Chapter 88: Wretched Rabble

Zhang Yu served as ink attendant in Diwu Lun's tent, and would occasionally see him, after a day's march, taking advantage of the last light before dark to sit alone with a brush, drawing maps.

When little Zhang Yu leaned in to watch, the sect head would point to those mountains and rivers and say to him, "Zhang Yu, we are now in Jingwei Commandery, traveling northwest along the Jing River. That mountain you see across the water by day is called Ganquan Mountain — the Ganquan Palace is built there. The far bank of the Jing is our homeland, Liewei Commandery."

He was afraid of the Jing River; years ago, that very flood had brought utter ruin to his family, who were already far from well-off. And now, when the word 'homeland' was spoken, the first thing Zhang Yu thought of was not his childhood home, long since washed away, but the Diwu ward that had taken in him and Zhu Di.

Years of wandering had made them forget the feeling of home, but in the Diwu ward they had found it again. At first they were just kitchen helpers, but the leftover offal and scraps from those cooks, casually boiled up, mostly ended up in their bellies. The two of them, once scrawny, shot up in height, and now when Zhang Yu bent his arm hard, he could even find a little muscle.

And on every community festival day and year-end La sacrifice, the whole ward took part in the rites and celebrations, which deepened their sense of belonging. Zhang Yu even wished his own surname were Diwu, so he wouldn't have to endure Diwu Fu looking down on him with those superior eyes.

The next day the march continued, and when the column rested by the Jing River, Zhang Yu showed off what he had just learned the day before, telling the Boar-Rush Braves that the far bank was Liewei.

"It's home."

But apart from a few farmers who had been forced into labor because they owed property tax and who gazed at the far bank with a trace of longing, the rest — those of slave origin — were utterly expressionless.

Zhang Yu understood at once: they did not miss home. The memories Liewei had left them were nothing but toil that began at cockcrow, their masters' scoldings, and the welt marks on their bodies.

"Life in camp is hard, but at least in this month since Major Boyu arrived, I haven't been flogged once," Zang Nu said with satisfaction, hoping to stir his comrades' gratitude toward Diwu Lun.

But his eloquence and rallying power were far inferior to those of the clerk Xuan Biao, and the moment turned into a total flop. The Boar-Rush Braves poured out their own beatings: "That's because you're a squad leader now. I got beaten — for fighting over food at mealtime."

"I got beaten too — I was so tired during stance drill that I fell asleep standing up, toppled over, and went out of bounds."

"And me — on the march from Hongmen to Maoling, I ran off twice."

"You still have the nerve to say that? In any other camp, you'd have been dead twice over!"

Zang Nu was furious and cursed them: "You… you lot deserve it! Well beaten! Next time you're beaten, I'll wield the whip myself."

The men laughed and admitted it freely: Major Diwu, for all his benevolence in clothing and feeding them, was actually a shade stricter than others on minor discipline — except for cutting down on killing. Seasoned old army malingerers might fear only harshness and not virtue, but most of these men came from bitter slave backgrounds and knew how rare it was to meet a good 'master.' Once they realized that staying seemed to offer a better chance of survival, they all stopped running.

With a shout, the brief rest ended, and they had to go back to hauling the manpower carts loaded with armor and weapons, or shouldering the poles that carried the grain, and continue on the road.

And so, on the tenth day after breaking camp, they reached Yiju County. This county had once belonged to Beidi but had been reassigned by Wang Mang to Jingwei. Once they left Yiju County, they finally passed beyond the bounds of the Six Lieutenants and formally entered Weirong Commandery.

Now it was the clerk Xuan Biao's turn to feel homesick.

The road stretched north along the valley of the Muddy River, which lived up to its name: one pint of water, six dippers of mud. It was mid-spring, the second month, and the runoff was still slight, but already extremely turbid.

The yellow earth underfoot was thick and hard-packed, sculpted by the water into countless ridges and hillocks crisscrossed with ravines. Farmers with white headscarves were busy plowing and sowing millet; here and there, herdsmen wrapped in sheepskin coats appeared in twos and threes, waving whips as they drove black goats from the loess tablelands down to the river to drink and graze.

"The scenery around here is exactly like that of Liewei's Xiuling County, where my father lived in seclusion," Xuan Biao said, suddenly missing his old father Xuan Bing terribly. How was he faring in the prison of the Master of Fates of the Five Majesties? Had he been sentenced and exiled to some distant place? Wait, Father — your son will surely come back and rescue you!

The further north they went, the bleaker the landscape became.

Some men from the southern part of Liewei Commandery bent down, scooped up soil, and tasted it, finding only barren mountains and foul waters in this region.

"Everywhere is scrub and loess tableland, the soil is poor. In a place this barren, you can scatter a handful of millet seed and still harvest next to nothing half a year later."

