I Am Zhang Yide's Daughter
As I stepped up onto the training ground, Guan Ping recognized my face and offered a greeting.
"I never thought I'd see you again like this. You were a newborn the first time I laid eyes on you, and already you've grown so much."
"And you as well, Brother Ping. You've become a man of magnificent bearing."
"Hahaha. So you remember something from when you were a babe in arms."
"I do. Quite clearly."
It was the truth. Whether from having recalled my past life or not, I even kept memories from my time in my mother's womb. Guan Ping took the words for a jest, laughed them off, and went on.
"A shame, but the talk will have to wait. What weapon do you use?"
"Hmm."
I thought for a moment. In all honesty, the weapon that still sat most naturally in my hand was the sword—a longsword. But Zhang Fei had told me that if I meant to fight from horseback on a battlefield, I would need the spear more than the sword, and so he had taught me the spear.
The hesitation did not last. This was no place to prove myself strong by any means I could find. It was a place where my potential would be weighed, and I had staked my claim on succeeding Zhang Fei. Taking up the spear I had learned from him seemed the proper choice.
"I'll use the spear."
Guan Ping looked me over once, as if taking my height, and handed me a wooden practice spear of a fitting length, nearly the same as the one I used in training. For a fighting man, he had a fair eye.
"Come at me."
Whatever he had been told beforehand, Guan Ping set himself in earnest. If I was studying under Zhang Fei, then he had surely followed Guan Yu all this while and learned the martial way from him.
In his own day Guan Yu had been called a match for ten thousand, just as Zhang Fei was, and after his death he was revered as a god of war. Guan Ping, heir to that blood and that martial line, was no opponent to take lightly. He would fall short of Guan Yu, of course. Had he been a talent of that order, the official histories would not have recorded him a bare three times.
On pure potential, I thought I had the better of him. Mine was Zhang Fei-class aptitude, certified by the Mountain Spirit himself. But he was a grown man, already blooded in real war, and I was a chick new from the shell.
I did not go in thinking I would win. I went in to give everything I had, stamped hard off the ground, and charged.
Back when I lived in the modern world—before I became Zhang Lan, that is—a man on a broadcast had once judged Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei in these terms.
Liu Bei was bodyweight training. Guan Yu was heavy weight at low repetitions. Zhang Fei was light weight at high repetitions. And so, he said, if every one of Guan Yu's blows hit terribly hard, Zhang Fei would be the one who lived by speed. People had laughed, and gladly.
Set against Guan Ping, who had taken his art from Guan Yu in person, it was no joke at all.
Fwooom—
His weapon was only a wooden sword cut in the likeness of a great glaive, and yet the rush of cloven air that struck my ear was far too heavy for any such thing.
Put into the language of the martial arts, Guan Yu's way was strength and weight, and so dominion. Zhang Fei's, held up as its equal, was speed and unbroken succession, and so illusion.
Only a few days had passed, and still I could bring Zhang Fei's spear to the sparring ground, largely because of the temper of the art. It ran in the same vein as the longsword of Liechtenauer that I had learned, and even in hands still short of strength it served me well.
Tak-tak-tak-tang!
The chain of blows I poured out in an instant, Guan Ping shut down entire with nothing but tight, spare movements. They were exacting motions, bedded deep in real combat, and there was scarcely a waste among them.
For me, that manner of fighting was a boon. Had he driven in with swift technique, as I did, instead of hammering down with heavy force, I, whose skill was nowhere near ripe, could not have lasted.
It was strength one could hardly believe in a child of nine. Set beside Guan Ping, who carried the same blood of a match for ten thousand and had all but finished growing, I would still come up short—but I had force enough to shed his attacks.
When I simply would not fall, impatience got into him. Little by little his movements swelled, and useless motion crept in with them. My own wind was failing just as fast.
This body is still too young. As expected.
Say what one liked, this flesh had only just begun to grow. Divine strength or not, it could not step past human limits. The young are said to have stamina to spare, and yet they do not outlast a grown man tempered by long drill. Not until my growth found its course, and strength and endurance both took a true step forward, could I do otherwise. Until then I had no choice but to stake the bout on something closer to a gamble.
Thock—skrrk!
Three methods lie at the root of the spear: lan, na, and zha. Press, seize, and thrust.
With a lan, pressing his weapon outward to block, I turned Guan Ping's blow off its line. I had preferred to evade rather than cross shaft to shaft whenever I could, so the moment I took an attack from the front he spent the chance as if he meant to use all of it, wringing out his strength and driving his spear up along a twisted path.
But the opening was mine as well. Choose attack over defense, and a gap must follow. Where his guard had gone slack, my zha thrust shot in and threaded toward him like a snake.
Thwack!
We had both cast defense aside to strike, and the two staffs crossed. The sound rang from my body, and from nowhere else.
"Ngh—!"
The difference in reach was simply too great. My wooden staff never touched him and only stabbed the air, while his cracked against my head. A bright, stinging pain ran the length of me. Even then Guan Ping had governed his hand, and my skull, thankfully, did not split and burst with blood. All the same, I was going to wear a lump for it.
"It's over."
"Yes..."
"Does it hurt badly? Mm. I got serious before I knew it. I did pull as much strength as I could at the end, but I may have gone too far."
"Not at all. Thank you for measuring the blow."
If I took after Zhang Fei, I ought to be able to take a hit. I was not truly a child, and I could bear it.
I was minding my image—hurting, and not so much as lifting a hand to my head—when an answer came from those watching.
"Splendid!"
The one who dared speak first was Liu Bei. He broke into open admiration and turned to Zhang Fei.
"It is exactly like looking at you as a boy. At an age near Lan's, you were already beating grown men black and blue. Don't tell me it isn't so, Yide."
