Lian woke up early so that the villager on the last round of fireworks watch could sleep an extra few hours. She toured the outside of the fort in an early morning chill, the grass damp with dew, and stretched as the sun began its long appearance over the horizon.

Her body was finally registering the soreness from her battle with the Keeper two days earlier, and almost every part of her hurt in the tender, gnawing way endemic to sore muscles and bruised skin. After twenty two years straight of one kind of battle or another – not to mention a childhood spent learning to fight – she’d grown used to those particular agonies. But as forty threatened she’d started noticing the pain lasted longer and the bruises didn’t disappear as quickly. Stretching had become a necessity.

She was finishing her suite of exercises when the first stirrings came from inside the fort and Quan and Fen trudged their way back from their lookout position. Quan looked tired, which Lian briefly considered to be positive, but Fen looked well rested and angry, which was not. Fen walked by her first, a dozen paces ahead of Quan, and said nothing, just stalked into the fort to speak to her uncle.

“How’d it go?” Lian asked as Quan plodded by, his face particularly exhausted and some sort of scratch mark on his throat.

“Fine,” he said, clearly indicating it had not gone fine. Lian considered pressing for more information, but she knew Quan had said everything he felt comfortable sharing. Lian let it drop and followed her son in to help organize breakfast so they could send the messenger on her way and start their march for that day.

That march turned into a slow, laborious one as the terrain grew higher and sunk lower in alternating waves, the relentless feeling of going uphill pervading each step along the way. When Li Jie announced they were closing in on the herder’s fields, Lian forced everyone to move even slower – including taking Li Jie and herself off their horses – so that she could approach each rise and examine the horizon for sentries. They had only covered five miles by the time the sun was directly overhead, and they ate in plaintive quiet next to a small stream.

Another two miles slogged by when Lian – with Li Jie, Quan, and Fen all just a few steps behind – came over a hill and then dropped to her stomach. “Everyone, down!” She whispered, waving for the peasants who were thirty feet behind with the horses to stop where they were. Fen ran back to them with Lian’s instructions, and the air turned absolutely still. She surveyed the wind first, ensuring it was still coming down off the mountains, then she slowly peeked over the edge of the rise.

The sentry was on a high, isolated hill, similar to the one Quan and Fen had used the night before, about 200 yards to the southeast. It didn’t have the sheer face, but it did come to a high point, upon which a single figure was pacing back and forth, twirling a red flag without purpose. The ground between Lian and the hill was remarkably flat compared to the rest of the countryside, and Lian felt grateful they’d approached as they had; if they’d taken the less difficult slope to the east, they might have been spotted.

She examined the surrounding area. The hill she and the villagers were hiding behind extended only twenty feet south before sloping off and joining the plateau. To the east the hill extended further, but then fell steeply off, producing the only true valley of any noticeable height. There was no way to approach the sentry without being spotted. So the best thing to do was to bring the sentry to them.

“Quan,” she whispered to her son when she’d crept back below the sentry’s viewing line. “Go with Li Jie and take everything off his horse except the saddle and bridle. Lead it to the edge of the hill there – make sure you can’t see around the hill though. When I give the word, nudge it out into the valley. Ok?”

“Ok,” Quan responded, the excitement of the situation wiping away the tired expression he’d worn all morning.

Lian watched as Li Jie and Quan started working, silently removing the food, water, and other baggage from the horse. As they worked Fen scaled the hill and knelt next to Lian. The younger woman said nothing, just stared at the ridge past which her enemy was waiting. Lian in turn stared at her, wondering what had happened the night before, and what the young woman was thinking. It was Fen who pointed out the bushes to the south.

“We could hide in there,” Fen pointed to a set of small bushes that formed a thin line where the hill met the plateau. From higher up they’d looked like the grass that covered everything else in the landscape, but Lian now saw that it was tall and thick enough to obscure the view of the sentry who didn’t know there was someone behind the bush.

“Good thinking,” Lian thanked Fen, grinning. Fen didn’t smile in return, just started to move towards the bushes unprompted. Lian followed and overtook her, then showed her how to slowly enter the sentry’s field of vision in a slow, gradual crawl. The two women lay on their stomachs, their view of the sentry mostly obscured by the bushes, but clear enough that they could watch to ensure their bait was being taken.

