Chapter 8
There were books of that sort. In the Northern Song, the Lives of a Hundred Generals from the Seventeen Histories; in the Ming, the Lives of a Hundred Generals from the Ten Surveys. Drawing on those, a work called the Lives of Illustrious Generals had been compiled — a record of the great captains who had dominated their ages. Jiang Taigong, Sun Wu, Bai Qi, Han Xin, Huo Qubing, and the rest. Unless you were truly a general who stood for your era, you could not dare to have your name set down in it.
The Sui Dynasty had fallen in thirty-seven years, thanks to the vigorous labors of a certain mad emperor, and yet in that short history it had managed to produce as many as five such men. Set beside the Tang, which lasted two hundred and eighty-eight years and produced twenty, the result was astonishing.
And why, of all people, those men.
The reason books that would not be written until the future — future, reckoned from where I now stood — had suddenly come to mind was simple. The two vanguard enthusiasts bellowing for the vanguard right in front of me, He Ruobi and Han Qinhu. Those two were heavyweights who had proudly claimed their places among the five.
I’d been looking forward to this. A little.
My eardrums stung worse by the moment, and a sourness spread through my chest along with the noise. Great generals who had helped unify all under heaven. Great men of whom even posterity, centuries later, would say that yes, these were the ones who represented their age. So I had expected a little. No — a great deal. I had wondered what kind of charisma generals who left so vivid a mark on history might actually possess.
“If Your Highness will grant me the vanguard! I shall take the lord of Chen before the first month is out!”
“The first month? Nonsense! However frail those wretches may be, you think that possible? Your Highness! Do not believe such empty boasts! Before the spring winds rise, I will lay Jiankang in Your Highness’s arms!”
Charisma, I still couldn’t speak to. That their lungs were enormous, I now knew for certain. A loud voice is a virtue in a general, I’ll grant it — it does seize the soldiers’ attention. What I couldn’t understand was why they were flaunting it at me. Did I look like a soldier to them? Damn the both of them.
Who am I supposed to give it to?
The truly maddening part was that I had no idea which of the two it would be right to trust with the vanguard. All I knew was that Sui had raised a great host, thrashed Chen, and that Chen had collapsed inside of four months. It was the end of 588, so the Sui unification of the realm would come in early 589. But that was as far as my knowledge went. The detailed course of the campaign, I did not know. Honestly, for a Korean, merely knowing that Chen had fallen in four months already counted as knowing quite a lot, didn’t it?
They’re both great generals. The result ought to be the same.
In truth both were undeniably capable, so whichever of them I gave the vanguard, the war would end in victory. But what if a choice that diverged from actual history made the thing drag on longer? What if more soldiers died? The Yang Guang of real history had judged the matter politically. If I, knowing nothing of that, simply decided at random?
Damn it.
That would be a problem. I needed this war finished as quickly as possible, so I could see Xiao Zhen and Teunteuni. One spectacular misstep in this war we were supposed to win, and my peaceful life as a Slacker Imperial Family Member would start to shake.
“Truly admirable valor. With generals of such high spirit among us, the glory of Great Sui in this age is only to be expected.”
That was what I managed, after all my fretting, to force out of my mouth.
“Area Commander-in-Chief of Wuzhou. Area Commander-in-Chief of Luzhou.”
“Yes! Your Highness!”
“Command us!”
“Must the vanguard necessarily be a single man?”
I said it in order to float the notion that there was no particular need to name a vanguard at all. Was insisting on a vanguard in the middle of a war nothing but prejudice? Were we, perhaps, oppressing and persecuting the very concept of the vanguard?
“It is enough that both commanders display their valor and ability at once. We possess sharp, sturdy swords beyond counting — why must we wield them one at a time? It is only proper that we aim them together at the throat of Chen’s lord.”
With those words I showed the two vanguard enthusiasts — no, the commanders — the map that happened to be lying on the desk.
The Yangtze, vast and long. From the attacker’s side it wrung out a groan: when were you ever supposed to cross a thing like this? From the defender’s side it wrung out a torrent of curses: how were you supposed to watch all of it? A natural wall.
“We will open simultaneous offensives across the whole of the lower reaches. In that sense, every one of us may be called the vanguard.”
“Simultaneous offensives, Your Highness said?”
“I can only marvel at the breadth of Your Highness’s design, but if we do so, our forces will be scattered far too thin!”
“And if our forces are dispersed, will they not also have to split their troops in order to defend?”
