Tiger of Jiangdong (5)
Governor Liu Biao of Jing Province received word that Huang Zu, the commander he had sent to Fancheng, had been defeated by Sun Jian.
That Huang Zu had escaped with nothing more than his life said everything about how savage the fighting must have been.
Liu Biao turned to the man standing before him.
"Now, then. Describe for me in detail how the battle unfolded."
"Yes, my lord."
Huang Zu, who had come straight to deliver his report the moment he set foot inside Xiangyang Castle, was a wreck of a man. His helmet had been flung off somewhere and lost, and the armor meant to protect his body was smeared all over with blood gone dry and dark. Charitably speaking, he was the furthest thing from clean — but no one in that hall was in any position to find fault. The local magnates had spent the outset passing the duty of facing Sun Jian head-on around among themselves like a hot coal, and so had no standing to crow; and Liu Biao was hardly so naive as to cast away one of the few precious generals Jing Province possessed over a single lost battle.
Having heard Huang Zu's account, Liu Biao held his silence for a time before speaking.
"Have we any way forward now?"
"...In my judgment, my lord, our only course for the present is to hold Xiangyang Castle fast."
Huang Zu answered his lord's question with careful deference. Having once tasted bitter defeat in the open field, he now argued for stiffening the defenses and withstanding Sun Jian rather than seeking battle again. At this, Liu Biao let out a hollow sigh.
"Very well."
He had failed to drive the enemy from beyond his walls, and only one course of action remained to him now.
A defensive siege.
Fancheng may have been lost, but Xiangyang Castle was a superb fortress in its own right. A river flowed before it and a mountain rose behind it — ground no enemy could easily assail. With that classic "back to the mountain, face to the river" terrain, if they dug in with genuine resolve, Sun Jian's army could hardly help but balk at storming the walls. Tighten discipline within, reinforce the ramparts, and Liu Biao believed he could withstand even an assault from Sun Jian's host.
"But holing up inside the castle with no plan at all is hardly the whole answer. Have you a good stratagem for me?"
As Liu Biao's gaze swept across the assembled strategists of Jing Province, one man stepped forward. He bowed with full courtesy and asked:
"Might I offer my counsel, my lord?"
"Oh — if it isn't Kuai Liang."
If it was Kuai Liang, he could be trusted. Liu Biao nodded.
"Go on, then. Let's hear it."
"Yes, my lord."
Kuai Liang gathered his thoughts and continued. "Sun Jian's army will need time yet to reach this place. If we dig our trenches deep and raise our ramparts high to blunt his assaults, while quietly sending envoys to beg relief from Yuan Shao or Cao Cao, they will have no choice but to abandon the siege and withdraw."
"Hmm…."
Liu Biao nodded slowly, judging the plan had merit. The Tiger of Jiangdong, for all his fearsome name, was when you got right down to it nothing more than Yuan Shu's lackey. For Sun Jian to seize Xiangyang Castle would amount to Yuan Shu swallowing Jing Province whole — and to any power at odds with Yuan Shu, that was a decidedly unwelcome prospect.
Liu Biao was still turning the matter over, nodding along, on the verge of issuing his order — when a figure burst out from the back of the hall. The man shouted at Kuai Liang, who had proposed the stratagem:
"The enemy has already set foot upon our soil! How can you counsel us to sit idle on our haunches and wait for him to reach our very moat?!"
Liu Biao narrowed his eyes at the general's brazen confidence. "...And have you a better way, then?"
"I do, my lord!"
It was a general of the Cai clan — a house risen to high office of late, ever since Liu Biao had taken a daughter of its family as his second wife. "Grant me only ten thousand well-trained regulars, and I will march out at their head and lay Sun Jian's head before you, Governor of Jing Province!"
"That would be a poor choice."
Kuai Liang, who had been listening in silence to Cai Mao's argument with a mind simply to observe, now spoke up in remonstrance. "News of our army's recent defeat has sunk the soldiers' morale to a pitiful low."
……
"How could an army in such a state hope to prevail against Sun Jian's forces? We would most likely only squander lives for nothing. I beg you, reconsider."
Would he trust Cai Mao and send the army out to face Sun Jian once more? Or follow Kuai Liang's plan, fortify the defenses, and call for reinforcements?
"This time, I will take General Cai Mao's counsel."
After long deliberation between the two courses, Liu Biao had made his decision.
"Haha! A splendid choice, my lord!"
"...As you command."
Cai Mao laughed with booming bravado, while Kuai Liang bowed in silent acceptance of his lord's will and withdrew.
Liu Biao addressed Cai Mao. "You shall have the ten thousand men you asked for. Now drive Sun Jian from our lands!"
