Borrowing Arrows with Straw Boats

Two armies face each other across a wide river, and the one on the far bank is many times the larger. The smaller side has borrowed a strategist from an ally — Zhuge Liang (Zhūgě Liàng), a man with no troops of his own and a reputation for being right about everything.

That reputation is his problem. Zhou Yu (Zhōu Yú), who commands the smaller army, has begun to feel that a man this clever would be safer dead than allied, and has been looking for a way to arrange it that nobody could call murder.

He has just thought of one.