“As a qualified astrologer, I can tell you with 99% certainty that the omens are terrible,” Qiao Zhou explained. “Just the other day, several thousand birds dived into the river and drowned themselves. No way that means anything good. The sky’s just as bad. The Dog Star’s barking at Venus, and the North Star’s looking really bright. That’s a good omen for Wei, but not so good for us. Plus, I have some peasants here who say the cypress trees are moaning really loudly at night.”
“Are they sure it’s the cypress trees?”
“To be honest, I haven’t looked into it,” said Qiao Zhou. “But the rest is undeniable. If we attack Wei, it’ll end badly.”
“Pffft, omens.” Zhuge Liang waved his hand. “Liu Bei told me to invade Wei on his deathbed. I can’t change my whole plan because you guys are superstitious.”
“How often do you read omens, again?” pointed out Qiao Zhou.
“When it suits me,” said Zhuge Liang. “If it makes you happy, I’ll kill a whole lot of cows first. Hopefully they’ll absorb the bad luck.”
Not liking the looks on everyone’s faces at that, he added, “I’ll destroy Wei or die trying!”
Around him, dozens of faces thunked into palms.
Dusting off his hands, Zhuge Liang went back to Hanzhong, where he received some horrible news. “Guan Xing suddenly died offscreen!”
“Oh no!” he shrieked, and passed out, waking up several hours later in a foul mood. “I’m losing competent generals left and right! This is bullshit.”
But there was nothing he could do about it, so off he marched with Jiang Wei, Wei Yan, and three hundred and forty thousand redshirts. Li Hui was left with one job: bringing enough food.
Meanwhile, in Wei, Sima Yi was giving Cao Rui a similar omen report. “Plus, we saw a dragon flying out of a well the other day,” he finished. “Everything looks good for us. I can fight him off – I just need one thing. Well, four things. Xiahou Yuan’s four sons.”
“Who?” asked the Emperor.
“Didn’t they get names? Oh. Well, Ba and Wei are the muscle, Hui and He are the brains. They all want to avenge their dad, and now’s the perfect time.”
“Are you sure?” asked Cao Rui. “Xiahou Mao tried that, and he failed so embarrassingly that he still doesn’t dare show his face.”
“They’re nothing like Xiahou Mao, except for the name and the admittedly strong resemblance,” said Sima Yi.
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Cao Rui. “Now, listen carefully – and I’ll put this in writing: do not go chasing after any Shu generals. Hold the line, defend it for all you’re worth, and wait for them to run out of food. That’s what’s worked every time so far. Don’t lose any more soldiers just because they mooned you or dressed in Halloween costumes or whatever.”
“This guy gets it,” said Sima Yi. He grabbed the four Xiahous and four hundred thousand soldiers, and cheerfully began building a rampart along the River Wei.
As they all whistled and waved trowels, Guo Huai and Sun Li sauntered in. “You know,” they said. “He could just travel along the river till he gets past you, and attack Xizhou up north.”
Sima Yi’s monocle popped off. “Egad! He could! Can you guys go take care of it? Beiyuan’s a good place to camp. Make sure you follow orders and stay on the defensive.”
All this time, Zhuge Liang was building camps. “I’ll build a long line of camps,” he said. “How about nineteen camps, from Qishan to the Xie Valley and Saber Pass? Long lines of camps always end well.” No one said anything, so he gazed out over the river. “I think this calls for good old-fashioned fire ships. May as well make this a ‘Greatest Hits’ album. I’ll send out a diversion to Beiyuan. Then five thousand of us’ll sneak out tonight on the fire ships, set fire to all the bridges, and take their camp. Load up the straw!”
“Wait,” said Wei Yan. “You’re saying we send five thousand men to beat four hundred thousand on the other side, and burn not only the bridges to cut off our own reinforcements, but also the boats, so they can’t get back?”
“Exactly.” Zhuge Liang smiled.
Sima Yi heard out the spies, astounded. “Well, he can go right ahead. Xiahou Ba, Xiahou Wei, set up an ambush south of Beiyuan. Zhang Hu, Yue Chen, wait on our side of the bank with bowmen. Someone call Guo Huai and Sun Li. Tell them to lead the attackers into the traps, and call me if there are too many to handle.”
