Dead Tired - Volume Four - The Competitors Three - The Unwise

The Competitors Three - The Unwise

Unfortunately, he had burned several bridges before he crossed them, which is how he found himself in this strange and rather particular situation. 

He stood on a long road, behind him were fields of swaying grass, and further back light forests filled with birdsong and swaying shadows. It was that particular time of day, where some might call it morning and others night, but all would agree that every passing moment the night became less convincing. The sky was blue-grey and chilled. 

The men in front of him seemed to have embodied that chill as well. There was little amusement in their eyes.

Beyond them, the fields of grass continued. Were one to walk along them, across the ancient imperial road, they might find the grass turning yellow-orange, then discover it suddenly replaced by sandy ground. 

This was the edge of one province and another, a space of great change.

“You are not permitted here, old man,” the youngster ahead of him said. 

He squinted at the young man. Had he been called old? Glancing down at himself... well, perhaps he wasn’t as young as he’d once been. He wore robes that had once been white, but now were yellowed and brown, discoloured by years in the sun and recoloured by collected sand and dirt washed into the fabric by hasty cleanings along riversides and in passing streams. His hands were thin, his skin gaunt, but his muscles were corded and earned. “Permitted? Boy, permission is just a polite word for power. You don’t have either.”

The guard bristled. “I do have power. I guard this road.” He glanced over his shoulder to his companions. “We have power. By the seal of the great Emperor upon his Jade Throne, this road is shut and passage across it is forbidden.”

The young man wasn’t alone. He had some two dozen others with him. They had set up a small camp alongside the road. Three carriages pulled into a circle around a camp fire. Most of the guards wore road-stained but serviceable armour. Helmets, brigandines, long polearms. They were soldiers, not guards. Among them, by the campfire, was a young man in a long dress, studying a scroll in the early light.

“You don’t guard the road,” he said as he finished his inspection of the camp, finding no threat. “The road has been here a thousand years before you, and will be here a thousand after. If anyone guards anyone, the road guards you.”

The young guard blinked. “That makes no sense.” The youth scanned him up and down. “Are you a sage? An ascetic?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps? I don’t know if I’d consider myself wise, but I’ve spent more years thinking and walking the empire than you’ve spent living. I know these roads better than you know your cheap boots. And all that thinking tells me that I won’t be stopped by a brat who thinks he can forbid me a horizon.”

The young man took a moment to process the insults. He was pointed at, then the guard pulled out a stick from a sheath at his side, it had a small metal guard for his knuckles and a metal tip on the end which he used to gesture back along the road. “The Emperor’s law forbids passage here. You won’t pass. Not even for that tournament! You’ll go back the way you came, or--”

“Or what? You’ll strike me? That’s not law, that’s impatience with a stick.” He spat. 

“I am the law here!”

He laughed so hard he nearly coughed. Ah, it had been a while since he’d last run into the law, hadn’t it? In the wilderness and along the road, there was little by means of law, only the self and nature. 

He hadn’t set out to become an ascetic. That lifestyle never truly called out to him. And yet... at some point, he found that there was a serenity in avoiding people. Not because people bothered him, but rather because he liked to speak in his own way, on his own terms, and honest folk didn’t like honest speech very much at all.

Were he in any sort of sect--he wasn’t. He'd sooner punch an elder in the nose than have them tell him to sweep the floors--he might say that he was cultivating the dao of the long walk, or the dao of the lonely old man. 

“The law?” he asked. “You think you’re the law?”

“We are,” the young guard said.

“Then recite yourself. I’ll see if you’re well-written or just a scribble with legs,” he shot back. 

The guard bristled at that. The poor young fool wasn’t prepared for any sort of antagonism, or for anyone to question his authority. The ‘old’ sage, however, was more than prepared. This conversation was like many he had had before. Usually they were a precursor to him getting booted out of town.

The guard’s face flushed. “Enough of your riddles. Turn back!”

“They’re not riddles, child, they’re explanations too clever for you. If you spent less time licking boots and more time thinking... well, wouldn’t the world be a nicer place? Now, kindly shuffle aside before I confuse you into a coma.”

The boy stiffened, knuckles going white around the haft of his polearm. “You’d dare to mock the Emperor?”

“Him? No, I couldn’t take that one on in a fight. You... well... you’ve mistaken your reflection in the seal for the sun itself. That’s the danger of polishing bronze too long: you start believing you’re gold.”

“Now, look here, old man!”

He sighed. When they started to whip that kind of platitude, it was because they didn’t even want to fight him.

So he moved on.

Between one step and the next, he was several hundred paces past the guard and along the road. Another step and he was further still. There was shouting, but it was far behind him.

He was a wanderer, these roads his only home... though, that youngster had mentioned something about a tournament. He wondered what that was about.

***