Chapter 186

Suzhou.

The June sun was like an inverted iron pot, smothering the land north of the Huai River in suffocating heat. Not a breath of wind stirred. The mud beneath the walls had dried into cracked tortoise-shell-like patterns, fissures filled with broken arrow shafts and dried blood. Flies outnumbered all living things—black clouds clinging to the corpses beneath the walls: Song soldiers, Jin soldiers, all piled there for nearly a month, unrecovered.

Guo Ni had lost a full circle of flesh. His armor straps had been tightened two notches; his eye sockets sank inward, his cheekbones jutted out. His horse was failing too—the steed had been meticulously chosen from the Two Huai stables before crossing the Huai, now so emaciated his ribs showed through, the groom said if things continued, he’d be unfit for battle. He squatted beneath a half-dead locust tree, spreading the map across his knees, staring for half an hour, until his finger had worn a hole through the map at Suzhou’s location.

The siege had lasted over twenty days. When Lingbi had just fallen, the entire army had believed Suzhou would be an easy prize—Lingbi was taken, what was Suzhou? Guo Ni had even declared in council, “We’ll take it in ten days.” Tian Junmai had said nothing beside him. Now twenty days had passed, and the Jin banners still flew above Suzhou’s walls.

After retreating from Lingbi, Heshilie Zhizhong withdrew to Suzhou with fewer than two hundred survivors. Then Emperor Wanyan Jing’s decree arrived: “In the Battle of Lingbi, you, with five thousand isolated troops, resisted tens of thousands of rebels, held firm for half a month, and inflicted heavy losses. I commend you greatly. I now appoint you Defense Commissioner of Suzhou, commanding all troops in Suzhou and Xu Prefectures.” Along with it came three thousand reinforcements. Not many, but combined with Suzhou’s original garrison, total strength exceeded six thousand. More importantly, Heshilie Zhizhong had upgraded Lingbi’s tactics. He dug ditches, built low walls, and planted caltrops outside Suzhou’s walls—but added one more thing: twelve heavy crossbows mounted on the ramparts. These were the heavy crossbows used by Jin’s northern frontier troops, bolts as thick as spears, with ranges far exceeding Song army field crossbows. Any siege tower approaching within three hundred paces had its roof pierced by bolts—one arrow, one hole. Three siege towers had already been destroyed.

Today’s assault failed again. Launched at Mao hour, ended at Chen hour. Over a hundred dead. Not a single ladder reached the wall. One battalion commander charged to the ditch’s edge—his shield was pinned to the ground by a crossbow bolt, him with it. The troops behind turned and fled. Guo Ni executed one deserter on the spot, hanging his head at the camp gate—but morale kept sinking.

“Fifth.” Guo Ni muttered, folding the map and tucking it into his robe. In less than a month, he had executed five deserters. When he reached the fifth, he suddenly realized something—not these men feared death, but he didn’t know how to fight this battle. Sizhoucheng was taken by ambush in fog; Hongxian fell when trebuchets shattered the eastern wall; Lingbi was won by bloody, grinding warfare over half a month. He thought Suzhou was just another Lingbi—siege warfare, just enough troops, bold generals, enough time, and it would fall. But Suzhou was not Lingbi. The Heshilie Zhizhong at Lingbi was isolated—no reinforcements, no crossbows, no outer ditch system. The Heshilie Zhizhong at Suzhou had everything. And his own army was no longer the fierce, high-spirited force that crossed the Huai a month ago.

The main camp reeked of sour rot—not from corpses (they were buried outside), but from sweat, feces, spoiled rice, and festering wounds. June in northern Huai was unbearably humid; the tents were steam vats. Soldiers squatted by tent flaps gnawing dried rations, flies buzzing around their faces, impossible to shoo away. Tian Junmai emerged from the infirmary, his face grim. He wasn’t there for his own wound—the arrow wound on his arm had scabbed over. The problem was the infirmary. He’d walked through it just now and found something worse than arrow wounds: plague.

“How many?” Guo Ni called Tian Junmai into his tent, cutting straight to the point.

“Over three hundred showing symptoms,” Tian Junmai whispered, afraid the personal guards outside might hear. “High fever, vomiting, red blotches on the skin. The military physicians can’t name the illness, but it spreads fast. One man falls ill in a tent, and within two days, the whole tent collapses.” He paused. “Worst of all—the sick are all veterans. The new recruits aren’t falling ill much.”

Guo Ni understood. The veterans had spent years in the south, never endured a northern Huai summer. The heat of the Huai was different from Jiangnan’s—it wasn’t damp, it was stifling. Mosquitoes were three times larger, waterborne bacteria ten times more abundant. Veterans’ bodies, acclimated to southern conditions for decades, had collapsed after a month of exposure to northern Huai’s wilderness. New recruits were strong, but they couldn’t fight like veterans. Now, the fighters were falling sick; those still healthy couldn’t fight.

“What did the physicians say?”

“They say isolate them—concentrate all sick soldiers in a separate camp, away from healthy troops.”

“Then isolate them.”

