The Luan Builds Its Nest
The fighting between Liu Bei's army and Liu Zhang's was utterly one-sided.
Liu Bei took Baishui, which Yang Huai had been holding, in a single stroke, then drove straight south. Before the host led by Huang Zhong, Fu County never managed a proper resistance and fell in the blink of an eye.
By then Liu Zhang had finished his own preparations and sent Liu Gui at the head of Zhang Ren, Deng Xian, and Leng Bao to stop him—but they were nowhere near enough to halt Liu Bei's army.
Huang Zhong was only the beginning. With a solid line of lieutenants behind him in Wei Yan, Zhuo Ying, and the rest, Liu Bei's men were simply too strong for officers who, in peaceful Yizhou, had fought nothing worse than rebels and border tribes.
The city beyond Fu County was Mianzhu. The road ran from Jiameng Pass through Jian'ge, Zitong, Fu County, and Mianzhu to Luo, and past Luo lay Chengdu. If Mianzhu fell, Liu Zhang would have only one defensive line left: Luo itself.
There was not the slightest opening for me to step in. They were cutting the enemy down like a knife through bamboo. What was a Campaign Marshal supposed to do in the middle of that?
Even so, watching the fighting from a commander's place rather than a soldier's was not without its worth.
Pang Tong had left tactics, as distinct from strategy, to the generals at the front, so it was not as if I learned anything from him directly. Still, whenever he spared a moment to explain why Huang Zhong had moved just there, or what calculation Zhuo Ying had fought by, I felt my view of the field opening wider.
We detached a garrison to hold Fu County and were marching south for Mianzhu when Pang Tong spoke.
"The men Liu Zhang sent to hold Mianzhu Pass are Fei Guan and Li Yan, I hear."
Over the time we had spent together, Pang Tong had grown easy with speaking down to me. At our first meeting he had still used a courteous register—perhaps out of regard for my father—but I was wholly his subordinate now, and the change was only natural.
"I have heard those names as well. Liu Zhang's son-in-law, I am told, and that son-in-law's friend."
"Right. I don't know much about this Fei Guan, but Li Yan's a man I know."
Li Yan had originally served under Liu Biao. After Liu Biao's death he had gone over to Liu Zhang, and his ability had earned him trust.
"If Li Yan digs in and means to hold that city, we could be in real trouble."
I knew Li Yan's ability every bit as well as Pang Tong's worry implied—better, perhaps, than Pang Tong or anyone else. In years to come he would stand as a pillar of the Yizhou faction, one of the ministers who received Liu Bei's deathbed charge alongside Zhuge Liang, and the man of storm and fortune who lost everything after picking a quarrel he should never have picked with Zhuge Liang.
That Liu Bei, so shrewd a judge of men, chose him as the figure next after Zhuge Liang was partly to keep the Yizhou and Jingzhou factions in balance. A high opinion of the man's ability must have weighed in the scale as well.
If he truly meant to stake his life on Mianzhu Pass for loyalty's sake to Liu Zhang, Liu Bei's army would waste no small store of time and supplies. Pang Tong was not fretting over nothing. Yet even after hearing him out, I stayed perfectly calm. The calm must have looked strange. He asked:
"You sure you understood what I said? Awfully at ease."
"My insight is shallow, but I do not believe Li Yan will defend Mianzhu in earnest."
"Why? Liu Zhang gave him heavy employment even though he came over from Jingzhou. And he isn't alone at Mianzhu. Fei Guan, Liu Zhang's own son-in-law, is with him."
I caught something odd in the question and smiled.
"You are testing me, Strategist."
"Hm?"
"There is neither anger nor curiosity in what you say. You already know the answer, and you wish to hear mine. Is that not so?"
"Hah—caught me at once."
Pang Tong laughed, a little abashed, and shook his head.
"And I like to think I've a fair hand at acting. It just never seems to work in front of the Marshal. Ahem."
