It began on a dusty yellow plain, when three rebels made their play for the Land Under Heaven after years of skirmishes, plots and preparation. Below, men wielding powerful Mandates clashed. Above, on a rocky outcrop, a boy with none watched.

  “A shrewd move by the leader of the Grey Wolf,” I said. The banners upon the field were innumerable, the melee below indecipherable. Five years of fighting and I had just begun to scratch the surface of the nature of war. But to a young man, five years feels like more than enough to know something.

  We waited in cold silence, our horses whinnying impatiently when the wind carried the smell of fresh blood up to our vantage point.

  Uncle, mounted beside me, chewed on his whiskers while he surveyed the field. Eventually, he shook his head. “A foolish move! He’s backed his wolves against the rocks. They’ll break if they’ve got nowhere to go.”

  My gaze flicked past Uncle, to my father, who made no move to involve himself.

  I decided to double down. “Aye, the wolves have nowhere to go,” I conceded. “But they know it. They fight harder for their desperation. They’ll stand.”

  Atop a distant outcrop opposite us, a gray banner flew, the personal standard of the man called Dreadwolf, head of the Gray Wolf clan. So high above it, he would be seeing the battle as we saw it, not a clash of sweating, bleeding, shitting men, made of flesh and iron and wood, but as a gameboard, with some pieces to sacrifice and others to maneuver towards victory, or short of that, achieving some strategic objective for his clan.

  But Dreadwolf knew well that this was no mere game of chess. No piece left the board willingly. Placed between an insurmountable cliff face and the overwhelming rebel army, the Grey Wolves had no choice but to fight as if there was no retreat, no surrender, no alternatives.

  “They’ll hold,” ruled my father, and my chest swelled with pride. Commandant, as he was called, had once claimed that highest military rank in the empire, answering only to the emperor. Among his clan or within his holdings, his rule was law.

  “He’s wasting his men. Surely, they won’t last,” said Uncle.

  Bolstered by my last victory, I wasted no time in responding. “Noble Lion knows that. Already his infantry move to support.” Sure enough, a second army had closed upon the backs of the seething rebels. Well armored and well equipped, they were the hammer against the anvil, and the rebels began to falter.

  I smiled but my father’s gaze flicked to me and my armor creaked, constricting my chest just enough to cut off my air. The invisible grip released me almost as soon as I realized it and my father’s attention returned to the battle below. Chastisement? Or warning?

  Ironically, or perhaps prophetically, my father had been called “Commandant” long before he had achieved the rank. Perhaps even as a boy he had exuded power – martial power, physical power, and that special kind of power Mandated by Heaven.

  I had been right. And yet my father wanted me to hold my tongue anyway?

  Perhaps it was because I was always a quick study. Maybe it was because distinguishing myself in the classroom had earned me my first promotion in rank, and military study specifically had earned me another not long after, when I had passed the Civil Service Cadet’s exam. Now, I felt as if I surpassed even Uncle despite his years of fighting experience. Perhaps it was because, in a world where people could call down storms with a wave of a hand, or crush metal plate with a gesture, being right was all I had. For whatever reason, as two more of the Emperor’s armies closed upon the rebels, I couldn’t help myself.

  “If we delay any longer, there’ll be nothing left for us! We need to signal a charge before Noble Lion finishes it!” I directed this toward my father, but it was Uncle who responded.

  “Committing cavalry to that mess?” Uncle snorted. “We’ll be mired. And if the Generals slip out we’ll have wasted five years.”

  Five years…. Five long years we had hunted the rebel brothers who styled themselves the General of Earth, General of Flesh, and General of Heaven, who ransacked the Emperor’s granaries and pulled the peasants from their fields, then disappeared like dust before the Imperial Coalition’s forces could martial against them. My father had placed me in the cavalry when he had first drafted me, but it had taken him five more years to trust me with a command of my own. Now, here I was, knowing that this was the best plan to trap the generals and end the war, but still my father heeded Uncle’s council over mine.

  “Father, if we don’t move now-”

  The invisible hand closed upon my chest again, tighter this time, and my lungs found themselves suddenly unable to expand and draw breath. My panicked eyes rolled to my father. The Commandant’s glance was casual, almost lazy, and I knew he could end my life with barely a nod.

  “Boshe’s right,” he said, using Uncle’s personal name. “See that man over there?”

  He nodded toward yet another rise just beside to the one we waited upon. “That’s the Tiger of Jiangdong. They say he’s a descendant of Sun Tzu. As soon as the rebels break, he’s going to sweep in and take as many rebel heads as he can. If he kills three or even just two of the rebel generals himself, he’ll be labelled a Hero of the Times. He’d be ranked higher than even the Emperor. If we commit now, and the generals leak out in another direction…”

  Another significant look, and he released his hold on me.

  “So…” I said, chastened and rubbing my chest. “We’re not here to just win the war.”

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  “We’re hunting.” Uncle harrumphed. “So we don’t move until the Crimson Tiger does.”

  “But-”

  “No one,” said my Uncle, cutting me off, “flies faster than the Silver Falcon. Not even the Crimson Tiger. Isn’t that right, boys!”

  “Aiaiaiaiai!” came the ululations from the men at our backs. Our horses began shuffling nervously in the dust.

  The Tiger of Jiangdong’s crested helm turned, not toward the battle below – peasant rabble held no fear for one such as him – but towards my father. As I watched the distant figure, red cape streaming in the wind, he looked every bit as powerful as a tiger. It wasn’t just his build, but in the way all of his men oriented around him, yet gave him a wide berth, as if he were a beast in the jungle that exuded an aura of both fear and wonder. But despite that, did I see in his posture a sense of… wariness when he beheld my father?

