Chapter 178: The First Victory of the Northern Expedition

The fourteenth day of the third month, the second year of Kaixi.

The Huaihe River bent northward outside Sizhoucheng; the spring flood had not yet arrived, the river water remained shallow, and blackened, water-soaked dead wood protruded from the shallows. Dawn had not fully broken; mist pressed down over the river surface, thick as a pot of boiling rice soup. On the opposite bank, the battlements of Sizhoucheng loomed faintly through the fog, like a row of crouching beasts. Guo Zhuo stood on a dirt slope on the southern bank of the Huaihe; dew had condensed into a layer on his armor, and the white breath of his warhorse puffed out behind him in bursts.

Behind him were eight thousand vanguard troops, all elite soldiers selected from the various armies of the Two Huais. These soldiers had crouched in the reed thickets along the riverbank for half the night, their hands gripping their blades until they sweated. Guo Zhuo glanced back; he could not make out faces, only a dense mass of black shadows and the occasional flash of steel.

"My lord, the fog is too thick. Should we wait a while longer?" Vice-General Tian Junmai whispered, leaning in close.

Guo Zhuo did not answer. He stared at the opposite bank, tapping his fingers three times on the hilt of his blade. The fog was indeed thick, but what would he fight for once it lifted? There were fewer than two thousand Jin soldiers inside Sizhoucheng; this was intelligence confirmed repeatedly by spies. Two thousand men defending a city, with walls that were merely old rammed earth faced with brick, typical of the southern bank of the Huaihe, not the stone-built arrow towers and moat fortresses of the Jin northern border. Two thousand men scattered across the four city walls meant only a few hundred on each side. A surprise attack under cover of fog could take the city in one go.

"No waiting." Guo Zhuo swung himself onto his horse. "Give the order: cross the river."

Twenty-four small boats were pushed out from the reed thickets, their hulls scraping the mud with a dull hissing sound. The first wave to cross consisted of only six hundred men; each had a bamboo tube clenched between his teeth—not to avoid making noise, but to prevent screaming if they fell into the icy river water. The oars rose and fell in the mist, the sound of water extremely faint. The fog was so dense that by the time the boats reached the middle of the river, those on the shore could no longer see their outlines, hearing only the sound of oars cutting the water gradually fading away.

Guo Zhuo stood on the dirt slope, hand resting on his blade hilt, motionless. The eight thousand men behind him waited in silence; no one coughed, no one spoke, and even the horses seemed to understand human nature, neither snorting nor pawing the ground. The mist flowed over the river surface, muffling all sounds within it.

Tian Junmai stood half a step behind Guo Zhuo, his palms covered in sweat. He was not a new recruit; he had been in the army during the Northern Expedition at the end of the Shaoxing era, though back then he was merely a lowly squad leader. He remembered how that Northern Expedition had gone—the great army pressing the border with overwhelming momentum, then the Jin counterattack, then the rout, then the dead. So many dead that the waters of the Huaihe turned red. Now standing by this river, watching fog identical to that of thirty years ago, smelling the same fishy scent of the river water, a chill ran down his spine repeatedly.

"My lord," he whispered again, "if the Jin people have prepared early—"

"They have not prepared." Guo Zhuo's voice was steady. "The spies said the Jin commander in Sizhoucheng sent someone to Xuzhou to request reinforcements half a month ago; Xuzhou gave him not a single soldier. The Jin main forces are all in the north and west; the southern front is an empty shell. The Sizhou garrison numbers fewer than two thousand, consisting of the old, the weak, and local conscripts. They may bully commoners in peacetime, but they are useless in battle."

"But they are still holding the city walls—"

"City walls?" Guo Zhuo sneered. "Just wait and see."

Suddenly, a short, sharp scream came from the opposite bank, followed by the sound of metal clashing, then more screams, then silence. After a few moments of quiet, a flame lit up in the fog on the opposite bank, flickering three times, then flickering three times again. That was the agreed signal—the beachhead had been secured.

