Chapter 507: Two Rabbits

As the commander-in-chief, Diwu Lun relied on intelligence transmission to see the battlefield situation with perfect clarity, but the tiny individuals caught up in the great battle often sank into confusion and overwhelming terror.

The most uneasy men in the Wei army were the civilian laborers from Henei. Serving as the baggage train, they were responsible for transporting grain and fodder and were usually placed far behind the battle lines. They often heard only the sounds of slaughter without seeing what was actually happening. This blindness left them anxious and unsettled — after all, rumors in the army said there were "several hundred thousand" Red Eyebrows out there.

"Nonsense and wild talk — stop spreading it, unless you want the army judges to convict you." Xiang Ziping, a man from Zhaoge County serving as the laborers' Platoon Commander, could not control others, so he could only warn his fellow townsmen this way.

The past months of moving with the army had only hardened Xiang Ziping's once-held ambition to withdraw from the world and his resolve never to join the ranks again.

War truly held no glory or brilliance. The whole way, corpses had littered the countryside. Though they had never personally taken up spear and halberd to fight the Red Eyebrows, the aftermath — carrying bodies, digging pits, burning them — was all done by the laborers. The stench, or rather the sickly-sweet reek, that rose when the corpse piles were set alight was a nightmare that Xiang Ziping could never purge, no matter how many times he vomited.

Xiang Ziping's attitude toward the Red Eyebrows and toward this war had also undergone a subtle shift, from the initial fury of single-minded revenge for his brother, slowly turning to numbness and even weariness.

And in a Wei army teeming with talent, how hard was it to rise without exceptional ability or connections? Exhaustion and disease had already claimed the lives of many laborers. Unlike the soldiers, their deaths brought no compensation whatsoever, and this slowly sobered everyone up.

So now, with a great enemy before them, they did not think of how to die for the Emperor. They only said, "To take ten thousand steps back — if the Wei army cannot hold, we'll just imitate the creature on this banner... and run for our lives!"

That was the rear army's emblem: the Two Rabbits banner. It was said that having the reserves and baggage train fly this banner was a tradition centuries old. As for its meaning, no one could clearly say. Unlike the Responding Dragon or the brown-eared pheasant, the rabbit was a famously timid animal.

Xiang Ziping, however, recalled a poem from the Book of Songs: "The Rabbit Is Slow."

"Slowly the rabbit runs, the pheasant is caught in the net. In the beginning of my life, there was still no toil; after my birth, I meet these hundred calamities."

He missed home. He missed his old life. Since the Red Eyebrows north of the great river had already surrendered, and Fan Chong would likely be annihilated here by the Emperor, it was time for them to leave the ranks and tend to their own small lives.

"Once this battle is over, I'll go back to Zhaoge County, seek a post as a county clerk, draw a salary, and raise my nephews."

That was what he was truly good at.

But they soon had no more time for idle chat. The Ji Province troops had already engaged the Red Eyebrows, and the laborers were ordered to deliver arrows forward. Because livestock might panic and stampede in battle, the arrows were mostly transported on human-pushed deer carts. Facing the Red Eyebrow Army's charges, the several thousand archers on the front line were expending arrows at a rate of tens of thousands every quarter-hour. Ranged weapons were one of the Wei army's great advantages against the Red Eyebrows.

After several round trips, Xiang Ziping was just about to lead his men to rest and drink some water when he suddenly heard a great pounding of war drums from within the rear army. The laborers instantly panicked like a nest of rabbits.

Looking over at the next unit, the Sanhe soldiers who had been leaning or sitting in their temporary camp, heads drooping in sleep, suddenly sprang to their feet at the sound of the war drums. Still half-dazed, they shouldered their spears and moved forward. Xiang Ziping clearly saw one soldier, even younger than himself, his lip still bare of hair, walking with his eyes still shut!

The Sanhe troops, serving as the vanguard for the southward advance, had gone two nights without sleep for many of them — they were simply too exhausted.

Then the assignment point changed. Xiang Ziping and his men were ordered to follow the Sanhe troops into action. His eyes were locked dead onto their backs. In the army, orders were absolute. If they got lost, fell behind, or blundered into another unit and disrupted the formation, they would be guilty of "breaking ranks, crowding forward or lagging behind." The laborers might not have to die for it, but as Platoon Commander, he would certainly be executed!