Quan approached the corner of the hill and looked to his mother. Lian gave a nod and Quan raced back. Lian and Fen watched, both of them breathing slow to avoid being spotted, waiting for the sentry to notice the horse.

It did. At once its body tensed up and the red signalling flag it had been playing with was replaced with a spear and a long, intense stare at the lone horse, followed by a thorough scan of the horizon where it had come from. More than once it looked directly at Fen and Lian, causing Fen to hold her breath and Lian to freeze her movements. Lian couldn’t be sure, but the horse must have stopped to eat some grass, because after several minutes, the sentry’s stare became fixated on the small valley. It was another few agonizing minutes before the sentry took the bait.

It bounded down the steep hill with excitement, but then walked across the plateau slowly, almost expecting an ambush. It even called out a few times – shouting names of fellow bandits who could have lost a horse – in a higher pitched but distinctly male voice. He made a final approach towards the horse, avoiding climbing the hill and instead going directly into the valley. As he did so he slipped out of Lian’s vision.

“If you want to follow me stay low and stay absolutely quiet,” she instructed Fen before rising up slightly and looping east towards the horse and the sentry. She heard Fen get up to follow, though quiet enough she wouldn’t ruin Lian’s stealth.

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Lian sprinted low, her feet gliding along the ground to avoid making a pounding sound. As she passed around the curve of the hill and onto the plateau, she saw the sentry standing next to the horse, patting it gently, mere feet away from being able to spot Quan, Li Jie, and the villagers. Lian moved even faster, hand on her Wamaian sword in case she needed to strike quickly. She couldn’t let this one raise any sort of alarm, and if he mounted the horse before Lian could strike she’d have to cut them both down.

She remained silent and lucky however – silent enough to reach the sentry without his ever noticing, and lucky enough that he’d rested his spear against the horse and never had a chance to bring it into play. Lian tackled him at the waist and arm, then spun him into a hip throw and slammed him into the ground, retaining a grip on his right arm as she did so, which she instantly put into a wrist lock. She clasped her other hand around his jaw and mouth, squeezing them both shut, and dropped her knee into his other arm, pinning him down.

He struggled for a split second until Lian tightened the wrist lock, drawing a pained growl out of his shut mouth. He shuddered then slowly opened his eyes and looked into Lian’s.

“Do you know who I am?” She asked.

She allowed him to shake his head very slightly.

“Do you know what I am?”

He looked at her, the swords and the hair, and nodded.

“So you know I can tell if you’re lying?”

He nodded.

“If I take my hand off your mouth, are you going to scream?”

He shook his head.

Lian snapped his wrist with an audible crack, then held him tightly as he squirmed under the intense pain. Behind her Fen recoiled slightly before steeling herself. Quan and the villagers also moved out into the valley to watch, their faces a mixture of interest and terror. Few of them could remember a Shuli Go, and none of them had seen one break a man’s bones with ease.

The sentry screamed and writhed against her for a while. That kind of scream she could handle, muffled as it was, but a full on scream may raise another alarm closer to the bandit camp. She waited until his shouting had reduced to a whimper and he’d stopped wiggling underneath her before questioning him again. The armbone she was resting her knee on was starting to dig in into her shin and it was very uncomfortable, she wanted to get this over with.

“Now you know it’s true. I can tell when you’re lying.”

She moved her grip off of his now limp wrist and encircled his arm at the elbow, the next joint she could easily destroy, although technically there were three other bones in his wrist she could always return to.

“So now let me ask you again: if I take my hand away, are you going to scream?”

He paused for a moment, tears starting to pour out of his eyes and a thin layer of mucus pouring onto the top of her hand. He nodded.

“Fuck,” she mumbled, “that’s not the kind of honesty I’m looking for. Ok, don’t scream. I just want to talk to you. Nobody has to get hurt anymore. We’re just going to talk. I’m going to ask questions, and you’re going to answer them truthfully. Ok?”

He nodded again.

“No screaming, right?”

