Chapter 206: Defending the Homeland

"Gentlemen, this is truly a winter of life and death, of survival or ruin!"

"The fate of Shouliang and Weicheng will be decided in this single battle!"

At the pre-battle mobilization meeting held for the local magnates and officials of Shouliang Commandery in the county seat of Dongwuyang, the one closest to the great river, Diwu Lun painted the situation in the gravest possible terms.

Apart from the necessary exaggerations of propaganda and morale-boosting, Diwu Lun was not lying — two small variables had robbed them of any certainty of victory in this fight against the Red Eyebrow incursion.

The first was that, the previous month, after Geng Chun and his uncle and nephew had pulled away two thousand of Diwu Lun's main troops, detouring through Liyang and Baima to relieve Dingtao in the south, the promised two thousand Geng clan retainers had failed to arrive. According to Geng Chun's junior associate Geng Su, who came in person to report, the Five Towers bandit Zhang Wen, who had been driven out of the territory, had led his followers into Julu Commandery to pillage the counties and villages, and had happened to block the Geng family army's only route south, forcing them to halt.

Geng Su expressed his regret: "To guard against the bandits raiding Songzi County, a thousand men were sent back. The remaining thousand, even if they take a detour, probably won't arrive until after spring."

The gift sent from a thousand li had shrunk to a goose feather — by the time the Geng army arrived, the daylilies would have long gone cold. And Geng Chun and his uncle and nephew had probably only just reached the vicinity of Dingtao, disguised as Red Eyebrow soldiers with dry rations, hundreds of li away in the south, while the Red Eyebrows were coming from due east; there was no hope of them turning back to help.

This forced Diwu Lun to summon every soldier under his command, leaving only Wan Xiu and a little over a thousand of the Boar-Rush Braves to garrison Yecheng and Wu'an, keeping a wary eye on the Zhao-Liu faction in Handan, who were neither friend nor foe, and guarding against Squire Li of Wu'an returning home to stir up trouble.

Counting the forces assembled at the Shouliang river defenses, the two thousand exile soldiers under Ma Yuan's personal command formed the main strength. There were also two thousand commandery troops under the Commandery Clerk Xiong and Wei Commandery Military Officer Chai Rong, but after deducting phantom payrolls, they likely numbered only a little over a thousand — not enough to entrust with a heavy responsibility. In addition, there were the two thousand Gengshi soldiers Geng Chun had brought in early winter; though they had recovered some nerve fighting the Five Towers bandits, their morale still wavered at the prospect of facing their old enemy, the Red Eyebrows.

Fortunately, Diwu Lun had already mobilized the magnates' armed forces by demonizing the Red Eyebrow Army. The landlords great and small, terrified that the Red Eyebrows would cross into their territory and devour great households like theirs down to the bone, cooperated quite readily with Diwu Lun. The various clans of Weicheng scraped together four to five thousand men, and Shouliang's side scraped together three to four thousand.

The total strength came to over ten thousand, but of these, only two thousand were truly reliable core troops. Though a motley assortment of uneven quality, once the numbers were sufficient, they could at least be stationed across the counties and watchtowers along the several-hundred-li river defense line to monitor the Red Eyebrows' every move. Once the Yellow River froze over, it could be crossed anywhere — the initiative lay with the Red Eyebrows.

And according to reports from scouts and spies who had infiltrated the opposite bank, after deep winter set in, the Red Eyebrow forces massing around Dong'e were far more numerous than expected — a rough estimate put them at seventy to eighty thousand strong! Most were able-bodied young men, which was rather alarming.

"Where did so many people come from?" Huang Chang was stunned, increasingly convinced that his lord had made a mistake in dividing the troops for Geng Chun.

Ma Yuan did the math: "Twenty to thirty thousand from Chi Zhaoping's old forces, over ten thousand from the Cheng Tou Zi Lu band under Mount Tai Commandery, plus over ten thousand civilians swept along, and tens of thousands of famine refugees from several commanderies in Qing Province and Yan Province drawn by their reputation."

If it came to a real fight, the most optimistic estimate of the troop ratio was one against five.

More troublesome still, Chi Zhaoping had clearly come prepared this time, vastly different from her incursion into Yuancheng the previous year.

Over the past year, Chi Zhaoping had followed Fan Chong and Dong Xian, using the main government forces as practice. The order among her core followers had improved slightly, and their equipment was surprisingly good — several thousand elite troops under Chi Zhaoping's direct command had an armor-wearing rate comparable to the magnates' armed forces, and their pitchforks and farm tools had been replaced with hooked halberds and long spears.

