The Battle of Mount Dingjun
Li Si was a volunteer from Yuexi Commandery.
He had enlisted not long before—well after Yizhou had passed into Liu Bei's hands. Once Zhuge Liang took charge of the province's administration, a great many things had changed.
Li Si had wanted out of his miserable backwater, and the promise of steady pay was enough to send him knocking at the army's gate. They happened to be raising extra troops for the fighting in Hanzhong, so he was a soldier almost before he knew it.
Now he was seized by the urge to drive a fist into the gut of the official who had fed him that line—and, while he was at it, into the gut of the fool he himself had been, for swallowing those fine words and volunteering.
What kind of mess was this? Win martial merit and rise in the world? Here, in the middle of a slaughter this fierce?
The tale that official had told, of a man who climbed from camp-serf to general, had to be about some monster born for battle, not an ordinary village lout like him. Otherwise it made no sense at all.
Fuck… a dog's death. That's all this is, a dog's death!
His body shook like an aspen in a gale. The arm locked around his spear would not obey him. He knew he had learned something back in camp, but his mind had gone pure white, and not a scrap of it remained.
The enemy was coming. The spear was gone; somehow he had a sword in his hand. Only then did he remember that in a melee a sword was handier than a long spear. He had to draw it. The thought was there. His body would not follow.
Before the battle, the veterans had taught him what to do when fear locked a man's limbs. Those lessons proved worthless in the end. The soldiers beside him were shouting at him—raise your spear, watch your front, don't give ground—but none of it reached Li Si's ears.
"Aaaaagh!"
When terror finally broke him and he crumpled where he stood, his seniors spat in disgust and closed the gap he had left.
That was how the small giving of ground began. Like a great dam failing from a hairline crack, the veterans' focus frayed, and little by little they were driven back—the price of a hole in the formation.
But Liu Bei's army was not so soft as to leave a breach untended. A watch officer caught the sagging line and threw a company commander into it at once.
"The commander's here! Hold on a little longer, all of you!"
A company commander was the lowest of the low, hardly worthy of the name officer—yet he was no common soldier. These were men who had survived fight after fight and proved their strength.
To ordinary troops they were protectors: a wall set against the enemy. Morale rose. Even Li Si, sprawled in a daze, looked at that heavy armor and felt hope stir.
"I—I can live…?"
Hope came back, and with it a weak spark of courage. He snatched up the spear he had dropped and hauled himself to his feet. Late as it was, he set his stance the way he had been drilled and groped his way back to his place.
"I can live!"
Courage swelled. Veterans stood on either side of him, and ahead the company commander was showing his valor, shoving enemy soldiers back. I'm alive. The thought gave Li Si the belief that he could do this.
But the hope lasted only a moment.
A wet chop—!
A head in flight.
Blood flung wide.
A body going down.
Whose?
Li Si stared blankly at the jet of blood. He could not understand why the spear was falling. He could not understand why that body wore armor like that.
Wasn't that the company commander? An officer who led hundreds of men—he wasn't supposed to die like this.
"Huh?"
The sound came from someone else. Before the commander's corpse had even struck the ground, the soldiers' morale hit it first.
As the body fell away, what showed beyond it was an enemy officer of smaller build. An iron ji in his hands, he looked them over and took one step toward them.
On the second step, his head vanished just as the commander's had.
Crack!
"Huh?"
This time the voice was Li Si's.
When the enemy officer's head burst right after the commander's, neat as a lie, Li Si thought this could not be a dream—not until he saw the spear planted beside the man.
"She's here…!"
At the senior soldier's murmur, thick with joy, Li Si asked before he knew he was speaking. Who?
Thud-thud-thud-thud—!
Hoofbeats hammered at his ears, so close he could barely make out the veteran yelling at him to fall back.
When the hooves were finally right in front of him, he saw her: a woman in a silver mask that hid half her face, a thing that had no place on a battlefield. She swept straight past him and wrenched the spear from the ground as she went.
Thud-thud-thud!
Dust and wind slapped Li Si across the face. Before he could even feel it, the answer came back.
"The Lady of Nanling."
"The Lady of Nanling?"
It was a name he was hearing for the first time. Was there a commander called Nanling? Country bumpkin or not, even Li Si knew the truly famous ones.
Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Ma Chao—wasn't knowing them enough?
What good was it for a common soldier to learn the names of generals that far above him? He already had trouble remembering the pentarchs, the decarchs, and the section chiefs.
Thinking she must be some newly arrived commander, he asked again, and the veteran stared at him as if he were hopeless.
"The Lady of Nanling, I said. The Lady of Nanling. You don't know Zhang Lan, Lady of Nanling? Zhang Fei's eldest daughter—Zhang Lan?"
