The Great Wall - The Official Movie Novelization

4

The pounding of drums echoed through the vast interior complex of the Great Wall. Smoke rose in precisely controlled signals from engraved copper vats on every turret, conveying messages far and wide. The corridors rang with shouted orders, and troops rushed in all directions, heading for their stations. In the midst of this manic but rigorously rehearsed pandemonium, William and Pero, hands bound behind their backs, were being hustled towards an unknown fate.

In front of them the blue-armored woman—Lin?—was leading the way, flanked by her two captains, or lieutenants, or whatever they were. Behind them, just in front of William and Pero, was the small, neat figure of the scholarly man who had been examining their possessions, moving with such economical steps that he seemed almost to be gliding along. Behind William and Pero, at the back of the group, cutting off all hope of escape, were eight huge, heavily armed soldiers in black bear armour, their faces set like stone.

A little breathlessly, Pero called out, “Are you about to kill us, sister?” His voice was all innocence. “Two lost travellers?”

The blue-armored woman didn’t reply, didn’t even glance back at them.

Turning to William, Pero said in Spanish, “What are we doing here, my friend? Is this cold bitch walking us to the gallows?”

“I think she’d like to,” William replied, eyeing her sweep of raven-black hair, the way she moved, nimble and quick as a bird, despite her armour.

Raising his voice, Pero said sweetly, this time speaking in English, “If it’s death we’re heading for, my dear, then I need time to pray. I’m a very religious man.”

But still his words met with no response.

They turned to their left, passed through a wooden gate, and began to climb a set of steep stone steps. The steps were divided into groups of twelve, at the top of each of which was a stone landing. Gaps to their left offered them brief glimpses of different levels of the Wall, and of soldiers preparing weapons and taking up positions, readying themselves for battle.

“I know this, sister,” Pero said. “I know siege preparations when I see them. Who comes at you so hard that you need a wall like this?”

The blue-armored woman continued to lead them resolutely upward, acting as if Pero hadn’t spoken.

The ominous pounding of the drums went on and on. William was starting to lose patience with the woman’s silence. Angrily he said, “If we’re to die, what’s the harm in telling us why?” When she still failed to respond, he bellowed, “What the hell did we kill out there?”

The scholarly man turned to regard him. He had the air of a man of science examining a new and interesting species of insect. “Tao Tei,” he said. “You killed a Tao Tei scout.”

William and Pero both gaped. Until this moment they had had no idea that the man could speak English. William opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, the man spoke again. Raising his eyebrows a notch—his only concession to incredulity—he said, “You killed it. You killed it alone.”

William and Pero looked at one another. What William had done was obviously significant. But when it came down to it, the beast, though big and fearsome and full of green blood, had been nothing but a wild animal. And he had been armed. So why all the fuss?

“What is a… Tao Tei?” Pero asked.

Up ahead the blue-armored woman finally responded—but only to bark an order at the scholar in Mandarin. The little man looked affronted, and responded coldly. William didn’t need a translator to tell him that the woman had told the man not to speak to the prisoners, whereas he had clearly said something to the effect that she wasn’t his boss, and that he would do as he saw fit.

Sure enough the little man turned back to them and said, “You are correct. We are under siege. But we did not expect the attack for another nine days. Many things about your story have importance.” He puffed out his chest a little, and as though the choice was his, declared importantly, “You are not to die today!”

If he expected gratitude, he was to be disappointed. William, for one, didn’t like his use of the word “today”. If he and Pero were to be killed, he’d rather get it done quickly than live under the shadow of death for however long it might be until he was no longer considered useful.

“That’s great,” Pero said with more than a hint of sarcasm, “but can we go back to the Tao Tei? Or did I miss something?” He enunciated his words carefully. “What is a Tao Tei?”

Before the little man could respond, the blue-armored woman raised an arm and barked an order. Immediately the soldiers both at the front and back of the group came to a halt, forcing William and Pero to do the same. William looked up to see they had arrived at a large solid-looking door with a circular handle below an oversized keyhole.

“Must be the stockade,” he murmured to Pero.

From behind them, one of the Bear warriors detached himself from their eight-strong escort and marched forward, carrying a huge dusty ring of keys. William glanced at him as he strode past, and was surprised to see that beneath the fearsome black helmet molded to resemble a snarling bear’s head was the face of a young and nervous boy. In fact, now that he looked more closely, it was clear that the boy’s armour, which was snug on his muscle-bound comrades, was a little too large for him. Despite the circumstances, William almost smiled.

The young bear warrior reached the blue-armored woman and nervously pushed a key into the lock. He tried to turn it, but it didn’t turn. As he withdrew the key and began to search for the right one with trembling hands, William saw his eyes widen in panic, saw sweat begin to trickle down his face. The blue-armored woman stood motionless, glaring at him. With the din of battle preparations audible from the nearby Wall, it was clear she was eager to get this job done and enter the fray. The young bear warrior muttered what could only have been an apology, and the woman released a gasp of exasperation. She said something to her two lieutenants, and they hurried away—clearly she had been giving them leave to join the oncoming battle.

