The Gathering of Talents
The gates of Chengdu opened, and a company of men came walking out. The man at their head carried something cradled in both hands. It was Liu Zhang, come to surrender and to yield up the seal of his office.
Incompetent he may have been, but his heart must have been kind enough, for among those who followed him there was not one who was not weeping. The sight pressed on the chest—and yet was the world not always thus? The law by which the strong devour the weak had changed only its wrapping with the age. Its essence had never changed at all.
Liu Bei, waiting beyond the gate, went out to meet them with a stride as assured as Liu Zhang's was cautious. The generals at his back, unlike the ministers trailing Liu Zhang, held their shoulders square and their spines straight.
Victor and vanquished, set in stark contrast.
Liu Zhang bowed his head as he offered up the Governor of Yizhou's seal.
Liu Bei took it from his hands.
"Raise your head, Lord Liu. How could kinsmen of the same imperial house demand an apology of one another? Come—let us enter the city together."
The words announced that Chengdu's master had passed from Liu Zhang to Liu Bei. Grasping as much, the old ministers wept all the louder.
The common people within the city, however, reacted quite differently from the ministers. They were trembling with fear. In the siege warfare of antiquity, plunder followed so reliably that one might as well have called it certain. There had been no battle, true enough, but they had lost the war for Yizhou, and they dreaded that Liu Bei the conqueror would strip them of what they owned.
Yet Liu Bei, having brought Liu Zhang to his knees and ascended as Governor of Yizhou, swept that anxiety away with a single proclamation. He opened the treasuries to settle the rewards owed to the soldiers who had followed him this far, and he returned the people's property to them untouched.
Yizhou steadied with astonishing speed. The outlying regions had already been swept and brought to heel in a single pass by Zhuge Liang, Zhao Yun, and Father, but Chengdu itself assimilated to its new ruler just as quickly.
It was a moment in which Zhuge Liang's gift for administration shone—and Fa Zheng's deep calculations, and Liu Bei's capacity to embrace, shone with it.
There was a man named Xu Jing. His ability was nothing much, yet his reputation stood high: the classic empty cart that rattles the loudest. Liu Bei slighted him, but Fa Zheng urged that he be given weighty employ. The reason was simple. Xu Jing's fame, though a hollow name with no skill behind it, was a fame people truly believed in, and if the man were treated well, talent would follow Liu Bei. Liu Bei accepted the counsel and took Xu Jing in.
If Xu Jing was the case that showed Fa Zheng's foresight, then the man who showed Liu Bei's magnanimity was Liu Ba.
Liu Ba, a man of Jingzhou, had originally been a guest of Liu Biao, and in the days right after Cao Cao seized Jingzhou he had submitted and served him. Then Cao Cao was smashed at Red Cliffs, and Liu Ba fled Liu Bei all the way to Jiaozhou, later seeking refuge in Yizhou. His whole life had been one long flight from Liu Bei.
Liu Ba had every cause to bristle. Even so, Liu Bei sought him out, declaring that this time he would make the man his own, and with Zhuge Liang joining the persuasion, Liu Ba at last became his minister.
Nor did it end there. Liu Bei actively employed Huang Quan, who had served Liu Zhang to the very last, and Fei Guan, Liu Zhang's own son-in-law, sending the established men of Yizhou a clear message that they might set their hearts at ease—while Liu Zhang himself he packed off to Jingzhou, cutting the tree and digging out the root.
None of this, in any case, is a tale of great weight. One may simply take it that Zhuge Liang did as Zhuge Liang does, and Liu Bei did as Liu Bei does.
If Zhuge Liang took administration and Fa Zheng took personnel, the two of them propping up Liu Bei's hold on Yizhou, then Pang Tong was at work on the military side.
He persuaded Zhang Ren—taken prisoner, yet never surrendered—to follow Liu Bei, and at the same time he was overhauling, root and branch, the organization and posting of the troops to match the generals' newly settled ranks.
Ah, and I was appointed General of the Wing Guard. A miscellaneous general of the fifth rank—still beneath Father's third-rank General Who Subdues the Caitiffs, but a staggering climb from my old post as lieutenant-general.
Liu Bei was neither emperor nor king yet, and so there were limits on the offices he could confer. Father's rank therefore remained General Who Subdues the Caitiffs. Not that nothing had changed: his posting shifted from Nan Commandery to Baxi. He had become Grand Administrator of Baxi.
The officials of Jingzhou saw their own promotions and transfers. Guan Yu became Military Governor-General of Jingzhou, and my literary friend Pan Jun became an aide assisting the Inspector of Jingzhou. In practice Guan Yu was all but Inspector himself, so one might fairly call Pan Jun the third man of the province, after Guan Yu and his deputy.