No wonder the laborers joked that in the Wei army, the odds of being executed by the army judges were far higher than being killed by the Red Eyebrows!

After the first shipment of arrows was delivered and they returned to the rear army, Dou Rong gave an order: they were to quickly deliver the spare tang-bidents and horse forks forward.

Horse forks, as the name implied, were for use against cavalry, but the Red Eyebrows had almost no such troops. These long-poled encumbrances had been left gathering dust in the baggage train. Why were they suddenly remembered now?

Xiang Ziping had no standing to ask questions; he simply carried out the order at once. By the time he led his men back with the horse forks, the previously chaotic Sanhe troops had, in just a quarter-hour, formed a solid battle line and were urgently distributing the horse forks to the front ranks. The orderly formation gave the laborers a good measure of confidence...

But as the drumbeats grew ever more urgent, the expressions on the Sanhe soldiers' faces grew tenser and tenser. With repeated shouts of "Push them back!", Xiang Ziping had the dubious privilege of witnessing, from within a hundred paces, the moment the two armies collided: long wooden ladders crashed into the Wei front line, shattering the neat formation into scattered fragments. But relying on the horse forks and tang-bidents, many ladders were kept at bay. With volleys from crossbows and thrusts from long spears, the Red Eyebrow vanguard fell, and the ladders dropped powerlessly to the ground, to be trampled by countless feet.

This sudden eruption of combat shook Xiang Ziping to his core. Even after the Sanhe troops had laboriously pushed the Red Eyebrows back, he stood frozen in place — until his superior kicked him.

"What are you standing there for? Collect the wounded!"

That was right. The civilian laborers and baggage troops had one more task: transporting the wounded who had lost their fighting capacity to the rear for care.

Many had died on the spot in the violent collision moments before, but even more, having suffered wounds, had struggled out of the battlefield. Bearing cuts or ghastly pale faces, they passed one by one before the army judges, and only after receiving permission were they handed over to the baggage troops.

Xiang Ziping discovered that the man he was supporting was the very same young soldier who, during the muster just earlier, had still had his eyes shut from lack of sleep. Blood was streaming down from beneath his armor. In a faint voice, he said, "Wounded in the shoulder. Can't lift my blade."

A Henei accent — it sounded like someone from around Huai County. A fellow townsman, then. Looking at his shoulder, Xiang Ziping saw that the iron scales of his armor had first been hacked off, and then a spear had stabbed through, piercing a hole and bearing traces of blood.

This was a rule set by the Emperor, Diwu Lun himself: the severely wounded were to be carried off on objects called "stretchers." Now, with stretchers in short supply, door planks served instead. The lightly wounded hobbled to the rear leaning on their weapons, all along specially designated routes, forbidden from obstructing soldiers moving to reinforce the front. Diwu Lun also did not demand that every man fight on desperately despite multiple wounds, like Zhang Zong or Zheng Tong.

Though this Henei soldier's face was full of pain, Xiang Ziping, as the only educated man in his village, had also studied some medicine. After joining the army, he had further picked up some of the "battlefield first aid" that Emperor Diwu had ordered promoted. But when he took the initiative to bandage the soldier and stop the bleeding, the man's expression turned panicked and he said it was not necessary...

"How could the bleeding stop so quickly?"

Xiang Ziping understood. This young soldier was feigning injury and illness to avoid battle. According to the military law he had memorized, this was called "defrauding the army," and the penalty was beheading.

The soldier's face crumpled in misery. "When the spear hit me, I thought my arm was broken. In my panic, I retreated and said I was badly wounded. Only just now did I realize the spear pierced the armor but only broke my skin. But if the army provosts find out, I'm afraid I'll face military law."

He humbly pleaded with Xiang Ziping: "Elder Brother, from your accent, you're also from Henei. Between fellow townsmen, I beg you to cover for me. I still have an old father at home, and a sweetheart waiting for me to come back and marry her."

"I'll give you money and silk, Elder Brother... What blocked the spearpoint for me was the silk garment issued as a reward for merit. It's wrapped inside my armor. It's a bit dirty and torn, but it'll wash clean."