Pero looked at William, amusement dancing in his eyes, and mouthed: Wrong keys.

William grinned back at him, but there was a part of him that couldn’t help feeling sorry for the boy.

General Shao stood on top of his command tower, his black cape with its bear emblem snapping in the desert breeze. Flanking him on both sides were several of his commanders, resplendent in their brightly colored armour. Though the group stood in solemn silence, staring out at the desert beyond the Wall, the air seemed to vibrate with tension and fear, but also with excitement. They all knew that what they were about to face was savage and terrible—but it was a moment they had all anticipated for as long as they had lived. A moment they had trained for, ceaselessly and tirelessly, since they had been children. A moment they had been born for.

In the distance, across the valley, a thread of river glistened under the sun. Beyond the river was the jade green Gouwu Mountain. At first glance the scene seemed a picture of beauty and tranquility. But beneath the whisper of the breeze was another sound, almost indiscernible at first, but quite definitely there. It was a sort of churning. Or rumbling.

Like distant thunder.

As the rumbling grew louder, it was accompanied by yet another sound, carried forth on the wind. This new sound was shriller and far more disturbing. It almost sounded like… babies.

Thousands of babies.

Wailing in terrible distress.

The group in front of the stockade door suddenly tensed and raised their heads, each of them half-turning in the direction of the outer wall. From beyond it, faintly, they could hear a terrible sound, a hideous screeching wail, as if thousands of children were being tortured.

Lin Mae was the first to recover. Turning to Wang she said urgently, “Strategist, the Crane Corps needs me. I must go. Please forgive me.”

Without waiting for a response, she hurried after her lieutenants, Xiao Yu and Li Qing.

Wang sighed, and then turned his mounting ire on the young Bear warrior, whose name was Peng Yong. “Hurry!” he snapped.

But his irritation did not encourage the boy. In fact, it had the opposite effect. Peng Yong jumped, and dropped the ring of keys, which hit the floor with a tinkling clatter. Sweating heavily, Peng Yong patted his own body, as if the missing key could somehow have magically worked its way beneath his armour without his knowledge.

“Sir, I…” Suddenly he blurted it out. “I cannot find the key!”

Wang sighed again, heavily, then spun to indicate the two prisoners. “Forget it! Bring them to the Wall and have the Bear Corps watch them!”

He stomped away. Still sweating, Peng Yong turned to the two prisoners and the group of impassive Bear Corps soldiers behind them. He gave a jerky nod, and saw the two men’s eyes widen in alarm as gauntleted hands clamped down on their shoulders.

Moving nimbly and almost silently for a man of his age, Strategist Wang sprinted up the steps of the command tower. He emerged into daylight to find General Shao standing there alone, staring broodingly at what looked like a dust storm, bowling towards them from the far-distant jade mountain.

Shao turned and nodded a greeting. Wang moved forward to stand beside him, his head barely coming up to the clawed bear paw epaulette on the General’s right shoulder.

“So General,” he said, “it’s finally happening.”

Shao nodded again. “Sixty years,” he said. “Sixty years spent in preparation for this one moment.”

Lin Mae hurried up the steps of the Crane Corps command tower, followed by several blue-armored warriors. At the top a nervous but clearly relieved Xiao Yu moved forward to greet her.

“Commander Lin,” she said, “the sky rigs are ready to deploy.”

William whistled in admiration as, escorted by the bear warriors, he and Pero passed through a pair of huge wooden doors and onto the wooden platform of a vast space just behind the outer surface of the Wall itself. The area—it couldn’t really be called a ‘room’—was deep and high, and stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions. William couldn’t help but feel he was standing within the workings of some colossal timepiece, albeit one that was infinitely more intricate and complex than anything he had seen before. Wherever he looked, his eyes were dazzled by numerous, vast mechanical components working in perfect harmony. There were enormous wooden and iron bearings, a cornucopia of wheels, winches, gears and levers, some propelled by gushing spumes of water. And among all of this, like busy but autonomous cogs in the machine, were dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of yellow-clad tiger warriors, each of whom were working furiously, operating an array of cranks and pulleys and rotating wooden handles.

He and Pero were ushered to the edge of the platform, and just for a moment William wondered whether they were about to be pushed into the maelstrom of grinding cogs and cables he could see below—blood sacrifices to the great devouring Wall. To his right he saw weird contraptions, five of them, slowly rising from hollows within the depths of the machinery. They were long and thin, and made him think of part of a ship’s rigging, its sails and spars tucked in tightly for now, though ready to expand, to unfurl, when given space to do so.

