“General Yue was immediately called to the scene and, upon seeing Zhai Chun’s dead body and hearing the story from the men who’d witnessed it, called for an immediate halt to the games upon pain of death. Despite Yue Shu’s injuries, General Yue ordered his son to receive ten lashes before he’d be granted medical attention for his wounds. The punishment was administered right then and there, the boy not crying out once. Zhai Chun’s body was packed into a box and sent back to Anyi with a message of explanation and condolences to his father.”
“There was never an uproar over the dozen men who died playing the game before Zhai Chun’s death,” Hui said nonchalantly from where he leaned against the table.
“That is enough from you!” Wu said to his son.
“I’m just saying that it’s a bit silly to get worked up over one man’s death when so many others have suffered similar fates,” Hui persisted.
“That’s quite enough from you tonight,” Wen said icily, his eyes firmly on his grandson. “I think it’d be best if you went back to your tent and got some sleep. It’ll be a long day tomorrow.”
Hui frowned but pushed himself away from the table and headed toward the tent flap. As he passed by Zhai, however, he paused and leaned in close to the Minister of War.
“Zhai would never have stopped to pick up Yue,” he said quietly to Zhai, although loud enough that everyone in the tent had heard him.
Ximen was sure that Zhai would strike the man, but Zhai still seemed deflated after having heard the story of his son’s death, and just looked up at Hui with bleary eyes. It came as some shock, then, when Marquis Wen himself rose from his chair and rushed to his grandson faster than Ximen imagined a man of his age could. Without a word Wen slapped Hui hard across the face three times, the surprise of the attack sending Hui to the carpeted floor as much, if not more so, as the force of the blows.
“You’ve a lot to learn, boy!” Wen yelled at Hui, who stared up at him in shock from the floor, his nose bloodied. “Now get out of my sight!”
Hui quickly scrambled to his feet and rushed from the tent. Wen stared after him and then turned to Zhai.
“I’m sorry for that, and sorry for the loss of your son,” Wen said as he clasped Zhai’s shoulder. “He was a brave man and would have gone far.”
Zhai nodded but said nothing, his eyes still locked on his cup.
“But you must put this feud between yourself and Yue behind you,” Wen continued, still staring at his Minister of War. “Although I can tell you that you will never have to command General Yue again.”
Zhai looked up at this remark, his eyes filling with surprise as he looked at Wen.
Wen held the look for a few moments before turning and making his way back to his chair.
“Word has gotten back to me that Yue has been sending messages to Duke Wu requesting a private meeting,” Wen said as he reached his chair and sat down. “It seems that he wants to meet the Duke and settle the matter of his son’s death between just the two of them. While I admit that this is an honorable thing for a man to do, it is not something for a general of a besieging army to do. This, together with the obviously traumatic events of his son’s death, has led me after much thought to relieve Yue Yang of all command when this siege ends, and to send him into retirement. He has earned that much.”
Zhai nodded at the news, but said nothing. The tent remained quite for several moments before Wen took a deep breath and spoke again.
“It grows late, and we’ll all have to be up early tomorrow. Let’s adjourn this meeting.”
The men silently rose from their chairs to leave and Ximen began to head toward the tent flap when Wen’s voice again cut through the silence.
“Liu, I want you to stay for a few moments longer,” Wen said, “the rest of you I will see in the morning.”
“Father, surely I should be present for whatever you discuss,” Wu said quickly, turning to his father.
Wen shook his head. “Get your rest, it will be a long day tomorrow.”
Wu nodded reluctantly, gathered his robes up around him, and walked to the tent flap. Ximen let him pass and turned one last time to look at Wen. The Marquis nodded to him and gave him a slight smile, filling Ximen with confidence as he stepped out into the torch-lit night.
FIVE
“The boy troubles me,” Wen said when he was alone with his two advisors.
“He’s hardly a boy anymore,” Liu replied.
The old advisor, confidant to Wen for years, still sat in his chair, his eyes locked onto his hand and his fingers pressed firmly against one another in front of him. Wei sat beside him, and although he felt nervous at having been allowed to remain in the tent after all the other men filed out, he also felt honored. His nervousness, however, outweighed the honor he felt, and he was sure that the Marquis or his master would suddenly take note of him, as if suddenly they’d forgotten he was there, and dismiss him with the rest. Instead, Marquis Wen stared down at the floor with his hands clasped behind his back as he paced the room anxiously.
“And that’s what troubles me even more,” Wen said in answer to Liu. “When he was still a boy he could easily be controlled. Now that he’s a man in his own right it’s next to impossible!”
Wen suddenly stopped his pacing and looked up. Wei thought that he’d surely been noticed at last, but the Marquis just moved over to one of the small tables and poured two cups of tea.
“I thought that some of his sharp edges would be blunted by sending him up here into Zhongshan, where the fighting was sure to be bloody and prolonged,” Wen continued as he took the two cups into his hands and began making his way over to the two men. “Instead it’s only seemed to make those edges all the sharper and more dangerous for those around him.”
Wei was surprised when Wen reached them and offered the cups to both he and Liu. He reached up and nodded deferentially as he met the Marquis’s eyes for a moment, then quickly looked back down at the carpeted tent floor, his nervousness returning.