He nodded.

Lian slowly removed his grip over his mouth, but kept everything else tight. He didn’t scream, but he did sigh out in pain, then started snivelling. His entire face was covered in terror, and as the other villagers crowded around it only grew worse as he realized how desperately he’d failed at his mission.

“Has the Keeper returned with the other bandits yet?”

He swallowed before responding in a weak, terrified voice. “No.”

“How many days have they been gone?”

“Four. Four and a half now.”

“When are they supposed to be back?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Lian eyed him, but he was telling the truth. She reconsidered the question. “How long are they usually gone?”

“Five days. Maybe six.”

“Ok. Where is the main camp?”

He paused, looking around for help from any of the villagers. When he found none he returned to Lian, the desperation of a cornered animal on every inch of his face. He’d made a decision to join the bandits because it had seemed better than all the other available decisions. The obvious choice. Now the decision to betray this better life to spare himself pain seemed just as obvious. The disharmony between the two obvious choices – join the bandits, betray the bandits – confused and troubled him. He had not learned the lesson she’d taught Quan: that sometimes the right choice can still lead to very bad things.

“They’re not worth it,” she told him, tightening her grip on his elbow at the same time.

The sentry broke down, explaining in a teary speech that the main camp was in a deep furrow in the rancher’s land about three miles to the south east, close to the mountain where Lian had directed Puotong. There were only six people in the base at that time, with another two sentries to the east, covering the most direct routes into the camp. With such a small compliment on hand, the flag system the Keeper had set up for sentries was useless – it required intermediaries every half mile – and he was supposed to shoot a flaming arrow into a pile of grass if anyone approached. With him out of the way they could take over the camp and lay their trap without much difficulty.

Lian released the bandit – not much older than Quan really, and asked for her son to come over.

“See what you can do about this,” she pointed to the bandit’s broken wrist.

Quan knelt down next to the man and gave him a reassuring smile. “This will hurt a bit,” he warned, as he felt the man’s wrist, already swelling from the trauma. When he located the broken bone he tenderly felt the edge of it and traced its path. Quan snapped the bone back into place and this time the man writhed and screamed out in the open, falling on the ground and shedding more tears.

Quan remained kneeling, moved into a meditative pose on both knees, and concentrated, whispering in Zhosian and bringing his hands up towards the sky. All the villagers and even the sentry watched him in wonder, as he completed the Keeper spell, gently grasped the man’s wrist and clamped over it with both hands. The man’s pained expression disappeared and he looked at Quan with marvel.

“You’re one too?” He wondered aloud.

Quan just smiled, then tore off a piece of his Zhosian robe. “The freezing only numbs the pain, it doesn’t heal anything. So keep your wrist straight. I’ll wrap it but it won’t be perfect, so make sure you don’t use it for a few weeks if you can.” Quan bound the man’s wrist into a makeshift cast and said, “The pain will come back in a few hours. Best thing is to try and sleep it off. Ok?” The former bandit was too mesmerized to say anything.

Lian ordered the villagers to repack the horse and put two of them in charge of keeping an eye on the sentry as they marched. Everyone snapped into action, energized by the display of their leaders. The mission that had seemed hopeless just twelve hours earlier was suddenly not just possible but probable: an unguarded bandit base, time to attack, and a Shuli Go and Keeper capable of breaking and setting bones at will. Not to mention the soldiers that were still promised. They moved into a dervish of action – even Fen and Li Jie moved with newfound purpose.

“You didn’t have to break his wrist,” Quan said to Lian as they stepped aside.

“But then how would you have fixed it?”

“I didn’t need to fix it.”

“But then how would you look both tough and compassionate in front of your girlfriend?”

Quan’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t blush quite the way Lian expected. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Fine. Fuck-friend. Whatever it is you kids are calling it these days.”

“Please, mom, this isn’t the time,” he said with a sense of resignation that caught her off guard. It truly wasn’t the time for him.

“Ok,” she relented. “Are you alright though?”

Quan just shook his head and walked away, muttering, “you didn’t have to break his wrist.”

Lian watched him go and shook her head. The lesson still hadn’t gotten through.