Chapter 441: The Famous Father-in-Law Arrives

In early twelfth month, Yelu Deguang at Weizhou learned that the Western Route Army's Wei Wang and the Eastern Route's Mada had both suffered crushing defeats. Fear and dread seized him, and he was terrified of being encircled from both sides.

He therefore immediately sent twenty thousand more troops to Zhao Yanshou and Yelu Wuzhi, ordering them to break through Qicheng with all speed and cross south over the Yellow River.

So long as the main Jin army was smashed, the disasters on the left and right flanks would no longer matter.

By this point, the Khitan troops taking part in the siege of Qicheng had reached as many as eighty thousand.

And how many men did Gao Xingzhou, who at that moment held Qicheng and served as the nail pinning down the great army, have?

The answer: fewer than six thousand.

Qicheng was a small city and could not store much grain. Eighty thousand Khitan troops surrounded it and attacked in waves, and every moment the situation hung by a thread.

Gao Xingzhou and his son Gao Huaide sallied out several times, charging left and right with cavalry, but the Khitan were simply too many, and they could not break through.

In the middle of the month, Shi Chonggui, stationed at Chanzhou, received word of the great victories at Xingzhou and Majiakou. Wild with joy, he rewarded the generals and held a grand banquet, and from his initial lingering fear he began to look down on the Khitan somewhat.

Jing Yanguang, however, knew how formidable the Khitan were, because whether it was the Western Route Army's Wei Wang or the Eastern Route Army's Mada, both were essentially Khitan tribal troops.

One could not say these troops had no fighting strength, but they were lightly armored, poorly armed, and unfamiliar with the terrain.

Liu Zhiyuan, Li Shouzhen, and Huangfu Yu were all renowned ministers and brave generals; it was only natural that Khitan tribal troops could not defeat them.

But the main force under Yelu Deguang on the north bank of the Yellow River contained at least twenty thousand Pishi troops and more than ten thousand Shushan troops.

These were all the Khitan imperial guard troops of the imperial tent, with an armor-wearing rate above seventy percent, and most of it was iron armor.

Zhao Yanshou had inherited more than ten years of accumulation from his father Zhao Dejun, and the several thousand men under him were all the elite of the former Lulong Army, with extremely formidable fighting strength.

And so this powerful minister, whose mouth-cannon shook the heavens, turned coward when facing the Khitan main force.

He withheld the letter Gao Xingzhou had sent to Shi Chonggui begging for aid, and made up his mind not to send relief.

Because in Jing Yanguang's view, it was inevitable that the Jin army could not defeat the Khitan; if troops were sent to the rescue, he feared they would be routed.

If no rescue came, it would merely be the deaths of Gao Xingzhou and his son Gao Huaide in battle, and they could still hold the river line against the Khitan.

But paper cannot wrap up fire. Gao Chao, an officer under Gao Xingzhou, broke out through extreme peril to beg for aid, and having received no relief troops, he was not about to leave. Day after day he raised a clamor outside Shi Chonggui's field headquarters.

Heh! If I, Jing Yanguang, cannot solve the problem, can I not solve you, the man who created the problem?

So Jing Yanguang ordered Gao Chao secretly arrested. But the imperial guard troops he sent were also military men, and feeling for his plight, they were unwilling to arrest this loyal officer. They secretly leaked word, and Gao Chao escaped with his life.

That evening, the General of the Right Qianniu Guard, Hu Cile, invited the various generals to his tent.

Fu Yanqing, Wang Zhou, Pan Huan, Yao Yuanfu, Xue Huairang, and the other generals all arrived.

Although Hu Cile held only the nominal post of General of the Right Qianniu Guard, and his son Hu Guang was only a deputy commander of the imperial guard cavalry,

the father and son had long moved in wide circles in the Eastern Capital, and five years earlier they had followed Murong Xinzhang in suppressing the rebellion of Zhang Congbin, winning great merit. Shi Jingtang had once taken them into his confidence.

By Shi Chonggui's time they had fallen somewhat out of favor, but this instead gave the two of them an even more unusual signal in the eyes of those paying attention.

Because everyone knew that on the salaries of Hu Cile and his son Hu Guang, what gave them the right to spend so lavishly in the Eastern Capital?

There had to be someone backing them, and if so, which someone was it? Was that not self-evident?

Besides that Great Liang Heavenly King, who exchanged envoys with the court and might very well come again with the twenty-eight prefectures of Liang to pay homage, who else could it be?

And why would Great King Zhang be supporting the Hu father and son with money and goods? Was that not obvious?

Between them there were still secret connections.

On this point, Fu Yanqing, the forty-four-year-old Cavalry Array Commissioner, was even clearer.