“There’s no space left,” Tian Junmai said. “Our camp is packed too tight—fifty thousand men crammed into one area, tents only three feet apart. No room to build an isolation camp. To build one, we’d have to retreat ten li, move all the sick to the rear. But the rear is Sizhoucheng—Sizhoucheng lacks enough physicians and medicine.”

Guo Ni tightened and loosened his grip on his saber hilt three times. He was a warrior—he feared no enemy, no walls, no crossbows—but he feared this. Plague was more terrifying than any weapon. In Cao Cao’s defeat at Chibi, the annals recorded: “A great plague broke out; many soldiers died.” That plague directly caused Cao Cao’s collapse. He had read those words, but never imagined he’d face the same fate.

“There’s another way,” Tian Junmai said. “Lift the siege.”

Guo Ni snapped his head up: “Lift the siege? Suzhou is right before us—”

“Suzhou is right before us,” Tian Junmai’s voice hardened, “but our men are rotting away day by day. General, you are the commander—only you can make this decision. Either keep the siege, betting the Jin inside will break first—but they have walls for shade, wells for water, enough grain. Our men bake in the open, drown in mud, lie in swarms of flies. Wait another month, and the Jin won’t collapse—we will.”

Guo Ni fell silent. Outside, the sun blazed white over the camp; from afar came muffled moans from the infirmary. A breeze lifted the tent flap, and he saw the locust tree at the gate—its leaves wilted and limp, like the dying soldiers in the infirmary tents.

On the same day, a grain convoy was ambushed thirty li south of Suzhou.

The raiders weren’t Jin troops—they were starving locals. Northern Huai had suffered years of drought; Jin rule there was already weak. With war, grain had been seized by Jin soldiers or Song troops, leaving the people with nothing. Hundreds of starving men, eyes green with hunger, wielding hoes and shoulder poles, drove off the escorting militia, seizing thirty carts of grain. The militia dared not pursue, only fled back to report.

When Guo Zhuo heard, he smashed his cup in rage. He wasn’t angry at the starving peasants—he was furious about the supply route. From Sizhoucheng to Suzhou, this was the only road. He’d traveled it for over a month, memorized every town, every bridge, every bend where ambushes might lie—but he couldn’t spare troops to guard it. His men were all pressed against Suzhou’s walls; the rear supply line was maintained by only a half-strength militia commander. He didn’t want to neglect the route—he simply had no troops to spare.

“If the Jin discover how fragile our supply line is, and send a light cavalry unit to cut us off from behind, we’re finished,” Guo Zhuo told Guo Ni.

Guo Ni said nothing. He knew—but he couldn’t help it. This was his first campaign of national conquest. For the first time, he realized siege warfare wasn’t just about storming a city—it meant managing hundreds of li of supply lines from the Huai to the front, feeding and caring for fifty thousand men, controlling disease and plague, maintaining morale, suppressing deserters, and guarding rear areas where starving peasants could turn into bandits at any moment. None of these things were familiar to him. He was a battle general, not a commander-in-chief. He thought the northern expedition meant sharpening his blade and charging forward—cutting down one city after another until Bianjing. At the fourth cut, his blade shattered—and only then did he realize the entire supply line behind him was trembling.

Two days later, a messenger from Lin’an brought worse news. He wasn’t delivering victory reports—he delivered a private letter. From Xin Qiji. Xin’s message was brief, tone restrained: “To General Guo: Hearing of your great victory at Lingbi, I, from Yanshan, send distant congratulations. But one matter I dare not withhold: recent spies report that Jin’s northern elite forces remain unmoved, and their western defenses against the Xia have not been redeployed south. The Jin would rather watch the southern front collapse than shift a single soldier from the north. This is not cowardice—it is biding time. You on the front must judge the moment carefully; do not let temporary victory make you reckless. Warfare is the ground of life and death, the way of survival and ruin—do not neglect it.”

Guo Ni read the letter, placed it on the table, and looked up at the map. Suzhou was circled in vermilion—he’d stared at that red circle hundreds of times, could draw it blindfolded. He understood what Xin Qiji meant. Xin didn’t say it outright, but the meaning was clear—the Jin’s elite were all in the north; the southern resistance was merely an appetizer. You can’t even swallow the appetizer—how will you eat the main course?

But he couldn’t retreat. Not because he didn’t want to—but because he couldn’t. He was commander of the eastern northern expeditionary force. Sizhoucheng was his. Hongxian was his. Lingbi was his. Victory reports had poured into Lin’an. Han Tuozhou had been promoted to Grand Preceptor and Chief of Military Affairs; the entire court had shouted “Long live!”; Lu You wrote a poem every day in Shanyin. Everyone waited for the Suzhou victory. How could he retreat now? What excuse? Plague? Grain shortages? Unstable rear? In Lin’an’s celebration, these sounded like excuses.

Guo Ni folded Xin Qiji’s letter, slipped it back into the envelope, and did not reply. He stepped out of the tent, stood beneath the half-dead locust tree, gazing at Suzhou in the distance. The setting sun dyed the walls a dark red; the Jin banners drifted slowly atop the battlements. He knew an old one-eyed general inside was watching him, just as he had watched the same man beneath Lingbi’s walls a month ago.

This time, however, he was the one being worn down.