Shaken to the Core
"Bring more logs. Cut down everything over there and that ought to do it."
"We're short on rope, too. Go fetch another hundred bundles."
The Jizhou troops had turned themselves into a thoroughly capable corps of engineers, and the shelters rose under their hands. Even amid that vast sea of refugees, people came out one by one for the simple sake of eating and staying alive, and the work moved all the faster for it.
"The chicken coop's finished. We can turn them loose in here."
Into the broad fenced run I had hammered together with my own hands, the chickens that had been crammed inside narrow crates were finally set free. Watching them flutter and stretch their cramped bodies within the fence, I told myself the pens for the rest of the livestock would have to go up just as quickly.
"Well now. Live chickens. There's a sight."
Jian Yong came over and nodded as if he were admiring some rare beast in a menagerie.
"Live chickens?"
"On the road into Xuzhou, the only living animals we saw were the warhorses under our own saddles. And why do you think that was? Cao Cao's army swept up everything."
"They slaughter the people and plunder every last beast. They're trying to grind Xuzhou itself into the dirt, aren't they?"
"Who'd say otherwise? Worse than starving hungry ghosts, those bastards. Not a single blade of grass grows where they've passed."
Jian Yong caught his breath and went on with the tale of everything they had lived through.
"They didn't leave a single chicken or a single dog in the villages. Burned the lot, or buried it."
"I saw plenty on the way here, but the more I hear, the worse it gets."
"Truth is, we came down from Beihai in Qingzhou, where our lord was waiting. Dongguan Commandery, farthest to the north, was smashed. Mount Tai was smashed. We were driven all the way down to Tancheng, barely holding the line."
He said it lightly enough, but Liu Bei's army had watched that slaughter with their own eyes, been beaten back by the same force, and kept falling south. Their despair must have run deeper still.
"Anyway. For as long as I'm here, I'll keep every one of you fed."
The piglets had only just been weaned when we left Jizhou, and already they were growing. This fenced pasture was only the beginning. I meant to plant a firm foothold in Xuzhou, starting right here in Tan County.
"Whew."
Dawn had broken, and I had just sat down to catch my breath when the smell of cooking rice drifted up from the field kitchen. Liu Bei had ridden out to the field, and this was no daily commute he would be making back and forth. He had said it would last until victory or defeat was decided, which meant supplies would have to be sent after him as well.
The second day was stumbling toward its close when, all at once, a commotion broke out around us.
"Brother Xianhe! Where are you?"
With the desperate shout of an officer, an armored commander came running, soaked in blood.
"Tian Yu?"
It was the same man I had seen yesterday. He rushed straight to Jian Yong, who had been idly hammering at the fence, and made his report in a rush.
"Guoyang? What in the world is going on?"
"We were scouting outside Tancheng. Cao Cao's troops are there."
"What are you saying? Cao Cao's army?"
I shot to my feet in shock and ran over. Tian Yu bowed to me as well and pressed on with the rest.
"All this time we've had our eyes only on Dongguan Commandery to the north, and our lord has gone that way himself to hold the line. These men seem to have come in from the west, through Xiaopei."
"How many?"
"Fortunately, it's only a small detached force. I believe we can hold this place until our lord returns."
"Ha. Of all the times."
Jian Yong scratched his head, then looked at me and held out the hammer.
"My apologies. I'll have to go see to the defensive palisades outside the walls."
The sun was sinking. Jian Yong and Tian Yu meant to gather every soldier still on hand and lock down the whole of Tan County.
"Wait, Master Xianhe. There are tens of thousands of refugees outside right now, aren't there?"
"That is precisely the problem..."
If Cao Cao's detached force truly found this place and saw that the three sworn brothers—Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei—were gone, they might strike at once. Should they attack, Tan County itself could hold. The trouble was the refugees ringing the county in numbers no one could count, left to serve as meat shields if it came to that.
"Can we... take them in?"
"Our lord would of course tell us to let them in, but our situation as it stands... Damn it! There's no helping it!"
Jian Yong clicked his tongue and turned to Tian Yu.
"We'll explain when our lord returns. Guoyang—if we start bringing every refugee outside inside right now, how long will it take?"
"It will take until dawn."
"Xianhe. Guoyang. Then I'll see to the food and spend the night raising shelters."
Hammer in hand, I agreed to bring that enormous mass of refugees inside Tancheng.
"Please, save us!"
"We haven't eaten a thing in four days. Please, give us anything!"
"People are dying. At least treat their wounds!"