Then I set my finger on the upper Yangtze, the region of Bashu.
“While the forces of the lower reaches and of Jiankang are pinned down blocking us, the Prince of Qin upstream will likewise check the troops sent to relieve Jiankang. And in the meantime the Censor-in-Chief will lead his fleet and come crashing all the way to Jiankang.”
Seal the enemy’s movements with the brute weight of numbers. While the Chen bastards could do neither one thing nor the other, a Sui fleet would appear on the Yangtze they had trusted as a natural wall. Then the war was over. Men already tied down upstream and down — how were they supposed to stop a fleet that had been years in the making?
“Your Highness! Then the merit of taking Jiankang falls to the Censor-in-Chief!”
“And how could that be a problem? The Censor-in-Chief is also a subject of His Majesty, my imperial father. What matters is capturing the lord of Chen, who dares style himself emperor, and leading this war to victory.”
So I said, though I wasn’t particularly worried. I had no great attachment to merit, and in actual history the war had ended before the fleet that set out from Bashu ever reached Jiankang. It would be the same this time. My choice might differ from that of the Yang Guang of real history, but He Ruobi and Han Qinhu, unable to bear having the merit of taking Jiankang snatched from them, would pound Chen without pausing to draw breath.
“Indeed! I am moved, and can only marvel, at His Highness the Prince of Jin’s decision!”
“A decision both wise and bold, for the sake of the great cause! We dull-witted fools have had our eyes opened, thanks to Your Highness!”
After that, He Ruobi and Han Qinhu poured out praises embarrassing enough to rival the Songs of Dragons Flying to Heaven, then vanished in a storm just as they had appeared in one.
…
Why did they even come?
I was bewildered. From their mouths had poured every sort of praise — a wise choice, a bold decision, the vast breadth of Your Highness’s vision — and yet, far from pleased, I was only baffled. There was no way those two had failed to think of something a nobody like me had come up with. The chance that I had hit on an idea two generals who left their names in history had missed? That didn’t exist. It was simply zero.
Ah.
I stared blankly into the empty air, and then it came to me. This was that thing. A man parachuted down on you from above is a nuisance and an irritant, but you still have to keep him sweet, so you dress up a thought anyone could have had until it looks like a tremendous idea. They had meant to attack all along the lower reaches anyway. They simply arranged the mood so it would seem I had thought of it and decided it myself, while the two of them applauded with a chorus of His Highness the Prince of Jin is a genius! — all so a clueless twenty-year-old greenhorn would be satisfied and shut his mouth.
What a relief.
Reaching that conclusion, I nearly let the sigh out. That the two most trustworthy great generals under my command… were not merely loud-voiced vanguard enthusiasts. I was profoundly grateful.
“A most astute judgment.”
This time even Gao Jiong, who had kept his silence behind me, tossed in a yes-man’s line for the benefit of the parachuted department head. Kind of him, humoring me like that.
Having finished his audience with His Highness the Prince of Jin, Han Qinhu stroked his beard.
Not bad.
He nodded, satisfied with the result. Unlike His Highness the Prince of Qin, who would operate on the upper Yangtze and already had experience leading the Guandong troops in Henan, His Highness the Prince of Jin, charged with the lower reaches, possessed no military experience at all. The one upstream had of course received his office at a tender age, and so had likely done little more than nod rather than exercise true command — but His Highness the Prince of Jin lacked even that. The unease, then, was genuine. In this age of chaos it was a common thing for a war already won to be lost, and a state itself to fall, through the arbitrary will and incompetence of a single man.
Was that not how Fu Jian’s Former Qin collapsed, and the Zhou of the Yuwen clan?
The fall of Zhou in particular Han Qinhu remembered, for he had seen it with his own eyes — how emptily that brilliant Zhou had crumbled, and with it the once-firm authority of the Yuwen.
How did a creature like that ever come to be?
The heir who followed a great emperor had been a tyrant past all imagining, and within two years of his accession Zhou had suffered a blow from which it could not recover. Had the man not died inside those two years, how much chaos would have followed? The realm itself might have shattered into pieces, as Former Qin had after the Battle of Fei River.
It was out of such fears that he had sounded out His Highness the Prince of Jin. Whether the prince possessed the rudiments of knowledge, what his character was, how quick his wits — whether he stood at the level of Fu Jian or Yuwen Yun, or at least rose to the measure of an ordinary general. The result was satisfactory. He could not yet say the prince was able. At the least, he was not unable.
Heaven has aided us.
