Chapter 652: Traitor to the Han

Between Shuofang Commandery and New Qinzhong lay four hundred li of gobi — the Ulan Buh Desert of later ages. Unlike New Qinzhong and the Hetao, famed as the "Central Plain beyond the frontier," this region was arid and rain-starved; the grasslands had receded into sandy waste. But to the Xiongnu, conditions in this sea of sand hardly counted as harsh. Compared to the great Gobi between the desert south and the desert north, it was a mere little brother: apart from scattered stands of diversiform poplar and needlegrass, the Yellow River also flowed slowly along the desert's edge, so water was never a problem.

Army provisions could be managed too. Even for cavalry, crossing four hundred li of desert took several days, and during that time the Hu soldiers could fill their bellies with the dried meat and curds they carried.

The greatest trouble was still fodder. Horses lacked the adaptability and endurance of men. To keep the Hu horses fed, trailing behind the forty thousand Xiongnu cavalry were another forty thousand "Han soldiers" — in truth, conscripted laborers forcibly levied from the border commanderies of Bing Province. For this campaign, Lu Fang had poured out his realm's entire strength. These laborers hauled the grain, yet could only watch as the finest beans and wheat were greedily chewed by Xiongnu horse-mouths, while they themselves could eat only the horses' leavings.

Through nearly ten days of marching, the Xiongnu lords took their ease and pleasure, even finding the spirit to play the hujia flute and dance by campfires of burning poplar. The Han folk could only huddle together, shivering beneath tattered sheepskin coats.

When at last they struggled free of the desert and made out in the distance that "stone beak" at the northern end of the Beiyi Mountains, the Wei army's ramparts already stretched across the way before them.

At once the effect of Geng Yan's strategy became clear. He had sealed off the Xiongnu's southward passage while seizing the ground where withered grazing still remained, forcing the Xiongnu and the Hu-Han coalition, their provisions stretched to breaking, to consider the one option left.

"A decisive battle, and soon!" Lu Fang was the most zealous advocate of immediate attack, day and night lobbying the Xiongnu's Left Guli King, who commanded the army.

The Left Guli King, however, was unmoved. By Xiongnu custom, one did not lightly commit to a pitched positional battle against the enemy; the advantage of mobility must be exploited. While leading his own army south, he had already dispatched the Wulou Juqu King and the Aori Zhui King with several thousand riders to circle through the desert and strike the eastern and western sectors of New Qinzhong separately. The Wei army must be made to face enemies at its front and rear, and under the Xiongnu's pulling and dragging, expose a gap.

So the Left Guli King, with considerable cunning, shifted his forces to the east bank of the Yellow River, facing the Wei camp across the water. Though this strip could not match New Qinzhong, there were still some wet meadows along the riverbank where men and horses could barely fill their stomachs. And if things dragged on until the winter cold descended, the first to succumb to the freeze would surely be the Wei soldiers from the south.

As a puppet, Lu Fang could serve as a guide, but he had little say in military matters and could only withdraw in sullen resentment.

As for the several generals and governors under Lu Fang's command, when they learned of this, their faces grew even more clouded with worry. The Xiongnu could afford to drag things out — they themselves could not.

That day, the Hu-Han "Wuyuan Commandant" Sui Yu was drinking alone in his tent, deeply troubled over the prospects ahead.

He recalled the great chaos at the end of the Xin dynasty. Bing Province had been especially turbulent. Wang Mang's long-drawn, indecisive war against the Xiongnu had utterly wrecked the economy of several commanderies. The Xin army's imperial divisions were no less brutal than the Hu raiders. The people of Bing Province, pushed beyond endurance, fled in droves — some seeking refuge in the inner commanderies, others crossing beyond the frontier to scratch out a living on the steppe.

After Diwu Lun dealt Wang Mang his death blow, order in Bing Province collapsed even faster. Local bandits and horse-thieves rose up in arms everywhere. The smaller bands, a hundred or so strong, seized county seats; the larger ones, numbering in the thousands, stormed commandery headquarters and proclaimed themselves generals. Sui Yu, a man of Wuyuan, was one of them.

The warlord fragmentation of Bing Province did not last long. The Xiongnu Chanyu seized the chance to enter the frontier. Knowing full well that the Xiongnu could not hold agricultural lands, he propped up Lu Fang and forcibly unified the Bing Province commanderies, making them all swear allegiance to a single emperor. The various warlords accepted seals and ribbons from Lu Fang and, in the blink of an eye, transformed into governors and county magistrates.

