He put his hand around Zhai, turned, and began walking down the river bank.
“Over the course of my fifty-year reign we’ve expanded the Wei borders, nearly doubling them with the conquests we’ve made against the tribes and the lesser states. Our military achievements, though significant, have also been matched by our domestic accomplishments. When I came to power most of the people could barely think further than the day confronting them, so concerned were they with just getting enough to eat. Our changes have pulled tens of thousands up out of poverty and given them more than they every could have imagined, but perhaps most importantly, they now have respect. The can hold their heads high when they travel their lands, and they can be proud to be of Wei.”
“But we’ve not stopped with just military and domestic initiatives to satisfy our current problems and ambitions. We’ve thought far into the future, and trained men of talent, turning them into great engineers. Canals have been constructed from the rivers to our cities, creating a wealth of plenty for our people. Even as we speak, and with the sun not even fully up yet, I know that Ximen Bao is already urging his workers on to complete the Great Canal which will end all worries about food for generations.”
He stopped and shook his head. “I’ve seen and created so much, Zhai, that I don’t want to see it all squandered when I’m gone.”
“Your son knows this, Sire, and he would never do anything to shame your memory.”
“But his son will, I know it,” Wen said, stopping to turn again to the river. “Hui will lose everything in his blind ambition. Oh, he might think that he’s doing the right thing, but I know that he’ll be the ruin of Wei.”
“Hui is still young and headstrong,” Zhai said. “There’s no telling what changes will take place within him over the coming decades. Your son Wu is strong and still young. He will rule for many years after you’re gone, and Wei will flourish under his leadership. When it is time for Hui to assume the throne upon his own father’s death, I’m confident that he’ll be ready.”
Wen turned back to Zhai. “You’ve been a good advisor to me for many years, Zhai, but you’ve also been a friend. Your words ease my worried mind, but I think they contain more hope than certainty.”
“There can be no certainty where the future is concerned.”
“No, there cannot.”
They stood looking out at the river for several more minutes as the world lightened around them. Finally Zhai put his own arm around Wen’s shoulders.
“Sire, let us get back on the road. The sudden capture of Duke Kang might be just the stimulus we need have that meeting with King Weilie and to finally be recognized as a state in our own right.”
Wen turned to look at his friend and Zhai saw him smile for the first time that day.
“You’re right, Zhai. Let’s make our way to the border and leave our worries of the future for another day.”
* * * * *
The terrain changed noticeably during their second day out from the capital. The mountains that had reared up all around them became less numerous and not quite so high. The border with Qi was little more than a day’s chariot ride from the eastern sea, and as they got closer to it the vegetation around them changed from the coniferous trees found inland to the more lush green vegetation of the coastal areas. Still, they were far from the coast, and the land continued to have a mountainous feel to it.
They followed the Yellow River, the road running parallel to it for its entire length to the sea, and their journey was uneventful. They saw few people, peasants from surrounding villages mainly, and not a single chariot, only a few carts and wagons, and those mainly pulled by donkeys.
Their eight chariots caused little disruption to the surrounding area besides a few minutes of noise and a lingering cloud of dust. Most people didn’t stray far from their villages, and most of those were set far enough from the main road that there was little indication that the Marquis of Wei was passing through his lands.
“We’ll reach the city of Wei in another hour or so,” Zhai yelled loudly so as to be heard above the constant rumble of the chariot. “Do you wish to stop?”
Wen had allowed Zhai to steer the chariot that morning, for he wanted to be free from all distractions, letting his mind roam over the possibilities of the coming meeting with General Zhai Jue and the myriad opportunities it held for the future of Wei.
“Sire?” Zhai yelled more loudly, rubbing his shoulder up against Wen so that he’d notice.
Wen shook his head. “No, let us keep moving. Any stop there would only cause the local magistrate to insist upon a banquet of some sort, and I’m in no mood to delay the meeting with General Zhai Jue.”
Zhai nodded and cracked the reins across the horses back in answer, giving the chariot an additional short burst of speed.
