Chapter 455: A Lone, Bold Stand

Wan Xiu's force, the first to break into Longyou via the Wei River narrows, was also the first to be surrounded and attacked by Long troops.

The Longxi magnate Yang Guang, under orders, led his troops to resist Wan Xiu — resist indeed, for Wan Xiu advanced with great fanfare, and Yang Guang assumed an endless stream of reinforcements lay behind him, so he had already prepared to hold Longxi in a defensive stand.

But Yang Guang soon realized: "The Wei River narrows are a minor path to begin with. Even if a surprise force can cross the peril, there is absolutely no supply route, and the main Wei army cannot possibly come through."

Later, when it indeed proved that Wan Xiu's show of force was somewhat flagging, Yang Guang finally breathed easier — yet his urgent dispatches to Wei Ao did not slow by half a beat. In the midst of a great battle, who wouldn't want a few more troops on hand, just to be safe?

Once the five thousand reinforcements Wei Ao had dispatched arrived, Yang Guang tightened his encirclement of Wan Xiu. Having found no grain to forage, Wan Xiu withdrew to the city of Mianzhu, using that small town to maneuver against Yang Guang of Long.

After receiving reinforcements, Yang Guang's forces outnumbered Wan Xiu's at least three to one, but what gave him a headache was that Mianzhu was far harder to assault than he had ever imagined.

Here the Wei River suddenly broadened, and a spur of land seemed to slide down from the Qinling Mountains, stretching long to the river's edge, jutting abruptly into the river valley like the tongue of a long dragon, its northern end no more than two hundred paces wide. The small city was built right on the tip of this long tongue, with steep riverbanks on three sides and a mountain face on the fourth. Standing atop it, one's view was vast — distant mountains and near plains all lay within sight.

But for an attacker, this was a sheer nightmare!

Studying the map, Yang Guang also worked it out: the Western March, the homeland from which the Qin people rose, was not far from here, reachable in a few days, yet they had always left the Mianzhu Rong alone. Only centuries later, after sweeping across both sides of Mount Qi, did Duke Mu of Qin turn back and destroy the Mianzhu Rong. It seemed that this small Rong state of old had sustained its rule precisely by relying on this strategic, inaccessible ground.

He questioned the County Chief who had fled the area: "The Wei army came from afar — how did they seize Mianzhu City?"

"They disguised themselves as woodcutters to enter the city, then suddenly rose up and seized the city gate, allowing their vanguard to succeed."

"That doesn't make sense — if their accents were different, why were they let inside?"

"The Wei army's spies must have specially learned the local dialect, and the guards were bribed…"

It turned out that Diwu Lun had established dialect officers under the Court of State Visitors, specifically tasked with gathering and training spies who could speak the dialects of particular regions. The reason Wan Xiu knew Longyou so well was precisely because these men had blazed the trail ahead of him.

Coupled with the State of Wei's most adept gold-cake offensive, its agents moved through Longyou, and many local magnates had received bribes, with promises of rich rewards if they aided Wei. As for ordinary minor officials, the bribes were switched to broken gold — and they succeeded more than a few times.

Be that as it may, it was now Yang Guang's turn to rack his brains over how to attack.

He first tried a frontal assault along the sole narrow road, only to have his superior numbers all jammed up at the choke point, taking Wei crossbow bolts for nothing.

Yang Guang then tried ordering good swimmers to row boats across the Wei and scale the riverbank cliffs, but the Wei troops kept an extremely tight watch, and this too failed, costing him several brave warriors instead.

The Wei River was in flood at the time, which meant the narrows were now completely impassable — Wan Xiu's rear support was utterly cut off. But this was no good for the attackers either; the roads were slick with mud, the offensive halted, and because Mianzhu sat on higher ground, even water attacks were useless.

At his wits' end, Yang Guang could only resort to a long-term siege. Mianzhu was a poor, remote place, with stored grain of no more than a thousand shi.

"A month at most, and the Wei army will run out of food. As long as we seal off the only road to the flatlands, they will be trapped and starved, and will eventually have to come out and fight."

It was also Wan Xiu's bad luck — he had arrived about ten days too early and missed the August millet harvest. The old grain in the city was soon exhausted; they were fortunate to have earlier cut and threshed some still-green millet, which they pounded and boiled into gruel.

The Long army was clearly trying to lure them into a desperate charge, loose on the outside but tight within. Wan Xiu did not take the bait. Instead, he had his men make the "ground cages" that Diwu Lun had devised when teaching soldiers to catch Yellow River fish in New Qinzhong. They lowered them by rope from the city walls into the murky river, and every day they hauled up dozens of fish. Wei River water to boil Wei River fish — it had a flavor all its own.

