On the twenty-third day of the ninth month, in White Horse City, Eastern Commandery, two days had passed since a brief rain. The air was mild, neither too damp nor too dry.
Just after noon, Dou Bing, the commandery's commandant, received an invitation from Li Tingwen, its resident Black Sash. The chrysanthemums in his rear courtyard were in full bloom, he said, just right for viewing, so he had arranged an impromptu banquet and invited Commandant Dou over to admire the flowers and drink.
Dou Bing had not wanted to go. As the commandery's deputy official responsible for military affairs, he had clearly sensed unrest among the commandery troops in the city these past few days. From the vital White Horse Ford to the city's defenses, the atmosphere was tense.
As a scion of a great Guanlong clan, Dou Bing naturally knew what was happening... At the beginning of the month, a rebel army hundreds of thousands strong had taken Dengzhou, then rampaged unchecked, capturing cities and seizing territory. As the news traveled along the Great River and the Ji River, it was bound to send violent tremors through Eastern Commandery, likewise part of Eastern Qi's former territory.
But how should one put it?
Life had been growing harder by the day, and that had not begun just these past few days. Compared with the impact and upheaval of the million-strong march in the Third Dongyi Campaign that spring, and the Sage's sudden southern tour in the summer, this news was something most people had long expected.
Perhaps that was precisely why, after a moment's hesitation, Dou Bing accepted his wife's advice and postponed his inspection of White Horse Ford, heading to the Li residence instead. After all, his first wife had a point: Eastern Commandery's geographical position all but