The Space Between Wars
If one spoke only of the battle's outcome, it was a victory — and yet Wei's army had still managed an orderly withdrawal.
Ma Chao, pursuing Cao Cao, never broke through Xu Chu, and in the end Cao Cao slipped away. I had dealt Cao Zhang a heavy blow, though not one that could be called mortal, and Cao Zhen, who had charged in to drag Cao Zhang clear, took a single sword-stroke himself — painful, but nowhere near enough to kill him.
Liu Bei did press the attack with the follow-up force, but Xu Huang, stationed at Yangping Pass, arrived in time, and a total collapse was the one fate Wei managed to avoid.
Even with the advantage now clearly ours, Liu Bei never once slackened his grip. Perhaps it was because he had just watched, from a hand's breadth away, the catastrophe a moment's carelessness could bring. Only when word came that Cao Cao had crossed the Qinling Mountains and fallen all the way back to the city of Chang'an did he move in earnest to draw Hanzhong into his sphere.
With Cao Cao himself beaten, no one remained in Hanzhong who could stand in Liu Bei's way. He took Nanzheng County in a single day, and before long the whole of Hanzhong had submitted.
It was not yet the new year, but Liu Bei had opened the year with the conquest of Hanzhong, and his spirits were high. He threw open the granaries of Nanzhong County, distributed their stores among the common people and the soldiers, and held a great banquet that doubled as a ceremony of merits and rewards.
"Hahaha! Cao Cao held out rather well, but how could he ever have beaten us? Am I wrong?"
He had held out a long time, that much was true. He had scraped an army together in haste after Cao Hong's death and then, without so much as a breath of rest in Chang'an, come down into Hanzhong — and still he had lasted.
In the original history he had endured more than three months; this time he had drawn it out to nearly five. He had lost Zhang He as well as Cao Hong, so the hunger for revenge must have burned far hotter.
Even so, the moment he withdrew to Chang'an he sent reinforcements to Cao Ren, smashed Hou Yin — who had risen in revolt in Jing Province — and showed the world that he was still very much alive. It was Cao Cao's way of making war: the deeper the crisis, the bolder he became.
Because of it, Guan Yu, who had been ready to raise his army on the back of the unbroken victories in Hanzhong and Hou Yin's rebellion, checked himself and went back to watching the wind. But that was another matter.
The banquet had warmed just enough for talk of rewards to begin surfacing when Huang Quan rose and addressed Liu Bei.
"My lord, I submit that it is still too soon to speak of merits."
"What do you mean? Has Cao Cao not already gone?"
"Cao Cao has withdrawn to Chang'an, and the region of Nanzheng County has submitted, yes — but Xicheng, Shangyong, and Fangling still remain. Only when all of these have been gathered into our fold can we say the war is truly at an end."
"Nor is that all. When Cao Cao moved the people of Wudu, was that not an admission that he could no longer hold the place? We ought to take Wudu Commandery as well."
At the words of Huang Quan and Fa Zheng, the excitement of the generals — flushed with the thought of rewards for their merits — cooled so plainly that one could see it. Watching them cough to cover their embarrassment, Liu Bei agreed that the two were right.
"Then we should send word to Jing Province as well, and press them from both sides."
"Of late a righteous man named Hou Yin raised a righteous host at Wancheng against Cao Cao, only to be crushed. They have also appointed one Tian Yu — a man who won great merit in the north against the barbarian tribes — as Grand Administrator of Nanyang, and the region is in disarray. Would it not be better to leave Jing Province as it is?"
Liu Bei had offered a way to heighten their efficiency, and Fa Zheng carefully set an objection against it. Contradicted though he was, Liu Bei showed no displeasure. His attention fixed instead on the name Fa Zheng had spoken.
"Guoyang is coming?"
Tian Yu, styled Guoyang. A hidden master of the Records of the Three Kingdoms, he was a general of Wei now — yet the first time he appeared in history was none other than when he gave himself over to Liu Bei. And not to the Liu Bei of later fame: to the Liu Bei of the Gongsun Zan days, when he was little better than a stray cur. For a man who lacked nothing in either an eye for talent or a hunger for it, how sore a finger must Tian Yu have been?
"Then we will leave Jing Province as it stands. In that case we must send someone of weight from our side. Wudu Commandery can be left to the General Who Pacifies the West, and the rest..."
Liu Bei's gaze was turning toward my father when a voice cut in.
"I will go."
"You, Lan? Hmm... You have been fighting since the very start of this war. You won't rest, even now?"
He never so much as mentioned any lack of weight. My reputation had grown, and no mistake — and that pleased me more than a little.
I was about to set about persuading him when someone beat me to it. Fa Zheng.
"My lord, pray grant it."
"Even you, Xiaozhi?"
"There is no one who does not know the toil and the merit of the General of Brilliant Might. Yet in truth, that final assault was the general's own decision, taken alone. It ran contrary to military orders. Command an attack on Shangyong, and let that stand in its place."
I had charged out on the excuse of deceiving our own side before we deceived the enemy. Leaving without so much as asking Liu Bei's leave had been wrong, no question of it. The result had been good, so the matter had been allowed to pass in a muddle — but it had still been wrong.
Liu Bei, it seemed, did not see it that way.
"I have already given orders that Lan, and certain other generals, may move first should the situation grow urgent. Seen in that light, I do not consider Lan's attack a problem."
