Only Those Who Have Held the Line May Speak of What Comes Next
"I... beg to report."
I waved urgently for water. The messenger gulped it down in great swallows, still gasping for breath, and then delivered his news.
"The army of Yanzhou will withdraw shortly. They're already falling back from the rear."
"Just as I thought!"
History was holding to its course. I clenched both fists. Cao Cao's second invasion of Xuzhou was ending here.
In the first invasion, the year before, his army had trampled every stretch of Xuzhou it seized into scorched earth, only to fall back when the supplies failed. This second time they had come on nothing but the stores of their own domain — and, true to history, that had been their undoing.
"Tell it in full! Why is the Yanzhou army retreating?"
At Lu Su's demand the messenger caught his breath and answered.
"Across Yanzhou, the local great clans have risen against Inspector Cao Cao, and most of the province has already gone over to them. In Yanzhou, Puyang, Chenliu, and Dongjun have fallen one after another. Word of it reached the army, and Cao Cao's forces are turning back to put down the rebellion."
"Oh — oh!"
"Collapsed from within? Heaven's own fortune!"
Lu Su, Zhuge Jin, and Xu Sheng alike let out their breath in relief, certain now of victory.
"And who heads the Yanzhou clans that rose?"
"Commandant Zhang Miao and his brother Zhang Chao, who had taken shelter under Cao Cao, along with Chen Gong and others..."
Then he spoke of the man who mattered most of all.
"Lu Bu, who left Guanzhong for the Central Plains, has joined the Yanzhou clans and taken the vanguard of this rebellion."
With that last word, the messenger collapsed.
"This man risked his life to bring us all of it. See that he rests well, and reward him richly."
"Yes, Clan Lord!"
The report was in. I, the only one in the room who knew what the future held, set it out myself.
"So it came out just as I thought."
"As you thought? Acting Inspector — did you already know?"
To the gentlemen here it was a windfall that had burst from nowhere. They were owed an explanation.
"Cao Cao is a man raised up by the great clans of Yanzhou. Last year's invasion he launched in the name of avenging his father and his kin, but he hadn't the strength of his own — he struck Xuzhou on the backing he received through Yuan Shao of Jizhou."
"Mmm."
At the word that the slaughter of Xuzhou had ridden on Yuan Shao of Jizhou's support, the generals of Xuzhou burned with fury at Cao Cao and Yuan Shao both.
"And the strange part is this. The one who afterward checked Cao Cao, and bound him in alliance with Xuzhou, was Yuan Shao as well."
An absurd turn — but in an age of chaos, rivals sharing one boat was simply how the world went.
"...And so this time he invaded on Yanzhou's own stores alone. That the clans rose behind him means the discontent inside Yanzhou had already been driven to the breaking point by this very campaign against Xuzhou."
"The Clan Lord's eye for the board is nothing short of uncanny."
Xu Sheng was moved by the clarity of it, and Bu Zhi and Zhuge Jin nodded along. Lu Su, hearing me out, sank into thought.
"So Lu Bu is in Yanzhou... Then the rebellion there will take two years at the least. Even if we restore Xuzhou as far as we can in that span, it will still demand a great deal of time..."
Then Xu Sheng took up his sword and spoke, his voice hard with resolve.
"Zijing. If our lord returns from Tancheng, why not muster every soldier Xuzhou has, join hands with the Yanzhou clans who have set Lu Bu at their head, and tear that cur Cao Cao apart while we have the chance?"
"He's right! Only by paying Cao Cao back in the same coin will the grudge of Xuzhou's refugees be eased!"
I had to admit that what Xu Sheng and Bu Zhi proposed had a powerful pull. Right now Cao Cao had lost more than seventy percent of Yanzhou, his own base. In the history I knew, he had only just managed to put the revolt down. If we seized this moment, took Lu Bu and Chen Gong by the hand, and cut off his breath... Better to break Cao Cao's army in its infancy. However strong Lu Bu or Chen Gong might prove afterward, they would still be opponents we could handle — nothing beside what Cao Cao's power was going to become.
But Lu Su shook his head, flat and final.
"I regret to say it cannot be done."
"Why not? Cao Cao has lost his base. He's a hollow husk, isn't he — not even the grain to feed his own men?"
"As things stand, merely setting Xuzhou back in order will take five years at the least. And you would scrape together every soldier we have and march them off to strike Yanzhou? Does no one here recall who sits south of Xuzhou?"
The moment I heard him, one name came to me at once.
"Yuan Shu?"
"Lord Baijin has given the answer."
"Yuan Shu's lot! They call themselves Xuzhou's allies, and they never so much as lifted a finger."
"Exactly. Because they never lifted that finger, they still hold their main strength, ready to strike Xuzhou in the back whenever they please. Should Yuan Shu gather his whole host and come north of the Huai River, then after Cao Cao we would spend years more bleeding against Yuan Shu."
