Field Camp of Sun Quan, Jing Province, 219
Cao Ren emerged from a small tent that had been pitched around him as he slept, the last cocoon of the fever dream that had brought him to this encampment. He had run off from Fan Castle as a man possessed, floating through blurred vignettes of muster and egress and the slog over midnight trails. Reality now surrounded him in sharp relief - the crunch of gravel beneath his boots, the faint acridity of a cooking fire, the scrape and bustle of soldiers lining up for their breakfast rations.
The guard captain strode over, bowed. "General Cao!"
Cao Ren returned the greeting with utmost martial precision as if to compensate for the indignities of his rumpled attire, his hastily combed topknot, his rising well after the first drums of morning watch. He found a small comfort in that his guards were fully dressed and in formation, showing the discipline of his forces although his own weariness had kept him from being his usual example.
"Thank you for the tent, and for setting it up so quietly." Cao Ren smiled. "A sneak attack of hospitality, one might say."
"It's a crude shelter for a commander of your repute. I apologize that we were not better prepared."
"No apologies needed. It was well kept and secure." Cao Ren glanced up at clouds dark with the threat of rain. "It certainly would have sufficed if Heaven had seen fit to drench us."
"You had best make haste before it does. General Lü was in quite a hurry himself. He seemed to be racing ahead of the storm." This pensive remark left an unsaid implication - Almost as if he doubted his ability to weather it.
Cao Ren gulped down his offered bowl of gruel, gathered himself and his men. He set his pace at the limits of sustainable exertion, his sights on the long and winding road ahead. Through the tedious hours of pursuit, of wildwood unbroken by banner or guardsman or signal fire, this focus drifted into rumination. Lü Meng was as ill as the rumors suggested. Lü Meng was deteriorating, perhaps already dying. Or Lü Meng was tired and hungry and deprived of sleep - just the same as Cao Ren, who must hardly look his best after a rough day of travel.
As daylight began to fade, the road split off into a freshly blazed trail toward an upcoming plateau. A watchtower rose above the treetops, its guards clad in red armor. Cao Ren and his men paused to display their own banners before following the path to a modest encampment. The tower was its lone established structure. The tents were small, much like the one he had just slept in, and only a platform base served to distinguish the commander's quarters from the rest. Even before the Wu soldiers confirmed their leader's identity, Cao Ren felt the anxious thrill of finding his target.
Lü Meng stood alone on an overlook, his back to the camp. His head was bowed, but perhaps in planning or thought or observation of the land stretching out to the south. The brass of his armor was dull, but perhaps muted beneath the dusk of gray and oppressive skies.
"Lü Ziming!"
Lü Meng turned slowly, warily, as if trying to recall which particular deep voice had the confidence to address him by his courtesy name. He approached with earnest yet hitching steps, leaning on his halberd as a walking stick. When the two of them were face to face, he planted the weapon to steady himself.
"Cao Zixiao." Three poetic syllables, nearly reverent in their surprise. "You're here."
Lü Meng's skin was waxen pale, his cheeks hollow, his eyes depressed in weary sockets. His gaze still burned as always, but there was an unsettling edge to its intensity. Cao Ren tried to place this as he grasped after a response, unsure whether to explain himself or to soften the shock that must be plain in his eyes. He came to realize that he was seeing a ghost of the young man he had dueled and briefly captured at Jiangling - of his defiance in the face of death.
"You're exhausted," Cao Ren managed.
"I'm on the hunt. I have no time to rest." Lü Meng took a gritted breath. "Not if I am to put an end to this."
Cao Ren thought to praise Lü Meng for seizing southern Jing by serving its citizens, to gently question the discord between the harmony of that conquest and the desperate haste he was hearing now. He found himself unable to gather his thoughts in detail. "Why you? Why personally?"
"Why not? I began this betrayal. I'm the one who has to see it through. Who else ought to bloody their hands with this dirt?"
Lü Meng must have taken due pride in this coup, a ploy as iconic as the signature campaigns of his mentors. Sima Yi had dismissed his motives as pure greed. From his own witness of Lü Meng's generosity as a host and administrator - or perhaps from eagerness to believe the best of him - Cao Ren had clung to the hope of some nuance within his mindset. This question, more spat than spoken, gave him a sense of vindication.
"What about that pirate friend of yours? He'd be foaming at the mouth over a prize such as Guan Yu."
"He's dead."
