The Sinking Ship of Xiangyang
The General-in-Chief had launched the siege in earnest, but that did not mean he would simply hurl his soldiers at the walls. Pressing troops against Xiangyang Castle—a stronghold blessed by heaven itself—would buy nothing more than a dog's death. And so the General-in-Chief built his entire conduct around a single focus: gnawing away at Liu Biao's army's nerves.
His trebuchets flung boulders one-sidedly from beyond the reach of arrows, while half-hearted feints at filling the moat forced the defenders to burn through their arrow stocks. Then, just as darkness fell and the defenders dared to breathe, his drums would erupt in a deafening racket, robbing them of any real rest. For Liu Biao's army, it was an ordeal without equal. As the days piled up like this, the force defending Xiangyang Castle against the General-in-Chief's host steadily wore thin.
"So the trebuchets are the problem?"
Having received the reports from the battlefield, Liu Biao offered his opinion to his generals.
"Then why can we not simply answer them in kind with trebuchets of our own!"
A weapon that flung massive boulders sounded threatening enough in the telling, but in truth the trebuchet was a machine riddled with flaws. It worked by setting a stone in a pouch and having men haul on ropes to launch it, which meant its effective range was shorter than one might expect and its accuracy abysmally low.
"Assemble trebuchets on the strongpoints atop our walls, smash the enemy's machines, and the matter resolves itself. Why, then, do you flounder so?"
The trebuchet was, in fact, a weapon the defending side could turn to excellent account as well. It went without saying that a boulder hurtling down from atop the walls was a far graver threat than one lobbed up from the ground.
When Liu Biao posed the question to his generals with exactly that in mind, Zhang Yun, the officer commanding the defense of the ramparts, stepped forward.
"At present, every trebuchet we attempt to assemble is destroyed before it can be finished. We are powerless to do anything about it."
"What was that?"
Caught off guard by a report beyond anything he had imagined, Liu Biao let his bewilderment show. Zhang Yun went on.
"The one called Peerless Under Heaven, Lü Bu, is operating a trebuchet with her own hands and raining boulders down on us. Her accuracy is so extraordinary that she keeps destroying our machines one after another."
"...You mean to tell me a general volunteers for such labor?"
Load a boulder into the pouch, haul on the ropes, fling the stone. It was manual labor in all but name—and a general was volunteering for it. Did she not care one whit for the dignity of a general who led an army? To Liu Biao, it was an absurd piece of news.
Gauging Liu Biao's reaction, Zhang Yun continued.
"The trouble is that with the Peerless Under Heaven herself taking the lead in hurling stones, the enemy's offensive grows fiercer of its own accord."
"Hmm..."
A low groan escaped Liu Biao.
"If there is any blessing in our misfortune, it is that Lü Bu seldom takes the field in person..."
Even as he said it, Zhang Yun's mind drifted back to what he had witnessed. The Peerless Under Heaven, single-handedly working a weapon that needed at least ten men clinging to its ropes just to loose a single boulder. Even now, the memory of her giving the trebuchet's ropes a light tug and sending boulders sailing left him dumbstruck.
Lü Bu appeared on the battlefield at wildly irregular intervals. Whenever she showed herself, she struck at Liu Biao's army—sometimes with arrows, sometimes with siege engines—and each time, with no means of checking her, Zhang Yun was left feeling helpless. She planted herself beyond arrow's reach and bombarded them at her leisure; how was anyone supposed to counter that? Nor could they throw open the gates and sally out to intercept her merely because Lü Bu grated on their nerves.
Tormented by her day in and day out, the men of Liu Biao's army had all but made her name a taboo. These days, whenever that red hair appeared over the battlefield, the sag in their own army's morale was plain for anyone to see. Zhang Yun had never experienced anything like it either, and a dazed helplessness had settled over him and would not lift.
"...We cannot simply sit here and keep taking this beating..."
Having heard Zhang Yun's report, Liu Biao sighed and asked, "How are the soldiers faring?"
"...The situation is not a good one."
A general stepped forward as she spoke—the woman who had loosed an arrow at the General-in-Chief when he drew near the walls to demand surrender, putting his very person at risk. The finest archer in all of Liu Biao's camp bowed in salute, and Liu Biao greeted her with visible relief.
"Ah, if it isn't General Huang Hansheng."
