Even If an Egg Cannot Shatter a Rock...
"Even if I'm only the provisional lord of Xiaopei, nothing truly changes. This is a city we're building with our own hands."
The others started in surprise, yet they followed all the same. Of them all, none was more astonished than Su Shuang.
"You mean the three brothers have all gone off and left you the seal?"
"They have."
"And you believe they can actually make it back to Xiaopei?"
"I do."
Surely my brother-in-law wasn't seizing on this to decide the three brothers of the Peach Garden had simply fled. How could he think such a thing? This was the very man who had recognized their heroism long ago, back in Lousang Village of Zhuo County in Youzhou, and sponsored them from the first.
"Liu Bei has done something far too dangerous. Hold Xiaopei shut, and there might still have been room to negotiate. As it stands, this is striking a rock with an egg."
"I thought the same. But he says he cannot bear to stand by and watch Xuzhou being slaughtered before his eyes."
"Hah. Very well. Then start by confirming the wartime stores as they stand."
I had looked them over now and then, but they needed checking once more. The army storehouse was heaped with a considerable stock of supplies.
"On the way down, we raked in every last strand of seaweed drifting along the Bohai."
"It will serve us extremely well, even after this war."
If every scrap of dried wakame stored here were soaked in water, there would be enough to blanket all of Xiaopei — enough that even Cao Ren's men outside the walls could eat it wondering what on earth it was, only for the seaweed to swell inside their bellies. When I lifted a lid to inspect the bone-dry wakame, something odd turned up.
"There's the occasional strange thing mixed in..."
"Ah. This isn't wakame."
Kombu had gotten tangled in with it, but soak the lot and boil it down, and it all went to nourishment just the same.
"Aside from that — fish oil, arrows, hide glue, iron, and the rest. For the present, every category is still ample."
Walking the warehouse and taking stock of what lay within, I felt genuinely reassured.
"Have we opened any of our own house granaries?"
"Not yet."
Mm. Perhaps this was the last crisis — and the wager we had laid on Liu Bei's army all this time might finally pay off.
"Hold off only the army besieging Xiaopei, and the return will be several times anything we've put in."
"As it happens, I spoke at length with that Lu Zijing, the man who emptied his private fortune to bring six thousand hu of army grain. He said that once this war ends, we ought to go to Xiapi together."
"Zijing comes from a great clan whose name has been known in Xuzhou for generations. He'll know where the interests lie."
I, heir to the greatest merchant house north of the Yellow River, and my brother-in-law Su Shuang were playing the part of war merchants for now, but this was only a step into an age of chaos. We would have to move on many fronts.
"Even so, all of that is for after every one of us is still alive. Let's go."
"Right. Off we go."
When I came out with Su Shuang, Zhang He was there to receive me, a thousand Jizhou troops at his back. I had no gift for command myself, but with Zhang He in this place and Lu Su holding the defensive line, I felt secure.
"Brother Junyi, I'm counting on you."
"As things stand, holding Xiaopei is what matters most."
"What odds do you give us?"
"If we keep enduring just as we are, better than six in ten."
A strong chance of victory meant that all of them judged it a fight worth making. In the last hours before dawn, atop the watchtower, Lu Su, Jian Yong, Xu Sheng, Bu Zhi, Zhuge Jin, and the others were waiting for me. They raised their swords and offered a salute.
"Well then. Shall those of us who remain see this through properly?"
From tomorrow, the fighting would begin again.
Meanwhile, against every plea that he stay, Liu Bei left Xiaopei with two thousand soldiers and only Guan Yu and Zhang Fei beside him, determined to save Xuzhou. Just as Lu Su had proposed, he pressed steadily onward, crying out along every road: "Cao Cao has invaded Xuzhou again, and I will be the one to stop him!"
And that evening, they made camp.
"Whew — running all over the place before we've even fought. Busy as anything."
Liu Bei dropped down before the campfire and rolled the stiffness from his neck and shoulders. Guan Yu watched him in silence.
Beneath this disordered realm, he is the man most filled with righteousness and chivalry. A man among men, who carries his sense of honor through to the very end, no matter how dangerous the road!
