The Warring States, Books 1-3

by Greg Strandberg

  Ximen shook his head as he stared down at the city. “But not today.

  “No,” Wen nodded beside him. “Not today.”

  * * * * *

  It took more than two hours to seal the river once again, and in that time the city had filled with more than ten feet of water. The half-starved citizens began climbing over the walls to the flooded no-man’s land below almost immediately after the gates had been swept away, neither fearful of the more than twenty foot drop or the enemy that lay in wait for them below.

  General Yue had ordered several hundred soldiers to stand ready near the embankments in case any Zhongshan soldiers tried to come out of the city, but none appeared and he wasn’t yet ready to order his forces into the drowned city.

  Wei stood on top of the same embankment from which he’d watched the breaching of the walls until the water finally stopped flowing down the long channel. He shook his head and gave a sigh of relief then, for his initial elation at seeing the city finally broken had quickly been replaced by pity for the people within, and then downright shame at what had occurred. There was still no indication from inside the city that the leaders, Duke Wu in particular, were going to surrender to General Yue and the Wei Army. Even an hour after the water stopped flowing and with hundreds of citizens swimming out the city gates or dropping down off the walls, there was no official word from within the beleaguered city.

  Wei turned to Liu and shook his head again. “I can’t understand why they don’t just give up.”

  Liu nodded. Marquis Wen, Wu, and Zhai had traveled down the road running next to the embankments shortly after the gates had been breached. General Yue had caught sight of them and waved for them to join him atop the embankment. Now they waited and watched as the morning began to turn into afternoon.

  “They’re a proud people,” Liu said in remark to Wei, “and perhaps they don’t feel they’ve been beaten yet.”

  “Their city’s under ten feet of water!” Zhai said, having heard Liu. “If that’s not beaten I don’t know what is.”

  “Now that the water’s stopped,” Wu said, “Ximen should be able to get down here. We’ve got to start cutting some holes in the base of the walls to let that water out.”

  “I agree,” Yue said. “I can’t send my soldiers into the city with that much water. Most of them can’t even swim.”

  Wei stared out at the area around the city walls. The city gates had stopped the first rush of water, forcing it up and over the embankments and onto the land around the walls. Even when the gates had broken, enough of the leftmost embankment had eroded away to allow water to flow over the land for two hours. Now a shallow lake, perhaps a foot or two deep, stood over a wide stretch of land.

  “Even if Ximen gets down here with some of his workers, I’d still be wary about sending in men to begin cutting away at the walls,” Zhai said. “We’ve seen no indication of soldiers in the city, but that doesn’t mean archers won’t appear on the walls if our men get within range.”

  The sound of rocks tumbling nearby halted the conversation and all eyes went from the city to a man as he scrambled up the embankment and quickly made his way over to Yue. He spoke quickly and Yue nodded at his words before turning to face Wen and Zhai.

  “Word from the citizens we’ve rounded up is that Duke Wu is still alive in the city, as are a large proportion of the fighting men. While the people say that it’d be impossible to fight in the city with all the water, they also don’t think that Duke Wu will surrender.”

  “We’ll have to go in there and drag him out, then,” Wu said beside his father.

  “It could be a difficult fight,” Zhai said. “Most likely the Duke and his men are holed up somewhere high and dry and difficult to get to. We could lose dozens of men, perhaps even a hundred or more, before we could force them out of the city or kill them in the process.”

  “I want Duke Wu taken alive, is that clear?” Marquis Wen said loudly, focusing his attention on Yue.

  “As do I, Sire,” Yue nodded, his voice quiet.

  “We’ve got to get men into that city,” Wen continued. “From what I can see there’s enough wood piled around the trenches to build a small fleet of boats, or even rafts. I suggest we begin building them right away. I want this siege to end today.”

  The men nodded and Yue spoke a few quick words to the messenger still standing beside him and sent him scurrying back down toward the trenches.

  “We’ll get the men on it right away, Sire.”

  Wen nodded. “Good, now someone get a message up to Ximen to report down here immediately.”

  * * * * *

  Ximen barked out orders faster than he could think them, his mind moving by itself as his body began to grow sluggish from overwork and lack of sleep. A great cheer had gone up from the mass of workers when the last few boulders had been rolled into place, stemming the flow of the river after two hours of work, but Ximen had been quick to keep them shoveling the dirt of the embankments back into place. The Fan River was still moving swiftly, and would continue to do so for another few months as the snows of the Luliang Mountains continued to melt. The last thing he wanted was a weak spot in the riverbanks to give way and the valley below to be flooded once again.

  Distantly Ximen heard a chariot somewhere behind him on the road, but paid it no attention as he talked with two of his lead workers about the riverbanks. A few moments later a man was calling out his name from behind him, but Ximen continued to talk with his men, intent upon getting everything done before he headed back down toward the city. At last the man grabbed him by the arm and Ximen turned angrily on him.

  “We’re not finished here yet! What is it?”

  “Marquis Wen requests your presence immediately,” the man said, somewhat shaken by the outburst from the engineer.

  “Just because the water has stopped flowing doesn’t mean that the job’s done!” Ximen said with frustration, although he knew it was useless. If Wen wanted him down at the city, he’d go down to the city.

