A Lifeline Through the Carnage
I mustered the thousand soldiers Yuan Shao had granted me, and the wagons loaded to the rails with coin and army grain.
"Brother-in-law. I'll be going."
"Are you truly sure? This is no ordinary road—you're walking into a war. If anything happens to you, our house is finished. Truly finished."
Su Shuang had offered to come himself, but a great deal of business still wanted settling inside Jizhou, and I had told him to stay.
"The Governor of Jizhou has sent us a truly formidable warrior. And we have Zhao Zilong besides."
Zhang He on my left, Zhao Yun on my right. I would have sworn it: with those two at my side, even a host ten times our thousand held no terror.
"Relief grain is already coming down from Bohai, so don't worry. I'll send word once we arrive, and the moment the war is over I'll come straight back up."
"Baijin, be careful. You must be careful. Truly."
Su Shuang caught my hand and let me go only while fretting over me without cease. When I returned, he would not hesitate. He would wind up the family's holdings in Hebei and move our business to Xuzhou.
"Come on. We set out."
And so my historic expedition began.
From Ye to Tan County in Xuzhou, where Liu Bei was, the road ran straight: cross the Yellow River, then down onto the plain. It was so quiet that not a beast showed itself along the way, nor a single beggar, and the soldiers too did nothing but march in silence.
We walked for days. That evening, as on the others, we were making ready to camp.
"Lord Zhang. A column says it has come from Qingzhou. They're asking for you."
"Ah. Here already?"
I went out at Zhao Yun's report, and there was Yue, seeking me at the head of a train of wagons beyond counting.
"Uncle Yue. You've come?"
"This servant of the house of Yue greets the new master of the caravan."
The moment he saw me he bowed low and began showing off what he had brought.
"When I heard you were bound for Xuzhou, I packed in haste—and just in case, I brought barley and dried fish as well."
"With this we could feed tens of thousands, and have some to spare."
I opened one wooden cask among the many wagons. Inside lay sea mustard dried bone-hard, thick with the smell of the sea. I took up a handful and squeezed; it crumbled dry and brittle. Properly dried.
"Well prepared."
"The wagon yonder is heaped with the stuff, but what in the world do you mean to do with all of it? Fertilizer, perhaps?"
"I'll show you now."
I went over to the mess soldiers preparing the meal and held up a handful of the dried weed.
"All of you, eyes here! I'm about to show you a little sorcery. Food for several hundred, out of a single handful."
"Master, what is that?"
"Dried scraps of grass, of all things..."
The cooks stared, baffled. I paid them no mind. Into the pot where they meant to boil mallow and aster greens I poured water without hesitation and dropped in a handful of sea mustard, then dried meat, then fish sauce and salt to season it, and I kept the whole of it boiling. Done properly, one would fry minced garlic with the meat, soak the sea mustard first, and finish with a few drops of sesame oil—but this was the field. Water, dried sea mustard, jerky, and fish sauce, and nothing else. As the water came to a boil, every eye went wide.
One handful of bone-dry sea mustard swelled in an instant in the boiling water, and the pot filled with a splendid sea-mustard soup.
"One bowl each."
"My lord, this slippery stuff...?"
"Sniff... sniff. Hmm? You mean we're to eat this?"
Faced with a food none of them had seen in their lives, they smelled it, eyed the slick, wobbling strands, and looked thoroughly uneasy. Then one man took a spoonful, smacked his lips at the salt of the broth, and drank it down.
"It's... surprisingly fit to eat?"
"Truly? Here, let me—mm! Not bad at all."
Fortunately a few of the soldiers found it passable, and some even ladled themselves another helping. That night the thousand troops ate sea-mustard soup for the first time in their lives, together with beans hauled up from Manchuria and boiled.
"To think you prepared all this so we might eat a weed of the sea. Master, I, Yue, never imagined such a thing!"
"The beans we'll plant properly in the Central Plains and press for oil. This will serve as relief food."
"Remarkable, Master."
In the midst of the meal Zhao Yun came over, took up a bowl of the unfamiliar soup without hesitation, and savored it.
"Hmm. Nothing at all like the mallow we eat so often."
"Will starving people take to it, do you think?"
