Sandalwood Death: A Novel (Chinese Literature Today Book Series)

Squad leaders reported to the contingent commanders, who took orders from the two guardians, Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie, who in turn obeyed the commands of Yue Fei.
    As the sun rose on a hazy Qingming morning, General Yue and his two guardians set up an incense stand and planted the General’s flag at the bridgehead. Red turbans and sashes had been distributed the night before. When the cock crowed the third time, the order to muster at the bridgehead was given. Women in all the homes had risen before dawn to prepare food. What exactly? General Yue ordered: Today before the fight, warriors must eat their fill, white flour cakes and red preserved eggs will hunger pangs still . To improve the taste of the food, he told the women of each family to prepare yellow onions in broad-bean sauce. The women, who loved hearing General Yue speak, did as he asked. General Yue said that anyone who did not do as he was told was asking for trouble. What sort of trouble? On the battlefield, their amulets would lose their power, and a bullet does not have eyes. General Yue also told his warriors that they must abstain from relations with a woman that night so their bodies could ward off enemy bullets. Everyone took General Yue’s words to heart—their lives depended on it.
    When the early birds had exhausted their songs, all the many heroic warriors, in twos and threes, mustered at the bridgehead, as if on their way to market. General Yue was disappointed in the sloppy way they answered the call, but upon further consideration, he decided not to punish them, as he might have done. Ten days earlier, after all, they had been farmers, used to being carefree and undisciplined, and joining him now, during a holiday season between crops, spoke well of them. In fact, some of the more committed individuals had actually shown up before him.
    General Yue looked up into the misty sky. Though he could not see the sun, he figured it must be mid-morning. He had wanted to surprise the Germans in their beds, but it was too late for that. The plan to attack, however, would not be affected, given the difficulty in bringing together so many people at one time. The good news was that enthusiasm was running high. The men were talking and laughing, unlike the days soon after the massacre, when so many families had lost loved ones. After conferring with his two guardians, General Yue decided to start without delay by performing rites before the altar and the flags.
    Sixi, the youngster in the cat-skin cap, who had been assigned to transmit General Yue’s orders, raised a ferocious beat on his gong to quiet the noisy gathering of warriors. The General jumped onto a bench and issued his orders:
    “Find your contingents and squads, then line up to pay your respects at the divine altar.”
    Following a brief commotion, they managed to fall in line, all sporting red turbans and red sashes. Some of them—descendants of men trained in martial arts, families in possession of weapons of war—carried spears; others held cleavers, and still others had shown up with tiger-tail whips. Far more men had arrived with ordinary tools: shovels, pitchforks, double-sided hooks, and manure rakes. But there is strength in numbers, and seven or eight hundred men made a force to be reckoned with. General Yue’s excitement was palpable, for he knew that only by being fired in a furnace does iron become steel, and only by the baptism of battle does a group of men become a fighting force. Transforming a bunch of farmers into the assemblage before him in a mere ten days was nothing short of miraculous. Having no experience in the business of organizing and deploying forces, he had relied on instructions passed quietly to him by Zhu Bajie, who had put in time as a soldier at a small military center in Tianjin, where he had received training in modern drilling, and had even had the privilege of seeing the famous Yuan Shikai, who was overseeing training at the center.
    “Pay respects at the altar!” General Yue ordered. “And to the flags!”
    The so-called divine altar was in reality an octagonal table with an incense burner. A pair of flags on fresh, unstripped willow branches had been planted in the ground behind the table, one white, the other red. The red flag was the altar banner, with the seven stars of the Big Dipper embroidered in white. The white flag was the commander’s banner, with a large “Yue” embroidered in red. The needlework was the contribution of two