A Willing Mistake, My Lady – Chapter 93
by Little PandaEven the General Is Broke
Together to the Border
From atop a watchtower over 10 meters high, the rugged, solemn mountains stretched endlessly into the distance, blanketed white by drifting snow, like slumbering giant beasts—still and majestic.
The thick snow dressed the withered branches in vivid, striking form. Ice crystals formed everywhere, gleaming under the sunlight.
But before long the sunlight faded, and the snow continued to fall in clusters, turning the entire sky gray and hazy once more.
“General, this snow couldn’t have come at a worse time. If it had fallen 3 or 4 months earlier, we wouldn’t have had to ask the court for help.” Commandant Zhao took off his hat and shook off the snow, complaining.
“The heavens’ affairs—neither you nor I gets a say.” Shen Hetang bent over, roasting sweet potatoes in the fire pit.
“Better to arrive at the right time than early. Here, have one.” She fished a sweet potato out of the fire and pushed one over to him.
“Things are already desperate, and you’re still in the mood to roast sweet potatoes, Master?” Zhao Chenlan looked at the two half-blackened lumps on the ground, his mouth twitching.
“Even if the sky’s falling, you’ve still got to eat.” Shen Hetang broke open the sweet potato, blowing on it because it was still a bit hot.
“So tell me, what’s so desperate?” She squatted on the ground and looked up, asking.
“Those barbarians have been quiet for a long time since they raided Guqiao Town last month. Who knows what they’re plotting.” When they didn’t come, Zhao Chenlan found himself unaccustomed to the silence.
After Great Qian’s 100,000-strong army arrived, Liao State bared its fangs no more and played dead like a sheep. Yet it fanned the flames from the sidelines, goading two tiny states—Lulong and Shuche—into repeated incursions.
Like gadflies, they were insufferably irritating. They ought to have been wiped out entirely, yet they seemed to know exactly how far to push things.
Apart from looting, they rarely killed or burned civilians. If they were exterminated to the last, it would give the outer vassal states an excuse to unite against Great Qian.
Whether Lulong and Shuche feared Great Qian’s retaliation and dared not go too far, or whether they feared Liao State’s oppressive might and had no choice but to harass Great Qian, they kept hovering at the line of provocation without quite crossing it.
The border defense line was long, stretching over 600 kilometers. Even with a 100-man squad posted every 5 kilometers, the barbarian warriors were fierce and impossible to guard against completely. Sometimes they’d feint east and strike west, running one trick after another.
Neither Liao State nor its vassal states had made a move in 30 or 40 days, leaving Zhao Chenlan—who spent his days catching enemies for sport—deeply unaccustomed.
Shen Hetang held the sweet potato, her eyes—dark as lacquer—deep and unfathomable, lost in thought.
“How much grain is left from what we brought?” If they were truly planning something major, she wasn’t short of soldiers. Even if her troops weren’t as strong or well-mounted as the barbarians, as long as they held tight and didn’t fall behind, the odds of victory were high.
After all, she had 20,000 elite troops—each one a match for five. She had been training them in secret all year, saving them for a crucial moment.
If everything else was in place, the only thing lacking was the soldiers’ rations. War always brought grain shortages, let alone in a famine year.
“Those rations ran out long ago. We’re living off what the military reclamation farming soldiers scrimped and saved from previous years. If the court’s supplies don’t come, we’ll just have to starve.” Zhao Chenlan’s eyes rolled so far back they nearly reached the heavens.
“What does the court say?” Lately she had been endlessly bickering with the Army Supervisor sent from the capital—a well-fed busybody who came to her turf throwing his weight around. Shen Hetang paid lip service and ignored him entirely.
She certainly hadn’t carved “swear to the death to serve the Great Qian Emperor” into her bones. If he dared gamble with the lives of her 100,000-strong army, she’d cut off his head with one stroke and part ways with the Emperor. She wouldn’t listen to treacherous ministers’ slander, let soldiers die in vain, and let that shit-stirrer get his way.
