After Taishi Ci (太史慈) broke through Guan Hai’s siege, a single horse rode day and night toward Pingyuan (平原). The bow-string at his waist and the letter in his saddle carried, this dawn, the weight of one man’s road.

Before the office of Pingyuan, Taishi Ci dismounted. A gatekeeper saw the bow at his waist and ran in alarmed. Liu Bei came out himself to the gate to receive him. Guan Yu and Zhang Fei stood side by side behind him. Taishi Ci offered Kong Rong’s letter to Liu Bei with both hands.

Liu Bei opened the letter and read. In the middle lay one line: “Beihai’s gate is in peril; Xuzhou’s gate is in greater peril. The rescue of two cities lies within Your Lordship’s hand.” Liu Bei’s eyes lingered long upon the letter. After a breath, he spoke quietly.

“Does Master Kong Rong remember the name of this Liu Bei?”

Taishi Ci bowed his head deeply. “Lord Liu. Master Kong Rong has long engraved the name of your humaneness in his heart. The siege of Beihai I have broken on my way out; yet the seat of Xuzhou is not yet broken. Lord Liu, please ride toward Xuzhou yourself.”

Liu Bei rose from his seat. “Guan Yu. Zhang Fei. This dawn our three spears must gather again at one seat.” The two nodded. Liu Bei raised three thousand Pingyuan soldiers. He sent word to Gongsun Zan (公孫瓚) and borrowed two thousand more, along with Zhao Yun (趙雲). Five thousand soldiers began riding toward Xuzhou.

The tip of Zhao Yun’s spear lay once again beside Liu Bei. The name of Zhao Yun from the bridge of Jieqiao of Day 29 was, this dawn, fixed within Liu Bei’s direct retinue. Within Liu Bei’s chest pocket, the seed of the fourth face at the hearth before Gongsun Zan of Day 8 had this dawn taken root. Zhao Yun did not speak of the long road that had brought him here; he simply rode, as he had always ridden, behind the shoulder of the man whose face he had first read at a hearth two books back.

At the foot of the walls of Xuzhou, Cao Cao’s army had already beaten upon its seventh day of assault. On the dawn when Liu Bei’s five thousand reached the foot of the walls, the armies of Kong Rong and Tian Kai (田楷) had arrived from the west. Inside Cao Cao’s tent, Xun Yu brought up one line in a low voice.

“Your Lordship. News has come from the rear. Lü Bu (呂布) has drawn in Chen Gong (陳宮) and Zhang Miao (張邈) and has struck Yanzhou (兗州). The home base is, at this hour, in peril. Your Lordship must release the siege of Xuzhou and return to Yanzhou.”

Cao Cao’s eyes widened. After a breath of silence, he drew a sigh. “The grudge of a father stands here at Xuzhou; yet the ground beneath my own home base is nearer. Let us release the siege of Xuzhou and return to Yanzhou.”

Cao Cao’s army withdrew slowly before the walls of Xuzhou. On the walls, Tao Qian shed tears and bowed toward Liu Bei. This dawn, the single bow-string of a lone rider had opened the gate of Xuzhou.

Yet the armies that returned with Cao Cao were not wholly in grief: his father’s grudge had not been discharged, only set aside for another season. The bodies and ashes of Xuzhou villages lay behind him, burnt on the long weeks of the siege, and they would weigh upon his name in later years more heavily than the name of Xuzhou itself. Revenge that is interrupted does not lie quiet; it lies waiting.

Inside Xuzhou, Tao Qian took Liu Bei’s hand after the last of Cao Cao’s banners had vanished to the west. His grip was old, but steady. “Lord Liu. This Xuzhou seat is too heavy for an old man. Let me lay it down upon your shoulder.” Liu Bei, startled, bowed twice and declined. Tao Qian only smiled. A seat declined in one breath does not always stay declined; some seats return, after a season, to the shoulder that declined them. Liu Bei walked out of the hall that night thinking of a red thread still folded in his chest-pocket, and of the first line now drawn upon a map that had not been drawn before. The red thread had been laid there at the evening of Daxing in Day 5, when three brothers’ names had not yet climbed upon any paper. Tonight a seat was quietly offered. That was a distance the red thread had crossed.

The fifteenth dawn of Book 2 deepened quietly below the walls of Xuzhou. The three characters Dangigung (單騎弓, a bow of a lone rider) were planted as a seed: the breath on which one man’s bow-string drew ahead of it the rescue of two cities. The plea of Day 44’s Bukaewon received, this dawn, its answer as a withdrawal below the walls of Xuzhou.

—

WIA Code 스캐너로 비추면 인터넷 없이 발행 사실과 위·변조 여부를 확인할 수 있습니다.
휴대폰 기본 카메라로 찍으면 스캐너 안내 페이지가 열립니다 — 기사 바로 열기

움직이는 코드는 스트림입니다 — WIA Code 스캐너로 약 43초 비추면 기사 전문(사진 포함)이 폰에 저장되어 인터넷 없이도 읽을 수 있습니다.

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