Xiang Ziping did not know why this soldier had enlisted. The Red Eyebrows had not invaded as far as Huai County. Was he conscripted by the counties scraping together a headcount? Or was he stirred by the Emperor's proclamation denouncing the Red Eyebrows, hoping to earn some merit and a career?

Looking at his ashen face, he had clearly been terrified out of his wits by the Red Eyebrows' charge and the savage slaughter just now. This soldier had followed the Emperor from Henei to the Pu River, had endured the forced marches — yet at the very last moment, he had lost to fear.

"Rest easy."

Xiang Ziping said to him, "I won't make trouble for you."

Supporting the soldier, he walked with his back to the battle line. The sounds of slaughter seemed to grow more and more distant, and they drew closer and closer to safety. Their steps grew lighter.

But for some reason, the young Sanhe soldier hung his head and began to cry.

"I've let down my comrades. I've let down General Zhang, and Your Majesty."

When Xiang Ziping returned to the rear army once more, he heard a Colonel loudly relaying the words that the Colonel-Director of Retainers, Dou Rong, had spoken to the laborers and baggage troops:

"The reason the rear army flies the Two Rabbits banner is to echo a line from the poem: 'Thump, thump, the rabbit nets are set. Stalwart and strong, the fighting men — the duke's and prince's shield and wall.' The baggage train is the shield and wall guarding the Sanhe troops' rear! Now take these arrows and deliver them to General Zhang!"

This interpretation of the poem was far too forced. "Stalwart and strong fighting men" like Dou Rong and Zhang Zong were indeed the shield and wall of the state, but they were the ones setting rabbit nets for the dukes and princes — while the laborers were more like the little rabbits fleeing in panic across the battlefield.

Yet this was also precisely why Xiang Ziping believed the Wei army was certain to win this battle.

A flock of rabbits as cowardly as himself should, by all rights, have been trembling helplessly under the Red Eyebrows' blades, just as in the past. But now, no matter how terrified they were inside, spurred on by the Emperor's whip and relying on the inertia of months of training, they once again pushed a heavy deer cart and walked toward the place where the shouts of slaughter were loudest! In everyone's heart was a single thought.

"Let the Red Eyebrows be put down quickly, so we can go home!"

On the battlefield, there were the cowardly, and there were fearless men who courted death. This was true of the Wei army, and the same on the Red Eyebrows' side.

Fan Chong's tens of thousands of elite troops were charging fiercely at the Sanhe troops. In the grand scheme, they were indeed advancing wave after wave, hoping to break through from the rear.

But men also kept retreating from the battle line. Some were wounded, but others had not a single wound on their entire body — they were simply men whose courage had been shattered by the savage slaughter.

The Wei army had army provosts supervising, beheading those who broke ranks and fled to intimidate the rest. The Red Eyebrows had no such meticulous management at all. The retreats began as individuals, but gradually, and then suddenly, they became whole groups.

Those among them with a conscience ran back to Fan Chong's side to pour out their grievances, saying the Wei army was truly hard to assault, the long ladders had not worked well, and everyone was weak from not having eaten enough breakfast — they had pulled back to catch their breath before going in again.

And those without a conscience, seeing the Wei lines firm and hard to break, simply took their men and ran off. This was precisely why the Red Eyebrows had numbered two or three hundred thousand before the campaign, and now less than half remained to fight Diwu Lun's decisive battle. In these chaotic times, those thinking of "preserving their strength" were hardly limited to the Hebei magnates.

"If it were the Xin army facing this, they would have already collapsed."

"If we were up against the Greenwood men, we would have broken through their lines long ago."

"Wasn't Ma Yuan supposed to be the Wei state's greatest general? How is it that Diwu Lun personally leading the campaign is even harder to deal with?"

The Red Eyebrow staff officers were growing frantic — the Wei army's ferocity had far exceeded the Red Eyebrows' expectations — and they kept petitioning Fan Chong for orders.

Fan Chong was suffering too. Though the Red Eyebrows still held the offensive by dint of slightly greater numbers, that was only because Diwu Lun was still holding over ten thousand crack troops in reserve, refusing to commit them. He was forcing Fan Chong to make the first move.