I ought to send a letter congratulating him on that storm of a promotion.
I have wandered. At any rate, Liu Bei's faction was turning at a furious pace. Holding the middle course between stability and change, and harmonizing the old following with the talent newly taken in—the civil officials were suffering no small hardship.
The military officers, by contrast, had a fair amount of leisure.
In truth, promote a soldier as you like and the work is much the same from one post to the next. Unless one is a special case like Guan Yu. I, of course, belonged to the ordinary kind.
Still, if there was something I had to do, it was to gather the soldiers I would command and build a unit of my own. Sheer numbers were no trouble—I already had the men of my old command—but this damned sex of mine was a problem all over again.
Among those meant to assist a general from below, the company officers and the garrison captains, there was not one proper man. Every last one of them just stole glances at my face. Anyone who has served knows how much those noncommissioned ranks matter.
The unit itself was small, so officers of colonel grade came to two at most. Three, if one counted me. The garrison captains who led a hundred men, and the company officers who led five hundred, were essential—and like this...
"Haha. You must be having a hard time of it."
"And how is it with you, General Wei?"
Wei Yan, like me, had been recognized for his merits and granted the fifth-rank miscellaneous generalship of General of the Ivory Gate. He had not even been allowed to take the soldiers he had commanded as a colonel, so he stood in the same place I did.
"Oh, I gathered mine quickly enough."
This was Wei Yan, a man the histories themselves would record as gifted at training rank and file. Of course he had collected his company officers and garrison captains without trouble. A man like him could take a file leader of fifty and raise him into a garrison captain. Honestly—who was worrying about whom?
"What if you spoke to our lord and drew men from the existing troops? They already know your ability, General Zhang. They would follow you well."
"That won't do. That would be my own incompetence. The moment I start pleading that I'm a woman, the rest of them will seize on my being a woman too."
"Hmm... that is also true. Though simply being a woman isn't really the problem, is it..."
"Pardon?"
"No. It's nothing."
Still, Liu Bei's power was not yet so great, and even a generalship did not mean a very large body of troops. Fortunate, that. General in name though I was, the number of soldiers I actually commanded was hardly different from a colonel's.
I had been assigned some two thousand men, which meant four company officers and twenty garrison captains ought to have been attached to me. One round of training, and half of them looked as if they needed replacing.
No—before any of that, did I even have a colonel?
"General, you have a guest."
"A guest?"
The soldiers who had been with me from the rescue of Adou all the way into Shu had been assigned under my command as they were, and of them Zhang San, the one I was closest to, was doubling as my attendant.
I glanced at the guest already seated—Wei Yan—and answered him.
"I'm sorry, but tell them I have a prior guest."
"Yes, General."
"Wait. Who is the visitor? I'll need a name if I'm to seek them out or invite them later. If you don't know, ask outright and tell me."
"He gives himself as the General Who Pacifies the West."
"The General Who Pacifies the West?"
If it was the General Who Pacifies the West...
"Then that would be the Marquis of Duting, wouldn't it?"
Ma Chao. Startled, I looked at Wei Yan, and he nodded, having reached the same conclusion.
"I'm fine. Let us receive him together."
"Thank you. Zhang San, show the Marquis of Duting in. No—I'll go myself."
I hurried to the main gate and found three men already waiting beyond the open doors. One was Ma Chao. One was Pang De. The third I was certain I had seen before—only who had he been?
In any case, Wei Yan and I offered our greetings to Ma Chao, the highest in rank among those present.
"That the Marquis of Duting should come all this way. I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Please, come in."
"Not at all. I came without sending word, and you receive me so kindly—I am only grateful. Ah, and the man beside me is my cousin, Ma Dai."
"It is an honor to meet two generals of such renown. I am Ma Dai. My courtesy name is Bozhan."
So this was Ma Dai. I had thought he looked a great deal like Ma Chao.
In the Romance he plays Ma Chao, mark two, but in the orthodox histories, as I recalled, there was not much recorded of him. Still, he had risen high enough. He had to be at least above the common run.
"I am Zhang Lan. I have not yet received a courtesy name, but I hold the post of General of the Wing Guard."
"We're already acquainted, aren't we?"
"You know General Wei?"
"Yes. We met briefly after the rewards for merit were settled. Lord Pang De was with us as well."
"Well now. Leaving me clean out of it. General Chen and General Zhao weren't there too, were they?"
"Ha, hahaha."
Pang De laughed, awkward. So that had actually happened. The time had been short, but we had shared life and death, and this stung a little.
"We met by chance. The General Who Assists the Army wasn't there either. We didn't leave you out on purpose, General Zhang, so don't be angry."
