A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

At daybreak, the commander of the Third Battalion arrived at the back of the earthen ridge.

Yang Hu didn't give an answer first. Instead, he asked a question.

"Today is the fifth day since the start of the hottest period of summer. They haven't come. Why?"

Shao Qi was taken aback.

For the past five days, everyone has only thought about their own side: food, medicine, wounded soldiers, and the road. Not a single person has thought about the other side.

"They...are waiting for us to starve to death," Cui Ting said.

"Why wait until we starve to death?" Yang Hu said. "They have 20,000 horses, while our 4,700 able-bodied men are crammed into a low-lying area, with just over 400 lying down. If we march over now, it will only take an hour."

Cui Ting couldn't answer.

"General Yue."

Yue Chong stroked his beard.

"General, you are right. I have served in the frontier for nineteen years, and I have never seen a barbarian who, after winning a battle, did not pursue the enemy." He said slowly, "There is only one reason why they do not pursue after winning: they cannot catch up."

"We can't catch up."

Yang Hu presented the idea he had thought of the night before.

"Willow Leaf saw three pits in that old camp in the Northeast, filled with stones, seven or eight days apart. By then, people were already dead. The day of the Mid-Summer Solstice was the third day of the third lunar month, and today is the eighth. Those three pits were from the second lunar month."

"The general means that the three times they buried [the graves] were just the beginning."

"That's quite something," Yang Hu said. "They drove dozens of sick animals, covering hundreds of miles. The drivers, the pole carriers, and the horses that drank from those waters were all their own. The disease flares up every three days, and once it flares up, they can't walk anymore."

He pointed north.

"It's not that they didn't want to chase them. It's that they weren't sure how many of those 20,000 horses could still run."

There was silence behind the earthen ridge for a moment.

"This is just the general's guess," Shao Qi couldn't help but say.

"It's a guess," Yang Hu said, "which is why we're going to verify it today."

He turned toward the doorway.

"Willow leaf".

Liu Ye came in from outside, covered in dew.

"I went out at midnight last night and made my way forty li." She spread a piece of cloth on a stone, on which were a few clumps of dried manure and a small piece of rope. "The general is right."

"speak."

"Their camp moved north. They moved about twenty li (about 10 kilometers), very quickly. They didn't pack up their tents or light their fires," Liu Ye said. "That's the most important thing."

She pushed that small section of rope over.

It's made of wool, about two fingers wide.

It's the same kind that Liu Ye found at the bottom of a ridge about 120 miles northeast of the city a dozen days ago.

"They've brought another batch," Yang Hu said.

"They weren't rushing us." Liu Ye shook her head. "This time they weren't rushing us. The rope was left north of their own camp, and there were drag marks all the way north."

Cui Ting suddenly looked up.

"They're moving their patients northward," Yang Hu said, picking up the rope. "Moving northward means getting further away from their main camp. It's something we did by the water, and they've copied it."

He lowered the rope.

"General Shao."

"Your subordinate is here."

I do not approve of your proposal yesterday.

Shao Qi bowed deeply: "This humble general obeys the order."

"I'm not pressuring you," Yang Hu said. "I'll give you a number."

He pulled out the piece of paper he had written on the night before from his pocket.

"The old camp that Liu Ye found last night, there are now seven buried pits, not three. The seven pits are spaced closer together each day, with the last two only two days apart."

Shao Qi paused for a moment.

"The general means that they are at their most ferocious point over there."

"It's at its worst." Yang Hu folded the paper. "We only have three days' worth of food left. I don't know how many days' worth of people they have left. But I do know one thing: they're in a more desperate situation than we are."

"Then we..."

"Wait three days."

"And what about three days later?"

"We'll run out of food in three days," Yang Hu said. "But in three days, those seven pits will become nine."

Shao Qi gritted his teeth and remained silent.

Cui Ting first asked the question everyone wanted to ask: "General, what have the 6,300 men been eating for the past three days?"

Yang Hu put the paper away and stood up.

"From this day forward, I will not accept this share."

