The End of the Battle for Jingzhou
Even after the negotiations with Cao Cao were settled, Guan Yu and I had no time to rest.
Jingzhou's dangers were not yet all behind us. Cao Cao, the greatest of them, had withdrawn, but Sun Quan's army was still there.
A truce had been signed, yet we left nothing to chance: Guan Ping remained at Fancheng, Liao Hua at Xiangyang, and Guan Yu and I took to the road once more. Guan Yu, who commanded a navy, would follow the waterways toward Qingni and meet Jiang Qin. I, with the greater share of cavalry, was riding overland to bring up support.
"General, might I ask you one thing?"
The question came from Liu Yin, riding at the head of the column beside me. I could already guess what he wanted. His eyes kept flicking sidelong, stealing glances at the thing hung at my waist. When I gave him leave, he asked exactly what I had expected.
"How did you come to receive the White Sparrow Blade?"
"Dexin didn't tell you even that much?"
"No. He only said you were in no position to refuse it."
"The reason is simple enough. If you're afraid this is some scheme to sow discord, I trust the faith between my lord and me, so it isn't worth the worry. And if it's only a small fretting on my behalf, that doesn't stray from good sense either, so there's nothing to fuss over."
"When you say good sense...?"
Once, in the audience where I first met Pang Tong, I had quoted a line from the Huainanzi and gone to serve beneath him. The phoenix bears the luan, and the luan bears every other bird.
"By that account, the sparrow too was born of the luan. What harm is there in my accepting it?"
Force the fit a little, and the story might even serve us as propaganda: that Cao Cao had fashioned with his own hands a white-jade blade in the shape of a sparrow, and returned it to me, the luan — as if he were only giving back what he had taken.
"Better to spend your thoughts on where, in this tangled battlefield, we ought to go. It will turn on how the fighting has moved by the time we arrive."
"Whatever we aim for, we'll have to pass Dangyang first, won't we?"
Jingzhou was burning in three places. Pan Zhang and Pang De were locked together at Dangyang. Wei Yan was holding Lu Xun fast at Yiling. And at Gong'an, Pang Tong and Lü Meng — the highest commanders each side could field — had come to blows.
Follow the land straight south and Dangyang came first. But as I saw it, Dangyang was no great trouble. Pan Zhang might be another matter, but Zhu Ran was a thinking general, a man who could read a battle. Spot us, and he would most likely pull back at once. If he did not, so much the better for us. The man holding Dangyang was none other than Pang De, the White Horse General. He was fighting from behind the walls only because he was outnumbered. Let us join him, and he would come out through the gates and show the world why he had been called the strongest warrior in Xiliang.
We stole a brief rest and opened a council. Among the gathered officers, Wang Ping was the first to speak.
"Pan Zhang and Zhu Ran are likely to fall back on Jiangling."
"We of lesser rank think the same."
Retreat to Jiangling was the prevailing view. Only Ma Zhong raised the chance of a fight, citing Pan Zhang's violent, hasty temper — and even he did not seem to set much store by it. So the council turned away from the battle at Dangyang itself, and toward the question of which way we should go once we had passed it. Jiangling, or Yiling?
Judged coldly, the first was right. Jiangling and Gong'an might look as if they had Lü Meng boxed in, but look closer and the picture was hardly so comforting. Lü Meng had close to twenty thousand men. Jiangling had only a few thousand. Gong'an held more than ten thousand, yet most of them were tribesmen of Wuling, and their fighting strength had to be reckoned lower than the number suggested. That Gong'an was holding at all came down to two things: its commander was Pang Tong, and Jiangling at his rear kept Lü Meng from throwing his whole strength at Gong'an alone.
If Pan Zhang and Zhu Ran joined Lü Meng and shut the Jiangling side, he might well take Gong'an. Pang Tong was formidable, but Lü Meng too was a commander fit to dominate an age. Even so, I could not easily say the words we go to Jiangling.
Miss this chance, and I can't promise when I'll ever lay hands on that man.
Lu Xun. Among Wu's grand commanders — every one of them absurdly able — he was the only man who could be set beside Zhou Yu. The others did not yet grasp how dangerous he was. He had seen through Meng Da's feigned surrender and turned it to kill him, and still nearly every eye, in our own camp and among all who watched this war, was fixed on Lü Meng. They believed the clash between Lü Meng and Pang Tong would decide the war.
If I detach part of my army to Shengming and have him check Pan Zhang and Zhu Ran, and if General Pang shows what the White Horse General can do...
Might I buy the time I needed to take Lu Xun?
The officers saw me sink deeper into the problem, understood that something was weighing on me, and waited in silence for my decision. Then a report came that dragged Jiangling out of my mouth at last. A following column under Sun Jiao had appeared.
"And they say Sun Quan himself is moving with them!"
