Staking Their Lives
"When General Shen Kunyang and his men arrived, they learned that Your Highness had just fallen asleep after toiling through the night, and so they refrained from paying their respects, fearing they would disturb your rest. I met with them first and conveyed Your Highness's grand intentions to the generals. They have pledged to follow only the Crown Prince's orders in all matters to come."
Bai Jingyan continued at a leisurely pace.
"General Shen is a rough man by nature, so his speech will contain many expressions that are less than seemly. I beg Your Highness to forgive him with magnanimity. Ah, but do rest assured — heaven itself knows, and so does the earth, that General Shen devotes his utmost loyalty to Great Jin."
"I know it well! Every soul around General Bai is a fine general, devoted to their sovereign and devoted to the nation!"
Walking with Bai Jingyan through the morning sunlight, the Crown Prince listened as she laid out how she had arranged everything for the days ahead. As he heard her earnest counsel and requests, a vague, wistful feeling stirred in his chest.
If only Bai Jingyan had not been a woman. If only she had been in good health. Once he ascended the throne, he might have let her lead the Bai Family Army. There were not many generals so skilled in war who showed such wholehearted loyalty to him.
"And there is Shen Liangyu to consider. The Haoying Battalion holds a position of special standing within the Bai Family Army. It was, after all, the direct force once led by my fifth uncle with his own hands, so you need not doubt Shen Liangyu's loyalty either. However, he is a man of fierce pride, and when it comes to training soldiers, he despises interference and orders from anyone standing over his shoulder. Since my fifth uncle's passing, there has been no one besides Shen Liangyu capable of forging such fearsome warriors as those of the Haoying Battalion. In matters of training, it would be wise to let him have his way. But in all other affairs, I ask that Your Highness place your own trusted general above him. He is a man of unbending principles — if he takes it into his head, he might one day ignore an order on the battlefield and act on his own, refusing even your command."
The Crown Prince turned his head to look at Bai Jingyan as she spoke on, unhurried, and his heart swelled with gratitude. She truly was thinking of him in every detail.
Zhen Xiangzhi had been right. The Bai family carried great ambition in their hearts. Zhen Xiangzhi had said that if he only showed Bai Jingyan that he himself was a man who held the whole realm in his heart, she would serve him to the best of her ability.
By the time the Crown Prince returned to his tent, every trace of drowsiness had flown from him, and he drank tea with Advisor Fang.
"The way I see it, General Bai's arrangement of the Haoying Battalion's Shen Liangyu was done entirely out of consideration for Your Highness! You abide by the principle of never doubting the man you employ and never employing the man you doubt — which makes me look like nothing but a petty wretch, pointlessly paranoid and suspicious."
Advisor Fang chuckled softly, gathering every blame onto himself while heaping praise upon the Crown Prince.
His mood lightened, the Crown Prince laughed.
"Everything Advisor Fang does is for my sake. I know that well. Before I came to this place, my royal father told me that once I had learned the Haoying Battalion's methods of training, I was to have the Haoying Battalion—"
The Crown Prince drew his hand across his throat in a cutting gesture.
"Your Highness..."
As if remembering something, Advisor Fang set down his teacup and addressed the Crown Prince.
"Your Highness, what I am about to say borders on treason. But I am your advisor, and there are things I must say. I may overstep myself — I beg Your Highness's understanding!"
"Do I not know that Advisor Fang acts solely for my sake? Say what you must."
The Crown Prince replied.
"Though His Majesty has raised Your Highness to the position of Crown Prince, His Majesty today is suspicious by nature — and capricious besides. As His Majesty's son, and as one of his ministers, it is right and proper for Your Highness to devote your loyalty to him! But Your Highness is also a sovereign-to-be. You will one day become the Emperor of Great Jin, and you cannot afford to display nothing but blind, reckless loyalty. While serving His Majesty faithfully, you must also make preparations for yourself.
General Bai has entrusted the entire Bai Family Army into Your Highness's hands. Once Your Highness holds the Bai Family Army firmly in your grip, then even if His Majesty should one day harbor other designs toward your position, he will have a great deal to weigh before he acts."
It was a treacherous thing to say. But the words came from the mouth of Advisor Fang, whom the Crown Prince trusted without reservation, and so the Crown Prince did not blame him in the slightest.
Every man has his private ambitions. If the Bai family alone could think of nothing but the nation — carving their loyalty into flesh and bone through their strict training codes — then honestly, the Crown Prince did not have the confidence to be like them.
Besides, where was there a prince who did not covet the throne?
Advisor Fang's words had struck the Crown Prince squarely in his deepest anxieties. Until he sat upon the Emperor's seat, the position of sovereign-to-be could give rise to variables at any moment. His father was still in his prime — it was possible another prince might yet be born. The other princes were still young, but who could say whether his father might hold out until they were grown? Above all, the thought of seating another prince on the heir's seat might well occur to him.
However he turned it over in his mind, leaving himself a way out seemed to be the right answer.
The Crown Prince nodded.
"There seems to be no need to slaughter the Haoying Battalion on my father's orders."
Throw away the brave warriors already within his grasp, only to labor and strain to raise new soldiers from nothing? Would that not truly be the act of a fool?
"Precisely so."
Advisor Fang nodded.
"But this matter must remain known to Your Highness alone. If His Majesty catches wind of it, he will begin to suspect you — and that would work to Your Highness's detriment!"
When the Crown Prince nodded, Advisor Fang did not pursue the subject further, but turned the conversation.
"Now that the great matter is settled, Your Highness need only send Lin Shijie ahead to prepare for the auspicious event descending from heaven."
