The Xie family, high and low, were wracked with worry.

Though it had been fewer than three days since the Ning Army destroyed the water wheels, the suffering caused by the absence of water was already acutely felt — an affliction that kept people from sleep through the night.

To live in a mountain-city and keep water in reserve was both habit and common sense. But when you watched the water in your jars dwindle without any means of replenishment, the fear and dread that gripped you was the most agonizing thing of all.

By the fifth day, the meager reserves in many households had been nearly exhausted, even though these past days people had been drinking in the most careful, tiny sips.

The Xie family suffered more than most. The family was large, and apart from the kitchen there was almost no stored water at all. The aqueducts ran through the Xie family estate at every turn, making drawing water so convenient that there had been no need to store any.

But it was precisely this extreme convenience that made this great family’s ordeal all the more bitter now.

“I will go and negotiate.”

Xie Huaiyuan rose to his feet. “Send word to the Ning Army commander at the lakeside — I want to meet with him. In front of the city walls. Ask him whether he dares come.”

Before long, the messenger had arrived at the Ning Army’s camp on the shore and conveyed Xie Huaiyuan’s meaning — that he wished to ask whether the other party dared to meet. Liu Ge found this rather amusing.

Liu Ge told the messenger: “Go back and tell Xie Huaiyuan — never mind meeting outside the city, I would gladly come and sit in his drawing room. On your way back, you may also ask on my behalf: if I came to his drawing room, would he dare let me in?”

The message was delivered, and Xie Huaiyuan heard it with considerable indignation.

But thinking it over — he truly would not dare.

For one fleeting moment, a thought crossed his mind: since the Ning Army commander was so bent on walking into a trap, let him come. Once inside, seize him as a hostage, use that to force the Ning Army to stand aside, and then arrange for the water wheels to be repaired.

But a moment’s further thought: what if the Ning Army refused to yield? Then that general would die inside his home, and what had been a situation that could be resolved by surrender would become a clan-annihilation. The Xie family would be wiped out.

At this juncture Xie Huaiyuan could not afford not to think more carefully.

For he had heard — the Ning Army never yields.

So both sides agreed to meet outside the city gates. For safety, Xie Huaiyuan did not leave the gates themselves; instead he had the drawbridge lowered halfway, and stood upon the half-raised bridge, while Liu Ge stood opposite him.

This was, in truth, a fairly useless little psychological trick — by standing on the half-raised drawbridge, he could appear to have the high ground.

Would Liu Ge care about any of that?

Some men stand on high ground and strike a condescending pose and are nothing but dwarves. Others stand in a depression and look up, and are gazing at the stars.

“General Liu.”

Xie Huaiyuan spoke loudly from where he stood: “Are you aware that since you destroyed the water wheels, the common people inside the city are already close to dying of thirst? I have long heard that Prince Ning places the common people above all else, that the people’s welfare is his guiding principle — yet now it seems those reports may have been exaggerated.”

Liu Ge smiled and said nothing, for there was nothing worth saying. Such nonsense was hardly worth the effort of listening to.

Xie Huaiyuan pressed on: “The number of Xie family members in this city is far smaller than the common populace. Inside Tingyang there are over thirty thousand ordinary residents. General, are you not afraid that tens of thousands of people dying of thirst will burden Prince Ning with an eternal curse upon his name?”

This time Liu Ge answered.

He smiled and said: “Prince Ning may be benevolent, but the generals under Prince Ning cannot afford to be merciful. Those of us who wear armor — what we do has never been something merciful. A general leads soldiers to war in order to win. Victory comes primarily through killing. Whether you are cut down by a blade or died of thirst — what difference does it make?”

“Furthermore, the right to speak about what happens here belongs to the victor. If your whole city dies of thirst, I will burn Tingyang to the ground, and what the world will hear tomorrow is probably that the Xie family refused to surrender and had no way out, and in their desperation set fire to the city themselves — unwilling to spare even the common people from sharing their fate in death.”