"It is done." Guo Zhuo swung himself onto his horse, drew the long blade at his waist, pointed the tip toward the opposite bank, and shouted, "The entire army crosses the river! Give the order: once inside the city, disarm and do not kill; seize the four gates; those who disobey shall be beheaded!"

Eight thousand Song soldiers surged out from the reed thickets, rushing toward the boats by the riverbank in a scramble. There were not enough boats; many jumped directly into the river to swim across. The Huaihe water in mid-March still carried the biting chill of winter, shaking one's very bones, yet no one hesitated. The first wave of six hundred had already secured a foothold on the beachhead; they had eliminated the two Jin sentry posts on the beach, killed over a dozen sentries, and the remaining Jin soldiers fled toward the city gates without even time to don their armor.

The commander of the north gate of Sizhoucheng was a Han Chinese thousand-household officer of the surname Liu, a conscript by origin. When he was dragged from his bed in the middle of the night, his first reaction was "The Song army has arrived." His second reaction was "How many?" His third reaction never came, because the messenger sentry cried out a single sentence: "Too many; the fog is full of heads, too numerous to count."

Thousand-Household Liu stood on the north gate tower and took one look outward; that single glance made his decision. On the Huaihe beachhead, fires burned densely, like ghost fires in a summer graveyard; amidst the flames, countless small boats could be vaguely seen crossing the river. The river surface was black with heads and boat shadows, and some were even swimming toward the southern bank. Farther away, the outlines of the main army could be faintly seen within the mist, the glint of blades flashing in the fog. This was not a surprise attack; this was the destruction of the city.

"Retreat." Thousand-Household Liu spat out that single word, turned, and descended the tower. The Jin experience of long-term defense along the Huaihe line told him: if one could not strike the enemy while they were half-crossing the river, once the entire enemy army had crossed, the walls of a small city could not possibly hold back an enemy several times their number. Half of the soldiers under his command were old and weak, the other half were conscripts; they were fine at guarding city gates and collecting tolls, but to clash head-on with the ferocious Song elites would be suicide. He led fewer than eight hundred ragged survivors out through the south gate. In his haste, he did not even order the granaries to be burned; it was too late, the Song army was already attacking the north gate.

Sizhoucheng fell at the hour of Mao. Guo Zhuo's personal guards struck the battering ram three times, and the north gate's bolt snapped. It was not that the Song army was too fierce; rather, most of the city's defenders had already fled. The few dozen conscripts who had not managed to escape hid behind the merlons of the city wall, dropped their weapons, and knelt on the ground with hands raised high. One conscript knelt and shouted a sentence that left Tian Junmai stunned: "Wang Shi! You have finally come; we have waited for so many years!"

When the great army entered the city, most of the people of Sizhoucheng were still asleep. Someone glanced out onto the street, saw Song cavalry surging in through the north gate holding torches, their armor gleaming with cold light in the mist, and quickly retreated indoors. But soon, the bold pushed open their windows, then others opened their doors, and some even lit lanterns reserved for the New Year. By the time full daylight broke and the great Song banner was raised at the city gate, some had already dug out Song coins unused for years from their homes and rushed into the streets to distribute them to the soldiers. "Song money! We have kept it all along!" An old man shoved a handful of Chongning Tongbao coins into the hand of a young soldier. The soldier waved his hands, saying he could not accept the people's property, but the old man was so distressed that tears streamed down his face.

As Guo Zhuo rode through the city gate, he noticed a detail: on the lintels of some civilian houses within Sizhoucheng, the reign titles from the Shaoxing era still remained. Those were carvings from over sixty years ago, eroded and blurred by wind and rain, yet still recognizable. "Shaoxing Year 30," "Shaoxing Year 32"—those carvings were left by the people of the Huaihe during the Song army's last Northern Expedition; they were the people's final thread of longing for their homeland. For sixty years, no one had chiseled those characters away.

"Report!" A scout galloped up, dismounted, and knelt before Guo Zhuo's horse, his voice trembling. "The Jin soldiers in Sizhou have been routed; three hundred captured; the granary is intact; the armory is intact!"