"The Major told us our final destination was the rich, fertile lands along the great river — so why does it look less and less like it the further we go? Could he be deceiving us?"

Though they said with their mouths that they did not miss home, the moment these Liewei men entered unfamiliar surroundings, their first reaction was still panic. After all, in the first half of their lives, the furthest they had ever gone was accompanying their masters to the county town for market day.

At this point, it fell to Xuan Biao to do the morale work: "This journey will take seventy days, and we have only walked twenty — not even halfway. The scenery will change many more times along the road. Who is the Major? He naturally understands more than you peasant laborers do."

"In the past, I also heard my father mention that during the Han, poor people were resettled west of the passes, filling the lands south of Shuofang. The settlers opened up fields there and fed over seven hundred thousand people. Because its wealth rivaled Qin itself, it was called New Qin — the land is fertile, cattle and sheep roam in herds, and they say that in autumn, there is so much grain they can't eat it all."

After offering this small comfort to the Boar-Rush Braves, Xuan Biao privately felt some uncertainty himself — it was, after all, only hearsay; he had never seen it with his own eyes. On the contrary, during his seclusion with his father, he had encountered some frontier folk fleeing south from the north and heard them complain that places like Wuyuan were already utterly destitute. He just didn't know about the northern part of Weirong. Ah, was there a single place left in this world that was peaceful and stable?

Because the route was so desolate, they often had to march three or four days to reach the next county town, and the dead they encountered along the road gradually grew more numerous.

Over the past half month, they had often come across Boar-Rush Braves collapsed by the roadside. Sometimes they bore wounds, killed while trying to flee; sometimes they had no wounds at all, having dropped dead from hunger, sickness, or exhaustion. The common thread was that the clothes on their bodies had been ruthlessly stripped by their comrades. Wolves roamed here, and sometimes you could even see them fighting over a fresh human leg, red-eyed and snarling, a sight that made one's hair stand on end.

At Xihe's Ting County (Dayao County), the sharp-eyed Zhang Yu spotted an even more horrifying scene: a large pit, freshly dug only a few days before, crammed with Boar-Rush Braves lying every which way. Because they had been buried so carelessly, a leg or a foot often stuck out above the ground; some had even been half-buried before someone realized they were not yet dead, and were then abandoned, left there twitching and pleading with their last shred of strength.

The Diwu camp rescued one of them. After they poured water into him, he still had life, and by his own account, he had been with the vanguard's Advance Army. The Advance Army's commander, heedless of the Boar-Rush Braves' exhaustion, had driven them on day and night. Of their fewer than seven hundred men, one in five had already dropped dead.

"At night they bound us together with ropes around our necks and stripped off all our clothes to prevent desertion. And sick soldiers like me were just tossed by the roadside."

On top of that, their shoes, bedding, and food had been embezzled by their superiors, so their condition at the start of the march was already dire. After twenty days on the road, many had burned through the last of their oil and could no longer lift a leg. The only thing waiting for them was to be abandoned and to die.

This man did not live much longer before he breathed his last. During a rest stop, at Xuan Biao's suggestion, the men — who, being well-fed, still had strength to spare — dug a pit and buried him. This time they buried him deep, so deep that no wolf or wild dog could dig the body out.

Once the grave was filled and leveled, Zang Nu spoke again, from the bottom of his heart.

"Major Boyu truly treats us well. Not only does he distribute clothes and shoes, but these ten-odd days he hasn't let us march on empty stomachs. When he comes across someone too sick or weak to go on, he releases them at a post station and even leaves them a little money."

As for what became of those people afterward, no one knew, and no one wanted to know.

This time no one argued back. The Boar-Rush Braves all stood silently in the sunset, and as the night deepened, they unconsciously drew closer together — the more death they met on the road, the more tightly they united.

Just as Diwu Lun had hoped: united around him!

……

The Boar-Rush Braves were like sailors on a lone boat, facing the raging storm outside, able only to entrust all their loyalty and hope to the captain at the helm.

But Captain Diwu himself also bore an enormous pressure. Within the camp, Diwu Lun had issued repeated orders: during these two months on the road, padding the payroll with ghost soldiers was permissible, but embezzling the rations of the living must be absolutely forbidden!

In any case, the platoon leaders and squad leaders had more or less all been replaced with his own men: Diqi Biao was made a platoon leader, Diwu Pingdan and Diyi Jiming became squad leaders, and so on. The rank-and-file soldiers were managed for him by Xuan Biao and others. The two Company Commanders, Dai Gong and Jin Dan, were completely sidelined and could only follow Diwu Lun's lead.

The biggest trouble came from external conditions. Although they had oxen and horses to pull carts, the grain they had brought out from the Jingwei Commandery granary was, after all, limited. And Beidi Commandery was poor and remote — after the local officials skimmed off another layer of grease, they could get virtually no resupply.

