Becoming the True Savior of Xu Province
I took three hundred soldiers, with Jian Yong, Zhang He, and the rest, and we swept the countryside.
"Hm?"
"Lord Xianhe, what's the matter?"
"A foul reek of blood—and it's close!"
Jian Yong broke ahead at once, and I followed on his heels.
"It's dangerous. This one will guard you."
Zhang He matched his stride to mine as we ran.
Then Jian Yong, who had been sprinting with everything he had, stopped short and bellowed.
"You bastards! What do you think you're doing?"
"What? Xu Province remnants?"
"Couldn't have asked for better!"
We had come face to face with Cao Cao's troops in the village.
Here, too, a great crowd of commoners had been bound and ringed about a well, while the axes of the executioners and long swords slick with blood stood ready to butcher every last one of them. The slaughter was a breath away, right before my eyes, and my heart hammered as both hands began to shake.
"You—you aren't even human!"
But Cao Cao's men only raised spear and blade and came on toward us.
"Even better. Our lord ordered every Xu Province dog who resists put to death—and here they come of their own accord."
At the sight of our three hundred they began closing in one by one, and more of them burst out from the surroundings. In a blink several hundred of Cao Cao's soldiers had appeared, matching our numbers. A battle was unfolding before my eyes. My hand found the sword at my waist.
Can I truly swing it? If I don't kill, I die.
The men in front of me were murderers who had cruelly butchered countless commoners across the battlefield. As Jian Yong stood at the front with his sword raised in a standoff, Zhang He set a hand on my shoulder and slowly stepped forward.
"Young Master, see that you are well guarded."
"!?"
Zhang He, who had always shrunk from entering a fight himself even while he served as escort, took up his spear and advanced.
"Cut them all—"
Shhhk—
"G-ghhk?"
In an instant Zhang He lunged and drove his spear through the chest of the Cao Cao officer at the front. Cold-faced as a machine, he opened the engagement, and behind him our vanguard charged at once.
"Strike!"
"These madmen—kill every last one!"
The Cao Cao troops, who had lived by slaughter, were caught in the sudden assault and met us head-on. This army, raised in Ji Province and trained under Yuan Shao, showed considerable fighting strength. Until now they had been a peacekeeping force—escorts, palisades, and relief—but in war they fought with courage against any enemy that stood before them.
Blood sprayed before my eyes. Screams and groans came in real time, and sweat pooled thick in the hand that gripped my sword. But I could not flinch. This was an age of chaos. Hesitate like a fool, and in the next breath your head was gone.
"Graaaah!"
"You picked the wrong fight!"
Jian Yong, too, swung his sword with practiced skill, fighting better on the field than I had expected. He was no general to charge the enemy ranks from horseback, but on open ground he had martial skill enough to handle several ordinary soldiers. The fighting grew ever fiercer, and against Cao Cao's men we even began to push them back.
"You!"
For a moment several of them rushed me with blades drawn, but the spearmen in front thrust and stopped them cold. While Zhang He fought at the fore, cutting Cao Cao's soldiers down one by one with his spear, fifty Ji Province troops formed a living palisade around me, spears leveled, guarding me without a gap. Among them Zhang He's martial skill was extraordinary. When he toppled a commander in splendid armor with the shaft of his spear, the Cao Cao troops who had been giving ground faltered.
"Damn it!"
The man who had faced Jian Yong earlier was their captain.
"I will not say it twice. All of you, withdraw."
"Spare me the dog's bark and kill them! We came to Xu Province to exterminate every last wretch until our lord is avenged!"
Even after killing so many, even held at spearpoint, the Cao Cao commander showed madness in his bloodshot eyes.
"One tael for every Xu Province neck. Until our lord's vengeance is complete, not a single cur will be left alive on this land. And that includes you!"
Crack!
In that instant Zhang He drove his spear through the nape of the enemy commander he had already pinned, killing him in a single blow. With their captain dead, Cao Cao's troops broke and ran. I wanted to shout for them to be pursued and slain to the last—and then!
Skreee—skreeee—
Skreeeeek!
"!?"
"Damn."
The fleeing soldiers pulled flutes from their robes and blew them wildly, and Zhang He's face changed at once. He yanked his spear from the commander's throat and hurried to my side.
"There must be a large number of detached forces in the area. Those men split up to stir the villages hereabouts and plunder them."
"Guoyang swore it was only a small detached force!"
"We are the smaller force."
With scarcely three hundred soldiers in the field, Zhang He wanted us back to Tan City at once. I grasped the situation and meant to withdraw—gathering the wounded, following after him—but before long Cao Cao's troops began assembling around us, one band after another.
"!"
"This is..."
They lay spread in every direction, and their numbers looked to be two or three thousand. We had been told Cao Cao's army was all to the north. There were far more of them than I had thought.
"So there were still rats of Xu Province left."
"There was a reason the general ordered us to strike west of Tan City. Catch these and go in, and there won't be a single one left."
The detached force had already massed here, meaning to push as far as Tan County. Even if three hundred soldiers fought with all their courage, I did not know whether they could hold an army of Cao Cao nearly ten times their size.
"Damn it..."
The curse slipped out of me on its own, and Zhang He whispered at my side.
"I will break through. Run forward without hesitation, together with that man called Xianhe."
"Lord Junyi."
"Do as I say. I will rally the rest and get them back to Tan County."
Zhang He had resolved to hold Cao Cao's army himself.
"Madman. You think even one of you can survive h—"
Shhhk—
Crack!