I had only slept and woken, and yet the reality of tens of thousands of people standing before my eyes struck me all at once. Looking at refugees who seemed ready to starve into heaps of corpses at any moment, I watched the supply wagons I had brought dwindle at a frightening pace.
"Caravan Master, we've already broken open fifty wagons."
"Then open more."
I answered Akga without a second thought. People gulped down seaweed soup and barley gruel, then shoved their way headfirst into the freshly raised refugee huts in a scrambling rush, and someone was coming toward me as I watched them.
"Only the third day, and already this far."
"Officer Zhang."
"At this point, don't you feel you forced yourself into coming here?"
Zhang He was probing, in that roundabout way of his, whether I regretted any of this. It was true enough. I had come to Xuzhou thinking only of the heroic tales in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, meaning to build some grand enterprise, and the scale of this devastation made a great many things look different.
"But I don't regret it in the least."
"I am under orders from the Inspector of Jizhou to guard Caravan Master Zhang in safety until this war is over. Protecting you is my duty, of course. Still, I would have you know that this place is exceedingly dangerous."
"It is, no question. But listen. Only now do I think I understand my late father's last words. Set food at the very bottom, and win people's hearts before anything else."
"!"
"At the very least, this isn't some green caravan master, fresh to the seat, throwing good coin away on meaningless charity in another man's province. Once Cao Cao's army withdraws, word of this will spread everywhere."
Coming here and seeing the carnage, taking in the survivors and giving what I had, meeting Liu Bei and taking the measure of the man—I had come to understand what it truly meant to bring an age of chaos to an end. There was a great deal to be learned here, and a clearer vision was taking shape.
"And besides. What we've brought isn't so precious as all that. It's only the smallest fraction of my family's fortune in Yecheng."
"You adapt faster than I expected. And you're bolder than you look."
Wherever Governor Tao Qian of Xuzhou might be, and whatever he might be doing, the men beneath him would remember this. Even if I said nothing myself, the people of this place would spread the word—or Liu Bei would carry it himself.
"Caravan Master Zhang!"
"Master Xianhe, isn't it?"
Jian Yong came running in a hurry, offered a bow, and asked me carefully.
"This is... sudden, but might we borrow your Jizhou troops?"
"!"
Zhang He flinched harder than I did and fixed Jian Yong with a glare. Jian Yong looked awkward, shrugged, and laid out the situation.
"Yesterday Guoyang's scouts found Cao Cao's men nearby, and we've kept scouting since. The situation isn't good. It seems several detached forces have gotten mixed together. We need to defeat them piecemeal while they're still scattered."
"So you want the Jizhou troops I brought to take on Cao Cao's detached force as well?"
"Is there no way?"
I glanced at Zhang He. He clearly had no wish to agree, but he closed his eyes and gave a quiet nod.
"Very well. Let's go. But I want armor of my own. I mean to see the field with my own eyes."
"Guarding you will be harder still."
And so, with Zhang He beside me, I led three hundred Jizhou soldiers out to search the surrounding country. The air was still thick with the cloying stench of blood. Had this been summer and not winter, the corpses rotting day by day would have taken our noses clean off and left us too dizzy to endure it.
"We've taken in the refugees from northern Xuzhou, but this stretch of country is still very dangerous. If anything happens, I'll fight at the front."
I had heard much the same from Zhao Yun. Now it was Jian Yong saying it. Could I trust that?
Sword at his hip, glancing this way and that as if he had some confidence of his own, Jian Yong suddenly sensed something and broke into a run. I hurried after him. There was a small village, and in it...
"Urgh!"
"Another heap of corpses?"
Every house in the village had burned. Smoke and ash drifted together on the wind, and the people who had lived there were piled beside the well like a tower. Men and women, old and young, all of them killed, run through with spears and stacked. Both my hands began to shake.
"These bodies haven't been dead long."
At Jian Yong's words, the blood ran backward in my veins.
"Ha. Can you even call the bastards who did this human?"
They were beasts beyond anything I had imagined, and I could not accept it.
"How many villages like this are there around here?"
"Most people will have come to Tancheng by now, but there will still be those who never made it inside the walls..."
"We came to catch that detached force anyway. Let's scour this whole area and take them!"
"Caravan Master Zhang."
Zhang He came up with a heavy face, but my mind was already made.
"Then, Master Junyi, take the three hundred back and hammer fences for me. I'll make the rounds with Xianhe."
"...I can't do that. I'll go with you."
From this moment, we would hunt the Cao Cao troops who did nothing across this land but plunder and slaughter. And when we found them, we would pay them back in exactly the same coin.