Warriors as Warriors, Merchants as Merchants
Hundreds of thousands of wanderers out of Xuzhou, and with them all those who had come within a breath of dying from the wounds of war and from hunger, had clung to life only because I arrived.
I made certain that a thousand soldiers were keeping order as they handed out the relief rations that would go on through the night, and then I stepped into the tent.
Zhao Yun was already inside, and with him the three brothers—Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei.
The tent was broad, yet the heroes packed it full, and the sheer weight of their presence bore down on my whole body until it was no small thing to endure.
Liu Bei was about my own height. His ears truly were large, his arms long, and he had the look of a man born to swing a sword.
Flanking him stood Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. Guan Yu rose easily past two meters, with a frame to match—the body of a super-heavyweight. His beard was long and luxuriant, hanging all the way to his chest, and though his eyes were narrow they were keen as a knife-edge. When he lifted his chin and glanced faintly down, he was a beast of prey.
Opposite him, Zhang Fei was a bulk nearly Guan Yu's equal. His eyes were huge, as if light might blaze from them, and his face twitched so that even standing perfectly still he inspired dread.
There Zhao Yun made the introductions first.
"You have already exchanged names with our lord, but this is the son of Lord Zhang, the great merchant come from the kingdom of Zhongshan in Jizhou."
"Zhang Qian. My courtesy name is Baijin."
When I formally introduced myself to the three brothers of the Peach Garden, Liu Bei raised both hands in answer.
"Liu Bei, a scion of the Han imperial house from Zhuo Commandery in Youzhou, offers you his thanks. In days past it was your father. This time the son has drawn us up out of the mire."
Gravity, loyalty to the house of Han, and the chivalry of a man who had stepped forward of his own accord to save the people when no one else would stand against Cao Cao's slaughter in Xuzhou—all of it showed in Liu Bei at once.
From here I spoke my true purpose in earnest.
"This man is a merchant who left Jizhou to seek a new foothold in the Central Plains. And yet, looking on the state of things, I have come to feel a great deal."
"To behold a scene so cruel must have been a terrible shock. Had it not been for you, my lord, every one of us would have been food for the crows."
"How do matters stand at present?"
When I asked, Liu Bei answered at once.
"There is a brief lull, but even now the armies of Yanzhou are tearing through every corner of Xuzhou, plundering vast stores and butchering the people without mercy."
"Any wretch who falls within reach of this blade will die upon it! Under the stolen name of vengeance they do nothing but slaughter—beasts, and less than beasts!"
Guan Yu's face flushed crimson, and as that enormous body trembled, a killing aura of pure rage filled the tent.
"Therefore I make this proposal to Lord Liu Xuande, Chancellor of Pingyuan. I came here as a merchant, and I cannot take the field myself. So let my patronage hearten your soldiers, and pray drive the Yanzhou army back. Settling the chaos of war, and saving the refugees—that I will undertake."
Then Guan Yu cut in.
"The soldiers who came with you—whence did they come, and by whose command?"
"When Lord Yuan, Governor of Jizhou, heard that I was bound for this place, he sent them as an escort. I mean to use them to keep the peace here."
"Hm."
"Brother Yunchang, I will join the battle in his stead. I came all the way from Changshan for no other reason than to fight beside our lord and my elder brothers."
When Zhao Yun—worth a thousand troops and ten thousand horse—offered to join them, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, and Liu Bei himself, nodded and decided.
"Good. The situation is still dire, but if we can at least keep our brothers and the people from starving to death, that alone is a great help. So be it."
Liu Bei was more forthright than I had expected, and his willingness to go out himself, shrinking from no danger, was exactly what one wanted in the lord of a host.
I exchanged names with the generals of Liu Bei's army and received their thanks, and the last of it was a private audience, just the two of us.
"Coming all this way, you must have a great deal to say. Speak."
With only a single candle lit inside the tent, I could deal with Liu Bei directly, late into the night.
