Chapter 67: Going Home

The men Ge Liu brought to meet the forward camp were able-bodied refugees who had come from the mountains around Luoding over the past few days to join the army, numbering more than 150.

In addition, 100 residents of the town had been conscripted, and they had brought every cart in Luoding — 12 horse-drawn wagons and 18 donkey carts — besides which each man carried a shoulder pole and two lengths of hemp rope.

The party joined up with the forward camp's main force at Dawan, more than forty li from Luoding. At the sight of the grain piled high on those great wagons, the able-bodied men Ge Liu had brought burst into cheers.

Some of the forward camp's soldiers held up clothes stripped from Qing soldiers on the tips of long spears to show off to those able-bodied men, while others kept drawing and sheathing their newly issued long sabers so the men could get a good look.

As for the captured Green Standard banners, they had long since been planted on the wagons. Seeing this, and remembering how the Qing prisoners at the Xihe ferry had tearfully begged for a belt-string when they set out, Zhou Shixiang could not help smiling faintly.

The Taiping Camp had been thorough in everything it did at Deqing. Not only had they stripped every stitch of clothing from the prisoners, they had even stripped the clothes from the corpses, and as for sabers, spears, swords, and lances, not a single one had been left behind.

One could say that anything usable, even a strip of cloth, had been picked up and carried back by the soldiers.

Zhou Shixiang had also used silver to buy a good deal of supplies from Tang Sanshui — over a hundred iron pots, and no small amount of salt and cooking oil.

Although he knew the prices Tang Sanshui gave were unfair, far above market rates, Zhou Shixiang did not haggle, but bought everything with a beaming smile.

His readiness delighted the Green Standard men so much that they could not wait to do more business with him — if you don't fleece a fool like this, who do you fleece?

After a few transactions, however, Zhou Shixiang had come to understand that this Battalion Commander Tang Sanshui, for all his timid, death-fearing appearance, was actually very clever — only his cleverness was not spent on dealing with the enemy, but on how to get rich.

Tang Sanshui had not only used the Ming army's attack on the town as a pretext to extort a large sum of silver from the county yamen, but had also killed with a borrowed knife by devouring the wealthy refugee households, and had even found ways to scheme against the Taiping Camp itself.

Zhou Shixiang had originally reckoned that if Tang Sanshui cooperated, he could earn at least two thousand taels of silver, but now it seemed those two thousand taels were merely a fraction of the fortune Battalion Commander Tang had made from this "Ming army" offensive.

The bold die of overeating; the timid die of starvation. However bold a man is, that is how much the land yields!

Tang Sanshui was a talent too — he knew how to invest, how to avoid risk, and even better, how to raise profits. Placed in a later age, he would absolutely have been a successful merchant.

At the very least, his ability to turn crisis into wealth, to seize an opportunity the moment it appeared and never let go even if beaten to death, filled Zhou Shixiang with admiration.

Yet along with admiration came, naturally, some unwillingness — watching someone else borrow your momentum to make a fortune bigger than your own, could that sit well in the heart?

But what could unwillingness do?

Tang Sanshui had shrunk back into Deqing town and would not come out even if beaten to death; all the trading and dealing was done by his subordinates.

And with the Taiping Camp's current strength, there was truly nothing to be done about him — unless another Brother Sanshui appeared in Deqing to cooperate, it was a case of heaven high and the Emperor far away, leaving him to enjoy himself.

At this moment, even if Tang Sanshui stood on Deqing's walls cursing Zhou Shixiang's ancestors back eighteen generations, all Zhou Shixiang could do was curse back and glare helplessly.

Being fleeced was being fleeced; compared with the gains, a little imbalance counted for nothing.

For the Taiping Camp, desperately short of supplies and without a complete logistics chain, obtaining resources from the enemy was the only way, and doing business with officials like Tang Sanshui inside the Green Standard seemed to be one means as well.

Between the two, plundering the common people was clearly less in the Taiping Camp's interest, and it was the method Zhou Shixiang preferred.

Just imagine: if you have no food and no clothing, the enemy delivers them to your door of his own accord; if you have no sabers and no spears, the enemy brings them to you. Such a picture in the mind is truly wonderful.

Of course, to possess that wonderful picture, the precondition must be that the Taiping Camp possesses — or feigns possession of — enough strength to intimidate the enemy. Without such strength, even the best business partner will turn his face away and disown you.

What Zhou Shixiang had returned to Luoding to do was to truly condense that strength into form.

The company spent that night at Dawan and set out before dawn the next day. Peng Dazhu led men escorting the wagons in front, Ge Wu was in the middle with the wounded, and Zhou Shixiang brought up the rear with Shao Jiugong and four squads of soldiers.

Chen Mo's death-soldier camp was kept under guard in the middle, advancing reluctantly under the watch of enforcers who looked every bit like jailers.

Along the way, roughly every two hours a messenger sent from Luoding would arrive, then hurry back to Luoding brimming with good news.

Six hours later, the company finally appeared before the gates of Luoding in the fading light of the setting sun.

"They're back!"

Gazing at the somewhat crumbling city wall, Zhou Shixiang was full of emotion. When they had set out days ago, his heart had been uneasy; returning days later, he felt so light. Yet many of the companions who had once traveled south beside him were now gone, and that could not but bring sorrow.

"Big Brother, we're home!"

Ge Wu, Peng Dazhu, Baldy, and the others walked together to Boss Hu's coffin, knelt down neatly as one, and kowtowed several times. Then together they changed into white mourning cloth, joined strength to lift the coffin from the wagon, and carried it on their shoulders toward the town.

Several dozen soldiers scooped up the spirit money the town had sent earlier and flung it into the sky. As the paper money drifted down piece by piece, the company's mood at once grew heavy.

"Big Brother!"

Zhao Sihai knelt before the city gate and wailed toward the coffin as it was slowly borne forward.

Master Song uttered no sound, only stared blankly at the coffin, his chest so blocked he could hardly bear it, his nose growing more and more sour. After a long while, he let out a deep sigh.

Zhou Shixiang had originally been unwilling to bring Hu Quan's coffin into the town, preferring to bury it directly outside the walls together with the bones of the fallen soldiers.

After all, they were returning in great victory with rich spoils, and this could have been a perfect chance to display the Taiping Camp's strength to the common people.

But Song Xianggong and the others insisted that Boss Hu must be brought back into the town, and that the fallen soldiers should also be brought back so their kin could see them one last time before burial.

This reversal of order made Zhou Shixiang worry about the effect on morale — that it would dilute the joy of victory.

Yet he could not well object, since all the old brothers of the Dachao Mountain band were in favor, and if he, an "outsider," opposed it, his standing among these men would suffer.

So he had agreed, and could only hope that the compensation paid to the families of the fallen would dilute their discontent with the Taiping Camp.

Although a public treasury had been established, with the rule that all property of the Taiping Camp belonged to the treasury and was to be distributed uniformly by it, in the matter of compensation for fallen soldiers Zhou Shixiang made an exception: the kin of the fallen were allowed to possess the compensation money and to use it, and no one in the Taiping Camp might seize it, on pain of death.