The Wind from the North
As he gathered his men and turned them back toward camp, Xiahou Ba turned one thought over and over.
It was no empty name.
Word of Zhang Lan was no longer a matter confined to Jing and Yi. At the start her fame had been strictly local. Her first appearance before the world had been the fighting in Nan Commandery, and even then she had done little worth the telling. She had stood in the way of Yu Jin, Cao Ren's lieutenant, but she had nearly died after holding him for only a few exchanges, and it was Zhang Fei who saved her.
After that, the episode with Lady Sun and the rescue of Adou won her a measure of renown, yet that too was a story of Gong'an and the lands of southern Jing. The latter had been deliberately buried besides, so the name Zhang Lan was known only to those who already knew to listen for it.
Then came the Battle of Luocheng, where her reputation truly began, and from that day Zhang Lan's course was one unbroken storm. Alone she scaled Luocheng, took Liu Xun captive, and brought the city down. With only a handful of officers she plucked Ma Chao's family out of Hanzhong. She drew the Ba tribes to her banner and swept the field in a single cast of the net, searing her name into the non-Han peoples of all Yizhou, and every deed of hers was sent abroad as a kind of propaganda.
Those in high command who encountered it naturally took the tales for a campaign to mislead the common people and settle occupied ground in haste. By any ordinary measure, could a girl of barely fifteen string together victories that would tax even a seasoned champion?
Xiahou Ba had thought the same. They were parading a daughter in whom the blood of Zhang Fei and the Xiahou ran together—a device to raise the fame of the girl Liu Bei would one day take as a daughter-in-law, and so to raise Liu Bei himself.
A story to lead the people astray. That was all I took it for.
But now, having crossed swords with her himself, he knew. All of it was true. Strength beyond belief. Swordsmanship refined past all polish. And with it an initiative, a swiftness of improvisation, that never waited to be told. Had the fight gone on only a little longer, he would by now be dead, or dragged away a prisoner.
The shame of being pressed by a girl not half his thirty years came second to the satisfaction of having tested himself against a warrior of true stature. Zhang Lan had already reached a realm of her own.
And still she does not come up to Father.
Xiahou Yuan's martial skill had long passed full ripeness and was reaching for completion. Even in Cao Cao's army, crowded with a galaxy of talent, that strength could be counted on one hand. Cao Cao's left arm, a man to whom only Cao Ren and Zhang Liao could be set beside—the name of Xiahou Yuan, the General of Ghostly Speed, carried a weight past measuring.
To compare a being like that with a girl of fifteen was already an absurdity, a thing that ought not to exist. Yet what Xiahou Ba had lived through was fact beyond denying, and in it there was not the slightest room for doubt.
It was simply astonishing. He could hardly believe the skill of this young kinswoman, his cousin's child and not half his age, but believe he must. Letting feeling muddy the judgment of right and wrong was a vice for second-rate commanders.
Was this what Father and His Lordship hoped for, when they married Xi'er to Zhang Fei?
He had felt in his own flesh how terrible a child could be who inherited the blood of the Match for Ten Thousand and the General of Ghostly Speed. So terrible that he wondered whether Cao Cao's design had reached past the winning of Zhang Fei—whether His Lordship had meant to bring a champion of the age into the world.
That only made it bitterer. A niece who might have served Cao Cao at his side and helped finish the great work of unifying the realm now stood beneath Liu Bei.
A sad thing.
Calling to mind the niece who so resembled his younger cousin, Xiahou Ba tasted something bitter on his tongue and, for no reason he could name, glared resentment up at the empty sky.
Xiahou Ba.
Even after I returned to the tent, he filled my head. Xiahou Ba. To anyone who had met the Three Kingdoms only through the Romance and closed the book when Zhuge Liang died on the Wuzhang Plains, the name would sound unfamiliar. Anyone who read to the end would not easily forget him.
After Xiahou Yuan's eldest son died, Xiahou Ba inherited his father's title and rose to prominence in the armies of Wei. Then, when Sima Yi seized power in the Gaoping Tombs Incident, Xiahou Ba set off an event that stunned the realm.
His defection to Shu-Han.
By then he had lost his own father, Xiahou Yuan, to Shu-Han, and he burned with a piercing hatred while he fought along the front against Shu. Shu-Han itself had already spent nearly all the driving force of its northern campaigns and no longer had the strength to contend for dominion over the realm—and still Xiahou Ba crossed those brutal mountains and went over to Shu.
Shu-Han gave him the office of General of Chariots and Cavalry, the post bestowed on the imperial affines, and treated him with open generosity. Liu Shan is said to have brought one of his own children forward and declared, "This child is a grandson of the Xiahou house by the maternal line." A child, no doubt, of the me who lived in the original history, or of the one in the Romance.
"Could I win him over?"
I shook my head at the question I had spoken aloud and answered it myself.
