Captain Yue coughed. His horse snorted.
Tonglong adjusted his long braid. “Sir, if I may be so bold—I succeeded in completing my mission well beyond expectations. Perhaps this is accomplishment enough for all of us for one day. Please, don't kill the horse. You know that horses are worth their weight in gold out here. Especially the horse before you. It's a real fighter. I suggest you have Captain Yue take it out of your sight if it has offended you in some manner.”
Ying looked sideways at Tonglong and grunted. Then he turned to Captain Yue's horse. It reared up once more. Ying spit on it and backed away.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ying spotted movement through the open compound gate. Across the grassy expanse, a single leaf fluttered on a bush near the tree line. There was no breeze.
“Come ON!” Fu said to the tiger cub. “The sun will be setting soon.”
The cub didn't budge. It stared up the well-worn trail.
Fu grunted. “We've got to keep moving. I know you're exhausted, but we spent far too much time napping.”
The cub stuck its nose high into the air.
“Why are you being so arrogant? If you …” Fu's voice trailed off. He smelled it, too. Garbage. And garbage meant humans.
The cub's nose recoiled.
“Let's go!” Fu whispered. “I know it stinks, but maybe we'll get lucky and there will be some fresh table scraps or something. I'm starving.”
The tiger's ears suddenly perked up. And then Fu heard something, too. Voices. The cub growled.
“Shhh!” Fu said. He moved off the trail.
Fu took a few steps toward the voices and looked over his shoulder to see the cub still sitting on the trail. Staring straight at him, the cub blinked three times, then it turned and walked back the way they had come.
Fu sighed. He was disappointed, but he understood. The cub wanted nothing to do with the hunters they were tracking. He would miss the cub. He hoped he would see his new blood brother again.
Fu adjusted his robe and got down on his hands and knees. He felt a draft on his backside, and his head slumped. What did I ever do to deserve this? Fu thought. He adjusted his torn pants as best he could and crawled off through the underbrush, following his nose.
After a few moments, Fu reached one side of an enormous pile of waste. The voices were on the other side. The pile was five times as big as the one at Cangzhen, and it stank a hundred times worse. At Cangzhen, the bulk of their pile was vegetable trimmings. Fu wondered what had been discarded on this one. He doubted he could stomach eating anything that had been left there, no matter how clean the scraps appeared to be.
Fu kneeled down behind a large tree, holding his nose as two men carried on a conversation on the opposite side of the pile. One of them took a bite out of something. It sounded like an apple.
“What a shame it is to waste all this fine food,” the man mumbled, his mouth full. “But what else can we do? He told us to dump it, so we've got to dump it. I'm not about to argue with him.”
“Nor I, nor I,” said the second man. “Dump it, dump it.”
Fu sat straight up. He poked his head around the tree.
“Yeah,” said the first man, chomping away, “there's no point in making him feel any worse. If I were him, I'd have canceled the celebration, too. Imagine, your only son attacked by a vicious killer monk for no reason. And on top of everything else that's already happened.”
“Yes, yes,” replied the second man. “So true, so true.”
The first man swallowed, then took another bite. “It couldn't have happened to a nicer boy, either,” he mumbled. “They say he's now deaf in that ear. Can you imagine?”
“What a shame, what a shame,” said the second man.
Fu's eyes widened. He crept out from behind the tree and approached the back side of the pile.
“Yes, it certainly is a shame,” said the first man, swallowing. “You don't suppose this killer monk is a friend of that Major Ying? I heard he was once a monk, too, and I know for a fact he's the most evil creature to walk our countryside in generations.”
“You never know, you never know,” said the second man.
“I bet they're friends. This killer monk is probably trying to make a name for himself, just like that Major Ying has. What is this world coming to? I would do just about anything to stop that Major Ying. He's a villain if I ever saw one.”
“Indeed, indeed.”
Fu's face flushed. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He eased his way around the garbage pile.
“Well, are you ready to help me dump this?” the first man asked. “Or are you going to just stand around all day jabbering? I've got things to do and—”