The hour passed quickly and with it the city of Wei on their left. The walled city was large, with a population of more than fifty thousand, and the road became much busier long before they saw the great stone and mortar walls that loomed up on the horizon when they were still a few miles distant. Zhai cracked the reins hard and passed the slow carts and wagons quickly, and after only a few minutes they were completely past the city. If anyone had spotted Marquis Wen in the lead chariot they’d given no indication, and the eight chariots continued on toward the Qi border.
There was little opportunity to talk while riding in a chariot, for the noise was just too great. Marquis Wen used the time to think, mainly about what reaction King Weilie would have when the news inevitably reached him, and also what Marquis’ Lie and Jing would think when they arrived at the border that day or the next.
It’d been only three months before, just around the time that Ximen Bao had been sent to Zhongshan to begin diverting the Fan River, when Tai Tian had requested an audience with Marquis’ Wen, Lie, and Jing in the Zhao capital city of Handan. The fact that Handan had been chosen as the meeting place alerted Wen immediately that the message wasn’t the first that had been sent, and that Lie had been the first to be contacted by Tai with the request for an audience. Perhaps Lie’s youth had been the reason he’d been hesitant to throw his support behind Tai alone. Or maybe Tai had wanted the help of all three states, but had just felt the most comfortable going to Zhao first with the proposal. Whatever the reason, Wen had agreed to the meeting, curious as to its intent, although well aware that Tai was most likely ready to make the final push against Duke Kang.
It was no surprise, really. Tai Tian was still a young man, and therefore had a young man’s ambition. Duke Kang had inherited the tenuous throne from his father, Duke Xuan, when he’d died just a few years before. Duke Xuan had been a strong ruler, although he was able to do little more than keep the small area that House Jiang controlled. Still, that was an accomplishment, considering that House Tian controlled the majority of Qi. Wen had suspected that Tai felt confident going against Duke Kang, a ruler who was still young and inexperienced, and therefore easier to topple.
Wen arrived in Handan and had immediately been impressed with Tai. The man was older than Wen had suspected he would be, but he’d been confident, and Wen remembered distinctly how Tai had held his head high, as a ruler should.
During the meeting with the three Marquis’, Tai had outlined how, with the help of a small company of troops to augment his own forces, he could make the final push against Duke Kang and end House Jiang’s six hundred year-long reign of Qi. Something in the man’s bearing and the way he’d been so sure of himself had impressed not only Wen but Lie and Jing as well. They’d agreed to send a small company of troops, no more than a thousand from each state, to aid Tai in his efforts. In exchange, Tai had promised that he’d be a friend to the three rulers, something each was happy to hear. Chu, although quiet now for more than fifty yeas, still loomed up large and menacing in their minds, and Han and Wei, both of which shared a common border with Chu, were glad to have a friend to help against any sudden moves by the giant to their south.
No talk ha
d been given over to the fate of Duke Kang, his heirs, and the future fate of House Jiang. Wen realized now that it’d been folly to not plan for anything concerning the ruler, but Tai had been so confident in his assessment of victory over the Duke that each had at the time assumed that Duke Kang would be killed in the hostilities to come. Now, as Wen thundered down the road toward Qi, he realized the mistake that Tai’s confidence had created, and which his own general had helped bring about.
But the possibilities that the situation had brought about, and not just the problems, were to be considered, Wen thought to himself. There was a good chance, with Duke Kang still alive and in captivity, that he’d want to bargain for his release. And what would he be willing to give for that release? Wen thought. Just about anything, most likely. It was no secret that Duke Kang’s father, Duke Xuan, had been close to King Weilie of Zhou. Perhaps some of that closeness had transferred to concern for Xuan’s son. If so, there could be a chance that the three Marquis’ could use Duke Kang to get from King Weilie what they wanted, or specifically what Wen wanted: recognition finally that Wei, Han, and Zhao were the rightful inheritors of the Jin title.
