Chapter 238 — The Man Named Lee Yeongu 5
"But if this is the capital, is it not too far to the east?"
Yeongu suddenly asked.
The Great Khan tilted his head.
From the perspective of Jurchen lands, Huiling was not at the eastern edge.
The Acheng area was, within the living sphere of the various Jurchen tribes, closer to the center.
The roads of mountains, rivers, and tribes gathered there, and it was a suitable place for Agolta to summon and rally people.
Yeongu, as if he knew none of those circumstances, pointed far to the southwest.
"Would Yanjing not be better?"
The Yanjing he spoke of was Liao's Southern Capital, Xijin Prefecture, the present Beijing.
All afternoon, he had spoken of the grand strategy of diplomacy with Song: negotiate well, hand over the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun, and shift the annual tribute Liao had received so that Jin would receive it instead.
That was one of the most important strategies of this war.
Yet now he was saying that same Yanjing should become the capital someday.
The Great Khan was briefly at a loss for words.
Yeongu leaped too easily.
He had skipped all at once over the mountains and rivers that had to be crossed to make that place the capital, the promise with Song, Liao's remaining forces, the hearts of the people in the Yan-Yun region, and the likely resistance of Jurchen generals.
It was as though a map of the distant future had already unfolded before him.
The Great Khan said,
"But that place must be handed over to Song."
"For now, yes. Ahaha. Ahaha."
What did that mean?
The Great Khan's brow twitched slightly.
"Are you saying we should disregard diplomatic negotiations?"
Yeongu answered without concern.
"I only mean that a man's mind differs before and after he goes to the latrine. Those people are now pleading so desperately their bowels must be burning, but when the time comes, they will change."
The Great Khan shook his head.
"No. Even so, a promise must be kept."
"Please watch how the negotiations unfold."
After that too, the two men exchanged many words.
Yet at times, the Great Khan felt as if Yeongu lived in a world entirely different from his own.
Yeongu laid out plan after plan in disorder, as if making vows to himself.
His words leaped from here to there, and before one story ended, another possibility intruded.
Yet strangely, all those words led to one place.
The subject was the same, but the depth differed from what he had said during the meeting.
In the meeting, the focus had been listing each item and presenting the goals.
It was important to decide who would take charge of each matter.
Diplomacy with Song, the shaking of Liao from within, the standard for postwar handling, and the reorganization of the army were each laid out in order.
But in the place where he walked alone with the Great Khan, the difficulties that could arise while pushing those goals forward began to spring out.
Those difficulties were, in the end, matters the Great Khan himself had to take care of.
The Great Khan asked,
"Then what is Zonghan to do?"
"What do you mean? He must design the entire war here. That is the war's proper work.
I intend to cling to that as well."
"You called it a great decisive battle."
"We must examine where the battlefield will be."
Naturally, the Great Khan thought beyond Huanglongfu, that is, Buyeobu.
If Liao's great army came down, he thought they would collide somewhere around there.
But Yeongu offered a completely different opinion.
"It will be near here."
"Here?"
The Great Khan stopped walking.
Yeongu was drawing the battlefield in an entirely different place.
"Why?"
"Goryeo destroyed enemies by drawing them in. While they come, their reinforcements and the forces of their subordinate tribes will peel away. By the time they arrive near here, they will no longer be a massive procession supported by supplies and slave labor, but mostly pure fighting troops. They will have diminished greatly. We should draw them in as far as possible and decide the matter there.
It would be good if a rebellion rises at that timing, and if rumors of Goryeo and Song entering the war move together."
The Great Khan asked in a low voice,
"Then can we win? Even so, it is a great army."
Yeongu said,
"We must win.
In this battle, we must break Liao."
The Great Khan looked at Yeongu again after hearing that.
His words were disorderly, but he did not lose the first goal in the end.
He spoke of Yanjing, then Song, then rebellion inside Liao, and before one knew it, he had returned to the great decisive battle.
Things that sounded like stray nonsense were all attached to a single goal.
That goal was to break Liao's military center in this one battle.
The Great Khan asked,
"What must I do, then? At this point."
Yeongu answered at once.
"The Great Khan should do the same work. Rather than hoping our soldiers increase further, please focus on arming and training those who can be mobilized now. Even if the number grows, will it grow by five thousand? Ten thousand? There is no need to waste effort on number games that will not work."
The Great Khan stopped for a moment at those words.
Then he slowly nodded.
"I see. That was what it was from the beginning. While we dreamed of something else, time flowed away. We should have made even one more suit of armor instead. After several victories, many came over to us, so I thought we might be able to fight them on equal footing. But in the end, nothing has changed: we must fight many with few."
"That is so."
The Great Khan's face brightened.
Strangely, those words gave not despair, but relief.
When people wait for something that will not come, they despair.
But once they know from the beginning that it will not come, they can gather their strength into what they already hold.
There was no reason to wait for soldiers who would not come.
They had to feed, clothe, arm, and train the soldiers they had now.
Yeongu continued speaking.
"Will five thousand more make things better? Or ten thousand? I keep repeating the same thing. Right now there are twenty meng'an. We must properly arm them, feed their horses, fill their bows and arrows, and repair their spear shafts and armor. If we leave the soldiers we already have idle while waiting for those newly joining, that is the greater loss."
It sounded like he was just rambling, but Yeongu's meaning was clear.
Do not wait for more troops to come.
Properly prepare the army already present.
Because he could not say that straight, he had only mixed possible and impossible words together and repeated them.
In the end, it meant they should fight with the soldiers they had and do their utmost.
That was Lee Yeongu.
The Great Khan suddenly took Yeongu's hand.
His large, rough hand wrapped around Yeongu's.
"You came well. You returned well."
Yeongu lowered himself with a slightly flustered face.
"Thank you."
The Great Khan did not release his hand.
There was a light in his eyes different from earlier.
On the face of a man who had lost sages, placated generals, built the palace fortress of a new country, and waited for Liao's army of hundreds of thousands, sincere relief appeared for the first time in a long while.
"I feel as though I have gained something greater than a heavenly army and ten thousand horses."