Jizhou City.

The rain went on and on. The soldiers standing on the city walls had become part of the rain-scene—though they did not think of it that way themselves, for they were the ones looking out at the rain.

It occurred to Xiahou Zuo, for no particular reason, that a person standing in the rain, gazing at it, sees everything in the rain—including the people beside him—yet forgets entirely that he too is part of the scene.

So yes—the world was full of contradictions. And where people themselves were concerned, many such contradictions went unnoticed.

“People are so full of contradictions.”

He muttered it half to himself.

Tang Pidi, standing beside him, asked: “What brought that to mind?”

Xiahou Zuo smiled. “Nothing in particular. I’ve been standing in this rain so long that my mind started to wander—to some of the contradictory things in this world, and some of the contradictory people.”

He glanced at Tang Pidi and said: “A rain this heavy might hold up the Qingzhou army for a while.”

“People are so full of contradictions, indeed,” Tang Pidi said with a laugh. “Just as you said.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Without this rain,” Tang Pidi said, “the Qingzhou army would probably not have dared to attack rashly. They have come a long way, already weary, and they suffered a recent defeat—they would need a short rest to recover their morale. And yet it is precisely as they are about to arrive that this rain has come.”

Xiahou Zuo said: “So what you are saying is that they will be caught in the same contradiction—wait for the rain to stop, or attack in it. Both seem right, so neither is easy to choose. But because of that earlier defeat, they will feel that a surprise attack is worth the risk.”

“People all carry something like that inside them,” Tang Pidi said. “You surprised me and hit me once—I take note of it, and all I think about from then on is how to surprise you back, and hit you harder than you hit me.”

Xiahou Zuo said: “There is nothing they would want more than to take Jizhou in a surprise attack.”

He turned and called out: “Pass the order—everyone sharpen up. Reserves to the base of the wall, ready to reinforce. Everyone on the walls, keep your eyes wide open. The enemy could come at any moment.”

Those around him began relaying the order down the line. The defenders on the walls visibly tensed.

In truth, the Jizhou soldiers had not fought a proper battle in a long time. For a great many of them, this might well be the first serious engagement of their lives.

“The Qingzhou army is here. The Yanzhou army should not be coming now.”

Xiahou Zuo looked at Tang Pidi. “That speech of yours—Luo Geng will have taken it as a slight. He has always been this way. He is not tall, and from his earliest days in the army people looked down on him for it—which is why he detests that sort of thing above all else. Whoever slights him, he erupts.”

Tang Pidi smiled. “The Yanzhou Commissioner Zhou Shiren of course knows Luo Geng’s nature as well. So if he wanted to pass through Youzhou’s territory unhindered, his only option was to flatter Luo Geng—not to try to intimidate him. There are contradictory things in this world, and contradictory people too. Brave and capable, yet foolish—at that particular moment, there was only one General Luo.”

Xiahou Zuo sighed. “Can be deceived but not insulted—truly, there is only one General Luo in this world. There are not many men under heaven who know how to train and command soldiers better than he does.”

At that moment, a soldier spotted something unusual beyond the walls and immediately cried out: “Movement!”

Through the curtain of rain, far off, a vast dark mass was closing in rapidly. In the grey immensity of wind and rain—like an open sea—that swiftly advancing darkness was like some colossal, nameless creature racing toward them through the deep.

Xiahou Zuo at once turned to the men beside him: “Pass the order—no one shouts. No one is to call out. Wind and rain are fierce—tell the soldiers not to waste arrows at this range; they will do no harm. Everyone holds until the enemy reaches the base of the walls.”

“Yes, sir!”

Those assigned to carry orders sprinted off, relaying the command quietly as they ran.

Below the walls, the Qingzhou soldiers who had marched to Jizhou through the downpour were already exhausted to the bone. They raised their faces and looked up at the massive city looming ahead, and what they felt was probably not so different from what the defenders felt.

