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Even with an escort well versed in the country roads and the swiftest guide the emperor could offer, it had taken Ningguang three days to reach the coastline outpost on horseback. Three days of swapping horses at messenger posts, of rations, of feeling as if her fingers were about to fuse to the leather of the reins with frost as its glue.
Three days until the outpost was within sight, and but a few hours more before the scout spotted her as well, horse slowed to an ambling trot through the gates.
All it had taken was a flash of her insignia before one of the guards had taken her to a large tent set near the center of the outpost, and she watched her guide be welcomed with open arms in amusement. Xu Liushi had been a pirate once upon a time, if she had learned anything from their stilted conversations, and the coast guard was half composed of captive forces held in check by a former Jinyiwei.
…Perhaps Ningguang should’ve looked more into the origins of the coast guard before heading to the border, although she had done her reading on their general.
As the general’s future tactician, that was a must.
It had taken some digging and some money slid under the table before she was able to wheedle out the story of the pirate turned Jinyiwei turned general. Supposedly, the woman had made a name for herself and her crew raiding merchants and officials alike along the east coast, although she didn’t truly get shoved into the limelight when one of the villages under her crew’s “protection” was attacked by a sea dragon.
And then she slew that sea dragon in turn.
That had… been an interesting time to be in court, although Ningguang hadn’t exactly been much of anyone yet, even if she had ears in the shadows. Some officials had argued for Beidou’s head on a platter, because she was too dangerous, while others agreed that she should be subdued because dragons were symbolic of the emperor and thus her actions had been blasphemous.
A scant few had argued for her continued survival, because her existence was beneficial for the coastline villages, however unsightly her actions were. The emperor had apparently only been amused by the whole ordeal and thoroughly unimpressed by certain arguments, but ordered her brought in anyways.
And thus, the Crux fleet was subdued, its captain captured and delivered into court.
That was where the interesting history began, because the captain then vanished, and instead after a tremulous year there were rumors of a new Jinyiwei captain, one garbed in crimson, armored silk and a red eyepatch over an eye.
A bit of prodding her drunk spy revealed to Ningguang that the captain had unwillingly joined the emperor’s personal guard, likely due to news of the Crux crew being split between the capital and the coast as hostages to keep her in line.
Then another few years later, in an unprecedented act where the court’s uproar could be heard from even outside the imperial palace, the emperor relieved the Jinyiwei captain of her duties and instead raised her to the position of the General of the East Coast, where she’s been since.
Ningguang, unfortunately, had been preparing for the Imperial exams at the time, and did not get to bear witness to the court’s outrage. It would’ve made for good blackmail, although it would’ve been even better if she had gotten a glimpse of the general’s face.
General Beidou. Named of the northern dipper, granted the position of the general of the eastern coast. How… fascinating.
But also general Beidou, who was quite a bit late greeting her new tactician, who had just arrived after three days of near nonstop riding.
The tent that Xu Liushi had led Ningguang to was spacious, the large dome propped up by wooden poles and braziers blazing merrily away atop torches, the smoke let out from a half-covered hole in the ceiling. It was warm where Ningguang sat at a low table, even if it wasn’t enough to chase the chill from her bones.
“The general is on her way, I presume?” The young dozing guard at the entrance of the tent jolted, looked around, and hastily nodded. But before the man could open his mouth to offer a verbal reply, the tent entrance flapped open to admit a hulking behemoth of a woman and the blizzard howling at her heels.
Ningguang didn’t even feel the sudden nip of chill, all her focus suddenly dedicated to the woman before her. She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, and drew in a careful breath. However, she didn’t stand. Not because of a lack of manners, but just because her legs felt like minced meat after the nonstop riding.
Internally, she cursed out Yelan three ways to the next season for not warning her that the general was— that the general was— what, handsome?
“Sorry for the delay, Tactician Ning, something came up.” Informal, evasive, but Ningguang shoved all of her analytical mind to the back for later.
The tactician offered a benign smile at the general, even as her nails bit into her hands where they were clasped upon her lap.
“General Beidou, a pleasure.”
The general made a face that Ningguang couldn’t quite decipher, although she could tentatively call it disgust. “Just Beidou will do, I’ve had enough of formalities in the capital.”
“Ah.”
A huff, a shake of a head that scattered snowflakes and water alike into the confines of the tent. “No matter, you’ll get used to it here. I would ask you to excuse our… crassness, but frankly, none of us here want to bother with all that back and forth you capital folks seem to prefer.”
Ningguang’s fingers uncurled from her palms, her earlier excitement settling into a cool observation of the general. “That is indeed useful to know for our future interactions,” Ningguang replied slowly, tone neutral, “it would be… remiss for me to approach your men with the wrong level of formality, wouldn’t it.”
