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sight, just the empty treeless landscape strewn with rocks cocooned in ice, and the twin snakes of silver metal that cut through the base of the valley. The rail track.
    For a brief moment he allowed himself to wonder how many Chinese lives had been lost, how many rockfalls had come crashing down on their heads, turning the rails red as they were laid on the ground. It was the fanqui , the foreign devils, who dynamited its path through the valley. They’d come and stomped all over China. They laid down their metal roads, indifferent to the voice of the land itself, their big elephant ears deaf to the anger of the spirits of the mountain.
    First the European uniforms marched over the land, swarming like flies across the yellow dust and stealing its wealth, but now it was the Nationalist Army of that strutting peacock, Chiang Kai-shek. He was tearing everything from under the feet of the Chinese people, even the grass in their fields and the green shoots in the paddies. It made Chang An Lo’s heart ache for them and for this vast and beautiful Middle Kingdom.
    ‘Kuan,’ he said, tasting ice on his lips. ‘Contact Luo, then Wang. Tell them to lay the charges.’
    The young woman at his side slid the khaki canvas burden from her shoulder to the ground and began to unbuckle its straps, turning the dials with efficient skill. Kuan had trained as a lawyer in Peking but now was a radio expert, and it was her job to keep the various Communist cadres in constant touch on this mission. She worked well, with no fuss. This pleased Chang and made her an easy companion. He trusted her. Her only weakness was her lack of stamina in the mountains.
    As she murmured into the mouthpiece, he closed his eyes and opened his mind. He turned his face northward, directly into the bitter wind that raced down from Siberia, and he breathed it deep into his lungs, let its teeth bite at the soft tissue within him.
    Was she there? His fox girl. Somewhere across the border in that foreign land?
    Could he taste her in the Russian wind? Smell her? Hear the clear bell of her laughter?
    He wouldn’t say her name, not even inside his mind. For fear that the whisper of it would betray her and bring the forces of vengeful spirits down on her copper-fire head. She had stolen something from the gods and they did not forgive.
    ‘It is time,’ he said with an abruptness that took Kuan by surprise.
    ‘Now?’ she asked.
    ‘Now.’
    Quickly she buckled up the canvas straps, but by the time her cold fingers had finished the job, Chang was already moving fast down the mountainside.
     
    Death. It seemed to stalk him. Or did he stalk it?
    All around him bodies lay torn to shreds, limbs and torsos blasted to limp chunks of flesh and bone that were attracting crows before they were even cold. One head, a young man’s with black blood-streaked hair and one eye missing from its socket, perched on a boulder ten metres from the wreckage and stared straight at Chang. A head, no body. Chang felt the finger of death touch his heart till he shivered, turned away and walked down the broken line of the train. Glass crunched under his feet.
    Carriages at both ends had been blown apart by the dual explosions. Ripped open into a raw and tangled twist of metal and timber; bodies spewed out like wolf-bait on the icy ground. As Chang prowled past the carnage he hardened his heart against the screams and reminded himself that these men were his enemies, travelling south with the sole purpose of slaughtering Communists, determined to destroy Mao’s Red Army. But somewhere deep beyond his reach, his heart wept for them.
    ‘You.’ He pointed at a young soldier in the grey uniform and red armband of the Chinese Communist forces, who was dragging a bleeding figure from the wreckage. The wounded man was a Nationalist Army captain, judging by the colours he wore, and his gut had been torn open by the explosion. He was trying to hold in his bloody innards with his hands, cradling them,