The Tangled Skein and the Needle to Thread It
I woke with a clear head and stretched until my joints sang.
"May this war end quickly!"
Washed, loosened, and ready for the day, I had just stepped out of Tancheng and was turning toward breakfast when Akga came scurrying up and launched straight into his report.
"Our man ought to have reached Jizhou by now."
"Then the answer will arrive first either north of Xuzhou, once it crosses the Yellow River, or in Yanzhou."
"I couldn't say what judgment the Governor of Jizhou will make."
"He will mediate the war."
"You think so?"
I was certain of it.
Yuan Shao, a hundred times out of a hundred, would tell Cao Cao to his face to stop the war between Yanzhou and Xuzhou here and now.
"Cao Cao's army in Yanzhou marched only because it had Jizhou behind it. He knows perfectly well a long war gains him nothing. And we took Jizhou's support ourselves."
"That we did."
"A mere thousand men — but that general out of Jizhou won no small merit with them."
While Yanzhou hammered Xuzhou and the two provinces kept trading blows, the man smiling through it all would be Yuan Shao. The letter I had set Zhuge Jin to write was magnificent prose besides. Praise him, tell him Xuzhou's plight was desperate, and beg him to show a hero's mettle and bring the war to an end — his vanity would swell several times over, and he would grant it on the spot.
"Just as I first reckoned. The trouble between Yanzhou and Xuzhou will end with Yuan Shao of Jizhou mediating."
"Splendid, Master! Xuzhou, Yanzhou, and Jizhou — haven't all three fallen out exactly as you planned?"
Akga kept puffing me up. Praise is pleasant from any mouth, but there was one problem.
"My sister and brother-in-law in Yecheng are going to suffer for it."
"What? What do you mean…"
"Yuan Shao will surely trumpet to my brother-in-law that he was the one who quashed this war and saved me. No — he has his own face to mind, so the men beneath him will come out and say it."
"Ah. Ah!"
"I can't even guess how much they'll preen while they pick us clean."
Yuan Shao was a man who hid his appetite behind a smile. This affair would have him lay a bill before Yanzhou for the aid he had given, and send word to Tao Qian that he had smoothed matters over nicely, so Xuzhou had better follow him in Jizhou rather than Yuan Shu in the south. And last of all, to me, it would come dressed as a casual question: he had cleared the danger of war from the place I had gone to do business — hadn't I anything for him?
"Yuan Shao is tall, well-built, the very picture of a magnanimous man, and yet I found him surprisingly petty about things like this."
"Ha, haha… The old master used to say dealings with the Governor of Jizhou swallow a great deal of small coin."
Well, that was how he kept nibbling his lands in Hebei a little larger, and how he went on pressing his influence into the Central Plains. He too was a warlord bent on ending this age of chaos under his own name.
"Master, I meant to ask in any case — once we return to Jizhou, how the salt trade out of Bohai is faring."
Right. The salt trade. In these times salt was an enormous concession, and the distribution rights within Jizhou had belonged to our house — until Yuan Shao took the province and planted his own man in them.
"The Governor's nephew has gone in and is learning our methods of distribution one by one. That's the trouble."
"We already bargained away the horse pastures, the farmland, and troops, and now the salt rights on top of it…"
Put that way, Yuan Shao truly never took a loss. He simply ate his way forward, crumb by crumb. A fox in a bear's hide: never letting his own profit slip, and swallowing down everything he could suck dry.
"I'll look into that carefully, one step at a time."
"Yes, Master."
Still, settling the family property would be well in the hands of my brother-in-law Su Shuang in Yecheng. He was said to be a great merchant with at least as much skill as my late father.
I was walking off to see about breakfast when a woman leaned her head out of one of the tent-houses.
"Hm?"
A remarkable beauty, long black hair swaying. My nape had been prickling for a while — had she been watching me all this time? When I quietly drew near she flinched, covered the moment with a dry little cough, and slowly came out. Tall for a woman, and with a high, straight nose: a single jewel among the grimy refugees of Xuzhou.
"Aren't you the sister of Ziyu and Kongming? Was your name Hua?"
"That is my younger sister's name. I am the elder — Xue."
"Ah, forgive me. But why have you been staring at me all this time?"
"That is… well…"
She kept looking at me, utterly at a loss, then hid her face in her sleeve. What was this? A hint of romance, in the middle of a war like this? Perhaps I was more popular than I had thought.
"You have caught my eye for some time… The ties of your long robe have come undone. You have been going about in it torn."
"Hm?"