Hearing these words, Xie Huaiyuan’s color drained visibly from his face.

He could not tell whether Liu Ge was speaking as a threat or meant it in earnest. And it was precisely that uncertainty — not knowing whether the enemy was capable of it — that was most terrifying.

Xie Huaiyuan understood clearly: men who intend to accomplish great things rarely have soft hearts.

If the Xie family continued to hold out and Heaven showed no mercy either, sending not a single drop of rain in the days ahead, would it even be difficult for the Ning Army to enter the city?

Never mind the situation as it then stood — even now, though no one yet dared say it openly, there were no small number of people who were already thinking: perhaps it would be better to surrender.

“Master Xie.”

Liu Ge said: “I am a military man. Military men are least suited to negotiating. If what you intended to convey was only the meaning behind what you just said, then so be it — your words pose no real threat to me.”

With that, Liu Ge turned and walked away.

Xie Huaiyuan, in a panic, called after him: “If you walk away just like that, General — don’t blame me for ordering a volley of arrows loosed!”

Liu Ge turned and looked at him. “Is it your wish to see the Xie family reduced to nothing, not a blade of grass left standing?”

He turned back to face Xie Huaiyuan: “If you don’t know how to make a proper threat, let me teach you. Listen carefully. If you open the city and surrender, the Xie family’s crimes fall on you alone — should Prince Ning see fit to be merciful, all others beyond yourself will go unpunished. But if I die outside these city walls, Prince Ning can ensure there is not a person left alive bearing the surname Xie anywhere in the world.”

Having said this, Liu Ge turned around and gave a casual order: “Bring me a bed out here. Master Xie says he wants to have me shot with arrows — I’ll give Master Xie the opportunity.”

Xie Huaiyuan assumed this was mere bluster. But to his utter astonishment, those utterly dauntless Ning Army soldiers actually hauled a bed up from the slope below.

Liu Ge lay down on it. “Remove the shields. We don’t want to block Master Xie’s soldiers’ aim.”

And his personal guards truly set all the shields aside.

This sort of scene was something Xie Huaiyuan had never seen or heard of in his life.

This meeting had been worse than no meeting at all. Xie Huaiyuan stood there feeling not merely awkward but as if someone had slapped him across the face.

He could only retreat inside the walls and give the order not to engage, thinking: surely that Liu Ge, being a general, would not actually just stay camped there indefinitely?

Yes. He actually would.

He did not leave that evening either — he simply slept there.

The next morning Liu Ge rose early, washed and groomed himself outside the city walls, and even indulged in a bath. Quite unabashedly.

After bathing and changing into fresh clothes, he had water heated beside him to brew tea.

On the city wall above, soldiers whose lips had cracked from thirst watched as he sat at the foot of the walls, not far away, leisurely sipping tea and reading — looking for all the world as though he had not a care.

That afternoon, Liu Ge even had his personal guards cut down timber, and right there beside the walls, built himself a swing.

This general, it seemed, had a youthful spirit — sitting in the swing and rocking back and forth, he looked more at ease than ever.

The first day passed. On the second day, it grew worse.

Liu Ge had soldiers bring hoes, and looking for all the world as if he had nothing better to do, cleared a stretch of overgrown wasteland not far away and leveled the ground.

Then with a hoe he dug holes, had people produce some kind of seeds, and proceeded to plant a small plot of ground right outside the city walls.

Shortly after, Ning Army soldiers came up carrying shoulder poles and buckets, and right in front of the soldiers on the wall who were nearly dying of thirst, poured water bucket by bucket to irrigate the new plantings.

One day and then another, and now another — by the count of the days, this was the ninth day without water in Tingyang. All stores within the city had been fully exhausted, and Heaven itself seemed particularly cruel — in this fourth month, not a single drop of rain had fallen.

General Liu Ge was still the same — rising each morning to wash, groom himself, practice his martial forms, sit in the swing, read in the rocking chair, and water what he had planted.