The prestige of an emperor in such a regime can be imagined. Lu Fang was like a frontier Zhou Son of Heaven, with a host of feudal lords beneath him who answered the call to arms but ignored all other decrees. He could only play the fox borrowing the tiger's might, using the Xiongnu to coerce the others into obedience.

Thus, while the Wei army's officers and soldiers at least had some rough idea of what they were fighting for, on the Hu-Han side, hearts were scattered and confused, each man working his own little abacus.

After waiting anxiously deep into the night, Sui Yu at last received his visitor — none other than the Hu-Han "Wuyuan Governor," Li Xing.

"Brother Sui, you've asked me here late at night — has some urgent matter arisen?" Li Xing had come quietly in plain clothes. He too was a man of Wuyuan Commandery, his territory north of the Yellow River, while Sui Yu's lay south of it. The two had also sealed a marriage alliance, each having wed the other's sister.

"I recently learned of something."

Sui Yu poured wine for Li Xing and revealed the great secret: Lu Fang and the Xiongnu had reached a secret pact. Without even consulting them, he was going to cede the sixteen frontier commanderies, including Wuyuan, to the Xiongnu!

"What?" Li Xing was aghast. If this battle were won, Wuyuan was to be handed over to the Xiongnu — how had he, the Governor of Wuyuan, not known? His first reaction was that it was absurd. "His Majesty's capital is at Jiuyuan City in Wuyuan Commandery. How could there be any reason to give away the imperial seat? And if it's a secret pact, how did you, Brother Sui, come to know of it?"

Sui Yu, of course, had his own channels. "Lu Fang's close confidants may be tight-lipped, but I have a way into the Xiongnu Chanyu's court. Around the Chanyu are many descendants of the old Han escort slaves who serve as scribes and clerks, keeping the Xiongnu's records and livestock tallies. With the right bribes, any news can be known."

After all, had he not also opened a line to the State of Wei and accepted no small amount of gold delivered by the Embroidered Uniform Guard? Sui Yu swallowed ninety percent of it; he only needed to spend a tenth of that to make everything go smoothly.

After Sui Yu recounted the various details of the secret pact, Li Xing was largely convinced and promptly plunged into towering rage and terror. Though they all served Lu Fang as Son of Heaven, as the feudal-lord warlords beneath him, they still regarded the commanderies and counties as their own turf. Lu Fang was being generous with other men's property!

That being so, even if this war were won, they would reap no benefit. Would they then follow Lu Fang into unfamiliar Guanzhong, cut loose from the fiefs they had managed for years, and sink utterly into being Lu Fang's subjects? Or would they stay behind and coexist with the Xiongnu?

Seizing the moment, Sui Yu joined in with his own complaints: "Back then, the Xiongnu Chanyu said: the Hu originally made a pact of brotherhood with the Han dynasty. Later, when the Hu fell into decline, the Huhanye Chanyu submitted to the Han, and the Han house therefore dispatched troops to protect him, while the Xiongnu, generation after generation, declared themselves vassals to the Han. Now that the Han house has also perished, a clansman of the Liu lineage has come to submit to me, and I ought to set him up as ruler."

"And so Liu Wenbo was established as Son of Heaven, and the Aori Zhui King was sent to win us over. My ancestor was Lord Sui, He by name, the Protector-Attendant of the Army and a meritorious official in the early Han. Brother Li here is descended from Han-era frontier garrison officers. We both detested the Xin and Wang Mang, and yearned for the Great Han. So we believed it to be true, went in person to the Chanyu's court, and welcomed Liu Wenbo to Wuyuan. Brother Li even yielded Jiuyuan City so that Liu Wenbo could make it his capital."

"Only later did we hear that this man's real name is Lu Fang, a half-breed Hu from Anding — no descendant of the Han imperial line at all!"

He spoke the emperor's personal name outright and even punctured this truth that everyone in the Hu-Han camp knew but none dared mention. Li Xing raised no objection. Three feet of ice is not frozen in a single day. Ever since the last disastrous invasion of New Qinzhong, Lu Fang had delivered none of the rewards he had promised the subordinate warlords, while costing the various commanders men and treasure. Discontent had accumulated to a certain pitch; only the pressure of the Xiongnu kept it from erupting.

Sui Yu knew the matter was half-won, so he pressed a step further and struck the table in fury. "What is most hateful is that Lu Fang, far from repaying kindness, repeatedly complains that the tribute we offer is too little and constantly uses the Xiongnu to apply pressure. At first he schemed to swallow up all of Wuyuan Commandery, and now he casts us aside like broken tiles."

