The air in Yue Fei's command tent tasted of dust, cold tea, and the iron tang of impending history. It was a vast space, lit by braziers that fought back the pre-dawn chill, its ground covered in cured hides to muffle the sound of boots.
At its center stood the map. Not a simple scrap of hide, but a massive sand table, a sculpted landscape of the Central Plains. Mounds of dyed sand represented the fortress-cities of Xiangyang, Luoyang, and the distant, sacred goal: Kaifeng, the lost Northern Capital. Tiny silk flags, stitched with the coiled serpent of the Jin, dotted the north. A forest of green-tasseled pins, marking the Southern Song armies, clustered in the south like a poised fist.
Lin Wei stood just inside the tent flap, feeling the sheer gravitational pull of the men gathered around that table.
This was not Commander Xin's pragmatic frontier council.
This was the court of a king of war.
To the right of the table stood General Niu Gao, a bull of a man whose very stillness seemed to promise violence. To the left was General Yang Zaixing, taller, gaunter, with the patient eyes of a stone-mason. Between them, fussing over a sheaf of rice paper scrolls, was the Logistics Master, Li Ru, whose anxious energy buzzed in the solemn air. Beside him, solid as an oak, was Yue Fei's lieutenant, Zhang Xian. And at the head of the table, a hand resting on the representation of the Yellow River as if feeling its current, stood the Generalissimo.
Yue Fei did not speak. He listened. The debate was already raging.
"—a lightning strike!" Niu Gao's voice was a gravelly rumble. He stabbed a thick finger at the sand north of the river. "My cavalry, the Bears' Paw infantry, we cross at Liyuan Ford. We bypass the fortified towns, ride straight for their rear. Cut their supply lines to Kaifeng, let them starve in their stone boxes while we pluck them like ripe fruit!"
"And leave your own supply line dangling like a loose thread for their horsemen to sever?" Yang Zaixing's voice was cooler, a file on stone. "You become a needle in a haystack, Niu. A needle they will find and break. We must be the wall, not the spear." His long finger traced a slow, deliberate path up the main southern road. "We take Xiangcheng, then Xuchang, fortifying as we go. A step, a fortress. Another step, another fortress. We give them a wall to break their teeth on, and we advance the wall. It is slower, but it is sure. It reclaims the land, mile by bloody mile."
"It gives them a year to gather every man and horse from Manchuria to grind us to paste against your 'wall'!" Niu Gao shot back.
A flicker of movement. Yue Fei's hand lifted, an inch. Silence fell, instant and absolute. All eyes turned to him.
He studied the table, his gaze moving from Niu Gao's proposed ford to Yang Zaixing's plodding road. "The Jin are a cavalry army," he said, his voice so low everyone leaned in to hear. "Their strength is the open plain, the swift encirclement. Their weakness is the fortress, the siege, the fixed line." He picked up a green-tasseled pin from the southern mass. "Yang Zaixing. Your main army will be the wall. You will advance as you say. You will be the mountain they must move. You will draw their main force to you." He placed the pin on the road, then picked up a cluster of three more. "Niu Gao. You will be the spear. But not a lone needle. You will be a moving fortress of speed. The Bears' Paw, the swiftest cavalry, the most ruthless scouts. You do not ride for Kaifeng. You ride here." He placed the pins like a dagger pointing at the junction of two major Jin supply routes far behind the front lines. "You strike their grain depots, their remount pastures, their conscript mustering points. You make them choose: turn to face you and let the wall crush their front, or hold the line and watch you burn their breadbasket. You are the pain behind their eyes."
The strategy was breathtaking in its simple, brutal elegance. A pincer, not of geography, but of function. A relentless, undeniable pressure applied to the front, and a screaming, chaotic agony unleashed in the rear. The commanders' faces shifted from argument to grim calculation. The campaign had its skeleton.
Master Li Ru, the logistician, cleared his throat, the sound like dry parchment tearing. "The wall requires six hundred tons of grain per week to move. The speat requires specially packed rations, fodder for horses that must move three times the speed. The supply train will be four hundred wagons, stretching twenty li. It is a snake so long, the Jin can cut it in a dozen places. It is the single greatest vulnerability of this… elegant plan."
Yue Fei nodded, as if he had been waiting for this. "Then we must make the snake's body as hard as iron, and its ability to heal as swift as a thought." His gaze found Lin Wei, standing in the shadows. "Surgeon-General. Approach. Explain to Master Li how you will make his snake immortal."
Every eye in the tent followed Lin Wei as he stepped forward to the sand table. He felt the weight of their stares—skeptical, curious, hostile. He ignored the sand cities and focused on the space between the green tassels and the distant goal.
"The army is a body," Lin Wei began, his voice clinical, cutting through the tension. "Master Li speaks of its nourishment. I speak of its health. A sick army moves at a quarter speed. A wounded army does not move at all. My corps is not a charitable endeavor. It is a logistical multiplier." He took three small, plain wooden blocks from the edge of the table. "We will function in three layers." He placed the first block among Niu Gao's hammer-force pins. "Mender Teams. Four medics, two stretcher-bearers. Attached directly to forward companies. They treat immediately, on the spot. They stop the leaks before the strength pours out. Their supplies move with the combat units."
He placed the second block a short distance behind Yang Zaixing's anvil-force. "Mobile Field Hospitals. Larger, with surgical capacity. They follow half a day's march behind the main line. The Mender Teams stabilize and pass the critical wounded back to them. These hospitals move with the army's baggage train."