"Eldest Brother, what are you saying? You make me sound like some street ruffian who picks a fight with anyone at all."
"Hahaha! Did it come out that way? You used to go about vowing to thrash anyone who preyed on the common people. Such valor, at that age. Lan is her father to the life. Wouldn't you say so, Yunchang?"
"I would. As I watched, there were moments when Ping met her in true earnest. That she did not lose heart even then, but fought him blow for blow—truly, our younger brother's blood runs thick in her."
"Yes, yes. I meant only to take the measure of her gift, and instead I have been granted the pleasure of a fine bout. Military Advisor, how did you find it?"
Zhuge Liang screened the corner of his mouth with his crane-feather fan, bowed his head to Liu Bei, and answered.
"When even my lord's niece stands so far above the common, how could the talents of the realm be said to have any home but my lord's bosom? Not one word of General Zhang's was amiss. Let a man nurse discontent if he will; none will dare give it voice."
"I am of the same mind. Come close, both of you."
Guan Ping and I stood before him, and Liu Bei himself patted our shoulders.
"Tanzhi, you have grown a great deal as well. A showing worthy of Yunchang's eldest son."
"This body is still far from enough. I will apply myself all the harder, so that I bring no shame upon my father's name."
"That heart is truly worthy of praise."
His gaze left Guan Ping, and when it met mine I bowed my head at once.
"You have endured much. I have seen the truth of your heart. Born with gifts like these, how should I bar the road ahead of you merely because the body is a woman's? From this day, will you follow Yide and lend your strength to this unworthy uncle?"
"Of course! How should I be ignorant of loyalty and filial piety merely because I am a woman? If you will trust me with a charge despite this woman's body, I will knot the grass to repay the grace, as the old histories tell, and beside my father add what little I can to the great enterprise of Lord Liu of Yuzhou."
I had reached for an episode from the Zuo Zhuan, and perhaps for that another stack of satisfaction settled into Guan Yu's eyes. Liu Bei's gaze on me had softened a shade as well. The initiation, it seemed, had been carried out in proper form.
He offered Guan Ping and me one further round of praise, then turned to Zhang Fei.
"Yide, do as you intend. Should any man wrangle over this matter, I will punish him with my own hand. Military Advisor, see that these words are spread."
"Yes, my lord."
The kindly smile he had shown his young kin vanished. He set the cold mask of a sovereign over his face once more and went on.
"Yide, I have decided to send you, and a thousand soldiers with you, to the support of Zhou Gongjin."
"I will return and make ready."
The order had come from nowhere, and still Zhang Fei did not ask it over. He obeyed at once. Were it Liu Bei who spoke, this was a man who would strap a bundle of kindling to his back and leap into the fire.
To send Zhang Fei to Zhou Yu, though, was to say that the struggle over Jingzhou was drawing to its close. The fight Cao Ren, Liu Bei, and Zhou Yu were waging over Nanyang had reached its last stage almost before one noticed.
"I will follow as well."
The three-sided contest that unfolded in Nan Commandery after Red Cliffs was one I knew perfectly well. An all-star war of Wei, Shu, and Wu, nothing less.
Zhou Yu, Wu's all-time number one; Gan Ning, the mightiest warrior Sun Wu could field; Cao Ren, the godlike general in whom Wei took such pride; Xu Huang of the Five Elite Generals, and Man Chong hardly a step behind him; and the three sworn brothers, Liu, Guan, and Zhang, every one of them committed at once. A battle of stars.
"Mm. I have no mind to stop you. But this will be a bitter business."
"If my father goes to the aid of Zhou Gongjin, Cao Ren will not be able to hold Nan Commandery any longer, and he will withdraw. Should you and Second Uncle strike the Cao bandits as well, they will be as good as surrounded, with the songs of Chu on every side. How could the peril belong to us alone?"
And in truth, the fight for Nan Commandery ends in victory for the alliance of Liu and Sun.
It was one of the exceedingly rare defeats in the career of Cao Ren, Wei's pride, and the battle in which Zhou Yu, supreme commander of that alliance in all but name, proved his genius before all under heaven. It may also have been the campaign that claimed him. The wound he took there may have been what carried Zhou Yu off, and seen across the years it was a grievous loss for Wu as well.
"Truly, you have inherited not Yide's gift of arms alone, but his gift of command. To think so far, and at such an age. Good. I leave this matter to Yide. I will involve myself no further."
Zhang Fei hardly looked likely to forbid me. He had said himself that he would draw no distinction between me and the common soldiers. All the same, I offered Liu Bei my thanks.
On the road back from that audience with Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhuge Liang, Zhang Fei spoke.
"Do you truly mean to follow me to the battlefield?"
"Yes, Father."
There was Choi Dong-rin, the boy commander who went to war at thirteen in the Donghak Peasant Revolution, and I did not have to look so far. Nearer to hand, my father's own cousin, Xiahou Ying, drew his sword at thirteen, stood against the enemy, and died.
Nine I might be, but I carried the makings of Zhang Fei, a match for ten thousand, and I was certain I could at least do one soldier's work.
"I should have taught you to ride before this."
Under the words lay the judgment that his own side was safer than the rear. A fierce captain like Zhang Fei mounts and breaks the enemy at the van, and to follow him one had to be cavalry. Unlike the man in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he was a famed general of wisdom and courage together, well able at schemes—but his troops were few now, and it was more efficient that he stand as general of the vanguard. For planning and for stratagem there was Zhou Yu besides, who was no less than Zhang Fei, and perhaps his better.
"Please don't worry too much. I'm your daughter."
Zhang Fei said nothing further. All he left was a single line.