Bald Vulture asked.
"What do you think?"
His heart was full of tender thoughts and he had no stomach for killing at that moment. "Let"s sit a while and wait for him to sleep so that he can die painlessly." He took his wife"s hand and the two sat silently together on the sand. Soon after, Chen entered his tent and went to sleep.
The Twin Eagles could normally kill people without batting an eyelid, but they found it difficult to deal with these two slumbering youngsters. The constellations slowly turned, the wind grew colder and the old couple hugged each other for warmth. Madame Guan buried her face in her husband"s chest and Bald Vulture lightly stroked her back. Before long, both were asleep.
** 8 **
Next morning, Chen and Princess Fragrance awoke to find the Twin Eagles gone, and were puzzled.
"Look, what"s that?" Princess Fragrance asked suddenly. Chen turned and saw several huge characters drawn on the sand: "Your evil deeds cannot be forgiven. You will have to die." The characters were five foot square and looked as if they had been drawn with the tip of a sword. Chen frowned, wondering what the message meant. Princess Fragrance could not read Chinese and asked what is said.
"They had some other business and went on ahead," Chen replied, not wishing to worry her.
"Sister"s teacher and her husband are really nice..." Suddenly, she stopped in mid-sentence and jumped up. "Listen!"
Chen had also heard the distant, blood-curdling howl, and having lived in the northwest many years, instantly recognised it.
"There"s a wolf pack coming," he said urgently. "We must go quickly!" They hurriedly packed up their tents and provisions and galloped away just as the wolf pack closed in on them. Luckily, they were both riding extremely fast horses and the pack was soon left far behind. But the wolves had been hungry for a long time and having glimpsed them, continued to track them, following the hoof prints in the sand.
After half a day of hard riding, they dismounted to rest, but just as they had prepared a fire to cook some food, the wolf howls neared once more, and they hurriedly re-mounted, and rode off again. Only when darkness had fallen and they estimated the wolf pack to be at least thirty miles behind them did they stop and rest. Around midnight, the white horse began to neigh and kick about, waking Chen. The wolf pack was closing in once more. With no time to pack their tents, they grabbed up their rations and water bags and jumped onto the horses. They travelled a great arc through the desert, never managing to shake off the wolves. The chestnut horse could finally take no more and dropped dead of exhaustion, and they had to continue with both of them on the white horse. The extra weight slowed the horse down, and by the third day, it was no longer able to outrun the wolf pack. They spotted a clump of bushes and small trees and went over.
"We"ll stop here and let the horse rest," said Chen, dismounting. With Princess Fragrance"s help, he built a low circular wall of sand and placed some dead branches on the top. When lit, the branches became a protective ring of fire for themselves and the horse inside.
Not long after, the wolf pack raced up. Afraid of the flames, the wolves milled around outside the circle howling, not daring to get too close.
"We"ll wait for the horse to recover its strength and then break out," said Chen.
"Do you think we"ll be able to?"
"Of course," he replied. But he had no idea how.
Princess Fragrance saw how thin and emaciated the hungry wolves were. "The poor things," she said. "I wonder how long it"s been since they last ate?"