Who Do You Think You're Waging Intelligence and Mind Games Against?
The first day's battle was over.
"Isolate the wounded and get them treated. Pitch the tents at once, and keep the night watch tight!"
"Yes, my lord!"
The soldiers no longer looked at me as a mere attendant officer or commandant. I still went about with no formal post, and yet they moved at my word as if I were another general among them.
"Whew—"
I wiped the sweat from my brow after that furious fight and stepped into the tent, only to be met with applause from Liu Bei, Jian Yong, and Lu Su.
"Baijin, that was a masterstroke."
"I never dreamed Yuan Shu would stick his own head in at that moment."
"Well, we took some losses too. What matters is that he came charging in blind with his vanguard, and the enemy ate a proper fist to the face."
Guan Yu had torn through them with two thousand men and come back with a little over a thousand left. Yuan Shu, goaded by me, had hurled several thousand of his vanguard forward—only to be showered with logs, boulders, and arrows until they shattered like brittle candy and reeled away.
"Baijin, what in the world did you use to draw Yuan Shu in?"
"I merely told him he was inferior to Yuan Shao. Nothing more."
"Ha—hahahaha!"
Liu Bei clutched his belly and laughed, and the rest of them burst out snickering with him.
Zhang He had heard every word of it from the side. He swallowed his laughter as best he could and answered, deadpan.
"It was a good deal more vicious than that—the sort of talk that would have a Confucian scholar pointing fingers in the marketplace. But it was a provocation made in the midst of war, so I will spare you the words."
"Come now, Baijin. Did you curse his parents to his face?"
"I did remark that, since the bastard Yuan Shao had proved himself superior to the legitimate son Yuan Shu, perhaps the fault lay in his mother's blood."
Lu Su had been laughing too, but at that he wiped his eyes.
"Good heavens. Words like those should not be thrown about even on a battlefield."
"Even so—will Yuan Shu send word to Yuan Shao that we slandered his parentage? Or will he scatter a denunciation of Baijin to the four winds? A single provocation, loosed once in the middle of a battle, has netted us several thousand of the enemy."
For all his scruples, Lu Su was a man who weighed the result.
"Well then. However it came about, we hold the advantage in the first day's exchange. Let us bury the trifles and speak of tomorrow's battle."
Liu Bei pressed on without once raising the matter of Guan Yu missing his moment to take his gains and pull out.
Lu Su swiftly laid out the situation as it stood.
"The vanguard took losses, but those came of Yuan Shu charging out without a thought. His army is still powerful, and he will come on while encircling the heights of Xuyi."
"He won't bite on the same provocation twice, will he?"
"Baijin, once was enough. We must think of another move."
Hearing Lu Su say it, I knew the taunt would have to remain a one-time trick.
"My lord, we seized the initiative in the first battle. We must hold this momentum and stop Yuan Shu's encirclement."
"So a protracted war is out of the question after all?"
Just as Liu Bei said, every one of them still carried in his heart what Chen Qun had told them before the march. You must not fight Yuan Shu and suffer mutual losses. If the two of you bleed each other, there is someone waiting to take advantage of it! Because of that warning they had already cut five thousand from the twenty thousand they had meant to bring. In the rear, the Chancellor of Xiapi was Zhao Bao, with Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun beside him. Even if that held—what of the defensive line at Mount Tai and Xiaopei? Put that way, Liu Bei could take the field in person, but he must not be drawn into a long war with Yuan Shu's army.
"If only we could use the ground to gnaw his army away little by little. That would be ideal."
Lu Su smiled and nodded.
"The greatest problem is still the security of our rear. Honestly, if that alone were settled, a long war would be entirely possible."
"Mount Tai and Xiaopei will have to hold."
And Liu Bei's army would not be the only ones thinking it.
"That damned bastard! Twisting his limbs off and tearing him apart wouldn't be enough! Aaaargh! I swear I'll kill that man myself!"
Inside the tent Yuan Shu hurled whatever came to hand and seethed, while his subordinates stood before him wringing their hands. They had thought the first battle well in hand—until some wretch touched the one scale their lord could not bear to have touched, and they spilled far more blood than they ever should have.
"My lord, the man who spoke those words—words one can scarcely bear to repeat—is a certain Zhang Qian. A merchant who handles goods in Xuzhou, and a strategist who has attached himself to Liu Bei."
"From this day, if any Xuzhou dog so much as tries to trade in Jiujiang, seize everything he owns and cut off every last head!"
"M-my lord! That is a matter for another day. The problem before us is Liu Bei's camp as it stands now."
Among Yuan Shu's generals, Zhang Xun had grasped the situation quickest, and he counseled his lord to settle the fight at Xuyi before anything else.
"Just so, my lord! Finish this battle first, and then we take this Zhang Qian!"