Liu reached up with only one hand, his other propping up his head as he stared off into the distance.
“He’s nothing like his father, that’s for certain,” Liu said as he placed the cup on the small table between the chairs before focusing on Wen. “He has more of you in him than he does his father, especially when you were young.”
Wen shook his head vigorously and moved back to the table. “I was never that impetuous, nor that bold.” He poured himself a cup of tea and then moved back to his own chair. “I would never even have met a superior officer’s eyes unless ordered to. And to insult him like that?” he shook his head. “My own father would have killed me!”
“Something that Wu would never even contemplate,” Liu said. “Your son has always been too easy on the boy, and it shows.”
“I always thought that I was a bit hard on Wu when he was growing up,” Wen said. “I wanted to toughen the boy up, make him ready to rule.” Wen chuckled to himself. “Little good that did for him, or the family. I wonder if Hui was disciplined at all while growing up. It doesn’t seem like it.”
“There’s little we can do to change our natures,” Liu said as he reached down and picked up his tea. “Wu is how he is, as is Hui. They both could be much worse, and we should be thankful they’re as competent as they are.”
Wen was silent for a few moments and Wei saw his face take on a worried look.
“I wonder, Liu, about all that I’ve achieved. When I’m gone, will it too go with me?”
“Your son is a capable ruler, and although it’s true he may not be as forceful as you, he will be able to rule in his own right.”
“Force may be what we need in these times,” Wen said. “Already the smaller states are decreasing in number. It won’t be much longer before the Seven States begin going after each other in their bids for power and control. I hate to admit it, but I know that there’s already talk amongst the younger generation of even doing away with the Zhou Kings entirely.”
“I doub
t it’ll come to that, at least not for many years,” Liu said.
Wen paused again for several moments. When he did speak again Wei noticed that his eyes were far away.
“When I was a boy we used to play a game called ‘king of the hill,’” Wen began. “The object was simple: one boy reaches the top of the hill and everyone else tries to knock him down, becoming the king himself. It wasn’t until years later that I saw the folly and danger of the game, and the lessons it imparted. Everyone wanted to be the ‘king of the hill,’ yet it was the most dangerous position in the game, and the most fleeting. I still remember the boys that were smart enough to realize this, for they were the ones that always stayed just below the top of the hill, ready to knock off whoever rose to the summit.”
Wen took a deep sip of tea, tilting the cup back to get at the dregs, before focusing back on Liu.
“Tell me, Liu, among the Seven States, is Wei the current king of the hill?”
“We are the strongest,” Liu admitted, “and it is true that the others both fear and envy that strength. Whether they’ll try to ‘knock us down,’ however, is something I can’t be sure of.”
Wen was silent for a long time after that, and Wei began to silently count the minutes as they passed by. Finally, the Marquis stirred, his eyes again focusing on some far-off thing.
“When I was a young man I visited an oracle. She was an unnaturally old and wrinkled hag, one that should’ve been dead long before I’d even been born. Nonetheless, she was skilled in the use of the oracle bones, as well as consulting the Book of Changes, so I asked her for a consultation from both.”
Wei sat up straight, his interest piqued by the story, while beside him Liu seemed not to have moved at all.
“She took a handful of small bones and threw them onto the dirty floor of her hut, then made quiet noises to herself as she studied whatever it was they told her. After several minutes of this she nodded her head and then retrieved a massive roll of scrolls from the clutter of her home. She produced three coins and instructed me to concentrate on my family before tossing them six times onto a small cloth that she’d laid out. I did as she instructed, and after the sixth throw she quickly turned to her scrolls and began flipping through the sheaves. After several moments she found the page that she was looking for, read quietly, then rolled up the scrolls, took the coins and cloth, and returned them all silently to wherever it was she’d produced them from. She came back and stared at the floor for several minutes before speaking again.
“’I know that you come from a powerful family, one that is rising steadily among the others of the land,’ she’d said in her high, piercing voice. ‘But the readings I’ve gotten today do not bode well.’”
“I nodded my head quietly and told her to tell me exactly what she’d read,” Wen said.”
“’You will rise up mightily and your family will become the strongest in the land,’ she had told me. ‘But after you there will be problems which will lead to disaster. The bones and the book tell me that many years after your own death, the death of your family will follow as well.’”
“I asked her to explain further but she either could not or would not,” Wen said, looking at the two men once again. “I left the hut and dismissed her words, not thinking on them for many years. Then, when I’d become an old man and the head of the most powerful family in the land, her words came back to me. It was then that I remembered what the old woman had told me, and came to realize that what she’d spoken was the truth.”
“Village superstition, nothing more,” Liu said mockingly and with a wave of his hand.
Wei, however, wasn’t sure how much his master actually believed that. Liu was known to consult the Book of Changes himself from time to time, and had even done so before their journey from the capital.
“The more I thought on her words the more I thought of my son and grandson,” Wen continued, ignoring the remark from Liu. “It’s for that reason that I hope that Wu reigns for a very long time, for it seems to me that it is with Hui that the problem for our family lies.”