The words fell like a blade, and Cao Ren knew better than to follow up with sympathy or inquiry into the manner of Gan Ning's passing. Lü Meng's speech was clipped and terse, chilling the warmth of his welcome - as if the flood had washed away all they had shared in more peaceful times, leaving the stress of this campaign to confound their path like so many jagged rocks in a river's ford.
"Please." Lü Meng sighed. "Go back to Fan Castle. Rebuild your city. Take care of your people. Haven't you seen enough of this misery?"
"I have, long before the two of us ever clashed on the field." Cao Ren had a brief and raw memory of his lord's unspeakable massacre of Xu province, of waterways choked with corpses and running dark with their blood. "I've also seen that there is no sense in avoiding it - not if I have any chance to ease its pain."
"What if there isn't any such chance?"
"Sometimes that may be true." Cao Ren had done his part to end the Xu invasion quickly, leading his cavalry to chase down forces of Tao Qian before they joined up into a greater threat. Yet Cao Cao's rage was unquestionable, its magnitude only evident in the heaps of bodies already begun to rot when Cao Ren caught his first horrified glimpse of the carnage. "But even if my hopes are futile, I'd rather have been there to try."
Lü Meng did not respond, almost as if thinking up another attempt to send Cao Ren on the road back north. Instead he doubled over with a sudden cough, a deep rattle giving way to wheezing. As he got himself upright, he smiled.
"Idealistic as ever, aren't you? Glad to see you haven't changed."
"Did you expect me to?"
"War has a way of hardening men's hearts, making them cynical." A rueful set of the mouth. "At least that's the case for some of us."
"War is a burden, and there's no shame in struggling beneath its weight. Sometimes I count up the heads I was forced to take, the soldiers I failed to protect. Sometimes the regret can be staggering." Cao Ren took pause as he decided whether to admit his next thought. "Sometimes I'm not so sure it was all worthwhile."
"Yet you're still here, keeping on as you do. Refusing to give up on anything you've set your mind to saving." Lü Meng laughed sardonically. "Even me."
"My city is secure, my men in the able hands of fellow commanders. You're alone on this road with the fight of your life at its end. What would you have me do?"
Lü Meng looked off at the horizon, his brows suspiciously knit over distant eyes. Fearing he had hurt his pride, Cao Ren steeled himself for another rebuke.
"Oh, why not? I could use some good company." Shoving off with his halberd, Lü Meng began to lead them both toward camp. "Come on. My tent has room for two."
The camp horn brayed at first light, a punctual end to an early slumber that had overtaken their talk of recollections and left no chance for further bonding. Cao Ren had woken just ahead of the call as if to atone for sleeping late on the day before. Lü Meng remained a motionless form beside him, unresponsive to soft words in his ear and a gentle shake of his shoulder.
A guard captain appeared at the tent flap, bearing two bowls of gruel topped with the dried shrimp and pickled vegetables reserved as a commander's luxury. Lü Meng stirred as Cao Ren brought the food near enough for him to smell. He got himself seated, haggard in the watery streak of dawn across his pallet.
Breakfast waited between them, emanating its savory steam. A spot of hunger awoke, and Cao Ren went to reach for his chopsticks. His hand fell back when he saw the slump in Lü Meng's shoulders, the loose drape of his robes.
"Aren't you eating?" Lü Meng asked.
"Aren't you?"
"You're my guest. You go first." An amused gleam in the eye. "I thought you hated to be rude."
"I'd hate much more for you to go hungry." Cao Ren allowed himself a single bite, then pushed his bowl away as Lü Meng took a hesitant mouthful. "Here. Have your fill."
"I already am." Lü Meng continued to force down his share, his throat bobbing with effort as he swallowed. "How much more do I need to put a lid on your worries?"
"Enough to get some color back into you." Cao Ren pressed his palm to Lü Meng's forehead, finding it clammy. "And some heat, for that matter."
"This is a fine warming meal. It just needs time to digest." Lü Meng nodded toward the tent door, a window onto the waking bustle of camp. "Why don't you go keep an eye on the men?"
"I'd rather keep an eye on you."
"What if I promise to finish all of this in the meantime?"
Cao Ren smiled. "Deal."
Lü Meng's troops lined up, ate, proceeded to their duties with the same quiet efficiency. The cooking pot was scraped clean, the fire scattered, dirt shoveled onto the smoking embers. Tents were dismantled one by one, leaving gaps in their neat rows. Cao Ren took a slow walk to inspect each shelter still standing, finding them empty as expected. A tent stood alone behind a thicket, well away from its original row. Inside, two privates stretched out with eyes closed and arms at their side, as if unsure whether to fake sleep or death. One of the men twitched as Cao Ren's shadow fell across him. A moment later, he implausibly began to snore.