"That order was solely so they might answer an enemy attack — not so they might force a first strike of their own. A good result matters, of course, but we must never slight the process, my lord."
"Xiaozhi's words are right as well."
From Fa Zheng's side, he meant to use my joining the campaign as something like a punishment, and thereby tighten the army's discipline. To me it was no different from covering fire. With even Fa Zheng stepping forward to hang a justification on the thing, Liu Bei opposed it no further.
"Then I will send the General of Brilliant Might, Zhang Lan, as commander, with troops added under her — five thousand in all. The granting of rewards will wait until Hanzhong Commandery is wholly ours."
"My lord! Send me as well!"
Without warning Liu Feng burst forward, dropped to his knees before Liu Bei, and cried out.
"Gongzhong — you too?"
"Yes, my lord. I wish to go among the reinforcements."
"Hmm. What say you, Mingjing?"
Liu Feng. In the original course of things, the settling of eastern Hanzhong had been carried out under Liu Feng and Meng Da. In that sense I was taking credit that would originally have been his. There was no need to stop him. A man of Liu Feng's caliber could more than pull his own weight, and Liu Bei had already declared me commander, so there would be none of the festering trouble Meng Da had stirred when the chain of command was unclear. It would be fine.
"Yes. A Deputy General of the Household will be help enough."
"Good. Then the Deputy General of the Household will accompany the army as second-in-command. Does anyone object?"
It was a conclusion Huang Quan, Fa Zheng, Liu Bei, and I had all reached together. When no further objection arose, Liu Bei nodded and lifted his cup.
"Then enjoy the banquet!"
Eastern Hanzhong was not yet Liu Bei's. Of those lands, Fangling — the easternmost — was held by Kuai Qi, Zhuge Liang's brother-in-law, while at Xicheng and Shangyong the brothers Shen Dan and Shen Yi had built powers of their own.
Caught between Cao Cao and Liu Bei, they had kept independent forces and stood a step back from the battle for Hanzhong, watching how it went. When word came that Liu Bei had won outright, they fell into hard deliberation. Submit to Liu Bei, or resist?
The answer of the brothers Shen Dan and Shen Yi and the answer of Kuai Qi were exact opposites. Astonishingly, Kuai Qi — Zhuge Liang's own brother-in-law — chose resistance, while Shen Dan and Shen Yi, utter strangers to Liu Bei, chose the path of surrender.
Having sent word that they meant to yield, and received Zhang Lan's reply that she would accept them, the brothers waited for her at Xicheng, the city nearer Nanzheng County.
"This is the right path, isn't it, elder brother?"
At his younger brother Shen Yi's question, Shen Dan answered as a man who saw no help for it.
"Even Cao Cao lost, did he not?"
"I still don't understand. Can Liu Bei truly beat Cao Cao? It was only a single victory, wasn't it?"
"Eh! Mind your tongue."
Now that they had resolved to go under Liu Bei, words needed watching.
"As I see it, the current of the age is flowing toward His Lordship. Look. Since Red Cliffs, when has His Lordship ever lost?"
"That is true, but..."
"And the one coming now is called the General of Brilliant Might. Do you think we could even win?"
Shen Yi looked askance at his brother — already calling Liu Bei His Lordship, and Zhang Lan the General of Brilliant Might — and grumbled again in a sulky voice.
"If we trusted to the walls, it wouldn't be impossible."
"Eh. I told you to stop talking like that."
He said as much, but Shen Yi agreed with his brother's judgment all the same. That was why they stood here with the gates thrown open, waiting to surrender. Even so, giving themselves up flat on their faces without having done a thing sat poorly with him.
Then, at last, an army showed itself in the distance. Watching the host come on through a cloud of dust, Shen Yi narrowed his eyes.
"So that one is the one."
A woman general rode at the head of Liu Bei's army. A mask covered the lower half of her face, and she was now one of the most famous commanders under heaven.
"Yes. The woman who took Cao Hong's head and drove off Cao Zhang..."
"Can it really be true? No matter how I turn it over, I can't easily believe a woman that slender beat those two."
"Mm... To be honest, I feel the same. But isn't that what everyone in the world is saying?"
Men who claimed to have lived through the war went about with one voice — Zhang Lan had killed Zhang He, Zhang Lan had beaten Cao Zhang — and one could not simply refuse to believe them. To the two brothers, who held the reading of the times and the keeping of their own skins as the highest good, the world's perception was truth even when it was a delusion. All the more so for Shen Dan, who believed Liu Bei was the rising tide. In Zhang Lan's case, of course, it had been the truth from the start.
"Then... is that other story true as well?"
Shen Yi asked it quietly, lest those around them hear. The point had been left unspoken, but that was no obstacle at all. Among the countless rumors about Zhang Lan, that one was, from a man's point of view, far and away the most interesting.
"Who can say. They say she goes about with her face covered. I'm curious myself."
The greatest beauty under heaven. An epithet so extravagant, and so plainly at odds with itself, that one wondered whether it even belonged on a woman general. The two of them were already married, with children of their own — but in an age when wives and concubines were simply the way of things, how could curiosity about a beautiful woman ever fade?
The discomfort Shen Yi had worn only moments before vanished without a trace. He spoke with a face suddenly quite serious.
"She'll take it off at the banquet, won't she?"
"...Let us just go down."