A bold stroke. Sun Quan was not yet in his dotage, and he had the true capacity of a lord in an age of chaos. He had seen that if things went on as they were, Lü Meng and Lu Xun alike would be shut up in Jingzhou and left to wither, and so he had hurled every force that remained into the collision. His resolve to win back at least his men could be felt even here, a thousand li off.
A pity. But regret, however sharp, could change nothing now. Go to Yiling to kill Lu Xun, and Gong'an and Jiangling looked ready to fall. I would not trade Pang Tong and Pan Jun away just to be rid of Lu Xun.
"We make for Jiangling. Prepare a messenger for General Pang. Tell him we have a truce with Wei, so he need no longer watch the Wei prisoners. Tell him to come with us to Jiangling."
The officers withdrew to make ready for the march. I turned and looked off toward a quarter far from the way we would go. A bitter taste filled my mouth. If Meng Da had succeeded, as planned, in drawing Lu Xun no farther than Zigui County, none of this weighing would have been necessary. To ache over it any longer would only get in the way of the present. I forced the thought of Lu Xun aside.
How had it come to this?
Lü Meng asked it of himself, forcing back the blood that climbed toward his throat. Look back over every step that had brought him here, and there was not one great blunder — and yet, why?
"Commander... our lord is coming. Take heart."
The adjutant's encouragement only tore at him more savagely. His lord Sun Quan had trusted him and set him in the supreme command. What was Lü Meng to say to him about this? Press his head to the ground and confess the crime? Or string out some ugly excuse — and what excuse would that even be? Lu Xun, the man he had marked as his successor, was trapped at Yiling, and no one could say whether he was dead or alive. Pan Zhang and Zhu Ran, sent in trust, had been stopped by Pan Jun, struck in the rear by Zhang Lan and Pang De, and come scrambling out like men in flight. Not one scrap of ground had been taken. All Lü Meng had achieved was to keep Liu Bei's army, fresh from its great victory at Xiangfan, from swallowing any more.
"Hahaha... A-Meng, A-Meng. You forgot your place and dragged our lord's name through the mud. You stupid fool..."
So the old sneer had been right after all. He was Wu's own A-Meng — and surely the most foolish man in the whole of Wu. Yet even amid the self-mockery and the lament, Lü Meng was missing nothing of what lay around him. He had thrown himself at Gong'an, straining to leave himself some scrap of ground to stand on, and he let no small report slip past. Across the field, Zhang Lan and Pang De were running rampant, two hard enemies, but the desperate fighting of Pan Zhang, Zhu Ran, Lü Dai, and the other generals was somehow keeping the line from breaking. Pang Tong's command, which had held this long even with Wuling tribesmen unused to a defensive fight, was at last beginning to fray. Let it go on, and it might still be possible to secure Gong'an, trade Pang Tong for Lu Xun, and from that stronghold reach even toward Wuling in the south.
Lü Meng was feeding a thread of hope with his own life for kindling, and barely keeping the flame alive. Caught in the compulsion that he must claw the situation back, he saw that his adjutant had taken a report and was not bringing it to him. His face tightened, and he bore down on the man.
"Colonel Shi! You have a report, and you don't bring it to me?"
"Th-that is..."
Shi Yi was the man Lü Meng had asked to judge the plan for bringing Guan Yu down, the man who had endorsed it outright and marched out with him. Even with Lü Meng's anger crashing over him, he could not make himself speak. That, of course, scraped raw against nerves already drawn tight.
"Speak! Now!"
Driven as if the sword might come out, Shi Yi let his head fall and said it without strength.
"The Tangkou General... they say he died in the fighting against Guan Yu. The cause is thought to be illness."
The Tangkou General under Sun Quan, the man who had been holding Guan Yu, was Jiang Qin, counted among the Twelve Tigers of Jiangdong. Like Lü Meng he had been sick for a long time, and still, knowing what this campaign meant, he had come to burn his last flame. His death meant there was no longer anyone who could keep Guan Yu in place. Shi Yi had meant to hide it, afraid the news would break Lü Meng.
Tragically for them, his fear was exact.
"Guhk—! Khh... cough, cough!"
The blood Lü Meng had been choking down burst out of him, and he reeled.
"Commander!"
"Commander!"
Shi Yi caught the falling body and did not let it drop. He could not catch the mind as well. When Lü Meng, the supreme commander, went down, confusion ran through Sun Quan's army. There was no time to hide it. Lü Meng had been directing the fight in person at the front, and the soldiers' spirit plunged with him. The line that had barely been holding came apart in an instant.
In a sight that was steadily going dim, what Lü Meng saw was none other than the girl he had glimpsed in passing ten years before. She had grown until one might fairly call her a woman, and she sat her horse at the point of the charge, sweeping through Sun Quan's ranks. When the one man Lü Meng had respected above even his own lord had wanted that girl for a daughter-in-law, how had Lü Meng himself taken it? The memory flickered past: he had scorned it in his heart, and called it too high a praise.
"You were..."
Only now, with death upon him, did Lü Meng admit it. That he had been wrong once again, and that Zhou Yu had been right.