Cai Mao

One of Liu Biao's two commanders sent with ten thousand troops to bar Sun Jian's road home and demand the seal. Huang Gai's iron whip catches him on the breastplate over the heart and he turns and flees - then joins the second ambush behind the hills.

Overrules Kuai Liang's caution - 'the enemy is at the city gates' - and leads ten thousand out to the Xian Hills, where Cheng Pu routs him and the field is left heaped with corpses. Kuai Liang demands his head by military law, but Liu Biao will not execute the brother of his newly wedded wife. He joins the final sortie after Sun Jian falls.

Cai Mao; Liu Biao's brother-in-law and the chapter's first portrait of him as the regime's spider - already counsel against accepting Liu Bei.

Cai Mao; Lady Cai's brother and Jingzhou's chief commander; engineers the failed assassination of Liu Bei at the Xiangyang banquet.

Caught lying to Zhao Zilong at the west gate - 'it is my duty to guard the officials' - he is berated by Liu Biao when Sun Qian delivers the truth, ordered out to execution, and saved only by his sister's tears and Sun Qian's cold arithmetic; he keeps his head at the price of a public reprimand.

Only spoken of: Liu Biao admits he spared 'the prime mover' of the Xiangyang plot under universal pleading, and Liu Bei diplomatically shifts the blame to subordinates.

Bars the true heir from his father's deathbed with smooth arguments about duty, forges the testament with Lady Cai the moment Liu Biao dies, sends Li Gui to execution for saying so aloud, and shares Jingzhou's military authority among the Cai clan.

Orders arrows shot down on the refugees begging at Xiangyang's walls, then flatters his way through Cao Cao's inventory questions and comes away Supreme Admiral of the Naval Force and Lord Who Controls the South - useful, as Cao Cao privately tells Xun You, only until the north learns war by water.

Beaten in the first exchange, he answers Cao Cao's reproach with the truth - the marines need training - and builds the twenty-four Water Gates whose competence frightens Zhou Yu into the forgery. His 'the soldiers are not yet sufficiently trained' at the summons becomes his death warrant: 'they will be trained enough when you have sent my head to Zhou Yu, eh?'

His execution is the pivot the chapter turns on: his clan's presence in Cao Cao's army makes his brothers plausible avengers-turned-deserters, and their 'vengeance' story is what Zhou Yu pretends to believe.