Preparing to Take Flight
Having taken Luocheng, Liu Bei hosted a grand assembly, just as he had after the capture of Fu County.
In the original history, Luocheng was a traumatic place for him—the city where Pang Tong died, and where the conquest of Yizhou was delayed a full year—so even after taking it he had pressed straight on for Chengdu. Here, it was the opposite. Pang Tong had suffered the misfortune of an arrow, true enough, but he had gotten back up without so much as a touch of tetanus, and they had even taken the troublesome Zhang Ren and Liu Xun alive. How could Liu Bei not be glad?
The march into Shu had gone exactly as he wished, without a single defeat. In high spirits, he gathered his commanders and summoned the captured enemy officers so their fate might be decided.
Prisoners though they were, not one of them was bound. Liu Xun, Liu Zhang's son and the overall commander, entered first. Behind him, one after another, came Liu Gui, Deng Xian, Leng Bao, and Zhang Ren.
Unlike the others, who dropped to their knees of their own accord, only Liu Xun and Zhang Ren remained stubbornly on their feet. The soldiers at their sides moved to force them down—but before a boot could land, Liu Bei raised a hand and stopped them.
"Leave them. The rest of you may rise as well. I came to blows with Governor Liu, yes, but would I stoop to abusing the men who served beneath him? I know you did no more than stay faithful to the charge you were given. Will you not, then, put your talents to use for me?"
The moment he spoke of surrender, Liu Gui, Deng Xian, and Leng Bao saw a road to survival and flung themselves flat in frantic bows.
"You offer even a defeated general a chance. How could I refuse to follow?"
"From this day I shall serve Your Excellency, Governor of Jingzhou, with the devotion of horse and hound."
"Until now I served the wrong master. Only today do I behold my true lord."
The bit players certainly had a way with words. Did it never occur to them how ugly it looked, dropping into a bow just to scrape through alive? Take them in, and a colonel's rank was about all they were worth. I watched the performance with a blank face, then shifted my gaze to the two who still had not bent the knee.
Liu Bei, sharp-eyed where talent was concerned, let the surrenders of Liu, Deng, and Leng pass with little more than a glance and turned to Zhang Ren.
"And what of you, Lord Zhang Ren? Will you not join me in accomplishing a great work?"
"…How can seizing the lands of one's own kin be called a great work? This old servant will die before he serves two masters. Cut off my head and be done with it."
Regret filled Liu Bei's face, and he pressed the persuasion again.
"Of late, old memories have been coming back to me. Something like this happened once before—when I took Lü Bu. Lü Bu, Zhang Liao, Zang Ba, Gao Shun… so many of them were brought before me and Cao Cao as prisoners, just as you stand now. All of them offered to submit. Only Gao Shun kept his integrity, and died beside Lü Bu. But look at the present. Zhang Liao and Zang Ba, who surrendered and lived, have made their names ring across the realm—while how many still remember Gao Shun? Lord Zhang Ren, think on it once more."
"I have nothing more to say."
Zhang Ren clamped his mouth shut. Liu Bei sighed.
Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan—the founding lords of Wei, Shu, and Wu—were all men who would have been aggrieved to be called second in their hunger for talent. Cao Cao, who was said to have grieved Dian Wei's death more than that of his eldest son, Cao Ang. Liu Bei, who flung Liu Shan aside, protesting that he had nearly lost Zhao Yun for the sake of saving the boy. Even Sun Quan, who sorrowed over Lü Meng's illness as if it were his own and—lest the burden of a visit weigh on him—secretly had a hole cut in the wall of the house so he might watch through the gap. The love they vaunted for their men of talent was something apart from the ordinary.
"Why seek to die first, when your lord Liu Zhang, and Liu Xun, yet live? I will give you a place to rest alongside Liu Xun. For the time being, I hope you will set your thoughts in order there."
In the original history, with Pang Tong dead and the fall of Luocheng dragging on, he would have killed them—to raise morale, and to break the enemy's will. The Liu Bei of the present had room to spare. Seeing no need for executions, he disposed of them by house arrest, then turned at last to Liu Xun.
"I quarreled with your father, it is true. But as fellow members of the imperial house of Han, how could I harbor ill will toward you? I will see to it that you want for nothing. If there is anything you wish to say, bring it to me whenever you like."
He spoke of anything Liu Xun might wish to say, but the meaning was roughly this: if you decide to accept the way the tide is turning and persuade your father to surrender, then speak. Even if the young man did submit, Liu Bei could hardly seat Liu Zhang's eldest in a key post and put him to use, and he had been ready to let the matter pass—until something odd caught his eye, and his gaze narrowed.
"Ho… so that's how it is. Liu Xun, why do you stare at none but my niece?"
Liu Bei's niece. Who else would that be? Me. I looked not at Zhang Ren but at Liu Xun, as if to ask what on earth that was supposed to mean, and our eyes met—so the remark had not been empty. Liu Xun jerked his head aside at once, avoiding my gaze. His ears had gone red. My stomach was empty, and still I felt something trying to climb up my throat.
I'm going to have to start going about in a mask. I mean it.
When I let my displeasure show, Pang Tong, seated beside me, fought a laugh until his shoulders shook. I had the feeling I had seen that look somewhere before. Déjà vu?
Whether he noticed or not, Liu Bei seemed determined to tease, and he laughed as he went on.
"I thought we had captured only Liu Xun's person, and here we have captured something else besides. Already this popular—the hardships ahead will be no small thing. What do you say, Lan'er? Since it has come to this, shall we see you married to our Adou, just as your uncle and I pledged?"
Oh. So it wasn't Liu Xun he meant to needle. It was me, the old fox. And you—what are you looking so stricken for?
"My lord, your commanders are gathered here. I beg you to preserve your dignity."