"If they mean to live, they'll eat whatever is set before them. At the least, it's far better than digging up tree roots and weeds."
It went down well enough, and that day we filled our bellies on a new dish. Everyone seemed reasonably satisfied—save one man who only watched from far off.
Zhang He.
Late that night, as the camp was settled, Zhang He stood a watch himself, though he was the commander. I took it for my chance and went over to speak with him.
"Xuzhou isn't far now. Bear with the hardship a little longer."
"I came down under orders. It's no trouble."
Zhao Yun was taciturn, but Zhang He seemed stiffer still, and colder. Thinking on it again, Yuan Shao's sending him to me was a windfall beyond anything I could have asked.
"What I fed the men today is a seaweed called whale-grass, or sea mustard. It lies thick along the coast. Dressed properly, it's fit to eat, and dried hard it keeps easily for a year."
"A great tide of refugees will come of this, so you've thought of relief stores. The military grain we're hauling is considerable, but I had only reckoned on feeding soldiers."
"The hungry must be fed. Soldier or common folk, it makes no difference."
Zhang He nodded at that, and the silence returned. Only when the cry of insects was all that could be heard under the moonlight did he speak again.
"I've heard the talk of Xuzhou. By now that place will be a ruin soaked in blood."
"That's why we're going. To save it."
"Do you mean to send us out front to fight?"
"If things grow truly desperate, yes. But so far as I can manage it, I want these soldiers set to protecting the people of Xuzhou."
For a moment Zhang He stared at me, long and level.
"If I may be so bold—have you ever seen a war?"
"This will be the first."
"You will see a great many truly hideous things."
"...I'm prepared for that."
He nodded at my answer and quietly turned away.
The next day, once the soldiers had eaten a solid breakfast, we set out as we were. Xuzhou was not far now, and the closer we drew, the more men would be fighting for their lives ahead of us. I had said I was prepared. To see it would be another matter—appalling beyond the saying.
"The hardest thing to endure on a battlefield is the stench of corpses."
"Blood and flesh rotting into the earth. I've never smelled it. But the people still living in it are the ones I mean to save."
After Zhang He the day before, Zhao Yun too had warned me in advance. Sure enough, the nearer we came, the colder my spine grew, and a dead stillness hung over the road. Now and then, high in the sky far off, black shapes passed, and the crying of crows.
"Should we meet Cao Cao's army, I will stake my life to protect you, Master."
With Zhao Yun saying so, I took fresh courage, and so we came to Xuzhou. Only one thickly wooded hill remained to cross, and yet the cold sweat ran harder. We had walked a long road, and of a sudden I could feel no living thing move at all.
"We've arri—"
"Heavens! What is this?!"
The vanguard that had gone ahead cried out—and broke off in horror. Zhao Yun sprinted forward to see, and I watched that great back of his shudder. So the massacre of Xuzhou could not be avoided after all. Even so, I had steeled myself. I gathered my courage, stepped closer, and saw the hell that lay before me.
"Ah—agh?!"
I never wanted to look on anything so dreadful again for as long as I lived. Corpses lay everywhere. Not scattered—the whole of the plain beneath the hill was paved with the dead. The reek of decay was a force past any words. Bodies rotted where they had been hacked apart; elsewhere the dead were heaped and scorched together. Not a person remained, nor a chicken, nor a dog. The only living things were the flocks of crows wheeling overhead.
"This can't be..."
"Merciful heavens! You mean they're all dead?"
Yuan Shao's troops were elite of a sort, and even they lost the power of speech before that carnage.
"How many dead is this?"
"Even if you ask... there are heaps of corpses in every direction. There's no counting them!"
Some of the soldiers retched. Others, rigid with terror, planted their spears like walking sticks and shook where they stood. It was no lie, then. Cao Cao, avenging the slaughter of his father and his whole family, had butchered every living thing in this region.
While the rest of us could not take a single step, Zhang He moved first.
"I'll cut us a path."
He strode ahead as if it were nothing and forced a way in through the heaps of the dead. I wanted to turn and flee that very instant, but I squeezed my eyes shut and followed. Wherever I turned my gaze I met the eyes of corpses, dead in horror, their faces frozen in every manner of dying.
"You said you were going to a battlefield to aid refugees and the wounded. At this rate, who can say how many still live—and the wanderers will be past counting."