The five contraptions were being hauled upwards by chanting, sweating soldiers, but before they could reach the level on which William and Pero were standing, an iron cage slid down from above on pulleys and opened directly in front of them. The young soldier who had dropped the keys, as if anxious to make up for his earlier mishap, barked at them and shoved them forward. He and another bear warrior followed them into the cage, the young soldier closing the door behind them. Then several soldiers on the platform began to turn a winch, and the cage rose smoothly into the air.

William might have been alarmed if there hadn’t been so much to distract his attention. Through the bars of the cage he watched the narrow contraptions, which were now beside them and still rising rapidly—more rapidly than they were, in fact. Pero’s astonishment matched his own as the huge, folded bundles of sails and spars slid past their cage, ascending to the high ceiling. Just as it seemed the five contraptions would either have to come to a halt or collide with the ceiling, five separate sections of the ceiling opened with a cracking sound, and the contraptions rose majestically up through the holes, beyond which they could see daylight.

William and Pero looked at each other, blinking in awe. They had seen many wondrous sights on their travels, but never had they seen anything so advanced as this, and on such a vast scale. William couldn’t help but feel he and his companion were primitive and uneducated cave dwellers in comparison to their hosts. Whoever the enemy of these Wall warriors might be, they would surely have no chance of victory against such an incredible display of ingenuity and organization.

The cage reached its apex and clanked to a halt. The big bear warrior opened the door and the younger bear warrior, overly aggressive now, shoved William and Pero forward. They stumbled a little, squinting in the sudden bright sunlight that shone down on top of the Wall. To their right the battlements, which faced the desert, were a hive of activity as troops made their final preparations for war. William veered in that direction, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever was foolhardy enough to attack the Wall and its many and varied defenses. He had taken no more than a couple of steps, however, when sunlight flashed on steel, and a moment later the tip of a sharp lance was pressed against his neck.

The young bear soldier’s face was apoplectic with rage. His show of aggression and hostility wasn’t quite convincing, though. Beneath the boy’s bluster William sensed fear and uncertainty. If they hadn’t been surrounded by myriad armored soldiers, he would have found it a simple task, even in his exhausted state, to have snatched the lance, flipped it round and rammed it through the young warrior’s guts. He decided, though, that in this instance it was better to comply than to retaliate and end up dead. And so, curling his lips in a disarming grin, he raised his hands in surrender.

Clearly buoyed by his mastery over the foreign prisoner, the young soldier yelled an order at them. Although they didn’t understand his words, the fact that he jabbed them with the end of his long lance made it clear that he wanted them to sit against the wall. William and Pero did so, their backs pressed up against the rear parapet. They watched the proceedings around them with a mixture of professional curiosity, apprehension and utter astonishment.

What astonished them the most was the fact that the Wall, incredible structure though it was, was not simply a barrier against attack, but a brilliantly conceived war machine. Peering over the parapet behind them, they saw that attached to the Wall below was a seemingly endless row of huge trebuchets, like gigantic, jointed arms that were even now slowly straightening, that stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions.

They both jumped as the surface of the Wall at the bottom of each of the trebuchets suddenly began to crack open. William’s first thought was that the Wall was somehow breaking up, that the enemy, whoever they were, had launched a stealth attack, which was now undermining the structure. But then he realized that, like the ceiling through which the sail-decked contraptions had risen, the Wall was supposed to break open. He watched, amazed, as from the channels that had been created rose a series of vast iron chutes.

This, though, was perhaps only the least of the wonders they were destined to witness over the next few minutes. No sooner had the chutes appeared than, with a further series of cracks, the stone floor in front of them opened in multiple places once again, and what appeared to be numerous nests or platforms rose up from below. As soon as they were in position, rows of red-armored eagle snipers lined up and began to climb onto the platforms. Each of them was holding a weapon William had never seen before. It was similar to his own bow, but shorter, stubbier, and held horizontally rather than vertically. Odd though the weapons were, he and Pero had seen for themselves how accurate they could be. Again William wondered how an attacking force could hope to win against such firepower.

With the archers in position on their raised platforms, the floor cracked open yet again—in different sections this time—and the contraptions that William and Pero had seen earlier rose up through the gaps. There were not just five of them this time, but dozens—hundreds perhaps. They rose up into the air like giant spikes, and then, when they were in position, a flood of female crane warriors, fluid and nimble as dancers in their vibrant blue armour, flooded forward to tug on ropes and pulleys dangling from the undersides of the contraptions.

As they did so the contraptions opened up, like vast elegant birds spreading their wings. Immediately crane warriors began to step up onto the bird-like rigs, to buckle and strap themselves into harnesses that were attached to the structure, to become a part of it. As soon as they were in position, yellow-clad tiger warriors came forward to toss the crane warriors long lances, which they caught nimbly, before taking up their positions on massive winches to which the bird-like rigs were attached. The tiger warriors began to haul on levers and ropes, hauling the rigs higher, causing the great wing-like sails to spread wider, to fill with air. Now the crane warriors looked ready to launch themselves from the battlements, to fly and swoop through the air like gigantic birds.