In their eyes, Jizhou City in the rain was like some primordial beast crouching here since before memory—an enormous thing that could swallow the sky—waiting for them to arrive, and then consume them all, flesh and blood alike.

Vanguard General Lin Yitai, burning to distinguish himself, ordered the horns to sound the attack the moment they arrived. His soldiers trudged through the mud without being able to see the ground beneath their feet. The earth had been dug into countless pits, and the men carrying ladders stumbled and went sprawling.

The footing was slick to begin with, and now the hidden pits made matters worse. The Qingzhou soldiers’ advance slowed considerably, men falling constantly.

Had Lin Yitai recovered any of his composure, he would have known not to order them onward. But he felt that the rain gave him a chance to take Jizhou, and he could not bear to let it pass untested—he was certain the Jizhou garrison must all be sheltering from the rain.

Stumbling forward, nearly reaching the wall, and still not a single arrow loosed from above—Lin Yitai’s heart leapt. He was now certain that the Jizhou soldiers had all gone to take cover.

“Attack!”

Lin Yitai bellowed.

The moment the dark mass of soldiers surged toward the base of the wall, the Jizhou defenders rose as one. In a disciplined, unified motion, they sent arrows pouring down upon the attackers in a dense cascade.

Arrow-rain, thicker than the rain itself.

The forward ranks of the Qingzhou soldiers were swept away before they could react. Men were running, and then suddenly they were not there anymore.

The fallen became obstacles for those behind. Soldiers tripped over corpses, stumbled from wounds, and screams erupted everywhere, drowning out the sound of the rain almost instantly.

Tang Pidi said to Xiahou Zuo: “If they don’t retreat, another half an hour of this will break their morale entirely. Half an hour from now, order the wall-mounted crossbows to fire at maximum range to impede any follow-on forces and shake their nerve. Xiahou—if you feel confident, take a force out through the east gate, circle around to their flank, and this battle can be won decisively.”

“But in this rain,” Xiahou Zuo said, “I have no clear picture of where their main force is.”

“Their main force is not before the walls,” Tang Pidi said. “My assessment is that it is still some distance away. If their full strength had arrived, they would not be attacking only the south wall. If they mean to surprise us in the rain and they have their whole army in hand, they would at minimum be hammering the east and south walls simultaneously. The fact that only the south wall is under attack tells me this is only the Qingzhou army’s vanguard.”

He continued: “They have only a few tens of thousands. If they divide their force to attack from multiple directions, each thrust becomes too thin. So they have chosen the south wall—it is the nearest. Commissioner Cui Yanlai of Qingzhou is said to be cautious by nature; he will not commit everything in a single throw.”

“Then I will go now to the east gate,” Xiahou Zuo said.

“You cannot go.”

“You are the supreme commander of this army,” Tang Pidi said. “If something goes wrong with you, the entire force loses heart in an instant. Give me every cavalryman in the city.”

“No,” Xiahou Zuo said. “I will not let you take the risk.”

Tang Pidi smiled. “Do you think I don’t fear death? You should know by now—I never commit to something I am not certain of. I never pretend to certainty I don’t have…”

Xiahou Zuo burst out laughing, but still shook his head. “The horses fit for cavalry use in the city number barely fifteen hundred. At the Hutuo River ambush, we had to press every cart-horse into service just to scrape together four thousand.”

“Fifteen hundred is enough.”

“Don’t forget,” Tang Pidi said, “they cannot see clearly.”

He stripped off his raincoat, took up the long wooden-shafted spear, and looked at Xiahou Zuo. “Give the order.”

Xiahou Zuo said yes, then asked with a curious look: “Where is your iron spear?”

Tang Pidi smiled faintly. “The enemies out there are not worthy of my iron spear.”

Half an hour later, Tang Pidi had assembled fifteen hundred cavalry at the east gate. A runner came down from the walls to report: no enemy forces visible outside the east gate. Tang Pidi immediately ordered the gate opened and dispatched men to wait at the north gate as well.