Beidou twitched, squinting at the seated woman with her one good eye. “Glad we’re on the same page, then. Anyways, I’ve heard of your journey from the capital, and you must be cold, so here.” A few broad strides, and the general placed a small hand warmer on the table before Ningguang. “As a border post, we don’t have the best amenities, but I do have a spare handwarmer for you before you get situated in your own lodgings.”
It was a dainty thing, dwarfed by the general’s hands but nearly perfect for Ningguang’s own, and soft curls of smoke escaped from its latticed top. The copper appeared well-worn and the hinges well-oiled, and Ningguang knew immediately that this wasn’t just some spare.
“You have my thanks, general.” Ningguang murmured, gently cupping the warmth between frozen fingers.
“Can’t chase off our new tactician so soon, right?” The general laughed, and it filled the tent and chased the remaining chill from Ningguang’s bones. “Our last one was a bit of a sourpuss, pardon my language, but you seem like the right sort.”
“Your confidence in me is staggering, and appreciated. I know of your previous tactician, and from my experience, he was not the most pleasant person to interact with.” Beidou’s eye curled with mirth, and something in Ningguang’s chest loosened. “Setting my predecessor aside, what would be the current situation here?”
“Diving right in, huh?” Beidou chortled, “Give me a moment to hang this up and we can get started.”
Saying thus, she shrugged off the heavy crimson cloak around her shoulders, shook off the snow lining its white fur collar, and threw it at the nearest armour stand where it settled like a second guard. She stretched, seemingly relishing in the new freedom of movement.
Ningguang however, Ningguang didn’t notice the where or the how of the cloak’s landing, because her eyes were very firmly drawn to the dark, armoured silk robes that Beidou was left in. Tailored, formfitting robes clasped at the waist and embroidered with a vast array of sea creatures.
Robes on a body paired with a face that told Ningguang that she was going to have a very, very interesting few years at the border.
She swallowed.
A few very long years.
It was another two weeks after the tactician arrived that Beidou saw her again.
In her defense, she had been busy with a few scouts spotted at the borders, followed up by skirmishes that Beidou had to personally take care of, and on the days where she was back the white-haired woman was busy going through the command tent’s information. At least Beidou knew that Juza was taking his job of guarding her seriously, even if he was sighing anywhere Beidou could see from being kept from the front lines.
Beidou would much rather her right hand man heal up before joining her back on the battlefront, because she very much preferred her old lieutenant alive and kicking.
Nonetheless, perhaps that was why Beidou had to take a good few seconds to blink away the snow-glare corona’s in her eye before actually confirming that yes, Ningguang was sitting in her tent, a teapot and two cups of warm tea at her hand.
Most notably, that Ningguang was sitting at her seat, behind her low table, and scribbling quick notes with a brush on the margins of an open scroll. To her side was a small mountain of unraveled scrolls, and to her other was a Juza with his head buried in his hands.
Feeling the wind, Juza peeked out from between his fingers, saw Beidou, and threw his arms up in a gesture that couldn’t be further than the professional image that Beidou and her once-pirate cohort had tried to cultivate. Beidou arched her brow, and Juza quickly scrambled to Beidou’s side, boot’s making not a single sound, and leaned in to her ear.
“Tactician Ning has been like this since this morning. Got up at the ass crack of dawn saying she put something together and now—” he motioned at the woman, so engrossed in her task she didn’t even notice Beidou at the entrance, nor the snow following her in. “Said it was urgent and needed to show you immediately, but you were out so I brought her here and she just decided to commandeer your desk.” A pause. “And your supplies.” Another lengthier pause, punctuated only by Ningguang’s mutterings, and he finally added on: “And the supply routes that were supposedly confidential.”
Beidou blinked, took a moment to take in the information, and patted Juza on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go see what Furong is up to, I’ll deal with Ningguang.”
“Yes, captain!”
And yet, even though Beidou said she was to deal with the tactician, she waited before the desk for a full hour before the woman finally glanced up and noticed her presence. She paused, hand hovering beside her cup.
“Good… afternoon general,” Ningguang said, a tired blink of her eyes the only show of surprise. “And here I was wondering why my tea never seemed to get cold, or run out, for that matter.”
Having commandeered a brazier to heat the tea with, Beidou shrugged. “You seemed awfully engrossed in all the papers, so who was I to stop you?”
“My general, of course.”
Beidou paused, mind skipping two notes and a whole tone before she replied, “well, whatever you have to tell me, how about after we play a game of weiqi?” Never let it be said that Beidou wasn’t productive in her boredom, as she had already played three rounds of weiqi against herself, of which white won once and black won twice.
The tactician, however, frowned. “This is urgent, and will concern the continued survival of this outpost for the next six months.”
“Six months? Then we’ve got plenty of time.” Beidou waved a hand at the entrance to the tent. “Besides, it’s storming out, and I would rather not have my men freeze if it is not a matter concerning this very moment.”