But for now he represented the Emperor’s eyes, so she couldn’t be openly disrespectful to the Army Supervisor on the surface. The camp had also quietly split into two factions: the Shen family’s original generals on one side, and the court’s appointees on the other. There were old generals who had served alongside Shen Yao, and also young heirs and sons of imperial in-laws sent to gain experience.
These people themselves splintered into several sub-factions—quite entertaining. But when it came to actual combat, few of them were of any use. They were a bunch of Xia Yingchuns1, and she was no King Xuan of Qi. She certainly wasn’t swallowing their snake oil.
“The court says they’re preparing as fast as possible, but this year’s harvest isn’t as abundant as before, so it might be slower.”
“How long can we hold out? Can we last until year’s end?”
“If we scrimp and save, it should be doable, but if we go to war, it won’t be enough.”
Shen Hetang frowned tightly. She’d sensed the imminent outbreak of war lately and drilled the troops almost every day, yet they still had to scrimp on food. It sat poorly with her.
“Go tell the Army Supervisor that the army is out of food. He can’t just throw his weight around every day—he needs to find a solution for the troops’ rations. If he doesn’t come up with a solution, go find him every single day.” In this freezing cold, if they couldn’t even eat their fill, how were they supposed to face anything else?
“Got it. I’ll go find him this afternoon. If he doesn’t come up with something, I’ll just stick to him like glue.” Zhao Chenlan wore a wicked grin.
“It’s just giving him something to do. The grain still needs to be raised quickly through Huaiqing. If we really relied on that petty man, we’d all starve to death.” Shen Hetang clapped her hands and stood up.
“The Master makes a good point. This subordinate understands.”
“Just call me General. Stop calling me Master—are you afraid people won’t figure out your background?” Shen Hetang looked somewhat helplessly at this strapping young man.
“Isn’t that what makes me unique? None of them have the same kind of close relationship with the Master that I do.”
“Alright, go pester the Army Supervisor. I have work to do.” Shen Hetang was amused by his clingy demeanor.
After Zhao Chenlan left, she returned to her room and studied the sand table of Xixing Pass, pondering where the enemy might strike.
Over a month passed in this uneventful calm. The weather grew ever colder, and the rations dwindled day by day.
The only consolation was that the weather made it impossible for the enemy to launch any further provocations.
Xixing Pass was naturally easy to defend and hard to attack. If the enemy assaulted the gates during the freezing Three-Nine Days2, they’d freeze solid as popsicles at the foot of the wall without the defenders lifting a finger.
But even doing nothing, life remained hard for Shen Hetang and her soldiers. The promised military rations still hadn’t arrived at the border on time.
With year’s end fast approaching, Zhao Chenlan had even swallowed his pride and gone to Jiayu Pass to borrow grain.
It was just that the neighbors weren’t well-off either. They’d managed to borrow back 10 days’ worth of rations, which, combined with their existing stores, could barely last past the New Year.
The commander of Jiayu Pass also, with great apology, supplied General Shen with 50,000 long arrows and matching stiff bows.
Shen Hetang never imagined that becoming a general would mean going around with a begging bowl. In the past, Old General Shen had handled all of this. Now there was no one left to manage her logistics.
Shen Hetang didn’t know what had gone wrong on Ye Huaiqing’s end, but he was the only person in court she could rely on now.
The rations hadn’t arrived, and she could only wait. Eating her daily allotment of one meat and one vegetable dish felt like chewing wax, so she told Wang Ma to just make one dish.
Wang Ma kept quite a few chickens in the courtyard, but even those didn’t taste good to Shen Hetang anymore. The soldiers hadn’t had meat in 20-odd days. More than 10 chickens from her own courtyard wouldn’t go far anyway!
She’d set off full of fighting spirit, only to eat herself poor in a prolonged stalemate. She rubbed the jade bead chain in her hand, wondering what the enemy ate every day.
