The Flying General's Head Hangs in the Blood-Soaked Ruins
"I never thought the Thousand-Gold Merchant would actually go and scatter a thousand gold."
"Minister Cao?"
Another day had ended in plenty, and I was turning to leave when I found Cao Cao there. He had granted me a fortnight, and he had watched the operation I was running with keen, undisguised fascination.
"It staggers me every time I look. All that coin strewn in front of Yiyang—how do you mean to gather it back?"
"It's pretty trash anyway."
"Those five-zhu coins Dong Zhuo minted by the cartload?"
"That's right."
"So the father's relic ends up tightening a noose around his own son's neck. The world does have a sense of humor."
Just as Cao Cao said, the five-zhu coins my adoptive father, Dong Zhuo, had stamped out had become a device aimed at the throat of his adopted son, Lu Bu. It was a fine moment, I thought, to feel how the world turns, and turns, and comes back around.
"Anyone can see what's about to become of Yiyang."
"In all likelihood, they'll fall into great disorder."
"Great disorder, he says—hahahaha! We'll have to wait and see how it ends."
"Then I'll take my leave."
"Ah. Back when we first had Lu Bu bottled up in Yiyang—that arrow he loosed. Judging by the angle, it wasn't aimed at me. It was aimed at you."
"I was unlucky."
"Were you? Or did he decide any one of the three would do?"
Cao Cao let the words hang, heavy with meaning, then laughed aloud and turned back toward his own tent.
Meanwhile, inside Yiyang itself, the mood grew uglier by the hour.
"A hundred cash for a single soldier!"
For the common people, catching one man meant rice enough to feed a whole extended family. Lu Bu's troops knew it, and they drew their watch even tighter. But the townsfolk had already taken up the sickles, hoes, and spades they used at home, eyes bloodshot and rolled back in their heads.
Chen Gong hastily more than doubled the men keeping order and dragged in anyone even slightly suspicious, yet the more he seized, the fouler the air became. Inside the government office, they argued it out.
Crash!
"Fengxian, we ought to seize anyone the least bit suspicious and execute them as an example."
"Damn right—a hundred times right! These wretches got one whiff of meat and their eyes turned inside out."
Lu Bu was boiling over as well. He swore he would take the heads of Zhang Qian and Cao Cao for staging this filthy trick and throw the corpses to the dogs.
"General, for now leave soldiers to hold the gates fast, and let us open what military grain we have left."
"No. If we open the grain in a long war, what are we supposed to fight with?"
"Scattering coin and meat out there is an open invitation to come bursting out. And as it happens, locking ourselves into a long siege under these conditions is impossible. We find the weakest of the four gates, seize a decisive advantage in one stroke, and negotiate from there."
Chen Gong, too, searched desperately for the best course and pressed his counsel, and Lu Bu ground his teeth and agreed as if he had no other choice. But the situation only grew worse for it.
"They say there's a mountain of money piled outside the walls! Get out alive and we're all rich!"
"You mad bastards—will you fall back this instant?!"
At every gate Lu Bu's soldiers leveled spears and blades and tried to hold the line, but the people of Yiyang no longer had human eyes.
"A hundred cash a head! A thousand for an armored officer!"
"Fall back! Come one step closer and I'll cut down every last one of you."
"Just a moment outside the walls, and then back..."
In that taut standoff, it was the people of Yiyang whose grip on reason finally snapped. One of them, eyes rolled white, charged the gate and went down in a spray of blood on an officer's blade.
"Look well! The next man who comes near this gate and tries anything foolish—?!"
In that instant a storm of hoes, sickles, and pitchforks came whistling straight at the officer's face.
"I've got him!"
"The head's mine!"
"I killed him—I killed him with my sickle!"
The people of Yiyang were turning into hungry ghosts, and with nothing left in their eyes they hurled themselves at Lu Bu's army at whatever they saw.
"Minister, look at that!"
"Big brother! Smoke inside Yiyang—that's a fire, sure as anything!"
