Chapter 69: The Lord's Opinion
The feast ended at the second hour past midday.
Elder Hua had set out the long tables in the commons with rice and the village's own salted fish and stewed greens with garlic, and the cooks had pressed enough rice wine from the autumn batch to fill twelve clay jars set under the eastern eave. Commander Xu sat at the elder's right hand at the head table, with Fei Liao at the elder's left. The militia captains and the cavalry captains and Administrator Wen sat at the second table. I sat at the third table with my four disciples, because the third table was where I belonged.
The elder gave a short speech. He thanked the Lord of the Western Reaches for the provisions and for the gentle hand the village had been given that morning, and he thanked Commander Xu for the bow she had offered. Commander Xu returned the speech with one of her own that was shorter and less ornamented. The village ate, the soldiers ate, and the cohort drank one cup each of the rice wine and were sober when the feast ended.
Preparations resumed in the afternoon.
The cavalry tended the horses at the western paddock. The Hekou militia checked weapons and oiled leather under the eaves of the temporary barracks the village had cleared for them. Administrator Wen's quartermasters counted the remaining rations and set aside the portions for the march. The scouts Commander Xu had sent out at the second hour returned at the fourth with maps of the lower Meishan road updated against what we had ridden through, and they sat with Fei Liao in his command tent to compare them against the maps Commander Xu had brought from the Outer Garrison.
I walked to the open ground past the southern pasture and looked at the Snare from a distance of fifty paces, only to confirm the five stones still sat flush with the earth and had not been disturbed by wind or animal. They had not. The cord scrape I had used to mark the chords was already half-blown away. By the third watch, the cord scrape would be gone entirely, and the only thing remaining would be five stones in the earth in a shape no one in this world could read except me.
I walked back to the village in the slanting late-afternoon light.
The cohort gathered at the eastern edge of the commons in the early evening, under the largest banyan tree in Chianji. The lanterns from the feast had been left in their branches, and the tables had not been broken down yet. Villagers were still around. Children ran between the table legs. Elders sat at the far end with the elder's wife pouring the second pressing of rice wine from earthen pitchers. A few militia men from Hekou had wandered over to join the village table.
Sun Hai was loud. He was on his fourth cup when I sat down at the end of the table, his cheeks red, telling a militia man from Hekou about the watchtower climb. Cao Yan was on his second cup, drinking it slow, watching the children at the next table without speaking. Lin Zhi had her cup in her hand but had not lifted it in some time. Mu Renshu had taken one cup at the feast and refused the second when it had been offered, and his cup sat in front of him with the wine line untouched.