Commander Xin's command tent was a world of ordered tension, a stark contrast to the bloody chaos of Qiling Ridge. The air hummed with low voices and the rustle of dispatches. But at its center, there was stillness. Xin stood over the large campaign table, his hands braced on the edge, his gaze locked on the map.
It was not a simple drawing. It was a sculpted terrain of clay and wood, a grim diorama of the unfolding crisis. At its heart sat the city of Xiangyang, a white-clay rectangle nestled in a curve of the Han River, its walls besieged by a ring of dark-stained wooden blocks—the main Jin army. Encircling that Jin force was a loose ring of green-painted blocks—his own Southern Song relief army. Almost a siege of a siege.
And to the northwest, a spine of raised ground represented the Qiling Heights. Two small, lonely green blocks were surrounded by a cluster of dark ones. Lin Wei's penal battalion and Captain Guo's regulars—the anvil upon which this entire battle hinged.
They were the stopper in the bottle. If they fell, the Jin could pour reinforcements onto his own rear.
A messenger burst in, saluting sharply. "Commander! The Jin have launched another assault on the Heights! Heavy smoke reported!"
Xin's eyes didn't leave the map. "Acknowledged." His voice was flat, devoid of inflection. Another messenger entered on the first's heels. "Report from the east, Commander! Jin patrols are probing our lines, but their main force remains fixed on the city."
"As expected," Xin murmured, more to himself than to anyone. He watched the flow of information, a general watching the pulse of his army. Each report was a tremor in the clay-and-wood landscape. The news from the ridge was bad, but it was not a surprise. It was the price he had accepted when he placed them there.
He finally straightened, his decision made. The officers in the tent fell silent.
"The anvil is holding," he stated, his voice cutting through the air. "Now, we swing the hammer. The Jin are committed at the ridge. Their attention is divided. This is our moment."
He pointed to the western flank of the Jin siege lines. "General Deng. You will take the third and fourth divisions. Launch a feint attack here. I want noise. I want fire. I want every drum and every signal horn you have. Make them believe the main assault is coming from the west. Draw their reserves. Make it convincing."
General Deng, a veteran with a scarred face, nodded. "They will believe it, Commander."
Xin's finger then swept to the southern side of the clay city, where the Jin lines were thinnest. "The rest of the army, with me. We strike here, at the river gate. Our attack is the true blow." He looked around the tent, his gaze lingering on each officer. "This is not a battle of attrition. We need to cut deep, and fast. Our objective is not to destroy their army—it is to link up with the Xiangyang garrison. Their survival is our victory."
He paused, his mask of command slipping for a fraction of a second. The human cost of the feint, the men who would die to sell the lie, flashed behind his eyes. He crushed the thought. "The men on the ridge are buying us this chance with their blood. We will not waste it."
As dawn broke, the plan unfolded with brutal precision. From the west, the sound of thundering war drums and the smoky glow of countless fires rose into the sky. The feint had begun.
Xin stood in his stirrups, his personal banner flying high amidst the massed ranks of his main force on the southern plain. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and nervous sweat.
He could feel the eyes of his men on him. He was not a charismatic leader who gave rousing speeches. His authority was a cold, solid thing.
He drew his sword, the steel scraping softly. He did not shout. He simply raised it, pointed the blade towards the Jin lines, and gave a single, sharp nod.
The signal flags dropped.
The air was torn apart. Song catapults launched their volleys, heavy stones and jars of fire-oil arcing over the plain to crash into the Jin fortifications. Then, the advance began. It was not a wild charge, but a steady, relentless march behind a wall of shields, crossbowmen loosing volley after volley into the enemy positions.
Xin rode at the center of the storm, his world stratified into concentric rings of awareness, each demanding a part of his focus.
The grip of his sword was a hard, familiar pressure in his hand, an immediate anchor in the chaos. The snort of his horse, the smell of its sweat, the way its muscles bunched and shifted beneath him—this was the innermost sphere, the shell of his own body.
An arrow thudded into the shield of the guard to his left with a hollow thump; he registered the impact not with a flinch, but as a data point in his immediate environment, a reminder of his mortality.
His gaze, however, was constantly sweeping the second sphere, the tactical landscape.
He saw the line of his advance not as a mass of men, but as a living, breathing entity. He watched its pulse and flow, spotting weaknesses and pressures like a physician reading a body's distress. He saw a unit of his infantry waver as a cluster of Jin spearmen launched a localized counter-charge.
He didn't need to shout; he pointed, and a rider galloped off with the command. "Reserves to the left flank. Now." The order was a stitch applied to a bleeding wound, and he watched as the line stiffened, the crisis averted.
But underlying it all, the third and deepest layer of his consciousness was fixed on the strategic map imprinted behind his eyes.
He was not just a fighter on this field; he was a player on a larger board. In his mind, he saw General Deng's feint playing out to the west, a theatrical distraction designed to pull the enemy's reserves. He saw the gates of Xiangyang, willing them to open, calculating the precise moment when the garrison's sortie would have the maximum impact.
The clash of steel around him was immediate, but the silence from the city walls was a louder, more terrifying sound. They have to sortie. Now. Or this is a slaughter. The entire, costly plan hinged on that single, unpredictable variable.
As if answering his thought, a roar went up from the city walls. The great gates of Xiangyang shuddered and began to swing open. The besieged garrison, starved and desperate, poured out like a raging river, smashing into the rear of the Jin lines who were trying to face Xin's assault.
The Jin army was caught between the rock and a hard place. Their discipline shattered. The battle devolved into a sprawling, chaotic melee along the riverbank.
Xin fought now, his sword a swift, efficient extension of his will. He was no legendary warrior, but a capable, ruthless soldier. He fought not for glory, but to close the pincer.
He saw a Jin officer trying to rally his men and spurred his horse forward, cutting the man down in a single, brutal motion. It was not a duel; it was pest control.
The battle was a whirlwind of mud, blood, and screams. But through the chaos, Xin saw the green banners of his army and the ragged standards of the Xiangyang garrison finally touch, then merge. The link was made.
As the last organized Jin resistance collapsed, a rider, splattered with mud but bearing the insignia of a communications officer, galloped up to him, saluting.
"Commander! A message from the Qiling Heights!"
Xin wiped his blade clean on his horse's mane, his breathing steady. "Report."
"The Jin assault is broken! They are in full retreat! The Heights are held, Commander! Physician Lin and Captain Guo… they held."
Xin accepted the report with a slow nod. He looked around at the field of victory—at the dead, the dying, the exhausted, triumphant faces of his men. He looked towards the distant ridge, where a handful of men had endured hell to make this moment possible.
"The anvil held," he said quietly, to the air. Then, turning to his aides, his command mask firmly back in place, he issued the next order. "Secure the perimeter. Tend the wounded. The battle is won. The war is not over." But in the privacy of his own mind, he allowed himself one, finite thought. We have bought ourselves time. And it cost more than we knew.