Huang Zhong, Hansheng. One of the Five Tiger Generals of Shu Han, famed as the veteran who only grew mightier with age. A master general who, in the original history, had shared Liu Bei's deepest trust alongside Zhao Yun now stood revealed.
"I remain grateful for how you saved my life that day."
"Your words do me great honor."
Huang Zhong held herself with courteous deference. Had that order to shoot the General-in-Chief from atop the walls never been given, she would never have found her life threatened by Lü Bu—but not a soul present was so tactless as to bring that up now.
Liu Biao turned his gaze on Huang Zhong and spoke. "What precisely do you mean, 'not good'?"
"With every day that passes, the men's morale crumbles further." Huang Zhong thought of the enemy who had come to harry them again today, punctual as ever. "At present, the General-in-Chief's host concerns itself less with taking Xiangyang Castle than with breaking our spirit—and that alone."
One needed only watch them make no earnest attempt to fill the moat, content to hurl stones from afar. The single problem was that these attacks kept no account of day or night. Sooner or later, without warning, the General-in-Chief's forces would set their drums thundering and rain down boulders, and Liu Biao's men atop the walls could do nothing but lie awake through the night, sick with dread that the ramparts might come down at any moment.
"I am ashamed to bring you such a report... but of late, the number of men slipping over the walls to desert their camps has grown by leaps and bounds."
"What?!"
Liu Biao's eyes flew wide. "The General-in-Chief's army has us ringed about on every side as we speak! Where in blazes do these deserters imagine they can run?!"
"...They say that when the General-in-Chief spies a deserter, he leaves the road open for him and makes no move to seize him."
"What manner of nonsense is this...!"
Shaken by the shocking news, Liu Biao shot to his feet. His soldiers were no fools—leave this situation to fester, and the deserters would multiply beyond counting!
"What in the world do you all even do, that you cannot keep a single fleeing soldier under watch?!"
As if by prior pact, the surrounding generals held their silence and endured his tirade.
"You have mouths, have you not?! Then offer me an excuse—any excuse!"
When Liu Biao roared, Huang Zhong stepped forward in their stead. "I have no face to show you."
"...Tch. Enough! Do well from this day forward, and I shall let the past lie."
So saying, Liu Biao continued in a voice that made plain he could no longer stomach the sight of them. "Begone!"
At his testy dismissal, the generals hurried their steps and quit the government hall. One of the officers trailing behind Huang Zhong turned his head the moment they were outside, gazing back toward where Liu Biao remained.
Liu Biao, Jingsheng. As far as he could remember, the man had surely been an intellectual—a scholar capable of wise, clear-eyed judgment. But of late, not a trace of that man could be seen in Liu Biao. The Liu Biao of today was... yes. The very picture of a petty, small-minded tyrant, dragging everyone around him down to ruin for the sake of clinging to his own power.
"..."
He himself knew little of rites and precedent, but he knew perfectly well what Liu Biao had been doing in Jing Province. Clad in black robes and wearing the mianliu crown said to be reserved for the Son of Heaven alone, the man's ambitions were easy enough to guess. And had he not spurned, right before everyone's eyes, the General-in-Chief's offer of surrender on generous terms? Apparently the countless powers he had clutched and savored all these years were simply too sweet to relinquish.
A ruler fallen, undone by the lure of power. Impersonating the Emperor was, to begin with, something no sane man would attempt—one might as well deem the sharp-witted Liu Biao of the past already lost. A pitiful creature who, ever since Lü Bu threatened his life, shrank from showing his face even on the streets. All Liu Biao did now was hide somewhere safe and rail at the generals beneath him.
The deserters grew more numerous with every passing day, and though no one said so aloud, the weariness among the officers showed through all the same. At this rate, it was self-evident they would wither away without ever fighting a single battle worthy of the name. What choice, then, ought he himself to make? Only two roads remained. To hold out on the sinking ship to the very end and drown with it—or to abandon a ruler blinded by his own greed and entrust himself to another.
After only a brief deliberation, the officer made his choice. There was talk, of late, of a group behaving suspiciously within Xiangyang Castle. And in a situation like this—morale in freefall, the interior in disarray—"suspicious behavior" usually meant one thing and one thing only. The officer who had followed Huang Zhong out turned his steps to go asking after them.