Waiting for the Rain
The third month of Jian'an 24, the year 219.
With the defense of Jingzhou at last in order, Guan Yu launched the northern advance he had so long desired. Thirty thousand men marched out of Jiangling and drove, unchecked, all the way to Xiangfan.
Xiangfan was the joint name for the cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng, raised to face one another across the Han River—a matched pair, twin fortresses that were all but a single work. That peculiar layout made Xiangfan a stronghold among strongholds, all but impossible to take. Before cannon existed to batter walls to rubble, the classic art of the siege was to ring a city and starve it out. At Xiangfan, that was never a simple matter. Seal every landward approach, and the Han would still carry supply by water; threaten Xiangyang, and Fancheng could reinforce it, just as Xiangyang could answer if Fancheng were the one in danger.
Yet through the river fleet he had raised with his own hands, Guan Yu succeeded in closing a perfect ring around Xiangfan.
Even so, Wei could not gather its full strength to defend Jingzhou. Not would not—could not. While Guan Yu struck into Jingzhou, Ma Chao was driving on Tianshui. Liu Bei had withdrawn into Yizhou, but his main army still lay in Hanzhong. And above all, the man appointed Commander of Hanzhong was none other than Father. In the history I knew, Wei Yan had become Commander of Hanzhong; here he had risen no higher than deputy commander. Had Liu Bei meant only to catch his breath, he would have left the post to Wei Yan and pulled Father back to Sanba. To entrust it to Father was to throw still more weight behind this northern campaign of Guan Yu's.
Ma Chao in Wudu. Zhang Fei in Hanzhong. Guan Yu in Jingzhou. The names alone were enough to send a chill through Wei. Strip the garrison from Chang'an and fling it at Jingzhou, and Father would cross the Qinling with Ma Chao and strike for Guanzhong. Dragging reinforcements off the northern frontier, or off the line facing Sun Quan, was scarcely any safer.
Cao Cao had already wrung the manpower of the Central Plains dry once, to fight the struggle for Hanzhong. Victory might have changed the reckoning. In defeat, even the heartland had to be nearing the limit of what it could raise. Of course, once his secret understanding with Sun Quan turned the alliances about and he had recovered some of his strength, he would again display that monstrous power of mobilization.
It was not a perfect fulfillment of the twin advance from Jing and Yi that Zhuge Liang had set forth in the Longzhong Plan, but a kind of miniature of that design was underway, and on the Jingzhou front the advantage clearly lay with Guan Yu. At Tianshui, Ma Chao and Yang Fu seemed to be trading the ground back and forth, so to Wei's eye both flanks were hard-pressed and yet, for the moment, holding tolerably well.
Those charged with Xiangfan were, moreover, Cao Ren himself. Praised as a general sent down by Heaven, he had already shown a terrible prowess in the fighting for Nanjun; he alone was more than fit to stand against Guan Yu, and Man Chong stood with him besides. In Nanyang, covering Xiangfan's rear, even Tian Yu, the famed general of the northern front, had been posted. Strip away the wishful thinking, and the Jingzhou line was, by any objective measure, exceedingly firm.
Indeed, though the fierce Pang De was gone and a commander named Wang Shuang had taken his place, Xiangfan was enduring Guan Yu's assault without giving way.
"They say the Front General has dealt Wang Shuang a heavy defeat."
Of course he had. Wang Shuang was no Pang De. Asking him to stop Guan Yu had always been too much.
"And how has Cao Cao answered?"
"I hear he is raising reinforcements. Hou Yin only raised the banner of righteousness a little while ago, after all."
Quite apart from that formidable defensive array in Jingzhou, no one could say what might yet erupt inside Wei, and Cao Cao could hardly rest entirely easy. Wang Shuang's collapse while raiding beyond the walls of Fancheng would only have sharpened that unease.
"At this rate, our side has already gained everything there was to gain."
Wang Si had it right. From the first, the reason Guan Yu had attempted this northern campaign stood at a considerable distance from any grand design to seize Xiangfan outright and recover Jingzhou. Cao Ren had settled into Xiangfan and begun to show signs of creeping south to apply pressure, so the stronger intent had been to strike first—a preventive war, of a sort.
But as everyone knows, human affairs never run only as they were first planned.
"And yet, General, didn't you say the fighting in Jingzhou would widen?"
"I did."
"If Cao Cao sends reinforcements, the Front General will have a hard fight on his hands alone. Do we join him then?"
At Wang Si's question, I looked at the axe I had set down beside me.
"Yes. That is what the provisional axe is for."
"So you have been moving with this in mind from the very beginning."
