The Standoff at Yiyang, in Another Sense
Liu Bei's army drove the enemy all the way to Yiyang and sealed the siege. At the same time Cao Cao hurled his full strength against Anfeng, and the city finally fell.
Pacifying Xuzhou alone had taken nearly a year. Lu Bu had scraped together one last desperate host from three commanderies of Yuzhou, struck north as far as Runan, and been broken by the allied armies of Liu and Cao. This was the end of him.
Before a force of more than a hundred thousand ringing the walls of Yiyang, Cao Cao stepped forward first.
"Xuande. I'm obliged to you for letting me speak first."
"Not at all. You hold the highest office in this host, Minister, and you command the greater army. It is only right that you open the parley."
Liu Bei had yielded the first word to Cao Cao. He already knew exactly how the man would play it.
First would come the offer to come over. I had a few words of my own I wanted to put in about Yiyang — a recruitment of a rather different kind — but apparently Cao Cao was going first.
"Fengxian! You are the finest flying general under heaven, the man who took the rebel Dong Zhuo's head. Why are you skulking inside a city like this?"
"Cao Cao, you dog! Then come out beyond the walls and settle it with me — one horse, one blade!"
"Ha! And who said I wanted to fight you? I only wish to make you an offer. Join my wits to your martial might, and what in the world would we have to fear?"
"What?"
"I'll speak plainly. I want to take the hand of the greatest warrior alive, sweep every traitor from the realm, steady the court, and see a great ambition fulfilled. With a fighting man like you beside me, what under heaven should I dread?"
At those words Lu Bu wavered.
He was genuinely hesitating. I stole a glance at him — then jabbed Liu Bei in the ribs.
"Qian — what are you doing?"
"Minister Cao is making his case over there. If we want the offer to carry any weight, shouldn't we add our support?"
Liu Bei tipped his head at me, puzzled, then nodded and quietly moved up behind Cao Cao.
"Lu Fengxian, think carefully! Join your martial skill to my stratagems, and what in the world would there be to fear? And besides... hmm, yes. Imperial Uncle Liu, protector of the royal house of Han, stands here as well, does he not?"
Cao Cao blinked at Liu Bei's sudden approach, then folded him into the offer he set before Lu Bu.
"A cauldron stands whole only when it has three legs. Be the third pillar that holds up the cauldron called Han!"
"Mmm..."
Lu Bu sank into thought. From where I stood, I looked straight at him.
I was behind Cao Cao. I deliberately lifted off my helmet so my face would be unmistakable, and our eyes met.
I had met Lu Bu twice already. At this third reunion I smiled in greeting and waved.
In that instant Lu Bu's eyes rolled white, and he snatched up his bow.
"You sons of bitches!!!"
"What?!"
The arrow came with a thin, terrible hiss. Liu Bei moved to knock it aside, but a hot sting bit into my shoulder.
"Ah—!"
The horse screamed and reared. I grabbed desperately at the reins, but I couldn't hold my seat on the twisting animal.
"Qian!"
"Imperial Vice Censor!"
Men rushed in from every side to gather me up. The shock of the fall had stripped the feeling from my whole body.
My eyes, though, stayed wide open.
I looked from the direction the arrow had come to Cao Cao — and his face was bewilderment itself as his gaze snapped back and forth between the shaft and Lu Bu.
"Did you think I'd fall for a dog's trick like that?!"
The moment Lu Bu drew a second arrow, Cao Cao wrenched his horse around.
"Qian! Are you all right?"
Amid the uproar, I was carried back to the tent.
Liu Bei seized my hand and cried out.
"Qian, why would you do something so reckless? If I lost you in this war, how could I go on living?"
He gripped my hand tight, and there were tears in his eyes.
He called for the army physicians. Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, and the others were studying me with grave faces when the tent flap opened.
"Minister Cao!"
"No, all of you stay as you are. Imperial Vice Censor, are you all right? I've brought my own physicians."
