Fall Back
"If you finish every bite of this meal right here, and only then does word arrive that the Xiliang grain has been raided—well, I am a daughter of the Bai family. And who knows the Bai family better than a Bai? We keep the word we give."
Bai Jingyan looked at Yun Paxing with eyes that gave away nothing.
"But if you act recklessly, without knowing your place, then this spot becomes your grave."
Yun Paxing flailed wildly in the water, roaring with fury.
"Bai Jingyan! This was a war between two nations, and I came in person seeking peace! If you kill me, will you not fear what the whole world will say of you?"
A clear light passed through Bai Jingyan's eyes as she smiled faintly.
"At Wengshan I put tens of thousands of Xiliang's surrendered soldiers to the sword. Do you really imagine I fear the tongues of men?"
Both sides stood taut as bowstrings, watchful, and a heavy silence settled between Yun Paxing and Bai Jingyan. Only the rush of the river could be heard.
Before long, a rider came galloping hard from the Xiliang camp. Reaching the riverbank and finding no sign of Yun Paxing, he scanned his surroundings, spotted hoofprints sunk deep in the marshy ground, and, uncertain, spurred westward. It was only after galloping several li that the Xiliang soldier caught sight of him here.
"Marshal! Marshal!"
The soldier rode up and beheld the two armies on the southern bank of the Jinghe, blades already drawn, on the very brink of war. Struck dumb with alarm, he could neither speak nor cross the river.
"You seem to have come on urgent business. Call him over, then. Let us hear what has happened."
Bai Jingyan spoke with a smile that was not quite a smile, her gaze resting on Yun Paxing.
Yun Paxing understood her intention perfectly. The soldier had returned. If the news was that the grain had been raided, he would go back as he was; if it was something else, the news would be delivered here, and then he would be made to wait until word of the grain's seizure arrived as well. Otherwise, there was nothing left for him but death.
Having no real choice, Yun Paxing raised a hand and beckoned the soldier over.
The Xiliang soldier rode across the river and leaned in to speak at Yun Paxing's ear—but Yun Paxing bellowed at him.
"Whatever the news, say it loud!"
The soldier lifted his head, glanced once at Bai Jingyan seated atop her horse, and spoke.
"A request for reinforcements has come from Nanyan. Last night they were attacked by soldiers at Yaoguan Pass, and they beg you to send troops, Marshal."
Yaoguan Pass...
Bai Jingyan's eyes remained perfectly calm and unshaken. If Yaoguan Pass had fallen to assault, then Xiao Rongyan's retaking of Nanyan truly had been moved up.
Yun Paxing, by contrast, felt in that instant as if he had aged a decade.
He had thought that once he slaughtered every last descendant of Bai Weiting, he could finally cast off his terror of the Bai Family Army for good. And yet—was it some cruel jest of heaven?—an even fiercer Bai Jingyan had come to find him.
True, he had gravely underestimated his enemy. But even setting that aside, he could not have sworn victory over Bai Jingyan.
With every generation, the Bai family had grown stronger. Bai Weiting's era had been the clan's golden age without question. If even his granddaughter was this formidable, then how fortunate it had been, after all, that they had conspired from within and without to wipe out Bai Weiting's descendants to the last man. Had they not, Xiliang would have faced even more terrifying generals of Great Jin in the years to come.
Having thought this far, Yun Paxing found that the agony and remorse over his son's and grandson's deaths had, paradoxically, eased. His son and grandson were dead—but he had snapped a pillar of enemy Jin. This campaign could hardly be called a total rout.
He opened his eyes and looked at Bai Jingyan. But as long as this woman of the Bai family lived, great calamity would one day descend upon Xiliang.
A thought flashed through Yun Paxing's mind like lightning—a fine scheme.
If Bai Jingyan did not die today, they would meet again in three years. And if by then he had fully grasped her methods of march and strategy...
"Marshal, from the look of you, you mean to raid my camp tonight."