"Ahem. Yes. Let us save that talk for a private hour."
Not a joke, then—sincere? Hss. I had better have something ready to say, or I was going to end up with a ring through my nose.
At any rate, Zhang Ren and Liu Xun were sent away, the men who had surrendered this time were seated in the lowest places, and Liu Bei beckoned to the attendants. The moment the food and wine prepared in advance were brought out, the council convened to decide the prisoners' fate transformed into a banquet hall.
Oh, and for the record: tea for me, not wine. They might call me of marriageable age, but at fourteen I was still a minor even here. Why? Because I had not yet received a courtesy name. Which meant, didn't it, that marrying while one was still a minor was normal in this place. I was never going to get used to this blasted custom of early marriage.
Liu Bei looked unusually pleased today. The last time, after taking Fu County, he had thrown a banquet and caught an earful from Pang Tong, hadn't he? Well, even then Pang Tong had landed his barb and gone on to enjoy the feast with everyone else, so perhaps it didn't matter. This time Pang Tong himself, glad, it seemed, to have confirmed Heaven's will, was enjoying the banquet every bit as much as his lord. Maybe it was because even the Battle of Luocheng—their first protracted fight—had ended in a smooth victory. The commanders as a whole seemed to have let the tension out of their shoulders.
After the wine had gone around several times, Liu Bei raised his cup and spoke with open satisfaction.
"The foremost merit in this Battle of Luocheng belongs, without question, to my niece, Campaign Marshal Zhang Lan. How could we fail to hear the tale of her valor?"
I didn't hate company dinners, but I didn't love them either. I had been enduring this one for the simple pleasure of watching famous men up close, and now he had gone and spread the mat under me without warning. Still, an attention-seeker's streak doesn't just vanish. I rose and lifted my teacup.
Ahem. I settled my voice and was about to spin the yarn the way one gives a presentation, when someone cut in before I could even open my mouth.
"My lord, this is not proper."
And what was that supposed to mean?
"Advisor Zhang may have distinguished herself in bringing Luocheng down, but that was a departure from the office of Campaign Marshal. For a woman to thrust herself, lightly and rashly, into military affairs is a violation of the great and upright Way."
The speaker was Zhang Cun, an attendant officer of Jingzhou who had followed Liu Bei into Shu. At his words the banquet hall sank into shock. Did the man have no sense of the room at all? Was he entirely lacking the ability to read an atmosphere? Even beneath the commanders' dumbfounded stares he held his head stiff and high, as if he alone were some lofty scholar. I, the person in question, was left gaping, at a complete loss—while Liu Bei wiped the smile from his face and fixed him with a glare.
"Campaign Marshal Zhang Lan not only shielded Military Advisor Pang from a stray arrow. She restored the discipline that broke because of it, turned crisis into opportunity, and brought Luocheng down. How dare you say that was not a Campaign Marshal's duty? Would you slight her for no reason but that she is a woman?"
His shout grew louder and fiercer as it went, ringing through the great hall. Fury at the man who had slandered to his face the niece he cherished—the talent he prized, the vanguard who had taken the city—burst as he slammed the cup in his hand down upon the table.
CRASH!
Wine spilled from the cup he had struck hard enough to break the table and soaked his hand. He paid it no mind as he gave the order.
"Strip that man of his office at once! I trusted my eye for people, and believed I kept men of talent at my side—and this time I have seen wrongly."
Having blown an attendant officer clean out of his post, Liu Bei was still not rid of his anger; he seethed. He looked ready to fire off something more, then caught sight of me and drew a breath—an effort, plain to see, to master his expression in front of his niece. Breathing deep to settle himself, he laid down his warning in a tone harsher than usual.
"Yes, my lord!"
The commanders answered as one. Only after pouring out that long speech did Liu Bei's anger seem to cool. He took a cloth from an attendant and wiped the wine from his hand.
"Lan'er, you have seen an ugly sight. And to my commanders—I am sorry."
"Not at all, Uncle. I am only grateful that you thought of me."
"Just so. My lord's words go beyond a private fondness for kin. They are meant to stop opposition for opposition's sake, and to grant treatment worthy of merit to those of outstanding ability. How is that not the virtue of a sovereign?"
It was Fa Zheng, who for Liu Bei worked as the tongue works in the mouth. Ability was ability, but he had an uncommon gift for matching his superior's mood with exquisite precision. That it was not mere flattery made the skill of his tongue all the more remarkable.
"Come, all of you—raise your cups! On a joyous day like this, shall we sit and brood?"
"My lord! Then allow me to add some elegance with a sword dance."
"Oh—Wenchang, is it? Good. Show us your skill."
"Yes, my lord!"
Wei Yan's sword dance. That, I was genuinely looking forward to. In the Romance he had danced with his blade in the manner of the Hongmen Banquet, meaning to cut Liu Zhang down. I wondered what the real thing would be like.
To the playing of the handful of musicians on hand, Wei Yan began to dance with his sword. And to speak only of the result—it was less than I had imagined. Perhaps my expectations had been too high. It felt wrong to say so, but he looked rather like an executioner out of a historical drama. Even so, it must have passed for a fine spectacle here; the mood did lift a little.
I'll have to show them the real thing.
Because the performance had fizzled, the attention-seeker in me—stirred only halfway up—rose the rest of the way.
"Uncle, it was not my intent, but Colonel Wei has loosened a banquet grown stiff on my account with a fine sword dance. Please allow me to answer him in kind."
"Oh—yes. If our niece steps forward like this again, how could we fail to watch?"
I didn't know professional sword dance. But I had seen what Wei Yan did, and I had the general shape of it. Join the forms of kendo to longsword technique, and one sword dance is nothing to throw together.
Ah. This is what you call fusion swordsmanship.