The Great Wall - The Official Movie Novelization

5

Up on her sky rig, Lin Mae gripped her two long lances tightly and tried to stay calm. The wind, which she could feel blowing through her hair, brought the awful screeches of the Tao Tei, which alone would have turned an ordinary man or woman’s guts to water. But she had trained for this. She had been born for it. She took long, deep breaths and tried to find the point of stillness in the center of her body. When it came to the battle she would draw her strength and her focus from that stillness. Whatever happened today, she would not be found wanting.

Still standing on top of his command tower, Wang beside him, General Shao silently observed the oncoming horde. He was anxious, though not for himself. He feared for the city of Bianliang, which the Wall had been designed to protect, and for the one million people who lived there. If the Tao Tei breached the Wall… If they reached the city…

He quashed the thought.

The Tao Tei would not breach the Wall.

He and his troops would not fail.

He would not allow it.

He watched the Tao Tei approach. He stood silently, waiting for them to get a little closer… a little closer…

Wang looked at him anxiously, but still Shao waited.

Come on, he thought, come on…

And then suddenly he sprang into motion, startling Wang.

Wheeling first left, and then right, he bellowed the order:

“Long distance weapon!”

As the war drums quickened, and General Shao’s order was relayed quickly along the Wall in both directions, the Tiger Corps warriors, responsible for engineering and artillery, leaped to the fore. Within the machine-like workings of the inner Wall, huge cannon balls were winched carefully from cauldrons of boiling oil and placed on iron chutes. Beside the chutes waited more Tiger Corps soldiers with burning brands, who set the cannon balls aflame and then launched them, trailing flames and heat, down the metal slopes of the chutes towards their destination. The chutes passed through channels in the Wall, allowing the flaming cannon balls to roll into the iron holders of the dozens of trebuchets ranged along the battlements. As soon as the cannon balls were in place, a trigger was activated and the trebuchets fired. Once their cargos had been released the trebuchets were primed again and the action repeated.

Perched precariously on the buttress, their hands still tied behind their backs, William and Pero watched as the sky became filled with massive iron fireballs. The noise as the trebuchets, one after another, launched burning metal death towards the advancing horde of green monsters was tremendous, almost but not quite loud enough to drown out the ceaseless screeching of the creatures themselves. And the effect of the fireballs was devastating. They rained down on the horde, smashing many of the creatures into instant extinction, and creating a barrier of rising flame between the Wall and the incoming tide of attackers.

Yet unbelievably the creatures kept coming. Many dozens of them, undeterred by the rain of missiles, burst through the flames leaping up around them, as if unaffected by the blistering heat. From his perch William could see that the creatures’ advance guard had suffered serious casualties. Yet he could also see that the creatures were so numerous that in the long run the death toll they had suffered from the fireballs alone would be so small as to be virtually negligible.

Another cry went up from the black-armored General on the command tower, his stentorian voice cutting through even the screeching of the creatures and the din of battle. William glanced up and across at the General, a distant figure whose black armour glinted in the sunlight, and wondered what he had said.

Whatever it was, he hoped it would prove effective against the enemy.

The drums changed tempo in line with the General’s new order, which in turn was relayed swiftly along the length of the Wall in both directions: “Raise the mirrors! Raise the mirrors!”

Perched on the battlements at the very front of the Wall, effectively standing on the edge of a precipice and peering down at the desert far, far below, Commander Chen of the Eagle Corps gripped his crossbow and waited grimly to be called into action. If all went to plan it would not be long now. The order to raise the mirrors had been given, and already, leaning forward, he could see bricks in the Wall flipping over rapidly, to reveal that on their backs were smooth reflective surfaces that caught the sunlight and deflected it in a shimmering wave of golden light over the advancing hordes of the Tao Tei. Within moments every single brick in the Wall had flipped around, to create a smooth mirrored surface that stretched the length of the Wall. It undulated and meandered through the Painted Mountains, absorbing the blinding sunlight and casting it back as a white glare.