Bai Jingyan, watching the light flare and gleam in Yun Paxing's eyes, spoke with a smile. His expression turned convoluted.
"Is my thinking so plainly written on my face?"
Yun Paxing asked, serious and without anger.
"It is. I saw your eyes change—from a look of deep despondency to one straining after renewed resolve. You've likely thought of a way to kill me. Kill me, and Great Jin would no longer trouble Xiliang—was that it?"
As she gazed at him, Bai Jingyan's eyes grew deeper and darker, then flared bright and hard again, her voice filling with force, laced now with a touch of arrogance besides.
"But if you kill me, would talent truly cease to flow from Jin? You must have thought that slaughtering the men of the Bai family would end your need to fear Jin—yet more than a hundred thousand of Xiliang's elite soldiers were just annihilated at the hands of a worthless creature like me, were they not?"
Xiao Ruohai started. To hurl stones at a man already fallen into a well was not the character of the Commandery Princess. To heap arrogance upon him was less her nature still. Then why was she saying such things to Yun Paxing?
Yun Paxing shut his mouth and said nothing at all.
Soon the news came from Yun Paxing's own soldier: the grain and the baggage train had all burned to nothing.
Yun Paxing looked at Bai Jingyan with eyes that wanted nothing more than to tear her apart on the spot—yet finding no way out of any of it, he could only sit slumped in his saddle.
Not only grain, but a great quantity of bows had been carried in with them.
Because Bai Jingyan had burned every bow in the Xiliang camp on her last visit, Yun Paxing had sent urgent word to Xiliang for relief, and had also begged Nanyan to lend him bows. Nanyan had refused.
These were bows and provisions hauled here at great hardship from Xiliang. Bai Jingyan had raided his grain, and now held him pinned here besides.
A flicker of hope had made him think that surely, at least the bows might be spared—but Bai Jingyan had burned every last one of them too.
Must heaven go so far out of its way to pile hardship upon Xiliang?
Shen Liangyu and Bai Jinchi returned. When Bai Jingyan learned that even the Xiliang bows had gone up in flames, she lifted her chin, ordered the drawn arrow withdrawn, and rode away.
Yun Paxing sat motionless on his horse for a long while before a sneer crossed his face.
'No wonder they say the young have no patience! Were it I, once I knew the enemy meant to raid my camp in the dead of night, I would have laid a trap and watched quietly. Let them pour into the camp—then make certain they never leave it again. Bai Jingyan has won a few battles, and now she imagines everything lies within her grasp and scorns me. Very well. Tonight I shall show her that the older the ginger, the fiercer its bite!'
Before returning to his camp, Yun Paxing looked toward the Jin camp. Dimly, faintly, he could make out his son's head mounted high upon a pike. He resolved that tonight, come what may, he would retrieve his son's head.
Inside the marshal's tent of the Jin army.
After hanging the Sun-Shooting Bow carefully in its place, Bai Jingyan called out loudly toward the entrance.
"Have all the generals assemble!"
Bai Jinchi asked, puzzled.
"Sister, what's happened?"
"Tonight, Yun Paxing will raid our camp."
Bai Jingyan said simply.
Xiao Ruogang started. At last, the question he had been nursing was answered. The Commandery Princess had deliberately brought Yun Paxing's intentions up to the surface. She wanted to appear so drunk with victory over him that arrogance had blinded her—and that was why she had spoken so deliberately insolent.
Which meant that no matter what, tonight Yun Paxing would raid the camp.
Seeing the Commandery Princess's haughty bearing, Yun Paxing would conclude that Bai Jingyan, swollen with triumph, no longer considered him worth her notice—and so, even after his scheme was laid bare, he would believe she had carelessly spoken her read of it aloud rather than concealing it.
And ordinarily, a man whose hand had been shown would withdraw.