Fan Chong, for his part, was also gripping ten thousand men tightly in hand — Red Eyebrow veterans who ate the best rations and had received the largest land allotments. If he threw them in, they might create an advantage against the Jizhou or Sanhe troops, but that would exhaust his trump card, leaving Diwu Lun free to reinforce at leisure.

On a great plain, a "surprise force" rarely drops from the sky. Diwu Lun did still have cavalry, but the moment had come to test the mettle of both commanders.

"Wait a little longer."

Xu Xuan, coming from Suiyang, had still not arrived. Fan Chong had already given up on him.

Fan the Giant ground his teeth and looked south. "Ma Yuan has suffered heavy losses and can hardly fight on. As long as Yang Yin's forty thousand men hurry north and tie down the Wei vanguard, I can personally lead the troops to break their formation!"

But very soon, Fan Chong would learn that Yang Yin would never arrive.

The tale now splits. Let us return to half a shichen earlier, to Ma Yuan's position at the southernmost end of the battlefield.

After Gai Yan's relief attempt failed the day before, the Red Eyebrows' hundred thousand troops had attacked from all sides once more, nearly overrunning their wagon fort.

It was only thanks to Ma Yuan personally commanding the line and directing the whole defense — placing his stoutest men in iron lamellar armor at the very front — that they held. The Red Eyebrow army lacked ranged weapons and could only charge headlong into the Wei army's crossbow fire, the door planks they carried bristling with arrow feathers. After nightfall, Fan Chong even tried fire attacks, but a spring rain had fallen only days before, and mid-spring grass does not burn easily.

Thus they endured until daybreak. Ma Yuan saw the smoke columns to the north, and his scouts, who had been observing the Red Eyebrow troops all along, reported that the Red Eyebrow bandits seemed to be pulling back.

"South, or north?"

If the former, it meant Fan Chong had lost his nerve and was deliberately avoiding battle, intending to flee the He-Ji region. If the latter...

Then Ma Yuan would salute Fan Chong as a true man!

After days of hardship, Ma Yuan had finally waited for this moment. His Emperor had not misunderstood his intent and had indeed rushed the army here. The Red Eyebrows had already missed their chance to withdraw and could only fight a decisive battle here, staking their fate and their future!

But the Red Eyebrows had over a hundred thousand men in formed units, while the Wei army troops that had reached the battlefield were barely half that number. This was a half-cooked pot of rice...

"I must help His Majesty stoke the fire from behind."

Ma Yuan's force had fewer than ten thousand men left. Days of bitter fighting had exhausted them all. Because Ma Yuan had ordered a strategy of rotating men but not armor — the wounded had to remove their armor and hand it to fresh troops — nearly every man had clashed with the Red Eyebrows, and the wounded amounted to a full third.

Now, wounded and sick alike lay collapsed on the ground. Some had simply fallen asleep and never woken again. When Ma Yuan ordered the Colonels and Platoon Commanders to rouse the soldiers, they no longer had the soaring morale of days before, when they had sung "South of the Battlefield" and "No Tunic" together with Ma Yuan. The exhaustion after battle had drained every man of spirit.

Ma Yuan knew well how hard his officers and men had fought. But if he simply let the Red Eyebrows who had besieged him march away at leisure, lying back to wait for the battle to end, Ma Yuan would be ashamed for the rest of his life.

"Gentlemen."

Ma Yuan refused the simple voice amplifier his subordinate offered — a large copper horn that Diwu Lun had ordered the Privy Treasury artisans to make and distribute to each army, mainly to facilitate pre-battle addresses.

But Ma Yuan had ample confidence in his own lung power.

He stood atop a boulder and pointed north. "Do you hear those drums?"

"Do you see those kites?"

"His Majesty's great army has arrived. The Red Eyebrows are now fish in a cauldron — escape is impossible!"

The soldiers relaxed considerably, some even cheering. The nightmare that had lasted for days was finally about to end. Now, all they had to do was wait, right?

But Ma Yuan continued: "Those who marched out with His Majesty on this campaign include the Jizhou troops. The Hebei magnates both fear and hate the Hebei Red Eyebrows, but toward the Henan Red Eyebrows, they would rather sit on the wall and watch."