In that instant the belly of the Cao Cao commander at the front was pierced, and the cold edge of a crescent blade burst through.
"Wh... what?"
Shhhraaaak!
The crescent blade had come flying from behind the Cao Cao troops encircling us. And the one who had thrown it—a giant nearing nine chi, long beard flying, face flushed crimson with excitement, eyes wide and blazing.
"Found you. You rats!"
"G-Guan Yu!?"
"The front of Langya Commandery felt strangely thin, so I came down—and here you were, just as I thought."
After hurling the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, Guan Yu drew the great sword at his waist and charged Cao Cao's troops together with the soldiers under his command.
"What are you standing around for? Stop the big-eared one's army at once! Those are the bastards who broke us at Donghai and Langya—"
But before the commander could finish, Guan Yu took his head with the great sword in a single stroke. Blood fountained without end from the cleanly severed neck and soaked Guan Yu's face, already red as a jujube.
"Did the host of Zhuo County look so worthy of your scorn?"
After Guan Yu himself drove into the enemy ranks and cut down their commander, he drew out the Green Dragon Blade that had pierced the man's body and swung it, and a chill ran down my spine. With terrifying strength that made me wonder whether he was even the same kind of man, he swept aside Cao Cao's soldiers—each a head or two shorter than he—as if they were fallen leaves.
"Brother Guan! I knew I could count on you!"
"Xianhe, spare the useless noise and see to them!"
"You mean these two?"
Jian Yong, his face bright with relief, gathered me and Zhang He, joined Guan Yu's force, and clashed with Cao Cao's troops once more. The detached force that had meant to drive in from west of Tan County fell beneath the Green Dragon's fangs, just as they themselves had cut others down.
Even if I were a general, I don't think I would have dared the thought of challenging that beard-giant, mad with killing fury.
Having finished all three thousand of Cao Cao's men, Guan Yu came to me.
"Are you unharmed?"
He asked it while roughly wiping the blood from his face with his sleeve. Just standing before him, the pressure was enough to inspire terror—but this man was on my side.
"I lived, thanks to you."
"How should I let a guest who came this far for a righteous cause fall into danger? You are my elder brother's benefactor, besides."
"Your martial skill is extraordinary."
"It is nothing."
And so Guan Yu brought all of us safely back to Tan County. After that, of course, he also brought inside every villager from beyond the walls of Tan City who had escaped Cao Cao's massacre.
That evening I stilled my trembling heart. In my lodgings I read whatever military texts came to hand, turning the present situation over and over, trying to wring some plan from it. Late that night I entered the place where everyone had gathered.
"There is something I wish to do."
"What is it? I am holding Tan County in my elder brother's stead for now, so speak."
Guan Yu drank deep from a wine jar as if nothing were amiss. Zhang He quietly took a seat when I moved; Jian Yong was there to second him, and Tian Yu to report the situation. Before that company I set out my plan.
"I need seasoned soldiers. Men with swift feet, faces thick enough to bluff at their ease even if they meet the enemy, and a sharp eye—picked for exactly that."
"What are you scheming? Has a merchant studied the commander's art and learned commando work besides?"
He spoke as if bored, but both eyes and ears were turned toward me.
"I will put a portion of the wealth I have here into their bosoms and send them through the surrounding country disguised as merchants."
"Hm?"
"Salt, beans, silver, and the like in their bundles—dressed as merchants making the rounds of a battlefield, so they can look the country over and sound the enemy out even if they are discovered."
Tian Yu, who had been listening in silence, asked quietly.
"You mean to use scouts disguised as merchants to take the measure of Cao Cao's detached forces, and to save the refugees who are still out there?"
He had read my meaning so perfectly that I nodded at once.
"Young Master, if merchants suddenly appear after a battle, carrying silver and salt from who knows where, anyone at all will grow suspicious."
Zhang He shot it down at once with that cold, straight-edged logic of his, but Tian Yu put out a hand.
"No. It can be done."
"What?"
"Xu Province has always been full of salt merchants, and even though this place has become a wretched battlefield, most of the fighting is in northern Xu—Langya and the Dongguan country. Around Xiapi, where Lord Tao, Inspector of Xu Province, resides, it is still safe, and people still come and go there from time to time."
"Disguise them as men of southern Xu? I do not know the geography of Xu Province well, but will Cao Cao's army understand that?"
I added one thing more to Zhang He's objection.
"Even so, we need it."
"Young Master."
"I have thought it through. Saving the commoners who will die in the midst of war matters—but gathering the people of Xu Province while the Governor of Pingyuan fights matters even more."
"Gather them, put spears and blades in their hands, and have them fight alongside us—is that what you are saying?"
"That too. But among the refugees I mean to win over the scholars who can read and who have insight, and the great clans."
"!"
I drew out what I had brought.
First bundle: the numerals — one through ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand.
Second bundle: a passage from the Zuo Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals.
"Gather those who can read even one of the two, and bring them inside. If order takes hold among that vast mass of refugees around men who know their letters, then a bond to Xu Province will form among them, and they will answer the Governor of Pingyuan, who fights alone, and this city of Tan."
"Hmm."
Give starving refugees food and protection, yes—but once they came to their senses, they too would have to rise together and join their strength. And if I could win over even a few among the great clans and the scholars, it would be a great help in days to come.
"Xianhe, sort out men who know their letters and are quick of body."
"Understood, Brother Guan!"
When Guan Yu had Jian Yong answer for him, I replied in turn.
"Of course, I will save people that way as well, and seek out men of talent."
In that moment, the look in Guan Yu's eyes was anything but ordinary.