The Battle of Xuyi County
A man of real talent had come into Liu Bei's army—Chen Qun—and no sooner had he arrived than he set off a piece of intelligence too large to ignore.
The danger to their rear that he described sent Lu Su back to rebuild the order of battle from the ground up. Guan Yu and Zhang Fei went with him, weighing which commands to take on campaign and which to leave holding the walls. Chen Qun himself set out with Chen Gui and his son Chen Deng, and with Yan Jun, to test the reports they had gathered against Xuzhou as it actually stood, and to see the paperwork through.
Everyone scattered to a task. When the coming and going settled, only Liu Bei and I were left, and with the room to ourselves I ventured it quietly.
"This is going to be a hard fight."
"So it's come to that. We can no longer watch only the enemy in front of us. Every other wolf with an eye on us has to be kept in mind as well."
He clutched his head and shook it, so I went on.
"And yet, Lord Xuande—deep down, you're pleased, aren't you?"
"...?"
A moment ago I was fairly sure I'd been the only one to catch the twitch at the corner of his mouth, so I tossed the thought out and let it land.
"It's a crisis, no question of that. But the outsider who brought word of it came to you. And the great clans of Xuzhou, who until now were content to sit safe inside Xiapi Commandery, are being won over one by one. They're showing they mean to march out and fight for you."
Liu Bei heard it, and his lips twitched again.
"With Chen Changwen among us, I can already see the shape of it. Not only the clans of Xuzhou, but every commander under your banner, moving of his own accord for your sake. That ought to set your mind at ease."
He came straight over. For a moment he only looked at me. Then he raised a hand and thumped me soundly across the back.
"Baijin, you really are—!"
On the eve of a war he laughed, bright and unburdened, threw an arm around my shoulders, and leaned in until his mouth was at my ear.
"An outside threat binding Xuzhou together, and every man of them placing his trust in me—nothing could please me more. And don't imagine for a moment I don't know whose doing this is."
"That you see it is more than enough for me."
"But listen. What I just said... no one else can hear it."
"!"
He brushed off my collar, opened the door, and sent me out to my work.
So a war beyond our borders might be knitting Xuzhou tight, but we were not to let the satisfaction of it show. I understood.
Over ten days Liu Bei's army was reformed, and he marched with fifteen thousand. He had mustered twenty thousand at first, but Chen Deng, admirably, volunteered to go to Xiaopei and hold the rear against whatever might come, and Liu Bei—generous to a fault—gave him five thousand to do it. With that, Xiaopei was locked into a proper line of defense. Zang Ba, supplied with more than double his former grain, expanded the force under his own command and kept in close concert with Bu Zhi and Xu Sheng at the Langya training camp, so that the moment war broke, support could come straight from there.
"Yide and Zilong will hold Xiapi well."
"They will. And we have to reach Xuyi County first, and take the high ground while it's still ours to take."
Liu Bei's fifteen thousand had no time to spare. Lu Su and I had both insisted that, whatever else happened, we had to arrive ahead of Yuan Shu and seize the advantageous ground, and Liu Bei drove the march at full speed. We reached Xuyi before Yuan Shu, setting out from Shuchun, could finish crossing the Huai.
Xuyi County lay inside Xuzhou's territory, and yet it was a kind of neutral ground, where our sphere of influence pressed right up against Yuan Shu's. We had come fast, and fortune was with us: we were first. We took the hill at once and made our camp upon it.
"Scouts say Yuan Shu is bringing thirty thousand at the least, and as many as fifty."
"Fifty thousand!"
Even the low figure was twice our strength. Not a man among us feared the battle for that.
"And when, pray, have we ever weighed a fight by counting heads?"
Guan Yu had taken the field beside Liu Bei, and he had already honed his Green Dragon Crescent Blade until the edge ran cold and bright, the look of a man who meant to cut down whatever stood before him. Lu Su, meanwhile, walked the ground and laid the plan.
"We hold the height, go down, and break their vanguard as badly as we can. But we do not drive deep. The moment the retreat drum sounds, we come back without a heartbeat's delay. Strike and withdraw—it has to be done cleanly."
"Set your mind at ease. I'll take the van myself."
Guan Yu said it with perfect confidence, and Lu Su asked him once more.
"Lord Yunchang. Suppose Yuan Shu himself is standing before your eyes, and the retreat drum sounds. What will you do?"
"Why, I'll take the cur's head, and then I'll come back—"
"Incorrect. Even if you see Yuan Shu, the instant that drum sounds you turn your horse. No delay."
"Come now. It will never line up so neatly as that."
"Yunchang. Zijing is our strategist, and the plan is his. Remember it. We are the fewer, so we live by the ground and by the quality of our best. You will follow the strategist's word."
"I... understand."
