The Fire Lances of Kaifeng (1126)
The Fire Lances of Kaifeng (1126) — a history story. 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder History.
Page 1
The ox lowed and skidded as its hooves found black ice beneath the snow crust, and the cart's load shifted with a groan of straining rope. Pei Shuang threw herself at the ox's head, hauling the bridle down, but the wheel caught the dyke's frozen rut and the whole cart rolled sideways, crates splitting as it went. White crystal saltpetre burst across the snow in a long pale fan, glittering like spilled frost. 'Grab it before the crowd sees!' Hao Tiejun bellowed, already dropping to his knees, shoveling the precious crystal back into a torn sack with his bare hands. Lü Boyan stumbled down after him, his long robe dragging in the slush, scooping handfuls with his blackened fingertips even as refugees pressed closer along the dyke road, drawn by the commotion. Pei Shuang flung her body across the widest drift of powder, shielding it with her own apron while shouting for more sacks. Behind them smoke from Jin campfires smeared the southern sky above the Iron Pagoda's dark spire, a reminder of how little time remained.
Page 2
The stone pestle came down wrong, caught a grit of flint hidden in the mix, and threw a spark the size of a rice grain onto the straw drying mat beside the trough. The mat caught with a hiss, orange licking up through the dry fibers. Pei Shuang dropped the scoop in her hand and lunged, grabbing the soaked sheepskin hanging from a peg, and slammed it down over the flame, pressing with her whole weight until the hiss died under wet hide. Beside her Lü Boyan swept both blackened forearms across the bench, shoving the loose mixed powder in one motion off the edge into the standing water tub, sulphur dust blooming in a grey cloud as it hit. Smoke curled thick along the brick vault. Hao Tiejun crossed the hall in three strides, boots skidding on damp stone, and kicked the heavy plank door outward so it banged against the wall, dragging freezing air and daylight in behind it to pull the smoke out through the gap.
Page 3
The staircase inside the pagoda had rotted through in places, treads crumbled to black stubs above a drop of seven storeys, but Gou'er went up it like a squirrel, knees and elbows finding the sound bricks by instinct. Below, Lü Boyan fed out the sling-cord hand over hand, the brass sighting tube swinging and knocking against the hexagonal walls until the boy's thin fingers closed on it and hauled it the last ten feet onto the gallery. Snow blew sideways through the broken lattice. Pei Shuang pressed herself flat to the inner wall, steadying the old man's elbow as he leaned out to count the siege engines massing beyond the moat. Then a plank the length of a door gave way under Hao Tiejun's boot with a crack like a snapped bone, his huge body lurching into the gap — and Gou'er, already crouched there, grabbed his wrist with both skinny hands and threw his own weight backward, screaming for help, until Pei Shuang's arms locked around the boy's waist and hauled them both back from the edge.
Page 4
The bamboo yards rang with saw-teeth all morning, green poles stacked three storeys high along the ropewalk, each stalk longer than two men laid end to end. Pei Shuang crouched at the base of a stack, lashing cut lengths into barrel-bundles, while Lü Boyan knelt beside her marking saw-lines with charcoal and calling out measurements. Gou'er scampered along the rope-walk overhead, hauling poles down hand over hand, grinning at his own speed. Then he yanked the wrong pole from low in the stack. The whole tower groaned, shifted, and came down in a green avalanche, poles cracking against the stones of the bridge approach. Pei Shuang screamed as the mass buried her to the waist, pinned flat against the frozen ground. Hao Tiejun dropped the axe he was swinging and threw himself at the pile, hauling pole after pole off her body with his bare hands, flinging them aside like kindling. Lü Boyan scrabbled at the edges, dragging smaller lengths clear, shouting for Gou'er to pull from the other side instead of freezing in horror.
Page 5
The hook bit the merlon with a sound like a cleaver splitting bone, and iron claws dug into brick taller than a man's waist. Pei Shuang saw the ladder's crown rise past the crenellation, saw the first helmet, the first gripping fingers. She grabbed the fire lance from the rack, thumbed the match-cord alight, and slammed the bamboo muzzle down between the merlons into the climbers' upturned faces. The jet roared out five feet long, orange and screaming, and the ladder's dry rungs caught in an instant. Below her Hao Tiejun heaved his whole bulk against the ladder's top rail, shoulder driving it outward, while Gou'er flung a dipper of snow-melt from the waist-high cauldron to keep the hoarding timbers from catching. The ladder peeled from the wall in a slow arc, men still clawing at it, and went down burning into the dark below the rampart. Lü Boyan, pressed flat against the brick, steadied her elbow so the lance did not buck wide.