The Red Eyebrows produced nothing themselves — where had they gotten all this armor and weaponry?

Diwu Lun was not surprised. Apart from a few commandery and county armories, it was all the legacy of the Battle of Chengchang!

He could not help cursing inwardly: "We really must thank General of Renewal Lian Dan and Grand Preceptor Wang Kuang, those two transport team leaders, captain and vice-captain, who toiled so hard to deliver armor and grain from Guanzhong to the Red Eyebrow Army!"

…

Yuan Zeng was a native of Lu County in Mount Tai Commandery.

Though a rough fellow, he greatly admired scholars, loved hearing the stories of Confucius and the seventy-two sages, and especially revered Zilu, so he adopted the same courtesy name. After he rose up in response to the Red Eyebrows the previous year and raised troops atop the Lu County city wall, his followers were called "Cheng Tou Zi Lu."

The reason for raising troops was the same as for most of the roving bandits — survival had become impossible!

Mount Tai Commandery had always been poor in land and people. Government troops and Fan Chong's Red Eyebrow division had been locked in a back-and-forth tug-of-war there for years, leaving few days to properly tend the fields. Some people went to join the Red Eyebrows; those who remained as law-abiding subjects of the authorities found the taxes even heavier.

On top of man-made calamity came natural disaster. In the spring of the previous year, around the third and fourth months, hailstones as large as chicken eggs fell. After summer began, not a drop of rain fell across the entire commandery for three months, and a great drought set in. A little rain fell in early autumn, and the millet and wheat around Lu County still held some hope, but just as the harvest approached, a great frost struck — the wheat kernels, unable to fill with sap, all froze to death. In the eighth and ninth months, the Ji River flooded, and the Yellow River overflowed its dikes; after the great drought came inundation, and the disaster grew even worse.

In those days, to say nothing of grain, even coarse chaff was a delicacy. Every day at the pestles and mortars in the hamlets, people pounded elm bark to boil and eat. Cheng Tou Zi Lu had eaten it — it scraped the throat raw!

When the elm bark was stripped bare, they stuffed withered leaves into their mouths. Wild herbs on the mountain, known to be poisonous — even pigs would go numb in all four limbs after eating them — were chewed and swallowed too. Greenish water spilled from the corners of their lips, their tongues swelled numb and thick, unable to speak. Once it went down the belly, a bitter, rank taste rose, but at least there was something in the stomach, even if it soon began to ache restlessly.

Sometimes Cheng Tou Zi Lu even wanted to slit open his own belly and tear out his guts and stomach altogether.

"That wasn't the hardest thing to swallow. The hardest thing to eat was firewood."

"Firewood?"

When hunger grew desperate and there was no other way, they gnawed on rotten firewood, on the pale, squirming wood-boring grubs inside, chewing raw, weeping as they ate. Truly, it was worse than an early death.

Indeed, many people starved to death outright, or went mad with hunger and swelled up and died from eating earth. In every county, hundreds and thousands of famine refugees stood waiting, crying out and begging. Those vegetable-green faces, those lifeless eyes — Cheng Tou Zi Lu had once been one of them.

Compassion, order, and morality had all vanished. The only thought in people's minds was to eat; hunger ruled everything. Tenant farmers and poor households sold their children to magnates, landlords, and officials who still had surplus grain. When no one wanted their children, they sold their young wives into brothels. The tragedy was that selling one person could not fetch four dou of grain, which would be gone after a few days of eating.

The old, the weak, the women, and the children waited all day for death; the young and strong could still take desperate risks.

Many gaunt, staggering poor youths, their eyes dull and gray, joined Cheng Tou Zi Lu in stirring up trouble, raising banners in response to the Red Eyebrows. They stormed into the county offices and bled out the officials who still ate three meaty meals a day and grew fat-bellied. They struck down the small magnates' fortified manors and threw open the granaries to distribute grain!

So it turned out that as long as you had courage and a blade in hand, getting a meal wasn't so hard after all!

And so, honest men were driven to become "bandits and outlaws."

They took part in the Battle of Chengchang and killed many government soldiers. The cartload after cartload of abandoned grain filled the hungry crowd's bellies until they were round; the captured baggage, armor, and weapons gave them a completely new look.