"I obey your command!"
Cai Mao bowed low and marched out of Xiangyang Castle in obedience to the order. And before even a week had passed, word reached Xiangyang that Cai Mao had fled in rout before Sun Jian.
"What in the world was that just now?"
Sun Jian, his camp pitched at Mount Xianshan, found himself recalling the general from Liu Biao's side who had led an army out to challenge him to a fair, head-on fight. Head-on contests were his particular specialty, so he had obliged — only for the enemy commander to lose the battle in an absurdly anticlimactic fashion.
"Come! Is there no one who will take my spear?!"
The Liu Biao general had ridden straight out of his camp the moment the two armies faced one another and called for single combat — and Sun Jian's officers were hardly the sort to stand by and let that pass.
"This old man Huang Gongfu will take you on!"
General Cheng Pu had carried the day last time; this time it was his turn — so declaring, Huang Gai came charging out, iron whip in hand. He brought his monstrous strength to bear, weapon grinding against weapon, and before more than a few exchanges had passed, the enemy general was swaying in his saddle.
"J-just you watch!"
"Where do you think you're going, in the middle of a fight!"
Unable to withstand Huang Gai a moment longer, the Liu Biao general wheeled his horse and fled. The moment Sun Jian saw Huang Gai's bellow roll out across the field, he sent his soldiers charging into the enemy. And scarcely had the two forces crashed together before the Liu Biao army disintegrated where it stood, scattering to the four winds.
"General Cai Mao has fallen!"
"Run! Run for your lives!"
An army that so boldly picked a fight ought to have something behind it — but contrary to Sun Jian's expectations, Liu Biao's forces had crumbled far too easily. Having brushed aside a host of ten thousand, Sun Jian mused that Jing Province, lying comparatively far from the chaos of war, must have gathered nothing behind its banner but riffraff. Set against the General-in-Chief's army in Luoyang, the gulf was enormous.
Sun Jian found himself thinking back to the Battle of Hulao Pass, which he had once commanded in person.
"You worthless bastards! If you won't come out, I'll come in there myself!"
Lü Bu, Peerless Under Heaven — she who had not stopped at barring the siege towers, but had hurled herself among the engines of war with her own two hands and brought them crashing down. Even for a man such as himself, Sun Jian reckoned, it would have been blessing enough simply not to be cut down on the spot. That overwhelming martial might was unquestionably worthy of the title Match for Ten Thousand.
By Sun Jian's experience, an army led by such a general could be beaten — if only you contrived by some means to sever its commander's influence over the battlefield. Long ago, when Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu of Han, and Xiang Liang, the Hegemon-King of Western Chu, had contended for supremacy over the realm, the Chu army under the Hegemon-King had shown one peculiar trait: battlefields where the Hegemon-King himself stood ended in total victory, and those without him were almost always defeats. An army that leaned on a single man's strength became an empty husk the instant that strength was sealed away. The Hegemon-King's martial glory had all but touched the heavens, which was why no one could have stopped him — but against someone like Lü Bu? There, Sun Jian thought, some way might yet be found.
Had it not been so at Hulao Pass as well? Once Gongsun Zan's guest general had pinned her down, Lü Bu had ultimately been left with no choice but to withdraw her army.
At the thought of them, Sun Jian muttered under his breath. "Now I'm curious. Where are they these days?"
"What do you mean, all of a sudden?"
Han Dang, attending at his side, asked, and Sun Jian answered. "The officers who held Lü Bu in check at Hulao Pass. You remember them."
"Ah... they were certainly remarkable, that they were."
Han Dang had campaigned at Sun Jian's side in those days too, so he had no trouble guessing which officers he meant. Sifting through what he knew, he answered slowly. "As far as I know, they no longer serve under Gongsun Zan."
"That was my understanding as well."
Had they still been at his side, Gongsun Zan would never have been driven back so helplessly by Yuan Shao at the Battle of Jieqiao. If anything, he might have turned that early defeat into an opening, reversed the tide, and crushed Yuan Shao outright. But the fighting there had long since ceased, and Gongsun Zan had withdrawn to You Province — an empty hypothetical. If the three had shed their posts as Gongsun Zan's guest generals, then they must be wandering the realm. What purpose, he wondered, drove them now? From what he could gather, the three of them seemed to keep together.
"...For now, I had best keep my mind on the battle."
Having mulled it over briefly, Sun Jian turned his gaze back toward Xiangyang Castle. If Liu Biao's army was this weak, reducing Xiangyang Castle would not take long.
Sun Jian set his feet in motion. Xiangyang Castle, the last bastion of Liu Biao's power, lay close at hand.