Catching Breath Amid the Massacre, Finding Hope
Zhuge Liang.
Of all who know the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, there is not one who does not know that name.
I had known he was of Xuzhou. What I had not expected was to find him a refugee, fled from the great massacre in the very hour of Cao Cao's invasion—and, by fortune, to be the one who saved him. He was still only thirteen, yet he led his elder sister and his little brother, Zhuge Jun, with a bearing that would not bend.
"Can you read this?"
I held out a bamboo slip bearing a passage from the Zuo Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals. Zhuge Liang turned it to the moonlight and read it off at once.
Pifu wuzui, huai yu qi zui.
"A common man may be without guilt. Yet if he holds a precious jade, that jade itself becomes his crime."
"You know it well. Sharp indeed, even at your age."
"You said you were called Baijin, did you not? Are you a local official? Or a military officer?"
"No. Just a merchant."
"A merchant..."
"I deal in everything, from cheap food to rare jade."
If I meant to live in this world, Zhuge Liang was a man I would have to walk beside for the rest of my life. Better to start building that bond now.
"Are we guilty merely because we live in fertile Xuzhou?"
"..."
"If our fate is to become fertilizer for Cao Cao's army simply because we were born and raised on the rich, abundant soil of Xuzhou... what tragedy is that?"
He meant it. The question was lodged in him, sincere and unanswered.
Cao Cao's father and his whole clan had died in Xuzhou, and the family's entire fortune had been swept away with them. His vengeance had turned upon everything the province held. I had watched that butchery—the slaughter, the massacre—until I was sick of the sight of it.
"I set out from Jizhou, and on the road here I was horrified by the heaps of corpses. Honestly, I even thought I should never have come."
"..."
"But someone told me this is a war of a chaotic age, and that if you want to survive, you do whatever it takes."
"I don't recall saying that latter part..."
Zhang He cleared his throat and muttered it, and somewhere in the midst of his grumbling we arrived at Tancheng.
"Well then. Home."
At some point I had started calling the place that.
"Hot soup and rice first, shall we?"
"W-wait! Please!"
"?"
The woman who had been looking after Zhuge Liang and Zhuge Jun raised her hand. I had not seen her clearly in the dark, but she was tall for a woman, and strikingly beautiful, her features sharp and clean.
"On behalf of my two younger brothers, I thank you."
"I've heard that plenty of times on the way here."
"I know—I truly know this is an unreasonable thing to ask! But if you go out again tomorrow morning to save the people, could you search for the rest of our family?"
"!"
"The truth is, we siblings promised to leave Xuzhou and survive by splitting toward Jingzhou and Yangzhou. If my elder brother and younger sister, who set out for Yangzhou, learn of this, they will come at once."
Right. It was not only Zhuge Liang and Zhuge Jun. There was Zhuge Jin as well. Take in Zhuge Jin, Zhuge Liang's two elder sisters, and Zhuge Jun together, and the help would be extraordinary.
"I'll consider it. For tonight, gathering whoever is still left comes first."
"Thank you."
As we passed into Tancheng, the smell of seaweed soup and soybean oil hung thick in every street. It was relief food with a cost-efficiency that bordered on the absurd. Seaweed we still had in overflowing heaps, and even among the soldiers of Tan County a saying had begun to circulate: that damned slippery sea-grass simply refused to diminish.
"Oh—and here I wondered who it was. Director Zhang!"
"Lord Yunchang. I've brought a good many people back again today."
"Excellent. A merchant, and yet a man brimming with the spirit of chivalry."
Guan Yu laughed more largely than he had in a long while and clapped me on the shoulder. At the sight of him the Zhuge siblings flinched as one—all but a single boy. Zhuge Liang alone stepped toward the giant with the long beard, a man several times his size.
"Hmm?"
"Zhuge Liang. My courtesy name is Kongming."
"Quite the eyes on you, for one so young. I am Guan Yunchang."
"Our family has received the grace of your protection. Even so, I would make a request at our first meeting."
"Ho ho. A request, is it?"
