A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

They traveled 120 li (approximately 60 kilometers) in a day and a night.

There were 117 when they left the city, but nine had fallen by the time they reached the foot of the snow-capped mountains. Two had broken their legs after their horses stumbled, and the remaining seven had not fully healed and vomited blood halfway through the journey, leaving them in an abandoned post station. Yang Hu left them three days' worth of medicine and a pot, and asked Old Man Cui, who sold tofu, to stay and look after them.

Old Cui refused. Carrying the iron pot on his back, he said with his neck stiff, "Officer Yang, this pot is for making soup for the brothers. We haven't found the person yet, so who am I going to cook this soup for?"

Yang Hu looked at him for a while and then told him to follow.

From then on, that pot never left his back. When going uphill, the bottom of the pot would hit the rocks, making a clanging sound all the way, but no one in the group complained about the noise.

They rested for an hour at the foot of the snow-capped mountains that night. No one lit a fire, for fear of attracting the fleeing soldiers. Yang Hu sat against a rock for half the night, taking out and putting away the half-strip of cloth from his sleeve three or four times.

The next afternoon, they arrived at Sancha'ao.

That place was even more dangerous than the sergeant had described. It was surrounded by rocky hills on all sides, with a depression in the middle and only two entrances, one on the east and one on the west. The eastern entrance was so narrow that only two riders could pass side by side. Whoever was in the depression was a sitting duck.

The seventeen corpses remained in the same spot, untouched. Forty-five days of sun and rain had rendered them unrecognizable, leaving only armor plates, shoe soles, and bones.

More than a hundred people stood at the entrance of the valley, but no one went in first.

Yang Hu dismounted, handed the medicine box to Physician Liu, and went inside alone.

He didn't look at the corpses first; he looked at the ground first.

The soil at the bottom of the ravine was hard; the footprints from forty-five days ago had long been washed away by the rain, but there were still things embedded in the cracks between the rocks in several places. He squatted down and used the tip of his knife to pick out an arrowhead, two pieces of armor, and half a broken stirrup. The arrowhead was triangular, in the style of the barbarians; the pieces of armor were standard issue for the Da Cheng border army; a small piece of leather strap remained on the stirrup, the break clean, as if it had been cut off with a knife.

He placed the three items side by side on a flat stone. The three-edged arrowheads were shot down from the edge of the ravine, the broken armor was from the people inside the ravine, and the clean cut on the stirrup was from someone being cut in half on horseback and dragged off along with the saddle.

With those three things placed together, that night began.

Then he started looking at people.

The first body was three steps inside the east entrance, lying face up. The front of the armor was cut open, and half an arrow shaft was still stuck under the ribs. Yang Hu squatted down, pulled out the half arrow shaft, and compared how deeply it had penetrated the flesh.

"This one was shot while the person was standing," he said. "The arrow came down from above, from the edge of the ravine."

The second body was five paces behind him, lying face down. There were three wounds on its back, two from arrows and one from a knife.

"This one was hit while running back."

The third, fourth, and fifth bodies were all in the area of ​​the east entrance, with three facing outwards and two facing inwards.

Further into the valley, the people dispersed. One body lay under a rock, one hand still sticking out, finger bones embedded in a crevice; two bodies were side by side, one hand on the other's wrist, the posture not like fighting, but rather like one stopping the other's bleeding.

Physician Liu followed in, his face turning pale as he looked at the scene: "Physician Yang, why are you looking at these? The people are in such a state."

"I'm watching how they fight," Yang Hu said without looking up. "Whether the wound is in the front or back, whether they were standing or lying down, whether the arrow came horizontally or from above—all of these are recorded on the person. People can't speak, but these things don't lie."

Yang Hu walked to the center of the valley, stopped, and turned around.

"The five bodies at the east entrance were facing outwards; they were blocking the entrance. Because they were blocked, the barbarians couldn't rush in from the east. The seven bodies at the center of the pass were all wounded on their upper bodies, mostly with arrows and few knives; they were shot by the people along the edge of the pass." He pointed to the west, "The five bodies at the west entrance, four facing west and one facing east."

Su Heng followed his hand and looked over.

"The one facing west is the one that rushes outwards," she said.

"Yes." Yang Hu nodded. "They blocked the east entrance, were shot at from above, and finally broke through from the west entrance. This team did not collapse. Even at the very end, they still had someone directing them."

The valley remained quiet for a long time. Only the wind blew in from the east, swirling the bits of grass on the ground.

More than a hundred people stood at the mouth of the valley, listening to these few words, without uttering a sound. These corpses had lay here for forty-five days, and no one knew how they had survived their final moments. Now, this doctor, squatting on the ground, had read out the details of that night in just the time it takes for an incense stick to burn.

"Seventeen," Yang Hu stood up. "Thirty-four left the city. Seventeen left from the west gate."

After he finished speaking, someone in the group quietly asked how many of the seventeen who had left were still alive.

No one could answer it.

"Take these seventeen in first," Yang Hu said. "Dig pits on the spot, but don't burn them. Report their names one by one after we get back to the city."

More than a hundred people scattered into the ravine and began digging. There were only six shovels; the rest used knives and their hands.

"But they didn't get far." Su Heng pointed to the pile of rocks outside the west gate. "The crevice the squad leader mentioned is over there."

The crevice was thirty paces outside the western entrance, sheltered from the wind, and sandwiched between two leaning boulders, invisible from within the hollow. The opening was very narrow; one had to squeeze in sideways. Inside was a shallow cave that could accommodate about ten people.

A fire had been lit in the cave; the ashes were still there, piled low, with a few blackened stones stacked nearby. There was indeed still a little warmth beneath the ashes.

There was blood on the cave wall. It wasn't splattered, it was smeared, streaks, from the entrance all the way to the very inside.

Yang Hu squatted down, scraped off some bloodstains from the cave wall with his fingernail, rubbed them between his fingers, and brought them to his nose to smell.

"This blood is fresh," he said, "at most three days old."

There were other things in the cave: several cleanly gnawed bones, belonging to rabbits and mountain rats; a tightly packed pile of dry grass; and a water sac with a hole in it. In the corner was half a torn piece of cloth, bluish-gray, from the same garment as the half he had in his sleeve.

Physician Liu's voice trembled: "So, they...they endured forty-five days in this cave?"

Physician Liu wiped his face: "Then the blood in this cave from three days ago..."

"We can't last forty-five days." Yang Hu put away the half-piece of cloth. "Seventeen people, this cave can't hold them all. And there's not enough food."

He stood up and walked to the cave entrance.

Outside the cave entrance, on the ground, there was a shallow mark, a shallow groove left by dragging, pointing northeast. A layer of loose soil had settled on the mark, but the edges had not yet been smoothed out by the rain.

"They split up," Yang Hu said. "Most of them went northeast, and a few who couldn't walk stayed in this cave. Those who stayed only left two or three days ago."

"Where to?"

Yang Huxian remained silent. He squeezed out of the crevice and looked up towards the northeast.

That direction was a continuous slope covered with knee-high weeds, which were bent northward by the wind.

About thirty paces from the cave entrance, a strip of bluish-gray cloth hung from the branch of a short pine tree, about half a person's height.

Forty steps further ahead, there was another section tied to a tree.

Yang Hu's breathing stopped abruptly.

That was not a distress signal.

That's a road sign.

The group rested for a moment at the mouth of the valley. Someone handed over a water bag, but Yang Hu waved it away. He was calculating something in his mind: from this crevice in the rocks to that slope, if he carried someone on his back, it would take at most five li a day; if he dragged someone along, it would take three li.

Some people walked while making way for those behind them.