Most Wars Are Caused by Sudden Escalations
The pounding on the door shattered the silence—bang, bang, bang! The sun, sluggish from the winter cold, was still curled up in bed. My rare stretch of deep sleep ended with the rude interruption of an unwelcome visitor.
“Mmm…”
I had always possessed sharp ears at night, so my eyes opened on their own. Still dressed in my sleep clothes, I opened the door. If it had been a thief or assassin, I would have heard the sounds of fighting long before any knock. In that case I should already have been awake and responding. If the one knocking was an enemy, it meant an absolute monster of a fighter had slipped past the 4th Special Task Force and the personal guard without making a sound. Weapons would be pointless then. If it was an ally, there had to be urgent news that could not wait until morning, so wasting time to grab a weapon would be foolish.
Using the sparsely lit torches as guides, I crossed the creaking hallway and studied the face of the unwelcome guest the steward was dealing with. It was Zera-hu, younger brother of Ga-neung from the personal guard. The name sounded like some kind of abbreviation, yet Zera-hu was his real name.
“Zera-hu? You should be out on the steppe. What brings you here at this hour…?”
“Your Excellency, Lu Bu has invaded Pingyuan.”
…Was I still half asleep?
Slap!
My cheeks stung, proving I was awake…
“Am I dreaming…”
“It is the truth. Around the hour of the monkey yesterday, Lu Bu and roughly a thousand cavalry under his command raided the Pingyuan army. Governor Liu managed to hold him off and took the heads of Lu Bu and two hundred of his riders. However, we have confirmed that Guo Si and forty thousand infantry under him were also present. We are currently following the White Operation plan to stabilize the local population’s morale and have scattered Wuhuan intelligence agents to gather more precise details.”
“Ugh… Lu Bu? Did Dong Zhuo order this?”
“We have not confirmed that yet. My apologies.”
“It’s fine. If it happened at the hour of the monkey yesterday, that was only six hours ago. Considering the travel time back to headquarters, it cannot be helped… What are our casualties?”
“There appear to be none. It seems there was friction between the units. The infantry remained far back while the cavalry charged alone.”
“…Does that even make sense?”
My mind was not yet firing on all cylinders, but no matter how I turned it over, I could not imagine the cunning Dong Zhuo ordering a siege with nothing but cavalry. That would be brainless.
“It makes no sense, yet the report is accurate. I will deliver the rest of the updates by tomorrow morning.”
“Where are you going now?”
“I intend to remind our northern friends not to entertain any foolish notions. Commander Dadun should arrive around morning, so I will take my leave.”
“You always carry a heavy burden. Well done.”
Zera-hu bowed deeply, turned on his heel, and melted into the darkness. His horse was black, his clothes were black, and he himself was black from head to toe, so he vanished the instant he stepped beyond the torchlight.
I yawned hugely, lit the lamp in the office, and unfolded the map I had folded away earlier.
“Dong Zhuo… Dong Zhuo is targeting the State of Yan… Why?”
Dong Zhuo was still a man capable of rational thought. Though the dynasty was rotting, he possessed the power to seize its throat in a single breath. He had the leadership to command the armies of Xiliang, Bingzhou, and the capital itself. A man of that caliber could not possibly be ignorant that war is merely an extension of diplomacy. Yet the idea that he would indulge Lu Bu’s personal grudge after the beating he took at Hulao Pass… Personal grudge… personal… personal…
In history, when events refused to add up, the cause was usually one individual’s sudden impulsive outburst. The Anschluss had been like that. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident had been like that. And almost always, the frantic attempts to clean up that impulsive mess had ignited full-scale war. After the Anschluss, Germany—drunk on its own strength—invaded Poland and announced the beginning of the world war. Japan, misinterpreting a subordinate’s bathroom break, kicked off the Sino-Japanese War. Even the First World War had begun when a radical nationalist youth murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The wars that shake the world usually sprout from trivial sparks.
Of course the world had already been unstable before those sparks flew, but the era I now lived in was equally chaotic.
“Hmm… Dong Zhuo… Dong Zhuo, huh…”
Naturally I had prepared countermeasures. In the worst case I could borrow the power of the Imperial Seal and forcibly halt the war. It would be a headache to push an emperor whose security and bureaucratic apparatus were not yet complete into the foreground, but it could be done. And even without resorting to the Imperial Seal as a final measure, Dong Zhuo had many enemies and was intelligent enough to understand how suicidal it would be to fight Yan one-on-one.
I had no desire to needlessly slaughter civilians either, so there was ample room for negotiation. Since the first strike had come from Lu Bu’s side, the moral advantage lay with us. Neither side truly wanted total war, so we could probably withdraw at a suitable point.
The information was still too thin. A proper plan would have to wait until morning.
I carefully folded the map I had been marking and slipped it back between the books before returning to the bedroom. Once my mind had been yanked awake, it refused to slip back into dreams until the sun rose.
