Chapter 477: Luring the Dog In to Slaughter It

In the seven years since they rose in arms, Fan Chong had stormed many a famous city: Ju, Chengyang, Pengcheng, Wancheng — these ancient strongholds all fell one by one under the Red Eyebrows' overwhelming assaults.

Compared to those, Chenliu seemed utterly ordinary. Though it was a major city of the Central Plains, its walls five zhang high, its moat fed by the Honggou Canal, neither its scale nor its layout was remarkable. Once the Red Eyebrow vanguard arrived and received the order to "take this city," they promptly set to work.

Years of campaigning had distilled a seasoned set of siege techniques among the Red Eyebrow veterans, now practically professional soldiers. From digging tunnels to building earthen ramps, no master strategist had come to guide them — everything had been learned slowly through lessons paid for in the blood of their brothers and sisters.

The old Confucian Fu Zhan's denunciation of the Red Eyebrows contained a fair amount of conjecture, but when it came to driving able-bodied men against the walls, the Red Eyebrows really did do it — though it was not entirely forced. When battle began, the "family members and adopted sons" in the army took turns receiving their rations from steaming cauldrons at the front line. They wolfed the food down, then each hoisted a large basket of earth and charged the moat under fire from the city's far-reaching heavy crossbows, hurling the earth into the water before immediately retreating.

At first, the Wei army's heavy defensive crossbows still shot at them, but later they realized the Red Eyebrows kept coming in an endless stream — they could exhaust every arrow in the city and still not kill them all — so they stopped interfering with the moat-filling.

By Ma Yuan's order, the defense of Chenliu was entrusted to Chenliu Commandant Zhao Pang, an old subordinate Ma Yuan had personally recruited in Wei. He at once stopped his men: "Stop shooting. The Red Eyebrows are like chives — cut one crop and another springs up. You can't kill them all, and a single life is worth less than a single arrow. Pass the word down: let them get close before you kill them."

The Red Eyebrow army spent three days filling in a section of the moat, then began scaling the walls with long ladders like a swarm of moths. But their fragile bodies met sharp crossbow bolts and bricks and tiles hurled from the battlements, and their casualties were appalling.

Chenliu was strong, but it could not withstand the Red Eyebrows' sheer numbers, and no matter the city, its most vulnerable point was always the gates — especially in a great transport hub like Chenliu. In peacetime, its eight gates made it a crossroads linking nine commanderies, but once war came, it was easy to guard one at the expense of another.

On the fifth day of the siege, the Red Eyebrows smashed open Chenliu's northwest gate with a great battering ram. But as they charged in exultantly, they were stunned to find that what met them was not houses, streets, and neighborhood wards, but a brand-new wall: rammed-earth core, faced with grey brick, and atop it the Wei soldiers had already trained their crossbows on this rashly charging crowd of Red Eyebrows.

Only after the Red Eyebrows had pulled back, leaving several hundred corpses behind, did they report what lay inside to Fan Chong, who had just arrived at the scene.

"A wall inside the wall?"

Fan Chong frowned and ordered the earthen ramp raised still higher. Looking out from it, he saw that at each of the city's eight gates there was a semicircular small fortification protecting the entrance.

In all the cities the Red Eyebrows had smashed across the Central Plains, they had never encountered such a defensive measure. This was the barbican that Diwu Lun had ordered devised. After hearing Ma Yuan's strategic plan for the Central Plains, which made Chenliu the first line of defense, he had dispatched the Court Architect and artisans from the Privy Treasury to assist. Because Chenliu's walls pressed close to the moat, the barbicans could not easily be extended outward, so the houses and wards beside the eight gates were razed and turned into inner barbicans instead.

After the Red Eyebrows had endured untold hardships to break through the gate, only to find yet another line of defense inside, their morale plummeted, and the day the city would fall receded into the indefinite future.

And Fan Chong now realized that Ma Yuan's abandonment of Chenliu was by no means "cowardly flight."

"He knew we couldn't take Chenliu in the short term."

Thus Chenliu became a fishbone stuck in the throat of the Red Eyebrow host — they dared not ignore it.

Fan Chong had never studied books. Commanding hundreds of thousands of men and campaigning across several provinces, his actions might be called blind, but they relied more on "instinct." This Ma Yuan had refused to swallow the bait at Puyang, had decisively abandoned Chenliu, and had withdrawn westward. What exactly was he planning?

"This is bad."

Fan Chong saw the danger and summoned an aide: "Ride at top speed to Xinzheng and tell Fifth Duke Yang Yin he must wait until I join him — he is not to rush toward Ao Granary!"

…

When a great battle looms, the ability of two armies to coordinate with each other is laid utterly bare.

In the single month after his spies reported that the Red Eyebrows were about to move north, Ma Yuan had withdrawn all the garrisons of Chenliu Commandery's various counties to the west, and had incidentally completed the scorched-earth clearing of the Zheng region. The powerful clans need no mention — the moment they heard the Red Eyebrows were coming, they bundled up and fled that very night. The common folk, willing or not, were mostly forced westward to Luoyang under Wei army coercion, leaving the Red Eyebrows nothing but empty ground.