Even Cao Cao had come running, his camp's doctors in tow.
They stripped off my armor in a rush to examine me, then prodded at my neck and my waist all over.
"Here. I'm setting a needle here. Can you feel it?"
"I can! It hurts like hell, so yes, I can feel it!"
I had gone out expecting to fall. Under the armor I had packed on thick leather padding, layer after layer, like cushions.
And fall I did. The ground was soft with mud, and I rolled clear so the horse wouldn't kick me. Something was a little wrenched, but a few hot compresses and a round of needles would put me right.
"Minister Cao, truly — thank you."
"Ha. Xuande, what are you doing weeping on a battlefield? Qian looks perfectly fine to me."
"This man treats every officer who takes the field beside him as a brother. He very nearly lost a brother he holds dear."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. A heart that soft. Well, he looks all right, so see that he's well looked after."
The physicians laid on compresses, set their needles, and left with a promise to return that night.
"Yide. Zilong. Prepare the assault on Yiyang."
"Yes, elder brother!"
When Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun had gone, I spoke to Liu Bei, the two of us alone.
"Lu Bu is now a man we have no choice but to kill."
"You knew that — and provoked him from behind on purpose?"
"I hadn't meant to take it that far. He was the one who flew off the handle. This isn't worth your tears."
For a moment Liu Bei held my hand and spoke with absolute firmness.
"No matter how fine a scheme you give me, you are never to do anything this dangerous again!"
What?
"How can a stratagem demand that you spend your own body? Lu Bu will be finished. That much is certain. You rest."
He left the tent with that resolve burning in him.
Lying there alone, waiting on treatment, I turned it over and over.
Those tears weren't an act. He had truly lost his temper, and they had come of that. I'm grateful — but never do this again...
A lord of real benevolence and chivalry. Is he simply made of different stuff?
While I was under treatment, Cao Cao and Liu Bei joined hands and launched an all-out assault on Yiyang.
What followed was a strange battle, unlike the one in the original history: Cao Cao and Liu Bei set against Lu Bu at Yiyang, and the fighting went on.
Half a month passed. A month passed. Time kept sliding by, and Lu Bu's army, in its own desperate way, was still holding.
Once I had recovered, I went out to study the ground at Yiyang. It looked flimsy at a glance, and yet strike it and it proved a fortress of real hardness.
History said they drew the river in winter and drowned the city. This was not Xiapi. There was no water source I could find to flood the walls, and none I could freeze.
"No mountains to choke the approaches. Ring a place like this and the siege ought to show its limits eventually..."
"Qian, there's one problem. It's flat country, which means water is plentiful."
Tian Yu came up beside me, laid out the situation, and spoke of what lay inside Yiyang.
"Wells in abundance. That matters enormously in a siege."
"Even so, it isn't a place we can't strike. The resistance is simply too fierce."
Lu Su and Tian Yu gazed from a distance at Lu Bu's city, murder in its bearing, and sighed.
"What do the Minister's advisors think?"
"Their plan is to ring it for a year — for two, if need be — and starve it to death outright. First stop up every channel that feeds the wells. Livestock and farming inside will never be enough to hold."
Listening to Lu Su, I could see Cao Cao had chosen the slow way, the one that was certain.
And Tian Yu kept glancing at me, plainly hoping I would say something.
"If the Imperial Vice Censor were to do something, the whole situation here would turn at once."
"You have advice to offer?"
"Nothing specific. It's only that, watching you until now, I believe you'll show us something. Especially if you take the ground as it stands, and think about materiel and supply..."
He was hesitating hard over whatever it was he wanted to say.
I looked around once more, confirmed the terrain, then checked the actual layout of Yiyang County in Yiyang Commandery against the map.
And I decided on one thing.
I went straight to the tent where Cao Cao and Liu Bei sat and made my request.
"Give me exactly half a month."
"Half a month? You have a plan?"
