Volume One, Chapter Eight: Disguise

In the distant outskirts of Mang City.

Every morning, the young man from the Winged Tribe, Ciwu, would open the battered wooden gate of the sheep pen and lead his flock up the hillside.

Though the Winged Tribe had a saying: “Red clouds at dawn never last till noon, red clouds at dusk burn through the earth” (meaning: morning glow keeps you indoors, evening glow lets you travel a thousand miles), their people had lived atop the mountains for generations. So, industrious Ciwu now herded his sheep downhill.

When he stepped out of the village, his kin were still sleeping on the muddy ground inside their ancient earthen houses.

Since the days of their ancestors, the Winged Tribe had isolated themselves completely from other peoples. They feared, despised, and even hated outsiders. The wars raging for millennia below rarely reached their lofty peaks. Once, their forebears had descended to battle the Han, but returned defeated, leaving behind two thousand years of ridicule at the hands of the Han.

A chieftain named Meng Huo, emboldened by the mists and treacherous mountains, had foolishly resisted the most cunning invaders from the Central Plains. That official, Zhuge Liang, toyed with Meng Huo as a cat does with a mouse, capturing and releasing him seven times.

From then on, the Winged Tribe’s natives, shamed and discouraged, retreated deep into the mountains, severed from the world. They believed in no religion, trusting only in the Bimo, the “Heavenly Bodhisattva” with long hair—a priest a notch above a shaman. Only when necessary would the chieftain command the village heads to lead the Black Wings down the mountain to raid for goods, especially to capture people as slaves.

This flock of sheep was Ciwu’s entire fortune, but he never sold them. Each year, during the Torch Festival, they would slaughter one, feast as a family, then cure the rest for the year’s meals. His father, growing old, urged him to raise as many sheep as possible; when he died, neighbors from miles around would attend his burial, and only then would all the sheep be slaughtered for the feast.

The more sheep served at a funeral, the greater the family’s honor.

Ciwu ate meat just once a year; the rest of his days, he survived on potatoes. Though he’d never attended school, he knew he was a Black Wing. Long ago, Black Wings were nobility, chieftains, at least free people, but now their lives were even harder than those of the White Wing children.

His father often recalled that their ancestors had houses, land, and winged slaves; decades ago, those homes and fields were divided among the newly empowered villagers.

His father’s funeral would last three days; most guests would be strangers, people he’d never met. They trekked for days and nights through the mountains, all for the sheep feast.

After wailing in front of the old house, the hills would fill with curling smoke. People lit piles of firewood and joyfully roasted chunks of mutton, drinking jars of rice wine from dawn till dusk, so drunk that men, women, and children sprawled across the slopes in a stupor, only to wake and drink again.

A few reckless drunkards would tumble down the hillside; if their skulls struck a rock and they died, it started another funeral and another sheep banquet.

For the protagonist of every funeral—the deceased—it would be the first time they slept on a plank bed; from birth till then, they’d always slept on the mud floor with the family’s chickens and pigs, if there were any.

Ciwu was a skilled shepherd. The flock of fifty sheep had a leader; as long as he controlled it, the rest would follow. Using different whip cracks and loud shouts, he conveyed various commands. The lead sheep, calm and collected, led the flock through the forest to graze on a relatively open, level hillside.

Though this shepherd, raised deep in the mountains, was sure-footed over peaks and ridges, he failed to notice today that someone was shadowing him closely—a pair of eyes had watched him from the dense woods for a long while.

Near noon, Ciwu herded the sheep through a mountain path to a meadow on the other side.

A figure stood in the road ahead. Before Ciwu could recover from the murderous glare in that person’s eyes, a blow struck his neck and he passed out.

On the highway into Mang City’s urban district, a young soldier was feeling the strain. Since the emergency siren had sounded at 2:00 a.m., he’d been in a military jeep within fifteen minutes, not even managing a sip of water.