  After all, my father had been ranked above him. The man called Commandant had only abdicated the rank when the rebellion broke out, preferring to lead his own forces into battle over a contingent of the Emperor’s.

  My father noticed my careful regard of the Tiger and nodded approvingly. “War, Sparrow, is not survival. Fighting is survival. Battles claim lives. But war is so much more than that. War is what you believe so earnestly that you would rather slaughter your kinsmen than give it up. Done poorly or foolishly, it can very quickly become, yes, a struggle to survive, as it is for the rebel hordes, as it is for the three rebel generals at this very moment. But for warlords, the real battle has nothing to do with that rabble, and everything to do with men like the Tiger, the Lion, the Wolf. It’s a competition to rise above the others and ascend to new heights. In that, the Silver Falcon is no different from the rest of them on these yellow plains, willing to wager our lives and our lands for a chance at immortality within the imperial ranks.”

  Finally, I realized my mistake, the first I had made since earning this new rank for which I had fought so hard over the last five years. Winning battles wasn’t important. Gaining from them was. By heaven! Uncle said we weren’t even here for the battle. It could have been a council meeting, or a wedding, or a conversation over tea. My father had been trying to tell me that the maneuvering of my words and my wits against Uncle was every bit as important as the maneuvering of horses and blades against the rebels, and because he had needed to say it out loud, explaining it to me like a child, I had lost face as an officer.

  I was shaken from my reverie, when, as if by some unseen signal, all the armor around me started to rattle and horses began whinnying in barely restrained fear. A tightness again gripped me, although this time it wasn’t the deliberate focus of my father’s Mandate, but the residual aura of five thousand men reaching for their heavenly gifts at exactly the same moment.

  Five thousand elite warriors, all born under the Silver Star, all blessed with the Mandate of Heaven and granted extraordinary powers, in various forms and to varying degrees, over the element of honor and justice, over the essence of metal. To them, the aura of combined power would be like a wind beneath their wings. To me, one without power, it felt like air whistling by me as I dropped from a great height.

  I turned back to the battlefield to see what had caused them to all reach for their gifts at the same time. Three warriors – lowly Green Skirmishers by the looks of it – had punched deep into the heart of the rebels and were even now cutting to the center of that army, where the rebel leaders, priest-generals of the Army of Supreme Peace, sat atop starving, half-dead steeds. I couldn’t see or sense the aura of those green skirmishers in the lead, but I knew no ordinary men could cut such a swathe of death and destruction through so many.

  Not to be outdone, the man they called Noble Lion stepped in front of his own Golden Infantry, crude earthen stairs rising up to meet his feet with each step and giving his soldiers platforms from which to stab or fire down. Once he was towering above the surrounding battlefield, alone atop a stone tower that hadn’t been there a moment ago, he knelt and plunged his sword downward, twisting it like a key that unlocked the very tumblers of the earth. A wave of stone blocks rose up to either side of him, rolling outwards until it seemed that a great fortress was twisting out of the earth to encircle the entire battlefield.

  Seeing a trap of colossal proportions closing, the rebel leaders kicked their horses into a full gallop, dust clouds rising in their wake, trampling their own soldiers who didn’t get out of the way quickly enough.

  The Tiger’s helmet flicked toward us for a moment, then returned to the battlefield.

  “This is the lesson Sparrow you can only learn from a battle like this,” said my father. “Study, training, military strategy. It’s all preamble to the clash between men like this. What good is a formation if three Green Skirmishers can cut through a million men? What good is a carefully chosen field when one man in gold can grasp the earth beneath your feet and change it on a whim. Battles can be won by wits and wisdom but the fate of the Land Under Heaven will always rest in the hands of the strongest Mandates.”

  My stomach dropped. He was telling me flat out, that without powers, I would never amount to more than I am now. If I never manifested a gift, I would never be his heir. I fixed my eyes to the battle below, willing some powerless peasant to reform his men and make a stand that mattered. As I watched, I prayed my father was wrong, but I knew he would not be.

  Noble Lion’s walls were rising faster than any peasant could react. For a moment it seemed as if the rebel generals, too, would be crushed where the earthworks met. But at the last moment, their mounts seemed to glide forward at inhuman speed. The Lion’s power suddenly faltered as another mandate was directed against the same earth and stone. The last earthen block meant to complete the barrier suddenly exploded outward as the rebel generals rode clear through Noble Lion’s trap, scattering peasants, Golden Infantry, and Green Skirmishers alike.

  I looked back toward the Lion atop his self-made tower, and I could see puzzlement in the way he held himself, even at this distance. Then he shrugged and withdrew his sword from the earth. He turned back toward his own men fighting the remaining rebel horde, seemingly content with what he could gain by orchestrating the route.

  “The General of Earth is mine, Boshe.” My father barely moved his mouth as he spoke.

  “Capture the General of Flesh or take his head as proof?” Boshe mumbled in the same subtle manner.

  My father grunted an assent.

  “And me?” I asked, turning to my father.

  The Crimson Tiger kicked his men into action the moment I spoke, no, the moment I moved.

  “Ach! Rearguard,” my father snarled. “Now, Boshe!”

  Nearly five thousand white, gray, and silver horses lurched forward with impossible speed, forced to a full gallop in the span of a heartbeat by the bits in their mouths, the metal shoes on their hooves, and armored saddles cinched at their bellies. The sound of four hundred horses launching into battle on the wings of their riders’ power was an earsplitting shriek, and I did my best not to wince as the Screaming Cavalry rode past me, down onto the field.