Leaving his sons Shi and Zhao in charge, he went off to Beiyuan with several bags of popcorn.
Zhuge Liang sent Wei Yan and Ma Dai to Beiyuan, put Wu Ban and Wu Yi on bridge duty, and sent everyone else to cross the river. He waited expectantly, with his own bag, which was full of marshmallows.
It didn’t go as planned.
As soon as Wei Yan and Ma Dai reached Beiyuan, Sun Li screamed theatrically and ran. “Yeah, no. Not following,” said Wei Yan, but before he could back away, Sima Yi and Guo Huai hit him from either side. Most of the redshirts jumped into the river, squealing.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” sighed Wu Yi. Leaving the bridges to his cousin, he paddled over and started to pull them out.
Wu Ban managed to pole his raft directly into the cloud of arrows coming from the Wei side. He’d elected to stand on top of a bale of hay, his cape fluttering, which turned out to be a bad move when several arrows went through him. “That’s not how you get style points,” scolded the judges, as the redshirts jumped overboard clutching the straw as life preservers.
As all this was going down, Wang Ping and Zhang Ni landed on the south side of the bank. They were too far away to see the disaster at Beiyuan, but they heard all the ruckus from the now-drenched fire rafts.
“I don’t see any soldiers. Do you?” asked Wang Ping uneasily, and Zhang Ni shook his head. “I don’t like this. Let’s wait till we see the bridges on fire before doing anything.”
Then a man galloped across the river on horseback. “Prime Minister says it’s a no-go! Come back!”
“How did you ride a horse across the river?” called Wang Ping.
“Now’s not the time to worry about continuity,” snapped the horseman. “Hurry up!”
Wang Ping and Zhang Ni hastily set about launching their boats, but before they could leave, a bomb went off. Wei soldiers charged out of the darkness, pressing them against the water. Upstream, their colleagues lit what was left of the fire rafts and pushed them downstream, cutting off the Shu boats. Zhang Ni and Wang Ping barely escaped with their lives, and by the time they trudged back into camp, Zhuge Liang was doing a headcount. More than ten thousand redshirts had been lost.
“Awkward time?” said Fei Yi, popping his head in.
“Sorta,” said Zhuge Liang. “But it’s fine. Can you take a letter to Sun Quan for me?”
“Huh? Sure,” said Fei Yi.
I’m trying to restore the Han, etc etc, but I’ve had a bit of bad luck. Can you lend me a hand? It’s going great here at Qishan, I’m about to win, I just need a little help. It’s a long story. We can split the empire.
“What?” Sun Quan squinted at Fei Yi, who shrugged.
“My bullshit meter is going through the roof right now,” said Sun Quan, “but I also want to attack Wei, so I’ll do it. I’ll take Xincheng personally, Lu Xun and Zhuge Jin can take Xiangyang, and Sun Shao can take Huaiyang.”
“Much appreciated,” said Fei Yi. “Wei will fall for sure!”
“Hope so,” said Sun Quan. “Anyway, time for a party. Say, who did Zhuge Liang put in charge of the whole expedition?”
“After himself, Wei Yan.”
“Wei Yan? He’s a brave man and a great leader,” said Sun Quan. “But I don’t know how much more of Zhuge Liang he can take.”
“I’ll tell Zhuge Liang you said that,” said Fei Yi.
“You do that.”
Zhuge Liang nodded. “I know, Wei Yan’s a troublemaker,” he said. “Don’t worry, I have a plan for dealing with him.”
“Hope you do,” said Fei Yi, and took off.
A day or so later, Shu’s council of war was interrupted by a random Wei general. “I want to surrender!”
“What’s your name? Zhang Wen? Never heard of you,” said Zhuge Liang suspiciously.
“That’s why I want to surrender,” explained Zhang Wen. “My colleague Qin Lang keeps getting promoted, but me? No one ever gives me a chance. So I thought I’d try my luck with the other side.”
“You sound like a real treasure,” began Wei Yan, but just then there was a shout outside. “Zhang Wen! Fight me, you traitor!”