The Red Eyebrows, by contrast, suffered severe disconnects between their different columns. Take, for example, the Red Eyebrow "Fifth Duke" Yang Yin, who had set out from Yingchuan. He had always been the army's impetuous vanguard: if Fan Chong told him to march on the fifteenth, he would invariably set out on the tenth, and his troops moved fast. By the time Fan Chong's aide caught up with Yang Yin, he had already reached the banks of the Honggou Canal and was only a day's march from Ao Granary!

"The Grand Duke says I'm not to rush into attacking Ao Granary?"

Yang Yin grew anxious at once: "The people of Zheng have all fled — we haven't seized much grain, and what we brought from Yingchuan is nearly gone."

"Right now Ao Granary is before my very eyes. I hear that all the grain from the whole of Chenliu, Zheng, and even Henei and Hedong is concentrated there — enough inside to feed a hundred-thousand-man army for a year."

The temptation of this objective was simply too great for the Red Eyebrows. Yang Yin only needed to lead his men across the Bian River, so shallow it could be ignored, and march northwest along the Honggou Canal, and they would reach Ao Granary in a single day.

"Is Duke Fan worried about the garrison in Xingyang city?"

That was the only enemy force that could possibly stop the Red Eyebrow army. It was said the Wei army's chief commander, Ma Yuan, was inside, but this General Ma had not deployed his troops outside Xingyang to block the Red Eyebrows; instead, he had turtled up, apparently unwilling to fight the Red Eyebrows in the open field.

A mountain ridge over a hundred zhang high ran east to west, standing between Xingyang city and Ao Granary — that was Guangwu Mountain. A watercourse cut through the middle of Guangwu Mountain, and where there was no water, a walled-in covered causeway had been built, along which boats, carts, and horses streamed in an unending line. That was how the Wei garrison inside Xingyang city solved its grain supply.

Among the Red Eyebrows' Five Dukes, Yang Yin was second only to Xu Xuan in learning. He could read a few characters, was eager to learn, and had seized several local scholars to serve as guides and advisors. They all congratulated him: "We have heard the elders say that when Emperor Gao of Han faced off against Xiang Yu at Xingyang, the Han army likewise drew its grain from Ao Granary via the Guangwu Mountain causeway. Later, Xiang Yu sent men on a detour to seize the causeway and then took Ao Granary, whereupon Emperor Gao abandoned Xingyang city — exactly the same as today!"

That was why Ma Yuan had mocked himself, saying his "hook was three chi above the water."

But this was an open stratagem. Whether the Red Eyebrows intended to cross the river and attack Henei or strike west at Luoyang, their first priority in this campaign was to seize Ao Granary. Without that grain, how were several hundred thousand troops supposed to survive on the northwest wind? If the campaign dragged on, the Red Eyebrows would have to return empty-handed.

Yang Yin was not so swollen with arrogance as to think he alone could defeat Ma Yuan. He merely said, "The Wei army in Xingyang can wait until Duke Fan arrives to be dealt with — they can't run away. But if we don't take Ao Granary, the Wei boats will likely move its contents away bit by bit!"

When they had set out from Yingchuan, there had been ten ten-thousand-man camps. Now only eight camps had arrived, with quite a few stragglers, but Yang Yin could not afford to wait.

"Have the two ten-thousand-man camps that are still behind stay by the Honggou Canal and guard our line of retreat."

"The eight ten-thousand-man camps will cross the water with me. Four camps will keep watch on Xingyang city so Ma Yuan cannot easily come out; the other forty thousand men will follow me straight to Ao Granary!"

…

Although the Yuyang shock cavalry had accomplished the mission of riding south from Youzhou to Henei in a single month, horses were not motorcars that you could simply refuel and keep running. They were terribly fragile creatures; after the long march, they were sick and emaciated. They had come two men to a horse, and now could barely manage one-to-one.

So Gai Yan had no choice but to leave his three thousand men in Henei to recuperate on beans and grain while he himself, with a few mounted attendants, took a boat south from the Yellow River's northern bank to pay his respects to his new superior, Ma Yuan.

For the gentry and women of Henei, the Red Eyebrows were still a threat neither near nor far. But when Gai Yan reached Shimen Ford, where the Yellow River met the Ji River and the Honggou Canal, he found the place already on high alert. Some well-connected Chenliu magnates had fled all the way here, hoping to cross north by boat to escape the danger, only to be roughly seized by the Wei troops guarding the crossing. Ma Yuan had given the order: any cart or boat between the Honggou Canal and the Yellow River not bearing a tally was to be treated as a Red Eyebrow accomplice.

Those magnates felt deeply wronged and cried out, "The Red Eyebrows are closing in on Ao Granary — please, Colonel, let us cross!"

Their mouths were promptly gagged, and on the charge of "spreading alarm by praising the enemy," the iron-faced and merciless Army Judge Dong Xuan ordered them beheaded!

