The Gathering of Talents
Not long after the twentieth year of Jian'an—the year 215—I led the unit whose muster I had at last made official and set out for Baxi Commandery, where my father was.
Its commander was, of course, myself: Zhang Lan, General Who Upholds Might. Assigned beneath me as colonels were Ma Dai over the cavalry and Liu Yin over the infantry. The captains and troop leaders had been filled out handsomely enough, and through the long stay in Chengdu I had drilled again and again alongside the two colonels until the men were finally beginning to carry themselves like a proper elite.
Officially, I was going to Baxi to assist my father—Zhang Fei, Administrator of Baxi—in putting down the Yi tribes and the bands of bandits. In truth, the larger part of it was that they meant to send me, fifteen now and still a child for all of that, to my father's side so he might raise me better.
Even after granting me a general's post, Liu Bei still treated me in quiet ways like a youngster, and I obeyed without a word of protest. Objecting would have changed nothing, and there was no sense earning a bad impression over it. My real thoughts, however, lay elsewhere.
Baxi is a treasure house of talent!
From of old, the true savor of the Three Kingdoms has always been the gathering of men of ability.
I had put together a fairly lavish staff in Ma Dai and Liu Yin, yet something was still lacking. A colonel, after all, is not the same creature as every other commander of a thousand. We numbered two thousand soldiers, but Liu Yin and Ma Dai were each responsible for very different strengths, and the reason was the worth of a warhorse. Determined to build an army around cavalry, I had poured every coin of the reward I received into buying horses. Even then the cavalry came to fewer than three hundred.
Horses were, to begin with, a commodity desperately hard to come by in Yi Province. Xiliang, rich in them, had already fallen into Cao Cao's grasp, and a beast that was expensive anywhere else commanded in Yi Province quite literally whatever price the seller cared to name. Even the expeditionary army of forty thousand that Liu Bei led at Yiling had numbered only two or three thousand horse. That alone said everything.
The men from Jing Province took to the saddle quickly enough, but those from Yi Province looked thoroughly ill at ease. Colonel Liu Yin was no exception. Riding at my side, he looked precarious.
"Colonel Liu, ease off a little. Think of fitting yourself to the horse's movement."
"Mm. Understood. This business of trusting my—oof—movement to another living creature is... not something I'm used to."
For someone in the saddle for the first time, he held his balance rather well.
"And you've that sword on your back besides. It'll only make it harder."
At Ma Dai's words my head nodded of its own accord. Small wonder. Liu Yin bore an enormous greatsword across his back, and its length looked easily twice that of an ordinary blade. It was what they called a zhanmadao, a horse-cutting saber. There was something absurd about a man on horseback making a sword meant for cutting horses his principal weapon, but Liu Yin was adamant.
"It is a weapon I have kept company with for a long time. I could give up the horse before I gave this up."
To Ma Dai, a man of Xiliang who lived with horses as if they were companions, the answer sat poorly. He spoke with a sour note.
"A precious thing, then."
"Yes. A beloved sword, given me by the finest blacksmith I know."
Oh. Now that caught my interest. A man of Liu Yin's caliber would have an uncommon eye for weapons, and if even he named someone the best without a heartbeat of hesitation, the smith's skill could be no ordinary thing.
"If you don't mind, would you introduce him to me as well?"
"Ah—his name is Pu Yuan. Where the working of iron is concerned, few under heaven surpass him."
"Pu Yuan? How do you know the man?"
I was so thrown that I forgot even to watch my tone.
Pu Yuan was someone I knew well. He was the true maker of the legendary wooden ox and gliding horse that Zhuge Liang is credited with devising. They were not the outrageous super-technology of the romance, but they were real things all the same: the wooden ox a cart with a single wheel, the gliding horse a wagon with four.
"In truth, I do not know him myself. He is an acquaintance of my close friend Wenran."
"Wenran—the friend you said you'd charged with looking into the gambling den?"
Liu Yin had friends from the same Shu Commandery, Du Zheng and Liu Shen, and Wenran was Du Zheng's courtesy name. The uproar at the gambling house where he and I had met had nothing to do with Liu Yin wanting to gamble. He had been carrying out a charge laid on him by Du Zheng, who served as an attendant clerk. Complaints were already coming in about gamblers fleecing the soldiers, and to secure proper evidence and take the culprits in hand, Du Zheng had sent him. A sort of undercover investigation, if you like.
In any case, if it was Pu Yuan who had forged that zhanmadao, then it was only natural Liu Yin could never give the blade up. A famed sword is made to bewitch a person. Later ages did not spin tales of the Yitian Sword and the Qinggang Sword for nothing.
