Commander Xin was tired. It was a fatigue that had nothing to do with miles marched or battles fought. It was the deep, soul-weary exhaustion of watching a perfect blade slowly being fouled with the mud of petty, distant men.
The northern campaign, under Yue Fei, was a masterpiece of war. Every fortified hill taken, every river crossed, every Jin battalion broken, was a note in a symphony of reclamation.
Xin's own troops, the hardened veterans of the frontier now integrated into the great machine, fought with a ferocity born of seeing the lost lands with their own eyes. But with every victory, the air grew thicker, the congratulations from the high command more restrained, the looks from the political officers more calculating.
The summons to the Generalissimo's command tent came not as a brass horn call, but as a whispered word from a stone-faced aide.
The tent, usually a hub of crisp, campaign energy, felt different. The great sand table was covered. Only Yue Fei's personal banner stood in the corner. The men gathered were not the full staff, but a skeletal core: the bull-like Niu Gao, stinking of horse and old blood; the gaunt, patient Yang Zaixing; and two of Yue Fei's most loyal lieutenants, men whose faces were as familiar and unyielding as the mountains of the south.
This was not a council of war. It was a gathering of the condemned, before the sentence was read.
Yue Fei stood before them, his back straight, but the lines around his eyes were chiseled deep by a weight no spear could lift. He did not offer them wine.
"Censor Zhao's preliminary report has been copied and sent to the Ministry of War in Lin'an," Yue Fei began, his voice the same low, steady rumble, but it now carried the gravity of a headstone being settled.
"It details the victory at Yancheng as a costly, chaotic brawl. It credits Niu Gao's aggression with destabilizing a controlled siege. It cites the Medical Corps' catastrophic losses as evidence of Lin Wei's reckless innovation and poor placement. It concludes that our methods, while effective in the short term, breed indiscipline and unsustainable dependency on unorthodox, potentially disloyal elements."
Niu Gao made a sound like a bear choking. "That ink-stained weasel! He watched from a hill! My 'aggression' saved the hospital and broke their prince! Does he think cities fall by asking nicely?"
"What he thinks is irrelevant," Yang Zaixing said, his voice a file on stone. "It is what the court in Lin'an wishes to hear. They do not listen for truth. They listen for justification."
One of the other lieutenants, a man named Feng with a face like weathered oak, spoke. "The justification they seek, Generalissimo, is for peace. Not the peace of victory, but the peace of a quiet river. The Chancellor and his faction have the Emperor's ear. They argue the treasury is drained. They argue the people are weary. They argue…" he hesitated, the unspoken truth a foul taste in the tent, "…that a too successful campaign creates… complications."
The silence was absolute. The complication hung in the air, a ghost they all acknowledged but never named: the two captured Emperors, Huizong and Qinzong, the current Emperor Gaozong's father and elder brother, languishing in a Jin palace far to the north.
If Yue Fei's armies swept north, recaptured the old capital of Kaifeng, and threatened the Jin heartland… what then? The Jin might use the captives as bargaining chips. Or worse, they might simply release them. An Emperor returning from captivity would shatter the Southern Song court like a hammer on glass.
The man on the Dragon Throne in Lin'an owed his crown to their capture. His most dangerous enemy was not the Jin horseman at the gate, but the rightful sovereign in a gilded cage.
"They do not want the north back," Commander Xin said, the words leaving his lips before he could stop them. He'd known it in his gut, in the strange hollowness of each victory, in the carefully limited supplies, in the poisonous scrolls that followed triumph like crows after a battle.
"The bureaucrats. The peace faction. They are comfortable. They have their gardens in Lin'an, their poetry, their trade. Becoming a tributary state to the Jin, paying annual silver and silk… it is a price they are willing to let the nation pay, so long as their world remains undisturbed. They do not hate the Jin. They fear us. They fear what victory would mean."
Yue Fei's eyes, those flint-chip orbs, rested on Xin. There was no anger in them. Only a profound, weary sorrow, and beneath it, the unbreakable core of his being. "I know what they fear," Yue Fei said. "But my loyalty is not to the comfort of ministers, nor to the politics of a throne. My loyalty is to the oaths I swore. To the land of the Song. To the people north of the river who wait for our banners. My duty is to fight, to reclaim, to restore. That is all."
"And the report, Generalissimo?" Yang Zaixing pressed softly. "Zhao will not stop. This is only the first thrust. He will look for more. Any irregularity. Any excess in foraging. Any rumor of discontent he can tie to your command. He will build a case, not of military failure, but of… political unreliability."
Yue Fei was silent for a long moment. He looked at each of them—the brave, the brilliant, the loyal. "I have made mistakes," he said, and the admission was more shocking than any defiance.
"At Yancheng, the hospital was vulnerable. I allowed Lin Wei too long a leash, and the enemy saw the weakness. Niu Gao's charge, while decisive, was a gamble that risked the entire left flank. These are military realities. A commander must acknowledge them. I will correct them.
I will tighten the lines, improve the fortifications, ensure our rear is secure." He paused, his gaze turning inward. "But I will not correct the spirit that drives us. I will not apologize for zeal. I will not punish success because it makes cowards in Lin'an nervous. Let Zhao write his reports. Let the court whisper. We have a country to win back. That is the only report that matters."
The meeting ended not with a plan, but with a silent, shared dread. They filed out of the tent, the victorious generals of the Northern Expedition feeling like men walking from a wake.
Under the vast, cold bowl of the night sky, Commander Xin walked beside Yang Zaixing. The sounds of the victorious camp—the songs, the repairs, the distant anvil strikes—felt like a cruel joke.
"He sees the trap," Xin muttered, his voice low. "He knows the jaws are closing. And he will walk into it, because his oath is a chain that pulls him forward."
Yang Zaixing nodded slowly, his eyes on the distant, unseen capital a thousand li to the south. "The Jin have iron and horses. A formidable enemy. But they are an enemy you can see, whose motives you can understand." He turned his bleak gaze on Xin. "The enemy in Lin'an… they fight with paper and whispers. They do not want to defeat the Jin. They want to defeat him. And in doing so, they will break the only sword that can save us all."
They stopped, looking back at the command tent, a island of solitary light in the sleeping camp. "If this continues," Xin said, the words tasting of ash, "it will not be the Jin who end the Southern Song. It will be the Southern Song that ends itself."
As they parted, a figure moved in the shadows near the courier's post. A clerk, one of Censor Zhao's own, handed a sealed leather tube to a fresh messenger. The man wore the light travel gear of the Imperial Post, a system that ran with relentless efficiency, carrying words, not armies. The clerk spoke a few quiet words, the messenger nodded, swung into the saddle, and turned his horse south. The hoofbeats were soft, quick, and purposeful, disappearing into the darkness on the road to Lin'an.
The report, with its elegant lies and poisonous truths, was on its way. The battle for the north was being won on the field. The war for the soul of the Song was being lost in an imperial dispatch rider's saddlebag, galloping silently towards the heart of the empire it was meant to protect.