Cao Ren thought to double clap his hands, to demand that these layabouts get up and get ready, perhaps to unstake the tent and enjoy the spectacle of two surprised lumps scrambling out from underneath. Instead he considered this odd breach of protocol and its continuation past the point of absurdity. These antics - about the last that Cao Ren had expected to see amid the discipline of Lü Meng's camp - likely had to do with some discontent best revealed by holding a mirror up to their foolishness.
"What is this? Do you expect that General Lü will leave you behind if you hide loudly enough?"
The feigned snoring continued as if in affirmation.
"I take that as a yes, so let's think your plan through. First off, this camp only harbors two hundred troops. In such a small force, your absence would be as plain as this noise you insist on continuing."
Said noise paused, restarted for a moment before trailing off.
"Now imagine that you did get away unnoticed, that General Lü forgot how to count his own men. Where would you go, just the two of you? Home to your villages and families, however long and treacherous those roads might be? Or would you head back north through the hills - away from the dreaded Guan Yu?"
The quieter of the two privates flinched before remembering that he was supposed to be asleep.
Cao Ren thought back to this fear in his own troops, the preemptive defeat in their eyes as they milled about in the cold and steady rain. He now stood on dry ground instead of a city wall lapped by rising waters, and he held his chin high with the confidence of past triumph rather than resolve against the destruction of his kingdom's capital. Yet he addressed a pair of strangers merely beholden to him by orders from Lü Meng - words that, for all they knew, were empty, and Cao Ren could only hope to show credence by offering more of his own.
"My men once believed Guan Yu to be invincible. He certainly seemed it when he sailed up to the walls of Fan Castle, eye to eye with the guard captains upon the ramparts. When crossbow bolts rained around him without landing a single blow. When I shot an arrow into his left arm, and he pulled it out as if shooing a fly. When he returned the next day with a bandage which remained pure white as if he had never bled."
The privates had opened their eyes and sat up to listen. Cao Ren felt another echo of his speech on that dire and dreary morning - the swelling pride of bonds being forged between commander and soldier.
"Guan Yu is no god. He is as human as you and me. My troops held him off for three months while flooded, isolated, and severely outnumbered. With aid from our allies, we drove him away. General Lü took Jing province out from under Guan Yu's nose by earning the respect of its citizens. Would one with the power of Heaven be so easily spurned by his people?"
The privates' expressions agreed that he would not.
"And now Guan Yu is on the run. We are wise to keep our vigilance, but let us not give in to fear. Let us stand strong with pride in our ability, in the expertise of General Lü's leadership. Guan Yu was beaten while at his best. What chance does he stand at his worst?"
The privates wordlessly regarded each other. At length, the snorer stood and bowed. The quiet one followed soon thereafter, and they began to gather themselves for the march ahead.
Lü Meng rode tall and proud, shoulders squared to show off his polished pauldrons. His eyes glowed with renewed focus, his complexion with a swarthy hint of vitality. Catching the long and thorough look that Cao Ren had apparently failed to sneak, he smiled.
"It's good to see you back on your even keel for the first time since you arrived."
"It's good to see you properly fed, even if you won't admit to needing those rations more than I did."
"I'm still not sure about that. Don't go fainting on me before we make camp this evening." Lü Meng clucked his tongue. "Then again, I could give you a ride in the grain cart as a reward for caring too much at your own expense."
Cao Ren gave a dismissive snort. "I've marched farther with less in my stomach and none in the foreseeable future. I'll live."
As Lü Meng led the troops in single file down the mountain path, Cao Ren and his personal regiment waited to take their place at the rear. He had begun his militia with a similar handful of friends, riding in secret without the support of his family estate. In those lean and early days, they had subsisted on fruit and wild game and the rare gift of grain from grateful villagers. The suffering of hunger was one more fire beneath the crucible of their growing discipline, tempered by the perilous thrill of earning a reputation as protector of the people. Excitement and uncertainty had also carried Cao Ren through these recent rough nights on the road. Both ebbed away as he kept his uneventful guard, leaving stiffness and aches to remind him just how far he was past his youth.