"Nothing I'd call a plan. Rest and refit the troops. Treat the wounded, grind the blades again, mend the armor, and cut our own fatigue down as far as it will go."
Cao Cao showed interest, stroked his beard, and gestured for me to go on. Liu Bei clenched a fist and worried his dry lips, waiting to hear what I would say.
"I mean to bring up reinforcements from Xiaopei and Runan for a short while. As it happens, my trading company should be passing through about now."
"Oho. A great minister of the realm, and a merchant with a thousand gold to his name besides. You mean to send merchants in through the inside?"
"No. I mean to make them come bursting out."
"Hmm?"
At that, Xun You and Guo Jia, who stood at Cao Cao's side, drew close and whispered to him.
Guo Jia in particular studied me hard while he whispered. I had a fair sense he had caught on.
Cao Cao thought a moment, nodded, and looked at me.
"By any chance, do you mean to haul in your company's goods, roast meat and throw a drinking party before the walls, and shake the enemy with the smell?"
"Half right."
"Oh?"
"Give me half a month. I'll settle it."
Whether he truly wanted to know or not, Cao Cao nodded.
"Xuande, I would like to give the army half a month's rest. What do you think?"
"I will follow the Minister's word. I, too, am curious about Zhang Qian's scheme."
Permission granted. Then I had to move at once.
I clenched a fist, offered a bow, stepped out of the tent, and called for someone.
First was Wang Ling.
"Go to Runan now. Find our company, and in the company head's name sweep up every head of livestock they have. Tell them to ready a great heap of money — in debased coin."
"Livestock and debased coin? The livestock I understand. The debased coin?"
"Say it like that and they'll know what to prepare. Tell them to scrape up every last bit. And make certain Xiaopei hears of this as well."
The debased coin was not the wuzhu the Han used as currency. It was Dong Zhuo's Debased Wuzhu Coin — the trash Dong Zhuo had stamped with his own name and scattered without restraint while he twisted the realm to his whim.
The metal itself was poor, and the flood of it had kicked inflation into a frenzy. People barely used it. It served as funeral grave-goods, and even our company only collected the stuff to let it sit.
After I sent Wang Ling, I found Zhang Fei, Lu Su, and Tian Yu.
"From here on we keep the siege on all sides, slaughter livestock, eat meat, and provoke the enemy. If we throw a drinking party and they boil over and come charging out, we'll need elite troops ready to meet them."
"I'll take that!"
Zhang Fei, tipping a cup right in front of the walls... Familiar enough. Approved.
All right. If they wouldn't come out, we would simply have to make them. Shall we try?
Some time later an entire trading caravan came down, and others arrived in haste from Xiaopei as well.
"Among you — those taken at Xinshi by the Left General, and moved by his mercy — step forward."
"..."
"Succeed, and the reward will be great. Don't hesitate. Come out. From this moment, we hold an interesting feast."
Once a reward was on offer, they came forward one by one.
"Yue. Is it ready?"
"Here it is."
Bundles of cash, stuffed to the brim of jars — and yet nearly worthless, the shoddy currency Dong Zhuo had minted.
There were tens of them. Hundreds of jars. Just hauling them must have been a misery.
"From this moment, listen carefully to what I say."
I laid out the whole operation. Every one of them agreed to do it.
From the next morning, while the soldiers held the ring around Yiyang, certain men crept in close.
They marked out ground beyond bowshot, set palisades, and hung shields.
Up to there, a typical screen. What came next was the problem.
Right before their eyes the axes fell without mercy. A chicken shrieked and died. A cow bellowed and died. A pig screamed and died. The butchering had begun.
Then came the wine vats. Fire was laid to the wood, and the meat went on to roast.
"This meat and this wine are laid out without stint for the army of Han. Eat your fill!"
We spread our mats brazenly before the walls of Yiyang and set the soldiers to roasting meat and drinking.
