Chapter 37
Liu Min sat by the campfire brooding. His men looked at him with worried expressions, but he was past caring about that. As far as he was concerned, they had all failed him.
"Eat something cousin" Chen Yan begged him, offering him a strip of dried meat.
Liu Min looked at the meat in disgust. He looked back at the campfire.
"HOW had the girl escaped him?" he asked himself for the thousandth time.
He had seen the wedding caravan leave the peasant shack and head onto the road north with his own eyes. He had been positioned on the hill that was above and behind the small house, waiting for the party to leave. His men had ridden around to the place he had picked earlier as a perfect ambush spot on that road. It was a simple plan. How had it gone wrong?
They had waited for two hours at the ambush spot and the caravan never showed. Liu Min had ridden back along the road and they weren't there. He sent men to explore the roads in every direction in case they had doubled back. There was no sign of the palanquin, the cart, the men pulling it, or the girl.
Liu Min clenched his fist. "The groom must be very clever" he thought to himself, "but he doesn't know me. He doesn't know what I'm willing to do to get what I want." Liu Min's thoughts turned to the little peasant shack. The girl's mother was still there. She would know where the groom came from.
He stared into the fire with glassy eyes, awaiting the dawn.