Pang De

Reads the tiger dream right, wins Changan with patience - lift the siege, let the starving city open its gates, then take the west gate by night, cutting down Zhong Jing at the gateway. In the pit-trap disaster he leaps clear, kills Cao Yong, takes the dead man's horse, and carries Han Sui out of the wreck.

Pang De; flees west with Ma Chao.

Fights at Ma Chao's side through the catastrophe — the double battle at Licheng, the alley cut through Yin Feng and Zhao Ang, the rear-attack that wounds Yang Fu — and rides out of the wreck as one of the last sixty horsemen.

Too ill to march — stays behind in Hanzhong while Ma Chao rides to Jiameng, and so misses the defection that would have taken him to Liu Bei's side.

Zhang Lu's last champion: duels four of Cao Cao's best in one day — Zhang He, Xiahou Yuan, Xu Huang, and fifty bouts of Xu Chu — without tiring. Slandered by the bribed Yang Song, threatened with beheading by his own lord, he chases the bait into the pit-trap; Cao Cao unties him personally, and the ill-used man gives in.

Commands a right column — and kills Chen Wu in the thicketed valley, the branches holding the man fast for the blow.

Duels Wei Yan when the camps catch fire — and saves Cao Cao's life on the hill, crying 'Spare my lord!' as he drives off the archer come to finish the wounded prince. Trusted with the rear guard for the retreat home.

Nearly stripped of the van over his Shu connections, he answers with a coffin: paraded at his own banquet, carried behind the army, promised either for Guan Yu's head or his own. Fights Guan Ping to a draw, Guan Yu a hundred bouts to a draw, and puts an arrow in the great man's left arm — robbed of the finish by Yu Jin's jealous gong. Flooded out at Zengkou, he cuts down Dong Heng and Dong Chao for urging surrender, fights from the hillock till midday, boards a boat alone and kills ten marines — and is dragged from the water by Zhou Cang. Before Guan Yu he stands erect, refuses the bridge to his brother and Ma Chao, and stretches out his neck for the sword.

Dead but present — Cao Cao holds his defiance up as the measure Yu Jin failed: 'thirty years, yet in that moment of truth he was less than Pang De.'

Painted on the tomb wall refusing to bow — the standing rebuke beside which Yu Jin grovels in chalk.