That very day, the Crown Prince wrote a memorial petitioning rewards for Bai Jingyan's achievements and sent it to the capital of Dadu. He believed that when Bai Jingyan returned to Dadu and learned that he had already submitted the memorial and petitioned for her merit on her behalf, gratitude would move her to obey him all the more faithfully.
His spirits high, the Crown Prince ate a little of the millet porridge boiled with chicken broth, then slept soundly, waking when the sun had begun its descent in the west.
Shen Liangyu reported that he had found nothing unusual about the spies dressed in Jin attire — they seemed indeed to be men of Jin, but why they had been with the Xiliang men, he had no way of knowing.
The Crown Prince held his silence for a long while, then ordered Shen Liangyu to dispose of the bodies, and said nothing more.
Shen Liangyu accepted the order and withdrew.
The Dong clan spies were not Haoying Battalion soldiers, but to Shen Liangyu they were men who had lived and died at his side, and he regarded them as brothers.
Bai Jingyan led Bai Jinchi and the generals of the Bai Family Army to bury the bodies of the Haoying Battalion soldiers and the Dong clan spies beside the Jinghe River.
The last light of the setting sun shone over the vast and beautiful land, its mountains and rivers, and the billowing clouds were dyed an uncommonly lovely shade of crimson.
Bai Jingyan knelt with Bai Jinchi and bowed three times. As she offered wine to the heroes, she murmured in her heart — thank you for fighting for us at the cost of your lives, thank you for pulling Bai Qingyun out of the tiger's den.
"Shen Liangyu, gather some dry branches and light a fire. Tell the Crown Prince we have burned the bodies of the Jin spies."
Bai Jingyan said.
"Yes, ma'am!"
Shen Liangyu rose and led the men off to gather branches.
Every one of them was used to life in a military camp, and they moved fast — within moments, they had piled the branches high.
Shen Liangyu had deliberately sought out damp branches. Wood like this sent up thick, heavy smoke when it burned — smoke that could be seen clearly even by the people on Youhua Island.
Bai Jingyan stood beside the pyre with her horse in hand. Watching the flames and black smoke scatter on the wind, she spoke to Shen Liangyu, who stood right beside her.
"I spoke to the Crown Prince today. I told him you are a man of strong pride who hates people butting in when you train your soldiers — so I asked him to let you have your way in matters of training as much as possible. But I also told him that in all other affairs, he should seat one of his own trusted generals above you. That, I said, is the only way to keep you in check."
Shen Liangyu understood Bai Jingyan's meaning perfectly. Only if she spoke this way would the Crown Prince believe she was thinking entirely of him. And only then — just as she said — would he hold the full authority over the training of soldiers, and nothing else.
Shen Liangyu nodded.
"I understood you completely, Commander. You must lose something to gain something. Only by letting the Crown Prince's men control other affairs will they keep their hands off the training of soldiers."
Bai Jingyan turned her head to look at Shen Liangyu, a smile in her eyes.
"Then I'm afraid you'll have to play the part — rough and stubborn as a mule. Just make sure he doesn't see through it."
"Yes. I understand perfectly."
Shen Liangyu answered.
The situation of the Bai Family Army was far from optimistic. The ten thousand men who remained were the last embers of its fire.
Bai Jingyan had to see them positioned and protected as well as she could manage. And the veterans of the Bai Family Army had to support the young cadets in every way possible.
Shen Liangyu was, in truth, a man full of fear and gentle of heart — but he would have to show the Crown Prince the fierce, obstinate face that Bai Jingyan had fashioned for him.
By the time the bonfire had burned itself out, darkness was slowly settling in. Moonlight hung bright and clear over the far reaches of the Jinghe River.
Bai Jingyan mounted her horse.
Tomorrow, Bai Jingyan would return to Dadu alongside the Crown Prince. But with every matter brought to its close, she had nothing to worry over.
"Eldest Miss Bai! Eldest Miss Bai!"
Mounted, Bai Jingyan turned her head toward the voice.
In the moonlight, Xiao Rongyan's bodyguard was riding toward her on a fine horse.
Only when the bodyguard drew near did Bai Jingyan see that he was leading one more horse — a black one.
Xiao Rongyan's bodyguard yanked the reins, leapt down from his mount, and offered Bai Jingyan a clasped-fist salute.
"Eldest Miss Bai, by my master's command, I have brought you a letter and a horse!"
Yue Shi drew the letter from his breast and raised it high above his head, presenting it to Bai Jingyan.
By now, Sagu would surely have led the Great Yan army to seize the capital of Southern Yan.
His master had said that because of the words Bai Jingyan had offered him, he had come to understand just how mighty a force the hearts of the people truly were; that thanks to her counsel, Great Yan had been able to reclaim Southern Yan with remarkable speed. And under the rightful banner of Great Yan's legitimate governance, he had won the people's allegiance — so that the other kingdoms, unable to find any pretext to intervene, could do nothing but stand by and watch as Great Yan took back Southern Yan, land that had always been its own.
Yue Shi felt a gratitude toward Bai Jingyan too vast for words, and a reverence to match.
When Bai Jingyan still had not moved long after Yue Shi presented the letter, Bai Jinchi lightly squeezed her horse's flank, came forward, and tugged at Bai Jingyan's sleeve.
"Big sister! It's a letter from Teacher Xiao!"
Only then did Bai Jingyan take the letter and unfold it.
There was nothing extraordinary in it. The horse, the letter said, was one given to Xiao Rongyan by the man who pastured the horses of Kuntian City — not as fierce-tempered as the one he had sent before, but a rare and exceptional steed, and so he was sending it specially to Bai Jingyan. He hoped it would serve her well on the battlefield, and he asked that she accept it without refusal.