Volunteering to take Shangyong. Receiving the provisional axe from Liu Bei. Garrisoning Shangyong while taking the measure of Jingzhou without cease. All of it had been preparation for the storm about to break over Jingzhou. No—from further back still. Ever since I saved Pang Tong, straight through until this hour, I had been waiting for this moment alone. I had emptied my private purse buying warhorses, to raise the cavalry share of the Nanling Army. I had developed the stirrup and built that cavalry up, accepting the risk that it might leak to Wei, whose mounted arm already dwarfed our own. I had bought experience in the blood of the Hanzhong campaign. All of it—every last part of it—had been for now.
To still what was rising in me, I closed my eyes and drew a long breath.
Not yet. I still have to keep my head.
Sight shut out, feeling mastered, I caught a faint sound threading into my ear. A tap. A patter. A tap.
"It's raining."
Drops struck the window at intervals. A drizzle.
"Summer must be here."
At Wang Si's talk of rain, Zhang Eok spoke. Was it the mood summer brings, or the green scent of summer rain? His manner was gentler than usual.
I opened my eyes and rose. I put a hand out past the window frame, and fine threads of rain struck my palm.
"Yes. Rain is coming."
"Pardon? Isn't it already raining?"
As Wang Si said, the rain was already here. But this gentle rain was not what I was waiting for. A downpour that would sweep the world clean. A deluge that would drown it whole.
"No. A greater rain is coming. Yes. A very great one."
I was already soaked through, and still I went on catching the drops, feeling the cold of the water against my skin. So Zhang Eok was not the only one undone by the spell of summer rain. A line of Du Fu I had once read rose unbidden, and I hummed it under my breath.
Good rain knows its season, and falls.
Come summer, it startles the world.
I folded the open palm into a fist. Not a heart that welcomes rain, nor one that takes pleasure in it, but a mind set to meet the war-clouds that would roll in with the storm.
I drew my arm in from the window and flicked my clenched hand, shaking the water loose.
The battle for Fancheng, begun in the fourth month, had already stretched on for three months.
Xiangfan was an iron fortress, and Cao Ren and Man Chong were famed generals both. Peerless though Guan Yu was—one of only two men beneath heaven worth ten thousand—he could not easily bring down a Xiangfan that had given trouble even to the armies of the Mongols. From the outset, the aim had been less the city's fall than the seizure of the initiative. Fierce work had been done, the rout of Wang Shuang among it, but nothing dramatic enough to turn the war on its head.
It was not, however, a matter that could simply be ignored, and so Cao Cao sent reinforcements with Yu Jin at their head. Xiangfan's stubborn defense, and fresh troops besides: the momentum Guan Yu had carried out of the Hanzhong campaign was due, at last, to ebb.
"Father, shouldn't we withdraw?"
Guan Ping put his worry into the words, speaking to a Guan Yu who meant to hold the siege of Fancheng. Tian Yu, garrisoned at Wan, was burden enough, and now Yu Jin—one of the Five Elite Generals Wei so proudly boasted—was coming at the head of a great host. If it came to a pitched battle rather than a defense leaned upon the walls, the outcome was as plain as a flame. Guan Ping trusted his father and revered him, but what could not be done could not be done.
Guan Yu kept his silence. He could not have failed to know the anxious heart behind his son's plea, and yet he remained utterly aloof.
"Yuanjian. How far do they say Yu Jin has come?"
Liao Hua, who held the office of registrar, pointed to one corner of the map.
"They say he has just entered Nanyang Commandery."
"Then there is still time before he reaches Fancheng."
The words meant the siege of Fancheng would be kept. Guan Ping cried out in alarm.
"Father!"
"Tanji, be still. Even if they all gather in one place, it will be no matter. Is Mingjing not at Shangyong?"
Shangyong was no great distance from Xiangfan—least of all for the Nanling Army, whose cavalry, bought with the whole of its commander's private fortune, stood at the highest proportion anywhere in Liu Bei's host. They would arrive before long.
"And toward Dangyang and Qingni, Pang Yingming and Military Advisor Pang are holding fast. There will be no difficulty in withdrawing."
"But simply remaining as we are is a loss of resources in itself, is it not?"
True enough. Supply had already been burned through in one campaign after another—Chibi, Nanjun, Yizhou, Hanzhong. That they had held out even this far was due entirely to Zhuge Liang, a genius of civil government who would be counted among the greatest in history. Guan Ping's argument had its weight. Guan Yu, however, returned him no separate answer. He stepped out of the tent.
His officers poured after him in a rush. He had not meant to inspect the field. Just outside the tent, Guan Yu stood still and looked up at the sky. Thick cloud covered the heavens.
"Rain is coming."
The sullen sky announced the season of the long rains. Even at his words, the officers were privately skeptical. Rain, more often than not, left a battle to peter out; they took him to mean it was worth watching a little longer.
But Guan Yu's deeply sunken eyes only shone, quiet, as if they were waiting for something else entirely.