Ningguang’s lips flattened. “I would advise you to take this a bit more seriously, as—”
“You’ve already said that I’m the general, did you not?” Beidou interrupted, “let me see how you fare in a game first, and we will deal with official matters later.”
A stretch of silence, as Ningguang regarded the mess that she had made of Beidou’s desk, the singular cup of tea, and the lazy curl of steam wafting towards the tip of the low tent they were in.
“Very well, a single game.”
There were a few things that Ningguang prided herself in, and her mind was the foremost amongst them. Politics, business, even keeping a finger to the pulse of the underground— filtering out information for the emperor’s spy network and nipping threats in the bud before they could even surface— she shone regardless of what post the emperor placed her in.
Being a tactician will not be an exception.
Aid in the coastal defense, fortify the outpost, and ensure that the border is as secure as the emperor’s own palace. Even though she had caught a glimpse of the general’s brilliance from the sparse paperwork that made it into her hands back then, and from the hastily penned reports sitting before her now, Ningguang still hadn’t considered her much of an equal.
There is a difference, after all, between a scholar’s mind and that of a warrior’s.
And yet, this pirate-turned-general was giving Ningguang the most trouble she has had among the maze of black and white stones for over a decade.
The tent was silent but for the clack of stones on the crossed lines of the board and the crackling of the fire, and Ningguang, to her curiosity, was actually at an impasse.
“Do you play weiqi often, general?” She asked, breaching the taut silence stretched above their miniaturized battlefield.
Beidou tapped her white stone against a scarred cheek, singular red eye nearly glowing in the dim lighting. “Before coming here, I did. Never thought I’d miss the capital for all the players there, as most of my men here no longer want to play me.”
“I believe I see why,” Ningguang huffed, tucking her smile behind a sleeve. One could learn plenty about how another conducts their affairs through a battle of wits, and Beidou was far sharper than those old codgers in court.
With Ningguang breaking the fragile barrier, it wasn’t long before the general likewise relaxed enough to joke with her while the heated game continued, and Ningguang once more was enraptured by the general’s easy smile and boisterous laughs.
Enough so that she almost lost.
“Another?” She asked, when they were tallying up the final counts and realized that Ningguang had won by a meager number of two stones.
“Delighted to.”
The next day, five scouts were sent along the routes and along the coast in the wee hours of dawn, Beidou standing with Ningguang by her side garbed in her tactician robes. Four of the scouts returned by nightfall, horses on the edge of kneeling over and the fifth only crawled his way back two days later after the sending of two unsuccessful search parties, bloodied.
The evidence was damning.
One of their supply routes had been compromised: the border town conspiring with Fatui to gradually wean off the supplies sent to the coastal border. Instead, it was weaseled away to feed a growing force of soldiers hidden a further cove, protected from natural elements and wary sight both by towering bluffs that just barely ringed the area. Of course, just one town wasn’t enough for their supply, and the multiple other scouts corroborated the accounts that the seemingly random skirmishes that Beidou’s crew had been dealing with the past while were much of the same ilk.
And even those that weren’t— well, they were ambushed soon after and no men left alive to tell the tale, or witness the change of hands.
Three months had been Ningguang’s initial estimation of how long before Beidou’s forces would be too drained to win, and with the scouts’ findings she swiftly shortened her estimation to one month. Apparently a lot of documentation had been missing, implying a potential mole, and the woman held her calm even as Beidou paced within the private confines of her tent. Ningguang sipped at her tea as the general raged, and flicked a singular white stone at Beidou’s forehead once she finally settled.
“Are you quite done with your tantrum?” A flutter of pale lashes, and Beidou met those vibrant, crimson eyes with a fire lit in her own.
A baring of too-sharp grin, and Beidou’s reply was all teeth: “I’m just getting started.”
Whatever doubts the general might’ve originally had of the tactician’s mettle was quickly set aside over war council meetings, the woman holding herself remarkably well among the brasher individuals of the council with a sharp wit and even sharper tongue. For all that Beidou was on amicable terms with most of her colleagues, it was… amusing to see the few faction-orientated assholes get berated without even realizing. During these moments, her eyes would be drawn the white-haired woman, inevitable, fleeting, for that she would look away when Ningguang’s eyes found her own, triumphant.
It certainly helped that Beidou would often keep her after the meetings for a game of weiqi, having finally found an opponent that can keep her thinking.
It was only until Juza remarked upon how foul Furong’s mood had gotten over a week later did Beidou realize that their weiqi games had been steadily taking longer, enough so that some days she didn’t even have time to spar with her old crew before night brought with it the deep winter’s chill.
Huh, they must’ve gotten better at reading each other then.
