[Three Kingdoms 365 · Day 169] Time Lent by the Fog — Zhuge Liang and Lu Su sail twenty boats into fog, beat drums

It was the dawn of three days later. Upon the river lay a chi of thick fog — fog of the very thickness that Kongming (孔明) had foreseen the evening before.

At the wharf by the river, twenty boats lay quietly anchored. On each side of each boat, straw had been tied thickly, as thick as the length of a man's arm. Upon each boat stood one drum and one banner. A dozen or so soldiers were aboard each one.

Kongming boarded the middle boat of the twenty. Lu Su (魯肅) stood beside him. By the agreement of the evening before, Lu Su had taken on the seat of witness. A layer of puzzlement still rested upon his face.

Kongming raised his hand. The prows of the twenty boats turned to the north. The fog upon the river's surface parted on either side of the boats, and their movement opened a path through the middle of it.

Lu Su asked quietly beside him.

"Sir. The interior of the fog is this thick; how do you find the location of Cao Cao's (曹操) naval encampment with precision?"

Kongming raised his fan.

"Lu Sir. A strand of the flow of water within the river, and a line of sound down its middle, have already opened this scholar's direction like a sheet of a map. A layer of fog may veil sight, but the flow of water cannot veil the map inside it."

Lu Su bowed his head. Inside Kongming's line was the shape of another map that the scholar was seeing today.

For a little over an hour, the twenty boats slowly advanced northward through the middle of the river. The direction of the river's wind was still from north to south. Because the boats moved against the wind, their speed was slow. Yet inside the thickness of fog, that slowness acted, rather, as a shield.

Kongming raised his fan again beside Lu Su.

"Lu Sir. The fog of this dawn is a fog that lends an hour to this scholar. Within this hour, this scholar shall read for you Cao Cao's decision of this dawn."

Lu Su's eyes opened wide.

"Cao Cao's decision — how would you read it from within the fog?"

Kongming closed his fan.

"Cao Cao's decision this dawn is one of two. First: to set out boats and engage the sound inside the fog. Second: to send arrows from his side into the fog. For Cao Cao, whose pillar of the navy has already been erased this dawn, the first is too heavy. Therefore Cao Cao's decision this dawn will be the second. The price of that second decision is — this scholar's one hundred thousand arrows."

Upon Lu Su's face, a layer of deep understanding settled. Kongming's plan this dawn was not a simple use of fog. It was the apex of a continuation of calculations reaching back through the day before yesterday and yesterday's dawn. Even the erasure of the two pillars of Cao Cao's navy had been a step taken in advance to narrow the road of this dawn's decision.

"Sir. Was yesterday dawn's erasure of Cai Mao (蔡瑁) and Zhang Yun (張允) — connected as a single line with this dawn's hour of fog?"

Kongming lowered his fan quietly.

"Lu Sir. It was not a step in which this scholar was directly involved. Only, Commander Zhou's step and this scholar's step are meeting at this dawn's seat. That two steps fold upon each other at a river's dawn is also a line in nature's ledger."

The twenty boats now reached a point a li (里) before Cao Cao's naval encampment. Because of the thickness of the fog, the shape of the camp was not yet visible. Yet from its direction came a faint sound of hoofbeats, announcing the nearness of that li.

Kongming raised his fan. The twenty boats halted together. Then Kongming let fall a single line.

"Strike the drums."

Twenty drums sounded together. Inside the fog, their booming spread wide. The two hundred and more soldiers on the boats let out a great shout. The sound of the shout shook the fog one layer more thickly.

From the direction of Cao Cao's naval encampment a layer of panic rose. The scale of the sound inside the fog felt like the great force of several hundred ships. Within the camp, a bustling movement began to stir.

At the middle of the hour the fog had lent to Kongming, the twenty boats were holding their movement in a pause. Inside that hour of pause, the moment in which Cao Cao's decision would be laid down was now drawing near.

The tenth dawn of Book 6 was opening quietly at the middle of a chi of fog. The sound of drums kept ringing inside the fog. The shouts, too, kept continuing. The fog upon the river's surface wrapped those sounds in yet another thick layer. The hour at which the time lent by the fog would have its price paid was drawing near.

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