The cheers from the men kindled my heart like warm wine in the cold northern night. The taste of cheap wine was still on my tongue, but tonight it felt like a fine vintage.

  I wished it comforted Zhao more, but he wasn't swept up by the excitement.

  I clapped a few of the men on the back as I made my way through the celebrating camp. I found Hou RenXiong and Luo Qinji standing near the fire. Hou’s face showed signs of opportunistic and eager scheming, while Luo’s remained etched with his customary skepticism.

  "A fine speech, General," Hou said, his voice slick with a veneer of respect. "You have a gift for words."

  A compliment from Hou meant he wanted something. Still, I had worked rather hard on that speech. "I merely spoke the truth, General Hou," I replied, my gaze shifting past him to where Captain Zhao Qian sat alone. "And I intend to make good on it."

  I approached Hou directly. "General, your experience is invaluable. I need a man I can trust to hold this territory. The LinYu Garrison is now yours to command. Reinforce its defenses, secure the supply lines, and ensure the local populace is treated with fairness. You will be the bedrock of our center."

  A flicker of disappointment crossed his face, perhaps at being left behind from the main advance, but he masked it quickly with a compliant bow. "As the General commands." He knew a good offer when he heard one; he was now the undisputed master of a region he had been tasked to defend.

  Luo Qinji gave me a subtle, approving nod. We both understood the wisdom of leaving the fox to guard the henhouse, so long as it was his own henhouse.

  With Hou occupied, I walked over to Captain Zhao. He looked up as I approached, his eyes still red-rimmed.

  "Captain," I began, my voice softer now. "That promise was not just for the men. It was for you." I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Your knowledge of the capital's layouts, your skill with maps... these are things I desperately need. I am requesting you join my personal staff as an advisor for the coming campaign."

  He blinked, surprised. "General, I am just a humble captain..."

  "You are a man fighting for his wife and not plunder," I corrected him gently. "And I need men like that by my side. March with us, Zhao Qian. Advise me, guide us with your maps, and I give you my word: when the banners of our righteous army fly over the gates of Chang'an, you will be the first man through them."

  For a moment, he was speechless. The raw grief in his eyes was replaced by a dawning, ferocious resolve. He dropped to one knee, his fist striking his chest with a solid thud. "My life is yours, General. I will not fail you."

  I pulled him to his feet. "I know you won't. Now, get some rest. We march at dawn."

  And the difference was astounding. In my previous campaigns against the steppe, advancing had been an exercise in frustration and guesswork. We relied on local guides of questionable loyalty and maps that were often decades out of date. Progress was a slow, bloody crawl, with ambushes lurking behind every forested hill and fortified town.

  But with Zhao Qian's map, it was as if we had been granted the eyes of the heavens.

  The document was magnificent in detail and precision. It showed not just the main roads, but paths, streams, and most of the small contours of the land. Villages and military outposts were marked clearly. We moved with a speed and confidence that was simply unheard of. I sent our cavalry scouts ahead in small teams with copies of the maps prepared by clerks, assigned to Zhao, confident they would find their way back.

  "There's a small garrison at AnLe village, just beyond this ridge," Zhao would say, pointing to a symbol on the map laid out on my saddle. "No more than two hundred men. Their western wall is weak, near the old riverbed."

  Armed with such knowledge, we moved like wildfire. We avoided pointless confrontations and chose our engagements on our own terms. Our march south towards the great eastern capital felt like a grand procession.

  The bloodshed I had anticipated never came. We would appear before a village, our banners snapping in the wind, and find the gates already open. The people, probably burdened by heavy taxes and neglected by the distant capital, saw us not as invaders, but as a welcome change.

  They offered us food and wine, cheering as we passed. The local garrisons were much the same. Dispirited, with their pay in arrears and their equipment falling apart, they had little love for the Imperial court.

  We confiscated imperial funds from corrupt local leaders and paid them out to my troops as rewards. This was Luo's idea, to discourage the men from looting themselves.

  At the town of BaiMa, the commanding officer, a veteran himself, simply surrendered his entire force of five hundred men without a single arrow being loosed.

  "We were told you were a rebel army," he said, sharing a bowl of wine with me in his now-former office. "But your men treat the people with respect. They pay for what they take. And you... you speak of a justice we haven't seen in years." He sighed, a deep, rattling sound. "My loyalty is to the people, General Cui, not to the corrupt ministers who steal the silver meant for my men's armor. We will fight with you."

  And so our army swelled. With every village we passed, every garrison that opened its gates, our numbers grew. We were a mighty river, carving a path south, gathering strength from the discontent of the land itself.

  The easy victories and cheering crowds began to thin as we drew closer to Luoyang. Within fifty li of the grand eastern capital, the landscape transformed. The quaint villages and open farmland gave way to sprawling towns, the dirt tracks to paved roads teeming with merchants and refugees heading in both directions. The air grew heavier, thick with the smoke of a thousand hearths and the palpable tension of a city bracing for war. My father, Cui QuanYou, a man whose caution had seen him survive three decades of brutal border warfare, decided it was time to consolidate. It was time to gather our strength before it met the sea of a true Imperial army that surely waited us.

  We made camp in a wide, fallow field beside a tributary of the Luo River. It was on the second afternoon, as I was reviewing patrol schedules with Luo Qinji, that one of the sentries on the ridge pointed to the southeast. A thin, dark finger of smoke smudged the otherwise clear blue sky. It was too thick and black for a cooking fire.

  "Trouble," Luo stated, his hand already resting on the hilt of his sword.

  "My thoughts exactly," I replied, my eyes narrowed on the plume. It came from the direction of a small village marked on our map as Feng'an, a place we had no reason to interact with. "It could be an Imperial patrol, but it's sloppy work to announce themselves so clearly."