They were all for throwing in, while the chance lasted, with the Yanzhou rebels who stood against Cao Cao and cutting off his breath for good. Lu Su had already read the board.
"There is one thing more. Distasteful as it is to all of us, we are allied with Yuan Shao — and Cao Cao is allied with Yuan Shao as well. If we strike the other way, then contrary to last year, Yuan Shao will step in to mediate, ordering Xuzhou to halt its invasion of Yanzhou, and the pressure will come down on us from above."
"Damn those two of the Yuan clan!"
Bu Zhi and Xu Sheng spat their rage, but most of the room could only shake their heads and concede the point.
"Now, then. What matters is that we hold Xiaopei to the last, until we are certain the enemy has withdrawn completely."
"The Acting Inspector speaks rightly."
When Lu Su seconded me, the rest turned back to the field.
"Zijing. Stay a moment."
I sent the others off and kept only Lu Su behind. He started.
"Why keep only me?"
"Zijing, there is one thing among what was said just now that I would ask you apart. If we raised an elite force of ten thousand — men who could go four thousand li out and back in a single push — how long would it take?"
Lu Su's face went stern at once.
"Baijin. Do you truly mean to strike Yanzhou in a situation like this? It will get every one of us killed! There is Yuan Shu at Shuchun — and Yuan Shao, the very man you yourself named!"
"No. I am only asking that. How long?"
"Even if the war ends as it stands, I have allowed three years at the minimum for the recovery. A separate budget on top of that... Very well. Even if we empty your private purse and mine and raise them apart from the rest, it will take a year and a half."
A year and a half, then, to raise ten thousand soldiers who could range a round trip of four thousand li at will.
"Zijing. The years between us are few, and the time we have known each other shorter still — yet you have followed me this far, fought beside me, and set your will with mine. In all sincerity, I count you a friend."
At those words Lu Su let out a long breath, came over to me, and dropped heavily into a seat.
"...Very well. What is it you are thinking? This Lu Zijing will hear the whole of Baijin's intent."
"We restore Xuzhou as Xuzhou must be restored, and we hold off whatever invasions come after — and apart from all of that, I mean to draw off a force and move it."
"Cao Cao, after all?"
"A greater battlefield. If one went due west from here, two thousand li without a turn — what would one come to?"
"That would be through Yuzhou and Yanzhou, straight across the Central Plains, over the Hangu Pass and Hongnong, and on to Chang—!?"
Lu Su's face was a sight. The veins stood out in eyes that looked ready to start from his head, and his mouth hung open, unable to close.
"From Xuzhou, across the Central Plains — a design that vast!"
I soothed him, and whispered low.
"Ah — and of course, for now, only you and I may know of it."
"I... I shall... withdraw."
Stunned, Lu Su barely gathered himself and rose, unsteady on his feet.
Lu Su came outside and walked toward a tower on the walls, where the embers of the fighting still smoldered. But the shock of what Zhang Qian had said kept him staggering, one hand braced against the stone.
He himself had thought Xuzhou no place to unfold a great ambition. As a man of learning he had wanted a wider stage, somewhere to put into practice what he kept stored in his heart. But this Zhang Baijin — what was he? A merchant, sketching something more tremendous than any scholar or any general.
"So that's... so that's it! He came here, from the very beginning, for this!"
"Lord Lu?"
Zhuge Jin took one look at him and saw that he was unwell. He hurried over, took his arm, and asked.
"Lord Lu, what's wrong? What did you hear, staying behind alone with Baijin, that you can barely hold yourself up — and a cold sweat like this...?"
"Y-yes! It was never an ambition that could be unfolded north of the Yellow River. Even by the sea roads, it wouldn't have done... A pretext, somehow, to come out into the Central Plains — and this place, Xiaopei. What is Xiaopei? Is it not Pei County, the home of Emperor Gaozu, who founded the Han?"
"Lord Lu?"
"Ha — hahahaha!"
Lu Su had understood everything. Shaking, he laughed aloud, and seized the hand of Zhuge Jin where it held him up.
"What do you mean?"
"A man with the spirit of Lu Buwei and Lord Mengchang was right here! Even after this war is over, I, Lu Zijing, can dream the great work of the realm from this very place!"
Zhuge Jin could guess this much: his prospective brother-in-law, Zhang Qian, had said something enormous, and Lu Su was lost in awe. What on earth had been said to produce a reaction like this, he could not begin to understand.
Pei County — Xiaopei, for short.
This land, the birthplace of Emperor Gaozu of Han, would once again become the place where the fate of all under heaven was set in its frame!
On that alone, Lu Su's heart was already decided.
Cao Ren's army of twenty thousand peeled away from the rear in succession, and at last withdrew. Even after the retreat we held still and waited two full days before scouts could confirm that Cao Cao's army had gone completely.
"To think we ended it without consuming everything stored here."