The Gaoping Tombs Incident accounted for nearly all of Xiahou Ba's defection. If I twisted the future and Shu-Han rose to true prosperity, there was a strong chance that incident would never happen. And without it, Xiahou Ba would never come to Shu-Han.
Because—
I am not going to stop Xiahou Yuan's death.
He and I would be blood, and we would be enemies: a knot of affection and hatred. Even so, the vow I had cut into myself on the day I first woke to my past life and asked Father to take me as his student in arms was still sharp in memory. If he, my mother's older cousin, ever wished to come and submit, I would go out ahead of everyone to receive him, and I would honor him to the utmost. Whether I could welcome him after killing Xiahou Yuan—that was a future I could not begin to picture.
"It's a hard thing."
"Hard how?"
"Ah—Father..."
I stumbled, oddly stung. Father only set a hand on my shoulder with the look of a man who already saw through me.
"You met Zhongquan, I hear."
Zhongquan was Xiahou Ba's courtesy name.
"Yes."
"Is it your mother that weighs on you?"
"If I said it wasn't, I'd be lying."
"It weighs on me as well."
"What?"
I threw the question straight back, unable to believe the words had come out of Zhang Fei. This was Zhang Fei—Liu Bei's sworn brother, severe, a man who drew the lines between people sharp and clean. How was I supposed to take it that fighting the Xiahou troubled even him?
"Why look at me like that? This father of yours has feelings too. It would be a poor thing to do to Xi. Xiahou Yuan and his children are as near to her as her own parents and her own brothers and sisters."
A heart that loved its family was no different in Zhang Fei than in anyone else. It was only that—
"I made Eldest Brother's great work the labor of my life. I swore it would come before all else."
He simply had something he loved more than family.
"From tomorrow, do not take the front. Keep at my side."
After that I stayed with Zhang Fei, watching the field and studying the way he disposed the army. The fighting went on without any great change. I had gathered the rising talents of Shu-Han under my own command, but Cao Cao's army was nothing to take lightly. Xiahou Ba, whom I had met blade to blade, was proof enough, and the renowned veteran Fei Yao followed Zhang He as well.
Yet I knew. All the fighting until now had been the preparation Zhang Fei needed in order to build his snare.
"Mencius said the affairs of the world are decided by three things."
"The timing of Heaven, the advantage of Earth, and the concord of men."
The hour Heaven grants. The benefit the land bestows. The strength people forge when they stand together.
"War, too, is part of the world, and it follows the same law. Heaven's timing has been taken from us. Earth's advantage, though, lies on this side. So the battle turns on who achieves the greater concord of men. At present the two sides are matched. Zhang He cannot help but grow restless."
When Zhang He came south, Badong Commandery had declared it would submit. Badong, however, lay beyond our reach in any case. As a stroke meant to hurt us, the gain missed its aim—and even that was only half a prize, one he was bound to lose the moment we drove him off and secured Baxi completely.
"Before long Zhang He will stand at a fork."
"So you made a weak point on purpose."
Father's art of maneuver was extraordinary, no question of it. I understood only because I followed at his side, seeing what he saw and hearing every word he spoke. Otherwise I would never have known a weakness was there at all. Nine times in ten it would have looked like no deliberate thing, only a gap that had opened of itself through the endless tangle of mountain war. Zhang Fei carried off that fineness of control without any show of strain.
"But will Zhang He move the way you intend?"
However great Father's generalship, Zhang He was a famous commander in his own right, no man to slight. Among the Five Elite Generals he stood near the top where cunning was concerned.
"A needless question. You already know the answer."
I laughed, a little abashed. I was the one holding history's answer sheet.
"The choices open to Zhang He are limited."
"Yes. That is Zhang He's weakness. However gifted he may be, it is an original sin he cannot escape."
Zhang He's weakness.
It was that he was a surrendered general.
Zhang He looked down at the campaign map, where the wooden markers stood, and murmured.
"A trap—or not."
Something was wrong. Reason insisted that this was the stroke that would break the stalemate, while a commander's instinct told him to beware. Zhang He trusted his instinct. He trusted his own tactical designs just as much. When the two pointed the same way, he had never failed to win great merit. There were times they diverged, but even when he judged wrong, he had forced a way through by the strength of his command.
He knew his weakness with equal clarity. In strategy and tactics he stood in the first rank even of Cao Cao's army, yet he was somewhat wanting in the direct assault. A stubborn contest of strength, a charge straight into the enemy's face—these were not Zhang He's gift. The fighting at Dangqu thus far had run less toward cunning than toward the very trial of force he disliked, and the shape of it favored Zhang Fei, who leaned on ground he knew and wore the enemy down by main strength.
The moment he caught the gap that had opened in the course of it, Zhang He understood that the hour had come at last to use what he did best.
And yet why? The unease will not leave me.
A decision was better the sooner it was made. On the battlefield, indecision was itself a crime. Zhang He closed his eyes and drew out the shape of an attack, and the shape of a withdrawal.
The weighing did not take long. When he opened his eyes again, the decision was made.