Ma Dai

The one voice against going - 'Cao Cao's designs are unfathomable' - and the one who escapes: warned by fugitives from the rearguard, he abandons his army and slips through the sealed passes disguised as a trader.

Arrives in Xiliang weeping with the news of the three deaths, rides as Ma Chao's support through the campaign, and leads the fifteen-thousand-man van that opens the Changan operation.

Ma Dai; flees west with Ma Chao.

Cuts through the encircling armies at Ma Chao's side in the flight from Licheng, and attacks Yang Fu's rear in the last stand — one of the handful who reach Hanzhong.

Mistaken for Ma Chao by the ambitious Wei Yan — feigns flight and puts an arrow in his arm; scorned by Zhang Fei ('you are no match for me — bid Ma Chao himself come'), he lasts ten bouts. Defects with his cousin and shares the summons at Chengdu's wall.

Ma Dai; with Ma Chao.

Arrives with grain, summer medicines, and three thousand troops — loses men to the noon miasma of the Lu until the natives teach the night crossing, then seizes the single-file Jiashan Gorge and a hundred grain wagons, kills Mangya Chang at the first sword-stroke, and shames Dongtu Na off the field with one sentence. His last service is theatrical: the 'rescue' boat at the river bank, crewed by his own soldiers in Mang dress, that makes the third capture.

Handles the river mechanics of the fourth ruse — cuts the floating bridge loose and floats it downstream for Zhao Yun and Wei Yan's crossing — then mauls Meng Huo's westward flight into the mountains.

The chapter's quiet executor: trips Lady Zhurong's horse with hidden ropes and takes her for the exchange, spends half a month arming the Coiled Serpent Valley — the nested nine-in-one mines, thirty paces apart, fused through hollow bamboo — and ropes the fleeing Meng Huo himself: the seventh and final capture is his.

Named for the cost of the southern campaign rather than for anything he does here: more than a thousand of his soldiers drowned crossing the River Lu, and it is their unfreed souls Zhuge Liang blames himself for and sacrifices to. Appointed Left Army Commander and Chief of the Commissariat for the Northern Expedition.

Chief mourner at his cousin Ma Chao's tomb in Mianyang, where the army halts on its way north and Zhuge Liang sacrifices in person to the dead Tiger General.

One of the four commanders placed in ambush around the emptied Shu camp, who fall on Cao Zun and Zhu Zan once they are inside and already fighting each other.

Sent as guide rather than commander — 'You know the disposition of the Qiangs from your long residence there' — and commands the right wing. Proposes holding the camp while the other two ride back for instructions when the iron chariots prove unbeatable. Takes Ya Dan prisoner in the rout and brings him to the main camp.

Rear guard with Jiang Wei, in ambush in the valleys until the whole army is clear. Kills Cao Zhen's Van Leader Chen Zao when the pursuit comes up, and the country 'seemed to swarm with enemies' enough to stop Cao Zhen dead.

Comes out with Zhang Ni at the wave of the fan when Fei Yao refuses to fetch Cao Zhen to the parley — the charge that starts the feigned retreat Fei Yao spends the rest of the day chasing.

Springs the trap on the grain convoy. Takes three thousand men to the Wei store camp at the second watch with the soldiers gagged and the horses' muzzles lashed, finds the carts tiered up the hills 'making an enclosure like a walled camp' with flags planted on them, waits for the southwest wind and fires them - a blaze that lights the sky, draws Sun Li out of the west hills into Ma Zheng and Zhang Ni's jaws, and pulls Zhang Hu and Yue Chen out of their camp for Guan Xing and Zhang Bao.

Sent through the Xie Valley, then given the harder half of the job: cross the mountains with Wang Ping, march by night and hide by day, reach the east of Qishan and light a fire as the signal. Comes up behind Cao Zhen's camp as the disguised raiders go in the front.

Drives the second decoy chariot, sent to the west of the city, one of the three identical Zhuge Liangs that unnerve the Wei army. One of the four corner ambushes at Lucheng, and then paired with Jiang Wei to hold the key points in strength.

Rides on Beiyuan with Wei Yan and is caught in the same trap. Then given the quietest and most important job in the chapter: five hundred men on the mouth of the Gourd Valley with orders that nobody goes in or out while the wooden oxen are built. Later sent with Ma Zheng to make a noisy demonstration against the south-bank camp while the convoy is being stolen.

Builds the trap. Ordered to raise a stockade in the Gourd Valley, dig pits, bury mines, and pile wood and straw on the hill in the shape of sheds, then block the road behind and lie in ambush at the mouth, with seven star flags by day and seven lamps by night as the signal Wei Yan will run for. Lights it on cue - 'the earth-mines exploded, and the straw and firewood blazed high as the heavens' - and can only watch when the storm puts it out, being 'not strong enough to pursue'.

What Zhuge Liang gives him is 'certain whispered instructions' and 'You are to follow out my instructions after my death'; the reader is not told what they are until ch105. What he does on the page here is the other half of it: sent by Wei Yan to find out why Fei Yi has not returned, he brings back the news that Jiang Wei has the rearguard and the army has gone — and when Wei Yan asks 'Will you help me?', he answers 'I have long hated Yang Yi; certainly I am ready to attack him.' The whispered orders are already running.

The executioner, and the payoff of the whispered orders from ch104. Rides with Wei Yan the whole way, is the only commander whose troops do not desert him, talks him out of defecting to Wei with what sounds like ambition on his behalf - 'A really strong person would try to carve out his own fortune and not be ready to crook the knee to another... I pledge myself to go with you to the seizure of Hanzhong' - and cuts him down from behind mid-shout. Given Wei Yan's forfeited rank for it.