The name made everything worse.
Xu Hao had grown comfortable with Big One and Big Two. Those were sensible names. They required no vocabulary, caused no offence that he knew of, and allowed him to distinguish his captors without admitting that he had begun to think of them as anything else.
Wang Da Bao and Wang Er Bao were names belonging to people. People had parents and histories. They remembered birthdays. They could ask you questions you weren't prepared to answer.
And, apparently, they expected you to pronounce their names correctly.
"Da Bao," Xu Hao said.
The shorter giant shook his head and repeated it.
Xu Hao tried again.
Another correction.
"You've been calling me something I couldn't understand for nine days," Xu Hao told him. "Surely I'm allowed one imperfect attempt at yours."
Da Bao said Xu Hao's name in return, stressing the wrong syllable so badly that it sounded like a different person.
"There. Now we're even."
Across the fire, Er Bao smiled without lifting his eyes from the sword he was sharpening.
The boar meat was better than Xu Hao expected. Da Bao had rubbed it with salt before roasting it, and the fat had browned without entirely catching fire. A substantial achievement, judging by his performance at breakfast.
Xu Hao ate until the trembling in his legs settled. Then he looked over the hilltop again.
Even in the fading light, the forest appeared to reach every horizon. Somewhere beneath that canopy there had to be a road. A village. Someone who knew what to do with a manuscript bearing a seal that could pull a grown man into another world.
He pointed towards the darkness below the ridge.
"Where?"
Er Bao followed his gesture.
Xu Hao drew a roof in the dirt. "Town. People."
"Dark Forest," Er Bao said first, indicating the trees around them. Then he pointed south, beyond two overlapping ridges. "Hibiscus Town."
Xu Hao straightened. "Town?"
"Hibiscus Town. Market. Inns. Many people."
For a moment Xu Hao couldn't speak. An inn meant a bed without insects climbing into it. A market meant shoes that fit. More importantly, people meant questions he could ask and, perhaps, answers worth hearing.
"A road?"
Er Bao drew a crooked line on the earth, running up from the south. It stopped well short of their hill.
"Far from here."
"How far?"
"Several days."
Da Bao held up the little clay jar of salt and shook it. Three grains fell into his palm. He spoke cheerfully, gesturing at the animal hides hanging near the packs.
"Trade," Er Bao translated into simpler words. "Sell skins. Buy salt."
"Then I'll come."
Xu Hao pointed to himself, then towards the line in the dirt.
Both brothers fell quiet.
It was a brief exchange of glances, but Xu Hao knew it at once. He had seen the same look whenever they discussed what to do with him during his captivity. A decision being made without words he could understand.
Er Bao dragged one finger across the road.
"Not yet."
"Why?"
The giant searched for words, looked at Xu Hao's torn coat, and said something too complicated to follow. Xu Hao caught only danger and wait.
Da Bao put a large piece of meat into Xu Hao's bowl, as though that settled the matter.
Xu Hao looked at the food. Then at the ruined road in the dirt.
He could have argued. He could also have accidentally told them that he wanted to purchase a grandmother. His vocabulary remained unequal to the task.
He ate the meat instead.
The town existed. He had a direction and a name. That would have to be enough for tonight.
* * *
They moved camp after sunrise.
Er Bao chose a shelf of stone lower down the slope, sheltered by a stand of pines. It overlooked two approaches and lay close enough to a stream for water without being directly beside it.
Xu Hao noticed the distinction only after helping carry the supplies. Yesterday he would have chosen the bank itself. It was level, and water was convenient. Er Bao walked him down to the stream and pointed at a line of debris caught high in the roots of a tree.
"Rain," he said. Then he raised his hand to show how far the water could rise.
Xu Hao looked at the marks. They were well above his waist.
"An excellent place to sleep," he muttered. "Provided you want to wake up in another valley."
Back at the shelter, Er Bao handed him a length of cord.
"Help."
That word, at least, presented no difficulty.
Xu Hao threaded the cord through the cloth eyelets, wrapped it around a pine, and made a knot he remembered from tying luggage on expeditions.
He tugged it. It held.
Er Bao tugged harder.
The entire side of the shelter fell onto Xu Hao's head.
He stood under the cloth for several seconds, considering the limitations of experience acquired in a world where rope was usually manufactured to remain cooperative.
Er Bao lifted the fabric.
"Again," he said.
"I'm delighted you enjoyed the first attempt."
The giant knelt beside him and demonstrated the knot: over, around, back through. Instead of taking the cord away when Xu Hao struggled, he steadied the loose end and waited for the younger man to finish.
Xu Hao pulled. The knot tightened neatly against the trunk.
Er Bao tested it. Nothing moved.
"Good."
Xu Hao tried not to look pleased. He failed.
He had once restored fragments of a damaged inscription that scholars had argued over for half a century. Nobody had sounded as genuinely impressed as Er Bao did over a knot.
He asked to try the other side himself.
Er Bao handed over the cord and went to collect firewood.
When Da Bao returned an hour later, the shelter was standing. Xu Hao sat outside it, sore-fingered and unreasonably proud.
The louder brother inspected the work. He pushed one pole. Tugged a corner. Then he gave the cloth an experimental slap.
Xu Hao rose so quickly that his blister protested.
"Don't you dare."
Da Bao laughed, apparently understanding the tone if not the words, and set off towards the stream carrying a length of fishing line.
* * *
They heard him before they saw him again.
A shout rang up from the water, followed by an enormous splash.
