Chapter 16: What Was Left Behind
Hao didn't argue about staying behind. That surprised me.
"You need someone here who can respond if the Prefect's men show up early," he said, standing at the gate in the grey before dawn. "I'm that someone. Bring back the iron, and bring back Bolin in one piece."
He gripped my shoulder and held it longer than usual. Then he let go and stepped back through the gate, and I turned north with Gao Ren, Bolin, and Duan at my back.
It was the first time I'd left Hekou since waking up in this body.
The road was different when you were the one walking it. From the drying rack, the northern route looked like a pale line drawn through green fields. At ground level, it was rutted, narrow, and exposed. No cover for a hundred meters in either direction. Anyone on this road could be seen from half a li away, and anyone seeing us would see four men carrying packs and tools heading east at a pace that didn't match farming business.
Gao Ren led. His limp slowed us on flat ground but he knew the terrain and his route sense was sharp. He'd pull us off the main road before I could voice the concern, cutting through tree lines and along creek beds that ran parallel to the path without being visible from it.
"Campaign habit," he said when I asked. "Supply runners who stayed on the main road got picked off by border clan raiders. You learned to walk the margins or you didn't walk back."
Duan kept rear guard without being asked. The man moved quietly for his size and his eyes never stopped scanning the shrubbery behind us. Bolin walked beside me, still buzzing from his breakthrough the day before, occasionally pressing his palms together in the prayer sign and reaching for the qi awareness like a child testing a new tooth with his tongue.
"Focus on the road," I told him. "Practice tonight."