Rocky slopes descended to foothills covered in dense forest. The men doubled up as the path widened enough for them to do so, edging closer to the front of the line and a view other than mottled green and brown. Two soldiers resisted this tide. As they fell through toward the back, Cao Ren had a good guess at their identity even before they ended up directly ahead of him.
"Gentlemen! How are you faring on this road?"
Snorer and Quiet jumped, glancing behind them at last. They looked at each other as if trying to gauge how much trouble they would be in by responding.
Cao Ren laughed. "You can speak to me, you know, just as you would to General Lü. I'm not here to trick you."
"I'm bored. I have a pain in my side. And I'm hungry, but I know that's my own damn fault because I didn't get up for breakfast." Snorer shrugged. "Hey, you asked."
"Stand tall and breathe deeply before that pain turns into a cramp. I can't help with the boredom, but after these past few months, I'll take a dull march through allied territory over constant vigilance against ambush."
A long pause. "Guess I should be thankful for my luck, huh?"
Quiet gave Snorer a look to indicate that he should.
The trees began to thin, giving way to shorter scrub and a view of the open plain. A shout went up from the front, and the bannermen raised their flags high as the march picked up with spirit. Cao Ren took this for joy at being out of the woods at last. Then he spotted the green banner, torn and soiled and abandoned on the roadside. Even if his troops were unable to read its name, Lü Meng had certainly made it clear to them.
Guan Yu.
Castoffs continued to appear from an army that seemed to be more concerned about speed of flight than preparation for battle. Swords, shields, spears. Another banner upon a long pole. A scaled chest plate, a fine brass helmet plumed with black horsehair. Snorer dashed out of line upon this last sighting, returning with a wide grin and his prize tucked under an arm.
"Well, would you look at this." Snorer fluffed the plume, brushing out a few specks of dust. "What was I just saying about luck?"
Quiet jabbed Snorer as he set about wrangling himself into the helmet. "Do you want to lose your head?"
"Yeah. You bet." Snorer settled his headgear out of its awkward tilt. "That's exactly what I was going for by covering it up."
"Throw that helmet away."
"Why? Because I saw it first? Want me to go see if I can find you another one?"
"I don't want it, and neither should you." Quiet sneaked a worried glance at Cao Ren before turning back to his tent mate. "Throw. It. Away."
Snorer ignored him.
Quiet continued. "You remember. We all do. Why do you think nobody up front beat you to that?"
"That was different. This stuff right here is all fair game."
"Do you want to be the one to find out the hard way if it isn't?"
Snorer kept his silence, head lowered in thought. As they passed by an untouched scattering of staves, he tore off the helmet and heaved it into the pile.
Lü Meng signaled a change of formation. Cao Ren rode forward to join him as the long tail of their march spread out into broad lines behind them. In a field up ahead, a small unit was scraping together a campsite. High above them flew a flag of surrender.
"Guan Yu, exemplar of loyalty and honor." Lü Meng's words dripped with derision. "So much for earning the same from his own men."
"If I were to be charitable, I might suppose that these troops were weary. If I were to be honest, I'd say that an able commander could still inspire them to follow. And if I were to be optimistic, I'd think that Guan Yu's failure to do so speaks volumes about his condition."
"If I were to be even more optimistic, I'd say that you and I should offer these men some real leadership. Too bad that trail of garbage tells me they've lost the will to fight."
"It's not all fit for the scrap heap. Most of those weapons and armor are still in good repair."
"They belong to Guan Yu." Lü Meng smirked. "And so, by definition, they're garbage."
"Is that why your men refuse to touch them?"
Cao Ren had matched Lü Meng's light tone, expecting another quip in return. Instead he received silence. He had wondered why Snorer discarded his spoils so easily in response to Quiet's fear, sensed a dark current beneath that tense exchange. As Lü Meng fixed his gaze forward, no longer meeting his eyes, Cao Ren felt the unease of that current rising to the surface.
"Last night, as we caught up on our respective campaigns, you praised me for capturing southern Jing without a single death. I accepted your praise without question." Lü Meng took a determined breath. "I lied."
Cao Ren waited for him to elaborate.
"A lieutenant of mine hailed from Runan, from the village I was born in. His family and mine were well acquainted. When we recognized each other, we embraced as old friends. Serving together, we shared a piece of home no matter how far the road took us.
When my forces traveled through Jing province, I set a strict example to prove us worthy to its people. We would only give, never take - not even a single tea leaf or speck of rice. Over and over, I imparted this rule to my men. I reminded them how Guan Yu raided our kingdom's grain stores. To steal from the citizens would stoop us to the greed of our enemy.