Zhang He led on, unshaken, clearing corpses aside even with the shaft of his spear.
In that instant the things I had blithely declared back in Jizhou came back to me one by one, and with them the memory of the road—showing one another sea mustard and beans, eating together, laughing.
"Master, if you wish it, we can deliver the supplies in your stead and see you safely back to Jizhou."
"...No. I'm going on!"
"You said you would see it with your own two eyes."
At my answer Zhang He picked up speed, treading rotting corpses underfoot. Zhao Yun drew level beside me and held out the sword at his waist.
"Master Zhang, there's no telling what may happen, or where. Use my sword."
A stench fit to tear the nose from my face. The wet, sucking give of corpses under the horses with every stride. A heart hammering in the extremity of terror. And Zhao Yun's blade, lent into my hand.
Peace upon the dead. The living—I will save them, no matter what.
I clenched my teeth and crossed that endless field of corpses, and crossed it again. We rode until the sun sank, and then black shapes appeared of a sudden before us.
"Hm?"
"All troops, prepare for battle! A large body of cavalry is coming straight at us!"
"Blast!"
At Zhang He's word, Zhao Yun snatched up his spear. While he and Zhang He shielded me and shouted to the men, what came on toward us was a giant of a general, as tall as Zhao Yun and broader still through the shoulders, charging with a curved-bladed spear several meters long.
"Halt! Who are you?"
No one answered.
"If you've no answer, I'll take the lot of you for enemies and kill you!"
At that thunderous roar, Zhao Yun started beside me and rode forward.
"Hold! You there—might you be Lord Zhang Yide?"
"I asked who you are!"
"Brother Zhang! It's me, Zilong—Zhao Zilong, come down from Changshan!"
"Zilong? Is it truly Zilong?"
The giant barring our way was Zhang Fei, courtesy name Yide. Of the brothers Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, it was Zhang Fei who had met us, and the moment he knew we were no enemies he grounded his spear and brought his hands together.
"So it is Zilong. You came—you truly came!"
"We've brought supplies and arms for Lord Xuande, who fights in Xuzhou. A great patron has come."
"Now that's the best news I've heard in a long while. Come on!"
Zhang Fei, who a moment before had glared as if he would kill anyone who drew near, laughed with a great booming cheer and led Zilong, and the rest of us with him, into the camp. Through the heaps of corpses and the ruins, we came at last to a military encampment where living people still remained. This place too was packed with wounded men at the edge of death, and with refugees beyond counting who had failed to escape Xuzhou and were trapped here.
I clenched my fist, dismounted on the spot, and looked around at them. I felt it again, down in my bones—why I had meant to come here from the first.
"My lord, this is the man."
Zhao Yun came hurrying toward me with someone in tow. The man running beside him stood about my own height, with great ears, armor drenched in blood, and a pair of swords at his hip.
"Might you be Lord Liu Xuande?"
"I am."
"I am Zhang Qian of Zhongshan Commandery in Jizhou, courtesy name Baijin. Son of the late elder Zhang Shiping. I have brought supplies to aid Lord Xuande in his lonely fight here in Xuzhou."
In that moment Liu Bei brought his hands together before me and bowed his head, his face set with resolve.
"You have my sincere thanks. First your father, and now his son—you have pulled this man up out of the mire."
"We can speak at length later. First, let us undo the barley and the sea mustard we've brought, and feed these people."
On the spot Yue, together with the soldiers of the Jizhou army, opened barley and sea mustard without stint before the thousands and tens of thousands of refugees and starving soldiers. Just as I had shown them on the road, they soaked the sea mustard and boiled it, cooked barley gruel, and shared it without holding back with everyone who came running.
"You've made a truly tremendous decision. I, Zhao Zilong, thank Master Zhang once more for coming all this way with me!"
"First we feed everyone. Then we talk."
Having come this far, I had resolved to open everything, with nothing held in reserve.
A starving child lifted a bowl of barley gruel in trembling hands.
One mouthful. Then another. Color began to return to that small face.
"Thank you... thank you, truly!"
A mother wept as she drew the child into her arms.
Sobs broke loose among the refugees.
People who had thought they were about to die were coming back to life.