But Yun Paxing's son's head hung from the walls of the Jin camp. His mind would be consumed with nothing but retrieving it. Above all, tonight was the perfect moment.
Even if he had planned no such thing, one look at the Commandery Princess's attitude would put the idea in his head.
She had read his heart precisely.
Shen Liangyu had remained at Bai Jingyan's side throughout, and before long Zhang Danyue, Zhen Zeping, Shi Panshan, and Wei Zhaonian filed into the tent together. Yu Menchang and Shen Kunyang—one with a wounded leg, the other a wounded arm—had been ordered by Bai Jingyan to hold Tianmenguan and Fengcheng, respectively.
"Tonight, Yun Paxing will raid our camp. So once darkness falls, General Zhen Zeping and General Zhang Danyue will lead five thousand elite soldiers along the vital route through Linggu and strike Yun Paxing's camp from Black Bear Mountain.
"The Commandery Princess and I—General Zhen Zeping and I will hold five hundred men inside the camp as bait. General Wei Zhaonian will take the Bai Family Army, and General Shi Panshan the remaining troops, and lie in ambush all around. Let not one Xiliang soldier who comes in ever go back!"
General Wei Zhaonian of the Bai Family Army needed no persuading, and Zhen Zeping, Zhang Danyue, and Shi Panshan—having fought at Wengshan at her side—already trusted Bai Jingyan utterly, and answered without hesitation.
"Is it not far too dangerous for General Bai to remain as bait herself?"
Zhen Zeping said.
"Then I alone could stay."
His concern caught Bai Jingyan by surprise. Then she shook her head.
"Yun Paxing has grown wiser from every fall he's taken. He will only strike once he has confirmed with his own eyes that I am here."
Bai Jinchi's heart hammered against her ribs. Terrified that Bai Jingyan might send her elsewhere, she clung to her sister's hand and would not let go. She thought only this: no matter what happened, she would stand at her sister's side.
Bai Jingyan glanced once at the southern bank of the Jinghe beyond the mouth of the marshal's tent, and a smile gathered in her eyes.
"Give the order to the whole army. This afternoon, before the evening meal, we drill. We will run a camp-raid exercise!"
"...Pardon?"
Zhen Zeping asked, bewildered.
"For what reason, exactly...?"
"Yun Paxing will take it for bluster—me trying to frighten him with a great show of noise."
Bai Jingyan replied.
"This subordinate accepts your command!"
Wei Zhaonian answered at once, raising his fist-and-palm salute without another word.
"This subordinate accepts your command!"
Zhang Danyue answered likewise.
Zhen Zeping could make neither head nor tail of the situation, but he followed Shi Panshan's lead, raised his salute, and took the order.
No one doubted Bai Jingyan's ability.
Before the evening meal, war drums and horn blasts suddenly rang out across the Jin camp.
The Xiliang soldiers, jittery as birds that had already felt arrows whistle past them, snatched up their weapons in a scramble of panic. The Xiliang generals burst from their tents and stared across the Jinghe at the Jin camp, where banners whipped in the sand-laden wind—then hurried swiftly into Yun Paxing's tent.
When Yun Paxing mounted his warhorse with men supporting him on either side, every Xiliang general went white to the lips.
"Marshal? Is it a surprise attack from the Jin army?"
"Keep nothing slack in the watch—I will go and see for myself!"
Anxiety gnawing at him, Yun Paxing gritted his teeth and bellowed the order.
"I will ride with you, Marshal!"
The generals leapt onto their horses and galloped hard after Yun Paxing toward the banks of the Jinghe.
The nearer they drew to the river, the louder rose the war cries shaking the sky above the Jin camp on the far shore.
From every direction, soldiers bearing the Bai Family Army's White Python Banner came surging in like a flood, and the men around Yun Paxing all drew their blades to shield him.
"Fall back! Ready the operation!"
Someone shouted—but Yun Paxing sat unmoving in his saddle, brows knotted, staring long and hard at the camp across the river.