William glanced at Pero, and saw that his dark eyes were as big as saucers.

Just as amazed himself, he muttered, “This is…”

“Unbelievable,” Pero supplied.

William spotted one of the crane leader’s captains or lieutenants clambering atop one of the rigs and strapping herself in, but he couldn’t see the crane leader—Lin?—herself.

And then he did see her, further along the Wall, barking orders, organizing her troops. She was perched on one of the rigs, which was being hauled into position by tiger soldiers. As the wings of the rig spread she stood proudly, stretching her body out as though eager to launch herself into battle, a long lance in each hand, as if she was prepared to fight twice as hard as everyone else.

She looked magnificent, dazzling, beautiful. Her black hair flowed in the wind. William couldn’t take his eyes off her.

And then, from behind a shadowy buttress in the Wall close to them, half-concealed by one of the trebuchets, a head suddenly appeared, snagging his attention.

The head was followed by the upper part of a lean, almost scrawny body. William blinked in surprise as the newcomer turned to regard him. What surprised him the most was not that the man had appeared, but that he was a Westerner, like himself! Who was he? Where had he come from? He didn’t seem to be a prisoner here. The man was cadaverous, with sharp, almost fox-like features. He clenched his teeth in a grin and nodded. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone again.

William turned to Pero, feeling slightly dazed. “Did you see that?”

Pero nodded. “I did.”

Beyond the din of preparations—the clank and creak and scrape of machinery, the pounding of drums, the bellowing of orders—the sound that had pulled them all up short in front of the stockade door, the screeching and wailing, as of a thousand tormented children, had been growing steadily louder. Now it was loud enough to start drilling into their heads, to send shudders of primal fear through their bodies.

“Who the hell are they fighting?” William asked, raising his voice above the ululation.

Pero shook his head. “No idea. But they look nervous.”

William surveyed the well-drilled activity still taking place in front of them. Admiringly he said, “They know how to follow orders.”

What Pero had said, though, was true. The soldiers did look nervous. And as the ceaseless wailing grew louder and closer and more ear piercing, they looked more nervous still, their eyes flickering with fear, sweat running down their faces.

“It’s a big wall to be so nervous,” Pero said.

Their bear guards had now turned their attention from their two prisoners and, like everyone else, were focused on the oncoming threat beyond the Wall. William nudged Pero and indicated the buttress to their right, from behind which the scrawny Westerner had appeared.

“Let’s get a closer look,” he said.

The two men sidled across to the buttress and, awkwardly because of their bound hands, scrambled up on to it as best they could to get a better vantage point. As soon as they were high enough, they peered over the heads of the hundreds of waiting troops at the desert beyond.

What they could see made them gasp. The river in the distance, which seemed to mark a border between the Wall and the jade mountain, was seething and churning, as if the water had turned boiling hot. Foam and spray were rising in the air, sparkling in the sun. But there was something in the spray, something dark that seemed to move with a kind of frantic purpose. Was it a single entity or…

“Dios mio…” Pero muttered.

William gaped, but couldn’t speak. He literally couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The creatures now bursting from the smothering cloud of spray, revealed for the first time beneath the unforgiving desert sun, were not animals but monsters. They barreled en masse towards the Wall, hundreds of them, thousands of them. And as they came they screamed their terrible, wailing war cry; a sound of rage and hunger and misery. It was as if they had burst from the very depths of Hell, bringing the screams of the tormented with them.

The closer they came to the Wall, the more William and Pero could make them out. Each one of the beasts was the length of a grizzly bear, or a great ape, with a solid, muscular body that was nevertheless lithe enough to propel them across the desert sand at an incredible speed. Their skin, plated like armour, was green and crocodile-tough, with a ruff of hyena-like fur on their backs, and although it was hard to tell at a distance, each plate seemed to be marked or inscribed with a translucent pattern of swirls. Their heads were massive and shark-like, dominated by huge, blood red mouths filled with countless rows of sharp, jagged teeth. Their eyes, by contrast, were small and deep-set, and were positioned not on their heads but on either side of their wide, barrel-like chests. Although the creature William had fought and killed the previous night had reared up on two legs to attack him, these monsters were racing across the desert on all fours, impeded not in the slightest by the fact that their claws were huge, club-like, and inset with curved, black, razor-sharp talons.

A shudder of primal terror ran through William’s body, yet mixed in with that was a scintilla of admiration, even awe. In all his travels he had never seen a creature so well equipped to fight and kill. He only hoped the Wall would stand firm against what was destined to be a devastating attack, and that the many and ingenious weapons of their captors would be enough to repel the invaders.