Chapter 11: Fa Mulan
The main room in the inn was packed with people from the village now. Shang sat at one of the tables with Chi Fu, half listening to the conversation around him and half keeping his eye on the entrance, hoping the medic would show up soon.
Pei served them the food that they had ordered.
"This food is excellent," Chi Fu commented to Pei.
"Yes. Sheng-Li is an excellent cook."
Pei disappeared into the kitchen then returned a few minutes later with two cups.
"Here you are, gentlemen. Rice wine, on the house."
The medic entered the inn and Chi Fu waved him over.
"Well, what is the news?" he asked.
"There has not been much of a change, but I have been able to control the infection. She is resting, and we will have to see over the next day or so what happens. Although, if she is going to be executed anyway, it all seems rather pointless, doesn't it?"
The man waved Pei over and asked him to bring him a cup of Du Kang.
"Right away, Guang-Zhi."
Shang finished his dinner and drank his rice wine slowly. He was pondering how he would handle Chi Fu. He knew the councilman was out for blood and wanted Mulan executed. He wondered if he would have to kill Chi Fu in order to protect her. He would definitely choose to kill the councilman over Mulan if it came to that.
He suddenly stared into his cup after drinking about half of it. He very rarely drank rice wine and he wasn't sure if he remembered what it was supposed to taste like. But there was a slightly odd bitter taste to the wine. It wasn't bad tasting. It was just odd. He shrugged, thinking it must be very aged, and finished drinking it.
There were now several men gathered at their table, asking them questions about the fugitive they were looking for. Chi Fu was telling them about how she had impersonated a man and a soldier, and had dishonored the Chinese army; but the villagers were talking about how they had heard that she had saved everyone's life, including the Emperor's.
Shang wondered how they could possibly know so much about it. How had this information traveled so fast to this little village that was so far from the Imperial City?
Chi Fu was chiding the villagers, telling them that the comments they were making sounded like treason. That didn't seem to scare them at all, though, and the conversation about the woman warrior Fa Mulan became loud and heated.
Shang was suddenly feeling dizzy and his eyelids felt heavy. He tried to force his eyes open and shake off the dizziness. One voice suddenly stuck out in the conversation, stating that they were lucky she had been there to save them, given the precarious position the country had been in after the Emperor's lousy orders to the general in the Tung Shao Pass that cost the lives of the entire troop stationed there.
Shang started to turn to the person that had said that, wondering at the comment and thinking that he had recognized the voice, but his mind felt hazy and he couldn't lift his eyelids. He suddenly wasn't hearing the conversation anymore. It was just a din of noise that washed over him, voices overlapping and running together. Someone was asking him a question and he tried to open his eyes and make his mouth form an answer, but he couldn't keep his eyes open and his voice came out incoherent and disembodied. Somewhere in his mind he was thinking that he hadn't realized that he was this exhausted.
"Captain! Captain!"
It was Chi Fu squealing. He sounded like a girl. Shang brought his hands up to his temples and tried to pry his eyelids open, to see what Chi Fu was screaming about. His vision was blurred but he could see that several men had surrounded Chi Fu and were holding his arms and restraining him, beginning to drag him off somewhere.
Shang went to stand and reached down for his sword but he couldn't move and his arm was too heavy. It just fell limply at his side.
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"Come on out, Mulan," Pei called out.
She stepped out of the kitchen. The men had Chi Fu bound and gagged. Chi Fu's eyes widened when he saw her. Though she was still wearing the tunic and trousers, she hadn't bothered to tie her hair up or streak her face, since everyone there knew who she was. She looked like Fa Mulan now, not Ping or Sheng-Li.
"This young woman saved your sorry hide two times and you didn't even have the decency to thank her," one of the men was saying. "He wants to thank you now, Fa Mulan. Don't you?"
The man had his hand at the back of Chi Fu's head and he forced him to nod.
"He also wants to show you proper homage, as you deserve."
Mulan gaped as he and another man shoved Chi Fu to his knees and forced him to bow before her.
The two men yanked the councilman back up onto his feet and began to drag him out the door, followed by Guang-Zhi and the rest of the group.
"We will return when we are finished."
Mulan turned wide-eyed to Pei once they had been left alone.
"It will all be over soon."
She suddenly noticed Shang slumped on the floor.
