Chengdu Once More
Even in the third century, in the age of the Three Kingdoms, stirrups existed. A footrest hung from the saddle was a known thing. What the age did not have was the familiar form that clamps both feet firmly in place.
The stirrup known in those days was used on one side only. It was not meant to brace the feet so a man could ride and fight with greater ease. More often it simply helped him climb into the saddle without a struggle.
"Of course I know that."
"Then this will be brief. I mean to improve the stirrup."
"Hm… but isn't a stirrup something only poor riders use?"
That was how the world regarded them. Cavalry did make use of them when men had to mount and dismount in haste, but on the whole a stirrup was thought of as a tool for beginners.
The innovation that would arrive only much later—nothing more than hanging a stirrup on either side and forging it of iron, solid enough to bear a rider's weight—had been delayed by precisely that rigidity of thought.
It did not mean the ancients were fools. Even in the twenty-first century, after mankind had raised its towering monuments of intellect, people seldom thought to question what was utterly ordinary. The ancients had been no different.
So that's where the myth of the modern genius comes from.
To carry the knowledge of a civilization refined and devised by countless challengers—some inscribed in history, others forgotten—was a kind of genius in itself. In that respect, the notion was not entirely wrong.
Knowing the future, of course, was another matter from knowing how to apply it properly to the past. A stirrup, however, demanded neither an industrial foundation nor any remarkable technology.
"From what I have heard, those easterners called the Goguryeo forge their stirrups of iron."
"Stirrups of iron?"
The talk had turned to iron, his own domain, and a faint interest broke through the indifference on Pu Yuan's face.
"Yes. They hang them on both sides and use them like footholds. Do that, they say, and even a child can ride the equal of the Xiongnu."
I had not invoked Goguryeo to exalt the ancestors of my previous life and hand later nationalists some refreshing vindication.
If the stirrup was an idea, then I simply meant to leave its credit with the true owners of that craft.
A proper iron stirrup—Goguryeo was the first. That was what I remembered.
In an age when fact-checking was no longer possible, memory was my only source.
Pu Yuan turned my words over in silence. He was a legendary smith. Perhaps the problem I had set before him had struck some spark.
I held my tongue and watched, leaving him room to think. He came out of his deliberations sooner than I expected.
"It sounds quite promising."
I meant to describe the stirrup's shape in detail, but he was not finished.
"The stirrups we have now are far too short. If a man is to use them as footholds while he rides, the length must be increased. Fix them firmly to the saddle, and a triangular form would be best, so the foot cannot slip free. Balance would be much easier to hold."
A long, exact explanation poured out of him. Du Zheng stared as if he could hardly believe the man had so many words in him. My own face was probably little different.
As though he had read my mind, Pu Yuan recited everything I had been about to say—and then, not content with that, turned a question back on me.
"Are you quite certain this belongs to the eastern tribes, and is not a notion of your own, General? To my mind, change the stirrup and it may be no empty dream to rival the Xiongnu, just as you said."
"Ah—yes. Among those eastern peoples, I am told, there is one that has formed a proper state and commands an exceptional art of iron."
"Hah. The world is wide indeed. I knew little of the other arts of foreign tribes, but I had thought their metallurgy, at least, amounted to nothing."
In truth, forging a stirrup required no extraordinary metallurgy. What had shaken Pu Yuan was the idea itself—something he had never once conceived.
This is Pu Yuan, the smith who left his name in history. Hardly strange that he should know the worth of an original thought.
While he marveled at the craft of Goguryeo and I marveled at how far his thinking had already run ahead of mine, Liu Yin, silent until then, spoke.
"Will a stirrup truly make so great a difference?"
Yes. That was the common view. A horseman such as Ma Dai might have seen it at once, but in matters of riding Liu Yin was hardly better than a layman.
"It will. I believe the stirrup is precisely the means by which we answer Cao Cao's Tiger and Leopard Cavalry. Master Pu Yuan, may I entrust their making to you?"
"The making itself, as I see it, is a simple matter. Settling on the most fitting form will be the difficult part, so I will forge you a sample. After that, the work may be left to other smiths."
"That was precisely what I meant to ask."
He had offered, unasked, the very thing I had come to request. I smiled, genuinely pleased, and gathered both hands to offer him a respectful salute.
"Not at all. You have granted a revelation to a man grown arrogant. The gratitude is mine."
There our meeting ended. Worthy of Shu Han's foremost artisan, Pu Yuan already had work heaped upon him, and since Zhuge Liang had raised him to office he was under special charge besides.
His farewell was short and plain, with nothing grand about it. Then, just as we were about to part, he put a question to me out of nowhere.
"Ah—I hear you wield both spear and sword, General. Which do you use more?"
No one could fail to catch the meaning in that.
I took care not to grin like a fool, and answered clearly.
"I use the spear more often."
Coming away from the meeting with Pu Yuan, Du Zheng spoke in a voice bright with excitement.
"As far as I know, this is the first time Master Pu Yuan has ever been the one to ask."
"Is that so?"
"Yes," said Liu Yin. "Wenlie and I once went to plead with him, and even then we barely received what we asked. He must have been deeply impressed by you, General."
So Liu Yin, too, joined Du Zheng in laying the gilt on thick. Awkward for no good reason, I turned the talk away from Pu Yuan.