Wen smiled to himself for the first time that day. Perhaps General Zhai Jue wasn’t so foolish in capturing Duke Kang after all. Perhaps by not letting him die in battle the General had opened up even greater possibilities, possibilities which would come to Wei first, before Han and Zhao even knew of them. As it was, Wen suspected that the messages from Anyi had barely reached Handan and Yangzhai yet. If that was the case, both Lie and Jing would still be another day in coming to the Qi border. That would give Wen enough time to negotiate with Duke Kang himself, as well as with Tai Tian. Wen’s mind churned with the possibilities that the events of the past day had suddenly thrown his way. If everything could be handled correctly, Duke Kang’s captivity might just prove to be the greatest thing to occur for Wen in a month of great occurrences.
Wen smiled to himself for the second time that day and prodded Zhai to crack the reins again, driving the chariot on faster. He wanted to get to Duke Kang as quickly as possible; for the Duke, he now began to realize, might just be the one person that would finally be able to bring about what Wen had been striving toward for his entire reign: the formal recognition of Wei as one of the Three Jins.
FOURTEEN
“They’ve come,” a man said from the doorway.
General Zhai Jue stopped writing and raised his head. His chief lieutenant was standing in the doorway with an expectant look on his face.
“Very well,” the General said as he stood from the desk.
He stretched his arms above his head, for he’d been sitting in the same position for several hours now, and his whole body seemed to ache. It wasn’t the kind of ache that a soldier should feel, but then again, Zhai Jue wasn’t a soldier any longer – he was a general. There was quite a difference, as he’d come to realize over the few years that he’d held the position. For one thing, a common soldier didn’t have to sit at a table filling out reports, reading and writing correspondence most of the day. A common soldier did the fighting, and when there wasn’t much of that he did the waiting, by far the most tedious task of military life, or so Zhai Jue had thought until he’d left it behind.
“Their chariot is coming down the road now,” the lieutenant added as Zhai Jue moved toward the doorway. “They’ve eight chariots, and we can see Marquis Wen, Minister of War Zhai Huang, and Prince Wu among them.”
Zhai Jue nodded and stepped past the man and into the small hallway that led to the stairs. His boots clicked audibly as he moved down the wooden floor to the stairs and within a few moments he was down them and out into the open courtyard outside the small grouping of buildings that he’d chosen as the designated meeting place a few days earlier. A few more quick strides brought him to the two soldiers flanking the opened-gate of the compound’s wall and out onto the dusty road that stretched back to the city of Wei in one direction and onward to the Qi border in the other.
It was not yet midday and the general was forced to raise his arm up to block the sun from his eyes as he peered down the road at the growing cloud of dust being thrown up in the wake of the chariots fast approaching. They were still far enough away that he couldn’t make out any of the people, although he was fairly certain that Marquis Wen would be in the lead chariot, perhaps driving it himself.
Zhai Jue smiled slightly as he thought of his Marquis. Wen had appointed him a general following a successful campaign against the Rong Tribes three years earlier. There’d been nothing too spectacular about the campaign, one which took place far from the Wei border and closer to the lands of Qin, but one that also kept the Rong Tribes occupied and thus unable to distract the larger Wei Army which was then planning the attacks into the Xihe areas of Qin under General Wu Qi.
Zhai Jue had been serving under General Wu Qi when he’d been called to Anyi for an audience with Marquis Wen. Zhai still remembered how nervous he’d felt to be in the presence of Wen, a man that’d ruled Wei since his own father had been a common soldier at Jinyang, a battle that Wen had himself fought in. The meeting had been short, so much so that it was over before Zhai even fully realized it’d begun. Wen had asked him how he liked serving under General Wu Qi, to which Zhai answered that it was an honor. Then Wen asked what he thought of the Rong Tribes, to which Zhai said they were a menace and a distraction. Wen had nodded, told Zhai that he was now a general, and that he’d be sent north to deal with those tribes. Zhai had bowed and then been unceremoniously ushered from the hall, the palace, and then Anyi, to where a small army of several thousand men awaited him, each ready to march north.