The fifteen hundred riders followed him out of the city. In the heavy rain, Tang Pidi ordered them to hold their pace and maintain formation as best they could. They were to hold their charge until they heard the sound of battle cries.

The column appeared from the Qingzhou army’s flank like the final straw that breaks a formation’s will.

Horsemen emerged from the rain—how many, no one could count. The Qingzhou soldiers assumed they had ridden into an ambush. The flank collapsed first, men running. The rear fell apart next, then the front. When Lin Yitai heard that cavalry was striking from the flank, his own nerve broke, and he had no choice but to order a retreat.

Tang Pidi drove back and forth along the enemy’s flank in the open ground beyond the walls, never plunging straight into their main body—fifteen hundred light horsemen crashing into tens of thousands of infantry would have been no different from target practice. Instead, they swept repeatedly across the outer edges of the enemy formation, like a blade being drawn across a stone, peeling away one layer of men at a time from the outside in.

When he saw the Qingzhou forces had withdrawn, Tang Pidi immediately sounded the horns and pulled back. They did not return through the east gate—they rode all the way around to the north gate to enter the city.

As if by design, after the fierce engagement was over, the sky gradually cleared. The rain eased, then stopped. The cloud cover slowly split open in long gaps, and shafts of sunlight came driving down through them like swords, spearing straight into the earth.

The men standing on the city walls looked out. The muddy ground was covered with bodies too many to count.

Those blade-like rays of light fell across the earth. The scene looked too beautiful to belong to the human world—a hellish beauty. The great rain had washed the mountains and rivers clean, enriching their color, and against that backdrop a human life seemed so very small.

The Qingzhou army had lost at minimum several thousand men. The troops who fell back carried the colors of mud on them from head to foot. They looked back at the Jizhou soldiers on the walls; the Jizhou soldiers looked back at them—in utterly different ways.

The Jizhou garrison on the walls was cheering, wave upon wave of voices rising. The Qingzhou soldiers walked away in silence, every face drawn and grim.

When Tang Pidi returned to the south wall, the Qingzhou forces outside had already withdrawn far into the distance. Xiahou Zuo saw him coming and went straight forward and wrapped him in a bear hug.

The two of them stood at the edge of the battlements, looking out. Xiahou Zuo was quiet for a long time, then said: “Perhaps it will not be long before the whole world under heaven knows the name of Tang Pidi.”

Tang Pidi smiled but said nothing.

“If you were leading the Qingzhou army,” Xiahou Zuo said, “how would you attack Jizhou?”

“A fortified city like Jizhou,” Tang Pidi said, “as long as provisions hold, cannot be taken lightly from without. The only reliable way to break such a city is from within and without at once.”

Xiahou Zuo stiffened. He turned to look at Tang Pidi. “The Cui family will have prepared for that long since.”

Tang Pidi smiled. “And yet even the Cui family did not anticipate their army attacking in the rain—so they made no move at all.”

“What about later?” Xiahou Zuo asked.

“Fire, most likely.”

“When the Qingzhou army attacks in strength,” Tang Pidi said, “the Cui family’s people inside the city will set fires in multiple locations. In the confusion, if they can seize a single gate, they can let the Qingzhou forces in. The options for this kind of scheme are not numerous—and then there is the other way: killing you.”

“Then I’ll go and slaughter the Cui family entire,” Xiahou Zuo said.

“Don’t.”

“The Cui family’s operatives,” Tang Pidi said, “will have scattered and gone into hiding long since—if they were going to hide, they’ve done it already. The Cui family compound will have no one left but servants. If you march soldiers to the Cui compound now, you will only cause every other prominent family in the city to panic, and that will push them toward surrender.”

He looked at Xiahou Zuo. “Leave the matter of the Cui family to Li Chi. Whatever I have thought of, and whatever you have thought of—Li Chi will have thought of it already.”

—