He braced himself on his perch as the first of the Tao Tei approached the Wall at lightning speed and then hurled itself forward. It tried to scramble up the mirrored surface, digging in its talons, but the mirrors proved every bit as effective as it had been hoped. Unable to get any traction on the smooth surface, the Tao Tei sank back to the ground, its claws making a hideous screeching sound as they slid over the glass. Immediately more of the Tao Tei hurled themselves at the Wall, but they too fell back. Soon hundreds of the creatures were packed against the base of the Wall, writhing and squirming over one another in their desperation to rend and tear and devour. Chen smiled grimly. The Tao Tei were now exactly where the Corps wanted them to be. He raised his head, looking to his left and right, and gave the order.

“Fire! Aim for the eyes!”

Immediately a lethal rain of bolts poured down on the mass of Tao Tei below. Those creatures that were struck in the eyes died instantly, their life force extinguished in a split second. However those that were struck in other parts of the body only became more enraged, tearing and biting at the bolts, ripping them from their plated bodies and casting them away, as if they were nothing more troublesome than thorns or the stings of insects.

Still firing arrows, his hands moving so quickly they were almost a blur, Chen heard Commander Shao, up on his command tower, issue another bellowed order: “Crane Corps attack! Now!”

Watching another of his bolts strike home, he felt like a small but vital component of a great war machine.

Soon, he thought with grim satisfaction. Soon we shall have victory.

Lin Mae conveyed the General’s orders, and watched with pride as the red-armored Eagle Corps drew back, allowing the sky rigs of the Crane Corps to be wheeled forward. The mechanisms and controls of the rigs themselves would be manipulated by the Tiger Corps, each of the different disciplines among the warriors of the Nameless Order working together like harmonious parts of a single entity.

As she was moved into position she looked right and left, and saw that the first wave of her Crane Corps soldiers were as poised and ready as she was. Each of them was standing upright on their rigs, proud and fearless, lances in their hands ready to strike at the enemy. Lin Mae knew how eager each of them would be to do their duty, the exultation they would feel as they launched themselves from the battlements. As a Crane Corps soldier, to fly was everything. To soar was the closest one could get not only to freedom, but to divinity. Facing front, she gripped her lances and took a long deep breath, searching again for that point of stillness in the center of her body.

As the blue-armored woman on her flying rig was wheeled forward to take her place at the forefront of the battle, William felt his stomach clench. They hadn’t exactly become friends in the short time they had spent together—in fact, he was sure she would see him executed without a qualm—but he nevertheless couldn’t help feeling there was a connection between them, and not simply because she spoke his language. The thought of someone so beautiful, so graceful, going head to head with the slavering, voracious beasts below seemed wholly wrong to him, obscene even. How could her elegance and purity survive in the face of such insatiable savagery? War was a filthy, bestial pursuit, best carried out by filthy, bestial creatures like himself and Pero.

As she braced herself to leap into the unknown his heart began to beat as fast as the pounding war drums, and he opened his mouth, as if to cry out.

But before he could say anything, the moment was gone. She yelled out an order, and then without hesitation dived from the battlements, lances extended.

William watched with horror as she plummeted towards the ravening horde below.

Launching herself from the top of the Wall, Lin Mae knew that her life was in the hands of the Tiger Corps warriors operating her sky rig. If they made the slightest mistake she would die, but she had the utmost faith that that wouldn’t happen. As she soared into the air, she knew they would be operating the winches to slacken the ropes of the rig, allowing her to plunge towards the sea of green flesh and ravening jaws below. Holding on to the point of stillness within herself she readied her lances and focused on making her contribution count.

At the apex of her dive she felt herself tipping, falling, the desert wind battering her body and the sails of the sky rig with increasing force as she hurtled towards the ground. It was easy to panic here, to lose control, to spin and twist in mid-air. But she maintained her shape and concentrated on picking out her twin targets and sticking to them.

There! The eyes of the creature rearing up towards her, like a dog leaping to snaffle a scrap of tossed meat, were small and black, but as she plunged towards it, they seemed to grow larger, to fill her world. She adjusted the position of her lances slightly, and then, just at the right moment, thrust them downwards! The creature shuddered and died as the lances embedded deep in its eyes bent in two perfect arcs, slowing her fall. As her downward momentum was arrested, Lin Mae calmly and expertly flipped her body round in mid-air, from a diving position into a sitting position, at the same time bending her knees and drawing them into her body, tightening herself into a ball. She knew that up above the Tiger Corps soldiers would be frantically turning the winches in the opposite direction, pulling the ropes of the sky rig taut, so that she could spring back up into the air, out of danger.

