I Was Sent as Tribute to the Prince I Shot novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Rope

Jiang shot the noose off his adjutant's neck before two thousand Liang archers, and that night he went to his knees by choice.

Jiang was out the moon gate before the guards finished waking.

Nobody had told him where the Hanging Yard was, so he followed the noise.

A crowd of soldiers stood packed in a courtyard behind the Marshal's barracks, breathing steam in the grey light.

In the middle stood a plank scaffold and a crossbeam.

Du Heng stood on the trapdoor with a noose around his neck and his hands tied behind him.

His freckles had gone white.

He saw Jiang and grinned.

"General," he called, loud enough for the back rows.

"You're late.

I was going to make a speech."

"Shut up, Du Heng."

"It was a good one."

Marshal Cen sat on a raised chair at the side of the yard.

A brazier burned at his feet, and he held a cup of hot wine.

His archers lined the wall in ranks of forty.

"The tribute," Cen said, pleased.

"Up before the sun.

You see, men, how well-trained they are."

"Take me instead," Jiang said.

"A Yan thief for a Yan thief?" Cen sipped.

"The law says a stolen temple bell is a hanging.

The law does not say we can swap."

"He didn't steal a bell."

"Then he should have said so at his trial."

"He had no trial."

"He had mine."

A few of the soldiers laughed.

Jiang could feel them watching his hands.

He had no sword, no armor, and no horse, and the best archers in Liang stood forty paces from his chest.

"The sentence is read," said the officer on the scaffold.

"The hour has come."

Cen turned the cup in his hand.

Then he smiled slowly.

"They say you're the best bow in Yan, General.

They say you could split a willow leaf at a hundred paces.

Captain, give him a bow."

Nobody moved for a breath.

Then one of the archers stepped out of the line and held his own bow out to Jiang.

It was a Liang bow, shorter than Jiang liked, with a stiff pull.

The archer gave him a single arrow.

"Cut the rope," Cen said.

"If you can't, the boy hangs.

If you turn the bow on any man in this yard, the guards cut you down.

Then the prince will have to say it was the tribute's own doing."

It was a trap.

Jiang had seen it as soon as the bow touched his hand.

If he shot the rope, he was a Yan assassin with a bow in the Marshal's yard.

If he didn't, his man was dead.

Du Heng looked down from the scaffold and stopped smiling.

"Don't," he said.

"General.

Don't give him what he wants."

Jiang nocked the arrow.

He took a breath of cold air and let half of it out, the way his first teacher had taught him when he was nine.

The rope was thin and grey and swaying, sixty paces off and forty feet high, and the trapdoor beneath it was already unlatched.

"Hang him," Cen said.

The officer reached for the lever.

Jiang loosed.

The bow sang.

The arrow crossed the yard in a blink and went through the hemp an inch above Du Heng's head.

The noose parted.

The trap fell, and Du Heng dropped four feet.

He landed on his boots with a cut rope dangling at his neck and his mouth open.

Two thousand men made one sound.

"Nice shot," said Du Heng, in a very small voice.

"Late."

Then somebody said, quiet and clear, from the gate behind them, "Marshal, that's my bell."

Lin Jingshu walked into the yard with Wen Lanxi a step behind him and eight palace guards in his wake.

His hair was tied up hastily and his collar was crooked.

He looked at the bow in Jiang's hand and at the Marshal's raised eyebrows.

He did not look like a man who had just run through three courtyards.

"The bell," Cen repeated.

"I lent it to the adjutant a week ago to ring for his general's prayers," Lin said.

"Wen Lanxi has the loan slip.

Don't you, Lanxi?"

"Right here, Highness," said Wen Lanxi, patting his sleeve, and he swallowed a candied hawthorn so he wouldn't smile.

"A prince's loan is not theft.

Du Heng is a servant of my household from this morning.

Cut him down."

Nobody argued.

Cen rose from his chair, red to the ears, and stood very still.

"He took a bow in the Marshal's yard."

"At a rope," said Lin, "on your order, with a bow your captain handed him, in front of two thousand witnesses.

I'd call that a loan too."

A low sound went through the soldiers.

It might have been a laugh.

Cen heard it, and his jaw set.

He looked past Lin straight at Jiang, as a man looks at a lock he means to pick.

"A fine eye, General," he said.

"I'll remember it."

That night Jiang knelt on the floor of the Orchid Court and would not get up.

Lin had sent Du Heng to the servants' wing with a bowl of broth and a stern warning to stop talking.

Now he sat on the edge of the bed with his hair down, tired, rubbing his bad shoulder.

Jiang went down in front of him, between his knees, and put his hands on Lin's thighs.

"General?"

"I'm asking," Jiang said.

"Let me."

The candle shook.

"For what?"

"I don't know how.

Tell me."

Lin made a sound.

His hand came down into Jiang's cropped hair, the lightest touch, and Jiang pushed up into it before he knew he was doing it.

"Open my robe," Lin said, softly.

Jiang pulled the silk apart and freed Lin's cock, already hard and flushed dark against his pale belly, a drop of slick gleaming at the slit.

The sight dried Jiang's throat.

"Put your mouth on me," Lin said.

"Let me feel your tongue."

Jiang leaned in and licked the hot head of his cock.

Lin tasted of salt and musk, and his cock twitched heavy against Jiang's tongue as he let out a low unsteady breath above him.

"Yes.

Like that.

Suck my cock just like that.

Good."

Jiang sank his mouth down the hard length until the head hit the back of his throat and he gagged, and Lin stroked his scalp.

"Easy.

Wrap your hand around the base and fuck your mouth on it.

You're doing so well, Zhanyuan."

Jiang felt the praise in his chest and down in his own aching cock.

He had commanded thirty thousand men, and no one had ever spoken to him like that.

He worked Lin's cock with his wet mouth and tight fist, hollowing his cheeks and learning every pulse by the ragged sounds Lin made.

Lin's hips shifted, his ass lifting off the mattress to push deeper between Jiang's lips.

His fingers tightened and shook in Jiang's shorn hair.

"Look up at me," Lin panted.

Jiang looked up with his mouth stretched full of him.

Lin's face was flushed and open and wrecked, his eyes black, his mouth half open.

"Beautiful," Lin breathed.

"Fuck, I'm going to cum in your mouth."

Jiang hollowed his tongue and sucked harder.

Lin broke on a cry with Jiang's name in it, his cock pulsing as hot cum spilled down Jiang's throat, and Jiang gripped his thighs and swallowed every drop while he shuddered.

For a long moment neither of them moved.

Then Lin pulled him up onto the quilts and kissed him hard, and laughed, shakily.

"You shot a rope," he said, against Jiang's cheek, "at sixty paces, in front of the Marshal's whole guard."

"You told me to ask."

"I didn't mean for that."

He held Jiang's face in both hands.

"You can still hit anything you aim at, General.

Cen has noticed."

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