Xu Hao dropped the branch he was trimming.
Er Bao stopped arranging stones around the fire. His face changed, and for an instant Xu Hao saw the same rigid attention that had preceded the snake's attack.
They ran to the stream.
Da Bao stood waist-deep in water, holding a writhing fish above his head. Two more lay on the bank, one armed with black spines and another with whiskers long enough to make Xu Hao reconsider whether it ought to be called a fish at all.
"Caught them!" Da Bao announced, apparently oblivious to the alarm he had caused.
Er Bao spoke to him in a low voice. Xu Hao couldn't catch the words, but the volume made their meaning plain enough.
Da Bao argued, displaying the largest fish as evidence in his defence. Er Bao answered without looking at it. Eventually he pointed beneath the water.
Xu Hao followed the gesture.
Da Bao had one boot on.
He lifted his bare foot, looked at it as though noticing it for the first time, and slowly lowered it again.
Xu Hao examined the fish. Then the water. Then the giant who could cut a charging boar apart yet had evidently been defeated by a stream.
"Was the fish wearing it?"
Da Bao folded his arms, which was an impressive gesture while holding a struggling fish.
Xu Hao began laughing. Er Bao's shoulders shook once, but he turned away before his brother could see.
Da Bao insisted the missing boot had been a necessary sacrifice. This took several attempts at translation and one demonstration involving the fish. Xu Hao understood almost none of the explanation and enjoyed it thoroughly.
They returned to camp with the fish. The boot remained in the stream.
At supper, Xu Hao watched Er Bao remove the black spines before cooking the catch. He studied the process carefully. The brothers knew which parts were safe to eat and which weren't. Xu Hao had spent his professional life identifying objects from clues left by people long dead. Here, a mistake could be made by somebody still alive and become fatal before the meal was finished.
He asked the local names of the fish, repeating them until Er Bao stopped correcting him.
Da Bao offered to teach him how to catch one.
Xu Hao looked at the giant's wet trousers and bare foot.
"I think I should begin with swimming."
* * *
As evening settled, Er Bao walked around the shelter carrying dry grass and small stones.
He laid them in a rough circle, tucking pebbles beneath the grass at intervals. A heavy foot crossing the line would dislodge the stones and make a noise against the harder ground beyond.
Xu Hao crouched to examine it.
An alarm system. Crude, but made from things they could replace without visiting a market. The important part was that an animal would trigger it before reaching the sleeping men.
"Snake?" he asked.
Er Bao nodded.
"Other?"
Another nod.
"How many others?"
Er Bao straightened and looked into the trees.
"Many."
Xu Hao thought of the bird whose wings had shaded the summit, the white boar's tusks, and the two-headed snake that had nearly killed Da Bao. He had assumed the brothers slept calmly because they could deal with anything that came near them.
Apparently they slept calmly because they worked hard to ensure nothing came near them unnoticed.
He helped finish the circle. Near the stream, where the ground was muddy, he noticed marks left by an animal that had passed before they arrived. Er Bao studied the tracks, then shifted one part of the warning line to cover the narrow approach between two rocks.
Xu Hao had intended to ask why they'd chosen such an isolated camp. Instead he watched Er Bao arrange the last stone.
The answer might not be as simple as liking the forest.
* * *
That night, the brothers spoke quietly across the fire.
Xu Hao understood little of it. He heard Hibiscus Town several times, the word for home, and a name that neither man had mentioned before. Da Bao said it sharply. Er Bao answered in a tone that made the other man's voice fall.
Xu Hao lay awake beneath the shelter, looking out towards the fire. Da Bao had a pale scar beneath his ear. Er Bao's left hand bore an older injury across the knuckles. He'd noticed both before, but until tonight he hadn't wondered who had given them those marks.
The brothers lived deep in a forest full of dangerous beasts. They visited town only to trade and appeared in no hurry to meet strangers. When Xu Hao arrived wearing unfamiliar clothes, they had tied him up for nine days rather than risk letting him wander away.
There was a pattern here. He didn't need to understand every word of their language to see it.
"Er Bao?"
The larger brother looked up.
Xu Hao sat beside the fire, drew a square in the dirt and gave it a roof.
"House."
Er Bao nodded.
Xu Hao pointed down the slope, towards the road to Hibiscus Town.
"Why here? Not town?"
Da Bao's hand stopped halfway towards the pot.
Er Bao studied the drawing. He took the stick and added two more houses beside it, then a wall around all three. A courtyard, perhaps. A family compound. Xu Hao couldn't tell.
"Home," Er Bao said.
Xu Hao waited.
The giant dragged the stick across the houses. The lines broke apart. With the flat of his hand, he wiped the entire drawing away.
Da Bao looked down into the fire.
"Gone?" Xu Hao asked.
Er Bao nodded.
"Family?"
Another nod.
Xu Hao found himself remembering the silence in his parents' apartment when he had once returned after a long expedition, too late to attend a family celebration. He had been able to telephone and apologise. He had known the people he loved would still answer.
He didn't know whether the Wang brothers had that comfort.
He almost asked who had died. Er Bao's expression stopped him.
"People," the giant said. "People did it."
He looked towards the dark slope below their camp.
"They may still be looking for us."
Xu Hao sat very still.
He had spent nine nights wishing the brothers would let him go. He'd pictured himself walking into Hibiscus Town, finding an inn, and putting their strange encounter behind him.
Now he looked beyond the warning line, at the trees reaching down towards the road, and wondered whether the people searching for the Wang brothers might have followed them here.