  The man looked at the two workers Ximen had been speaking with. “Your men should be able to finish whatever needs doing up here. We must go now.”

  Ximen resignedly shook his head, threw his shovel to the ground, and began walking past the messenger and to the road.

  “Alright, let’s go then.”

  It took them only minutes to ride down the road to the city and then another minute to climb up the embankment to the Marquis.

  “How is the river?” Marquis Wen asked when Ximen reached him.

  “We’ve stemmed the flow, but there’s still work to be done shoring up the weak spots,” Ximen answered. “I want to make sure the river can withstand the continued mountain runoff through spring.”

  “Well, we’ve got some more pressing problems right here,” Wen said. “Duke Wu is still holed up somewhere within the city and, according to the citizens that have already come out, he doesn’t intend to surrender.”

  Ximen folded his arms in front of him. “So you need to send men in after him?”

  Wen nodded. “We need to start punching holes into the city walls so the water can be released. There’s ten feet of it in there, and the soldiers are useless until it’s drained.”

  “That could take days!” Ximen said. “Even if we do get a few holes punched into the walls today, which will be difficult enough, the water will drain out much more slowly than it came in.”

  “With Duke Wu still inside the city the people aren’t totally defeated,” Yue said. “They will rally around him and continue to defy us until we bring him out.”

  Ximen shook his head. “I’m an engineer, not a soldier. I’m only telling you what we can and cannot do in terms of getting that water out.”

  “We’ve already begun constructing boats and rafts so that some of the soldiers can enter and find Wu’s location,” Liu said to Ximen.

  Ximen stroked his beard as he thought on that for a moment. “That’s good. Boats are something they’ll not have in the city,
and that will be the only way to move about within the walls for several days to come.”

  “We’ll need more of your workers down here to help,” Zhai said. “The soldiers aren’t carpenters, after all.”

  “Send word for fifty men to come down from the river,” Ximen said to Yue. “That should be enough to get a dozen boats built before nightfall, and twice as many rafts.”

  “Yue, tell your lieutenants to begin separating out the men that can swim,” Zhai said. “We should be able to put five or six on each raft, and a few more in the boats. Arm each of them with a crossbow so that they can strike quickly at any defenders from above.”

  “The first wave will be sent in to man the city walls,” Yue said. “Walkways run their entire length and they’re high enough to be out of the water. The boats can then be sent back out to get more men.”

  “Make it happen,” Wen said as he turned back to the city. “I want Duke Wu out here and at my feet before the day is through.”

  Within an hour the workers from the river had arrived and the first boats were being carried up the embankments and to the city gates. Dozens of soldiers marched beside the workers, their crossbows trained on the walls above, but no enemies appeared to inhibit their progress. The men dropped the boats to the ground atop the embankments and then used ropes to lower them down to the water below, which still filled the narrow channel nearly to the top. The soldiers then climbed down into them as the workers held the ropes steady. When the boats were filled the soldiers cast off, two setting down their weapons to pick up oars. Within minutes the first six boats, each carrying eight men, were through the shattered gates and inside the city, and only a few moments after that the same soldiers could be seen spreading out atop the city’s walls.

  “That was faster than I expected,” Zhai said.

  “Look,” Wu said, pointing toward the city gates and the workers atop the embankments a short distance away. “They’re already pulling the boats back out.”

  Liu squinted his eyes to see, then nodded his head. It was true. The first boats were already being pulled back out with the same ropes that had been used to lower them down just moments before. Already groups of soldiers stood by eagerly as the boats got closer, ready to lower themselves down and enter the city.

  “We’ll have to send in three-to-four boatloads of men just to properly man each section of the walls,” Yue said.

  “Do we need that many?” Wu asked.

  “It might seem like a lot but those men will be able to gauge where the enemy’s gathered in strength,” Yue replied. “I expect that we’ll know where Duke Wu is within the hour.”

  “We should be able to take some of those men from the walls and use them against the Duke and his men at that point,” Zhai said, looking at Yue.

  Yue nodded. “When the Duke is taken I suspect any further resistance within the city will end.”

  “So now we wait,” Liu said quietly as the men stared at the city.

  SEVEN

  Hui swiveled his crossbow as he heard frantic splashing coming from the right. Without hesitation he locked onto the target and fired in one quick movement, then lowered the crossbow from his eye and shook his head when he saw what he’d hit.

  “Another peasant!” he said scornfully. “You’d think they’d be smarter than that.”

  The boat slowly passed the woman that Hui had hit squarely in the face as she’d tried to swim to their boat, her lifeless body now floating face-up in the water. It was the third citizen that Hui had shot since entering the city only minutes before, and he was becoming sickened, not so much by the shooting of innocent civilians, but by the absence of soldiers to shoot at.

  “Pick up the pace,” he said to the two men that rowed the boat. “I want to get further in toward the palace. That’s where Duke Wu will be hiding.”