"W-well, a man might not know. But can a woman even be a general? Huh… so that one there is General Zhang Lan?"
"That one? You've lost your mind. If the Nanling troops hear you talk like that, they'll come at you ready to kill. Watch your mouth."
The veteran cuffed the back of his head. Li Si had lost his helmet somewhere in the fight without noticing, and a gloved hand on the bare skull hurt more than a little.
"Hey! Back to your places! They could hit us again any time!"
Despite the shout, Li Si stared off in a daze at the back of the Lady of Nanling—the woman they had called Zhang Lan—already far out across the field.
He did not think he would ever forget the woman who had thrown a spear and burst an enemy commander's head in a single blow.
Right after I had finished the one enemy officer.
"There."
I leveled my spear at a point on the field. Friend and foe were tangled together there, and in the middle of it an enemy commander had smashed through the deer-horn barricades and was butchering soldiers without mercy.
The decision made, action followed.
As always, it was Liu Yin who ran for the van. He slipped nimbly past Mount Dingjun's natural obstacles and the barricades, and on foot alone he outpaced a horse, first of anyone into the melee.
Boom! Crunch!
A gale in a single charge. One stroke swept the enemy aside and opened a space. A dreadful cut. Against blows that used the full reach of that horse-chopping saber, defense meant nothing.
Liu Yin cut, smashed, and stabbed at whatever he met, and drove on. It was a pitiless destruction that made bitter struggle look absurd.
Once he had broken the defensive line, Gu Bu's turn came. Before the charge of barded warhorses, human effort was useless.
Not even my father, born with heaven-sent strength, could have stopped an assault by iron cavalry. It was more than enough to break a man's will to fight.
Pouring into the path the horsemen had opened and crushing the enemy outright was the infantry's work. With Liu Yin, slipped off to the side, at their head, the foot soldiers under Zhang E and Wang Ping methodically cleared away the Wei troops, their edge gone and their ranks in disorder.
"The enemy is falling back!"
Inflicting still more harm on the retreating soldiers fell to Ma Dai and the light cavalry he led. He had been watching all this while, itching for it, and now he spent that itch without restraint across the backs of the Wei army.
"Dexin, Shengzong—clear the field."
Ma Zhong and Wang Si, who had been waiting in the rear, sent the wounded back and gathered the dead.
There was no hitch and no friction in any of it. Roles divided cleanly; every task carried through to the end.
It was troop-handling raised to an art, possible only because soldiers who were elite among elites stood together with commanders fit to lead not merely a few hundred, or a thousand or two, but tens of thousands, and still have strength to spare.
"Another victory for our side! No matter how they throw themselves at us, so long as we have our Nanling Army, they haven't a chance!"
Fu Qian, who stuck close at my side, shouted it in high spirits. He had not been with me long, yet his startling loyalty and martial strength had already raised him to the head of my personal guard.
I had kept Wang Ping beside me before, but once he took up the post of headquarters commander in earnest, Fu Qian had filled the place he left.
While the colonels saw to their own men, Ma Zhong came up and reported.
"General, the cleanup is finished."
"That was quick."
"Few wounded. It must be because you and Colonel Liu take the van."
A month had already passed since we left Yangping Pass and settled on Mount Dingjun.
Advance and retreat between our army and Wei's on the mountain had repeated again and again, still without a decisive victory for either side.
Wei attacked to drive us off Mount Dingjun, the height that looked down on Nanzheng, the heart of Hanzhong. We held that height, and we meant to take Nanzheng.
In the thick of the fighting, the Nanling Army's battle-craft grew sharper by the day.
I was savoring the report that we had almost no casualties, waiting for Ma Dai to return, when a messenger came down from the headquarters on the mountain's mid-slope.
It was Wang Si, Liu Bei's headquarters commander—a namesake of the Wang Si who served as my campaign major.
"General of Radiant Might, His Lordship summons you."
"Zijun, stay here until Bozhan returns, and be ready for whatever comes. Dexin, Boqi—you're with me."
I left the rest to Wang Ping and climbed to the main camp where Liu Bei was staying. I was not the only one called. Most of the commanders who bore real weight were already gathered.
Zhang Fei, Huang Zhong, Zhao Yun, Huang Quan, Fa Zheng, Zhang Yi, Wang Si. Looking over faces that did not even number ten, I could see why Ma Zhong and Zhang E had not been let in.
So the time has come.
The masterstroke Liu Bei and Fa Zheng had devised to end the Battle of Mount Dingjun.
Fa Zheng gave a slight nod, as if the last of those summoned had arrived. Liu Bei swept the assembly once with his eyes, then spoke.