“No one even died and you demand ten guan of gold—roughly forty kilograms?! You have no intention of negotiating at all?!”
The moment Guo Si’s messenger saw the compensation claim Liu Bei had presented, his neck bulged with veins as he shouted.
It was not as if a general had been captured, nor had they piled mountains of corpses in a hard-fought victory. At most a few arrows had lodged in the wooden walls and a few scratches marred the cavalry’s iron armor. The losses were far heavier on Dong Zhuo’s side. They had lost Lu Bu—the leader of the Bingzhou army and a famed cavalry commander—along with hundreds of veteran riders. Having even lost the armor of the dead, the thought of handing over dozens more guan of gold would get the messenger’s own head chopped off. Naturally he had to refuse.
“It hurts my heart to hear such words from someone who fired arrows without so much as a declaration of war. I am certain my soldiers feel the same.”
“W-what?”
“How startled they must have been… How terrified… I, Liu, cannot even begin to imagine the fear of those who had to face iron cavalry with nothing but a single wooden palisade between them.”
Though they spoke the same language, the messenger could not comprehend the words leaving Liu Bei’s mouth. Fear of soldiers? Weaklings like that should be beheaded as an example to toughen the army.
“Lord Liu, will you be able to bear the consequences when this tale reaches Duke Gongsun’s ears?”
“Oh dear, are you saying my brother would abandon me? Depending on how one hears it, this is rather… Hmm… Yes. That makes sense. It might feel a little unfair.”
Liu Bei’s appearance, carrying the faint blood of the imperial line, was truly beautiful. When the messenger first stepped into the fortress he had indeed been captivated by her somewhat dull yet golden-tinted hair, her blue-green eyes, and the figure that armor could not hide. Yet every word from her lips scraped at his insides, so it was no surprise that the defeated general’s envoy trembled.
She had learned the meaning of the “justice” a great power must possess both directly and through her teacher Lu Zhi. Originally gifted at creating value through righteousness and cooperation, she accepted this rhetorical seasoning without resistance. And though she had never suffered a major defeat in her life, she was more than capable of tormenting a mere messenger.
“Indeed. The Dong Zhuo army is filled with generals who can face ten thousand foes alone, so a few border cavalry can be treated as entirely expendable. Compared to you we are but a small state, so we must carefully tend to the suffering of every single soldier. I would appreciate your understanding, sir.”
“Grr! …Even so, this far exceeds my authority. The hour is late tonight, so how about we conclude negotiations with General Guo tomorrow?”
“Oh my… I would love to do exactly that, yet… after suffering a surprise attack it would be irresponsible to take your words at face value. If you stay here a few days, surely General Guo will send another messenger?”
“That cannot be allowed. Unfortunately we have no time. Although that madman Lu Bu went berserk and attacked Duke Gongsun’s lands, we have received His Majesty’s command to strike the traitor Cao Cao—”
“Strike who? Me?”
The messenger, seated with his back to the tent entrance, had not noticed Cao Cao’s arrival. Cao Cao signaled to Liu Bei. She gave a small nod, and he spoke, revealing his presence.
“C-Cao Cao?! How are you here… Wait, were you in league from the beginning?!”
“I am here as an observer. We are all officials of the same Han Dynasty. Observing one another’s battles and researching new tactics would be a fine exchange. Duke Cao is a master of military science who has written Sunzi’s Weaknesses as an annotation to the Art of War. Through various opportunities we have formed a connection, and he has been participating in Yan’s training and cooperating on tactical research… Though I never imagined Grand Commandant Dong would so brazenly attack a Han official…”
Yanzhou… has fallen into Gongsun Zan’s hands? So quietly?
The messenger was merely a cavalryman under Guo Si and knew little of the wider world. He could not know what had passed between Cao Cao and Li Ru, nor that Cao Cao and Gongsun Zan were drinking companions. Yet he had seen with his own eyes that Cao Cao’s troops moved openly in the heart of Gongsun Zan’s army.
He knew how sweet the plains of Ji Province and Yanzhou were. Upon seeing the monstrous fortress built at Pingyuan, he could guess that many warlords would seek to submit beneath it.
Ji Province—now the State of Yan—possessed the widest plain in all the central plains. The great plain blessed by the Yellow River could produce enough grain to feed the entire Han Empire. Moreover, if Yanzhou had also fallen into Yan’s hands, the entire great plain now belonged to Gongsun Zan. The roads from Qingzhou and Xuzhou beside the sea to Luoyang were completely blocked. It was easy to predict that Qingzhou and Xuzhou would soon fall into Gongsun Zan’s grasp as well.
This is disastrous. I must inform General Guo at once… I must tell him… but…
He needed to tell him, yet there was no way to send word. Killing an envoy was a grave insult and gave justification for war, but holding one as a hostage was a card the side holding the initiative could play once or twice. Of course kidnapping the next messenger as well would be highly rude, yet once was tolerable.
The hands that had been trembling now stopped, slick with cold sweat.