On the cliffs around the city, wild fruits also grew. There were endless trellises of schisandra berries, red, cluster pressed upon cluster, half the mountain dyed crimson. Vast patches of ground strawberries, the size of a thumb; after an autumn rain, one had only to stoop, kneel, and scoop up a double handful — tart and sweet, quite palatable. Or one could pick the prickly, hairy chestnuts and toss them into the fire for a moment to enjoy crisp, fragrant kernels.

They even gathered some wild Sichuan peppercorns, dried them in the sun, and distributed them specially to the soldiers on guard duty atop the walls. In the dead of night, when exhaustion truly set in, cracking one between the teeth was guaranteed to numb you into total wakefulness.

The war thus dragged on from late June into mid-August. During this time, Yang Guang repeatedly received urgent dispatches from Wei Ao, and also heard that two more Wei army columns had broken into Longyou. His subordinates grew increasingly uneasy, and many discussed whether to negotiate peace with the State of Wei, using Longxi as a bargaining chip. But when they sought Yang Guang's instructions, they met with a reprimand from this "Imperial Counselor."

"General Wei has said all his life that the reason he commands a host is not to contend for the realm, but only to preserve the land of his fathers and keep their tombs intact. He treats the various magnates and scholar-officials with great generosity. The Wei Emperor, by contrast — when he rose against Wang Mang, he relied on the power of the Wei River north-bank magnates, but once his wings were full-fledged, he turned and destroyed them, exterminating thirty-two clans, shaking the entire Guanzhong."

"After contending for Hebei, we also heard that Diwu Lun forcibly relocated eight clans and seventy-five households of the Hebei Liu lineage. The sacrificial beasts of the ancestral temple were put to the toil of the fields."

"If Diwu Lun achieves his ambitions and enters Longyou as its master, will the fate of the sixteen great surnames of Tianshui and Longxi be any better than that of the Wei north-bank magnates or the Hebei Lius? You are all sons of great houses — do not fall for Diwu Lun's stratagem of dividing us."

Yang Guang believed he had seen through Diwu Lun's scheme. The two-hundred-year heritage and glory of the Six Commanderies' scions could not be severed like this.

Better to stake everything on one more fight than to sink into ignoble submission!

"In that case, only a Long-Shu alliance can stand against Diwu."

Yang Guang had also finally received his reinforcements. Wei Ao had ordered his eldest son to open the Qishan Great Road, and Shu troops from the south were now streaming continuously into Longxi!

The Long soldiers watched with complicated expressions as their "allies" marched north in broad daylight. Due to long-standing regional prejudice, they had always looked down on the people of Shu.

Furthermore, they had been able to deceive themselves before, saying they "fought under the Han banner," no different from their ancestors. But with the Shu army's entry, and hearing that Wei Ao had already submitted as a vassal to Gongsun Shu, this "Western Han" court — long dead in all but name — probably could not be maintained for many more days.

And the first thing the Shu army did was to send men to support Yang Guang, aiming to seize Mianzhu in one swift stroke!

"The Wei army's food is exhausted."

Yang Guang's siege had indeed had some effect. Eating only mountain fruits and wild berries from around the city walls could not sustain two thousand men. Yang Guang observed that the smoke from cooking fires within the city rose less and less often, and the few trees near the city had all been felled.

But whenever the Long troops launched an attack, they still met a head-on, painful counterblow from Wan Xiu's force. When arrows ran out, they tore tiles from the roofs, or split the roof beams and sharpened the ends into weapons.

What made Yang Guang absolutely livid was that among the local Di and Qiang peoples, there were still some who, under cover of night, rowed upstream to deliver grain beneath the walls of Mianzhu for the Wei army to eat!

Under interrogation, when these Di and Qiang people who lived in the mountains were questioned, their answer was quite simple: they did not understand the grand trends of the realm; they simply admired the Wei soldiers in the city for their bravery and fearlessness, daring to come through the narrows that even they dreaded.

And Wan Xiu understood local customs very well. Before the siege began, he had his personal soldiers go from village to village, delivering gold cakes and gifts to the Di and Qiang headmen, hoping that after the autumn harvest they could aid the city with a little grain. Wan Xiu promised that once Longyou was taken, the Wei Emperor would richly reward those who helped them.