"Please recover a little of your composure. His mockery was a scheme from the start, meant to cloud your judgment."
Zhang Xun, Qiao Rui, Ji Ling, and the others labored desperately to calm him, and only after a long while did Yuan Shu begin to hear what anyone else was saying.
"Then what must we do to catch those men?"
"For the next month we encircle this place and raid the other counties and townships besides Xuyi, showing them we can strike Xiapi in Xuzhou without ever having to break Xuyi itself. Then they will be forced to carve their already thin strength into still smaller pieces and fling detached columns out in a panic to stop us."
"Y-yes. That is it!"
"When Liu Bei's main force on the Xuyi heights begins to bleed strength, we will be able to shake them."
"Good! If it means we can kill every last one of them, then do it!"
Still burning white-hot, Yuan Shu approved his subordinates' plan.
After that, it turned by degrees into a war of attrition.
"Governor! Jian Yong's troops have only just returned, after stopping the Yuan Shu forces bound for Huaiyin County!"
"Governor, this time Yuan Shu's army seems to be aiming at Huailing County in Xiapi!"
"Governor, they are hammering the counties north of the Huai River one by one. In the height of the farming season, the blow will be severe."
Yuan Shu meant to keep grinding down the main force along the heights of Xuyi County. This was no matter of once or twice. A full month of it, and while our vanguard steadily shrank, the enemy struck from every side.
"Elder brother, I'll go out once more!"
If there was a mercy in all of this, it was Guan Yu. Whenever Lu Su detached men to answer a strike somewhere other than Xuyi, Guan Yu himself led the vanguard stationed there down against Yuan Shu's main body and kept hammering it. They were a great host, yet once they went on splitting their strength to hit here and there, not a man in Yuan Shu's army could stand against Guan Yu when he drove straight at the heart of them.
And so the two sides went on checking one another.
Late at night.
An urgent report came in, and everyone gathered in the tent.
"What is the meaning of this? Xuzhou is in danger?"
The intelligence had come through spies, and it shook Liu Bei to the core. Lu Su read it through character by character, cold sweat beading on him.
"Can it be that the thing we feared has come to pass? A counterattack is coming up from Xiaopei Castle, and they say its strength cannot be estimated."
"What kind of report is that? If it's Cao Cao, say Cao Cao! If it's Lu Bu, say Lu Bu! We are to face an enemy we cannot even name?"
"Lord Guan, the report truly reads this way."
It was a message from Chen Deng, and its account of the situation was as vague as it was urgent.
An army has come up that is only presumed to have arrived in Yuzhou. They fly neither Lu Bu's banner nor Cao Cao's. By our estimate, they are either a league of warlords flung clear while Lu Bu was stirring Yuzhou into chaos, or else a power that has moved from somewhere else entirely.
"Is this the black hand Chen Qun spoke of?"
Here I had to calculate. Zhuge Jin was holding Xiaopei, and we had already given Chen Deng additional troops—yet he had still sent this. That meant Xiaopei itself was truly desperate.
"My lord, there is one thing more."
What Lu Su had brought, he said, was a letter that had surfaced from among Yuan Shu's raiding troops.
The seat of Xuzhou, Xiapi Castle — in danger. Signs of rebellion stirring within. They know the city stands empty.
What?! This didn't add up at all.
Zhang Fei alone would have been enough, and Zhao Yun was there besides, and Zhao Bao—my own father-in-law, Chancellor of Xiapi in nothing but name now that he no longer even had his Danyang troops. A rebellion inside Xuzhou? If we did not go at once, would it collapse there?
When I passed the letter to Liu Bei, his eyes narrowed by degrees.
"Yunchang. Look at this."
Guan Yu examined the slip. His eyes flew wide, and he began to tremble.
"Eldest brother, this is..."
"You think so too?"
Guan Yu nodded that great head of his. Then Liu Bei came over to me and Lu Su, waggling the bamboo slip of the letter—and began to laugh.
"Heh heh heh. Well, now."
And without ceremony he flung the slip into the brazier.
"My lord!"
"This letter is a fake. It imitates Yide's hand, but when that fellow reports to me, he uses a different script."
Oh! So that was it?
I looked at the characters as the slip burned, and the writing was crude enough.
"Yide may look like a mountain bandit, but his brushwork is excellent—he commands several scripts with ease. That letter is not his hand. It looks like a trap to me. What do you think?"
In a moment like this, Liu Bei had seen through the enemy's false intelligence with a truly stunning judgment. If he had believed it and gone scrambling back to Xiapi, Yuan Shu's army would have, in that very instant...
"My lord, this came of a military advisor who did not know the hand of the general in our rear! I will accept the blame."
"Blame? If it could fool even Master Zijing, then it was truly a grand scheme—but has it not been seen through?"
