Liu Biao (10)
With every preparation complete, I arrived before Xiangyang Castle without a single mishap and laid siege to Fancheng and Xiangyang in tandem.
There was just one problem: breaching Xiangyang before Yuan Shao and Cao Cao's relief forces arrived was flatly impossible, so one way or another, I needed word from Liu Bei before I could make my move.
Not that I could afford to simply sit on my hands while I waited. Having encircled Xiangyang and Fancheng with my army, I took a certain action as I awaited Liu Bei's news. What was it, you ask? Remember the council where I gathered my strategists, and the decoy stratagem came up? Just as Sima Yi had suggested, I deliberately threw my formations into disarray and dangled the bait before Liu Biao's army.
The men were ordered out of their armor lest it weigh them down; meals were cooked right out in the open, smoke billowing shamelessly into the sky; and the camp itself was pitched like the work of a leaderless rabble. I left openings so blatant it made me want to club myself over the back of the head.
Of course, nothing in this world would have been funnier than actually getting ambushed and routed like that, so I had made separate arrangements. While the camp flaunted its gaps to the outside, fully armed soldiers waited inside the tents, well beyond enemy eyes — and since a raid by its very nature tends to arrive at a gallop, I stationed archers and heavy crossbowmen behind cover.
So what would happen if they swallowed the temptation and came swarming in?
What do you think? Soldiers would come bursting from the tents to seal off their path, and arrows raining in from every direction would skewer Liu Biao's army like pincushions. Panicked, they would bolt for home, we would ride them down in pursuit, and then it would be a simple matter of punching straight through the open gates. Done.
...In the end, they never took the bait, though.
Sharp eyes on them.
Sima Yi, standing nearby, said it with an air of I told you so.
"See? I told you they're too scared to come out."
"So it seems."
I conceded it flatly. If they fell for it, wonderful; if not, so be it — that had been my attitude all along, so it hardly mattered either way.
Truth be told, Sima Yi had worked herself ragged over the details — the internal layout of the camp for the decoy, the rough disposition of the troops. She'd griped the entire time that the stratagem would never work, and all the while she'd obediently followed my ideas and torn the camp apart, rebuilding it from the ground up. Mouthing complaints while acting the exact opposite. That's our Sima Yi for you.
I gave her a smile.
"You worked hard. Shall I buy you something later?"
"What on earth do you take me for?"
she shot back. But a short while later, her eyes sliding away from mine, she continued.
"...If you insist on giving, then I would gratefully accept."
Honestly, could she be any worse at being honest?
I gave the sulking Sima Yi one long look, then took a moment to take stock of my surroundings. Seo Hwang and Gao Shun, who had marched out with me, were charged with rallying the soldiers should anything unexpected occur, while Ma Chao and Zhang Liao held back in the rear, ready to rush relief forces to whichever front grew desperate.
Cavalry under Ma Chao and Zhang Liao, no less. By my reckoning, even counting the time for a rider to carry the order, they could reach us within a day — two at the outside.
"Ah! There you are!"
Just then Lü Bu came sprinting up to me with a shout. I turned at her voice.
"What is it?"
"There's some guy out there right now doing something weird!"
...Something weird?
"And what weird thing would that be?"
"Hmm... how do I put it. Oh! Got it!"
Lü Bu chewed on my question for a moment before her face lit up.
"He looked exactly like a guy trying to sneak around where the guards can't see him!"
"..."
I felt a little guilty thinking it, but Lü Bu was genuinely hopeless at explaining things. Ask her where something was and you'd get "here and there" — never which direction, never what it looked like, nothing a person could actually use. Wasn't that a little too pure-hearted? Understanding her was entirely the listener's problem, so I put my mind to work.
Let's think. In our current situation, who would want to move about in secret, dodging my surveillance?
I blurted out the answer the moment it formed.
"A messenger from Liu Biao?"
"That would be the most likely answer."
Jia Xu replied, having caught my murmur.
"At present there is only one piece of information that matters to Liu Biao, so whatever he carries will concern that."
A courier bearing word of what had become of Cao Cao's and Yuan Shao's reinforcements. And if Liu Biao's messenger had shown himself, then before long a messenger of our own would be arriving from Liu Bei as well.
"Reporting in!"
Almost as if the thought had summoned him, a courier came running up to me.
"The Cao Cao army, which had held its standoff against General Liu Bei's forces for several days, has withdrawn!"
"Without even attacking?"
"Yes, General! They pitched camp nearby and spent their days watching the situation — then, citing Tao Qian's invasion as their reason, they turned back for Yanzhou!"