The reason Guan Yu himself served Liu Bei as lord, and as a sworn brother for life, was that boundless ambition and that chivalry, whose end no one could see.
"Yunchang. Last year, fighting the Yanzhou army, you committed their methods to memory, didn't you?"
"I did, elder brother."
"Then that's enough. They know us — and we know them."
Guan Yu had just nodded when a booming voice rang out from far off.
"Big brother! Big brotheeer!"
"Is that not Yide's voice?"
"I told him we'd leave early at dawn and to get a proper rest. Where has he been?"
As Guan Yu and Liu Bei rose, Zhang Fei came up with a band of men in tow.
"Big brother, looks like folks know what we stand for after all!"
Even Guan Yu's eyes flew wide. Behind Zhang Fei stood men in shabby clothes, armed with nothing better than hoes and bamboo spears — and yet killing intent poured off every one of them.
"Would you be Lord Xuande?"
"I am."
"We lost family and kin when the Yanzhou army invaded last year. We heard the general was going to strike those bastards, so we came!"
When some hundred of them stepped forward to offer their help, Liu Bei smiled and caught their hands in his.
"Truly grateful words. But all of you..."
"Elder brother, there are more coming over there."
This time it was Guan Yu who spotted them, and where he pointed, several hundred ragged commoners were truly drawing near.
"Which of you is General Liu?"
Hundreds of common folk had come following a clan head with the look of a village elder, his frame gaunt as a bundle of sticks.
"We used to live between Yuzhou and Xuzhou, but we've lost our homes and our families. We've come for revenge on that Cao Cao bastard who burned it all!"
"Well, now..."
It had been an expedition of barely two days, and already the commoners were swelling like a snowball — dozens, then hundreds. Liu Bei was truly glad, yet he spoke to them calmly.
"All of you, listen. I honor your spirit, but this is war. I am speaking of a battlefield running with blood, where you must fight an elite army armed with spears and blades, clad in armor and mounted on warhorses."
"General, I may be old, but back when the Yellow Turbans were seething I was conscripted and fought those bastards myself. War doesn't frighten me!"
Commoners beyond counting pressed in before Liu Bei. Seeing it, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei felt their noses sting; with awkward smiles they steadied their elder brother.
"Big brother, we've got a real chance at this."
"Wherever our eldest brother goes, it seems people of this spirit will multiply."
"Poor souls, the lot of them..."
Looking upon the people of Xuzhou and the country around Xiaopei — folk with nothing left to lose, whose only flame was revenge upon Cao Cao — Liu Bei opened his eyes wide and raised his sword.
And so, the countless commoners flocking to him along every road until his host became a sea of humanity, Liu Bei marched upon Tan City in Tan County. The rescue raised by his righteous spirit had at last been answered by Xuzhou.
"We're out of arrows! Bring more!"
"Delivered, and fast!"
"Wait — the acting city lord!?"
"Shoot. Quickly."
When the sun rose, Cao Ren's army hammered at Xiaopei, and I went from place to place heartening the men while I kept the arrows moving.
"Don't give ground! We can win this!!!"
I was shouting myself hoarse to urge the soldiers on when, all at once, the air felt wrong. In a moment too frantic to draw breath, I was about to go looking for the commanders over that sudden change when someone seized me and hauled me back. Zhang He.
"Brother Junyi?"
"Something's off. These bastards are attacking with less than half of yesterday's strength."
I had thought today felt a little easy. So that was it. Cao Ren's host had shrunk sharply in a single day.
"A withdrawal?"
"It could be a withdrawal. Or they may already have shifted the front and sent the rear troops somewhere else."
"Then we can hardly sit still, can we? We have to keep their main force pinned here."
I ran to find Lu Su, and he, directing the defense in full armor, shouted the moment he saw me.
"Caravan Chief Zhang!"
"Zijing, how does the enemy's momentum look?"
"It seems the bastards mean to give up on taking Xiaopei. Their numbers are thinning."
"They wouldn't be swinging around toward Tan County?"
"Even if they set out from here now, we're blocking the way ahead, so they'd have to circle to the rear. It would cost them a great deal of time."