"Yes. A real mercy."
I looked over the grain still heaped high in the supply warehouse, and the relief settled in. Su Shuang, who had in effect overseen every store through this war, was drained to the bone.
"That it ended this way is truly heaven's fortune. Once Lord Xuande returns from Tan County, the matter will be finished."
"Yes. That's as it should be."
"Brother-in-law, we are a house of merchants. Backing Lord Xuande and holding off Cao Cao's army this time was an investment — and now we can collect on that investment through the reconstruction, can't we?"
"I'll see to that."
We had agreed that Su Shuang would take the whole of the household's stewardship, and I trusted him with it. Even measured against a great modern concern, he was an outstanding professional manager, and he already seemed to have run a formidable set of figures in his head.
"Which brings me to this. Could you let me take about five hundred soldiers outside?"
"What do you mean to do?"
"It's something one always does once the fighting is over. Commonly called gleaning."
At the mention of gleaning in the aftermath of a war, a suspicion rose in him, and he asked.
"You don't mean picking iron and the like out from among the corpses on the field?"
"So you know it. We'll come away with a fair amount of iron."
"Setting ethics aside — the sanitation. Won't what we take off corpses spread pestilence?"
Helmets, blades, scrap iron, gleaned from the bodies of dead soldiers. I knew well enough what he was driving at, and the notion sat foul with me.
"Everyone does it in the wake of a war. And if you leave it lying, the rusted iron sinks into the soil, saps the vigor of the earth, and the land can never be tilled again."
"...Very well. I'll speak to Zijing and have it handled apart from the rest. But whatever you bring back will have to be scoured clean."
"There are plenty of tools inside the city for grinding and polishing. And most of it we'll simply throw into the furnace, melt down, and refine over again."
I hadn't the faintest idea what use there was for crap-iron that riddled with impurities, but for the moment I accepted Su Shuang's condition. It still sat ill with me — and yet in this age, I told myself, it was simply how business was done.
When I finished with Su Shuang and stepped outside, Zhang He and the Jizhou troops were putting the interior of Xiaopei in order. Zhang He saw me, came over quietly, and offered a salute.
"Clan Lord Zhang. Is the grain inside the city sufficient?"
"More than sufficient. It practically overflows."
"A great mass of refugees will be coming before long. You must keep back enough to feed them."
Something in Zhang He's words struck me. Hadn't the same thing been said before — that Liu Bei might set out all but alone, yet when he returned he would bring tens of thousands of the common people with him?
"You're thinking of a volunteer levy."
"I hardly need to see them. There will be tens of thousands, shuffling in under straw mats with bamboo staves in their hands."
He spoke as if he could see the whole of it without looking, and I knew again that he was a commander of rare insight — a talent among talents.
"Brother Junyi. Compared with Jizhou, what do you think of going on living here?"
"We walked into a great war the moment we arrived. I cannot judge yet."
"Still, if peace comes after this, one could live comfortably, don't you think?"
Zhang He held his silence. He gazed at me steadily, then spoke low.
"At the least, it is a fortunate thing that I can go out and fight in front, and my family's lives remain safe."
"That's exactly it!"
Zhang He was still no subordinate within Liu Bei's army. The same was true of me. Our faction was not ranged beneath Liu Bei's command so much as bound alongside it — a coalition with a cohesion of its own. Even so, I wanted to keep Zhang He at my side. Before the Battle of Guandu, or even sooner than that, he might be recalled on Yuan Shao's orders. Whatever it took, I would stop it.
And before long —
"General Liu has returned!"
A long, grinding creak split the air. The gates swung wide, and the three brothers — Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei — came into Xiaopei, proud and unbowed. All three had fought so fiercely that dried blood crusted their armor, and their faces were drawn and gaunt.
"The General is back!"
"The hero who saved us! Heaven itself sent him down!"
"The General kept us alive!"
The people of Xiaopei had all gathered, pouring their praise upon the three brothers. I clapped with them and went out to meet the three — and behind the brothers, a vast crowd came pouring in.
I caught my breath. The soldiers he had taken with him were themselves covered in wounds and looked ready to drop, and behind them the common people stretched on without end. Refugees in clothes torn down to straw matting, bamboo spears and hoes braced like walking sticks, staggering even as they forced their way in through the gates. Some bore wounds that looked mortal, and only once they were inside Xiaopei did they finally let a breath go.
"Did I, Liu Xuande, not say I would surely return to Xiaopei? What a mercy that all of you are safe."
"Inspector — my congratulations on the victory!"
"You have my thanks, all of you. But first, can you see to the people who came with me?"
I snapped my fingers at once. Su Shuang was already there, and the Jizhou troops behind him opened the military grain without a moment's delay.
Xiaopei and Xuzhou alike had weathered Cao Cao's invasion. Now, at last, everyone could rest deep, and the feast that follows a victory could begin.