"Mm. Very well. I've kept our guests standing outside too long. Come in."
"Then I shall intrude."
The first time I saw Ma Chao was when we brought his family out. Hearing that we were being pursued, he had come racing from Wudu Commandery. Of course, by then we had already smashed the pursuit and were ambling back at our leisure.
Ma Chao then had looked terribly gaunt and sunk in gloom, but much of that shadow had lifted. The name Brocade Ma Chao was a later invention, and yet there is no smoke from a cold chimney—with the color back in his face, he was a strikingly handsome man.
I offered him the seat of honor. Ma Chao declined with careful courtesy and yielded it to me. I was no more comfortable taking it than he was, so we left the high seat empty and sat facing one another to either side.
Just before he sat, Ma Chao abruptly offered me a formal salute, hands clasped.
"Marquis of Duting?"
"I was told it was you, General Zhang, who insisted that my household and Pang De had to be saved. Last time I was in too much haste to give proper thanks, and so I have come. Truly—thank you."
"How could one invite the Brocade Ma Chao of Xiliang and slight his family? I did not seek thanks of this kind. Please, take them back."
"Hahaha! Brocade Ma Chao... The one who ought to be called brocade is not I, but you, General Zhang. For a defeated general who lost Liangzhou to Cao Cao, it is a name beyond my worth."
At words so unlike him, so withdrawn, Pang De, at his side, spoke.
"My lord Marquis, what are you saying?"
"Yongming, I have only now come to understand why I fell. I wished to be a lord, but I lacked the virtue to lead those beneath me. I could not but fall."
"By that measure, that bastard Cao Cao is just as lacking in virtue, isn't he?"
"Yes. Just so. And so will Cao Mengde not meet the same end as I?"
Ma Chao's eyes were keen. They were not the eyes of a man burned out and sunk in pessimism.
"I stand beneath the one Heaven sent to stand against Cao Cao. Surely the day will come when this Ma Mengqi can once more set a chill at that bastard's neck."
There it was.
I had feared, against my own hopes, that Ma Chao might lose heart and forfeit the brilliance of his past. The man before me was still the pride of Xiliang—Ma Chao, General of Divine Might.
Even after gaining him, Shu had failed to win results worthy of the grand style of the Five Tiger Generals. Bringing Chengdu to surrender was about the greatest feat Ma Chao ever managed under Liu Bei.
This time would be different.
"I have strayed. I mean to repay the kindness I received."
"Kindness? You honor me far too much. And I have no wish to be treated with the deference due a benefactor, so please speak as is comfortable for you."
Ma Chao hummed, thought a moment, and said,
"You seem to find the deference even more uncomfortable, so I'll speak plain. We of Xiliang hold a benefactor as precious as an enemy. Even if you don't count it a kindness, General Zhang, I do—so don't refuse me."
"If you insist to that extent, I'll receive it with thanks."
"It wasn't my intent, but while I was looking into the people who saved my family, I learned of the difficulty you're in. Short of colonels and company officers, I hear?"
"Yes. Our lord's power has grown, and men are being sought on every side, so the army is short of talent as well. Fine generals we have in plenty. Those to assist them, we lack."
"Then what would you say to trying my cousin?"
"Lord Ma Dai?"
"Not because he's my cousin. He's a fellow of fairly sound ability. He'll be of help."
"I am confident I will be."
Ma Dai was not a bad prospect. Cousin to Ma Chao or not, the very fact that an independent record of him had survived in the histories meant he stood above the ordinary. So long as he was not one of those written down for the wrong reasons, like Xiahou Mao.
Even so—may I really take Ma Chao's cousin, Ma Chao who is all but an independent warlord inside Liu Bei's faction, and use him as my colonel?
When I could not readily answer, Ma Chao read the hesitation and added,
"Don't make it difficult just because he's my younger brother. The truth is, before I ever raised it, the fellow wanted to serve under you."
"B-Brother!"
"Have I said anything false? Isn't that also why you refused the generalship our lord meant to give you?"
"That is..."
"But hear me, younger brother. She is not a horse you can mount. It is you who must be the dog and the horse."
"How could I harbor such a thought? What I wish, in assisting General Zhang, is not romantic longing. It is gratitude, and admiration."
"You heard him? The fellow says so himself. Will you take him, General Zhang?"
Ma Dai was, in truth, too good a talent to spend as a mere colonel. I could tell a leering look that saw me as a woman from any other kind. As he himself had said, what he directed at me was close to pure respect.
There was no particular reason to refuse. I meant to build the unit around cavalry in any case. With Ma Dai, raising that cavalry would gain real momentum.
"Then I will receive him with thanks."
And so one colonel's post was filled.