He placed the third block further back, on a major road junction Master Li had indicated as a supply node. "Convalescent Depots. Fortified waypoints. Here, men heal. Here, medicines and clean supplies are stockpiled. Men who recover return to the front along the same supply lines that bring food, keeping the wagons full in both directions."
Master Li's brows were furrowed. "You add more wagons. More mouths to feed. More complexity."
"I add more fighting men, for longer," Lin Wei countered. "A soldier with a treated wound who returns to the line in three weeks is a soldier you do not have to replace with a recruit from the south, a recruit who requires six months of food and training before he is useful. My calculations, based on the frontier engagements, show a well-supported medical corps can increase the effective fighting strength of an army on campaign by a minimum of twenty percent. It turns a drain on your logistics into a reservoir of strength."
A murmur went around the table. Twenty percent. It was a number that even the most traditional general could not ignore. It was more soldiers without more conscription.
Before the debate could restart, Yue Fei spoke again. "The health of the body. The strength of the arm. Now, the fire in the fist." He gave a nod to an aide.
From the rear of the tent, three men in the soot-stained leather aprons of the Imperial Arsenal entered, carrying objects with reverent care. The first held a spherical iron casing, the size of a large grapefruit, with a small fuse hole. "The Thunder Crash Bomb," the artisan said. "Filled with black powder and iron shards. Launched from a trebuchet. It does not just crush; it shreds."
The second held a complex apparatus of brass pumps and a leather tank, mounted on a small cart. "Adapted from the navy's Fierce-Fire Spray," the man said, a hint of pride in his voice. "Pumps naphtha and fire twenty paces. Mounted on armored ox-carts—Fire Chariots. For breaking charges or clearing trenches."
The third man held a bamboo tube, three feet long, strapped to an arrow shaft. "The Flying Fire Arrow," he announced. "The powder in the tube ignites and provides thrust. Greater range, and the scream… it sows panic in horses and men alike."
The commanders leaned in, their faces illuminated by the brazier light and a new, hungry fascination. Niu Gao grinned, a wolf seeing a new tooth. Yang Zaixing nodded slowly, already calculating their defensive use. The tools of conquest were laid bare, a marriage of Song ingenuity and ruthless intent.
Yue Fei let the silence hang, absorbing the changed atmosphere. He placed his palms flat on the edge of the sand table, his shoulders squaring, making him seem to grow and fill the tent.
"We do not go to fight a battle," he said, and his voice, though still quiet, now carried the weight of a landslide. "We go to reclaim the heart of our nation. Every life preserved by the Surgeon-General's arts is a soldier who can hold a wall at Xuchang. Every pound of grain Master Li delivers is a day we can sit before the walls of Kaifeng. Every 'thunder crash' that shatters a Jin gate is a hundred sons of the Song who need not die on scaling ladders. This is not a war of brute courage. It is a war of will, of stone, of grain, of healing, and of fire. We will be the stone they cannot break, the sickness that drains their strength, and the fire that consumes their will."
His eyes swept the room, lingering on each man. "You have your parts. Make the body ready. Make the arm strong. Make the fist into iron and fire. We march in ten days. Dismissed."
---
Dawn bled pale gold over the eastern hills, illuminating a sight that stole the breath. The plain before the headquarters was no longer a camp. It was a living organism of terrifying purpose unfolding.
To the south, Yang Zaixing's anvil assembled: a vast, orderly square of infantry, their spear-tips a forest of cold silver, interspersed with the slow, groaning might of siege towers and catapults. Supply wagons, thousands of them, formed a serpentine river of wood and canvas alongside.
To the north, Niu Gao's hammer gathered: a restless, buzzing mass of cavalry, the tough, nimble Bears' Paw infantry with their signature axes, and mule trains loaded with sacks of parched grain and smoked meat. Among them, the hulking, metal-skinned forms of the Fire Chariots sat, ominous and strange.
And in the midst of it all, a distinct, organized column: Lin Wei's Medical Corps. No red armbands. Just ordered ranks of men with clean packs, lines of stretcher-bearing mules, and wagons with white flags bearing a single, bold character: 醫 (Medicine). It looked less like a military unit and more like a university on the march. Nearby, Master Li Ru's clerks darted like ants, final tallies on their scrolls.
From the command height, a single, deep-throated horn sounded, a note that vibrated in the chest. Then another. Then a dozen. Banners, taller than three men, slowly rose: the crimson field and the fierce black eagle of Yue Fei's personal standard.
A gate opened in the palisade. Yue Fei rode out. Not in ceremonial armor, but in the same worn, practical lamellar he always wore. He carried no grand banner. He simply rode, Zhang Xian a pace behind, to the head of the immense column. He did not turn. He did not give a speech to the multitude. He faced north, towards the distant, unseen river and the lost capital beyond.
He drew his sword. The morning light ran like water down the simple, unscrolled steel.
He pointed it north.
And the earth began to move.
With a rumble that was felt more than heard, the great machine of the Northern Expedition lurched into motion. The river of men and steel began to flow. Lin Wei, from his place in the column, watched the countless backs ahead of him, felt the tremor in the ground. The planning was over. The sand table was gone. There was only the road ahead, the enemy waiting, and the brutal, beautiful, terrifying machine of which he was now a vital cog.
The directive in his mind, which had guided him from a prison cell to this moment, displayed a single, stark line, its numbers a cold counterpoint to the rising sun.
"[Primary Directive: Win the War.]"
"[Campaign Phase: Initiated.]"
"[Probability of Strategic Success: 38.7%... and falling with every step north.]"