"First—when my late father was buried, Zhao Zilong, a man in Lord Xuande's service, gave his help. And as I said, there was much I wished to say once I met you in person."
"Hmm."
"Among those matters, I would begin with the five hundred warhorses, and the two thousand spears and blades, that you borrowed from my father in Zhuo Commandery."
The war was still far from over, but I meant to present an interim bill, just as the will had instructed.
"My father's dying charge was to seek out a hero who could end this age of chaos, and to sponsor him. But within that will there was another command as well—that others might be passed over, yet the three brothers of the Peach Garden in Zhuo Commandery must be made to repay what they had borrowed."
"The situation being what it is, I can answer that at once. When this war is over, the warhorses borrowed from your father in days past—and the grain and famine rations of the present as well—I shall count all of it as an investment!"
Even a partial reckoning already meant an immense fortune being charged to Liu Bei.
Hearing those words, he drew something from his breast and held it out to me.
"Take this, for now, as security."
"What is this? A seal?"
"That is the seal of the Chancellorship of the Pingyuan kingdom, the office the court appointed to this man. Take it, lodge a suit with the court, and you yourself should be able to govern the place."
I was struck dumb.
Liu Bei paid his own office no mind at all and simply thrust it at me.
"Of course, this is only collateral. I cannot say whether I will drive Brother Mengde's host from this place and return safely to Pingyuan, but hold it for the time being. And hereafter, set down against my name every cost of feeding my brothers and the refugees of Xuzhou."
"And how do you mean to repay it?"
"By saving Xuzhou, by stemming the wars of this chaotic age, by driving out the traitors, and by presenting you to the Son of Heaven so that I may help you rise to the rank of marquis—as Lü Buwei did in the Warring States of old."
Talk is cheap.
Feed the people here, and later he would raise our house from a mere merchant caravan to a marquis's household of the realm. And how long was that supposed to take?
"I don't put much faith in the words 'I'll do well by you later.' Seeing the future matters for a merchant, of course—but you also have to read the current right in front of your eyes."
"Then you came here, and not to Jizhou, truly to present me a bill in the middle of this war?"
"I will say it was my father's will—and that I wished to know Lord Xuande for myself."
At that, Liu Bei's face grew steadily brighter.
If someone tried to sound Yuan Shao out, the man's eyes narrowed at once. Liu Bei, by contrast, was smiling.
"You have already lent a sum on the order of a hundred gold. If you mean to invest two hundred gold more in order to take the measure of this man, then I, Liu Xuande, will stake my name and my brothers' names upon it: that is an investment well made."
It sounded like bluster, and yet this Liu Bei was telling me, without the slightest hesitation, that whether I invested money or grain or men, I would see the fruit of it.
Looking on that unashamed generosity, had the countless warlords and great clans of the original Three Kingdoms only believed in him all the more?
"Very well. First, after the fighting in Xuzhou is over. Until then, I will see to it that no one in this region starves to death. Those who mean to flee the chaos for other lands... yes. I will gather every one of them and keep them safe within Lord Xuande's protection."
"Splendid! Come—if you have more to say, say it here. I will listen through the night, and you may rest easy in this tent."
Liu Bei all but held me there so that we might talk until dawn, and we truly spoke of a great many things.
In the end he yielded his own bed to me, then, perfectly at ease, spread a single oxhide on the floor, flopped onto his back, and fell asleep.
The next day, I stepped outside to find far more refugees from Xuzhou than the day before fairly laying siege to the whole area.
Tens of thousands? No—hundreds of thousands? There were just so many of them!
"My lord, I'm hungry. Please, even cold gruel."
"They said if we came here, there would be food. Please, save us."
"My child is starving. I'm all right, but if there's anything to feed the little ones, I beg you..."
We had already released grain at a tremendous pace the day before, and still there were more of them than that.
"Master, at this rate we won't last a few days before we're cleaned out."
"In an age of chaos they say to split even half a bean, and my late father told me that of all goods in trade, grain was the least worth regarding. Hoard it all you like—it turns to manure in the end."