Page 6
The gallery was barely wider than a man's shoulders, the loess walls wet and yellow under guttering candle-stubs, props groaning somewhere ahead in the dark. Gou'er wriggled forward on knees and elbows, the fuse-cord clenched in his teeth, until he reached the breakthrough where the Jin sap gaped black beyond a curtain of roots. He struck the match, touched it to the bomb's fuse, and flung it hard down into the enemy tunnel before scrambling back as fast as his skinny legs would go. The blast came up through the earth like a fist, candle flames snuffing in the same instant, timber props snapping overhead. Pei Shuang grabbed Gou'er's coat collar and hauled him bodily past her as the ceiling began to sag. Lü Boyan stumbled, an arrow of falling clay catching his legs, and Hao Tiejun swept him onto his broad back without breaking stride, bulling forward through collapsing earth, dragging Pei Shuang's sleeve with his free hand toward the grey circle of daylight above the shaft ladder.
Page 7
Snow came sideways, thick enough to swallow the moon, and under it they ran out onto the black ice hauling the sledge by its rope harnesses. The goose-cart loomed three storeys high ahead, its hide roof bulking against the clouds, wheels as tall as a man set into a timber cradle. Pei Shuang threw her weight against the rope, boots skidding, while Hao Tiejun shouldered the sledge's rear corner and shoved it the last few feet, wedging the crate of bombs hard into the cradle's joint. Gou'er crouched low, shielding the slow match's spark-cup from the wind with his coat flap, and passed it to Hao Tiejun's waiting hand. Lü Boyan crouched behind them, counting breaths under his own, one blackened hand braced on Pei Shuang's shoulder to steady himself on the ice. The match caught. Hao Tiejun touched it to the fuse and bellowed the retreat, and all four scrambled, slipping, dragging each other upright, as the fuse hissed behind them into the dark.
Page 8
The ice cracked under running feet, long white seams splitting ahead of them like lightning. Hao Tiejun hauled the overturned boat-sledge by its rope, boots skidding, shoulders dragging against the burn in his thighs. An arrow hissed past Gou'er's ear and buried itself quivering in the pavilion's snow-heaped step. Then another struck true, slamming into Lü Boyan's back between the shoulder blades, and the old man folded forward with a grunt, hands still clutching his belt of paper slips. Pei Shuang screamed his name, grabbed the back of his sheepskin vest, and heaved him onto the sledge as Hao Tiejun kept hauling, bent double against the rope. They dragged him the last hundred paces, runners screeching over black ice, until the sledge struck the pavilion's stone steps and stopped. Lü Boyan slid off into the snow, already grey, his lips moving without sound. Pei Shuang dropped to her knees beside him as his paper slips scattered loose from the cord, tumbling across the drift, and she snatched at them with both yellow-stained hands, gathering them against her chest.
Page 9
Pei Shuang shoved her shoulder into the great bronze censer, waist-high and wide as a cartwheel, rocking it twice before it crashed off the plinth into the snow with a dull iron groan. Hao Tiejun hauled his axe off his back and swung it two-handed, slamming the blade down again and again until the ancient metal split into jagged black shards that skidded across the courtyard stones. Gou'er scrambled in between swings, dropping to his knees to scoop up the hot fragments with a folded cloth before they could scorch his palms, then ran them bent-backed to where the six bomb-shells sat open-mouthed in a row by the steps. Pei Shuang caught each bundle as he arrived, packing the shards in fistfuls, tamping the fuse-powder down around them with a stick, her sulphur-yellow hands blackening further with bronze dust. Along the colonnade the wounded hauled themselves up on elbows and crutches to watch, murmuring, too weak to help but unwilling to look away from the last weapons being built over their heads in the cold.
Page 10
They climbed the levee in silence, boots punching through crust snow waist-deep in drifts, the river below cracking in long black seams. Hao Tiejun carried the last fire lance across both shoulders like a yoke-pole, its bamboo barrel taller than himself. At the crest he dropped to his knees and drove the butt into the frozen earth, slamming his whole weight down twice before it held upright. Pei Shuang knelt and untied the oilcloth bundle of formula-slips from her apron, laying them at the lance's base and piling snow over them with both hands to weight them against the wind. Gou'er scrambled up with an armful of loose reeds and wedged them around the grave-post, packing the base tight, his small fingers raw and shaking. None of them spoke for a long while, watching the southern smoke rise thin over the needle of the Iron Pagoda. Hao Tiejun planted his axe beside the lance and bowed his head once, stiffly, like a soldier saluting a superior officer.
About this story
- Audience: general readers
- Format: 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder History
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