Although most villages simply took the gold cakes and did nothing, quite a few who kept their word fulfilled their promise and braved the danger.

Yang Guang had not expected Wan Xiu to do such things to win "popular support." He could only send men to each village to proclaim: "If you Di can help us break the city, can the gold cakes of the Wei army inside not be shared and offered as tribute to you all?"

But those who switched sides were few. Risking the water route to deliver grain — the Wei army was straightforward, directly trading grain for gold, hand to hand. But following the Long troops to assault the city as cannon fodder carried far greater risk, and besides, the city had been besieged for nearly two months now — could it really be breached?

Yang Guang flew into a rage and was about to give the order to behead anyone who communicated with Wei, regardless of whether they were Han or Rong. But this incident gave one man an inspiration.

"General Yang, do not be hasty! This may be an opportunity to kill Wan Xiu in one stroke!"

"Once Wan Xiu is dead, the Wei troops inside the city will surely collapse!"

…

By normal reckoning, without much supplementary food, an adult eats one and a half shi of grain per month; even at the barest minimum, one shi of staple grain is needed to feel full.

ωωω. ttκΛ n. ℃O

But relying on a mere thousand shi of grain, over two thousand Wei soldiers had held out for a month and a half. The wild fruits outside the city were gone, and the foolish fish they could haul in grew fewer and fewer. Had it not been for the several waves of grain that Di and Qiang villagers had risked bringing by boat in the preceding days, even the soldiers on guard duty atop the walls would have collapsed from hunger.

The troops were somewhat disheartened. They had come to Longyou to fight a great campaign; how could they have imagined being trapped here?

But Wan Xiu did not see it that way.

"For every enemy soldier we tie down here, it becomes one degree easier for His Majesty and the other generals to break through Long Mountain."

His abilities were limited; perhaps he could not achieve a tactical breakthrough. But the strategic objective of pinning down Longyou's forces had clearly succeeded.

That day, Wan Xiu had drunk only a little thin gruel from morning to night. The spot on his lower back he had injured against a rock on the mountain when they first arrived ached more and more, but their medic had fallen ill and died — Yang Guang had thrown many dead sheep and horses into the upper river. Though flowing water is not easily contaminated, the Wei troops no longer had enough fuel to boil water for drinking. Soldiers who were not careful enough and drank the river water still fell victim, and even the medic succumbed.

What the Wei troops longed for most was nightfall, when those Di and Qiang folk, greedy for reward, would come bringing grain.

"General, a boat is coming!"

A sharp-eyed soldier raised the call. Wan Xiu came over to look and indeed saw, in the darkness, a light skiff quietly approaching. The rower, stripped to the waist, struggled to steer the boat steady in the rushing current, while the grain was securely lashed to the gunwales.

The great billows of the Wei River pounded madly against the hull; the roaring, racing torrent, thick with muddy silt, hurled up enormous spray that lashed the boatmen fiercely. Yet the helmsman still stood firm at the very stern, both hands gripping the tiller in a death-lock, watching every possible sudden detail — every tremor, every slip.

What was more, he also had to dodge the Long troops on the bank. They had spotted this uninvited guest, and arrows came shooting over time and again, though all of them grazed past the boat and fell into the water.

Time was endured in struggle. After many twists and turns, the little boat survived the downstream breakers and drew gradually to shore on a river beach beneath the cliffs.

"A true brave man!" Even Wan Xiu could not help cheering for him.

The Mianzhu city wall had already lowered a basket, letting him send the grain up first; only then would it be the people's turn.

When that man had also hauled himself up the wall by the rope, the Wei soldiers looked at him with considerable surprise. "Just you alone?"

To brave such raging river waters all by himself — here indeed was a solitary hero of daring!

But the newcomer shook his head and pointed sorrowfully toward the boat. There, astonishingly, still lay another person — long since a corpse, with several arrows lodged in the body. Was it his companion? Or a kinsman?

Under the torchlight, everyone saw clearly: this was a lean, gaunt fellow. His long face closely resembled the local Di and Qiang people. He had bare, bronze-hued skin that gleamed with strength and a rugged luster — small wonder he could handle a boat alone amid terrifying waves.

"My father — by Long soldiers — shot dead."

He beat his own chest, cursed several times in the Qiang tongue of Long and Shu, then roared in stiff, halting Han speech: "Revenge!"

He glanced left and right through the crowd, until his gaze finally found Wan Xiu, who was surrounded by people. He then bowed heavily toward him, though his lowered eyes were exceedingly deep.

"General, take me in — I want revenge!"