Near dusk, from atop the city wall came a sudden burst of clamor. No one could quite make out what had happened — but Liu Ge had a fairly good guess. Someone had probably reached their limit and decided to open the city and surrender, and been held down by the others.

But once that sort of thing has happened once, it will never be the last time.

On the morning of the tenth day, the drawbridge came down.

At the sound of the drawbridge groaning and grinding its way down, the corner of Liu Ge’s mouth curved upward, almost of its own accord.

Before long, Xie Huaiyuan led the Xie family, high and low, out in a column. They knelt before Liu Ge — Xie Huaiyuan at their head, hands cradling the Xie family’s registry, and kowtowed in submission.

Liu Ge did not know what had transpired inside the Xie family during those three or four days — whether there had been arguments, whether there had been internal strife. He did not care.

He did not even much care whether anyone had actually died of thirst inside Tingyang.

He was a general. His way was to win.

In a certain sense, even the Xie family’s surrender did not bring him much joy, for it was exactly what he had foreseen.

It was the cracked and peeling lips of those who emerged from the city — that was what had conquered their courage, not cavalry and steel.

For a general, the greatest joy ought to come from victory on the battlefield.

And so when he watched Xie Huaiyuan at the head of the Xie family — all those people streaming out one by one, then dropping to their knees in a great wave — Liu Ge only let the corner of his mouth curve the very slightest fraction upward.

This — amounted to nothing.

—

At the Ning Army’s main camp.

After Li Chi took the dispatch Liu Ge had sent back, he showed no particular reaction. He simply passed the victory report along to Xie Huainan without a word.

Xie Huainan read it, and his expression changed greatly.

He rose and stepped back several paces, then dropped to his knees with his robes spread around him. “This subject gives deepest thanks to my lord for his magnanimous grace in not ordering the entire Xie clan to be exterminated.”

Li Chi said: “Rise. I intend to make you the Military Governor of Jingzhou — which is precisely why I had to deal with your family so sternly. Otherwise, you would have no means of establishing your authority.”

Xie Huainan did not rise. He kowtowed again. “This subject gives thanks to my lord.”

Li Chi said: “As for your family — apart from your eldest brother, you may handle the rest as you see fit. Even he I will not have killed arbitrarily. There is a mountain in Yuzhou called Qipan Mountain, and within it there is a pig farm. Send your eldest brother there to raise pigs. He should find there quite a few people he may not have met but has certainly heard of.”

Xie Huainan understood that this was the most generous clemency his lord could extend to the Xie family, extended out of consideration for him and Xie Xiu.

Otherwise, for a family that had supplied Yang Dingfang with such enormous quantities of provisions and materiel, another lord might well have already made an example of them with blood.

“One more matter.”

Li Chi looked at Xie Huainan. “The several dozen large ships we came with were borrowed from Cao Lie. I said I would not take them for nothing. I am entrusting this matter to you. Load the Xie family’s assets onto those ships — fill all several dozen vessels — and then arrange for the fleet to be returned to Yuzhou and delivered back to Cao Lie.”

Clemency first — now a disciplining blow.

Xie Huainan understood naturally. If there was no penalty whatsoever for the Xie family, how would the generals of the Ning Army be appeased?

As long as not too many people died, what did it matter if a few dozen shiploads of family property were hauled away?

So Xie Huainan bowed. “This subject obeys. This subject will go at once.”

Li Chi gave a sound of acknowledgment. “When you send men back, tell Cao Lie that once the ships are unloaded they are to be returned to me. I said I would use them for a year, and that time is not yet up.”

With that, Li Chi rose and helped Xie Huainan to his feet. “I will arrange an escort to accompany you home. Let Xie Xiu take his personal guard battalion along with you.”

Xie Huainan felt something churning inside him like great waves — yet those waves carried, above all, a powerful sense of relief and release.

The Xie family had survived after all. Whatever else one might say, that was reason enough to be grateful. Anyone who had not been swept from this world by Prince Ning’s iron cavalry had cause to be grateful.

For Xie Huainan knew — in the new world to come, there would be very little room for the old.

—