Inside the walls of Xinye (新野), a white horse entered. Its name was Dilu (的盧).

Dilu was a horse of white coat; at the center of his forehead, a white point was set like an eye. That point was called dilu (的盧, the white point of the forehead). From ancient times, horse-appraisers (馬鑑), upon seeing such a horse, had attached a word to it: it harms its master (妨主).

The manner in which Dilu came into Liu Bei’s (劉備) hand was this. Two generals of Liu Biao’s (劉表) retinue at Jingzhou (荊州), Zhang Wu (張武) and Chen Sun (陳孫), raised a rebellion, and Liu Biao asked Liu Bei to put it down.

Liu Bei raised an army and rode out to strike Zhang Wu and Chen Sun. Zhang Wu’s horse was none other than Dilu. After Zhao Yun (趙雲) beheaded Zhang Wu, he brought Dilu back.

Zhao Yun, at that time, had newly joined Liu Bei’s retinue. He offered Dilu to his lord. “Governor (使君). This horse is a famed steed (名馬).”

Liu Bei looked down at the white point on Dilu’s forehead. From his mouth came a low word. “Ziliong (子龍). I thank you. From today, this horse shall ride beneath my two legs.”

News that Dilu had entered beneath Liu Bei’s hand reached Liu Biao’s ear at Xiangyang (襄陽). Liu Biao laughed and said to him quietly, “Xuande. Today’s horse has long been said to harm its master. Take care.”

Yi Ji (伊籍) of Liu Bei’s retinue continued in a low voice. “Governor. Give that horse first to an enemy (怨讐). After the enemy has taken harm from it, receive it back again.” Liu Bei shook his head. “Lord Yi. To lay a person’s harm first upon another is not my grain. Dilu shall remain beneath my two legs.”

That evening, Liu Bei mounted upon Dilu’s back. Dilu’s four feet trembled lightly. Yet Liu Bei’s hand stroked Dilu’s mane, and the grain of his feet grew calm.

Zhao Yun stood at the edge of the courtyard and watched without comment. In the decades to come, the image of that mane beneath Liu Bei’s hand would return to him at odd hours. A general who has gifted a famed steed to his lord without a long speech rarely forgets the small gesture of the lord’s hand upon the steed’s mane on the first evening. Zhao Yun laid his palm upon the iron of his spear, nodded to a groom, and walked back toward his tent.

Inside the small residence’s study, Liu Bei laid a sheet of paper upon the low desk and wrote a short note for his own record. “Dilu was gifted to me at the end of the reduction of Zhang Wu and Chen Sun. The horse’s forehead bears a mark. Yi Ji counsels against keeping him. I shall keep him.” He folded the sheet, laid it inside a small drawer, and did not reread it. A note laid inside a drawer after a day’s decision is rarely reread by its writer; it is written for a later reader, who may never exist. In some later year, a scribe would find the sheet during a routine inventory, fail to grasp its significance, and lay it back exactly as found.

At Xiangyang, inside the inner chamber, Cai Mao listened to Liu Biao’s half-joking remark about Dilu and filed it quietly at the back of his ear. A brother-in-law of a second wife who hears an old warning about a rival’s horse rarely forgets that warning. Tonight he wrote nothing down; he only walked to his own study and stood at the window. In the coming year, he would devise a small banquet at a certain pavilion beside the Tan river (檀溪), where Liu Bei would, by necessity, ride Dilu; and there the warning about the horse would be tested.

In the courtyard behind the governor’s residence, an old stable-hand, who had served in three provinces across four decades, brushed Dilu’s flank in the last light of the afternoon. He had seen two other dilu horses in his life: one had thrown its rider at a bad stream, and the other had carried its rider through a siege unharmed. A stable-hand of forty years who has seen two dilu horses rarely accepts the simple rule that a dilu always harms its master. He brushed the white coat with even pressure and did not tell Liu Bei about the two earlier horses. Some knowledge is better kept on the brush than on the tongue. In the coming year, the hand holding that brush would be the same hand that laid the saddle upon Dilu for the morning ride toward Xiangyang; and the saddle’s latch that morning would be checked more carefully than any saddle in the governor’s stable had been for the last season.

Upon a low bench of the outer court, Zhang Fei, who had been watching the brush-stroke from a distance, nodded to the stable-hand. He did not speak. A brother who has seen an old stable-hand brush a dilu with an even grain rarely interrupts with praise; praise would only thin the grain. He rose from the bench and walked toward the tower to watch the road north.

The ninety-fourth evening of Book 4 deepened quietly beneath the white point of Dilu inside the walls of Xinye. The three characters Jeokromah (的盧馬, the horse named Dilu) were planted as a seed: the breath on which the white point, Zhao Yun’s gifting, the word mingzhu (妨主), Yi Ji’s remonstrance, and a hand upon the mane all lay at one seat. The tower of Day 93’s Sinya-jwa (新野坐) had, this evening, reached Dilu’s back.

—

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