Chapter Text
Shang had left me here, with only my life, my horse, and a basket of dumplings. Not a thank you for saving his life or the lives of his men. He left me here after everything I have done for them, claiming, ‘A life for a life.’ The phrase tasted like ash in my mouth. Honor, it seemed, was a luxury to Shang.
An icy draft blows through the thin blanket wrapped around me, courtesy of Shang. A pathetic shield against the mountain’s icy breath. My horse, Khan, sidles closer to me; his warm flanks are the only thing keeping me from freezing solid. Every time I breathe, the pain from the wound in my side throbs, a rhythmic reminder of the moment that nearly ended me.
I whisper to the wind, “What do I do now, Mushu?”
A single tear streaks down my cheek, turning to ice before it can fall. Then, the crushing weight of reality hits. Mushu is gone. He isn’t coming back. My heart cracks at the reminder that my best friend, the only one who truly stayed, is dead. I will never get him back.
I am truly alone.
I eventually drift into a shallow, fitful sleep, only to be jolted awake by a hand around my neck. It isn't squeezing, just holding a silent promise of violence.
“You cost me a third of my men!” a voice hisses into my ear, hot and jagged against the cold.
I scramble back, pulling away to see the face of my attacker. My heart stops.
Shan-Yu.
“Come to finish the job?” I hiss up at him, baring my teeth in a last-ditch effort to seem intimidating. I won't go down silently. “You couldn’t have picked a better time, too,” I laugh bitterly, the sound echoing off the canyon walls. “Left for dead and alone.”
Shan-Yu doesn't strike. Instead, he smiles like a predator watching its prey tire itself out. “Oh no, you’re coming with me. You have a life debt to pay for a third of my army. You are my most prized prisoner.” He glances around the empty, snow-swept pass. “Besides, I don’t think your Captain is coming back for you.”
The words hit harder than any fist. I feel my chest twist as if a knife were lodged there.
“Like hell am I coming with you,” I spat at him. “I’m going to find Shang, and we are going to stop you!”
He laughs, a dark, rumbling sound that vibrates in the cold air. “The little Captain is a dog on a leash; he will follow his master rather than come back for you. He chose his laws over your life.”
Before I can object or swing a fist, he throws me over his shoulder like a sack of grain. He takes the reins of a skittish Khan in his free hand.
“You are my prisoner now, Ping.”
I bristle; my face pressed against the rough fur of his coat. “My name is Mulan.”
He stops dead. He shifts me slightly, glancing at me with a look of genuine surprise. “You’re a woman?”
I can’t help the sarcasm, even now. “Didn’t the breasts make that obvious?”
I remember a second later that I am still tightly bound beneath my layers of cloth and armor. It isn't obvious at all. Shan-Yu’s eyes narrow, but he doesn't look disgusted. He looks intrigued.
“Women or men, we see both as warriors among the Huns,” he says, his voice gruff.
He carries me for what feels like hours. I watch the snow-dusted ground move beneath us until the silhouette of his camp rises from the frost. The white tents are wraiths in the blizzard, blending so perfectly with the drifts that I don’t see them until we are walking between them. He hoists me onto Khan’s back for the final stretch, leading my horse through the rows of silent, watching soldiers. Their yellow eyes follow me, cold and calculating.
The silence is suffocating. My mind is racing, trying to find a way out, a reason for any of this. Before I can stop myself, the question escapes my cracked lips.
“Why?”
Shan-Yu doesn't stop walking, but I see his heavy eyebrow arch.
“Why wage war against the Emperor?” I press, my voice trembling from the cold and the sheer exhaustion. “Why risk losing everything you have in a war that means nothing?”
He stops. I can see the anger flaring in the set of his jaw. With a rough jerk, he pulls me from the saddle. I hit the ground with a muffled gasp, the impact jarring my wound. Before I can collapse into the snow, he hauls me up by my collar, dragging me toward the largest tent. He shoves me through the flap, and the sudden rush of heat from the interior is sickening, making my head spin.
“Meaningless?” he hisses, looming over me in the amber glow of a brazier. He looks twice his size in the shadows of the tent. “Says the woman who slaughtered three thousand of my men.”
I open my mouth to retort, to say I was protecting my home, but he snarled before I could get a word out.
“Don’t lecture me on righteousness, Mulan. You’ve spilled enough blood to fill this valley twice over. Look at where you are, what you’ve done.” He leans in, his face inches from mine. “You are no better than the men who left you to die in the snow. You're a killer without a cause.”
And with that, he turns and disappears into the night, leaving me alone with the warmth and the crushing weight of his words.