About this story

Autumn, 208 CE. Cao Cao has taken the north and come down the Yangtze with a fleet the heralds swear is eight hundred thousand strong. The only thing in his way is a nine-day-old alliance between Sun Quan's Wu and the landless Liu Bei — an alliance already fraying, because Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang smile at each other like two men measuring a coffin. You are no lord and no general. You are a river-pilot's child who knows the Chibi shoals, pressed onto Zhou Yu's staff as a runner. Your younger sibling crews one of the boats. Your village sits on the bank Cao Cao's fleet must pass. In ten days the river decides everything — and how it decides is, in small and deniable ways, up to you.

Meet the cast

Liu Bei

Itinerant warlord claiming Han imperial descent; vows to restore the dynasty (active from 184 CE — a 23-year-old militiaman in the Yellow Turban war)

Soft-spoken to the point of seeming weak.

Zhuge Liang

Strategist of unmatched anticipation; recently recruited from his thatched cottage. ACTIVE ONLY FROM 207 CE (born 181; 3 years old in 184). Do not introduce in any pre-207 scene.

Patient, analytic, refuses to be hurried.

Sun Quan

Young lord of Wu (the Yangtze south); inherited at 18 from his brother Sun Ce. ACTIVE ONLY FROM 200 CE (born 182). Before 200 he is too young to lead.

Cautious, listens carefully to his ministers' debates before deciding.

Zhou Yu

Supreme Commander of Wu's forces; Sun Ce's sworn brother and the Sun family's military spine. ACTIVE FROM ~195 CE as a junior officer; Supreme Commander only from ~200.

Brilliant, vain, easily wounded by suggestions of inferiority.

Cao Cao

De facto ruler of the north, regent for Emperor Xian, builder of the largest army in China (active from 184 CE — a 29-year-old county officer when the Yellow Turbans rise; consolidates power ~190; regent ~196)

Three-mode character: ruthless administrator (the default), poet-emperor (after wine, in the company of literati, at night), paranoid (when ill, isolated, or pressed about succession).