As we marched into a city, a sudden storm blew over, and we found shelter as it was offered. A peasant household opened its doors to us. I waited under the eaves. The lieutenant from Runan went inside. When he came back out, he was wearing a rain shawl made of straw.
I asked the lieutenant when he had taken up weaving. He reddened and said nothing. I told him to return the shawl. He insisted that it was a gift, that the peasants wished for him to keep his armor from rusting. I insisted on following martial law."
"So you took his head," Cao Ren finished.
"The law took his head." Lü Meng dropped his gaze, which was bright with the shimmer of tears. "I only carried out its duty."
"When faced with such obligations, I have long since told myself the same."
"I could have gone into the house, asked the peasants whether the lieutenant was telling the truth. Shown him the leniency that I once granted Gan Ning for worse offenses. Instead I made an example of him. Was I right? I'll never know. I do know that the fear of pillaging remains in my men. If that's a greater good - "
Cao Ren nodded somberly. "Then so be it."
The deserters' camp drew near. As Cao Ren and Lü Meng approached the perimeter, its guard captain hastened forth to meet them. He threw himself to his knees, hands and forehead pressed flat against the grassy earth - seemingly anticipating a blade to the back of his neck, as if the enemy of his former lord remained his own as well.
Appearing to relish this deference, Lü Meng took a moment before speaking. "Stand up, why don't you? There's no need for such formality among friends."
"Especially when they've come to offer you aid," Cao Ren added.
The guard captain got up and tidied his uniform, eyes narrowed with weary skepticism.
"There's no need for such suspicion, either." Lü Meng dismounted and took a casual step forward. "We're not here to ask you to fight."
Cao Ren jumped down from his own horse. "Or for any other repayment in particular."
The guard captain glanced over the strict rows of soldiers before him. He took a much longer look at his own troops lethargically milling about, the scatter of tents in various phases of setup, two men struggling to anchor the stand of a cooking pot in a small and unevenly dug fire pit.
"I thought you both would be out for my blood. That you'd cut me down and be back on your way. But I still have my head, and you're still here." The guard captain's mouth curled wryly. "I guess you see some hope for this mess after all."
Cao Ren and Lü Meng let their silence serve as affirmation.
"Then I guess I should take you up on your offer before you think any better of it."
The former guard captain of Guan Yu read over his freshly penned letter, squinting in the gathering dusk. "By order of General Lü, these men have free passage within Jing province. They may camp as they wish and request provisions of grain as needed." He shook his head. "Let me guess. This is some sort of secret code for 'Kill on sight.'"
Lü Meng smiled. "It's exactly as you stated."
"Maybe it is, isn't it? I did give you that chance. I'd think you would have taken it if that's what you were after." The guard captain looked past their campfire to the steaming gruel cauldron, the neat heaps of grain sacks, the even rows of tents alongside an equally sized grid of Cao Ren and Lü Meng's own. "I'd also think you wouldn't have bothered to help us settle in like this."
"You think logically." Cao Ren nodded. "And correctly, for that matter."
"Logically, huh? I fled straight east with nowhere to go, ended up right out here in the open with no way to fight back. Begged the two of you to put me out of my misery. But even after all that, I did manage to save my own hide." A sad sort of scoff. "Too bad I can't say the same about the great Guan Yu."
Lü Meng sat up straighter, eyes keen in the flickering firelight.
"He's doing what I did. Run like hell and pray for the best. Guan Yu sees this road as some sort of miracle waiting to happen. All I see is more of your banners in the villages and watchtowers. And at the end? My own grave."
The guard captain had been waiting for a pot of tea to brew, and he filled three cups to pass around the fire. Cao Ren and Lü Meng sipped in silence as he continued to ramble.
"At first, Guan Yu really was great - and with him, we were unstoppable. We sailed up the river in late summer, the rainy season. We broke holes in the levees when the water began to rise. And the rains were heavy, and the river overflowed, just like Guan Yu said it would. So there we were, on our fleet of warships, with Fan Castle in the middle of this lake that used to be a plain, waiting for Guan Yu to just sail up and take it.
"But he didn't. Not even with that whole army we captured, and the walls crumbling and us doing our damndest to help. When the waters drained away, Guan Yu went to move in for the kill. But he just kept getting beaten again and again."
The defense of Fan had begun with similar optimism, with two vast armies set to strike the advancing enemy as hammer and anvil. Then came the rains, the flood, the reports of surrender and obliteration. Both support forces were gone, and a mere thousand troops remained, cut off from the world by waters gray as the stone walls of a tomb.