"I wish to find my elder brother and my sister. My brother's name is Zhuge Jin, courtesy name Ziyou—a renowned scholar of Langya Commandery in Xuzhou, a man who has mastered the Four Books and the Three Classics."
"And you would have me go searching at this late hour?"
Oh. Now this was something. Will like that, at his age—yes, that was Zhuge Liang.
"Ha ha ha ha!"
Guan Yu laughed aloud and set a hand on my shoulder.
"Director Zhang, you truly are a talent among talents, sent down to us by Heaven."
"Well, I figured one or two geniuses of the realm would turn up among the people we saved. This is Xuzhou, after all."
"Good. All of you, come with me."
I followed, and the Zhuge siblings followed with me. Across Xuzhou, those rising against the tyranny Cao Cao had wrought were gathering toward Liu Bei's army, one by one and two by two.
And I, I supposed, would have to call myself that army's sponsor.
"How far are we going?"
"To where the people you seek already are."
"!?"
Zhuge Liang's eyes flew wide. Guan Yu pointed into the refugees crowded within the tents. There, gulping down bowl after bowl of rice and soup as if he might never eat again, was a youth who looked remarkably like Zhuge Liang, though his face was a little longer and leaner. Beside him sat a girl who resembled Zhuge Liang's elder sister, Zhuge Xue.
"B-Big Brother?"
"...!"
Zhuge Jin, eldest brother of Zhuge Liang. The moment he saw them he brushed the scrap of seaweed from his lips, sprang to his feet, and ran.
"Liang! Xue! Jun!"
"Elder Brother!"
All five of the Zhuge siblings came together in that spot and broke, weeping without shame.
"I could thank you a thousand times and it would not be enough. From this day, the Zhuge clan will not forget Lord Zhang's grace, not even in death."
"Then might you help me with this?"
The meal was done. They had bathed and put on new clothes, and the five Zhuge siblings offered me a formal greeting. I held out a bamboo slip.
"I am, by origin, a merchant come out of Jizhou. But in aiding Xuzhou I mean to begin here and raise a great enterprise across the Central Plains, and for that I want this war ended quickly."
I told them everything that had brought us to this night, and Zhuge Jin nodded. Then his two younger sisters, Zhuge Xue and Zhuge Hua, bowed with careful courtesy, ground ink on the inkstone in my tent, and pressed the brush into their elder brother's hand.
"If I take your meaning, Lord Zhang—you came from Jizhou with the army of Jizhou in your company, and so you would have us praise Lord Yuan Benchu, Governor of Jizhou, and petition him to mediate the war between Yanzhou and Xuzhou?"
"That's right. I can read well enough, but I've no gift for writing."
And setting down in my own hand a letter that rubbed its palms and whimpered at Yuan Shao to please, please do something—that sat a little wrong.
"Understood. Then, though my skill is wanting, I shall write the letter to be offered to the Governor of Jizhou."
Zhuge Liang was still a child. Zhuge Jin, nearer my own years, set the characters flowing down the slip. He was not Zhuge Liang, counted among the greatest geniuses in all the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and yet Zhuge Jin too was one of the renowned prodigies of the age.
"I have heard much of the Governor of Jizhou myself. The qilin son of the Qingliu, who kept three years' mourning for his father and three again for his mother, and who stood as vanguard of the coalition against Dong Zhuo."
He wrote line upon line, and the movement of the brush was anything but ordinary. Young Zhuge Liang watched it without blinking.
"It is Yanzhou that invaded Xuzhou, and Jizhou that would mediate... which means, in the end, that Xuzhou alone cannot wholly defend itself."
A weighty thing for a boy to say.
"When one faces a powerful enemy, another power must always stand ready to check him, so that he cannot move rashly..."
He named the three provinces—Xuzhou, Yanzhou, Jizhou—and the light that leapt in Zhuge Liang's eyes was no ordinary flash.
Meanwhile, north of Tancheng, Liu Bei's army had led its host out and clashed with Cao Cao's forces time beyond counting. Liu Bei, Marquis of Pingyuan, the man who led them, had barely held off assault after fierce assault, and only now was he catching his breath.
"Ghhk—"
"There. That'll do."