To keep his eight hundred men from going hungry, Diwu Lun had to haggle every day with the Rear Guard Major, fighting to get the Boar-Rush Braves a mouthful of food.

"Marching consumes enormous energy. The regular soldiers get two jin (over 500 grams) of dry rations per meal; the auxiliary soldiers should eat the same amount."

"After all, whether it's the heavy baggage and armor or the grain and fodder, it's all pushed, hauled, and carried by the men under my command — far more exhausting than the regular soldiers who only need to march with their blades. If they collapse from overwork and slow the pace of the march, that would be far worse."

The Rear Guard Major was named Tumen Shao, a man from Duling. His ancestors had probably been pig-butchers or dog-slaughters, and he had a greasy-looking face. He was also an old hand at bargaining. At first he said something like… the Boar-Rush Braves of the Advance Army and the Main Army could only eat half the rations of the regular soldiers. Only after Diwu Lun argued long and hard on solid grounds did he relent a little.

"One and a half jin, and no pickled vegetables to go with it — absolutely no more!" Tumen Shao cut off any further argument from Diwu Lun, ending the dispute that broke out every few days.

Then, at the end, he added with a smile, "And this is only for Boyu's sake."

It was true — Diwu Lun had resorted to both bribes and promises to supply Tumen Shao's household with coal briquettes and other benefits before he was persuaded. But according to Tumen Shao, what he cared about was not those external things, but Diwu Lun the man himself.

"Does Boyu know how the other majors under General Han previously regarded you?"

Tumen Shao said, "They all looked at you askance. It was only that day when the order of march was decided — if you had once again fought to go first, everyone would have grown even warier of you. But after you deferred, they instead found you much more amiable. That's why I was willing to deal with you."

Brilliant talent always invites jealousy and hatred. Diwu Lun had not expected that showing timidity and hiding his ability would have such an unexpected effect — otherwise he would have taken a black knife in the back from his allied troops.

As the two were talking, Xuan Biao came to report that the green sprouts of the overwintering wheat along the route had been found severely trampled, and many had been pulled up — likely the work of the Advance Army and Main Army up ahead.

"It must have been the Boar-Rush Braves. Sure enough, a dog can't stop eating shit," Tumen Shao laughed. These words made Xuan Biao inwardly furious, but Diwu Lun shook his head to stop him.

The Boar-Rush Braves following the vanguard troops must have been starving. With not enough grain, they dug up wild greens and gnawed tree bark, and they didn't spare the overwintering wheat sprouts in the fields, which were still far from ripening.

Diwu Lun could only be sure that his own Fifth Battalion, because they usually got barely enough to eat, would not do such a thing.

Nearby was Princess County (Yuzhi County), still two days' march from the seat of Weirong Commandery. Once they reached it, they could draw their last resupply from the commandery granary.

But when the rear army resumed its march, it was stopped on the road by a crowd of furious commoners — all local people, over a hundred of them, with more pouring in from every hamlet, farm tools in their hands. The Elder who led them declared with righteous indignation that the vanguard, as it passed through, had destroyed a vast stretch of their green crops.

When some of the commoners tried to stop them, they were seized as able-bodied conscripts instead. The matter had now alarmed the Bailiff and the Elders, who demanded that an officer with authority give them an explanation.

This was getting troublesome. Diwu Lun was about to propose that he go and talk things over with these Elders and the rest — after all, he was good at the dialects of different regions.

To his surprise, Tumen Shao merely sneered. "The trouble the vanguard stirred up — what has it got to do with my rear army?"

Tumen Shao lazily raised his command banner and ordered the new recruits among the regulars to come forward and form ranks.

"We march by the Son of Heaven's command to the northern frontier to resist the Xiongnu. You pack of obstinate folk — instead of greeting the imperial army with pots of drink and vessels of broth, you dare obstruct us over some trifling matter?"

"The Son of Heaven has decreed: when the army is setting forth on campaign, any who dare to press forward, cause disorder, or break the law shall be summarily beheaded, with no need to choose an auspicious hour! Hear my command: long weapons to the front, bows and crossbows behind — shoot at will!"

These words struck Diwu Lun with horror, and he hurriedly blocked him. "Hold!"

Tumen Shao, however, gave a savage grin. "Just watch, Boyu. Let me teach you how to deal with such obstinate folk. It has been over ten days — the new recruits must see blood sooner or later. Those people are not commoners; they are bandits blocking the road to seize our grain. Rewards for any who kill or wound them!"

The local people on the opposite side could see that things were taking a bad turn and began falling back one after another. Just then, a single rider burst forth, holding high a seal and its cord, and shouted, "Stop!"

"I am Fu Chang, Marquis of Yiyang, appointed by the imperial court!"

…

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