Ninety-One: Alliance Infighting

Liao Hua replied, "Qiao Fa is not dead. I have placed him among the laborers in the stockade camp. As for Wen Gui, he is there keeping watch over him."

Cao Hong asked, "Since you captured this man, and he is not one of my camp, you should have reported it to the lord. Why come to me instead?"

Liao Hua said, "I did mean to report it, but Wen Gui stopped me. He said this matter should wait until the general returned and learned of it before deciding whether or not to tell the lord."

Cao Hong said, "He is only a thousand-man captain in the allied army. Why be so secretive?"

Liao Hua said, "According to Wen Gui, Qiao Fa brought an extremely important message."

Something stirred in Cao Hong's heart. "What message?"

Liao Hua smiled and answered, "That, I never asked. Dian, the palace guard, taught me that as the lord's personal guard, one should not go prying into matters one ought not to know, if one wishes to live long."

Cao Hong laughed heartily. Dian Wei was indeed no fool; he even remembered to give Liao Hua such reminders from time to time. Then he said, "In that case, take me to see Wen Gui."

In the northwest corner of the stockade, inside a wooden hut in the laborers' camp, Qiao Fa wore coarse homespun garments and bore not the slightest air of a thousand-man captain. By contrast, Pan Zhang, clad in gleaming armor, looked most imposing. In the span of a few months, their positions had been completely reversed; the strange turns of fate were plain to see.

A knock sounded at the door. Pan Zhang showed a wary expression, stepped forward, and opened it a crack. Seeing that it was Liao Hua and Cao Hong, he let them in and bowed. "Young Master!"

Though months had passed since they last met, Pan Zhang's cultivation had actually broken through to the realm of Refining Qi into Spirit. His brow, too, had taken on a steadier cast, showing that in both scholarship and martial arts he had made good progress during these months.

Cao Hong cast a glance at the unsettled Qiao Fa and said coolly, "Wen Gui, since you've captured this fellow, why not send him to the lord?"

Liao Hua muttered, "I'll go keep watch outside," and slipped from the room, very much the sly fellow.

Pan Zhang bent low and said, "Forgive me, Young Master. It is not that I have withheld him from the lord, but that he carries a major piece of news. Wen Gui did not know whether it would bring blessing or disaster, so I wished first to let the Young Master know."

Cao Hong asked, "What happened?"

Pan Zhang said, "After the Young Master went south, I followed the lord to Hanoi. Because I was the Young Master's subordinate, and because the Young Master had asked the lord on my behalf for military books, the lord still remembered me. Thus he showed me special favor, exempting me from duty so I could devote myself to studying the art of war. I was also free to come and go within the stockade. So apart from reading and wandering about, I did nothing else in my spare time. Until one day, while I was out roaming, I happened to hear someone calling my name in the hall. That man was one of Qiao Fa's subordinates, and once, he had been my comrade in arms."

Cao Hong turned to Qiao Fa and asked, "Did you send him?"

Qiao Fa answered, "Yes, yes. I sent him to look for Wen Gui, because these days the grain supplied by the Governor of Ji Province has grown less and less, and many of the brothers in the Sour Jujube camp can no longer even eat. With no other choice, we have had to go out and requisition grain from the nearby area..."

Cao Hong sneered. "Requisition grain? You mean plunder."

Qiao Fa stammered, "B-but it was also unavoidable! Our army had neither provisions nor pay, and Lord Qiao and Governor Liu were at odds, so we could not transport grain from Dong Commandery to the camp, because Governor Liu would send men to intercept the grain convoys. Thus our army could only go out and seize supplies..."

Lord Qiao was Qiao Mao, the Dong Commandery Administrator descended from the Three Excellencies; Governor Liu was Liu Dai, the Imperial kinsman and Governor of Yan Province. According to Qiao Fa, these two men were in conflict, so when Qiao Mao ran short of grain he could not transport supplies from Dong Commandery to Chenliu, for Liu Dai would send men to intercept them. Such disputes between local officials were all too common. In Cao Hong's memory, the Administrator of Wu Commandery, Cao Ding, had also been at odds with a neighboring administrator, and the four great clans of Wu Commandery had therefore instigated the local gentry of that neighboring commandery to drive the man out. Such underhanded maneuvers among local officials were by no means unusual.

So Cao Hong asked, "And after going out to seize grain, what then?"

Qiao Fa said bitterly, "Sour Jujube lies within the territory of Chenliu, and is under Lord Zhang's jurisdiction. After a few raids, grievances mounted everywhere, and Lord Zhang naturally sent men to warn the allied forces against further grain seizures. If anyone continued, he would dispatch troops to punish them."

Cao Hong nodded. Chenliu was Zhang Miao's territory, and the allies were stealing grain there; of course that would be unbearable. So he asked, "And after that?"