I pulled off the robe and looked. Sure enough, the stitching at the waist had given way, torn open until the inner jacket showed through.
"Aigo. And I thought I was wearing it well."
"If you would not mind… might I sew it for you?"
At her hesitant offer I handed her the robe. She bowed and darted into the tent.
"Hmm."
"Wasn't that my sister who just went in?"
"Oh — Ziyu."
Zhuge Jin had appeared, smiling faintly, and we walked on together toward breakfast.
"I hear we are the same age. You may speak easily with me."
"No. At the least, that would be better after some time has passed."
"A man who minds the difference in standing, then."
"At the least, once the war is over, I should like to exchange formal greetings and build a proper acquaintance."
He said it with a quiet smile and a nod, and I agreed. We ate, and then prepared once more to seek out people and men of talent. Zhang He was making ready with practiced ease when Zhuge Jin stepped forward.
"If you will allow it, may I come along?"
"You were rescued only yesterday."
"I know the lay of this land. And though I did not say so yesterday, before we fled, the noted men of the Langya region discussed among themselves which way each would go."
So when Cao Cao turned Xuzhou into a wasteland, Zhuge Jin knew where the great clans and scholars meaning to escape had gone?
"Lead the way. Today we had better have horses and carriages."
I set Zhuge Jin at the front and went out to gather people. That day a vast number of common folk came into Tancheng, and with them a good many men of name.
"Bu Zhi of Xiapi has received a great kindness. That you saved my entire household — I shall not forget it even in death."
"Wei Jing of Guangling offers his thanks to Lord Zhang of Jizhou, who came to our aid."
"Xu Sheng, who led the retainers of Ju County! I heard there was a company of righteous men here standing against the beasts slaughtering Xuzhou, so I have brought my followers. I ask that you put spear and blade in my hands!"
A windfall. The men I had gathered under Liu Bei's army since coming to Xuzhou were Zhuge Jin and Zhuge Liang, Yan Jun, Xu Sheng, Bu Zhi, Wei Jing, and others — and this from only a part of northern Xuzhou. People liked to say the place that produced the most noted men in the Three Kingdoms was Yingchuan in Yuzhou, but the men here from around Langya were no less.
"You are all welcome. It was this Zhang Qian who saved you, and my elder brother, Lord Liu Xuande, Chancellor of Pingyuan, who will hold back Cao Cao's army. Be grateful always to both."
Guan Yu went on elevating me, nodding with eyes full of resolve. He was indeed a man rich in feeling. Whoever came seeking him, he never treated them coldly, and within Tancheng he showed a quiet righteousness, determined to protect them all. And so I decided to spend what I had been holding back.
"Lord Yunchang, might I have a little of your time later?"
"Then I shall have to make time I do not have. Very well!"
I set the hour with Guan Yu, then caught Zhang He, who had worked in silence through the day.
"Lord Junyi, come with us."
"I don't know the reason, but very well."
Late that night Guan Yu, the advisors of Liu Bei's army in Tancheng, Zhang He, and I gathered inside a tent. In that bleak air Guan Yu offered good wine he had found somewhere. I took a mouthful, then came to the point.
"What I say in this place, I say in all sincerity."
"Heh. Say whatever you wish."
At Guan Yu's word I brought out, one by one, the things I had kept in my heart.
"This man, Zhang Qian, came from Jizhou to this battlefield for the sake of business."
"Hm?"
"Our house has for generations done great trade out of Zhongshan Commandery in Jizhou, with Hebei at its center. After my father died, we laid plans to seek a greater road into the Central Plains, and I came here thinking the most dangerous places leave the greatest profit. I emptied my private fortune to do it."
At that Guan Yu's face shifted subtly. Jian Yong, understanding none of it, seemed to have question marks bristling over his head. Tian Yu at least nodded. Zhang He listened with his eyes closed.
"Here I have come to know a great deal, and by saving Xuzhou's famed scholars and great clans I have laid a heavy debt upon them. Even so, I do not regret a single coin of the wealth I brought."
"Qian. Do you mean to play the merchant in these ruins, after the fires of war have passed?"
"That was the plan. And I still mean to do business with Xuzhou at the center."
"Mmm!"
Guan Yu's eyes narrowed further, but I went on.
"The war will end soon. Then I will return to Zhongshan in Jizhou. The problem is what comes after."
Guan Yu, Jian Yong, and Tian Yu all looked at me.
"I will be frank. Between the present Governor of Jizhou, Lord Yuan Benchu, and our house, relations are not bad — but neither can they be called good. In truth, the thousand private soldiers Lord Benchu sent as reinforcements were borrowed by settling our family's property and offering it up to him."