Gai Yan did have a tally. After this towering man of eight chi nine cun stated his purpose, Dong Xuan had someone escort him onward by boat, heading south.

"Army Judge Dong, are the Red Eyebrows truly closing in on Ao Granary? I wonder what countermeasure Commandant Ma has in mind?"

But Gai Yan's question drew a rebuke from Dong Xuan: "Even if the Commandant had a countermeasure and told it to me, if I then divulged it to a third person, that would be a capital crime of leaking secrets."

"Likewise, even though you, sir, are an Assistant General leading shock cavalry south to reinforce us and are entitled to learn the plan from the Commandant himself, to ask me about it is still overstepping your bounds!"

This utterly inflexible fellow shut Gai Yan's mouth. On the journey south, passing Ao Granary via the Guangwu Gorge, Gai Yan looked up and saw that this place, called a granary, was in truth a fortress, built atop a height called Ao Hill, rising just slightly above the surrounding ground.

He had heard that the Red Eyebrow army had advanced to within a day's distance, and Red Eyebrow scouts disguised as peasants were already infiltrating the area. Yet the defenses at Ao Granary still seemed rather lax, and Gai Yan could not help shaking his head inwardly, feeling this battle was hanging by a thread.

Hills gradually rose on either side of the gorge as they began to enter Guangwu Mountain. The boat suddenly stopped. Just as Gai Yan was wondering why, the colonel guiding him asked him to disembark.

Gai Yan found this odd: "Isn't the Commandant in Xingyang city?"

The colonel laughed: "Everyone in Luoyang, Zheng, and Chenliu knows the Commandant is in Xingyang — the Red Eyebrows think so too. His command flag is indeed there."

With that, he led Gai Yan up Guangwu Mountain. The summit of Guangwu Mountain was in fact quite flat, with the ruins of two ancient stockades: the one on the west was called the Han King's Fort, the one on the east the Xiang King's Fort. It was said that Liu and Xiang had faced off here during the Chu-Han struggle.

Now, the two long-abandoned stockades were once again packed with troops. From the mountain top to its foot, at least twenty thousand men were stationed, all feeding their horses and sharpening their weapons. At last Gai Yan saw the army he had imagined Ma Yuan would command!

"From the withdrawal to the emptying of Ao Granary, to planting a decoy force in Xingyang, and finally leading the elite troops personally to lie in ambush on Guangwu Mountain right beside Ao Granary — could all of this be Ma Yuan's stratagem? I was too foolish and misjudged General Ma!"

This friendly commander who had swallowed the bare hook was at last beginning to catch on. His heart trembling, he reached the highest point in the Xiang King's Fort, where a dashing middle-aged general sat with one leg propped up, his air of leisurely self-possession exactly like Grand Duke Jiang fishing by the Wei River.

This was Ma Yuan. He paid no attention to Gai Yan, who had come to pay his respects, but merely narrowed his phoenix eyes and gazed with rapt concentration down at the plain below the mountain, where the Red Eyebrow host surged westward in a rolling tide!

Then Ma Yuan sighed with regret: "This fish… is a bit small."

The Red Eyebrow army's Yang Yin division from Yingchuan had committed at least forty thousand men to the assault on Ao Granary — equivalent to the sum total of all the troops Ma Yuan could currently field. And that was small?

It was indeed small. What Ma Yuan had originally expected was to hook the fat-headed fish Fan Chong in one go — to fight a battle to rival Changping in the narrow corridor bounded by Aocang, Mount Guangwu, Xingyang, and Honggou, with its two sides and two corners.

"Small as it is, it's still meat. If I don't pull the line, it'll slip the hook and get away."

So Ma Yuan rose to his feet with regret and, right in front of Gai Yan, who was brimming with the desire to pour out his shame, gave the order: "Go inform Zhang Zong and Zheng Tong."

"The time is ripe."

"Shut the gate and beat the dog!"

"Commandant of the State!" Gai Yan hurriedly made his obeisance. "Your subordinate, Governor of Yuyang and Assistant General Gai Yan, has come south by imperial decree."

He raised his head. "A great battle is imminent — what would you have your subordinate do?"

"A fine warrior." Ma Yuan was not short, yet after Gai Yan dropped to one knee in salute, he was still nearly level with him. He nodded and said, "Where is your cavalry?"

Gai Yan replied, "They are still resting and regrouping in Henei."

Seeing that Gai Yan was travel-worn and dusty, Ma Yuan knew he had ridden south without pause. He did not ask what had been on Gai Yan's mind earlier, but only laughed heartily and said:

"In that case, Juqing, sit here, rest, and watch the battle — and while you're at it, warm a pot of wine for me."

Warm wine?

Ma Yuan donned his iron helmet with its pheasant-tail plume. Behind him, the leopard-tail banner rose high. The fierce winter wind swept across the summit of Mount Guangwu, setting his beard flying.

"Once I have broken these moth-bandits, I shall return to share a drink with you, Juqing!"

……

PS: Only one chapter today.