The Worst Decision (2)
If it had been up to me, we would have forgotten Tanhan Mountain entirely and hurled the whole army at Juyong Pass — held You Province and been done with it.
The gentlemen commanding the Han army, it seemed, thought otherwise.
"Why? Why would they do that? The right move here is to fall back and strengthen the forts in every county of You Province. Isn't it?"
I knew the history still waiting ahead of us — the history of the Han army's crushing defeat — and all I could think was that Ha Yu and Zhang Min had just pointed us down the road that led there.
It made no sense. Lü Bu's valor had been valor enough, but we had only held Tanshihuai off because the whole army had stood together. And now they were splitting us in two? Worse: after a Xianbei withdrawal that anyone with eyes could see was suspicious, they were going to snap up Tanhan Mountain just because it looked like a ripe fruit hanging on the branch?
Lü Bu frowned at the question and folded his arms. He was no happier with Zhang Min and Ha Yu's decision than I was. Wei Xu watched his commander's face for a cue. Hou Cheng waited in silence for whatever Lü Bu would say. Song Xian kept his eyes on the tent ceiling.
At last Lü Bu spoke.
"Maybe the problem was leaving Gongsun Zan here."
Song Xian lowered his gaze.
"Afraid he'd make trouble if he stayed?"
"He's a different kind of man from us, however you cut it. We live in Bing Province, rubbing shoulders with the Xiongnu every day. Watch him and you'll see — the Wuhuan turning on us isn't what bothers him. From the start, he hated everyone who wasn't Han. The Wuhuan were only the ones standing closest."
Wei Xu flicked a glance at me.
"If the Xiongnu had betrayed us, wouldn't we have done the same?"
This Wei Xu has been needling me for a while now. First chance I get, I ought to take him down a peg.
Lü Bu shook his head.
"We'd hate the Xiongnu, of course. But we wouldn't take that hate out on the Wuhuan, or the Qiang, or anybody else who had nothing to do with it. Not where a superior could see it, anyway. Gongsun Zan didn't bother to hide it. That was the face of a man who never once asked himself how he looked. That—"
He let the words hang a moment.
"That's the face of a man who believes he is absolutely right."
Song Xian tried again.
"Say Gongsun Zan is what he is. Why did the others go with him?"
"Han Dang's from Liaoxi, same as Gongsun Zan. If things go badly they can pull more men out of Liaoxi Commandery. As for Sun Jian — sending only Colonel Ha's people would have looked wrong, so they peeled off some of our General Zhang's men to go with him. And the last operation he ran with the Left Wise King already had the two of them moving like they shared a pair of hands."
Song Xian caught the raw nerve in that at once.
"Doesn't it seem as if Sun Jian is keeping one eye on the commander?"
He meant: Lü Bu was close to the Right Wise King's line, so Sun Jian had gone and attached himself to the Left. It sounded plausible enough to me. More than plausible. I could already see the picture it painted — the Xiongnu splitting left from right again, with Sun Jian and Lü Bu dragged in to fight each other as champions of either side.
That was a picture I could not allow to be painted.
"The names they sent to Juyong Pass I can follow," Hou Cheng said. He had been silent until now, his voice low. "But I still don't understand the rest. The Xiongnu kid is right. Tanshihuai emptying Tanhan Mountain all of a sudden is wrong. Tian Yan, the Zhonglangjiang charged with defeating the Xianbei, moved to strike Mobei, and so Tanshihuai went after him... We can't afford to think about it that comfortably."
"The way General Zhang and Colonel Ha see it, they want Tanhan Mountain in our hands before Tanshihuai can get back. Flip the board while they still can."
"How? In this situation, how—"
"You and I both think the wise thing is to fall back and hold the passes and the mountains. But let's say we actually do that. Walk it through."
Ah.
I saw it.
Changshan Pass, opening into Ji Province. Juyong Pass, opening into You. Seal the mountains around those two gates and the Xianbei could not set a hoof on the Hebei plain.
But—
"Half the counties of Dai Commandery sit outside the passes and the mountains."
Half of Dai jutted north like a fist, cut off from the Hebei heartland by the ranges.
"If Tanshihuai smashes General Tian and comes back, he'll take Goliu County and the rest of Dai that we abandoned. Once he holds Dai, he won't be able to drive straight into You or Ji."
The mountains and the passes would stop him. The west would not. The steppe between the Jundu Mountains and the Yin Mountains was open and flat.
"Yanmen Commandery and Dingxiang Commandery will be in danger. If he keeps prying that gap wider and drives west into Yunzhong and Shuofang, Bing Province is finished. If Yanmen falls because we couldn't put more men there, everything east of the Taihang Mountains could go over to Tanshihuai."
And if it came to that, Tanshihuai would have another road. Push into the plains between the Lüliang Mountains and the Taihang, and hammer Taiyuan Commandery — the seat of the Bing inspectorate — and the Han would be staring at the worst crisis since the wars of Modu Chanyu. Take Taiyuan, swing east, smash Huguan Pass in Shangdang Commandery, and he would be standing in Wei Commandery, the heart of Ji Province.
Ye County in Wei Commandery would burn under Xianbei torches before it ever became Cao Cao's capital.
"From Taiyuan, go south and you're in Hedong Commandery. Nothing there to stop the Xianbei either. And from there, just cross the Yellow River to the southwest—"
Guanzhong. The Sanfu. The old capital country of the Former Han, gathered around Chang'an. A land that, except for the hour when ancient Zhou was smashed by the Rong, had never once permitted a barbarian army across its threshold.
"If it comes to that, General Zhang and Colonel Ha's heads won't be enough to settle the account. We'll all have to put ours on the block."
