duho of the Red Headband Hall — I like him very much. He gets a job done properly.”
“I see it the same way. If we’ve work of that sort to be handled, I think we could put it to him.”
“Do that. And the medicine — keep a crate or two and sell off the rest.”
“Understood.”
“Good work.”

Black Leopard, a satisfied smile on his face, raised his cup to throw the drink back.

— Slam!

The office door flew open hard enough to break it, and one of his men came tearing in, gasping.

“Boss! There’s trouble!”

The lieutenant’s face screwed up hard and he shouted.

“Have you lost your mind! Charging in where the Boss is like that! Don’t you know I’m having a private word with him!”
“The treasure storehouse is on fire!”

The man ignored the lieutenant and shouted it out.

“What did you say!”

He shot to his feet. The wine jar and the cup hit the floor and smashed to pieces. The drink went out of him in an instant, and his head snapped clear as though someone had thrown ice water over him.

“Tell me what’s happened, quickly!”

Black Leopard pressed him. His face twisted until it was a fiend’s, and rage flushed it red.

The man took one look at him and swallowed hard. Then, with his lips shaking, he spoke.

“Th-they, they’re trying to put it out, but they s-say it won’t be brought under control.”
“And? Is it out or isn’t it?”
“They say they’re still at it, but the blaze is so fierce they haven’t been able to hold it.”

Black Leopard’s face set hard as stone at his words. The man raised his head, met his eyes, and sucked in a sharp breath.

“The goods in the storehouse?”

Black Leopard’s voice dropped low. That storehouse held the vast hoard the Great Saber Gang had scraped together over the years, and nobody knew it better than the man standing in front of him, who could not bring himself to open his mouth; only his lips shook.

“The goods. What became of them?”

The bellow made the man flinch, and he answered in a voice that crawled along the ground.

“We expect the fire will have burned through the whole storehouse and left nothing but ash.”
“…”

Silence.

A suffocating stillness hung about the office. The lieutenant and the man watched Black Leopard for a sign. His face went red and then purple, and thick veins rose along his neck.

— BANG!

Black Leopard brought his fist down on the table. The thick wood burst apart and splinters flew in every direction.

“Uwaaaaargh!”

The roar shook the building. Every last thing he had amassed in the running of the Great Saber Gang was gone. His stomach churned until he felt he might vomit blood. He tore the office apart, smashing whatever came to hand.

In a single moment, Black Leopard had been left with nothing.

At the same hour, the Shandong Escort Bureau in Jinan.

I was sitting face to face with Bureau Head Jo Mansik, drinking tea. He set down his cup and spoke.

“I have heard the story. You ran into a band of bandits, I understand?”
“Yes.”
“They tell me the medicine was taken from you. How is it, then, that you have brought the medicine you promised?”

The bureau head asked with the look of a man who could make nothing of it.

Because the medicine was never taken from me in the first place.

All I had handed over to the Great Saber Gang’s men was a portion of the whole consignment. The top layer was dressed to pass for medicine, and underneath it the crates were packed full of straw soaked through with oil. The real medicinal stock I’d set aside. I had drawn the Great Saber Gang into robbing the medicine, then gone home, taken up the stock I’d kept there, and come on to the Shandong Escort Bureau with it.

I’d lost a part of the whole consignment, true enough, but I mean to have Duho collect the price of it in full. None of that could be said aloud, so I made up something suitable.

“I had heard that bandits have been appearing across the Central Plains of late, so I had extra medicine made. I did not expect matters to fall out this way either, but I am glad I prepared beforehand.”
“Hah.”

Jo Mansik let out a sound of amazement.

“There is not a gap in you anywhere. I knew it from the first time I saw you, but young hero Yang’s discerning eye truly is a remarkable thing.”
“I was simply lucky.”
“Hoho — modest into the bargain. I only wish that son of mine would learn a little of it.”
“Is your son well now?”
“Thanks to young hero Yang’s medicine he has recovered, and he has gone out on an escort run somewhere close by. He says he will stop at the Yang manor on the way back to pay his respects, so I ask you to look kindly on him. It should take about six days, I expect.”

Jo Mansik smiled and went on.

“The goods have been received in good order. I will settle the payment as soon as the medicine sells.”
“Thank you.”

The talk with Jo Mansik came to a warm close. He seemed genuinely moved that I’d kept faith even after being hit by bandits, and the business had deepened the trust between the bureau head and me.

Should I be thanking Black Leopard for this?

