Hao Zhao

Recommended by Sima Yi and described before he is named — 'a nine-span man, round shouldered and powerful, a good archer and prudent strategist', in command at Hexi. Promoted to General Who Guards the West and sent to fortify Chencang against the invasion nobody has launched yet. The only promotion in the chapter, and the reason chapter 97 goes the way it does.

Refuses every approach in turn. Lets his boyhood friend Jin Xiang up onto the wall and hears him out once — 'We were brothers once, but now we are enemies' — then answers the second embassy from the tower with an arrow already fitted: 'Brother, you know the laws of Wei. I have accepted their bounty, and if that leads to death, so be it. Say no more, but return quickly to your master and tell him to come and attack. I am not afraid.' Holds with about three thousand men against a hundred thousand: fire-arrows burn the scaling ladders and their platforms, great stones swung on ropes smash the battering rams, and a counter-trench inside the city defeats Liao Hua's tunnel. A month of it, and the city still stands.

Dies at Chencang. Sima Yi's entire strategy rests on him - 'with Hao Zhao and Wang Shuang on guard there, he will not dare to come that way' - and he is already mortally ill when the scouts report it to Zhuge Liang, who takes the news as the campaign's opening move: 'That means success for me.' He rouses himself and has them carry him to the ramparts, but Zhuge Liang's planted spies fire every gate at once and the panic kills him outright, 'just as the troops of Shu were bursting in'. Zhuge Liang sends his coffin and his whole family back to Wei in recognition of his loyalty.