94 The White Tiger (2/2)
”Are we going to wait this out until everyone is dead and only the winner makes it out there alive?” An Ning was furious. ”This is a fucking massacre. What kind of monster was this tiger anyway? Minister Si?”
”Your majesty, the white tiger is...erhm...,” the subordinate again came to the minister's rescue with another thick file.”It says here that it weighs twice the red tiger, has black and white stripes, and...,” here the minister looked at the two people staring at him with fear on his face, ”and two giant tusks.”
”What?” An Ning exploded. ”Do you mean to tell me that we sent out those kids with nothing more than their puny swords and their equally puny magic to capture and kill that monster?” An Ning was incensed. ”What the hell were you people thinking? Why didn't you tell us?”
Minister Si quaked with fear.
”I'm sorry, your grace. I didn't know...”
”You didn't know. It's your fucking responsibility, damn it! I'd better go out there and do something or else those kids are all going to die.”
The emperor, who had been quietly watching and thinking in silence, finally spoke.
”You can't.”
”What?” An Ning was stunned.
”There's nothing you can do to help them, An Ning.”
”Why the hell not?”
”Because the rule of the contest is 'winner takes all'.It's another way of saying you live or die by the skin of your teeth. Winner takes all means you do just that, you live or die, you compete and fight till the last breath is left in your body. Everyone knows what they were in for when they joined this tournament. They fall or they die. It's a matter of honor, An Ning. That's why you can't interfere with its outcome.”
”But...”
”Minister Si, send some men out and tell them to help out as they can. Get the injured out quickly and give assistance to those still capable of fighting. That's all,” the emperor said, watching as Minister Si almost ran to do his bidding.
An Ning was angry and didn't look at him.
”I'm as upset as you are,” the emperor said quietly. ”But it would be like you telling me to stop trying because you don't want me hurt or anything. This is a different age from where you came from, An Ning. Here, young people value courage and bravery. They would have hated you if you had embarrassed them by pulling them out of the field like that.”
An Ning was silent, turning around and meeting his eyes with a furious look.
”I know,” he smiled. ”I'll change the rules next time. Maybe a hand to hand combat with a much smaller animal. But it will not change the outcome,” he warned. ”People are still going to die just because they want to achieve glory in the battlefield.”
An Ning turned away as if disgusted by the brutality of it all. Gu Sheng let her go, watching her stare out the window still deep in thought.
In truth, An Ning was feeling saturated by all this talk of death and courage and honor. What's honorable about dying at the hands of a beast anyway? It's not as if there was any honor in killing a beast who doesn't feel let alone think. It was ruled by instinct nothing more. Beasts like that were better off destroyed with a gun than killed in a hand to hand combat, which was bloodier and more costly anyway.
”No hand to hand contact next year. Fight the bait with a gun,” she said, turning to the emperor.
Gu Sheng was surprised.
”You want to share our secret weapon with the outside world?”
”No, in a controlled environment here during the games. We'll teach the contestants how to shoot then let them loose with several baits to kill. This way, they'll have a better chance of winning instead of doing it like this. Fighting a monster with a bow and arrow or a sword. What's fair about it? I know,” she added, anticipating his argument, ”where's the honor in that?But we'll make it fairer for both bait and pursuer if you like. I'll think of a way. But not this way again.I will not condone it next time. Forty nine kids dead. That's too costly even for the time where I came from. You teach them honor. I'll teach them how to even the odds.”
It was early morning of the following day when the white tiger was finally captured and killed. The sound of a gong being banged repeatedly woke everyone up in the camp. An Ning, who had not slept a wink, was the first out in the yard when the tired and worse for wear combatants arrived.
No one said a word. The silence was more painful than anything. This time, another twenty-one had perished and an additional fifty-five injured. Most of the kids who started showing up at the lodge looked shell-shocked and terrified.
An Ning's eyes roved around the yard, hoping selfishly that she wouldn't recognize anyone. Her gaze suddenly focused on someone familiar, Xiang Yun, who was standing looking aghast at her compatriots with Mu Xing's arm holding her tightly to his side. Mu Xing's face was pale from shock and his hold on his wife's arm was more to give himself the assurance that she was here safe, being held by him in his arms, and not out there being torn to pieces by a wild animal.
It took them a while to learn who the winner was because everything was in total chaos by the time dawn arrived. It was one of the kids from Chengdi, not the boy with the mask, but someone even younger.When everybody was circling the beast trying to pull it down, the kid jumped up high on its back, scrambled up high on its neck and brutally pierced its eye with a spear. The beast tried to bucked him up but the boy held on, clinging to its thick mane until the other eye was plucked out. The boy then stabbed the tiger's dead eyes again and again, the last blow piercing the skull which toppled the beast to the ground where it shuddered and finally laid still.
An Ning, however, was not interested in the winner. She went to the field and saw for herself the beast itself. Twice as big as the massive red tiger. The giant paws as big as a van. The terrifying ivory-colored tusks hanging down from its mouth as tall and thick as electric posts. She stared at it and could imagine the fear and terror those kids must have felt face to face with this monster.
What kind of society would condone this kind of massacre?All for the sake of a forgotten-code of honor even the modern world no longer aspires to? What happened to safe and campy bivouacs where the worst thing that could happen was for anyone to end up being cannon fodder for a colony of mosquitoes?
When she went back to the courtyard, it was to find Gu Sheng missing. He was not in his room nor in the room she last saw him enter, the study where just yesterday they heard the report of the ministry of animal of protection about the red tiger.
No one saw him. Neither was he in her room, where he would always spend his mornings eating breakfast with her by the window.
An Ning felt the world stopped. And she was back in Li Cheung's maze that night when Richard pulled her from her world and flung her screaming and fighting into the past.