"And the man of talent you mentioned, Master Du Zheng—who is he?"
"Ah, that. But first, please speak at your ease. To go on hearing honorifics from you still sits ill with me. Call me Wenlie."
"Hm. Very well. Then tell me of the man you mean to recommend, Wenlie."
We had paused at the question. Now we walked on, talking as we went.
"The man I wish to recommend is one Wang Si."
"Wang Si…"
"You know the name?"
"Not the same man who serves as our lord's gate captain, I trust."
"No. He is from Zizhong County, in Jianwei Commandery of Yizhou."
"Forgive me. It's a name I've never heard."
I had thought I carried nearly every name worth knowing, and here was one I did not. Even the gate captain Wang Si was a name I had learned in this life, not the last.
Du Zheng's voice stayed calm, without a shade of disappointment.
"I would expect as much. He is known only a little, and only in Zizhong. But his ability is the real thing."
"In what way does he excel?"
"He is versed in both letters and arms, but if one speaks of Shengzong's strengths, then virtue stands above the rest."
He added that Shengzong was Wang Si's courtesy name.
Virtue. A very broad word. It covered kindly conduct, the charm that draws people after a man, the sound behavior that makes him an example to others.
It was also what the xiaolian looked for—the age's selection of the filial and incorrupt. If Du Zheng spoke true, the man would take office someday whether I sought him or not.
"I would like to see him."
Our meeting had been short, but Du Zheng seemed a man worth trusting. Anyone he praised like that would be no ordinary person.
He must have thought the moment ripe, for he spoke at once.
"Shall I send word?"
"When I am the one seeking talent, what sense is there in bidding a man come or go? Zizhong County, Jianwei Commandery, you said? I'll go and see him myself."
Where talent was concerned, the more the better. If Wang Si was truly the man Du Zheng described, what did it matter that I went to him? Liu Bei had not begrudged three visits to a thatched cottage to win Zhuge Liang. And how far was it, really, from Chengdu to Jianwei?
Du Zheng had his duties, but I was idle for the present. There was no harm in wearing out the road with Liu Yin.
We parted on a promise to meet again, and I was making ready to set out for Zizhong when unexpected news arrived.
"My eldest brother?"
"Yes. The Elder Lady is asking for you, General."
The Elder Lady of whom Liu Yin spoke was my mother. Zhang Bao, the eldest son, was my half-brother, yet Mother—scarce much older than he—had treated him as her own child.
To hear that Zhang Bao's health had failed again, I knew how heavily it must weigh on her. This time might be the last. That fear, surely, was why she had sent for me.
But I was cold about it.
My nephew hasn't even been born yet.
Zhang Jun, my nephew and Zhang Bao's son, had not yet come into the world.
The original course of history had already begun to bend another way, true enough—but Zhang Bao had stood a step apart from that current from the very first.
There's no particular reason it should change.
Even so, I could hardly say such a thing aloud, and I decided to put off the journey to Zizhong.
"I have to go at once," I told Liu Yin. "I'm sorry, Xiuyan, but the journey will have to wait."
"Of course. Please, go quickly."
At Zhang Bao's house the rest of the household had already gathered. Zhang Shao, who held office, was keeping vigil at Father's side as well, and Mother and my younger sister could not take their anxious eyes from Zhang Bao.
"You've come."
Father did not so much as turn as I entered. Beneath the weight of his voice there ran a faint tremor.
"How is my brother?"
"They say that if he eats well and rests deeply, no great harm will come of it."
Liu Bei, who held Father dear, had sent even the physician who attended him. The medicine of this age was nothing to boast of, but a man of that standing ought to be trustworthy enough. Was this not the very age of Hua Tuo, whose name would remain a byword for the great physician a thousand years on?
Yet Father's face did not ease as he said it. The reason came in what followed.
"But Bao will not eat. Even porridge, he brings back up at once. It worries me."
Zhang Bao's color was poor. His cheeks had sunk in, and his lips were cracked and dry—the look of a man who had not eaten properly in days.
If I was honest, I had never felt much closeness to Zhang Bao or Zhang Shao. They seemed less like half-siblings than stepbrothers of no shared blood, children a remarried parent had brought along.
Even so, I must have thought of them as family after all. Looking at Zhang Bao's haggard face, I felt a dull ache start in my own chest.
Perhaps this really was the end.
What if there was a child in my sister-in-law's womb? What if Zhang Jun was to be a posthumous son, bereft of his father before he was ever born?
I pressed my lips tight and studied Zhang Bao. Beside him sat a bowl of porridge, perhaps from what he had just tried to eat, so white it seemed made of rice alone.
Cooked from nothing but polished rice?
In the twenty-first century, where food was absurdly plentiful, it would have meant nothing. In the past, the mere chance to eat white rice marked a man as well privileged. It tasted better, and it was soft on the tongue, so of course it was prized.
For health, the truth ran the other way. The tale of the Japanese soldiers who lived on polished rice alone and were ravaged by beriberi was a well-known case of exactly that.
What would be better for him than porridge, and easier to eat?
Set aside foods that would not arrive until after the early modern age, and among the nourishing dishes familiar to my own time, if I wanted something gentle on the digestion there was really only one answer.
Tofu.
And if it were the soft, silken kind, surely even Zhang Bao could get it down.
I would have to make soft tofu.