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

was what he had anticipated, he held out a ray of hope that the three German captives were there in the tent on the slow-moving mule-drawn wagon. He handed the field glasses back to the foreigner and avoided the German’s anxious eyes. In his mind’s eye he gauged whether or not the tent could accommodate three good-sized Germans. Two scenarios played out in his head: One was that Sun Bing was according his German hostages the courtesy of riding to their salvation in a mule-drawn wagon. The other was that three bloody corpses were piled inside that tent. Neither superstitious nor much of a believer in ghosts and spirits, the Magistrate surprised even himself by offering up a silent prayer: All you spirits and demons in heaven and on earth, I beg you to let those three German soldiers step unharmed from that wagon. If they cannot walk, being carried off is acceptable. As long as there is still breath in their bodies, all is not lost. If three bloody corpses were carried out of the tent, the Magistrate could not bear to think of what that would lead to. A bloody, full-scale war was a distinct possibility, or a massacre. One thing was certain: his career would be over.
    While thoughts thronged the Magistrate’s mind, Sun Bing’s procession approached the bridgehead, making field glasses unnecessary to see all the men, their animals, and the mysterious mule-drawn wagon; the Magistrate’s attention was focused on the wagon, which bounced and bumped its way along, appearing to have plenty of heft without being overly heavy. The iron-rimmed wooden wheels turned slowly, creaking noisily with each revolution. As soon as it reached the bridgehead, the procession halted, and the musicians put down their instruments. Sun Bing spurred his horse up the levee, and when he reached the top he shouted, “You are in the presence of the great Song general Yue Fei. I demand to know the name of the general I face!”
    The Magistrate responded loudly:
    “Sun Bing, release your captives at once!”
    “First tell that dog beside you to let my daughter go!” Sun Bing replied.
    “The truth is, Sun Bing, they never did take your daughter,” the Magistrate said as he pulled back the curtain of his palanquin.” There is nothing but a large rock in here.”
    “I knew it was a lie,” Sun Bing said with a smile. “This Supreme Commander has eyes and ears everywhere in the city. You cannot make a move there without my learning of it.”
    “If you do not free the hostages, I cannot guarantee Meiniang’s safety,” the Magistrate warned him.
    “This commander’s emotional attachment to his daughter no longer exists. You decide whether she lives or dies,” Sun Bing replied. “But in the spirit of magnanimity, and despite the alien dog’s lack of humanity, this commander must retain his righteousness, and so I have brought the three alien dogs with me and herewith hand them over.”
    With a casual wave, Sun Bing signaled the Boxer troops behind him to remove three burlap sacks from the mule-drawn wagon, which they dragged up to the bridgehead. The Magistrate saw signs of struggle inside the sacks and heard strange muffled sounds. The Boxers stood in the middle of the road waiting for Sun Bing’s command:
    “Let them out!”
    They opened the three bags, picked them up from the bottom, and dumped out the contents: a pair of pigs dressed in German uniforms and a white dog wearing a German soldier’s cap. With squeals and frantic barks, the animals scrambled across the ground, heading straight for the Plenipotentiary, like children rushing into the arms of family.
    “They turned themselves into pigs and dogs!” Sun Bing announced earnestly.
    His troops echoed his words:
    “They turned themselves into pigs and dogs!”
    Magistrate Qian did not know whether to laugh or cry at the scene playing out in front of him. The Plenipotentiary, on the other hand, drew his pistol and fired at Sun Bing, hitting the club in his hand and producing an unusual sound. But to look at Sun Bing, one would have thought that his club had hit the bullet rather than the other way around. At the very instant when the foreigner fired his pistol, one of the young musketeers behind Sun Bing took aim at the German and fired a spray of buckshot, some of which struck the man’s horse, which reared up in pain and threw its rider; his foot was caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged by the blinded animal toward the river. The Magistrate flew to the rescue, like