I rose from my seat and made the cupped-fist salute.

“I will take my leave here.”
“Go carefully on the road back.”

The bureau head saw me off, and I took the road.

By about now Duho will have made his move.

If it had gone to plan, they’d have paid the price in full. My steps quickened without my meaning them to. I was curious how much the leader of the Great Saber Gang had paid for that medicine.

Jo Mansik, the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau, went to find his steward. The steward was checking the medicine inside the crates, then caught sight of Jo Mansik and greeted him.

“Bureau Head. You have come.”
“I have. How does the medicine look?”
“It is good. The packing was done with care and the contents are excellent. For goods said to have met a band of bandits, there is not a fault to be found in the crates or in what is inside them.”

Still marvelling, the steward showed Jo Mansik the crate of medicine. The crate was clean, without so much as a scratch, and the medicine bottles stood ranged in neat order. Jo Mansik nodded, pleased.

“To hold that kind of nerve and that discerning eye at once, at his age. My eye did not fail me after all.”
“Just so. When you first said you would hand over as much as seven parts in ten of the profit, I confess I was worried, Bureau Head, but seeing it now I can only marvel at your eye for picking a man.”
“Is it not? To have made extra stock against the chance of bandits taking the goods means he holds his credit that dear. That a man not yet past twenty handles his business at this level is astonishing, nothing less. I will stake my word on it — before long the name Yang Mujin will be known throughout the Central Plains.”
“I am of the same mind. Tying ourselves to a talent like that so early may well prove the Shandong Escort Bureau’s greatest asset.”
“From here on you must take greater care with our dealings with the Yang manor. Leave nothing undone, so that whatever happens they are never put out on our account.”
“I will keep it firmly in mind, Bureau Head.”

Instead of going back to the house, I turned in at an inn near Qingzhou. Duho had taken a seat in the corner, and I went over and sat down across from him. His face was smeared all over with soot, and he was giggling away at something or other.

“Wipe your face.”
“Have I got something on it?”

Duho wiped his face with the hem of his robe. The soot came off onto the cloth and turned it black, and he took one look at it and snorted.

“I was so taken up watching the fire I never noticed a thing on my face.”
“Enjoyed yourself, did you?”
“It was glorious.”

His voice went up with excitement.

“Just as you said, I put a light to the oiled straw bundles and the whole thing was blazing away in no time. Something to see.”
“Was there much treasure inside?”
“Oh, the storehouse was wide and they’d stacked it deep and neat besides. Shifting the crates was hard work.”
“They won’t have put the fire out, will they?”
“Of course not. I set the crates of oiled straw out just so, to make sure they couldn’t. And I saw with my own two eyes that it had properly caught. The Great Saber Gang’s men poured on water and dirt and the blaze only came up fiercer.”

I nodded and asked him,

“And Black Leopard?”
“His eyes have rolled back and he’s throwing a fit. A lifetime’s hoard burned clean away — there’s no way he’s in his right mind. Smashing whatever comes to hand and screaming, the whole place in an uproar, so they say.”

Duho snickered and knocked my shoulder.

“How did you ever come up with burning the storehouse down? You really are a vicious bastard.”
“I told you. I’d be taking the price of the medicine out of them in full.”

Rather more than I’d reckoned on, as it turned out… Less than my due would be one thing; more is always welcome. The more the better. The more there was, the further it spilled over, the better.

“So what now? To my mind Black Leopard will have his venom right up, so wouldn’t we do better to keep our heads down a while? If it comes to open war we get pushed back.”

I shook my head at his question.

“No. If we’re going to move, now is the moment.”

The Great Saber Gang needs a great deal of money to involve itself in an incident that takes place near Qingzhou later on. Give them time and they will make the sum up one way or another. I had to press them hard and leave them no room for it.

“…Hey. Hey. What’s that look in your eye? What lunatic thing are you about to do this time.”

Duho recoiled and pulled back in his seat.

“Lunatic, he says. This time we go about it in a thoroughly wholesome, gentlemanly way.”
“Why is it that when that comes out of your mouth I don’t trust it in the least? Go on, let’s hear it.”
“I mean to cut one of the Great Saber Gang’s sources of funds.”
“A source of funds? What is it?”
“A gambling house.”
“Ah — Tugeum Hall?”
“That’s it.”
“And what do you mean to do with it?”

I answered his question.

“Do with it? We go to a gambling house to gamble.”
“What?”
“Let’s go gambling.”

Let’s go and pull off a proper haul.