Rin pushed the parabola forward. Two walls met at the center of the pass—blue and red, Phoenix and Dragon. Any normal body of water should have long since dissipated. This divine heat could have evaporated a lake.
Still the barrier held firm.
Burn, Rin prayed frantically. What are you doing, burn—
The Phoenix stunned her with a reply. The Dragon is too strong. We can’t.
Her flames shrank back into her body. Rin glared at Nezha through the water. He grinned back, smug. His army had completed their retreat. Her troops could still pursue them overland, but how would they get past Nezha?
Then it all struck Rin with devastating clarity.
Nezha had never intended to make a stand at Xuzhou. Sending his men to the ravine had been a ploy, an opportunity to find out the extent of Rin’s new capabilities, both shamanic and conventional, with minimal loss of his own forces. He hadn’t come to fight, he’d come to embarrass her.
He’d pitted his god against hers. And he’d won.
Nezha lowered his arms. The barrier crashed down, splashing hard against the rocks. The clouds resumed their heavy downpour. Rin spat out a mouthful of water, face burning.
Nezha gave her a small, taunting wave.
He was alone, but Rin knew better than to pursue. She knew the threat on his mind, could predict exactly what he would do if her troops surged forward.
Just try. See what the rain does then.
Though it felt like ripping her heart out to say it, she turned back to the Southern Army and gave the only order she could. “Fall back.”
They hesitated, their eyes darting confusedly to the clearly vulnerable Nezha.
“Fall back,” she snapped.
This time they obeyed. Sparks of humiliated rage poured off her shoulders as she followed them in retreat, steaming the water from her armor in a thick, choking mist. Fuck.
She’d had him.
She’d had him.
She hadn’t felt this sort of petty rage, this sheer indignation, since Sinegard. This wasn’t about troops, this was about pride. In that moment they were schoolchildren again, pummeling each other in the ring, and he’d just laughed in her face.
Chapter 28
“What just happened?” Cholang demanded. “What was that?”
“He’s got a god.” Rin paced back and forth before the general staff, cheeks flushed with humiliation. They were supposed to be celebrating. She’d promised them resounding victory, not this embarrassing stalemate. “The Dragon of Arlong, the ruler of the seas. I’ve never seen him pull rain into a shield like that. He must have gotten stronger. Must have—must have practiced.”
She kept her voice low so it wouldn’t carry. Outside the tent, the Southern Army waited in baffled suspense, their disappointment tinged with a mounting fear.
She knew whispers about Nezha were spreading throughout the troops. The gods favor the Young Marshal, they said. The Republic called down the heavens, and they’ve granted them a power to rival our own.
“Then why are we just sitting around?” Venka asked. “We were thrashing them, we should have given chase—”
“If we give chase, we’ll drown,” Rin snapped.
Xuzhou lay only miles north of the Western Murui. Any follow-up strike would be futile. Nezha had certainly positioned himself along the riverbanks, and as soon as their troops attempted a crossing he’d wrap the rapids around them like a fist and drag them to the Murui’s muddy depths.
Rin remembered vividly how it felt to drown. But this time Nezha wouldn’t save her. This time, he might pull her to the bottom of the river himself, holding her still as she thrashed until her lungs collapsed.
I can’t beat him.
She had to face that stark, immutable fact. The Phoenix had made that abundantly clear. Right now she could not engage Nezha one-on-one and win. It didn’t matter how many soldiers she had; it didn’t matter that she now controlled twice as much territory as he did. If they met again on the battlefield, he could easily kill her in a thousand different ways, because in the end, the sea and its dark, swallowing depths would always conquer fire.
And she knew Nezha would only get stronger the closer she marched to Arlong. He’d created a shield thick enough to ward off bullets with mere rainwater. It terrified her to imagine what he might do in a river so vast it looked like an ocean.
Days ago, she’d held every strategic advantage. How had her momentum vanished so abruptly?
If the entire leadership weren’t watching her, she would have screamed.
“There’s no way around this,” Kitay said quietly. “We’ve got to heed Chaghan’s advice. Back to the original plan.”
Rin met his eyes. Silent understanding sparked between them, and instantly the pieces of the obvious, inevitable strategy fell into place.
It terrified her. But they had no other choice. They had only one path forward, and now it was a matter of working through the logistics.
“We’ll have to stick to land routes as long as we can,” she said.
“Right,” he said. “Get over the river. Head straight down the mountains to the capital.”
“And when we’ve reached the Red Cliffs—”
“We’ll find the grotto. Kill it at the source.”
Yes. This was it. She’d been stupid to think that she might win this campaign without touching Arlong, when that was the locus of power all along.
Nezha fell if Arlong fell. Nezha died if the Dragon died. Nothing short of that would do.
“I don’t understand.” Venka glanced between them. “What are we trying to do?”
“We’re going to the Nine Curves Grotto,” Rin breathed. “And we’re going to kill a dragon.”
Rin ordered everyone out of the tent but Kitay.
They both knew, without saying it out loud, that what came next had to be delicately and discreetly planned. There were many roads to Arlong, but only one route that got her army there intact. Altan had once taught her that amateurs obsessed over strategy, and professionals obsessed over logistics. The logistics involved now meant the difference between dozens of casualties and thousands, and they could not be leaked.
Rin waited until the footsteps outside the tent had faded into silence to speak. “You know what we’ve got to do.”
Kitay nodded. “You want a decoy.”
“I’m thinking several. All pursuing separate crossings, with no knowledge of the other crossings, just the rendezvous point.”
That was the only way this could work. Nezha controlled the entire river, which meant he had every advantage except one. He didn’t know where or how Rin would cross it.
Meanwhile, Rin’s problem was how to move a large column over the river at a point that Nezha wouldn’t anticipate. She wasn’t working with a fast, tiny strike force anymore; she couldn’t pull off the kind of surprise ambushes she used to.
Moreover, she had to assume Nezha had spies within her ranks. Perhaps not in her inner circle, but certainly from the officer ranks down. That was inevitable in war—she had to plan every operation with the assumption that something would be leaked. The question was whether she could limit how much they knew. If she could trust Cholang and Venka, then she could break up a plan into pieces to give her generals limited, but sufficient, information.