Two weeks after the scouts’ return and a good three quarters of the camp left under the guise of a training mission, the remnant forces putting up strawman and taking to the grounds for the illusion of a busy outpost. Ningguang had insisted on coming to watch the live practice, and Beidou had refused. Ningguang continued insisting, and only after a decent amount of back-and-forth did they compromise by putting Ningguang on their fastest horse with enough signal flares to light up half the sky.
The morning dawned cloudy, visibility low over darkened seas, and ships were swiftly unmoored and cast towards the wide, hungry ocean. Rags were wrapped over steel-clad hooves, and cloth strips tied to horse tails. A silent force, made to look larger from afar when all the enemies could see was powdered snow whipping up behind the riders.
A pincer attack, or the guise of one: The land troops made to intimidate with a smaller number while the ships lie in wait— chase the unsuspecting enemies out of their cove with an ambush, then flush out the stragglers with extreme prejudice to be vanquished at sea.
It all started beautifully. Almost scarily so. Which meant that when Beidou watched with dawning resignation as more and more enemies gathered at the mouth of the cove, under the awning of the white-bellied bluff, it was with the grim thought of — of course. Life has rarely been truly kind to the pirate-turned-general, and it appeared that death might not either.
They had already finished off the first three waves of ships, the flaming wreckages of ghost ships slowly sinking around them. Nobody had anticipated more, not even the genius tactician, and Beidou’s men were tired.
Fuck, even she was tired— subsiding for years off the military rations of the coast outpost and weathering through harsh winters would do that to anyone, even if they were once able to slaying sea dragons capable of swallowing gods.
Ningguang’s horse skittered nervously at the edge of the cliffs, the sheer drop mere feet away frightening the animal with its fatal descent. She stood there, feet sunk in knee-high snow, and stared transfixed at the flames alit over the ocean. There were ships burning. The sea air almost seemed to carry with it the scent of burning flesh and the cries of the wounded and dying, and the tactician could barely swallow the bile threatening to rise in her throat.
This was what it meant to be a tactician— this was what it meant to war.
At this point, even if the general fell with her ship, the coming tide would push the flaming wreckages back towards the cove, where the packed enemy ships had no space to retreat. It was the end of the battle, the conclusion to something more horrifying before it could even begin.
It was a pyrrhic victory, the ships their country’s fallen torches.
The general’s bright-eyed grin flashed through her mind-- superimposed over a deathly pallor, and Ningguang—Ningguang realized that this was a conclusion that she would not accept.
Win the battle, but what of future battles, future wars? The fall of one general that had cost thousands of souls to forge? It wasn’t worth it—she’s seen the woman’s brilliance over games of weiqi, heard her tactics spoken brazen and confident over unfurled maps. Caught glimpses of a blush that stretched to her ears, stray glances, and could taste warm tea even in the depths of howling winter.
There was no strategy under the heavens that couldn’t be foiled, and when Ningguang’s eyes caught the red of the flares protruding from the horse’s pack, she planted the seeds of a plan.
--
Night brought Ningguang to Beidou’s tent, the tactician armed with her wits, bandages, and salves. To the surprise of nobody, Beidou had directed Yinxing to care for the other injured first, and had retreated to her tent to treat her own wounds. Ningguang then promptly took it into her own hands to volunteer.
Which inevitably meant that she walked into the general half bare, and reaching over her shoulder to dab a damp, reddened cloth at a palm-wide gash.
“Have you ever heard of knocking?” The general huffed, amusement lacing her tone even as she poked her tongue out to try to reach a bit further, swearing as it aggravated the wound.
It took Ningguang a moment to unravel her brain from where it had wrapped itself around Beidou’s bare shoulders, the broad expanse of exposed back, but she found her tongue soon after. “You had given me permission to come in whenever I wished.”
“I did, huh.”
“Yes, yes you did.”
A languid silence stretched lazily through the tent, and Ningguang broke it with a sigh and a few swift steps.
“Allow me,” she said, patting the general’s hand and tugging the bloodied cloth.
“I can deal with this myself,” Beidou said, but letting go with a hiss after Ningguang poked at the large bruise spanning the width of the general’s back.
It didn’t take long, the general a deft and practiced hand at patching herself up, and Ningguang only had to clean and bandage the harder to reach areas. Beidou’s muscles were warm under her touch, tense, but with the final wound hidden by swathes of white, left to heal and scar on this barren outpost, the general’s eyelids were drooping.
“Rest well, my general,” Ningguang murmured, making her way to gather the remaining medicinal supplies and preparing to leave, but a sudden, lax grip on her wrist stayed her steps.
“Thank you,” Beidou said, her lone eye brighter than even a molten star. For what-- it went unsaid, unheard, but known all the same.
“Anytime, Beidou.” For you, anytime.
The general’s eye widened, even as sleep chased the edges of her lips. “When I’m awake, a game of weiqi then, Ningguang?”
“Of course.”