"Hah!"
"So, while I was about it, I came down to see the Central Plains rather than remain in Jizhou, the ground of my fathers — and this is how it turned out. Even so, if I go back into Hebei, the family business may be shaken at any time."
"Why?"
"The Governor of Jizhou's men have their eyes greedily on our family's wealth. There will soon be war after war in Hebei, and the ones expected to furnish that money are Jizhou's great clans and merchants like us. Already the pasture rights and the salt concession are in danger of slipping away, one after another."
Zhang He, silent until then, opened his eyes and looked at me.
"Sit still, and I am a milk cow inside a narrow fence, good for nothing but being stripped of milk and meat. If the fortune is going to shrink either way, I would rather step outside that fence and judge for myself. By backing a hero of the realm."
No one spoke.
"That is all."
Guan Yu came to me without the slightest hesitation and made the offer in form.
"Neither I, nor my elder brother, nor our younger brother Yide will forget the grace of your coming all this way from Jizhou. And if your house stands as you say, what of walking the same road with us? My elder brother has set his will upon being the hero who ends this age of chaos, just as you said."
"When the war in Xuzhou ends, will Lord Xuande not return to his original post in Pingyuan? That too is territory in Hebei."
"That is… no. There will be a way! At the least, when you become a great merchant ranging the realm, we are confident we can guard you for life!"
Well, history had already proved Liu Bei would not leave Xuzhou for Pingyuan again once the war was done. I had taken the talk this far. Next would be Liu Bei's return, and Yuan Shao's answer.
Some time later, a messenger out of Jizhou arrived at the camp of Cao Cao's army, the host that had invaded Xuzhou.
Cao Cao, Governor of Yanzhou, was reading the bamboo slip Yuan Shao had sent when he sprang to his feet, rage beyond his grip.
"What is this supposed to mean? End the war at once and go back to Yanzhou!"
"Lord Mengde, why such agitation? It is word from the Governor of Jizhou, is it not?"
Around the furious Cao Cao stood Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan, Cao Hong, Cao Ren, and the rest, the air thick with killing intent. The messenger Guo Tu — a lean frame, a thin beard he kept tugging with his fingers, the whole of him infuriating — remained perfectly at ease.
"It is the Governor of Jizhou's will. And it is no other than I who have come, I who have assisted the Governor since the days of the Minister of the Masses, Lord Yuan Ciyang. You understand the weight of that, do you not?"
Right there before Cao Cao, Guo Tu invoked even the name of Yuan Wei — Yuan Shao's uncle, Minister of the Masses at the end of the Later Han — and bared his white teeth.
"The army at the front was raised on the Yuan clan's support, and the Yanzhou general who took the vanguard, Zhu Wenbo, was once my lord's lieutenant. That master says he can no longer bear to watch further slaughter and plunder. End it here."
"This war is vengeance for my father and my kin!"
"That vengeance? Ten thousand people of Xuzhou dead for each of your fallen. I should think that more than enough."
"Attendant Guo!"
At the cry of Cao Cao's advisors, who could endure it no longer, Guo Tu rose where he stood.
"I have delivered the Governor of Jizhou's words in full. This man will now return to Yecheng."
He needled Cao Cao's camp to the very last, then walked out as if nothing at all were amiss.
"My lord!"
"Elder brother!"
"That damned wretch — one day I'll tear Guo Tu limb from limb!"
Borrowing a tiger's terror was one thing, but a mere attendant of Yuan Shao, trusting in nothing but his master's power, had dared to lay a hand on Cao Mengde.
"My lord, I beg you to think a little more coldly. It grieves me to say it, but our grain is already spent, and the men are far too exhausted to advance any farther."
"It is so. Matters are too poor for wintering here, and Xuzhou is already a half-dead thing hanging on that one man, Liu Bei. You need only promise yourself another day."
At his advisors' counsel Cao Cao trembled, then at last decided.
"For now, we withdraw."
"My lord! We will make ready at once."
"But within three months I will gather supplies in Yanzhou and strike Xuzhou again."
"No — my lord?"
"Aman!?"
Xi Zhicai and Xiahou Dun had asked it in shock. Cao Cao glared at them with bloodshot eyes.
As it happened, he had taken a great deal of support from Yuan Shao, Governor of Jizhou; but he himself was governor of a single province, Yanzhou. Even if this present spark were stamped out, Cao Cao had no intention of leaving Xuzhou alone, and he pledged himself to the next invasion.
The first war had ended. No one could say when the second storm would follow.