The four people behind the earthen ridge were all stunned.

"General!"

"I won't take this share. The commanders, brigade commanders, and captains of the three battalions will all have their share halved," Yang Hu said. "The medical team will continue as usual, and the wounded will receive an additional half share."

"Half a portion?" Shao Qi blurted out. "General, wounded soldiers don't go into battle!"

"Wounded soldiers shouldn't go into battle; they need to grow back fat," Yang Hu said. "If they don't grow back fat, there won't be those two hundred and forty guns left in twenty days."

He took two steps toward the depression, then turned back.

"There's one more thing. Post that notice."

Cui Ting was taken aback: "General, there is no camp gate here."

"Find a pole."

The notice was put up in the afternoon.

The pole was taken from a hastily assembled stretcher and stuck high in the middle of the depression. The paper was a page torn from a booklet by Cui Ting; as usual, it only had a few numbers on it, with no heading or signature.

Nine thousand one hundred were sent beyond the Great Wall. Now there are six thousand three hundred and nine. Four hundred and three are seriously injured, but none will be abandoned.

A new line begins below: From today onwards, the number of officers and soldiers will be halved, and the number of wounded soldiers will be increased by half.

When Cui Ting posted this page, not many people gathered around to look at it. Even fewer could read.

A centurion read the words on it aloud.

When he got to the last line, he stopped and read it again.

At Shenshi (3-5 PM) on that day, the first person arrived.

He was an old soldier from the front camp, around fifty years old, whose arm had been injured at Qing Shi Kou and he couldn't lift it very high. He walked to the stone in the center camp and bent down.

"General, let me state my name."

"What should I register for?"

"Carry the stretcher," the old soldier said. "This little one of my arms can't lift heavy things, but I can lift the front end. The front is lighter."

Yang Hu looked at him.

"Do you know how far you need to carry it?"

"have no idea."

"They might carry him until he dies."

"I'll report that too." The old soldier bent down again. "General, I lay in the new camp. I was carried in in August, and the captain said I was to be carried out. I walked out by myself."

He paused.

"The general counted the children back then. Today it's the general's turn to count them."

Yang Hu sat in front of that rock for a long time.

The second group to arrive were Captain Pang and his thirty soldiers who were learning bandaging; they came together.

The third group to arrive was a squad from the right battalion, numbering over twenty, led by the centurion who had been whipped in the snow and refused to take off his boots.

By the time the sun had set, Cui Ting had filled four pages with notes.

His hand was trembling when he handed the booklet to Yang Hu.

"General."

"explain."

"One thousand one hundred and forty-seven people signed up to carry the stretcher."

Yang Hu took the booklet.

Four pages, one name per line; some were written by others, others were just circles drawn on the paper.

"Four hundred and three seriously injured." Cui Ting's voice was a little hoarse. "Each person needs two people to carry them, so we need eight hundred and six. There are three hundred and forty-one left over."

"What are we going to do with the extra?"

"They said..." Cui Ting turned to the last page, "They said to take turns. If someone gets tired, someone else can take over; one person won't be able to carry it all out."

Yang Hu closed the booklet.

Several fires had been lit in the depression, not for roasting meat, but for boiling water. Six thousand three hundred people were scattered on the slope, their voices not loud, but the silence of sitting and waiting to die was gone. Near one fire, someone was humming a tune, humming a few lines before being nudged by someone next to them, stopping, only to start humming again a moment later.

"General Choi."

"Your subordinate is here."

"Make a copy of these four pages and keep it safe."

"What does the general intend to use it for?"

"It's useless." Yang Hu handed the booklet back.

He stood up and glanced at the pole with the notice sticking out of it. The pole had been taken from the stretcher and wasn't stuck in the ground; it swayed in the wind, and one corner of the notice was already curled up.

"If anyone asks me in the future why I didn't abandon those 403 people," he said, "I won't reason with them. I'll show them these four pages."

"What if he denies it?"

"Then let him count them himself," Yang Hu said. "There are 1,147 names. If he can count them all, then let him do it."