A guard poked his head inside. “There’s a Mr. Qin Lang here to see you, with a whole company of soldiers.”
“You let a Wei general and a whole company of soldiers just walk up to our council tent?” glared Zhuge Liang. “We’ll talk about it later. Zhang Wen, is he a better fighter than you?”
“Not even close,” snorted Zhang Wen.
“All right. Kill him, and we’ll talk.”
Zhang Wen rode out and faced Qin Lang, who had words. “You dick! Not only do you betray us and join up with rebels, but you use my horse as a getaway vehicle? You stinker!”
Without missing a beat, Zhang Wen sliced off his head, caught it, and tossed it to Zhuge Liang.
“Execute this man!” called Zhuge Liang. Zhang Wen’s eyes bulged. “What do you mean? I killed him!”
“Sure, you killed him,” said Zhuge Liang. “That wasn’t Qin Lang.”
Zhang Wen’s head dropped. “You got me. It was his evil twin, Ming.”
“Sima Yi planned all this, didn’t he?”
“Yep. Are you going to kill me?”
“I’ll give you one out,” said Zhuge Liang. “Write a letter to Sima Yi telling him that it worked, and he should raid our camp tonight.”
“That’s easy,” said Zhang Wen. He was put in a jail cell with a pen and paper, and soon he produced a letter, which was sent to Sima Yi.
“But how did you know he was fake?” asked Fan Jian.
“Besides statistics,” said Zhuge Liang, “A nobody like him could never beat a famous general like Qin Lang. Who wants to take the letter?”
No one moved, so Zhuge Liang pointed at a random officer. “You. What’s your name?”
“Can I not have one?” asked the officer. “The way this is going, I’m thinking being a nameless redshirt is actually better for my chances.”
“Suit yourself,” shrugged Zhuge Liang. “Here’s what you should say…”
Not long afterwards, the officer handed the letter to Sima Yi.
“Who are you?” asked Sima Yi.
“A nameless redshirt from Wei,” he answered. “I got trapped in Shu and conscripted for the war. Zhang Wen and I were old friends. He says he’s been put in charge of a whole division, and he’ll light a signal fire for you tomorrow night. That’s when you should attack. Best to do it personally.”
“This is Zhang Wen’s handwriting, all right,” said Sima Yi, peering at it through his monocle. “All right, tell him I’ll be there.”
The soldier took off to report to Zhuge Liang, and found him stabbing his sword at the North Star. “Uh, Prime Minister? Are you trying to change the omens?”
“Shhh, it’s magic,” said Zhuge Liang, doing a few dance steps before sheathing the sword. “Call in the generals.” After a hasty meeting, he sent the generals to their posts and went to the top of a hill with his usual marshmallow supply.
Sima Yi was just putting on his armour when he heard a thin, reedy voice. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” said the tumour under Sima Shi’s eye.
“It’s a calculated risk,” said Sima Yi.
“It’s too big a risk,” insisted the tumour, and Sima Shi nodded and pointed to it. “Tumour’s right, Dad. You could die!”
“You’re right,” said Sima Yi slowly. “Qin Lang, you go instead. I’ll be right behind you with reinforcements.”
It was a bright night, but at about two in the morning clouds suddenly flew over the moon, and everything went black.
“Perfect,” chuckled Sima Yi, twirling his mustache. “Gag the redshirts, and the horses. To the camp!”
But when Qin Lang stuck his head in the gate, he saw no soldiers inside. Hastily backing away, he fumbled with his gag, trying to shout “It’s a trap!” But before he could get it loose, Shu soldiers attacked from every side. The camp went up in a whoosh of flames. A bomb sounded, then a drumroll, then finally trumpets, and on those signals Wei Yan and Jiang Wei closed in on Sima Yi.
This time, it was a disaster for Wei. Qin Lang was killed, and Sima Yi himself barely escaped. When the fight was over, Zhuge Liang sounded a gong for the retreat, muttered a couple of spells to clear the clouds, and strolled back into camp with his leftover marshmallows. “Good job, everyone. Oh, kill Zhang Wen! No, not onscreen, he doesn’t even deserve a spot on the scoreboard.”
