Chapter 665: Mount Dingjun

Ah Yun did not know how he had made it back to camp. Witnessing his fellow assassin struck down by Ma Yuan in the act had shaken him more than doing the deed himself ever could. Even after ducking into his tent, his hands still trembled uncontrollably — he could only gulp down water desperately...

He did not believe that if he had struck, he would have had any better chance than that man. Had he arrived a moment earlier, the one lying dead now might well have been Ah Yun!

Yet in his heart Ah Yun refused to admit that his hesitation sprang from a clinging to wealth and wife. He consoled himself only thus:

"Since the first strike missed, naturally no further chance remained. The matter has not reached its end; better to preserve this useful body and await grand employment by the Gongsun Emperor and General Jing."

What followed bore this out. Ma Yuan's security had always been outwardly tight but inwardly lax; now, after an assassin had slipped into the command tent, every Wei camp tightened its guard. The Embroidered Uniform Guard from Chang'an in particular flew into a rage, treating this as an enemy insult and their own dereliction of duty! Should anything truly go wrong, neither the Emperor nor the Embroidered Uniform Commandant would spare them! Driven by the will to survive, they launched overt and covert searches throughout the camp, trying to root out more spies — and their investigation even reached Ah Yun...

Fortunately, the Embroidered Uniform Guard still believed that "the assassin was a man of Wudu Commandery; we should screen all who have newly come over to Wei since the fifth year of Wude..." Ah Yun fell outside that scope. With his seniority and status as "Deputy Colonel," and his legitimate grounds for seeking an audience with Ma Yuan to report enemy intelligence, Ah Yun scraped through by luck — yet remained anxious, terrified that some Shu spy he knew might be caught and drag him down in the fallout.

What did he fear now, truly — the utter failure of his mission, or the exposure of his identity and the destruction of nine years' gains in a single day?

But at the same time, when word came that Ma Yuan had not appeared in public since that day, Ah Yun could not help clinging to a sliver of hope: "When we carry out assassinations, to guard against failing to kill the enemy general in one blow, we smear poison on our blades — mostly the blood-sealing throat poison of Nanzhong. I have lost contact with Shu and could only secretly seek snake venom. Ma Yuan slew the assassin with his own hands, but no matter how high his martial skill, when unarmored, how could he escape without a single scratch? Could he be forcing himself to hold up to calm men's hearts?"

It was not until the fifteenth day of the third month, when Qi Zhongliu was summoned to the main tent to receive orders, that Ah Yun — left behind to guard the camp — waited in an agony of suspense for nearly half a shichen. Qi Zhongliu returned at last, his face unable to conceal an expression of smug delight.

Ah Yun immediately sidled over to sound him out:

"Lord Qi, is General Ma unharmed?"

Qi Zhongliu thought nothing of it: "The Grand General Ma is hale and hearty! When he addressed us, his voice was like thunder."

"Have the Shu spies in camp been caught?"

"No need to catch them!" Qi Zhongliu waved a hand dismissively. "The Grand General says Gongsun Shu is most fond of employing sneaking, thieving sorts. Since the fifth year of Wude, the Grand General of the Agile Cavalry's staff has taken on men from Wudu — if not eight hundred, then a thousand. So long as the enemy had the will, many have long since infiltrated. Yet Wei's victory and Shu's defeat are already foregone conclusions. Even we Di people understand this, let alone those clever spies and assassins."

He continued: "General Ma also drew an analogy. There are two boats on this Mian River. The Shu boat is riddled with holes, its sail burned — it is about to sink. At such a moment, of those already aboard the Wei boat, how many would willingly leap back to sink with it? The fools blindly loyal to Gongsun have already played the jumping clown and thrown their lives away. Those who remain will make their own choices! Why must we hunt them to the last, forcing them to turn back?"

These words struck Ah Yun dumb for a long moment, as if a blow had landed square on his head and a shout in his ears. He hastily lowered his head to hide his emotions and murmured: "Worthy indeed of the Grand General of the Agile Cavalry — a breadth of mind and wisdom we cannot match..."

Qi Zhongliu said: "General Ma has also laid out the coming strategy. He specifically named the Di troops to go into battle — and as the vanguard."