It was at that time that Sui Yu had made contact with the State of Wei. Now he actively urged Li Xing on: "Looking at things now, the virtue of Han has waned and can hardly revive. We once thought the Central Plain had no master, yet now the Wei Emperor is sagely and enlightened. In a mere few years he has unified the north — is he not a hundred times stronger than that Lu Fang?"

Li Xing guessed that Sui Yu had most likely hooked up with Wei; he only wanted to know the price. "Though the Wei Emperor is brilliant and divinely martial, he places the greatest weight on the divide between Hua and Rong and utterly detests those who collude with the Hu. In his early years he drove out Lu Fang, and later he stationed troops on the frontier. I have heard that Wei proclaims: Lu Fang is a half-breed Hu who falsely usurped the Liu surname — his crime is unpardonable. And we, though called Han ministers, are in truth traitors to the Han, our conduct worse than Li Ling's, reaching straight back to Zhonghang Yue…"

A fine fellow — to know Diwu Lun's attitude so clearly, it seemed this Governor of Wuyuan had done his own fair share of inquiring!

Sui Yu laughed heartily. "Brother Li need not worry. The Embroidered Uniform Commandant of Great Wei corresponds with me directly and has conveyed the Wei Emperor's oral decree."

He rose to his feet and cupped his hands toward the southeast. "The Wei Emperor says: You are all descendants of former-dynasty renowned ministers and frontier garrison officers. So long as you awaken in time and turn your arms around soon enough, then you are not 'traitors to the Han'…"

"But frontier heroes who aid Great Wei in expelling the Hu scourge!"

"Excellent!" Hearing such a promise from the well-connected Sui Yu, Li Xing stood up and grasped Sui Yu's hands in excitement, lowering his voice. "I have actually had this intention for some time. Great Wei's General Geng holds New Qinzhong, and the officers and men under his command are crack troops. If we let ourselves be driven forward as the vanguard for the Xiongnu and Lu Fang, it will surely be like hurling eggs against a rock — we'll be smashed to pieces."

"Rather than that, better to revolt!"

"Exactly. Since Lu Fang can sell Wuyuan and the sixteen frontier commanderies to the Xiongnu, why can't we sell this false emperor to Great Wei, secure the treatment due to righteous insurgents, and perhaps even win enfeoffment as counts or viscounts!"

"The only question is how to coordinate."

Though they had resolved to revolt, the forces under Li Xing and Sui Yu combined numbered no more than ten thousand, most of them forcibly conscripted and of poor fighting quality. Moreover, the Xiongnu camp and the Hu-Han camp were separate, about ten li apart. Lu Fang, as the Hu-Han emperor, knew that his subordinates each harbored their own designs, so he did not enjoy the protection of his subjects. Instead, he lodged in the Xiongnu felt tents under their guard — making him difficult to seize and deliver up.

"General Geng already has a plan."

Sui Yu produced a message delivered by an Embroidered Uniform Guard agent and showed it to Li Xing by lamplight. "On the first day of the twelfth month, we can raise a fire as the signal!"

…

Exploiting the internal contradictions of the Hu-Han camp to make them a tool of the Wei army — this plan, which the Embroidered Uniform Guard had cultivated for several years, had to be reported not only to the Grand General of Chariots and Cavalry but also to Zang Nu, the Commandant of the Guards, who was stationed at Hunhuai Fort on the east bank of the Yellow River.

Zang Nu crossed the river by boat that night for a nocturnal meeting with Geng Yan. A plain and honest man by nature, he harbored doubts about such military stratagems and raised his concern: "What if it is a trick of the enemy, a feigned surrender to lure our troops out to attack — how should we handle it? Furthermore, the Xiongnu and Hu-Han coalition are mostly encamped several dozen li north of Hunhuai Fort, on the east bank, while the General's main army is on the west bank — not easy to launch a sudden raid."

"No matter. Even if it is a feigned surrender, our army can advance or withdraw as it pleases."

Geng Yan already had a plan worked out. Pointing to the ceaselessly flowing Yellow River, he said: "In Han times there were canal-transport boats that carried grain from New Qinzhong to Shuofang, coming and going without cease. Now I have ordered men to cut down all the great trees of the Beiyi Mountains and rebuild a fleet of transport boats, moored to the south."

"Through our internal contacts, we now know the locations of Lu Fang's and the Xiongnu's main camps. They are all pitched along the great river. In order to draw near the remaining winter grass so the horses can graze, their camps stretch unbroken for several dozen li — a cardinal taboo of warfare! We can have the troops board the boats and sail downstream with the current, striking straight at their vital points. If that Sui Yu can raise a fire as the signal, with action inside and out, it will be enough to burn the linked camps with fire!"