Because his eighth brother Fu Yanlun and his eldest son Fu Zhaoxin had long been on good terms with Murong Xinzhang, and so he knew the power structure of the Liang state fairly well.

In former years Great King Zhang had gone west to Khotan with one hundred and seven men, and those one hundred and seven were the Yuan Cong faction within Liang, holding the highest status, the most battle merit, the innermost of the inner circle.

And apart from the Yuan Cong faction, now reduced to only a few dozen men, there was the Eastern Return martial-merit bloc, to which the Hu father and son belonged.

Most of these men were descendants of the Anxi Army, along with the sons of Tang of Khotan gifted by the Great King's maternal uncle, the Great King of the Jin Kingdom, Li Shengtian.

Though their posts were not especially high, they were numerous, and compared to the few dozen men of the Yuan Cong faction, they were Great King Zhang's true base.

Hu Cile came from the Eastern Return martial-merit bloc; how could he casually betray the King of Liang?

Now the Liang state crouched like a tiger over Hexi, its armor and weapons sharp, on the verge of becoming a great power in the realm.

And at the same time, over the past year or two Shi Chonggui had looked less and less like a ruler of men, a hundred thousand li short of Shi Jingtang.

Within Jin, Liu Zhiyuan and Du Chongwei both harbored disloyal thoughts. Jing Yanguang, who held great power, was narrow-minded and had provoked the war with the Khitan, yet had no sense of responsibility, caring only to push out rivals.

With strong enemies without and unrest within, and with every dynasty since the Later Liang having lasted little more than ten or twenty years,

many people in their hearts now mentioned Zhang Zhao, dwelling in remote Liang, in the same breath as Liu Zhiyuan in Hedong.

Because they were at the front, and because the Later Jin had faced repeated floods and droughts in recent years, even Hu Cile, who was not short of money, had no fine dishes to offer his guests — only some cloudy wine and a few scrawny sheep.

After the company had drunk a few bowls of wine, Hu Cile, seated in the host's place, suddenly set down his chopsticks and heaved a long sigh.

"Men of war like us have no special skill save our martial arts. Today we have come here to defend the realm against the enemy.

Chief Commander Gao is trapped by the great Khitan army and in peril by the day. I fear that, to say nothing of cloudy wine and scrawny sheep, he cannot even get a bowl of millet rice. Yet we sit here feasting and drinking — my heart truly cannot bear it."

Hearing Hu Cile speak thus, Fu Yanqing felt especially pained, for he was Gao Xingzhou's close friend, and the two were ordinarily spoken of together in the army.

But there was one thing he did not understand: why had Hu Cile summoned them all together, and why say these things?

Because of the officers present, apart from Fu Yanqing himself, the rest could only be counted as mid-ranking officers.

To put it in later terms, they were roughly at the level of battalion commander to deputy regimental commander. Officers of that level certainly could not manage the affairs of the high command such as Jing Yanguang.

And even if the aim was to stir up discontent among the army's generals and damage Shi Chonggui's image on behalf of Great King Zhang, was this not a little too early?

But since the matter had been raised, Fu Yanqing also felt that Hu Cile probably wanted to use this affair to build an image of himself as loyal to the realm.

Fu Yanqing had this understanding, however, because he came from a martial-merit family.

But the others, such as Yao Yuanfu, Pan Huan, and Wang Zhou, were pure fighting men with none of those twists and turns in their minds. Hearing Hu Cile speak thus, one after another they cursed Jing Yanguang roundly.

Because the war with the Khitan was, damn it all, stirred up by Jing Yanguang, and now, with Gao Xingzhou trapped in Qicheng, Jing Yanguang not only refused to send troops to the rescue but even dared to block military dispatches.

Hu Cile glanced around, and seeing that Fu Yanqing showed no sign of speaking, he could only cough once and lay the matter out plainly.

"Lord Guanhou is the Son of Heaven's closest friend. Now that Jing Yanguang is blocking the channels of speech, the Son of Heaven, deep within the palace, probably does not yet know what is happening outside. Could you, my lord, lead us in presenting a memorial to the Son of Heaven?"

Fu Yanqing's courtesy name was rather interesting — Guanhou, "Crowned Marquis." Using those two characters as a courtesy name was not something one did lightly, because no matter how you looked at it, it could not help but call to mind the Champion Marquis.

So every time Fu Yanqing heard someone solemnly address him as Guanhou, even though he was already past forty, a faint ripple still stirred in his heart.

Fu Yanqing and Shi Chonggui did indeed have a very good relationship, but that had been built back when Shi Jingtang had not yet rebelled against the Tang and set himself up as emperor.

At that time, Shi Chonggui had been merely one of Shi Jingtang's adopted sons, and not a particularly favored one.

Fu Yanqing's father, Fu Cunshen, had originally been named Li Cunshen, one of Li Keyong's Thirteen Grand Guardians, and after his death had been posthumously enfeoffed as Prince of Qin.