Xun You and Zhang Fei reported in the same breath, one to Cao Cao and one to Liu Bei. I clenched my fist as I watched the smoke boil up, immense.
So it had burst from the inside after all.
I had pictured something cleaner: the generals splitting among themselves, and then, in that ugly mood, the people putting a knife to Lu Bu from the top down. But a blaze on that scale was a popular uprising, no question. They had seen the mountain of debased five-zhu coins strewn around Yiyang, and their eyes had rolled back.
Madness like that—if we meant to stamp it out fast and attack, was now the moment? Or should we wait a little longer?
Neither Liu Bei nor Cao Cao decided a thing. They only watched.
"The feast is over. Ready the siege engines and the ladders. That won't last much longer. We attack in two days."
"Minister—two days, you said?"
"No need to shove our heads into a furnace that's only just catching. You pour the water on once it's burned down to embers. That's how the last spark dies."
Even in this, Cao Cao judged with a cold head. Arms folded, he seemed to be waiting for the flames to climb higher still.
"Yide. All-out assault in two days. The men's spirits ought to be high enough, so see the attack prepared down to the last detail."
"Aye, big brother."
"Two days?"
"Master Qian, give it three days and Lu Bu'll have the mess sorted himself. Hit 'em now and you're walkin' straight into a furnace."
Even as Zhang Fei explained, smoke kept surging inside the city, and the screams and the sounds of slaughter never once stopped.
If they truly beat each other to pieces until the gates opened on their own, this would end more easily than any war I'd fought yet. Lu Bu would die right here, and that would be a sure victory.
But something about it—something, even though I was the one who had done it—sat wrong. What was this feeling?
"Aaaagh! S-save me—!!!"
The soldier rolled wretchedly across the ground with a broken spear in his hands, begging, and then countless blades punched into his body until he was torn to shreds.
"Two hundred thousand cash! Find the general worth two hundred thousand!"
Every soldier in Yiyang had risen as a rioter, and their numbers ran into the tens of thousands. Blinded by money and runaway on blood, the slaughter went on, until there was nothing left but a pandemonium in which no one could tell the traitor's army from the common people.
"You bastards!"
Hou Cheng, one of Lu Bu's lieutenants, led his men in and cut down the citizens charging him as a mob, hewing a path one body at a time.
"Do you truly want to die? You dare raise a rebellion against the general!"
"That one's a head worth a hundred thousand cash!"
"Seize the general! The general's right there! No—I'll take him myself!"
When the mob came on, deaf to every word, Hou Cheng chopped and chopped until the sword in his hand notched, then broke, and still he butchered rioters without number.
"The government office is on fire! Grab anyone coming out!"
"Aagh!"
Hou Cheng snatched up a fresh spear to hold them, and in that same moment flames climbed the office as well.
"Ah... no..."
With what soldiers remained, he had to keep blocking the citizens—now fully a mob—as they cut into his own men, and he had to save his lord. And then, at last, Lu Bu showed himself.
"You animals... You dare, before me, Lu Fengxian of Wuyuan!!!"
Lu Bu rode out from the rear garden and raised the Sky-Piercing Halberd.
"Any man who wants to die facing me, Lu Fengxian—step forward!"
This was no ordinary man. Lu Bu shouted with the Sky-Piercing Halberd in hand, trampled countless people of Yiyang beneath his horse's hooves, and punished every wretch who dared swing a blade at him. One sweep, and townsfolk died in heaps; anyone who showed his back had his spine shattered under the hooves. Whether every soul in Yiyang died or he did, Lu Bu slaughtered without number, all or nothing.
But that momentum would not break. Even now, people without number came pouring out. Tens of thousands of Yiyang's citizens hurled themselves like hungry ghosts and beasts at the single prize of Lu Bu's head, worth two hundred thousand cash.
When two days had passed, the howls and screams rose fiercer still. By now the death cries were so wretched they raised the hair on the back of the neck, and they did not stop. The other generals, though, were laughing.