After that battle, both sides settled for a long siege. Zhuge Liang took to aimlessly riding around in his golf cart, and one day he spotted something from the top of a mountain. “What’s that valley over there? The one shaped like a bottle?”
“Oh, you mean Gourd Valley?” said the locals. “Yeah, it’s shaped like a gourd. Narrow neck, but bigger on the inside. There is a way out the back, but it’s only good for going single-file.”
A lightbulb flickered on over Zhuge Liang’s head. Rushing back to his tent, he scribbled notes and blueprints for a while, only coming out to holler for engineers and mechanics. Finally, he emerged with bleary eyes and a plan.
“Du Rui, Hu Zhong, you supervise these people,” he said, pointing at the crowd of technicians his men had rounded up. “Bring them to Gourd Valley. Ma Dai, you guard the entrance, and don’t let anyone in or out except me!”
“What are they doing in there?” asked the generals, after a few days of mysterious comings and goings, complete with passwords and coded documents.
“A top secret plan for defeating Sima Yi.” Zhuge Liang grinned.
“Can you tell us?”
“No, too secret.”
“Okay, okay,” said Yang Yi, rolling his eyes. “Can I talk to you about something else for a minute? All of our grain is at Saber Pass, and we don’t have the manpower to transport it. I’m getting feelings of déjà vu.”
“Don’t worry, everything is under control,” said Zhuge Liang. “In fact, that’s what my top secret plan is all about! The boys in Gourd Valley are working on…” he paused, for emphasis, “New, state of the art, robot cows!”
“What the hell?” chorused the officers.
“Never heard of anything like that,” said a general, and someone else added, “I thought this was historical fiction?”
“I have the blueprints right here,” said Zhuge Liang proudly, holding it up. “And the assembly instructions, right here.” He tapped his finger on the page. “An inch wide. The front bar hole goes to the forefoot hole and divides the ink by two inches. The hole length is two inches and the width is one inch wide. The rear axle hole goes to the front bar to divide the ink by one foot and five minutes.”
The generals scratched their heads. “Have you thought of doing it with little cartoons?” they asked.
“No,” said Zhuge Liang. “It’s poetry. Listen: Same size as before. After the hole in the back of the ink hole to the rear axle hole three inches five points, the same size as before. After the hole in the back bar, the hole in the back hole is two inches and seven inches…”
“Yeah yeah, poetry,” said the generals. “The Prime Minister is supreme! This is beyond our grasp. You can stop reading it now.”
“After the truck is loaded,” continued Zhuge Liang, more loudly, “The rear lever hole is divided into four inches and five inches. The front bumper is one foot eight inches wide, two inches wide and five inches thick. Rear bumper and so on. Board side capsule…”
The generals tiptoed away.
When the robots were finally led out, though, everyone was interested and delighted. They were painted to look like ordinary cows from a distance, but were hollow inside. They would walk on their own in any direction, as long as they were turned to face it.
“What’s their power source?” asked Wei Yan, curiously.
“They run on genius,” said Zhuge Liang, stroking one of them. “Gao Xiang, take a thousand redshirts and guide these bad boys to Saber Pass. Lunch is on its way!”
Once again, Sima Yi stared at his spies in disbelief. “Robots?”
“Yup.”
“Robot cows?”
“Yessir.”
Sima Yi took a deep breath. “I’m just going to ignore the flagrant violation of genre convention here. This is a serious problem. We’re banking on them running out of food soon. If they have robots to carry food for them, then we’re screwed.” He beckoned to Zhang Hu and Yue Chen. “Hide beside the road. When they’ve almost passed you by, rush out and grab the hindmost robots. I want to see these for myself.”
So Zhang Hu, Yue Chen, and a thousand redshirts slipped on Shu uniforms and hid in the ditches. Soon, Gao Xiang passed at the head of the creaking convoy. When almost all of the robots and their minders had passed by, the Wei soldiers slipped out and casually sauntered in among the robotherds. Grabbing the leads of a few robots, they pretended to lead them, then gradually lagged behind till the convoy was out of sight. High-fiving, they led the captured robots to Sima Yi.