"There are also the Sanhe troops. Zhang Zong is a tiger of a general, but aside from his own core followers, the rest have no deep blood feud with the Red Eyebrows."

"The Guanzhong troops need even less mention — between them and the Red Eyebrows, it is like wind, horse, and ox, utterly unrelated."

"In the entire Wei army, no one hates the Red Eyebrows more than the soldiers of Yu Province and Yan Province!"

Ma Yuan's subordinates were mostly men from the various commanderies of Yu and Yan, who had fled as refugees to the vicinity of Aocang and been taken in by Ma Yuan. Their displacement was half due to the Yellow River floods, half to war — it was not purely the Red Eyebrows' evil doing. Yet the Red Eyebrow army, fellow wretches likewise driven from their homes, had now become a great scourge of the Central Plains, preventing another group of people from returning home.

Ma Yuan had intended from the start to use men of Yu and Yan to recover the soil of Yu and Yan. He had kept his word, leading them all the way to Dingtao.

"Not just Dingtao."

Ma Yuan softened his voice. "I also want to lead you, officers and men, to retake Yingchuan, Suiyang, Huaiyang."

"The scenery of the Ying River, the Yu Mound at Chen County, the splendor of Liang Garden."

"I want to see them all."

As Ma Yuan spoke, familiar landscapes rose before the soldiers' eyes. Many wept; they had been away from home far too long.

But Ma Yuan said: "What I want to see even more is how many mu of land — how fertile — His Majesty the Emperor will grant each of you, his meritorious soldiers, in your native lands of Yu and Yan!"

This was Diwu Lun's state policy. Soldiers and civilians were the foundation of Wei's statehood, with priority given especially to soldiers. Soldiers of Yu and Yan origin would have their land restored if they had owned any; those without would be allotted land later. Military farming colonies were, without doubt, the best way to restore order and the economy in the two provinces...

The paradise Wang Mang had painted was illusory. The "happy land" the Red Eyebrows yearned for was built upon the suffering of millions. But for the Yu and Yan soldiers of the Wei army, the happy realm was real and tangible, set down in black and white — in the Emperor's statutes and edicts!

They did not necessarily believe in Diwu Lun — after all, the Emperor was always far away beyond the horizon — but every single one of them, from the bottom of his heart, had absolute faith in Ma Yuan's promises!

"But the prerequisite is that we must finish this battle!"

Ma Yuan told them all: "We must tie down the forty thousand men of the Red Eyebrow Yang Yin division, so that this war can be won faster!"

Ten thousand against forty thousand. The lieutenant generals and Colonels frowned. This was not what they had expected. The Red Eyebrows had not continued the siege but had chosen to withdraw. If they sallied out now, a breakout battle would turn into a pure field engagement — and the three armies were utterly exhausted. Could they truly fight?

At that moment, one lieutenant general burst out laughing. "Yang Yin? The same Yang Yin whom the General has already defeated four times at Aocang, Dingtao, and elsewhere? Let us sally forth and make him a five-defeat general — what do you say?"

"Hear, hear!"

Voices of assent rose one after another, until they merged into a single cry.

"We are willing to follow the General through fire and water!"

They were all the infants Ma Yuan doted on, the beloved children who adored him, willing to follow their general into the attack once more! Except for the severely wounded who remained behind, those with three wounds rode in carts, those with two wounds leaned on the wagons, and those with one wound bore arms and formed ranks. They pushed open the wagon fort piled high with Red Eyebrow corpses and launched a pursuit of Yang Yin's division, which, after hastily breaking the siege, was now swarming northward across the whole plain!

"Don't the Red Eyebrows love chaotic fighting?"

"Then this old man will give them a chaotic fight! We'll settle who is cock and who is hen!"

Ma Yuan had shed the self-reflection of his besieged days and was wildly arrogant once more. Given his status, position, and meritorious service, he could have simply lain back and waited for the battle to end in this campaign, and Diwu Lun would still have granted him high office and rich rewards.

But in Ma Yuan's heart, there had always been a dream, at odds with his privileged station. Only by galloping across the battlefield, giving free rein to his spirit amid the sea of clouds, could he find his true self.

"A man should die on the frontier wilds, wrapped in a horsehide shroud and carried home for burial!"