I had many reasons for coming here, but I could not neglect a single one of them.
The thousand soldiers who had come with Zhang He became, every one of them, a peacekeeping force for the Tan County region, and they opened the crates without hesitation.
"I ate some yesterday, but it's really something, isn't it? Soak one handful of this and it feeds a few hundred."
"No kidding. The ones who snuck some last night got the gripes and were rolling around, spewing swollen seaweed out both ends."
Through that vast press of refugees, seaweed soup and gruel were boiling, and a few drops of oil pressed from beans fell in and turned it, on the spot, into famine rations.
They had gone so long without food that they gaped like hungry ghosts and thrust out skeletal hands, and the soldiers ladled the food into bowls and passed them out one by one. It was pandemonium. The moment anything was placed in their hands, the people crammed it into their mouths and wolfed it down—and then a hand closed on a bowl that had only just been filled.
"Hm. What's this? Seaweed soup?"
Liu Bei took up the bowl and drank it down, then, finding it better than he had expected, nodded and scooped out what remained to pass to his men.
"Along the Yangtze they say they salt water plants and river snails and boil them. This seems to be that sort of thing."
"At the least, it will fill a belly."
"Good. I'll be back before long, so let us all still be alive come evening!"
The moment Liu Bei, his belly warmed with hot broth, started off, the battered and wounded soldiers rose as one, no one waiting on anyone else, and followed him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Guan Yu and Zhang Fei moved with him, setting off once more in silence to meet Cao Cao's army. There was nothing that needed saying.
"Brother, the Yellow Turban remnants Cao Cao is using are striking the cities to the north."
"Then we go and save them. Arrive late, and those cities will be taken, and they'll kill everyone in them again."
Behind the departing Liu Bei, the commanders left to hold this ground were no mean men.
"Hm. So that's it. Seaweed, and beans from the north."
The slight-built general who came up beside me, ate a bowl, and rendered his verdict was Jian Yong. He had charge of the rear supply and of keeping the peace here.
"Whatever it is, so long as it can be eaten, we should be glad it sets these refugees at ease. Once that momentum breaks, even Cao Cao will not find it easy to reach for this place again."
This was Tian Yu, who oversaw supply for Liu Bei's army.
Once Liu Bei had gone, everyone had been fed, and we could finally draw a breath, I looked around.
Food had been so scarce that the trees of the region had been stripped of their bark until they were smooth as rooted logs, and the ground had been torn up entirely in the search for even a leaf of weeds to eat. Even so, the horror I had felt on first arriving—those long files of rotting corpses, reduced to carrion—was slowly receding, and every time I saw a living face, hope stirred again.
"I can't just stand here. There's work to be done. Uncle Yue, gather our people."
"Master, what are you planning to do?"
"Shall I sit still and merely watch the refugees? If they've eaten, they ought to use their strength. We'll fell every tree over there, and with the hides we brought we'll build a camp."
I could not take up spear and blade and go out to fight, but in a field gone to ruin I could give relief, and I could do whatever it took to help these people hold on.
I took up a hammer, drove in the posts, lashed them with rope, and stretched hides over the frames, raising them one by one like the tents of a refugee camp.
"Uncle Yue, from among those wanderers, bring me anyone who can read, or anyone with a bit of strength. I'll give them each another bowl, so set them to work here."
"Understood. But Master—when did you take up carpenter's work like this? And you're remarkably skilled at it."
I'd done plenty of it in my last life. When the typhoons hit I housed flood victims in camps, hired laborers, and even saw through the restoration of rivers and sites that had collapsed.
Zhang He, who had been watching me in silence, came over and set the soldiers before me.
"From this moment, all one thousand of these troops will aid the Master. What are you standing about for? The instant Caravan Master Zhang moves, you will fell trees and raise tents!"
"Yes, Major!"
"We'll build coops and pens for the livestock as well, and since we're making a separate relief station, we'll need to find army physicians too."
And so, on my second day in Xuzhou, I went on without rest, setting the land around us to rights.