  I rose from the campaign table. "Zhao Qian!" I called. Captain Zhao, who had been diligently copying a section of the map, hurried over. "Bring your map and your horse. You're riding with me." I then turned to my personal guard. "One hundred of my cataphracts. Prepare to ride."

  Luo stepped in front of me, his expression a familiar storm cloud of disapproval. "General, this is a job for a scouting party, not for the commanding officer. Your place is here."

  I could practically see him counting how many times we'd had this exact conversation. It was probably in the dozens. "My place is where my men are in trouble," I retorted, clapping him on the shoulder pauldron. "Besides, if it's an Imperial force, a hundred of my riders will be a fist, not a feather. They'll scatter before they know what hit them." I grinned, trying to lighten his mood. "What's the point of being a cavalry general if you can't ride at the head of a charge?"

  He sighed, the sound of a man who had indeed lost this argument many times before. "Just... be careful, BoFeng" He knew as well as I did that I was more at home in the saddle than in a command tent. He turned and began shouting orders.

  With Zhao navigating at my side, we rode hard. The smoke grew thicker as we crested a low hill, and the sounds of chaos. I heard a woman's shriek, the splintering of wood, a man's cry of pain drift up to us on the wind. The sounds of raid and plunder.

  We spurred our horses down the slope and into the village's single dusty street. The scene that greeted us turned the wine in my stomach curdle. It was one of my own scouting squads.

  Six riders, Khitans we had recruited to replace losses from SongJiaTun, were tearing the village apart like wolves in a sheepfold. One of them was dragging a screaming girl by the hair out of a small hut, her clothes half-torn from her body. Another had a terrified, bound man slung over his saddle, no doubt a new "slave." An old man with a wood axe lay dead in the street, his head split open. They had lit the granary on fire, the source of the black smoke, a wanton act of destruction.

  These were my men, wearing the colors of An Lushan, under my command.

  Zhao Qian made a retching sound beside me, his face pale as bleached linen. He was a scholar. He had seen battle from a distance, counted ledgers, and drawn lines on a map.

  I felt a surge of cold fury, a rage so pure it felt like ice in my veins.

  "On me," I commanded my riders, my voice low.

  We charged into the village square. The six mounted tribesmen looked up, their faces a mixture of surprise and drunken glee, which quickly became fear as they recognized my banner and the hundred armored riders thundering down on them. The one holding the girl dropped her.

  His sword never cleared the scabbard. In a fluid, practiced motion, before the others could react, my cataphracts had surrounded them, spears leveled at their throats. They were forced to dismount.

  I too dismounted, my armor groaning, and walked to the leader of the squad, whose face was still smeared with the blood of the old man he'd murdered.

  "What is the meaning of this?" I asked, my voice cut through the terrified silence of the village.

  He had the audacity to grin. "Spoils of war, General! We bring glory to the Jiedushi!"

  I looked from his leering face to the crying girl huddled on the ground, to the dead old man, to the burning granary.

  I said, my hand closing around the hilt of my sword. "This is filth." I looked at Zhao, who was staring at the scene, his hands shaking, his eyes wide with a horror that mirrored my own disgust. "And I will not have it in my army."

  My voice was steel. I gestured with my chin to my own cataphracts, who had the six men surrounded. "Disarm them. Bind them."

  My riders moved as one. They were Khitan tribesmen, same as the culprits, but they were my men first. They hauled the six scouts from their horses, stripping them of their weapons and tying their hands behind their backs with rough hemp rope. The scouts offered no resistance, their drunken bravado evaporating completely in the face of my cold fury and the silent, disciplined wall of my personal guard.

  We brought the prisoners to the center of the village, before the still-smoldering granary. My men rounded up the terrified villagers, freeing the man who had been slung over the saddle and gently guiding the sobbing girl to her family. I stood before the small, broken crowd, the six kneeling men at my feet. The shame I felt was a physical weight on my shoulders.

  The leader of the scouts, seeing his life forfeit, made one last desperate appeal. "General!" he pleaded, craning his neck to look at me. "There is silver in the headman's house! And these women... take your pick! A reward for your troubles!" He grinned a broken, pathetic grin. "We can share it!"

  Batu stepped forward. He kicked the man's shoulder, forcing his gaze away from me. "Our General does not take plunder from the hands of innocents," Batu growled, his voice a low rumble of contempt.

  The scout looked genuinely confused, a profound lack of understanding on his face. "But why?" he stammered, looking from Batu to the other silent riders. "This is our right! The right of the strong! Why fight if not for the rewards?"

  Batu's gaze was hard as iron. "Because we do not fight to inflict the same wounds we have suffered," he said, and his words were for the prisoners, but also for all my men who were listening. "These people are the reason we raise our banners. They are the ones the ministers in their silk robes have forgotten. We are here to protect them, not to become another pack of wolves at their door.”

  I felt pride hearing Batu’s declaration, years ago he would have shared the scouts view.

  I drew my dao from the sheath. Its gleaming edge caught the reflection of smoldering flames. I walked down the line of the six kneeling men. I did not offer them any last words. Their actions had spoken for them. With six swings, I ended their lives. Their heads rolled.

  When it was done, I stood over the bodies, the tip of my dao dripping crimson onto the dusty ground. I turned to face the stunned villagers and my own silent, watchful soldiers.

  "Let this be a lesson to all who march under my banner," I declared, my voice ringing with a conviction that came from the very core of my being. "Military law is clear and it shall be enforced."

  In full armor, I knelt and bowed my head until my helmet touched the dirt in a deep, formal kowtow to the villagers.

  Behind me, I heard the rustle and groan of armor as all one hundred of my proud cataphracts dismounted and knelt, following my lead.