“These are actually pretty neat,” he said, looking them over. “If Zhuge Liang wants robot wars, I’ll give him robot wars.” He called in his R&D team, and anxiously watched them prod and disassemble the robots. “Can we make knockoffs?”
The foreman rolled his eyes. “This is China.”
Within a couple of months, two thousand robot cows painted in Wei colours were walking up and down the road to Xizhou, and the Wei redshirts were stretching and finding ways to spend their new holiday.
“I seem to have misplaced some of the robots,” said Gao Xiang, nervously.
Zhuge Liang shrugged. “Sima Yi must have captured them. It was all part of the plan.”
“Yeah, he’s got robots too,” said Wang Ping, a couple of days later. “Are we going to make the robots fight each other? That would be so cool!”
“Nah,” said Zhuge Liang. “We’re just going to commandeer his fleet. What you have to do is, dress up in their uniforms and pretend to be their escort. When you’re clear of the camp, fight them off. When they run, turn the cows towards us. They’ll come after you soon, which is when you hit the kill switch. It’s in their tongue. Twist that, and those robots aren’t taking another step. They’re too heavy to move, though, and Wei’ll have to abandon them and the grain inside. When the enemy’s gone, turn the tongues the other way and lead the robots here.”
“One question,” said Wei Yan. “How do we lead them across the river? You keep acting like it’s not there.”
“Shhhh,” said Zhuge Liang. “Where’s Zhang Ni? There you are. I need you to find every Halloween costume you can get your hands on. The black hooded robes are still around, I think, we have plenty of animal skins, and boy do we have skulls. Get creative. Oh, carve some jack-o-lanterns instead of using torches.”
“That sounds like fun!” said Zhang Ni eagerly. “What’s our job?”
“Hide in the path of the convoy, then jump out and scare them.”
Zhang Ni went off happily, and Zhuge Liang turned to Wei Yan and Jiang Wei next. “You two meet the convoy up by Beiyuan. Zhang Yi, Liao Hua, you block Sima Yi if he tries anything funny. Ma Dai, Ma Zhong, you’re on mooning duty.”
Bright and early the next morning, General Cen Wei got on his horse and set out at the head of a convoy of robots. Then, he squinted. There were soldiers up ahead!
The soldiers only waved. “We’re your escort!”
“I thought I was the escort,” he said, puzzled, but the soldiers were wearing Wei uniforms, so he figured everything was in order and moved on with the new guys in tow.
A mile later, with a wild cry of “Tricked you!” Wang Ping and his men began stabbing left and right. Startled, Cen Wei tried to make a stand, but soon he was dead with Wang Ping’s sword through him, and the convoy was moving towards the Shu camp.
“How will we cross the river?” whispered a redshirt, and Wang Ping put his finger to his lips. “When we come to it,” he answered. “Probably it’ll be offscreen.”
Just then, there was a yell behind them. “Stop, thieves!” yelled Guo Huai. Quickly, the Shu soldiers hit the kill switches and ran.
Guo Huai and his men ignored them and tried to round up the robots instead – but none of them would budge. After an hour of pushing and shoving, the Wei men were exhausted, and Jiang Wei and Wei Yan made their move. Guo Huai was forced back, and soon the robot cows were once more rumbling towards Shu.
“We need backup,” gasped Guo Huai, halting a mile away. “They need to be stopped! Call-”
Before he could call anyone, dozens of figures in terrifying costumes leapt out from behind every tree. Zhang Ni and his men had gone all-out. There were goblins, witches, trolls, a few caricatures of Zhuge Liang, demons, and every other monster they could think of. Every one of them carried a bright, smoking jack-o-lantern, which they waved at the shocked Wei soldiers. “Trick or treeeeaat!”
“Fuck this,” said Guo Huai, and took off at a dead run.
When Sima Yi finally got some sense out of him, he sighed and put on his own armour. “This chapter is ridiculous. I’ll take care of it myself!”
But, just as he came in sight of the convoy, several bombs went off. Out jumped an ambush, led by two fierce generals. He could just make out their nametags: Zhang Yi and Liao Hua.
Saxo Dramaticus 
So. are they cows? or Caos.
I know, lame joke. But I couldn’t resist.
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