It was a tale from the Romance, but Pang Tong did have a record of deceiving even Cao Cao. The Romance is fiction, of course, and yet pure invention with no footing in fact is rarer than one might think. The scene of Guan Yu's surgery under Hua Tuo is a fair example: it was not Hua Tuo, but Guan Yu really did have living flesh cut and bone scraped away, and ate through it with perfect composure. Pang Tong was a brilliant strategist. A talent for deceiving people would not have been strange in him.
But why did it fail in front of me? Well...
My face, no doubt.
However much strategists traffic in outlandish notions and lay plans for every contingency, they are not much practiced at the thought of deceiving a woman. In this age women seldom step forward. Cases like mine, or Lady Sun's, are the strange ones. And I was no ordinary woman besides. Even I could see that my face was the sort that set the head spinning. In the twenty-first century I would probably have been cast as a child actress or a model just walking down the street.
Someone might ask what beauty a twelve-year-old could possibly have, but astonishingly, twelve was a marriageable age in this era. Had my own mother not married my father at thirteen?
Which meant she had borne me at fourteen. Truly a mad age.
"Well, since it's come to this, speak your mind freely, Strategist Zhang."
"I had the sense that Li Yan is a man of great ambition."
"Ambition."
"When he submitted to Liu Zhang after Liu Biao's death, why did he not follow Cao Cao? Was it not because he feared he would never rise high if he went to Cao Cao?"
Li Yan was like Guan Yu. Praise of his ability always followed him, and hard upon it the remark that his pride was fierce. They said only Fei Guan, generous of heart, counted as his friend.
"It is not a matter of Fei Guan restraining Li Yan. We need Li Yan to be the one who persuades Fei Guan."
"To reach that far on so small a clue—your reasoning is almost uncanny. You're right. What you've said matches what Xiaozhi said, nearly word for word."
"Then the question is what treatment we can offer Li Yan."
"Xiaozhi is discussing that with our lord."
"Is it acceptable that you are not with them, Strategist?"
Fa Zheng was a counselor every bit Pang Tong's equal, and where Yizhou was concerned he knew more than Pang Tong did—but the strategist of Liu Bei's army was, strictly speaking, Pang Tong. Absent Zhuge Liang, was there anyone Pang Tong need yield to?
"I came out because I wanted to consult you."
"With me?"
"Yes. You saw something I hadn't managed to see. I want to know what you think."
Refuting the high, middle, and low plans to his face must have left its mark. I thought it over carefully. In truth I could not remember what treatment Li Yan had received immediately after his surrender.
Nearly everything I knew of him I had already said: that he was a minister of the deathbed charge; that a man out of Jingzhou became the representative of Yizhou; and that he ruined himself by defying Zhuge Liang. Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Pang Tong would be dead by then, but he had risen as far as that charge all the same, so his treatment right after surrendering could not have been stingy.
Even so, could a man who received the deathbed charge and then wrecked Zhuge Liang's northern campaign for the sake of his own power be trusted in high office? That was what snagged at me.
"Would a Grand Administrator's post not suffice? If he later proves his loyalty and his ability, an inspectorship would be fitting as well."
"An outer post, then. He worked in the provinces rather than at the center back in Jingzhou, too—but is there a reason?"
If I succeeded in keeping Guan Yu and Pang Tong alive, Li Yan would never climb as far as minister of the deathbed charge in any case. So I answered without concealment.
"Because a man who puts his own advancement before the realm cannot be entrusted with the great work."
At a glance it might have sounded like a blanket condemnation of every surrendered general, but it was a different matter entirely. Even surrender has its proprieties. A city under siege, for instance, may yield without disgrace if relief fails to arrive within a set time. It was the same logic by which Liu Bei himself had shielded Huang Quan after Huang Quan went over to Wei.
Pang Tong, however, pointed at something else.
"I heard that on your first campaign you said you'd fight to carry on the name of General Who Subdues the Caitiffs. Doesn't that apply to the Marshal as well?"
"My filial duty is the great work itself. What my father desires is solely that the will of our lord, his elder brother, be accomplished—and our lord's will is our great work."
"So filial piety and loyalty aren't two different things."
Whatever he saw in that answer, he went on.
"You really are different from me. If Li Yan surrenders, I think he ought to be given heavy employment."