Guo Zhuo sat on his horse, looking at the dilapidated streets of Sizhoucheng, the surrendering soldiers kneeling by the roadside, and the people stepping out with lanterns. He slowly sheathed his blade. His expression remained unchanged, but his hand gripping the reins trembled slightly. It was not fear—it was excitement. The first battle of the Northern Expedition, he had won. His horse had set foot on the land north of the Huaihe; his blade had pierced the soil of the Central Plains. He called over a personal guard, his voice pressed low, yet every word seemed squeezed out between his teeth.

"Report to Lin'an. Sizhou has been captured; the Jin soldiers have fled in disarray; our army's casualties number fewer than one hundred."

He paused, then added: "Add this: 'The people of the city offered food in baskets and wine in jars to welcome the Wang Shi.'"

In reality, what food in baskets or wine in jars were there? The people of Sizhou had merely a few leftover lanterns from the New Year and a few old copper coins. But those few lanterns, in Guo Zhuo's eyes, carried more weight than any victory report—they were still subjects of Great Song; they recognized that banner. That was enough.

The victory report reached Lin'an, passed from north to south along the route. Horses were changed, but not the riders; the relay runners at the stations had never run so desperately. When the runner, holding the victory report high, charged through the Lin'an city gates, the horse he rode collapsed instantly outside Lizheng Gate, foaming at the mouth and convulsing uncontrollably. The runner rolled off the horse, stumbled forward into the palace gate, and ran while screaming all the way: "Great Victory at Sizhou! Great Victory at Sizhou! General Guo has recovered Sizhou!"

Lin'an City boiled that afternoon. It was not a metaphor; it truly boiled. The storytellers in the teahouses immediately dropped their original tales and began improvising the pinghua "General Guo's Clever Capture of Sizhou"—the battle had lasted only half a day; where was there any "cleverness"? But the storytellers did not care, nor did the listeners; all they wanted was a moment of satisfaction. Li Bi, hearing the news in his residence, immediately spread out paper and ground ink, writing a lengthy congratulatory memorial filled with over twenty allusions and ornate language, comparing Guo Zhuo to Li Su entering Caizhou on a snowy night. When Lu You heard the news in Shanyin, it was said he leaned on his cane, circled the courtyard three times, tears streaming down his face, then entered his study to write a poem, the opening two lines of which were: "Suddenly hearing the victory report from Sizhou, old tears soak my clothes." When Han Tuozhou received the victory report in the Government Hall while reviewing official documents, he read the military dispatch, which still smelled of sweat, placed it slowly on the desk, and remained silent for three breaths. Then he raised his head and said to the room full of officials the words that would later be repeatedly quoted in the gazettes: "Gentlemen, this is the first city. There are many more to come. The Central Plains welcome our return." The entire hall of officials rose together, clasping their hands and shouting in unison: "Grand Preceptor is wise! Great Song for ten thousand years!"

Guo Zhuo entered the Sizhou prefectural office only on the second day. Having not slept all night, his eyes were bloodshot, yet his spirits were extremely high, and he walked with a spring in his step. The plaque on the Sizhou office still bore the Jin dynasty's inscription; he ordered it taken down, split up, and burned as firewood, replacing it with a temporarily written sign reading "Office of the Prefect of Sizhou, Great Song." The characters were written by Tian Junmai; they were not good, crooked and uneven, but Guo Zhuo said that was just fine—Song characters, no matter how ugly, are still Song characters.

He spread out a map in the main hall of the office and began planning the next route of attack. North of Sizhou lies Suzhou; to the northeast lies Xuzhou; both are hard bones. Sizhou was too weak; defeating two thousand old and weak soldiers did not count as skill. The upcoming battles for Suzhou and Xuzhou would be the true test.

But that was tomorrow's matter. Today, the first Great Song military banner on the Sizhou city wall was already snapping loudly in the spring breeze. Beneath that banner, the mist over the Huaihe had cleared, and the sun had risen. For the first time in sixty years, the banner of Great Song was flying once again over the land of Huaibei.