The Realm in Sudden Flux
The eight subordinates who distinguished themselves so fiercely under Zhang Lan in the Hanzhong campaign, and in the Battle of Xiangfan that followed hard upon it, were known collectively as the Eight Wings of Luanling. When the historian Chen Shou later compiled the Records of Ji Han, he gathered them into a single chapter of biographies as Volume 8, under the title Biographies of the Demon King's Nine Generals and the Deputy Demon King. Unlike the Eight Tiger Generals, a fancy of Luo Guanzhong's invention, the Eight Wings appear to have been a name in actual use from their own day.
For all that "the Eight Wings of Luanling" was the byname of the army Zhang Lan commanded, the occasions on which all eight of them took the field together at her side numbered only three. Even so, their bond is said to have held until death, and like the soldiers of the Luanling Army they counted it the pride of a lifetime.
Amusingly enough, the bond did nothing to stop them. Whenever they met, they carried on a quiet contest over precedence — who, for instance, was the First Wing. If one follows the order of Chen Shou's biographies, the ranking runs Ma Zhong, Wang Ping, Ju Fu, Zhang Yi, Liu Yin, Ma Dai, Wang Si, and Fu Qian. Even at the time, though, there was no end of argument over which of them was the most outstanding, and which stood first in Zhang Lan's favor as the First Wing.
That quarrel over rank has lasted to the present day, and remains a favorite piece of gossip among enthusiasts of the Three Kingdoms. Some go further still, and insist that the Eight Wings of Luanling ought to be joined with the One Cap of Luanling and the Twin Plumes of Luanling — the last of these written not with the characters for the luan-bird damask, but with those for a resplendent sheen — and that the whole should be called the Eleven Feathers of the Luan, or else the Eleven Friends of the Luan.
About the time the rains began to come down in earnest across Xiangfan, I sent out the order to muster — not only at Shangyong, but to Wang Ping, stationed at Fangling, and to Ma Zhong at Xicheng as well.
Five thousand Luanling troops already under my hand. A thousand private soldiers taken when I stripped the Xin brothers of their military authority. And the men Liu Bei had granted Wang Ping and Ma Zhong upon their elevation to general, two thousand apiece. Ten thousand soldiers in all gathered at Shangyong.
At last an operation that is mine alone has become possible.
I laid a hand on the commander's axe at my belt and let the feeling wash through me. Ten years since I had woken to the knowledge that I had been born again as Zhang Lan, and at last I was a commander who held real authority over troops. The sense of achievement. The sheer exhilaration of it.
"General. All are assembled."
"Good."
Zhang Yi, Colonel of Military Counsel, reported that the muster of those I had summoned was complete. Four stood in attendance to my left and four to my right, armored and waiting, and the sight of them drove the elation rising in my chest still higher. I looked them over, face by face. Nearest on my right: Wang Ping, Ma Dai, Liu Yin, Wang Si. Down the left, in order: Ma Zhong, Ju Fu, Zhang Yi, Fu Qian. Was this what people meant by being full without having eaten? The roster warmed me just to look at it, and I found myself smiling.
"You all know the situation at Xiangfan is no ordinary one."
By now the Han would have begun to flood. I had already given Guan Yu warning — through Pang Tong, to be precise. I had no shortage of friends in Jing Province. They had shaped the conditions under which Guan Yu could keep the siege of Fan Castle going, and Guan Yu, trusting them, had held out all the way to the season of the long rains.
Lead a horse to water, and getting it to drink is the simple part. Guan Yu was a man with a genuine gift for handling a fleet as well as an army on land. Even in the original history, where he could not have known this was coming, he had seized the moment and wrought a feat to shake heaven and earth. How much more, then, a Guan Yu who had listened to me and to Pang Tong, and prepared beforehand? He might well break Cao Ren's resistance and take Xiangfan itself.
But his preparations were one thing, and the limits of this northern campaign were another, and those limits were plain. There is what strategists call the culminating point of the attack — the moment an offensive can no longer be kept up. Hold an offensive long enough and the spending of strength follows almost without fail, so that sooner or later the point arrives whether one wishes it or not. Among the Thirty-Six Stratagems there is await the exhausted at your ease, a scheme for striking an enemy who has reached precisely that point, which says enough about how much the notion matters in war.
In the original history, Guan Yu's death owed a great deal to Sun Quan's betrayal, yes — but no less to his having fought Xu Huang and lost when he was already nearing that culminating point. And there was every chance the same point would come down on Guan Yu's army immediately after the great victory won on the flooding of the Han. Take the Seven Armies prisoner, and someone has to feed them, someone has to watch them. All of that comes out of Guan Yu's own strength.
Pang Tong and Pang De had joined him, and heavier blows had been dealt to Wei in succession than in the original history, so his position was easier than it had been. Even so, the siege of Fan had grown longer as well. It would be no surprise if the bottom of his stores were beginning to show. And so we would step forward.
Even now Guan Yu would be moving quickly on the rising Han. Neither Liu Bei nor Guan Yu had asked for reinforcements, but that hardly mattered. I had the axe. If the need arose, I could open a campaign on my own authority — act first, and report afterward.