Of course, for a subject to test a kinsman of his sovereign was disloyal. For an Area Commander-in-Chief to test a Campaign Marshal was as good as insubordination. But there was no help for it. In this age of chaos there was neither an eternal lord nor an eternal vassal. Let the slightest tremor arise, and usurpation followed at once, and a man revered only yesterday died like a beast overnight. It was an age of chaos that had gone on that way for hundreds of years. An age when profit mattered more than loyalty, and calculation more than honor. An age in which, to survive, one had to be ready to cast aside at any moment even a man one had served as emperor until the day before. An age in which, if the man above you looked likely to get you killed, you had to find another road, and quickly. Those who could not do so had died. Only those who could had remained, and stubbornly dragged this age of chaos forward.
Now even that is coming to an end.
Yet that revolting, blood-reeking age was racing toward its close as well. If they captured the lord of Chen and put Chen to the torch — if the realm, split for hundreds of years, at last became one.
Then, at last, we will be able to establish true loyalty and true honor.
There would be no more need, as just now, to sound out a kinsman of the sovereign, a Campaign Marshal. It would be an age in which a small mistake, a slight misalignment, could be overlooked. And Han Qinhu would be one of the chief men who made such an age. All the more reason he could not die in vain. To collapse when only one more step remained — what bitterness could be greater than that? And so, the moment he heard that His Highness the Prince of Jin had arrived, he had come running.
“Area Commander-in-Chief of Wuzhou.”
“What is it?”
His gaze had turned to He Ruobi, beside him. He had not expected a man who thought as he did to appear at the same moment. How startled he had been, entering Shouchun, to find He Ruobi already there.
“Thanks to you, the matter went smoothly. Had I been alone, it would have taken somewhat longer.”
“Hmm?”
He had offered his thanks, but He Ruobi only blinked, as if to ask what on earth he meant.
Surely not.
Surely this fellow had not come running, not to sound out His Highness the Prince of Jin, but in earnest to seize the vanguard for himself? Had he truly raised his voice for the vanguard, and thrown a fit with his eyes rolled white?
Madman.
Even as he instinctively put a few steps between himself and He Ruobi, relief settled over him. Beside a man like that, Han Qinhu was a loyal subject — one who worried for the future of the realm, and for the Yang clan’s Mandate of Heaven.
The commanders under me moved as one. By now Yang Jun, upstream, was probably cracking the skulls of the Chen army as well. Then, even if something went wrong on the lower river, they would hardly dare send reinforcements, and with every day that passed Jiankang could only grow more isolated. We would grind at a slowly withering Jiankang and at the Chen forces of the lower reaches, then drive in by surprise when the moment was right. If no such moment showed itself, we would wait for Yang Su, coming by ship out of the west.
An easy war.
A lunatic chairman threatening the world with a nuclear launch button in his hand. An even madder chairman who, ringed by nothing but enemy states, had slammed a million men onto a single front. After watching bastards like those, facing a war like this set my mind at ease.
We’ll finish before the spring winds blow.
I didn’t even hope it would end sooner than actual history. Please — just don’t let it end any later.
Something unforeseen happened.
For the moment, the commanders under me were fighting well. He Ruobi in particular was lulling Chen into carelessness, and had even begun preparing a surprise crossing of the Yangtze. As expected, the howling he had done in front of me had been nothing but an act. But quite apart from our own side fighting well, the enemy’s mood was far too strange.
Why are they so quiet?
A Sui army that amounted to a calamity, from Chen’s point of view, had appeared, so they were stirring, yes. But break the lower Yangtze and you stood immediately before Jiankang, the capital of Chen. Considering that, the enemy’s movements were anything but aggressive. More precisely, there was no sign of support from Jiankang to hold the frontier. Only some of the troops already guarding the Yangtze were struggling desperately.
What is this?
Surely they hadn’t sent men to prop up the upstream front? No. Common sense said they could not fail to know that the upstream was the feint and the downstream the main thrust. What kind of strategy abandons a capital on the verge of meeting the enemy, and runs off to save the provinces?
“Marshal’s Chief of Staff. What is your judgment?”
“I am ashamed to say it, but we still lack the information to judge anything.”
Wondering whether it might be some meticulous scheme, I had asked Gao Jiong, but he too only shook his head, as if nothing came to mind for the moment.
Seriously, what are those bastards doing? Don’t tell me they’re digging a tunnel under our own camp.
The situation was so far beyond understanding that even a thought like that occurred to me.