For a couple of seconds, though, she was vulnerable. And sure enough, as she let go of her lances and watched the dead, impaled Tao Tei sink back into the morass of wriggling green flesh below, another of the creatures surged up from the throng, using the bodies of its comrades to propel itself towards her.

Lin Mae watched its widening maw grow larger beneath her feet, knowing there was nothing she could do. She saw rows of jagged teeth, a long red throat, smelled the thing’s breath come boiling up towards her, hot and rancid.

Just as the creature’s wide-open jaws began to close, the ropes of the sky rig reached their maximum tautness, and a split-second later she was shooting up into the air like an arrow fired from a crossbow. The Tao Tei’s jaws snapped shut so close to the bottom of her feet that she felt the upward push of air created by it rippling through her lower body.

Nevertheless she composed herself as she hurtled upwards, stretching out her body, enjoying the sensation of the wind parting around her as she cut through it. As she neared the top of the Wall, she tilted her body, shifting her weight on to her right side so that the sky rig swung round with her in a graceful half-circle. She held out her hands and one of the Tiger Corps soldiers expertly tossed across two more lances. Lin Mae caught them, and without even catching her breath, flipped and dived again. Around her she was aware of other Crane warriors rising or plunging as they performed similar maneuvers.

Suddenly she heard a scream from below. Looking to her left she saw one of her warriors plummeting towards the open jaws of a rising Tao Tei. The girl was trying to twist in mid-air, to aim her lance towards one of the creature’s eyes, but it was clear that this creature had not been her intended target, had instead risen unexpectedly from the mass and caught her on her blind side. Lin Mae looked on in horror as the girl frantically kicked her legs in an attempt to arrest or alter her course. But it was no use. The ropes of her sky rig were too slack.

Next moment the Tao Tei had her. The girl disappeared into its maw, still clutching her lance, and the Tao Tei’s jaws snapped shut. With a couple of sickening crunches it devoured both the Crane Corps warrior, her lance and half of her sky rig, leaving the remainder of the rig dangling in mid-air, blood-stained and mangled.

Awful though the sight was, Lin Mae knew she couldn’t let it affect her. They had all of them been resigned to dying a heroic death. They had known it was inevitable that once battle became joined with the enemy there would be casualties. As she plunged once again towards the seething green sea below, she tried to focus, to rediscover the point of stillness at her center.

But as she tried to home in on her new target, she realized that something was happening beneath her.

More than that, she realized that something was wrong.

High up in his command tower, General Shao had been watching the battle with a great deal of satisfaction. Their tactics had been working well. They had thinned out the advance guard of the Tao Tei with their fireballs, many of which were still burning; they had used their mirrors to prevent the Tao Tei from scaling the Wall, thus causing the creatures to mill about mindlessly at its foot; and now his Eagle Corps, Tiger Corps and Crane Corps warriors were working together with devastating effect to pick off the rest of the creatures at will.

It was almost too easy. Like spearing fish in a barrel.

But then perhaps they deserved an easy victory. They had been working tirelessly for many years to produce the most effective weapons and the most highly trained fighting force imaginable. And the Tao Tei, formidable though they were, were really nothing but mindless beasts. Perhaps they had finally met their match. Perhaps this victory would mark an end to…

Then Wang, standing beside him, drew his breath in sharply, and everything changed.

Shao looked at Wang. But Wang’s eyes were fixed on the battlefield below, where the Crane Corps were still diving and swooping. Wang, though, was not looking at their own troops. Instead he was observing the Tao Tei with narrowed eyes. General Shao followed his gaze—and then he too gasped in astonishment.

Something was happening among the Tao Tei. The mindless beasts that had been packed so tightly at the base of the Wall it was almost as if they’d been offering themselves up for slaughter, were now thinning out, pulling back—and not haphazardly but uniformly, like soldiers following orders. Indeed, General Shao saw an increasing number of the creatures lifting their massive heads and extending their surprisingly long necks, as if receiving some form of signal. The Crane Corps were still diving, but now there were fewer and fewer of the creatures left for them to kill. Almost meekly, considering how voracious, how utterly savage they were, the majority of Tao Tei were not only retreating but moving into formation, lining up in ranks.