One could say that back then, it had been Shi Chonggui who had gone out of his way to curry favor with Fu Yanqing.

And now, after Shi Jingtang's death, he had left behind only a one-year-old infant son, letting Shi Chonggui pick up a bargain.

Now that Shi Chonggui had become the Son of Heaven, he was not very willing to gather with old friends like Fu Yanqing anymore, because it would remind Shi Chonggui of the unpleasant past when his status had been lowly.

So Fu Yanqing slowly shook his head and refused with difficulty: "Now that Jing Yanguang, Feng Yu, and the rest enjoy ever-growing imperial favor, I am but a Left Array Commander. If I wished to go speak before the Son of Heaven, I fear I could not even easily gain entry to the palace."

Hearing Fu Yanqing say this, the others did not think much of it, because it was indeed the truth.

Although everyone sympathized with Gao Xingzhou's plight and had plenty of complaints about Jing Yanguang's indifference,

they were still not very willing to risk offending Jing Yanguang by going to speak to Shi Chonggui.

But no sooner had Fu Yanqing finished speaking than a man burst out from the rear hall. Everyone looked up and saw it was Gao Chao, the officer Gao Xingzhou had sent charging out from Qicheng — it turned out Hucile had hidden him away.

Gao Chao, his eyes splitting with fury, stared at Fu Yanqing and roared: "I have always held that among all the commanders now at Chanzhou, only Array Commander Fu is a true hero!

If even you will not save my Chief Commander, then who else can?

Should a man loyal to the state die beneath the swords of the Khitan?"

Yao Yuanfu and the others, seeing Gao Chao come out, all fell silent.

They were but mid-ranking officers, none of them having even attained a single command as military governor. They had few soldiers under them and no standing before Jing Yanguang — even if they wanted to go to the rescue, they could not.

But Fu Yanqing, stung by Gao Chao's words, at once rose to his full height.

"Gao Chao, do not try to goad me with words. At the court of the Son of Heaven and Jing Yanguang, I truly can do nothing. But Chief Commander Gao is a weighty general of the realm, and I cannot stand idly by while he fights the enemy with loyalty and valor!

I still have several hundred Fu family sons under my command, willing to live and die together with Chief Commander Gao. All you commanders are here — who is willing to cross the river with me to the rescue?"

Admiration rose simultaneously in the eyes of Hucile and Hu Guang.

The Khitan host of eighty thousand was besieging Qicheng. Although those eighty thousand could not all be packed outside the small town of Qicheng, being instead spread among the towns north of it,

the enemy directly facing Qicheng would still number no fewer than thirty thousand, and they were certain to be the elite of the Khitan army.

That Fu Yanqing would actually go to the relief of Gao Xingzhou with a few hundred cavalry — in most people's eyes, that was no different from throwing his life away.

So although Fu Yanqing spoke with righteous fervor, and Yao Yuanfu, Pan Huan, Wang Zhou, Xue Huairang, and the other commanders wore ashamed expressions, they still said nothing.

Don't be ridiculous — they would not even risk offending Jing Yanguang over this matter, so how could they go on what amounted to a suicide mission to save Gao Xingzhou?

But while they would not, Hucile suddenly rose to his feet and bowed to everyone all around.

This banquet today had been convened by him in the first place. Now that Fu Yanqing was going to rescue Gao Xingzhou, how could he lag behind?

Moreover, winning over Fu Yanqing, Gao Xingzhou, and the rest was the secret task Great King Zhang had given him.

What was more, the seven hundred Liangzhou great horses under his command were all superbly equipped cavalry, and half of them were kinsmen of Hucile's own tribe, so the whole force was of one mind and would fight resolutely.

The country around Qicheng was flat as far as the eye could see, very suited to cavalry operations — it was not necessarily impossible to bring Gao Xingzhou out.

Thinking this, Hucile shouted to the assembly: "Array Commander Fu's righteousness reaches to the clouds! Though we, father and son of the Hu family, are barbarians born beyond the passes, we have received the Great King's earnest instruction and know what loyalty and righteousness mean.

I am willing to go with Array Commander Fu to rescue Chief Commander Gao. If we do not return, I have several hundred strings of cash and goods here, along with some armor and clothing — please divide them among you, for they will be of use when you fight the enemy in days to come."

Hearing Hucile speak thus, Yao Yuanfu drained the cloudy wine in his bowl in one gulp.

"General Hu, do not look down on people. I, Yao Yuanfu, am willing to accompany you two to Qicheng."

Matters having come to this, Xue Huairang, Pan Huan, and Wang Zhou were forced into a corner as well. They could only steel themselves and agree to go together to rescue Gao Xingzhou.

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