"I'd like to meet him myself."
"When this business is finished, I will pass word to Wenran."
"I'd appreciate it."
And so, having gathered an unexpected harvest, we marched for several days and arrived without incident at Baxi Commandery.
Even in the press of official business, Father came out in person to meet me. Hmm—no. Perhaps, precisely because official business pressed so hard, he had used me as an excuse to escape the hell of paperwork. Even so, being welcomed so gladly left me in good spirits.
To shake off the fatigue of the march, share a reunion with Father, and make my report besides, I ordered Ma Dai and Liu Yin to quarter the soldiers. Father, for his part, showed consideration so that my men might rest in comfort.
Stricter than anyone with his own soldiers, and yet looking after the fellows under his daughter—how was I meant to take that? I had already pried those two, Fan Qiang and Zhang Da, away from him on the pretext of their merit in the taking of Yi Province, but the essential problem remained exactly as it was.
"Father, I am grateful that you look after my soldiers. Might you not look after the household troops under your own command as well?"
"That I look after your soldiers goes only so far as following your way of command. It is not done out of any thought for those soldiers."
So he was merely keeping step with the path of the benevolent commander I pursued, the habit of treating soldiers well. Hearing that, I set aside the notion of changing Father and put my weight on another method. The more a man has made himself, the firmer his convictions tend to grow, and someone of Father's measure would take even his beloved daughter's chatter in one ear and let it out the other. Liu Bei himself, worried for him, had offered advice that bordered on rebuke—do not treat the soldiers so—and Father had not so much as stirred. What was there to hope for?
The only way is to attach as benevolent a commander as I can find to serve as Father's lieutenant.
Then again, toward a capable person Father was more courteous and proper than anyone. I was riffling through the names that would sit well beside him, running them like a search through my head, when we soon came before the official residence.
Setting the bond of father and daughter aside for a moment, I offered my report as General Who Upholds Might to the Administrator of Baxi. Father heard me out in silence to the end, then asked in return:
"You mean to subdue the Ba?"
"Yes. Zhang Lu is holding out against Cao Cao, but it is plain he will soon be defeated, and either surrender or be destroyed. The Banshun, the Board-Shield tribes, aided Zhang Lu against Liu Zhang once before. If Zhang Lu falls, they will surely seek to follow Cao Cao."
"There is reason in what you say."
"Should they pass over to Cao Cao, they will return in later days as his forerunners. I judged it right to remove them before that can happen."
These were grounds that Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang had accepted as well. But whether the suppression itself would be carried out had been left to Father, as Administrator of Baxi, and so I had to persuade him before I could move as I had planned.
"Answer two questions, and I will allow it."
I thrust my chest forward, bold as if I could answer whatever came, and at once.
"The first is whether you can deal with them alone. The Ba are no small power. The troops I command are needed to keep the peace and tighten military discipline; I cannot support you. If you have my cooperation in mind, I cannot accept it."
"Those who follow me will suffice."
Zhang Fei looked at me without a word, as if bidding me explain further.
"I did not step forward with no intelligence at all. The Ba are divided among three chieftains: Du Huo, Fu Hu, and Yuan Yue. Striking them one by one is the soundest plan, but even should we face them all at once, they have no military law and run slack, while our discipline stands straight. How could we lose?"
A fight, from of old, is a contest of momentum. Once morale shatters, headcount means nothing. And against the Yi—not a Central Plains army armed to the teeth and drawn up in proper formation—the share that belongs to a fierce general is especially great. Look at Xiang Yu's Battle of Pengcheng, where thirty thousand scattered an enemy of more than five hundred thousand. That is what a fierce general is. His mere existence is enough to smash the enemy's morale to pieces, and worse, it bursts their nerve until they lose the will to fight entirely.
I would not dare compare myself to Xiang Yu, but between Liu Yin and me we were more than equal to playing that part against the Yi.
Xiang Yu of the backcountry.
Zhang Fei was himself the living proof of a fierce general's worth, and so Father nodded at my answer and put the next question.
"Next is time. You will have to take them before Cao Cao brings Zhang Lu down, and from the look of your confidence, that too seems no problem. Good. Do as you please."
"I will prove worthy of that trust, Father."
I brought my hands together in salute and bowed my head. Father patted my shoulder as he spoke.
"You seem to have learned a good deal about Baxi, yet it remains a strange place you have come to for the first time. I cannot lend you troops, but I will at least attach a guide."
"Ah—as to that. There is someone I already have in mind."
I snatched at the opportunity that had walked in far too easily.
"Is there? Who?"
"A man by the name of Ma Zhong."