The Battle of Zhaoyang
Our lightning advance met nothing that could check it. It took only a matter of days to race in a straight line as far as Zhuyang County in Nanxiang Commandery.
Wang Ping peeled off toward Yin County, farther north. His cavalry was relatively thin, and he could not easily hold our marching pace; he also meant to swing wide and cut the field off from Wancheng.
By the time we were nearly at Yancheng, the scouts we had cast across a wide net brought word that Xu Huang had left Wan and was coming south.
"Xinye?"
The report had him passing Xinye Castle.
There was an irony in that. In the years when Liu Bei sheltered under Liu Biao, Xinye was where Liu Biao had posted him, a breakwater against Cao Cao.
In the Romance, Zhuge Liang makes his dazzling debut at Bowang Slope near Xinye, but in truth there was never any such place as Bowang Slope, and the man who fought Xiahou Dun was not Zhuge Liang but Liu Bei himself.
Even so, for someone who had savored both the histories and the Romance, Xinye could not help but leave an impression.
"If it is Xinye, he comes down through Zhaoyang County toward Xiangfan."
"Zhaoyang..."
In raw distance Xinye lay closer to Zhaoyang, but unlike us—elite troops, and cavalry in strength—the greater part of Xu Huang's host was green. Push our pace, and we would likely arrive at roughly the same time.
"Carry word to Wang Ping, the General Who Pacifies the North. While the main body strikes Xu Huang, he is to hold Tian Yu's follow-on force. And if Tian Yu does not come out of Wancheng, he may read the field and act on his own judgment."
Wang Ping had a feel for the flow of a battle. The chance was very small, but if Tian Yu merely sat where he was, Wang Ping would choose the best course himself—whether that meant taking Xinye or hitting Xu Huang from behind.
We spurred past Yancheng and rode straight for Zhaoyang County. Of the two of us, Xu Huang and I, it was Xu Huang who set foot in Zhaoyang first.
His men were recruits, and their discipline was not yet sound, but the commander was Xu Huang, and the distance was far shorter for him. If any result was natural, it was that one.
Even so, the gap between his arrival and ours was slight. He knew we were closing in, yet he had not managed to throw up a proper line of palisades and abatis.
"Still, their discipline is tighter than I expected."
As Gu Bu judged, Xu Huang had formed a camp out of soldiers who were anything but elite. The frame was a little loose, but that it had a shape at all spoke to his ability.
"They're rabble all the same. Sweep them with cavalry and they'll scatter to the winds."
Ma Dai snorted as he said it. With him, the number of horsemen and the size of his confidence rose and fell together.
Perhaps it came of being a man of Western Liang. There was more than a little of the cavalry zealot in Ma Dai.
"Their numbers look about even with ours. They'll have more strength in reserve, but they are no match for the Nanling Army."
Ma Dai was not the only one showing confidence. Yu Eun, too, let his pride in the Nanling Army show, declaring that in a head-on fight they would yield to no one, and calling the victory before it came.
I did not think we would lose either. I had raised the Nanling Army with my own hands. A little worn from the march or not, were we going to fall to the likes of raw recruits?
Even so, aloud I demanded vigilance.
"Don't get careless. The enemy commander is Xu Huang. He'll attack."
For Xu Huang, with the overall quality of his troops inferior, this was the only chance he had. He would not let slip the moment when we were even a little more exhausted than he.
"Xiaoxing takes the center. Bai Zhan commands the left."
The right was already Ma Zhong's responsibility.
While the officers were still moving to their posts, Xu Huang stirred. It was in that very moment.
"Here they come. All units, prepare to engage!"
Xu Huang was a wise general and a brave one—truly among the finest commanders in Wei, intellect and courage in a single man.
Even granting that Guan Yu's soldiers had been exhausted, the ferocity that broke a ten-deep line of defense was not a thing to take lightly.
This time, though, I was certain Xu Huang was wrong. He must have judged the attack worth the risk, or he would not have launched it; to my eye it was a reckless blunder. No—the premise itself had been wrong from the start.
"He should never have come out at all."
Even if it earned him Cao Cao's rebuke, even if it cost him Xiangfan, this was a time to wait and watch for an opening.
Of course Xu Huang had probably never meant a full-scale battle of this kind. He would have meant to test us lightly, slip away, and look for a gap.
His mistake was failing to imagine I would come this fast.
Having already come this far, withdrawal was no longer practical. Falling back with the enemy before you is never a simple thing, and the cost of failure is ruinous.
So Xu Huang chose to advance rather than retreat. If he could shove the enemy back even once, he could withdraw in greater safety.