But those who joined the Red Eyebrows could eat by licking blood off their blades, and that had little to do with the majority of the starving common people. After winter set in, conditions in Yan Province continued to worsen. When there were no more children to sell, the living eating the living became the norm. Some traded children to eat, some traded wives to eat; there were even those who murdered their own kin to eat.

When Cheng Tou Zi Lu returned to his old home in Lu County, he found it a desolate waste. He went to visit a relative who had once kindly helped him, wanting to repay the favor. Looking around, the house was truly bare, with nothing but the four walls. The husband and wife were too starved to rise from their beds, each clutching a bloodstained knife, staring at each other with blood-red eyes.

Cheng Tou Zi Lu had his men feed them gruel. After calling out a few times, he realized that the family's two children, a boy and a girl, were nowhere to be seen.

He asked around. The father's words were evasive; he only said, "Sold them."

The mother just wept, her eyes constantly darting toward the bare vegetable patch behind the house.

Suspicious, Cheng Tou Zi Lu had his men search around. In the end, in a mound of earth, they found the bloodstained hair of the family's two children, and stark white bones — the flesh on those bones had been gnawed completely clean!

"They died of illness. Wild dogs dug them up and gnawed on them."

The relative who had been kind-hearted and helped Cheng Tou Zi Lu just a few months earlier insisted stubbornly. Cheng Tou Zi Lu only flogged him in fury: "You have the guts to eat your own children, but back then you didn't have the nerve to leave this place with me and go find food elsewhere?"

The harsh winter arrived, snowflakes drifting down. The people of Yan Province had no firewood, no grain, no clothes, no food — freezing and starving at once. The ill-fated snowflakes were a symbol of their own destiny.

Famine and the desire to survive made it impossible for them to stay. They abandoned the homeland where their families had lived in peace for generations, bid tearful farewells to their ancestral graves, and formed vast columns, trudging through the bitter cold. Countless people collapsed from hunger, cold, or sheer exhaustion and never rose again. It was common to see children weeping over their parents' corpses. The "bad people" would walk past them in silence, as if deaf and blind; the "good people" would stop and carry the children away.

Eating someone else's child was better than eating one's own.

More and more people flocked to join Cheng Tou Zi Lu, and they roamed everywhere like a plague of locusts. Arriving at a county, they would storm the city, open the government granaries, and plunder the wealthy households. If that was not enough, they would rob the middle class, rob the poor just like themselves, and seize the last handful of grain hidden in their cellars.

They would eat a county into destitution, then leave, creating even more roving bandits in their wake, who were forced or chose to join Cheng Tou Zi Lu. They swelled from a thousand to ten thousand, rolling larger and larger like a snowball.

In the end, they merged into an even larger snowball — Chi Zhaoping's great army, tens of thousands strong.

Chi Zhaoping captured Dong'e, the capital of Shouliang, and with the surplus grain seized at Chengchang, let Cheng Tou Zi Lu's starving followers eat a full meal.

But south of the great river, there were hardly any cities left that the Red Eyebrows had not taken. The county seats, fortified manors, and villages had been ravaged to exhaustion; Yan Province was hollowed out.

Chi Zhaoping pointed to the north bank and told them: "There is grain north of the river. The imperial temples and imperial manors at Yuancheng are bursting with grain — I saw it with my own eyes. Once we cross the river and take Yuancheng, we can eat until spring planting."

This was the truth Chi Zhaoping had been telling the various roving bands of Yan Province for months. Cheng Tou Zi Lu believed this woman who wore an exorcist mask to feign mystery and never showed her true face without a doubt. She was one of the three great commanders of the Red Eyebrows, after all. Her core followers had captured large quantities of armor and weapons and possessed considerable fighting strength — perhaps she really could lead them all to survival.

They used Dong'e as their base, relying on the surplus grain, waiting and waiting, until after several heavy snowfalls, the weather grew even colder and the ice grew even thicker!

"The ice can bear men and horses now."

In the last ten days of the twelfth month, tentatively, tentatively, someone rode a horse, step by step, along the ice-floe-covered river surface and crossed over without falling into a hole — though before he could climb the bank, an arrow from a patrolling soldier on the opposite shore shot him off his horse.

Beacon towers, spaced one every ten li, were arrayed along the north bank of the Great River. The moment the Red Eyebrows were spotted, they would light signal smoke — different grades indicating different numbers and situations.

