“Then you should rest. We’ll be marching soon.”
Ma Yun knelt beside Jiang Wei and said, “We will both rest when your work is done. Do you think I could sleep when you do not?”
Jiang Wei sighed, but handed his friend a lacquered box. “Still stubborn,” he said. “As soon as Sima Yi realizes we’ve abandoned camp, he’ll lead the Wei army in pursuit of us. The prime minister’s star will have fallen and they’ll know that he’s dead. We need time.”
“You’ll think of something. You have been his student these past six years. There is no better strategist to succeed him, and you know these northern lands better than anyone.”
Six years ago Jiang Wei had been an officer in the Wei army, until a paranoid commander had suspected him of collaborating with Shu. After he had fled for his life, Zhuge Liang had been the one to offer him refuge and gave him a position in his army. Now, at the prime minister’s final request, it would be Jiang Wei’s duty to pacify the land he had once called home.
“You could always dress a wooden figure in the prime minister’s clothes and stick it in his carriage,” said Ma Yun. “Wheel it around, and from a distance Sima Yi might think that the prime minister is still directing the battle.”
His voice was playful, but Jiang Wei could almost take the suggestion seriously. Sima Yi’s greatest weakness was his tendency to overthink the traps Zhuge Liang had laid for him. That was why the Wei army remained safely ensconced in their fortress rather than facing Shu on the battlefield. Even the prime minister’s attempts to insult the tactician’s honor had failed in the wake of Sima Yi’s paranoia.
Which gave Jiang Wei an idea.
“What about this? When we withdraw Sima Yi will follow us, like a wolf after the deer. He will expect a rear guard, but he will not anticipate an ambush, not when he sees the prime minister's star fall. We’ll only leave enough men to draw him out, while the rest of the army pulls back.”
“If he takes the Wei army out of the fortress, a single division is not going to be able to fight them all,” said Ma Yun.
“He won’t know that. The prime minister was a master of ambuscade. If the men fight like the entire army is at their backs, Sima Yi will think we faked our retreat to draw him out. He’ll run if he believes the prime minister is still alive.”
They could catch them in the Xiagu Pass. The Wei army would have to narrow itself to get through, and there was an overlook covered with trees that would hide ranks of archers and footmen. Give the commander enough doughty horsemen to charge through the Shu side of the pass and the Wei vanguard would feel like the whole Shu army was pressing down on them.
Ma Yun grinned. “I see why the prime minister thought highly of you. Who else sets an ambush when they’re running away?”
“Yang Yi would have to approve.”
“He would gladly do so, and lead it himself.”
And he was Ma Yun’s superior, which meant if Yang Yi led the ambush, then Ma Yun would be among those who stayed behind.
“It’s a worthy gamble,” said his friend. “If it meant the rest of the army could escape safely, I would hold off all of Wei alone. And I trust your strategy. Few men have ever outsmarted the prime minister, and you are one of them. That is why he has entrusted all this to you.” Ma Yun indicated the whole of the tent’s interior, but that wasn’t entirely true. Jiang Wei would not replace the prime minister in political affairs, but in war the campaign plans would fall to him.
“Will you notify Yang Yi that I wish to see him?” said Jiang Wei.
Ma Yun clasped his hands and bowed before standing. “Yes, Commander.”
Yang Yi was more of a minister than a warrior. Logistics was his strength, but he had good subordinates beneath him, men like Ma Yun, who could be trusted with their own judgment on the battlefield.
Jiang Wei picked up a heavy set of books from beside Zhuge Liang’s deathbed, surprised by how the very touch of them gave him a sensation of age and decay. They shouldn’t have lain so long beside a dead man. They were so old they had been written on bamboo slats rather than paper, and the script was antiquated, in the Qin style. These were not the prime minister’s own works.
The word Leng was inscribed on the first slat of each of the books, followed by a volume number. Jiang Wei unfolded one to find a treatise of some sort, something that the prime minister himself must have studied, but he could not ignore a feeling of wrongness about it, of something vile seeping from the bamboo.
Zhuge Liang could read the stars better than anyone. He could call on the wind, the fog. Perhaps this was where he had learned such things.
The book described terrible ceremonies, demons that Jiang Wei had never heard of, and obeisances that must be made to such creatures. He did not think the prime minister would have dabbled in such arts, but perhaps his enemies might. Zhuge Liang prepared for many things, and did not leave anything to chance when adequate foresight would provide.
That was why the Shu army, although half the size of the Wei, had managed a stalemate on the Wuzhang Plains.
Still, the rituals and symbols disturbed Jiang Wei, and he did not know this land of Leng from whence the books had come. They placed it far to the west, beyond the barbarian lands but before the palace of the Queen Mother of the West. Though Zhuge Liang had not left these books specifically for his successor, if he was to serve as the inheritor of the prime minister’s will, then he would have to understand these as well.
It was not until he felt a hand on his shoulder that he realized he had spent more time reading than packing. Yang Yi had arrived, his lined face written with as much concern as the gray that streaked his beard.
“The prime minister would not expect you to rise immediately as general in his place,” said Yang Yi. “Give yourself time to study. After all, he entrusted you alone with his strategies, and not until his final hour. He knows even you will need time to read them.”
Jiang Wei bowed his head, ashamed, not because he had been found idle, but because it had not been Zhuge Liang’s stratagems he had been reading. He folded the book back. “I understand,” he said. “I only pray that Heaven does not find me inadequate.”
Over the next few nights they left the cooking fires lit, as though the camp was still full of soldiers, while the Shu officers led the army out in stages by cover of darkness. Jiang Wei took the rear guard. His soldiers were seasoned veterans. If Yang Yi’s ambush failed, Jiang Wei’s men would still allow the bulk of the Shu army to escape, but it would be costly. He couldn’t let it come to that.
At daybreak the day after their departure, his scouts came to him with word of Sima Yi’s pursuit. By now they had reached the Xiagu Pass and Yang Yi’s men were in position, Ma Yun among them. They would see the Wei vanguard coming on horseback soon. Jiang Wei would slow the rear guard on the other side of the pass, forcing Sima Yi’s eager soldiers to push through the ambush to reach them.
Let the Wei tactician think that he had caught up to his fleeing foe.
But as the sun crested the mountains, Jiang Wei did not like what he saw. A gleam on the high ground of the pass. Though swords must be sheathed and arrows still in their quivers, it was not impossible that some errant soldier’s spear had caught the light, and if he could see it, then Wei could as well. If it came to Sima Yi’s attention, then the Wei army would not enter the pass, and Yang Yi did not have enough men to take them head-on.
In retrospect, he should have considered the sunlight, the time of day Sima Yi would catch up to them. Jiang Wei knew immediately what Zhuge Liang would have done to correct this mistake, but he was not the prime minister. He didn’t have the power.