The generals had known all along that I meant to advance into Jing Province, and they asked with the look of men thinking that what they had waited for had come at last.
"Do we march on Xiangfan?"
"No."
Xiangfan was a task Guan Yu could finish. He had already ground to nothing not only Wang Shuang's raiding column outside the walls, but Yu Jin's relief army as well. Cao Ren, shut up in Xiangfan, was not going to break through him. Which meant the place we ought to be aiming at was elsewhere.
"We go to Wan."
Xu Huang, at Wancheng.
The heart of Napoleon's art of war is, without question, defeating the enemy in detail. Even when the enemy's total strength is the greater, the trick of splitting that strength until a smaller friendly force becomes the larger party in each fight rises to the level of art. There is a story that a subordinate once remarked how His Majesty always won as the few against the many, and that Napoleon answered he did not — that he had always fought, and won, as the many. However few his numbers across a whole theater, the men he committed to any single battle were invariably the majority, and by that means he broke his enemies apart and beat them one piece at a time.
And why am I telling this story? Because from this moment I mean to imitate that Napoleon.
"I will divide the army into three."
Splitting one's forces is something soldiers look on with a very cold eye. As I have said more than once, it is an excellent way to be defeated in detail oneself. Napoleon had overcome that danger by keeping his detachments within reach of one another and in regular contact.
"Three armies: one under the General Who Pacifies the West, one under the General Who Pacifies the North, and one under me. As aides, I assign Zhang Yi, Wang Si, and Ju Fu."
Of the three commanders, Ma Zhong was the least gifted in the purely military arts, so he would have Zhang Yi, who was steeped in the manuals, to make up the lack. Wang Ping could command as well as any man alive, but he was too rigid, and Wang Si would soften that edge. Ju Fu, the all-rounder who could serve as my second whenever I took the van myself, I kept at my own side.
With the shape of the army settled, it was time to speak of the road. I set the tip of my command baton on the country northwest of Fangling, on the ground lying between Wancheng, where Xu Huang sat, and Xiangfan.
"Advance north by way of Nanxiang, and both Fan Castle and Wan Castle fall inside our reach at once."
Once a war began, Napoleon scattered his corps across the theater until the enemy could no longer tell which thrust was the main effort or where the true objective lay, and then, in the muddle, he split them and beat them piecemeal. This time there was no need to lure anyone into scattering. The enemy was already divided between Xiangfan and Wan. All we had to do was sit between them and cut apart, one by one, the pieces that had separated of their own accord — or the relief columns coming up to join them separately — and swallow them.
"A very simple business."
Formidable men held Wancheng, Xu Huang and Tian Yu among them, but they would come out of that city all the same. Cao Cao could not abandon Xiangfan, and he would order them to. If they refused the order, I had only to go to Xiangfan myself, lend Guan Yu a hand, and take Cao Ren. It was hardly different from Mount Dingjun: a move that forced the inevitable on them. Come out in relief, and they would be beaten in detail. Stay where they were, and Xiangfan would fall. Two choices, and ruin down either road.
"If the enemy sallies from Wancheng, I will meet them. While I do, the General Who Pacifies the North will cut the road back to Wancheng, and the General Who Pacifies the West will hold off Wei's other relief forces."
We would leave Fangling, pass through Nanxiang Commandery, and join the troops of ours already holding Yancheng, between Xiangyang and Wancheng, so that we could watch both approaches at once. If Xu Huang or Tian Yu came out of Wan before that, we would deal with them exactly as I had just said.
"Once Wancheng's relief force is beaten, we sweep the length of Nanyang Commandery and cut off every further column the enemy tries to send."
Wang Ping, who had been listening, offered an objection.
"The enemy will not sit still and take it. Suffer defeat in detail once or twice, and they will mass and come at us together. Do we fight a pitched battle then?"
Sound reasoning. The army of Wei was no pack of fools, and however slow news traveled in this age, they were not going to stand there and be beaten over and over. The profit in fighting them piecemeal would last only the first few times. Cao Cao had already lost more than one kinsman among his generals; he was not about to abandon Cao Ren. He would scrape the floorboards if he had to, and squeeze a relief force out of them somehow. And above all, if his secret understanding with Sun Quan let him turn the garrison at Hefei this way, we would find ourselves facing that terror of a man, Zhang Liao.
The weather between us and Sun Quan was ominous enough as it was. He would surely be loath to let a head-on war with Wei slide into a fight on two fronts. But the party with reason to fear a long war was not our own.
"Nothing to worry about."
Beating Wei's relief forces, Wancheng included, would be enough by itself. That victory was a fuse — a fuse to draw out Cao Cao's true intent and drag him onto the field in person. And the moment Cao Cao left Ye, the men who had been lying in wait, hungry for the seat he vacated, were certain to rise.
Wei Feng's Rebellion. Let a revolt against Cao Wei break out in Ye, and Cao Cao could not help but be uneasy. Even if he put Wei Feng down cleanly, a fear would take root in him: that he could never know when, or where, a second Wei Feng might appear, or a third. In the original history Sun Quan had looted the empty house in earnest, and driven Guan Yu to the brink in a single stroke. Would it go that way this time?
I would bet that it would not.