"What did you do to him?" she gasped.
"Don't worry. He is only drugged. We had to do it. If he had been coherent he would have drawn his sword and tried to stop us from capturing Chi Fu. It would have taken several of us to restrain him. Even in his drugged state he was starting to go for his sword. He may wake up with a headache, but otherwise he'll be fine."
Mulan bit her lip as she looked at Shang. She had been forcing herself not to feel and not to think about anything from before, including him. She had almost forgotten just how handsome Shang was.
"Are we just going to leave him there?"
"For now. At least until Guang-Zhi and the others come back."
xxxxxxx
Mulan stepped outside. She needed to get out of there. She was terribly upset after seeing Shang. She didn't want to die, and she knew that he was the one that had been sent to execute her, or at least to bring her back to the Imperial City to be executed; but she didn't want anything to happen to him either. She cared about him too much; she had always been attracted to him, from the first day that she was in his army camp dressed as Ping, and she had really come to care about him.
She knew she was being foolish and she was upset at herself for that, too. But she sincerely hoped that Pei and his friends wouldn't harm him.
After she had been discovered in the Tung Shao Pass she'd had serious doubts about her reasons for taking her father's place in the army. Those doubts flooded her again now, and she wondered why she had always been so incapable of leading the life of a normal woman. In her village she had always been known as Fa Zhou's beautiful but odd and unruly daughter. Even before she had gone to the matchmaker, most people had clicked their tongues at her and whispered that she would never grow up to be a proper young woman.
The other girls in her village had had an easy time passing the matchmaker's test. But Mulan just wasn't able to get her mind into everything that she needed to know for that test. It wasn't that she hadn't wanted to pass it. She just couldn't seem to keep things like the final admonition in her head. She had always been more interested in reading the books in their home, like Sun-Tzu. And those were the things that she'd had an easy time remembering.
She'd never been like other girls and she knew that it was something that her mother had always worried about. She had always been more interested in riding Khan, in learning Kung-Fu from her father, in reading. It was unusual for girls in her village to learn to read. But she considered herself lucky in that her grandmother knew how and had taught her.
It was even more unusual for girls in her village, or anywhere for that matter, to learn Kung-Fu; but she had always had an interest in it and she was the only daughter of a great and famous warrior who always wanted to make his only child happy. And she supposed he had wanted to pass his knowledge on to someone. He had no son, so he had been willing to teach his daughter.
Still. He had been so disappointed in her in the end; she had been a disappointment to both of her parents.
She wasn't sure about her grandmother. Her grandmother was outrageous and said whatever came into her head, much to the dismay and embarrassment of both of her parents; but she was also a very wise woman. Many times she had overheard her grandmother talking to her father, reminding him of how intelligent and unusual her granddaughter and his daughter was; and that she believed that Mulan was a girl that had the potential to make her own path in the world. Her grandmother, at least, had a very high opinion of her. If anyone in her family would forgive her and accept her back, it would be her grandmother.
But what kind of path had she made for herself? She knew she had done the right thing in going to the Imperial City to warn Shang and the others; everyone's lives were at stake. And she knew she had done the right thing when she got involved and made sure that their Emperor was not harmed. But she had to admit that even though she had been aware that the punishment for impersonating a man and a soldier was grounds for her execution, she had been hoping for a different outcome.
Mulan leaned against one of the supports of the overhang in front of the inn, the same way she had leaned against the column of her home the last night she was there, when she had run out of the house after the terrible argument with her father.
"No, no, don't think about it," she told herself, closing her eyes.
"Mulan, what's wrong?" Mushu asked.
She didn't answer. She slid down to her knees against the post, her hands grasping it, and pressed her face against it. Mushu hopped from her shoulder to the ground and stood in front of her.
"Nothing," she muttered.
"It's the captain, isn't it?"
She wiped away a tear that had started fall. "I just get sad when I think of home, that's all."
The cricket stood up on his hind legs and chirped indignantly at Mushu.
"I'm not trying to make her cry. I was only trying to find out what's wrong," he answered defensively.
Mushu hopped up onto her shoulder again and began to pat her comfortingly.
"Come on, Mulan. It'll be okay. At least you found some people who are on your side and who are willing to protect you."
"I know, Mushu. Sometimes I just have bad moments. But I know I am really lucky to have found these people. And I am grateful for it."