Zhai smiled again at the recollection of his only meeting with Marquis Wen. It had been simple, brief, and to the point, and Zhai had taken a lesson from it, dealing with his own subordinates in the same fashion from that day on. The campaign against the Rong Tribes had proven short and quite easy, and Zhai had been ordered to continue south into the Xihe area of Qin, where he’d been fighting until three months before when Marquis Wen, this time through a message, had sent him on another special assignment to aid Tai Tian in his fight against Duke Kang of Qi.
Never one to be concerned much for the political ramifications of military action, Zhai had simply shrugged at the orders, selected the best men from his ranks to make up the thousand-man force that Wen had ordered, and marched southeast toward Qi. He didn’t know much about House Tian and House Jiang, other than that they’d been fighting one another for control of Qi longer than he’d been alive. What had come as a surprise, however, was that Zhai would be working in conjunction with Han and Zhao forces. He’d never worked with commanders from other states before, although quite a large portion of his own army had been made up of soldiers who hailed from other states. Again, Zhai shrugged and thought little of it, and found to his satisfaction that the two generals he met upon arriving in Qi were of the same opinion.
What had proven most troublesome, however, were not his co-commanders, but the man that they’d been sent to help. Tai Tian was as headstrong as they came, a born leader with no one to lead. Three severe years of flooding more than two decades before, followed by three more years of severe drought, had led to large scale famine in Qi and the population had been reduced by almost half. Grain imports from other states coupled with a few good years of weather had brought the state back, but there was still a shortage of able-bodied men to fight, so Tai was faced with the reality of asking for assistance from Wei, Han, and Zhao.
Convinced as he was that a final push against the equally pressed-for-men forces of Duke Kang would be what he needed, he’d swallowed his pride and asked for help. For whatever reasons, probably future political favors that Zhai didn’t even want to begin to consider, the three states had agreed, and within a few months the allied forces of Wei, Han, and Zhao, together with the small force of House Tian, had cornered Duke Kang’s forces on a narrow plain outside of the Jiang controlled capital of Linzi. Cut-off without any
way to get back to his capital other than fighting through the allied army in front of him, Duke Kang did just that, and suffered a devastating defeat. While his army was being massacred on the field, Duke Kang had tried to slip around the fighting in order to make his way back to Linzi. A small company of General Zhai Jue’s men had seen the escape attempt, however, and they’d quickly made short work of the hundred men escorting the fleeing ruler, capturing Duke Kang in the process. General Zhai had been notified immediately from where he‘d been overseeing the battle, and he’d quickly rushed to where the captured duke was being held.
For a man that had prided himself on remaining neutral throughout the many political campaigns he’d served in, General Zhai Jue now found himself knee-deep in political mire. The smart thing to do, he’d told himself, would be to kill Duke Kang right then and there, handing the State of Qi over to Tai Tian. Another option had been to hand Duke Kang over to Tai Tian and let the man do the killing himself. Something had pulled at General Zhai Jue, however, a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that he’d never felt before, and couldn’t quite explain. The feeling caused him to order the men that’d captured the duke to spirit him away from the battle and toward the border with Wei. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d told the men to do that, and he quickly came to regret the decision afterward. Still, the decision had been made, and instead of telling his co-commanders and Tai Tian, he’d sent a message off to Marquis Wen in Anyi, telling him of what had occurred.
That had been just two days before, and now Marquis Wen was fully in view, just a few hundred yards away, his chariot thundering down the road to meet with Zhai Jue for the second time, and, Zhai thought with a gulp, possibly the last.
Wen saw a man standing outside the small compound and knew before he could even make out the man’s features that it was General Zhai Jue. Wen had only met the man once, and that no more than a few minutes years before, but he’d grown happy with his choice to elevate him to general. Zhai Jue had served him well in the various battles in the north, and again in the fighting within Qi. Whatever had possessed the man to capture Duke Kang, however, Wen did not know, and he doubted that Zhai Jue did either. Still, what Wen had first thought a disastrous turn of events had come to seem more beneficial the more he’d thought on it.
The Warring States, Books 1-3 Page 14