Liu Bei put the wind back into his strategist's sails, and at the same time he made certain the man who would lead the van understood just how much the plan mattered. I watched how it stood, and then I offered one thing of my own, in line with what Lu Su had set down.
"If the retreat drum sounds while Lord Yunchang is pulling back, and Yuan Shu's men cling to his tail, I'll cut that tail off."
"Xianhe and Junyi will be with you. Don't force it. Do exactly what the plan calls for."
"I will."
So every formation was set. Yuan Shu crossed the Huai in his turn, and his army came into view. It was a host larger than I had pictured. He might have been a poor general, but the sheer weight of his power struck me all over again.
"They're past thirty thousand, no question. And looking at how those soldiers are armed—he's spent some coin on them, hasn't he?"
I had barely finished sizing up the look of Yuan Shu's host when Liu Bei himself, with Guan Yu, led the vanguard slowly forward. Yuan Shu's side came on as well beneath the commander's banner, and there he was: passable enough in the face, and not a man whose character I would have vouched for with a single coin. The Honey-Water Emperor, in the flesh.
"Brother Yuan! I trust these past days have treated you well?"
"The wretch who swallowed Xuzhou whole dares claim he knows this elder?"
He was treating Liu Bei, to his face, as some nobody he had never so much as heard of. Guan Yu bristled. Liu Bei only laughed, broad and easy—and Yuan Shu's bellow rolled back across the field.
"Word reached me of a fool who doesn't know his station, snatching Xuzhou the instant Tao Qian died, and the impudence of it brought me here! Present the Governor of Xuzhou's seal even now, and out of my magnanimity I'll find you a place. Surrender!"
"Brother Yuan, I'm sorry, but that won't do. And do you truly not know me? We joined our strength in the alliance raised to take the traitor Dong Zhuo. Has your memory failed you so badly?"
Liu Bei laid it out neatly, needling him. Yuan Shu paid it no mind at all. Arrogance sat plain on his face as he raised a hand to shade his eyes and stared hard our way, then snorted and shook his head.
"I'm sorry, but I am not a man who knows any fellow called Liu Bei. Some stray may have gobbled up a single province of the Han, but all my eye finds is an upstart nobody—a mongrel I have never heard of."
"Yuan Shu, that rat!"
"Yunchang. A petty provocation."
Then Yuan Shu shouted again, louder still.
"Ah—if I rummage through the bends of my memory, I do faintly recall three beggar-brats of brothers who shoved their way into the hunt for Dong Zhuo! Called themselves scions of the Han's Liu clan, didn't they? Not a soldier to their name, not a bow between them, and off they went to war as Cao Cao's stable hands?"
"That rotten bastard—I'll tear him apart!"
"Yunchang!"
Guan Yu's temper blew its lid, and he burst out ahead of everyone. Whatever else one might say, to insult the three sworn brothers to Guan Yu's face was a line Yuan Shu had smashed straight through—and in the middle of a standoff, Guan Yu simply launched.
"Lord Xuande! Cover him!"
"Already sent!"
He was not charging blind. At that exact moment Liu Bei committed troops, and the two thousand of Guan Yu's van went in with him. Yuan Shu dropped back as if he had been waiting for it, and his generals came forward behind a wall of shields to meet the man coming down the hill. Guan Yu, fury burning his face crimson, drove straight into them.
KRA-KOOM—CRACK!
The impact landed like a bomb. A tremendous rupture tore the air, and Guan Yu smashed Yuan Shu's shield-wall to pieces and went through. The Green Dragon Crescent Blade, edge cold and bright, butchered the men beyond it without mercy. Called a match for ten thousand, he was raging in earnest, and Yuan Shu's army—prepared for him, and still unable to hold—collapsed from the first rank. Two thousand men had punched a hole clean through them, and they milled in a panic.
"That's Yunchang for you. Nothing better for breaking a place that's locked up tight."
Jian Yong, beside me, nodded as he took in the peerless slaughter. So Liu Bei had opened the engagement. However vast the enemy host, we had landed one heavy blow, and from here we could dig in on the strength of the ground.
The question was whether Guan Yu, now, would hear what we had repeated until we were hoarse. When the retreat drum sounds, you get out. No exceptions. Liu Bei had, in effect, let him off the leash to rampage as he pleased. How far that valor would run, we still had to see.
"Tear into them like that, and the tail gets caught. That's the danger. We put the archers as far forward as we can, and cover the withdrawal however we must."
Zhang He, watching in silence, was already shifting archers up in place of the spearmen and stacking shafts on the hill. He saw it too. And as I watched, something else came to me.
Yuan Shu had provoked this fight by openly degrading the three brothers, a jab meant to make them snap. Even if they retreated, men that full of rage could lose their composure. The enemy outnumbered us more than two to one, so somehow we had to make them angry as well—strip the calm out of them. To do that, we had to rattle their commander.