"May I ask the reason?"
Why? What did he mean by that? Did he intend to use the man as a bridgehead joining Jingzhou and Yizhou?
I tilted my head, not quite following, and Pang Tong laughed softly.
"That is—dear me, I nearly gave the answer away without meaning to. Save the beauty stratagem for other people, and let this be your assignment. If you think you've worked out my reason, tell me. The deadline... yes. Shall we say until all of Yizhou is pacified?"
There was something wistful in the way he said it.
Everything that followed happened just as that conversation had laid it out.
Li Yan persuaded Fei Guan, opened Mianzhu Pass, and surrendered to Liu Bei, and Liu Bei, as Pang Tong had urged, treated him generously. We pressed on south, and at last we arrived.
The reason I had been bound to enter Shu, no matter what.
Before the walls of Luo.
When Liu Bei's army had pressed to the very nose of Luo Castle, a council of war was in full session within Luo as well.
Luo was the last wall defending Chengdu. As a strongpoint even more vital than Mianzhu Pass, the man holding it was Liu Zhang's eldest son, Liu Xun. With him as commander, Zhang Ren and Liu Gui—both already beaten by Liu Bei—and the other generals had gathered, and the mood of the council was nothing but heavy.
Liu Bei's host, some thirty thousand strong, was crack troops at the very height of their momentum. The soldiers defending Luo were not even half that number, and far inferior in quality besides. Even so, their resolve was firm.
"Liu Bei's momentum is strong. For the time being we would do better to trust the walls and hold."
The other generals followed Liu Xun without a word of dissent. To their minds, marching out to stake everything on a single clash with Liu Bei's army was little different from suicide. Luo was a fortress, and the stores already laid up inside were ample enough for a long war. They had fewer soldiers than Liu Bei, but in a siege the attacker was said to need three times the defender's strength, so that was no great difficulty.
One man did not share Liu Xun's view.
"General, should we not send part of the army outside Luo to harass Liu Bei? They say the subordinates he left in Jingzhou have entered Western Shu. We cannot lean on Luo forever."
"Just as one would expect of General Zhang Ren."
He had lost to Liu Bei at Fu County, yet Zhang Ren was reckoned among the finest commanders in Liu Zhang's army. Liu Bei had wanted to win him over, and judging by the great merit he earned in the Romance by killing Pang Tong, one could fairly call him the most outstanding general under Liu Zhang. That the officers and men had been rallied after the defeat at Fu County and brought in to join the defense of Luo was entirely his doing. Drawing steadiness from that presence, Liu Xun pointed to one corner of the map.
"Lord Liu Mu will soon raise his army and strike Liu Bei's rear. The troops left at Jiameng Pass are not many. If we hold fast here, Liu Bei will be a rat in a jar!"
"Oh..."
"Hahaha! A pity we won't get to see Liu Bei's face turn ashen."
At Liu Xun's forceful claim, commanders such as Leng Bao and Deng Xian burst out laughing, and flattery toward him poured forth. Zhang Ren alone looked down at the map with deep-set eyes.
His gaze went to Ba Commandery.
Once Liu Bei is in danger, Jingzhou will not sit still. Can Yan Yan hold?
If they came from Jingzhou into Yizhou, Ba Commandery would be the first gate. Yan Yan, its Grand Administrator, was a man of some talent, but in Zhang Ren's judgment not enough to check Liu Bei's army.
Simply holding out is no guarantee of victory. This is a race of speed. Do we reverse the siege and catch Liu Bei first, or do the reinforcements pressing in from Jingzhou arrive first?
While Liu Bei's army still did not know of the counterstroke Liu Zhang had prepared—before Zhuge Liang in Jingzhou began to move—they had to force a decision somehow.
That same worry belonged to Liu Xun as well. He had spoken of bright prospects to lift morale, but the situation was by no means wholly in their favor. Unlike his father, Liu Xun possessed a fairly capable mind, and he kept in view the fact that time was granted to the enemy in equal measure.
Even so, they still had a chance. It was not the end. Not yet. Not yet...