William and Pero too were watching the Tao Tei with astonishment.

“Jesus,” William murmured. “They’re forming up.”

With nothing left to kill, the Crane Corps soldiers were leaping back up onto the battlements, detaching themselves from their sky rigs. William was relieved to see that the Crane Corps commander, whose name might or might not be Lin, was one of them. Not all the Crane Corps soldiers had made it. William had seen several flying rigs hauled back up over the battlements shattered, bloodstained and empty.

Pero was peering beyond the ranks of Tao Tei, squinting into the sun. Now he nodded to indicate the distant desert.

“Look there,” he said. “Further back.”

William looked where he was indicating, wishing he could raise his hand to shield his eyes. Some way back beyond the furthermost ranks of the Tao Tei another group of creatures had emerged from the cloud of mist that now all but shrouded the boiling river. There were around a dozen of them, similar to the Tao Tei but taller and more powerful looking. Impressive and terrifying though these new creatures were, it wasn’t they that drew the eye, however. Like a ring of bodyguards, the larger creatures were surrounding a being that was truly monstrous. Its body was massive, with dark, translucent skin and a huge, distended belly. Its eyes were a vivid green, flashing in the sun, and even though he was some distance away William sensed that a fierce, unknowable intelligence burned behind them.

As he watched, the creature raised its head and opened its vast mouth, as though chewing the air. William saw endless rows of curved, glinting, razor-sharp teeth, each of which looked as long as his forearm. Indeed, the maw itself, opened to its full capacity, looked capable of swallowing half a dozen men with a single gulp. He looked on with awe and revulsion as horn-like appendages on the creature’s head, linked by a web-like film of connective tissue, suddenly began to vibrant, and to produce a hideous, high-pitched ululating sound, which caused many of the soldiers in front of him to cover their ears with their hands. As the sound drilled into his head and seemed to set his skull vibrating, William wished he could do the same.

Watching from her perch atop the battlements, Lin Mae saw that the awful, elongated screech of sound issued by the vast creature in the distance was having a marked effect on the now eerily ordered ranks of the Tao Tei. Straightening up, row after row of them, like soldiers going into battle, they each raised their heads and let out an answering wail of their own. Then, in perfect unison, the first row charged headlong at the Wall and crashed into it with all their might.

Lin Mae tensed as she felt the stone battlement tremble beneath her feet. She knew, though, that no matter how hard they tried the Tao Tei would never smash their way through the Wall using sheer brute force. Did they honestly think they could?

Nevertheless they kept at it. After the first row had moved out of the way, seemingly none the worse for wear, the second row charged. Then the third row. The fourth. The fifth. Despite being bombarded by fireballs from the trebuchets and hails of arrows fired down from the top of the Wall by the Eagle Corps, the barrage went on and on.

It was only when the sixth or seventh wave of Tao Tei had smashed into the Wall that Lin Mae suddenly realized with horror what they were doing. They weren’t trying to smash their way through the Wall at all. They were trying to smash the mirrored surface, which had prevented them from climbing it!

And they were having a great deal of success too. Peering down between two Eagle Corps archers, who were perched on their “nests,” firing arrow after arrow into the Tao Tei ranks, she saw that the mirrored surface was already cracking, splintering, falling away. And with each successive wave of Tao Tei pounding their considerable combined weight against the Wall, she saw more and more of the smooth mirrored surface disintegrating, revealing the bare—and climbable—stone beneath.

Wang was a man who usually kept his emotions on a tight rein, but at this moment his face was etched with anxiety. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he pointed at the vast creature in the distance with the other.

“That must be their Queen. She commands them.”

General Shao diverted his gaze, peering in the direction of the Strategist’s pointing finger.

“Attack the Queen!” he bellowed. “Attack the Queen!”

Tiger Corps soldiers buzzed around the trebuchets like wasps around a nest, making alterations. Meanwhile, within the vast machine-like workings of the inner Wall, ammunition was being made ready. This time the oil-coated cannon balls were linked together and embedded with dozens of razor-sharp blades. They were lit and then propelled, burning, along the iron chutes, towards the waiting scoops of the trebuchets.