Yuan Shu.
I put the thought in order and shouted to Jian Yong.
"Brother Xianhe!"
"What? What is it?"
"Go to Lord Xuande and Zijing. Ask them this—if I help Yunchang by provoking the enemy and dragging them all the way up here, can we hit them on the way in?"
"We provoke them back? Drag them all the way here?"
Jian Yong blinked, and Zhang He said quietly, "If they come this far, we can at least shear off a lock of their hair. Whether we can gather them in is another matter."
"Tell them that if they'll do it, I will lure the enemy here. Without fail!"
"Right!"
Jian Yong sprinted for Liu Bei's position. A little later he came pounding back on horseback, swung down, and delivered it.
"If you can truly do it, they'll set long-spearmen and archers and crossbows on the hill at once—and roll logs down on the enemy!"
"Then we're set."
Guan Yu only had to pull out at something like the right moment. Then I could land a blow of my own. I stared down into the fight and clenched my fist.
Guan Yu was sheathed in blood, rampaging like the god of war men called him, cutting the enemy down as he went. At first they said his momentum couldn't last, and they wrapped him in double and triple rings, trying to bind him in. He never tired. The sight of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade sweeping on and on broke the spirit of Yuan Shu's front ranks first. Officers of the bannered companies charged in to rally them however they could, and Guan Yu did not give a step.
The clash ground on, and then the enemy's command banner rose again. Yuan Shu had come back with the vanguard under his own hand, meaning to ring Guan Yu in and crush him to death.
"Now! He has to get out now!"
The instant I shouted it, Lu Su seemed to have reached the same thought.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
"The retreat drum!"
Zhang He and Jian Yong cried it out together and pushed the archers closer, and I swung onto my horse. A few of my own mounted officers closed in, and Zhang He came up beside me.
"Danzhu. I don't know what you're planning, but it's dangerous. I'm coming with you."
"I'm grateful—but first Yunchang has to get clear!"
And after all that talk! Guan Yu had heard the retreat drum, seen Yuan Shu's banner, and still tried to go just one step farther to take him.
Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom!
They doubled the drumming, urging him back again and again, and at last he, who had held on as long as he could, turned his horse. But the price of having torn so much deeper into Yuan Shu's ranks was a tail—an enormous one.
"Cutting that tail was our job to begin with!"
Guan Yu had answered the drum late and was coming back, and behind him Yuan Shu himself was in pursuit, his generals at his heels.
"Loose!"
The moment they entered range, the order went out, and we tried to shear the tail away. Jian Yong took the archers in hand himself and poured shafts into the men chasing Guan Yu's troop. They were hit. They did not mean to stop.
"Danzhu, look! Shields to the front—they're coming up in earnest."
"They'll halt around the middle. I'm going to bring them all the way up here."
"!?"
"Brother Junyi—now!"
I put my horse down the hill, keeping a distance so fine it was nearly a mistake. As I came down, Guan Yu passed me going up. The Yuan Shu troops on his heels knew they shouldn't press any farther, and they hesitated. They meant to end the first day's fighting there.
I meant to start mine.
"Hnnn—!"
I drew the breath in, gathered it, and from here I would pull Yuan Shu after me.
"Yuan Shu! Set beside your elder brother Yuan Shao, your generalship is a wretched thing!"
"!?"
The Yuan Shu line flinched as one.
"A miserable general beside Yuan Shao of Jizhou! Though you brought a million men, I wouldn't fear you in the slightest!"
"This green brat!"
That much was ordinary taunting. To make Yuan Shu come out himself, I had to cut deeper. How did I make his eyes roll back and send him charging all the way up here? The answer was simple.
"So the Yuan house—Three Excellencies for four generations—ends in the fourth! Your father may have sat among the Excellencies, but two brothers dropped from two women's bellies, and the gap in quality this vast? How?"
"Y-you—!"
"Yuan Shu! It seems every good seed of your father Yuan Feng went to Yuan Shao! Or was it your mother who couldn't take the seed?"
"Seize that son of a bitch! Hack off his four limbs and throw them to the dogs!"
Yuan Shu's eyes rolled white. The pursuit that had meant only to come halfway went mad and started up the slope.
"I've got them—!"
In that instant Zhang He seized my reins, and we tore back toward Jian Yong's position as if the devil were on us. We had to get clear if we meant to live. Shouts and arrows came after us from behind.
This time it was Yuan Shu who had turned and come up—and the moment we regained our lines, Liu Bei's main body rolled great logs and loosed its arrows. Yuan Shu's men, chasing in a frenzy, would have to take what came.
Rrrumble—CRASH. KRA-KOOM.
Bowling, played on a hillside.