And Cao Ren's army truly petered out in an assault plainly weaker than usual, the fighting sputtering to an end in the early evening. The more it went on, the more it felt as if victory were taking hold.
Before the tens of thousands of Cao Cao's army marching on Tan County, a vast host came into view.
"Mm? Mmm—?!"
Cao Cao, riding at the fore, went wide-eyed as he stared at the forces drawing near in the distance.
"Haaah?"
"My lord?"
"Zhicai. My eyes must be failing me. Unless I'm seeing things doubled and tripled, how is there that much of an army out there?"
Staff officer Xi Zhicai narrowed his eyes at the host making ready to fight them from afar. It was several times the army of Liu Bei they had expected, and he could make out what it truly was.
"My lord, those are peasant levies. Proper troops are only at the front. Behind them I see hoes and bamboo spears."
"Scraped together from where, along the road? Ha! Xuande is up to every damned stunt there is."
Seeing the commoners of Xuzhou he had trampled now flocking to Liu Bei to stand against him, Cao Cao laughed in sheer disbelief.
"My lord, a report!"
Xiahou Yuan, his scouting done, reported at once to Cao Cao.
"My lord, since Liu Bei left Xiaopei he has gathered the able-bodied men of the counties and towns along the road and drawn them up to fight. They have neither proper armor nor decent weapons, but their numbers run into the tens of thousands."
All this while, Cao Cao had raised mountains of corpses along every road and turned villages into burned-out ruins where not a blade of grass would grow. Yet because he had gone on trampling them, they had now gathered as one and dared to oppose him.
"Do these insolent wretches mean to die here, every last one of them?"
And toward that Cao Cao, the three brothers came riding.
Liu Bei.
Guan Yu.
Zhang Fei.
The three of them galloped up and shouted to Cao Cao.
"Brother Mengde! Halt your host, and return to Yanzhou!"
"Is that my brother Xuande? Spare me this reckless resistance, and open the road to Xiapi without another word!"
"I will not! I cannot watch more blood spilled upon this land!"
"You're no match for me. How many times do you mean to strike a rock with a raw egg?"
At the words Cao Cao shouted, his face full of scorn, Guan Yu roared until heaven and earth seemed to shake.
At Guan Yu's cry, even among Cao Cao's elite there were men who flinched. As he raised the Green Dragon Crescent Blade and the shout went up, Cao Cao knit his brow — and still made ready for battle.
"You won't be getting what you want."
Just as he meant to meet Liu Bei's army head-on, a messenger came racing from the rear. Xi Zhicai, having taken the report, went straight to Cao Cao.
"My lord! My lord!"
"Speak."
"It is urgent."
Xi Zhicai drew in close to Cao Cao on his horse and, not daring to cry it aloud, whispered.
"They say the scent of rebellion is rising in the rear. An urgent dispatch, sent by Xun Yu himself from Dong Commandery in Yanzhou."
"...What?"
"The great clans of Yanzhou have cut off support from the rear and raised the banner of revolt. We must settle matters here and turn back at once. They say Cao Ren at Xiaopei already knows, and has hurriedly sent part of his army rearward to confirm it."
In a situation too absurd to credit, Cao Cao's great host stood in danger of losing his base in the rear to rebellion. For an instant he felt the blood surge backward in his veins, yet he had no thought of sheathing the blade he had drawn and withdrawing.
"...Fine. We take those three, and then we return to Yanzhou."
"My lord, there is no time!"
In the end, Cao Cao meant to smash into Liu Bei's army at least once, burn Tan City to the ground, and only then return to Yanzhou. And the great host of Yanzhou, taking up his will, charged at once upon the army of commoners Liu Bei had raised.
"I'll grind you down to the shell! Little eggs!"
"Brother Mengde, it may well be that we are the eggs, and you the great rock. But hear me."
Shring—
From horseback, Liu Bei drew his twin swords.
As Liu Bei drew his twin swords, Guan Yu lifted the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, and Zhang Fei raised his serpent spear, the tens of thousands of commoners following behind them roared.
Twin swords in hand, Liu Bei met Cao Cao's mighty host head-on. At Tan City, heroes and champions clashed once more.