This was the reason for Qi Zhongliu's delight. Ever since submitting to Wei five years ago, he had been granted the chance to travel to Chang'an and have an audience with Diwu Lun. Captivated by the bearing of the Wei sovereign and his ministers, he had returned with a single-minded obsession: to raise his title from "Count" to "Marquis."

"It's our turn to attack Yangping Pass?" Ah Yun felt a jolt. Was this kind of storming operation something Di troops could handle?

"No."

Qi Zhongliu lowered his voice and pointed southeast: "We follow the south bank of the Mian River, take the mountain path, and raid Mount Dingjun!"

Inside Yangping Pass, Jing Han was deeply anxious. That banner reading "The Map Unrolled, the Dagger Bared" had been hanging for over three days, yet the Wei camp opposite remained as untroubled as ever.

"Could it be that all those loyal sworn men of Gongsun have turned traitor?" To Jing Han's knowledge, there had been at least five spies who had lingered in Wudu before infiltrating the Wei army as minor officers — and he had not even counted Ah Yun, who had long since lost contact years ago.

Even if the assassination had failed, Ma Yuan should have displayed the heads as a public warning. Why was there no word at all?

Three days later, Jing Han had largely concluded that the assassination plot had failed. Since he could no longer pin his hopes on a single lucky strike, he could only continue this war of attrition with Ma Yuan.

But what infuriated Jing Han was not only that the reinforcements Gongsun Shu had dispatched from Ba-Shu would not arrive until month's end, but also that Yan Cen, the Governor of the newly established "Chengxing Commandery" to the east, was making excuses and dragging his feet about reinforcing Yangping Pass. This man had been a subordinate general of Liu Jia, King of Hanzhong under the Gengshi regime, and had surrendered when Gongsun Shu took Hanzhong. Gongsun Shu, ever keen to co-opt surrendered generals, had enfeoffed him as "King of Runing," giving him sole command of a commandery. For the past decade, Yan Cen had been fairly honest, diligently guarding the border for Gongsun Shu and supporting Jing Han's northern expedition strategy. But with the Wei army's massive forces pressing on the border, Yan Cen had become a variable...

Fortunately, the stout Yangping Pass at his side still gave the twenty thousand Shu troops sheltering behind it a sufficient sense of security. As Yizhou's second-greatest pass, Yangping was wedged perfectly into Hanzhong's western gateway: Mount Tiandang formed a defile to the north, Mount Dingjun blocked the south, and the sole passage hugged the banks of the swift Mian River, hemmed in by the Qinling and Ba Mountains. At its narrowest point, it was only a few dozen paces wide — making it utterly impossible for Wei siege engines to deploy.

To guard against Wei assault boats charging downstream, Jing Han had gone so far as to stretch three iron chains across the river surface, a mere few dozen paces wide, interspersed with long ropes woven from ancient rattan. Every raiding party Ma Yuan sent was stopped cold.

But there are no walls in this world impervious to the wind; a pass, however firm, cannot be seamless.

Jing Han had two points of concern. To the north, a gorge cut through Mount Tiandang. The terrain there was perilous; in Han times a plank road had been built, holes chiseled into the deep ravine's cliff face, wooden beams set in, and upon those beams "planks laid to receive passage," so that men, horses, and carts could cross. Yet with titanic crags looming within and a deep chasm yawning without, even the bravest men could not help but quail. Horses passing this stretch often shied and screamed in terror — hence the name "Neighing Horse Gallery Road."

To the south, below Mount Dingjun, a similar twisting goat-path led westward.

Jing Han had already burned every wooden trestle bridge on the Neighing Horse Gallery Road. He thought to himself: "When campaigning in Jincheng and Wudu, Ma Yuan was most fond of surprise attacks. Now that Yangping is hard to crack, he will surely seek another route — I only wonder whether Wei will strike north or south..."

This forced Jing Han to split his already insufficient forces yet again, stationing five thousand men each at the Neighing Horse Gallery to the north and Mount Dingjun to the south, to guard against contingencies.

But a thousand precautions still cannot cover every eventuality. That morning, Jing Han — who had not slept a wink the night before — had just succumbed to exhaustion and closed his eyes when an urgent report jolted him awake:

"General Jing! Wei raiders crossed the mountain ridges and struck Mount Dingjun!"