General Shao watched as the trebuchets were loaded, one by one, with their deadly cargo.

“Fire!” he yelled, and the counterweights of dozens of trebuchets were released almost in unison, the great firing arms flipping up and over. His eyes narrowed in grim satisfaction as razored fireballs flew through the air towards the distant Queen. Surely nothing could survive such a deadly barrage. Within moments the Queen would be cut to flaming ribbons and the Tao Tei would become mindless beasts once more. Then it would simply be a matter of employing their superior firepower to dispatch the creatures until there was not a single one of them left.

The razored fireballs flew up and over the main mass of Tao Tei who were still hurling themselves in ordered ranks at the mirrored surface of the Wall. Some of the fireballs, Shao saw, would fall short, whereas others would overshoot their target. More than enough, however, would reach their intended destination. He clenched his fists, knowing it would only be a matter of seconds. Already the first of the razored fireballs was beginning its downward arc.

But then Wang gasped beside him. One of the larger beasts surrounding the Queen had risen to its full height and unfurled what appeared to be great fan-like shields on either side of its head. Shao had no idea what the shields were composed of, but they must have been tougher than steel, because as the first fireball reached the Queen and her cortege of Paladins, Shao saw it hit the shield in a shower of sparks and bounce harmlessly away.

Within seconds the rest of the Paladins had risen to their full height and extended their own fan-like shields. Shao saw fireball after fireball hit the shields and deflect away, leaving barely a mark. Enclosed within the protective barrier, the Queen remained entirely unharmed. Directly below, meanwhile, the Tao Tei continued to follow her bellowed instructions, hurling themselves relentlessly against the mirrored surface of the Wall.

Then they stopped. And for a moment an eerie silence fell. Wang and General Shao looked at one another. Down below them, on the Wall, the thousands of Corps soldiers seemed to pause too, as though readying themselves for the next stage of the battle.

The mirrored defenses had fallen. Now they were just so much glittering shrapnel at the base of the Wall. The stone surface had once again been exposed, leaving the Wall vulnerable to renewed attack.

The Queen used the vibrating web between her horns to issue another order, and all at once the Tao Tei surged forward en masse and hurled themselves at the Wall once again. But this time they dug their taloned claws into the crevices between the stones and began to haul themselves upward. Some fell back, but many didn’t. The Tao Tei were climbing the Wall!

Trying to hide his anxiety, to appear calm and authoritative, General Shao stepped forward. “Close combat!” he shouted.

Immediately his order was conveyed up and down the length of the Wall. “Close combat! Close combat!”

Although General Shao had hoped it would never come to pass, this was another eventuality for which the soldiers of the Nameless Order had prepared themselves. Over and over again they had practiced their strategy for what would happen if the Tao Tei ever managed to breach the Wall. They had practiced it until every single man and woman could have performed their designated tasks in their sleep. And now the day had finally come when they were being forced to put that strategy into operation.

Within the inner Wall the Tiger Corps were busily pulling levers and adjusting mechanisms. As a result of their endeavors, the raised “nests” on which the Eagle Corps warriors perched with their crossbows suddenly cracked open, releasing great coils of barbed wire netting. As this was happening, the Crane Corps soldiers, now uncoupled from their sky rigs, moved back to form themselves into a defensive barrier, the rigs themselves, no longer needed for the time being, folding up and descending through trapdoors in the floor that had opened to receive them. The forward positions vacated by the Crane Corps were now taken up by the purple-armored Deer Corps, who advanced to a point directly behind the raised nests of the Eagle Corps archers. At an order from Commander Deng, which was relayed along the length of the Wall, the Deer Corps warriors raised their turtle-shell-like shields in unison, creating a formidable barrier between themselves and the enemy.

Despite the anxiety he was feeling, General Shao watched the preparations with pride. His soldiers had trained well, and now, with conflict against a terrifying enemy looming, they were acquitting themselves admirably. Whether they would win the upcoming battle was an impossible question to answer, but he was sure of one thing: whatever happened today, the men and women under his command would fight with courage and conviction, and would not give up until the very last one of them was dead.