Cao Ren had long since worked to suppress his instincts of fear, to face each danger of warfare with mechanical detachment. He tasked his men with flood control, salvaging supplies and shoring up the packed earth walls of Fan, and called an emergency council. One by one, in escalating detail and urgency, his advisers begged him to flee the city. When Cao Ren learned that a boat had been prepared for him to leave that night, a rare and heavy dread began to bloom in his stomach.
Man Chong was the last adviser to speak, a calm and confident contrast to the others' panic. The waters would recede. Reinforcements would arrive. Cao Ren simply had to stand firm as he had handily proved himself capable of doing. Alone, he had held Jiangling for a year. What then was a month here with help on the way?
As Cao Ren thought back to the lessons of that campaign, his dismay hardened into determination. Three days thereafter, he stood before an army ten thousand strong, drafted from every household with men in condition to fight. A single brick, he said, might seem like nothing. Together, they were the wall that would save their city. And in the darkest hour of peril, Cao Ren would throw his own shield before Guan Yu himself.
They began a steadfast and economical motion, building their resolve on each small success. Each anticipation of enemy movement, each ballista bolt precisely aimed into a boat, each grapnel wrested off a crumbling rampart before its claws claimed another hunk of earth. Each day that Fan remained standing - each morning call led with Cao Ren's praise of their collective fortitude.
One month became three before the banners of Xu Huang swept onto the ruined plain. When Cao Ren joined up with him to drive Guan Yu away at last, he was left with a void of exhausted relief more so than the elation of triumph.
The guard captain continued. "I could have gone off with some of the others before me, made my way home when I still knew the road back there. I guess I was holding onto what Guan Yu was when I first came to fight with him. And I guess I wanted to see that again - one last time."
A chill spread through Cao Ren as he glanced back across the fire. Lü Meng's face was spectral in the flickering light, worn and drawn and roughly lined with shadow. His throat worked as if seeking words, perhaps stuck between sympathy for the guard captain's plight and glee over Guan Yu's decline. Suddenly he ducked his head, fist to mouth to contain an eruption of coughing.
"Sick of my story, I take it?" The guard captain laughed. "Wouldn't be the first time I got that sort of reaction to running my mouth."
"It's not you. It's this dry winter air." Lü Meng poured himself another cup of tea, imbibed it in one long and measured swallow. "I just need some more to drink, that's all." But his speech still caught in his throat, rough as if parched beyond thirst.
"And we both need a good night's rest." Cao Ren stood up. "May you and your men enjoy the same as well."
"Oh, we will. These past few days, we've been dead on our feet." The guard captain leaned forward onto all fours to press himself up off the ground. "I expect we'll be dead to the world for the next week."
"So we shouldn't invite you to breakfast?" Lü Meng teased.
A yawn. "Only if you're offering to pick me up and carry me."
Cao Ren and Lü Meng took their leave. Most of the men had already retired, and two kept watch over the campfire's dwindling embers. Lü Meng stumbled, and Cao Ren caught him before he could fall over. As he steadied himself on his feet, he was trembling.
On the prior night, Lü Meng had undressed for sleep without incident. Now he struggled with his armor for a long and awkward while before motioning for Cao Ren to assist him. Having briefly fumbled at his own straps and buckles, Cao Ren figured that Lü Meng's fingers had also gone stiff in the chill night air. But his breaths were rasped, his face shining in the lamplight with an odd film of sweat, and Cao Ren's heart began to weigh with undisputable truth.
"You are ill," Cao Ren admitted.
Lü Meng did not speak, almost as if thinking up another guise of exhaustion. He let his eyes close in lieu of response, and Cao Ren wondered if they were avoiding the hurt and fear that he suspected was bright in his own.
"I heard the rumors. That's why I came." Cao Ren sighed. "I suppose I was as apt to deny their truth as you were to keep it from me."
"I wanted to seem weak to my enemies. Not to be pitied by my friends, especially since I hardly deserve it."
"You deserve rest and aid - not to suffer this burden alone. And you certainly don't deserve for it to destroy you."
Lü Meng took another moment of silence. When he finally replied, his words were cold with finality.
"What if it does?"
Cao Ren crawled into his pallet to avoid the question. It hung, looming, in the darkness of their tent, refusing to let him sleep.
"Then I can only hope its greater good was worth the sacrifice."