Now, they’d been manning this checkpoint since eleven o’clock. Logically, the target might already have been found on other routes into the city, but no one had informed them.

Without breakfast, his head spun. His comrades said it was low blood sugar; coming from the rural Jingpo people, he’d never heard of such a thing—surely it wouldn’t kill him?

The submachine gun in his hands had never seen real use; for target practice, they trained with rifles. This was his first time on sentry duty with a box of live ammunition. Afraid of accidental discharge, he loaded the magazine but kept the safety on.

Another soldier stood a hundred meters away, armed and ready in case someone tried to rush the checkpoint.

Even on an April morning, waves of heat washed over them; in a few days, Water Splashing Festival would arrive. As soldiers, they could grab plastic water guns and burst out of camp, spraying the villagers.

No one would take offense, for during the festival, splashing others was a blessing. The young soldier was already looking forward to it.

They’d checked two small trucks, five hand tractors; the drivers and overloaded passengers were all locals, tanned dark by tropical ultraviolet rays. There were three men at the checkpoint; the squad leader carried a Motorola walkie-talkie, specially assigned to them by Yannu, but there was certainly no signal atop this mountain.

In his other hand, the squad leader held a black-and-white photocopied portrait—not a photograph, but a hand-drawn sketch, resembling the “wanted posters” of ancient officials.

The man depicted appeared to be in his twenties, wearing square-framed glasses.

Their orders were to kill on sight, even if someone merely resembled this man. The squad leader had no idea what kind of monstrous criminal warranted the whole company rising before dawn.

All three had been stationed in Mang City since enlistment. The squad leader had served seven years; the other two, over three.

Locals could be recognized at a glance.

The sound of bleating sheep drifted from the mountain path, dust swirling at the bend. A few sheep poked out ahead, then the shepherd appeared, driving the flock and walking under the noon sun. He wore the traditional “Charwa” of the Winged Tribe, patched and filthy as if untouched for thirty years.

As he approached, a soldier raised his gun to stop him. The man’s stench was overwhelming; the soldier would bet he’d never bathed in his life. The squad leader, unable to bear it, held his nose and gestured, “I won’t search him, leave this dirty work to you.”

The shepherd was lame, likely a childhood polio survivor. His tangled, grayish-white hair made him look over fifty. His small eyes were cloudy and vacant, his face darkened by highland sun, reminding the soldier of burnt potatoes on the hearth.

His teeth were yellow, his beard unkempt—clearly not the young man in the sketch. Slung over his left shoulder was a red-and-white woven bag, tattered like all local bags for carrying supplies. The filthy sack swung with his limping gait.

In his right hand he held a shepherd’s whip made from a tree branch. The soldier called out in local dialect, and the lame man replied rapidly in the Winged language, cracking his whip so the sheep obediently halted.

As he questioned him, the shepherd humbly cupped his dirty right hand over his ear and leaned in—he was deaf as well! The stench from his body and mouth made the soldier nauseous.

Though he was certain this Winged Tribe shepherd wasn’t their target, the soldier dutifully pointed his gun at the woven sack. The shepherd warily hid it behind him. The soldier smiled gently, snatched it away, and despite the shepherd’s muttered protests, opened the broken bag, its zipper long gone. Inside were some ragged clothes, as if salvaged from a trash heap, topped with hundreds of small-denomination bills; the foul odor made the soldier gag.

The infamous habits of the Winged Tribe were not exaggerated.

The shepherd fished out a packet of cigarettes—locally called “whiteboard cigarettes”—from the bag. He tore open the seal, pulled out two unfiltered cigarettes, and offered them with a trembling left hand. The soldier saw the five grimy fingernails and quickly waved him off.

The soldier looked pleadingly at the squad leader, who impatiently gestured, “Let him go!” The soldier waved, indicating the shepherd and his flock should move along.

The uncouth wretch, moved to tears, said “Kasasha,” driving his sheep slowly away. The soldier understood only this Winged word: Thank you.