  Nearly the entire length of the city’s walls had been manned by Wei Army soldiers when Hui and his men had rowed through the broken gates. The men provided enough support that the boats now pushed deeper into the city, floating over the flooded streets as they searched out their enemy. Ximen’s workers had constructed more than a dozen of the vessels so far, as well as twice as many smaller rafts. The men were now all over the city, floating about in small groups as they searched for the remnants of the Zhongshan Army. So far all they’d found were great quantities of floating bodies, mostly women and children not quick enough to escape the flood that had hit the city. Besides bodies, debris floated all around them, and Hui made sure that the men in the boat kept their crossbows to their faces at all times, fearful that any one of the floating obstacles could be hiding an enemy soldier. Still, Hui had been the only one to fire, and each time it was at an innocent civilian, the first two men, but this last one a woman. Hui wondered to himself if the next victim would be a child. Well, he thought, they should have given up months ago.

  The boat passed by open windows and the men could see small rooms within, beds and kitchen tables the most common sights, many containing huddled people trying to stay out of view. When they’d first been spotted Hui had had the boats stop and the soldiers enter the houses to question the people. All they were told was that Duke Wu had last been seen near the city palace the night before, so that’s where Hui directed the majority of the boats. The deeper they moved into the city the more people they saw, and Hui had given up trying to question any of them. After their first few encounters with them their smell alone kept him and his men moving past.

  “I thought we’d see more survivors,” one of the men said quietly to Hui.

  “The siege must have hurt them more than we imagined,” Hui answered. “Before we attacked, the city was the thriving capital of the state, with more than five thousand people within its walls. But that was two years ago, and who knows how many could have perished or slipped out in that time.”

  “Perished more likely,” another soldier said. “Not a night went by in the trenches when we couldn’t smell the burning bodies of their funeral biers.”

  “Thank Shangdi we don’t have to put up with that anymore,” another soldier chuckled.

  “I know,” another added. “I’ll make sure that I’m buried in the ground and never burned to ashes, if only to save my neighbors from the smell.”

  The men in the boat laughed but Hui frowned.

  “That’s enough chatter,” he said sharply. “Keep your eyes on the houses and your mouths shut. The further we get into the city the greater the chance of us encountering soldiers and armed citizens that we didn’t smell burning over the past two years.”

  The men fell silent and the boat pushed on. Hui glanced back and saw the other three boats in his flotilla coming up slowly behind him. He had argued vociferously for the chance to lead the first group of men into the city that wouldn’t be manning the walls, and a message had been sent off to General Yue. Word had come back quickly that the order was approved, and now Hui meant to drag the Duke out of the city and to his grandfather’s feet himself.

  The boat rounded a turn in the hidden street below them and a great stone building came into view. So different was it from the wooden houses they’d been passing for the past several minutes that several of the men cried out in wonder.

  “That must be the palace,” Hui said as he pointed at the building. “Bring us right up to those windows.”

  The lower portion of the building, like all the others they’d passed, was completely hidden from view by the ten feet of water covering the city. Unlike the majority of buildings, however, this one was three stories high, and Hui was surprised they’d not seen it earlier, although it was far enough from the walls that some of the men could have had difficulty relaying the message to them.

  The palace became larger and larger as the boat drew closer, and then they were right next to the massively columned windows of the second floor. Hui motioned for one of the men to hop off the boat and onto the stone ledge, then threw him a rope with which to secure the boat.

  Hui waited for
the other three boats to pull up beside them before standing to speak.

  “Alright, we’ll fan out and find an open window to enter. If there are none we’ll force our way in. Once inside, keep close to one another and move silently. There are most likely soldiers crawling all over this place, and Duke Wu won’t give up so easily.”

  He nodded and the men began to climb up onto the palace’s window ledges. Hui led the seven men that’d been in the boat with him, and after only a few moments they came to an open window. He poked his head inside and saw the carpeted hallways empty of life.

  “Here’s where we’ll enter,” he said to the soldier behind him. “Go tell the others to gather here.”

  The man ran off and Hui climbed through the window and dropped down the few feet to the red-carpeted floor, careful to make as little sound as possible as he landed. He immediately raised his crossbow back to his face and peered down the sun-lit hallways in each direction, but his earlier estimate of the hallways as empty proved true. Within moments the rest of his men were in the hallway with him, with others gathering outside o the window to join them. He nodded to his men and then began moving, the others close behind.

  Ornate tapestries and statues filled the hallway from floor to ceiling as they moved deeper into the palace. The men checked each door as they passed, but most led into empty storerooms. Despite the two-year long siege, the palace looked well-maintained and Hui could see none of the ravages that had been so evident on the buildings outside that he’d peered into.

  When they reached the end of the hallway there was a staircase leading up to the third floor. Hui motioned four of his men to move up it and check for soldiers. When they reached the top they waved down that it was clear and Hui led the rest of the men up, a sizable force of thirty.

  Once up the stairs it was obvious to Hui that this was the main living area of the Duke. Finely upholstered-chairs and sofas sat beside lacquered tables while shelves filled with vases lined the walls. At the end of the room was a large set of double doors. Hui moved quickly to them and eased one open to cautiously peer inside. The room was dark, the windows closed and curtained against the light, but he could tell that it was a bedroom, and one made for a ruler. The bed was large and canopied, the chairs and tables even more finely crafted than those that sat outside.