“If anyone would make the family weaker it would most surely be Wu,” Liu said.
“Wu would be cautious, it is true, but I doubt he’d lose any of our hard-won territory, although he wouldn’t gain any either. It is Hui that concerns me. At some point he’ll become dissatisfied with what we’ve won and he’ll want more. He will go after it, and perhaps lose it all entirely.”
“It’ll do little to worry on what you cannot control,” Liu said after a moment. “Tomorrow is a day for great celebration, and yet here you are the night before, worrying on things that are many years away.”
Wen nodded. “Perhaps you’re right, Liu. Perhaps I’m just worrying too much over nothing. Still, Hui’s actions today do trouble me.”
“We will begin correcting them as soon as we return to Anyi,” Liu said, rising from his chair for the first time since coming into the tent more than an hour before. “It will be good to have him back in the capital where you can keep an eye on him and guide him yourself.”
Wen seemed to perk up at that idea. “You’re right. What the boy needs is some personal guidance, something he’ll not find in the ranks of the soldiery.”
Liu nodded and then approached Wen, putting his hand on the Marquis’s arm. “You’ve been telling each of us that it will be a long day tomorrow and that we should get some sleep. Now I am telling you, Sire, that it is time to rest. The day will be full tomorrow and you won’t want to miss any of it.”
Wen smiled up at his advisor. “You’re right as always, Liu. I don’t know where I’d be without your patient ears and perceptive eyes.”
“Probably exactly where you are now,” Liu said with his own smile. “Now, get some rest and we’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
Liu patted Wen’s arm one more time then turned to look back at Wei. Wei stood quickly, crossed in front of Wen, bowed, then made his way over to the tent flap followed by Liu. There was so much that Wei wanted to discuss, but Liu sensed it and put his hand on Wei’s shoulder once they were again outside in the cool evening air.
“The best thing an advisor can do is to take his own advice. Let us get some sleep and not speak anymore this night.”
Wei tried not to let his disappointment show as he nodded, and the two walked back to their own small tent to sleep and await the morning.
SIX
Wei Yang awoke to the smell of freshly brewed tea, and opened his eyes to see a steaming cup sitting on the table next to his bedroll. A wave of excitement washed over him as he sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, alertness coming quickly. This was the day that the city would be flooded and the two-year long siege would end!
He looked around the small tent, but there was no sign of Liu. His master must have gotten up earlier and gone to see the Marquis, Wei figured as he stood up and retrieved his robes from the chair where he’d laid them the night before, dressing quickly. The sun’s rays were just beginning to peek through the tent flap when he grabbed the cup of tea and headed out into the open.
The sky was still dark but lightening quickly, the black of night giving way to the soft yellows and blues of morning as the sun crested the eastern mountains. The camp was astir all around him, and Wei stood and watched soldiers move about, most cooking a quick breakfast of rice porridge before they headed off to man the trenches. Many of their faces were lit with smiles, for they knew that this day was out of the ordinary and signaled an end to their monotonous existence outside of the city.
Wei finished his tea and set the cup on the ground inside of the tent flap before turning to walk back to Marquis Wen’s tent. There was a chance that Liu could be there, possibly going over plans for Zhongshan’s incorporation into the State of Wei, although Wei suspected that he and the Marquis had already found a good vantage point to view the city’s downfall.
His pace was quick and Wei covered the distance in no time. Guards stood outside the tent, giving Wei hope that
his master was within, but as he approached one of the men shook his head.
“Liu went north with the Marquis before dawn,” the man said as Wei reached him. “They wanted to see the river breached.”
Wei nodded and turned on his heels. If they’d already gone to the river there was a good chance that the flooding would start any minute. Wei looked around, trying to find a spot that would allow him to see the most when the water began flowing. Many of the soldiers were atop the trenches, their attention fixed firmly on the city as they laughed and joked with one another, happy their time here was coming to an end. The large embankments that ran right through the middle of camp and up to the gates of the city were nearly empty of people, however. Wei nodded to himself, surprised that there weren’t more soldiers already there. That would be the place to be when the water broke free from the river, Wei knew, and he set off toward them at a brisk pace.
* * * * *
The last few workers were tying ropes to the boulders when Ximen turned around and saw Marquis Wen behind him.
“I didn’t think I’d be able to sneak up on you,” Wen said with a smile.
“I didn’t expect you so early, Sire,” Ximen stammered, startled by the sudden appearance of the Marquis. “I must have been totally wrapped-up in the work below.”
Wen clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s good, Ximen. You’ve always been one of the hardest workers I’ve ever known. Tell me,” Wen said, drawing closer to the engineer, “when you left us last night, did you go to your tent in the camp, or come right back up here to the work?”
Ximen tried to stifle a smile but failed. “I’ve barely gotten any sleep at all,” he admitted. “We’ve been burning torches all night so that we could work in the darkness.”
“I didn’t realize that there was so much still to do,” Zhai said.
Ximen looked past Wen and saw that the Minister of War had walked up behind the Marquis, with Wu a bit further back, still trudging up the steep embankments.
The Warring States, Books 1-3 Page 6