He walked the lines himself, binding the wounded and portioning out their rations with his own hands.
"The bleeding's stopped. I've packed it with mugwort powder and tied it off, so eat well in the tent, rest, and you'll mend."
"Thank you, my lord."
"We all go home alive."
He looked to every wounded soldier one by one, and that alone drew from them the absolute trust a commander dreams of and rarely earns.
"Ugh... ugh..."
"You're of the Zhou family from Zhuo Commandery, aren't you? You're in a bad way."
"N-no, my lord!"
The fighting was done, and one soldier on watch leaned his whole weight against his spear, shaking with the effort of staying upright. Liu Bei soothed him and took the spear from his hands.
"I'll stand the night watch. Go in and rest."
"I couldn't. How could I possibly..."
"I don't sleep at night. I toss and turn alone in the tent anyway, so it's no matter. Not another word—go in and rest."
Half by force, he sent the sentry to the rear, then took up the spear and stood the forward watch himself. Since morning he had ridden the battlefield without pause, fighting foe after foe, and his body was already a ruin. Seeing him so, the soldiers set their hearts again, and Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun came up quietly.
"Brother Xuande, I'll keep the watch here."
"I said I was standing it, didn't I? We can change at dawn. Right now, this is my duty."
Liu Bei stood easy with the spear in his grip. Zhang Fei looked out at the distant lights of Cao Cao's camp and spoke low.
"Morale's holding, somehow. But we can't live our whole lives like this."
"If we give ground here, we fight a last battle at Tancheng with hundreds of thousands of Xuzhou's people at our backs."
They had lost the first battle to the Dongguan army. Near eight-tenths of Langya had already fallen to Cao Cao. Still Liu Bei held.
"Brother, even so—since Brother Yunchang went to Tancheng, that place seems to be settling. Supplies coming in proper, too, what with that sea-grass and the beans."
"True. At least we won't have to fight while we starve. That's fortune enough."
He said that alone would suffice, and even in the middle of the war the smile did not leave him.
"Zilong, you truly brought us a benefactor fit to save us all. Let my brother Mengde's army only withdraw, and I'll buy you a great cup of wine myself."
"Not at all. I regret only that I came so late to your side. And I have heard that the lord who arrived from Jizhou has shared a deep bond with Your Lordship since his father's day. All of this is the fruit of Your Lordship's virtue."
"Even so—that the son should distinguish himself after the father—that was Heaven's help, and your strength, Zilong."
Liu Bei nodded, thinking of Zhang Qian, who would be in Tancheng now with his brother Guan Yu.
"Still, supplies or no, our numbers dwindle by the day, and that worries me. I mean to step farther to the front and fight, to make up the difference."
"No, Zilong. You're already doing more than enough."
Cao Cao's mighty host was hurling better than twice their strength into the assault, and always it was Zhao Yun—white horse beneath him, a well-honed spear in his hand—who rode the line from end to end and held the balance.
"Brother, at this point that fellow who calls himself Governor of Xuzhou, sitting shut up in Xiapi and doing nothing, is bad enough. But the people of Xuzhou are another matter. If they had any face left, they'd come even with sickles and hoes in their hands."
"Yide. They are people worn hollow by the shock of the massacre. We do the fighting. If they only go back to the fields and take up the plow again, that is enough."
He did not regret it—not for a moment. No tie bound him to this land. He had stepped onto another man's domain to save another man's people, and he would not take the choice back. Even now, fighting with everything he had, he showed no bitterness toward the Xuzhou that would not come to his aid. Better, he thought, that he himself lift the sword and bear the danger.
"Fight by the power of chivalry in search of righteousness, and the hour will come, however long it takes. Until then, we fight for as long as our strength holds."
"Brother, the wounded multiply every day, and every time we wake there are more dead. How long do you think we can hold?"
His righteous spirit burned. By the power of chivalry itself, he would meet Cao Cao's army and hold the line. And the answer to the righteousness and the chivalry he trusted was already being made ready—in a letter written at Tancheng by a scholar of the Zhuge clan, now on its way to Jizhou.