And we would teach him, by the result, just how naive a gamble that had been.
Xu Huang set his resolve as he looked upon Liu Bei's army before him. This place might well become his grave.
I knew Dengzi was dangerous, but to come this quickly... Had they already reckoned the flood into their plans?
Otherwise they could not have come so fast, or so precisely. Wei, too, had learned that Liu Bei had granted Zhang Lan the axe of independent command. Even so, to burst out of Shangyong at the very moment the seasonal rains set in and the Han overflowed its banks made no sense unless this instant had been prepared in advance. Either that, or Heaven itself had cast down fortune to take their side.
Whichever it was, the reality before Xu Huang was bleak. But when had he ever fought by weighing advantage against disadvantage? If the ground was unfavorable, he would simply find a way to win upon unfavorable ground. As he saw it, the only road that led to victory was forward.
Sometimes only by throwing oneself onto the ground of death can one discover the road to life. And Xu Huang judged that the moment was now.
The enemy arrived sooner than expected. They must be tired. This is the only chance.
He saw his own side clearly. The recruits he led had scarcely any real experience of battle, while the enemy was hard-bitten and elite. To make matters worse, they had cavalry in plenty.
An orderly retreat is difficult even for veterans. Order these recruits to fall back, and their discipline would collapse entirely; they would become a single meal for the enemy horse. Better, then, to fight as if death were certain, drive the enemy off once, and join the reinforcements coming up behind.
So judging, Xu Huang boldly ordered the advance.
Yet once the fighting began, the Wei army devoted itself entirely to defense—so much so that one might have thought it was Liu Bei's army that had picked the fight.
This was entirely as Xu Huang intended.
"Hold the ranks! Anyone who disorders the square, I'll cut him down myself!"
He considered this a battle worth fighting.
The quality of the soldiers was certainly a grave weakness, but the quality of the officer corps was the precise opposite.
There was Zhao Yan, who in later years would rise as high as Minister of Works; Zhu Ling, who after Xiahou Yuan's death had come under Xu Huang and could fairly be set beside Xu Huang himself; and the veteran commanders Lu Zhao and Feng Kai, who had built their careers alongside Zhu Ling.
Xu Huang had felt in his own flesh the skill of Zhang Lan, who had fought so fiercely through the Hanzhong campaign, and of the Eight Wings who followed her. But the Wei generals beside him now were in no way their inferiors.
The command and control of capable officers were more than enough to make up for what the soldiers lacked.
The moment the ranks crashed together, the Wei formation shuddered once—but under the generals' direction it recovered quickly, holding its square and meeting the enemy.
If it continues like this, we can win.
Whenever a point grew precarious, Xu Huang rode there at once and plugged it with his own hand, and so he thought. What Wei held over the enemy without question was numbers. His plan was to push that advantage to its limit.
Liu Bei's army, wrapping around the square, would be forced to expose more men along the fighting face than Wei. While he let them attack to their hearts' content, Wei would hold the formation and rotate its lines, conserving strength and drawing the fight out.
Then the Liu Bei army, which had been spending its strength even before the battle began, would show a flaw. If at that moment he unleashed every reserve of force and broke through...
There is a chance.
But Xu Huang's plan came badly undone before long.
"So he's playing for a long fight."
Watching the shape of the battle, I could roughly guess what Xu Huang intended.
He had advanced first, and yet he was pouring everything into defense—a body crouched in order to spring. Perhaps we had slighted them too much for being green. Wei was holding up quite solidly.
"The enemy officers are no small matter."
Ma Dai, Yu Eun, Ma Zhong, and Zhang Yi were hammering them in waves, and still the Wei center kept its square, looking as if it might collapse and then refusing to. Xu Huang stood at the heart of it, of course, but his lieutenants were accomplishing a great deal as well.
There was a reason, in the history I knew, that he had taken a victory against Guan Yu. Had these been Wei's elite rather than recruits, the contest might have stood even, or even tilted against us.
But to turn the present situation around and say it plain, they were barely holding, and only by leaning on their officers. The Wei army as it stood was a castle built on sand, resting entirely on the talent of its command.
"If the officers can't concentrate, a square is bound to collapse."
I touched my heels lightly to my horse's belly and came forward. The spear shaft filled my palm. My heart kicked, the way it always did in the instant before a charge, and an excitement that numbs fear washed through my mind.
"Xiaoxing, the center is yours."
I entrusted command of the center to Gu Bu, the man I had appointed Yamen General, and raised my spear.
The way a batter calls his home run, I leveled the spearhead at our right wing—the sector held by Ma Zhong and Zhang Yi.
It was the turning point of the battle.