"Today we take Yiyang! All forces, char—"
"Minister! Minister!!"
In the instant Cao Cao drew his sword, an urgent report came ringing in.
"A report from Cao Wenlie at the east gate. The gate has opened on its own, and the people of Yiyang are pouring out in a rush, coated head to foot in blood."
"Hnn—heh heh heh heh! Hahahahaha!"
Cao Cao laughed like a madman and pointed at Yiyang, where the flames were surging.
"So Lu Bu's about to end up hanging off a pack of dirt-farming fools? Even the greatest warrior under heaven, a match for ten thousand, can't beat more than ten thousand commoners!"
Laughing still, he ordered the charge. And the allied host of Liu Bei and Cao Cao attacked as one.
Boom—boom—craaash!
There was hardly any need to fight. Strike a gate with the battering ram and the wall gave way of its own accord. Cao Cao's army charged in high spirits; behind them, Liu Bei's men climbed the ladders and seized the watchtowers in proper order, by the book.
When at last I, too, stepped inside, I saw hell.
"...Ngh?"
House after house had burned to nothing, and the ground was heaped with corpses. Half-charred bones lay crushed beneath scorched wreckage. Blood and gore clung, sticky, to every wall—and everywhere I looked, the palm-prints of bodies butchered against the ramparts covered the stone.
"This is insane..."
I had thought that, at some reasonable point, only Lu Bu and Chen Gong would be taken. Instead Yiyang itself had become a living hell.
"Outside—it's outside!"
"Let's go! They say the money's piled up like mad!"
Citizens armored in blood simply rushed past us and poured out, snatching the five-zhu coins off the ground. They fell to fighting one another over what they picked up, until Liu Bei, unable to watch any longer, sent soldiers to take control and forcibly calmed the people.
Dead children. Wailing women. Corpses torn to shreds, not one of them whole. I took all of it in with both eyes, and when we burst into the government office—half burned—Cao Cao was already putting the situation in order.
"Lu Bu's head!"
"I found it! This bastard stole it from me!"
"I rammed a bamboo spear through his gut when he fell off the horse. This kill is mine!"
Citizens turned to hungry ghosts offered Lu Bu's head up to Cao Cao. Hundreds of them clamored, each insisting he was the one who had caught Lu Bu, and they clutched fistfuls of the corpse's flesh and armor, so that what remained of Lu Bu's body was nothing but a trunk.
"Ha—hahaha! What admirable subjects, to have caught the traitor."
Cao Cao laughed long and loud, came over to me, gave a nod, and pressed something into my hand.
"Congratulations on taking Yiyang. No need for you to prepare the prize money. I'll arrange it and see that it's handed out."
…!
"I hardly did anything myself. Shouldn't I at least add something to the reward?"
What Cao Cao had pressed into my hand was the official seal of Yiyang.
Even the clearing took half a day. Cart after cart, heaped with corpses beyond counting, rolled out beyond the walls. They pulled down the burned houses, washed the blood away, and set to cleaning.
"Minister, we've caught Chen Gong, who was in hiding. But... he is already a step from death."
"Oh? Is he? Summon the physicians."
I ran with Liu Bei, who had only just composed himself. Those who remained as prisoners were huddled in one corner of a storehouse, and not one of them was whole. Among them was Chen Gong, eyes glaring wide as he stared Cao Cao down.
"Cao Cao! To meet again... here!"
"Yanzhou's great scholar—what a state is this? What are the physicians doing? Treat him at once, and receive him with all courtesy."
"Pah—get this bastard away from me!"
Chen Gong was a man who had betrayed him, yet Cao Cao showed not a trace of anger. With a pitying face he came and sat before him and took his hand.
"Master Gongtai. I'll forget all that is past, so let us talk once your treatment is done."
"You think treating a corpse will conjure up a benevolence you never possessed?"
"It's been a long while since you've seen your family, hasn't it? I have them kept safe in Yanzhou."