Well, well. She followed my instructions to the letter. I can count Cao Cao as one of mine from here on out, can't I?
Having heard the courier out, I turned to Lü Bu, the one who'd brought me the news in the first place.
"You said someone was acting suspiciously?"
"Yeah."
"He'll probably try to slip past our camp before long. Pretend you haven't noticed and let him through."
Lü Bu blinked her rabbit-like crimson eyes at me.
"Really?"
"Yes. Really."
"Okay."
Puzzled as she clearly was, she nodded along. The fact that she asked no questions meant she trusted me, I supposed.
"Then I'm off?"
"Go on."
At my answer she threw me one last sidelong glance and trotted away.
"Just as you calculated."
I flashed Zhuge Liang a smile as she said it and gave her head a gentle pat.
"That you did. Wonderful work."
"...Nnngh."
A strangled sound of suppressed feeling came from somewhere beside us, and when I turned my head that way, there was Sima Yi, glaring holes through Zhuge Liang. I chalked it up to the same old rivalry as ever and let it pass without a second thought.
Watching Lü Bu's figure shrink into the distance, I turned the situation over in my mind. Just as Zhuge Liang had boldly proclaimed, Cao Cao had withdrawn without a fuss — which meant the Peach Sisters would be joining me. And with nothing left to hold in reserve, I intended to summon Zhang Liao and Ma Chao from the rear as well.
Every ally Liu Biao had pinned his hopes on was citing one excuse after another for failing to send a single soldier. Worse, the enemy's numbers swelled with each passing day. From where Liu Biao stood, the road ahead must have vanished into fog.
Which is exactly why he should have surrendered when I told him to.
It had been the same in the original history, too: time and again, at the crucial moment, Liu Biao made choices that bent strangely off course. What on earth had he been thinking, refusing to surrender? Had the emperor's life he'd been living in Jing Province clouded his eyes? Come to think of it, people devoured by the hunger for power were hardly a rarity in this era. Nothing strange about it at all.
The day after word arrived that neither Cao Cao's nor Yuan Shao's reinforcements could come, the General-in-Chief's army began to move in earnest.
Siege towers and cloud ladders, naturally — but even stone-throwers, great engines built to hurl massive boulders against the walls, began rising piece by piece across the field. With a few more machines reaching completion with every passing day, the morale of Liu Biao's army sagged of its own accord, and all the while the General-in-Chief's reinforcements poured in without pause.
The enemy host had swelled to a full one and a half times the size it had been at their first appearance. Faced with that host, Liu Biao's men now wore their dismay openly on their faces.
At last, one of the local magnates, unable to bear the sight any longer, ventured a remonstrance.
"My lord. Even now, it is not too late."
"..."
"If we open the gates and surrender in good grace, there may be censure, but I do not believe they will go so far as to take our lives. I beg you, make the wise decision and—"
"Enough."
Liu Biao cut him off.
"I seem to recall having settled the matter of surrender once already, in no uncertain terms."
"That was..."
"That no relief army has come wounds deeply, yes. But our soldiers are not few, nor are our granaries empty."
There were reasons behind all of it — every reason the General-in-Chief had not simply launched his assault at once. Every soldier and every last sack of grain in Jing Province had been funneled into Xiangyang Castle and Fancheng, and the result was a pair of fortresses even that army could not lightly assail. Were it otherwise, they would never have bothered staging decoy stratagems, never have poured such pains into building dozens of siege engines.
Liu Biao fixed the magnate with his gaze.
"Did you imagine I would not notice how surrender keeps finding its way to your lips, all to preserve that paltry little house of yours?"
When that frost-edged glare landed on him, the magnate hunched into himself.
"Bats, the whole lot of you. Thinking of nothing but your own skins, forever casting about for a new master to latch onto."
"..."
Liu Biao had insulted him to his face, yet the magnate could summon no reply — he only warily watched his lord's temper, like a man edging along a cliff.
"Put such words in your mouth one more time and I will take your head from your shoulders. Let that be understood."
Having taken the measure of the man's reaction, Liu Biao delivered his verdict and turned away.
He had no wish to leave alive magnates who might one day grow into a thorn in his side — yet he knew, too, that squeezing them too hard would only send them bolting in directions no one could predict. The purge would come later, once the General-in-Chief had withdrawn from Jing Province. Until that day, it was wiser to keep them cowed and bend the gentry clans to his will.
Long years of ruling Jing Province had taught Liu Biao these men's temperaments down to the bone, and now he set his mind grinding over how to withstand the General-in-Chief's host.
All unaware of the look the magnate was leveling at his back.