So the advance was unavoidable. Strategically. Politically. Both.
Hou Cheng's face had gone dark.
"Take Tanhan Mountain, then. Keep the battlefield in the north, even if it costs us."
"That's my guess, anyway... I think General Zhang and Colonel Ha want the Great Wall back."
The Great Wall. The one the modern world knew was the Ming wall, and it ran far south of Qin Shi Huang's. Which meant the Qin-Han wall had stood much farther north. Bing Province's stretch of it had crumbled, but the rough line of a defense was still there. Call the Wall a scarecrow if you liked — it was still a scarecrow standing in a Han field.
You Province was another matter. After the Former Han withered, after the usurper Wang Mang raised the Xin Dynasty and watched it die, through all the chaos out of which the Later Han was born, the You Province frontier had fallen back and fallen back again. It was not only the Xiongnu, the Wuhuan, and the Xianbei who had torn at it. Far to the east, in Lelang Commandery, the Joseon people had risen, and Goguryeo had come south to answer them. Even Tanhan Mountain itself stood on the Han side of the old Wall.
"If they can retake the old Wall country with Tanhan Mountain as the first stone, while Tanshihuai is off chasing Tian Yan, and then turn around and dig in — the butcher's bill will be ugly, but they may figure they can still hold their heads up in front of the court."
A long breath went out of Wei Xu, Song Xian, and Hou Cheng together. You could hear the words they did not say: And you think that will work?
Hou Cheng asked again, his voice lower still.
"What will you do?"
"If we... if my disciple talks the Chanyu around and the whole Bing cavalry peels off for Yanmen Commandery, the operation dies on the spot. The Zhonglangjiang and the Colonel would have to give up Dai and hold the mountains and the passes. But then every one of us is a deserter."
Forget advancement. Military law would be waiting with a headsman's sword.
"We go. If Tian Yan can hold a little longer, and if Sun Jian can smash the Wuhuan quickly enough for us to get a real defense set at Tanhan Mountain — that would be the best we can hope for."
Lü Bu looked at me, then put his hand on my shoulder.
"As I told you before, we'll form the unit together with the Xiongnu. Red horses. Red leather. Cloth. Scrape together every scrap you can find. If we walk into a trap, that'll be our only hope."
Nomads were not a people who built nothing. A forge that could turn out weapons and tools, a kiln — they raised such things as readily as any farming folk when they needed them. There were quarters, too, for peasants who had been taken prisoner, or who had crossed the northern frontier because there was no living left for them in the Han. Those peasants grew grain for their own mouths, and they grew fodder for the herds as well. In that way the nomads, when need required it, lived alongside people who stayed in one place, and they built for them.
Tanhan Mountain had been no different. Crude beside the walled towns of any Han commandery, but they had thrown up earthen ramparts and wooden palisades, and here and there they had even raised foundations and put real buildings on them.
Had.
"To think he'd smash it all to rubble," someone muttered. "And this was the place he made his royal court..."
I did not like the feeling in the air. In truth I had not liked it since the moment they said we would take Tanhan Mountain. The soldiers felt it too — Han and Xiongnu alike. There is no good way to look at a ruin that has been burned and broken down to nothing.
"Make camp here! Clear the wreckage that is useless. Whatever will serve, use it to raise the palisade!"
Ha Yu or Zhang Min — one of the gentlemen in command — and the order ran down the line.
"Tanshihuai has withdrawn! He could not stand before our might! Raise the cry of victory!"
Well now. Someone, at least, had decided the mood needed changing, and had decided to change it by shouting.
A ragged cheer leaked out — slow, embarrassed — and the mood only grew stranger for it. A few men still tried to force the sound. Then another cry rose, sharper, and gooseflesh stood up along my arms.
The cheering was not ours.
It was coming from below the mountain, from far off, and it was coming toward us. Not the drums and gongs of a Han signal. A Xianbei war cry, sharp and alien in its cadence.
"Enemy! The enemy! It's the Xianbei!"
Damn it. I knew it. I knew this would happen.
Besiege Wei to Rescue Zhao.
Tanshihuai already knew the story. Not only because Han advisors had told it to him. The Zhao of the Warring States had left a mark on the nomad peoples that time had not worn away.
Hu clothing and mounted archery.
Even now, the clothes a Han man wore were, at bottom, a skirt — the shang. That was why they called an outfit yishang, robe and skirt. And a man cannot ride a horse in a skirt. To put horses into a war while wearing skirts, you needed a chariot. A chariot, in speed and in tactical flexibility, was no match for a cavalryman.
In a fight on the Central Plains, perhaps it would not have mattered. But to face nomads on the frontier, cavalry had to be met with cavalry. So the armies of Zhao put on trousers — Hu clothing — climbed into the saddle, and trained to loose arrows at the gallop, and were reborn as a horse-host that could stand against the steppe.
A state that did not despise the northern peoples, but learned from them, and grew as strong as they were. That was Zhao.
The land that was now western Bing Province, south of the Wall, was land Zhao had taken from the nomads in just that way.
Then how, if you were a man of the north, did you surpass the Han?
As Zhao had learned from the north, the north would have to learn from Zhao. From anything that had to do with Zhao at all.
So Tanshihuai had studied the history of Zhao. And in studying Zhao, he had taken the measure of the strategies and tactics the Han still used.
"You thought Tian Yan's strike into Mobei had saved you."
At a single gesture from Tanshihuai, the horse-host began to move, closing around Tanhan Mountain from every side.
"That is the limit of your thinking. If Wei were not a country that lived by its walls and its fields — if, when its heartland was attacked, it could ignore the blow and keep pressing Zhao — the strategy would not be worth a handful of dust."
Tanshihuai smiled, thin and sharp.