"Already... in your hands... my life and my death hang... kaff! Kaff!"
Chen Gong brought up a terrible quantity of blood, and his head dropped. After that last reunion with Cao Cao, his breath ceased.
……
So Liu Bei ordered the cleansing of blood-soaked Yiyang. He inspected the ground himself, and as he passed he saw me and gave my shoulder a steadying pat. Zhang Fei, too, thumped me on the back and spoke as if it were nothing.
"So that's how the Lu Bu bastard died. It's done. We won, an' that's that."
"Haa... Yeah. So this is how we wiped out Lu Bu's army and put them down."
Only then did I let out the breath I had been holding deep.
The battle was over, and by Liu Bei's order, three days of clearing had at last thinned the traces of blood. Even out of that tragedy, the survivors of Lu Bu's army and their households were gathered up, somehow or other. But Cao Cao found it hard to discover any talent he liked well enough to take into his service, and so, while the rest was sorted in rough fashion, Liu Bei told them to go wherever they meant to go, and simply let them go.
Now and then someone looked at me with resentment, or with hate. But Zhang Fei and Wang Ling at my side opened an even fiercer glare, and the fight went out of those eyes; they left. From here on, those people would scatter as refugees of a chaotic age—neither soldiers nor farmers.
"Tch. I want to get back soon."
I walked Yiyang alone, the smell of blood not yet gone from it. In house after house the lamps were blazing, and I could see silhouettes flinging about the chests of five-zhu coins they had each come away with.
Liu Bei had offered calm encouragement over this war, and he had asked that we return to Xuchang, rest easy, call Guan Yu, and drink deep together. He kept soothing me, as if I still weighed on him, and together with the other generals he stressed that this, too, was war.
And then—
"Wandering about alone, looking that miserable. Are you softer-hearted than I thought?"
"!?"
It was Cao Cao. In this place still thick with the smell of blood, he had drunk himself pleasantly tipsy, and he came with a woman tucked under his arm—wherever he had found her—wearing a thoroughly satisfied face as he beckoned me over. I followed him without a thought in my head, and inside a wine table had already been laid.
"Ah—the Palace Aide to the Censor-in-Chief."
Cao Xiu was there, and Xiahou Dun with him. It seemed a modest gathering of kinsmen, murmuring over their cups.
"Heh heh heh. Wearing a dead man's face after you've won—that's a poor way to do things."
"Eh? Aman, ain't that the Palace Aide? He's the Left General's man."
"And Xuande's officers are not our allies? Don't talk nonsense."
Cao Cao gave Xiahou Dun the one rebuke, clicked his tongue, and jerked his chin.
"Go find us a fresh wine table."
"I'll go and fetch one."
Cao Xiu hurried off, and Cao Cao sat me down in that company.
"As soon as the cleanup here is finished, I should head for Xuchang."
"You should. We all ought to return in triumph together."
"But the lady beside you..."
"A woman her dead husband never loved."
"...?"
In that instant Xiahou Dun leaned in and whispered, low.
"Don't say a word. That's Lady Yan. The dead Lu Bu's wife."
Ha. Menace, tension—all of it just gone.
Whether Cao Cao knew it or not, he soothed the flushed Lady Yan as he spoke.
"Your daughter is safe as well. Come along with us on the way."
"For sparing my life... I am... more grateful than I can say..."
"That little one is a cute thing, though. Younger than my younger sons—how old is she?"
"She will be ten next year."
"Hahahaha. I'll look after her no differently than my own daughter."
Having taken in Lu Bu's wife and daughter, Cao Cao laughed with open delight. He studied me closely, a smile full on his lips. Then he knocked his own cup dry against the table and pressed it into my hand.
"I hear that last time, Director of the Secretariat Wenruo drank deep at your banquet house and went on his way. So this time, I'll stand you a cup."
!
Wine trickled in until the cup was full. I tipped it back and drank it straight down.