Then I sloshed a wine jar toward the city and shouted.
"All of you! Those things inside the walls are pitiful little runts who don't know a thing, crouched under a traitor! No sense of which way the wind blows, no grasp of the greater tide — wretched, starving rebels, defying the court!"
I provoked them at the top of my voice. Here and there the soldiers of Yiyang raised their bows, but of course the arrows could not reach.
Meanwhile the meat roasted more and more deliciously, and the wind blew toward Yiyang, carrying nothing but the smell.
Rice in plenty, meat without holding back, wine alongside — and among the soldiers, some were already climbing into their cups.
"Hey, you lot! In that corner over there — you sucking on your fingers?"
"Here! Catch! Still a scrap of meat on this one!"
Mocking Lu Bu's men, soldiers flung the chicken bones and pig bones they had been gnawing into Yiyang's moat.
Behind them, more meat went on the fire so the good smell would spread, and fans were worked toward the city.
Not from one side. East, west, south, and north — all of them.
"Ahh. Wine tastes fine. Fancy livin' this well on a battlefield."
At the main gate, the north gate, stood Zhang Fei, Tian Yu, and I.
At the west gate were Yue Jin and Yu Jin of Cao Cao's army. At the east, Xiahou Dun and Xu Chu. At the south, Zhang He, Wang Ling, and Hao Zhao.
Cao Cao and Liu Bei, and the advisors and officers around them, watched the show with amusement and tore into a piece of meat apiece.
"Hungry? Then come out and eat. Give it time, and we'll have eaten the lot."
The first day went like that. The next day the soldiers flung out the bones and lumps of charcoal they had finished with, and laid the mats again.
"Boys! Today it's duck and goat! A special flavor — roast all you like!"
While the same roasting and drinking went on, an archer company stood ready among the troops who were refitting.
And after the same provocation as yesterday, something new was added.
"You in Yiyang, hear me! Kill a soldier, and it's one hundred coins!"
"One hundred coins!"
At the same time the officers truly grabbed fistfuls of wuzhu and hurled them at the city.
"Take a major or above, and it's one thousand coins!"
"One thousand coins!"
Hundreds of soldiers, thousands, clutched a handful of wuzhu each and threw. In a flash, money was scattered all around Yiyang.
Chancellor Dong. Can you see this? Can you hear it?
That ugly trash you were scorned for, the currency so worthless it couldn't even be disposed of — your Dong Zhuo's Debased Wuzhu Coin — is serving beautifully as a strategic material.
Not that I miss you, Master Dong. Had we met in the same age, I would have been standing there when your head came off.
"Take an officer, and it's ten thousand coins!"
"Ten thousand coins!"
"Take a general, and it's two hundred thousand!"
"Two hundred thousand coins!"
Then they lifted whole chests and flung them, until the ground was sown with wuzhu as thick as caltrops.
Cao Cao found it so absurd he clutched his belly and laughed. The soldiers, too, kept glancing around — ought we to pick those up later? — but what mattered was the state of things inside Yiyang.
"Any soldier brave enough to gather those up late at night, so we can throw them again, will have a reward in silver. I'll see to it."
"Hold on. Can you even cover all that? You'll run the Zhang house clean into the ground."
"There's a lot of it, and that's all. Pure trash, fit for nothing but grave-goods in a tomb. So full of dross you can't even melt it down and use it."
Of course, to ignorant fools who knew no better, it would look like gilded treasure enough to turn their eyes inside out.
"Hah. So that's why you can fling it around like that. Still — shakin' a city by throwin' money. That's somethin'."
Days upon days of it. Wuzhu hurled like roadside pebbles, the smell of roasting meat cast on the wind, drinking parties without end.
I would wager that inside, chaos had already broken out, and they were arguing over just whose head was worth two hundred thousand coins.
That particular sum I would settle not in Dong Zhuo's Debased Wuzhu, but in proper wuzhu.