"Send more men to search for places where the river can be crossed." Chi Zhaoping knew that Diwu Lun's main army moved according to the beacon towers' signals, so behind her exorcist mask she issued orders in a muffled voice. But what if, when the weather was bad and the beacon smoke failed, she sent extra motley decoy troops to cross the river from different areas and draw off the main Wei force, making them rush to empty spots?

"Chengtou Zilu, you pick a foggy day and cross the river from Cangting!"

……

Beacon towers, originally meant to guard against the Hu and Lu barbarians beyond the frontier, were now being used to watch their "compatriots" — fellow people of the Central Xia.

But that was only Diwu Lun's view. The people of Wei had never regarded the ravenous, starving mob on the opposite bank as compatriots — only as bandits and ravenous wolves.

Unlike most of the Red Eyebrow Army on the opposite bank, who slept in the open on grass and suffered from hunger and cold, the Wei troops massed on the north bank were treated quite well. Though the five thousand-odd regular soldiers endured harsh training and heavy duties, every meal was a full belly of hot soup and rice, and winter clothing had all been distributed.

As for the six or seven thousand armed men of the powerful families who had gradually assembled — since Diwu Lun had taken the powerful houses' grain, he at least saw to it that they could fill their stomachs. This group, thrown together, was even more disorderly; they were separately stationed in the various riverside county towns, fortified manors, and beacon towers, coordinating with the main force.

Beyond this, Diwu Lun also began mobilizing another group of people to join the war.

"Grand Governor, two thousand able-bodied men from Liaocheng and Fuping counties have been assembled and begun training!"

The Confucian scholar Lu Da, styled Zhongkang, whom Diwu Lun had appointed as County Commandant of Liaocheng, did not disappoint. He had raised quite a few men from the vicinity of Liaocheng. They had only just been rescued by Diwu Lun from the roving bandit Wulou Zei and were gradually returning to their villages. Now, hearing that the Red Eyebrows were approaching and fearing that last year's calamity would repeat itself, they were thrown into great terror. Some wanted to flee, but Lu Zhongkang stopped them: "Rather than flee and hide, abandoning your ancestral graves, fields, and property, why not defend your homeland?"

Defending the homeland — this was the slogan Diwu Lun had set for this war, and it struck deep into people's hearts. Now not only the powerful houses, but even the middling households, freeholding farmers, and even tenant farmers were organized into militia, issued crude weapons and wooden spears. Diwu Lun also provided one meal a day, so even more people joined, keeping watch on the river defenses day and night.

And over in Weicheng Commandery, the Accounts Clerk Feng Qin also arrived at Dongwuyang, leading several thousand Wei commoners pushing carts loaded with grain. Diwu Lun sent his subordinate clerks to Yecheng to spread the word that the Red Eyebrows on the opposite bank not only burned, killed, looted, and violated women, but also ate human flesh! It was not only the powerful houses who were terrified — ordinary people too were conscripted and organized by the government. After transporting grain, they served as auxiliary troops in Shouliang and the other counties.

Once the common people of the two commanderies were mobilized, Diwu Lun's manpower swelled enormously. Watching this scene, he could not help recalling a song from his previous life.

High mountains rise ten thousand zhang in Hexi, the sorghum ripens east and north of the River… Brandishing broadswords and long spears, defend the homeland, defend the Yellow River, defend Huabei…

Although the people on the opposite bank were also poor and suffering brothers, in these times, regional enmity far outweighed class commonality. Once the Red Eyebrows were allowed across the river, there could never be mutual aid in hardship — the two sides would only fight over seizing grain and guarding their own rations, a struggle to the death without end!

This was a battle for the right to survive. The Red Eyebrows on the south bank, tormented by hunger and cold, could only stay alive by migrating as roving bandits. The Wei commoners on the north bank clung to the land their families had lived on for generations. The calamity in Yan Province was not of their making. At this moment, who among them was willing to hand over peace and food with both hands, letting others live while they themselves died?

By the end of the twelfth month, the Yellow River was frozen solid. The Red Eyebrows gathered in ever greater numbers and began testing the ice thickness at many points. A great battle could erupt at any moment.

But Diwu Lun no longer felt the heart palpitations and panic of the previous days, when his troop strength was insufficient. His confidence had returned.

Looking back, every stratum of the two commanderies had now united as never before under Diwu Lun's banner. His army, though still a feudal army, was no longer a tree without roots or water without a source.

Indeed — what could stand against the surging torrent of the Red Eyebrows on the opposite bank?

Only the vast ocean of the Hebei people's masses!

……

PS: Chapter 2 at 18:00.