Qiao Fa said, "After that, the provisions became even scarcer. Not only our Dong Commandery troops, but the other allied armies could no longer eat their fill, so they began seizing grain again, and even clashed with Lord Zhang's soldiers. Then Governor Liu took the opportunity to join forces with Lord Zhang and attack our Dong Commandery troops. Seeing the situation grow increasingly dangerous, I wanted to find another path. But Dong Commandery remained Lord Qiao's territory, so I dared not return home. Then I heard that Wen Gui had followed Lord Cao here to Hanoi, so I sent men to search for him, hoping that, for the sake of our shared hometown, he would introduce me to Lord Cao."

Pan Zhang stood aside, curled his lip, and said nothing. The meaning was plain: he had spoken coldly and harshly before, yet now had the gall to come begging him. Shameless indeed.

Cao Hong also knew that a fellow townsman was, after all, a fellow townsman. Pan Zhang could not simply refuse this Qiao Fa, fallen into misfortune as he was. Besides, Qiao Fa had once been nothing more than a servant in the Pan household. As a young master of the Pan family, Pan Zhang could not help but answer when the man called him master. In the end, the blows he had suffered at Qiao Fa's hands had burned in him deeply, and to slay the man with a single stroke would have been far less satisfying than making him come begging. After all, Pan Zhang was still a youth, a youth keen to excel and to triumph, and one who enjoyed, in some measure, getting the better of a grievance.

Cao Hong then asked Pan Zhang, "So Wen Gui went across the river to find him?"

Pan Zhang nodded and said somewhat ashamedly, "This fellow sent men to plead in humble terms, and I found it hard to refuse, so I could only cross the river to fetch him and bring him here to Hanoi. After all, he knows no one here."

Cao Hong said, "Yuanjian told me that when you came upriver from the Yellow River, he was covered in blood. What happened?"

Pan Zhang said, "When I reached Sour Jujube, the Dong Commandery troops had already departed. After making inquiries, I learned that Lord Qiao had grown indignant at Liu Dai for blocking the grain route, and because the provisions could no longer be supplied, had already led the army back to Dong Commandery, departing two days earlier. I chased after them all the way, only to find the Dong Commandery troops strewn dead across the fields, their armor and weapons abandoned. I knew they had been ambushed, so I kept tracking them. It was also Qiao Fa's fate that had not yet run out. I discovered he had been captured alive by a ten-man squad that had broken away from the main force, so I stepped forward and killed those ten men, rescuing Qiao Fa."

At this, Cao Hong frowned and asked, "Whose men were that ten-man squad?"

Pan Zhang said, "They were from Governor Liu Dai of Yan Province."

Cao Hong looked at Qiao Fa. The latter nodded to confirm it, and the room instantly fell silent.

Liu Dai and Qiao Mao were both members of the coalition against Dong Zhuo. The situation was now very clear: Liu Dai had taken the opportunity to launch a surprise attack while Qiao Mao's army was returning. From this it seemed that infighting among the allied forces had already begun. No wonder Pan Zhang had not dared hand Qiao Fa over to Cao Cao. After all, Cao Cao was the one who had convened the alliance. Pan Zhang could not guess how the alliance's own sponsor would react upon learning of such internal strife, whether he might vent his anger on them. So he had only dared to wait until Cao Hong returned before making a decision.

That, Pan Zhang had handled wisely. If Cao Hong were the one to inform Cao Cao, then no matter how bad Cao Cao's mood, he would not take it out on Cao Hong. But toward these two little figures, a displeased Cao Cao might well have cut them down in a fit of rage. After all, in this age there were many perverse generals and commanders, and taking out one's temper on soldiers was an everyday affair.

Only Pan Zhang did not know that Cao Cao had already decided to disband the coalition. Learning of the infighting would not move him much. Yet Cao Hong thought of something else entirely. He asked Qiao Fa, "What of your commander? Did he escape?"

Qiao Fa answered, "We were ambushed in a valley. Enemy soldiers covered the mountains and plains. When I broke through, there were only a few men left by my side. Looking back, the enemy banners blotted out the sky and sun. Afterwards I hid in the mountains, but enemy troops even searched me out. I fear the commander may not have survived..."

The Dong Commandery Administrator is dead? Ha! Excellent! Cao Hong patted Pan Zhang on the shoulder and said, "Wen Gui, you have done very well! Now come with me and bring this fellow to see my elder brother."

Pan Zhang agreed, then took Qiao Fa and followed Cao Hong out of the hut. Liao Hua, standing twenty paces away, saw the three emerge and came forward at once. Cao Hong said, "Come, let us go see the lord." After Liao Hua agreed, the four of them headed together toward Cao Cao's quarters.