Liu Bei laughed his broad laugh and soothed Lu Su, and something flashed through me as well.
"Lord Xuande... no. Governor Liu!"
"Oh?"
Until now I had called him Lord Xuande without ceremony, but seeing this, I decided to honor him by his proper office.
"They tried to shake us with a false report like this, so we ought to pay them back in kind. I have a way."
"Oh? Then let us see you do what you know, Baijin."
I immediately prepared several bundles of blank bamboo slips. Liu Bei and Guan Yu, Lu Su and Jian Yong—and even Zhang He, who had never shown the least interest in such things—sidled over and fixed their eyes on the tip of my brush.
"I am a merchant. And as for affairs in the rear of Yangzhou, I naturally have ears that listen through the trading companies."
On top of that, I knew the course of this age's Three Kingdoms inside and out, so there were any number of things Yuan Shu had reason to fear.
Sun Ce and Zhou Yu, who led Yuan Shu's army out of Shuchun on campaign, have sent word from Lujiang Commandery: they are willing to cooperate with Xuzhou.
"Lujiang? Sun Cheyak?"
"Governor Liu, don't you remember? The son of Sun Jian, Grand Administrator of Changsha—the one who, at Yuan Shu's instigation, has been striking the powerful clans across Yangzhou."
"Ah—ah! Yes, that was certainly something we heard when we set out."
"And so we have manufactured a piece of false intelligence for him. Sun Ce, under Yuan Shu, means to walk his father's path—joining hands with Governor Liu across Yangzhou, and breaking free of Yuan Shu to stand on his own!"
Liu Bei let out a long breath, and Lu Su and Zhang He, studying the slip, asked.
"Chief Zhang, how do you know Sun Ce is in Lujiang?"
"A merchant's intelligence."
"And who is this Zhou Yu said to be in Lujiang Commandery?"
"That, too, is a merchant's intelligence."
With this, at least, Yuan Shu would be forced to worry over restless moves by Sun Ce and Zhou Yu in his rear.
And the second was this.
Liu Yao, Inspector of Yangzhou, has joined hands with Wang Lang, Grand Administrator of Kuaiji, in a plan to invade Jiujiang Commandery while Yuan Shu is absent. Their vanguard commander is said to have won over forces come out of Qingzhou.
"Baijin! Do you know of Taishi Ci?"
"A name I've heard in passing. He was originally under Kong Rong, Chancellor of Beihai, then went down to Yangzhou and now serves Inspector Liu Yao—isn't that so?"
I knew every one of those names. And as for what they looked ready to do, I only had to whisper it toward Yuan Shu's flapping ears.
"Third! Lu Bu, who is attacking Runan, has had a change of heart and means to set up house on his own in Yuzhou! Lu Bu is not at Xiaopei!"
An army of unknown identity? Then it certainly was not Lu Bu—so where was Lu Bu, and what was he doing? Hadn't he taken a fat helping of troops and army grain off Yuan Shu? If I let slip that he looked ready to take the payment and vanish, what would Yuan Shu do then?
I packed it all densely onto three bamboo slips, then held them up before everyone. Who did they think they were attacking with mind games and false reports? They might know a thing or two, but I knew far more than Yuan Shu ever would!
"Ha—hahaha! So Baijin was a master of intelligence work and psychological warfare all along?"
Liu Bei took the three slips, and Lu Su at once set them in order and formed up the spies who would scatter them through Yuan Shu's rear to sow confusion.
And then...
"That little bastard in Lujiang! I cherished him like my own son, and he seduces Gongjin into plotting a thing like this?"
"My lord! This may be false intelligence! It is strange that Sun Ce, who has shown no sign of any such thing, should suddenly be plotting in Lujiang!"
It was a scenario Zhang Qian had spun, and in truth he had never once laid eyes on the sort of man Sun Ce was. But from where Yuan Shu sat, ten thousand thoughts crowded in at once.
I ordered him to take Lujiang Commandery, and he wiped out the Lu clan, the native power there—was that the problem? When he asked to be made Grand Administrator of Lujiang, should I have given it to him? Has he been nursing a grudge ever since I refused him that seat? I was only sounding him out, so I could work him harder under my own command!
Sun Ce was one problem. Lu Bu was another.
What is that mountain bandit Lu Bu doing now? The reports say he did strike Li Tong's faction in Runan, but there's been nothing since! The one attacking Xiaopei isn't Lu Bu? Is it Li Tong, that stone that was set in place and then worked loose—or Chen Wang? Where is that bastard now?
Yuan Shu was in a muddle. Truly unable to judge, he was thinking of calling his generals and peeling off part of his present force to go and see for themselves how matters stood in Lujiang and Yuzhou.
With Liu Bei still planted squarely on his front.