"You have all gathered well. I know how greatly you commanders have labored through all of this. Even so, I earnestly ask you to give a little more. Xiaozhi—begin."
At his word, Fa Zheng, who had been standing in attendance behind him, stepped forward, tapped the map laid at the center, and drew every eye.
"All of you, look at the map."
The tip of his pointer struck one spot with a sharp tap. It was the heart of a military terrain map, contours and all.
"This is Mount Dingjun, where we are now encamped. The vital ground overlooking Nanzheng."
On the map stood three horses bearing banners marked Liu, and four marked Cao.
Our markers sat, in order, at the Maming Gallery, Yangping Pass, and Mount Dingjun. Wei's sat at Xiabian, the Maming Gallery, and to the south and east of Mount Dingjun.
"At present Xu Huang is held by General Ma at the Maming Gallery, and Cao Xiu by General Wei at Yangping. Neither of them need concern us."
Ma Chao and Wei Yan. At Yangping Pass, Gao Xiang and Wu Lan held as their deputies; at the Maming Gallery, Chen Shi. Even among the pieces in Liu Bei's hand, these were strong ones, bracing our rear with confidence to spare.
Xu Huang and Cao Xiu were excellent commanders, but our two were no less, and they had the advantage of holding fortified ground. There was little to fear.
"Xiahou Yuan holds the south of Mount Dingjun. Zhang He holds Zouma Valley to the east. Until now we have sat fast on the mountain and devoted ourselves to stopping the attacks from both sides. Now it is our turn to take the offensive."
"Then whom should we strike?"
That was Zhao Yun.
"We will strike Zhang He."
"Zhang He…?"
"He is Xiahou Yuan's lieutenant, is he not?"
"But unlike Xiahou Yuan, Zhang He has a head for stratagem as well. Should we not take him first?"
"Hmm. That may be so. Even so, Zhang He is a man who has already lost to the General Who Subdues the Caitiffs, is he not?"
On the topic Fa Zheng had thrown out, the commanders offered this opinion and that. In truth, the case for taking Zhang He and the case for taking Xiahou Yuan both had weight. Each was a great figure, and both were senior generals of Wei—nothing easy about either of them.
My father had been listening to the debate in silence, eyes closed. The moment he opened them, the talk in the room cut off.
He looked at Liu Bei and said, "You mean to go after Miaocai."
He had already seen through the plan Fa Zheng and Liu Bei had made. To my father, who had named Xiahou Yuan outright, Liu Bei answered heavily.
"Yes."
"…Whom will you send?"
"I will send Huang Hansheng. Does that disappoint you?"
"How could I fail to see that you are sparing me? As a general, I have only to follow orders."
What was Xiahou Yuan to my father?
My mother—my father's wife, Xiahou Ji—had lost her parents early and been raised in the household of her uncle, Xiahou Yuan. The man who had brought her up was, to my father, no different from a father-in-law.
Brothers might serve different lords, and father and son give their loyalty to different states. It was that kind of age. Even so, to kill one's own family by one's own hand would surely be a tragedy.
So that the younger brother he loved would not become the son-in-law who slew his father-in-law, Liu Bei chose Huang Zhong in place of Zhang Fei, the strongest spear he possessed.
"I will take Zhang He. And let the General of Radiant Might go with me."
"……So be it."
"You have my thanks. Lord Fa Zheng, forgive me for taking your time."
Fa Zheng was famous for a narrow heart, but he seemed to have breadth enough to weigh my father's circumstances and mine. He shook his head, as if he were the one who ought to apologize.
"Not at all. Then, as you have said, I ask you to strike Zhang He."
"I will follow with all that I am."
"If the General Who Subdues the Caitiffs attacks Zhang He, Zhang He will certainly be unable to hold. Should either side be broken through, Nanzheng is in peril, so Xiahou Yuan will surely send reinforcements. In the gap left when that southern force is drawn away, the General Who Chastises the Caitiffs will cut Xiahou Yuan down."
Given so great a charge, Huang Zhong asked again, his manner quite grave.
"And if Xiahou Yuan does not send reinforcements?"
"In that case, while the General Who Chastises the Caitiffs serves as the supporting attack and holds Xiahou Yuan, the General Who Subdues the Caitiffs may cut Zhang He down."
"I understand."
After naming the commanders of both prongs, Fa Zheng began to announce who would be placed beneath them.
Under my father, as already said, I myself was assigned. The five thousand I led, and the ten thousand my father commanded—half of the thirty thousand of our army now seated on Mount Dingjun.
With an assignment in which no one could tell which was the main force and which the supporting one, Xiahou Yuan would in the end decide to send reinforcements.
That vow of Liu Bei's was a sentence of death upon Xiahou Yuan.