Looking south from Yangping Pass, one could see the great Ba Mountains, a hundred li distant, soaring into the clouds. Mount Dingjun was an outlying spur of the Ba range, twelve graceful peaks rising from west to east — not massed and crowding like the main range, but strung out like a chain of beads. The passes between the peaks were crossed regularly even by woodcutters and villagers — let alone by Di soldiers who had grown up in the heart of the great mountains and walked barefoot through the forest as if on level ground.

That Di troops in the Wei army could slip through and launch a raid was not strange. What was strange was that the moment their banners appeared at a Mount Dingjun pass and they launched a probing attack, the Shu deputy general stationed there actually turned and fled! A cowardly commander makes a den of cowards; the five thousand Shu troops, already at rock-bottom morale, naturally retreated with him — and the retreat swelled into a rout.

"So the Di troops are this formidable!"

This astonished the Di Colonel Qi Zhongliu. Even he had not known that Di fighting strength was so great — five years ago, when he had raised his banner against Gongsun Shu, the various Di tribes had been beaten back to Mount Qiuchi by Shu soldiers and nearly annihilated.

It was Ah Yun who looked back at the banners they were flying. Never mind the great "Wei" standard — more crucially, Ma Yuan's general's banner was there too. Was this not precisely the "fox borrowing the tiger's might" told of in Wei tales? What terrified the Shu troops was not the Di, but Ma Yuan!

Seizing the moment as the Shu troops fled in disorder, the Di soldiers swiftly pushed forward, occupying the abandoned camp on the southern slopes of Mount Dingjun, and covering the advance of a brigade of Longyou troops behind them.

Mount Dingjun lay between Yangping Pass and Mianyang (present-day Mian County, Hanzhong), and Mianyang was the Shu army's base camp and grain depot. From the mountain, one could clearly see the grain transport road below. If that road were cut, then no matter how impregnable Yangping Pass was, it would become a death trap!

Jing Han, keenly aware of the stakes, reacted at once. Believing that Ma Yuan had indeed personally led the raid on Mount Dingjun, he split his forces in two: half remained to hold Yangping Pass, while he himself led ten thousand men across the Mian River, rallied the routed troops, and attempted to counterattack toward Mount Dingjun!

Thus the two sides began an assault-and-defense battle around the southern-slope camp of Mount Dingjun. Jing Han frantically directed his units in uphill charges, while the Di troops and the Longyou brigade that had arrived in support defended from the high ground. Blood dyed the low grass and scrub on Mount Dingjun's waist; corpses clogged the small paths. They fought from dawn to dusk with no victor, forcing Jing Han to draw another three thousand reinforcements from Mianyang, Yangping Pass, and the northern Neighing Horse Gallery.

In the end, the Shu army's superior numbers told, and they pressed step by step closer to Mount Dingjun. But just as Jing Han thought victory was within his grasp, an attendant, eyes full of terror, pointed behind them and cried: "General Jing, look!"

By now the sky was utterly dark. Jing Han spun around in shock — and saw, on the far bank of the Mian River, far across from Mount Dingjun, on Zouma Ridge thirty li away — that is, the exit of the Neighing Horse Gallery Road — long serpents of pine-torch flame were winding out from the gallery road, and then setting the Shu northern camp ablaze!

"We've been tricked!"

Jing Han was thunderstruck. In an instant he understood: Wei had made a feint to the south to strike the north. Though Ma Yuan's banner was at Mount Dingjun, the man himself had, in all likelihood, launched a surprise assault on the Neighing Horse Gallery Road.

It was too late now to turn back and save the northern camp. Caught in a Wei pincer from north and south, neither Yangping Pass nor Mianyang could likely hold! Jing Han felt the heavens spin and the earth reel; he nearly collapsed. His heart full of unwilling rancor, he cried out in anguish:

"Ma Yuan... Neighing Horse Gallery — this place name should startle horses and set them running. Why has it instead fulfilled his destiny?"

Jing Han looked north in terror. Though thirty li away, he seemed to hear the fierce neighing of warhorses, the iron hooves of the Grand General of the Agile Cavalry pounding rolling thunder as they flew over skyward ladders and stone trestles, poised to sweep down and engulf all of Hanzhong!