What were the odds of raiding their cattle and sheep…!
Meanwhile, as the same year’s end approached, the atmosphere at Shen Manor in the capital could not have been more different.
They’d originally worried about having too little grain, but the villagers came through magnificently. Ever since they’d returned to the capital first, horse carts from the south had been arriving continuously for over a month without much interruption. They’d had to build 2 additional large granaries just to store the assortment of meat, vegetables, and coarse grain.
The brothers who’d gone north hadn’t gathered as much, but the wheat and corn combined still filled dozens of cartloads.
Jiang Ning took one look at the chaotic piles of grain and poultry and declared she was giving it all to Jiang Chenyu. She didn’t plan to sell it, and couldn’t even if she wanted to—there was simply nowhere to start.
The profit from selling it all would be thin anyway, so she might as well hand it all to Jiang Chenyu and save her from thinking about it every day.
Meanwhile, the imperial court was in an uproar. Grain prices had soared, and the treasury had spent a considerable amount of silver, but the grain on the market had already found its way into the warehouses of major merchants.
Buying it back would cost three times the price, and many civil officials argued against opening the granaries—since this year’s harvest was already reduced, the treasury’s grain should be saved to keep the common people alive.
Furthermore, the transport bottlenecks were enormous. With each layer skimming off the top, how much would actually reach General Shen?
The Emperor had recently been deeply infatuated with a newly favored Noble Person and obsessed with refining elixir pills. Though this year’s grain wasn’t as plentiful as before, it wasn’t a famine year, and no reports of major battles had come from the border.
The Emperor relaxed his oversight and eventually allocated 100,000 taels of silver, handing the matter over to the Second Prince to handle.
But the Second Prince dutifully used the 100,000 taels of silver to buy grain at inflated prices. Grain that had risen to 15 copper cash per jin3, after passing through the hands of his own people, went from a quantity that should have been 60,000 shi4 straight down to 50,000 shi.
Ye Huaiqing knew full well that this grain was far from enough. He wanted the Emperor to persuade ministers and wealthy merchants to donate—every little bit would help.
But the Emperor remained lost in his tender paradise. Noble Person Zhao spent her days studying pill refinement, drawing all the Emperor’s attention away. Ye Huaiqing sought audiences with him several times but never managed to see him.
He thought about organizing it himself, but with his status as a minor military officer, no one took him seriously. He returned defeated and dejected.
After calculating, if they were frugal on the road, they could still deliver 40,000 shi of grain to the border. If necessary, they’d set out first and continue raising more along the way.
After making up his mind, he prepared to personally escort the provisions. But before they could even set out, the Empress—dissatisfied that the matter had been entrusted to the Second Prince—feared that if he completed the task successfully, his standing in the Emperor’s eyes would rise with the tide.
She threw numerous obstacles in the Second Prince’s path before his departure, delaying the prepared provisions by 7 or 8 days before finally allowing them to proceed.
It wasn’t until the convoy set out that Ye Huaiqing breathed a sigh of relief. Just as he was preparing to depart himself, Shen Yunshu found him and asked him to bring Jiang Chenyu along.
Ye Huaiqing had been hesitant, but when he heard that Jiang Chenyu had also brought grain and vegetables for General Shen, his eyes lit up. He gritted his teeth and agreed.
Then when he saw the train of horse carts accompanying Jiang Chenyu, he stood frozen in place, utterly stunned!
Footnotes
- Xia Yingchun was a favorite consort of King Xuan of Qi, favored in peacetime but useless in war. The king relied on the capable but plain Zhong Wuyan when conflict arose. Here it denotes decorative, incompetent appointees.
- The Three-Nine Days are the coldest days of winter in the traditional Chinese calendar, falling in the third nine-day period following the Winter Solstice.
- A Chinese unit of weight equivalent to approximately 500 grams, commonly used for produce and foodstuffs.
- A traditional Chinese unit of dry measure for grain, equivalent to approximately 100 jin or 50 kilograms.
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