The Qiang Tribes (1)
Liangzhou — the province of the West, or as most people called it, Xiliang.
The name "Xiliang" was never an official designation during the Later Han era. It was called that, much like "Jiangdong" was used to avoid confusion with the Yangzhou region where the future Kingdom of Wu would rise, purely for later people's convenience.
And yet, most of Liangzhou's inhabitants referred to this land as Xiliang anyway.
Xiliang was a lawless no-man's-land where the Qiang and Di tribes and a host of other foreign peoples ran rampant. The Yellow Turban bandits rampaging across the Central Plains didn't operate here, but the local warlords sparked rebellions often enough to make up for it.
The land had been pioneered in the first place to check the Xiongnu, so its economy had never developed as far as the Central Plains or other regions.
Barren, sprawling wastelands and rugged mountain ranges — a place where food was hard to come by.
Recently I had begged my father Han Sui, the local magnate of the region, for permission to clear and cultivate some of the wasteland, and I was hard at work on it, but even that was no easy task.
Xiliang, along with Bing Province, was the frontier of frontiers — borderlands that the foreign tribes invaded again and again. The Qiang would descend on us without warning, trampling our fields and carrying off our grain.
I guarantee you this: I was more adept at swinging a sword against raiders than at using farm implements.
Even the ordinary people passing by on the road had fierce, scarred faces that would make the bandits of the Central Plains look like choirboys, and the forearms under their rolled-up sleeves were thick and hard as tree trunks.
And their eyes gleamed with greed. Give them half a chance, and they'd pounce to steal someone else's grain or savings.
To such brigands, a son of a Liangzhou magnate like me would be a prime kidnapping target.
The ransom would be fat, after all.
But
I was perfectly fine.
Because a stalwart bodyguard stood at my side, sword at his hip.
"So, young master. What are you scheming this time?"
A bearded man, far larger and more powerfully built than I — freshly through my coming-of-age rite as I was — narrowed his eyes and asked, dubious about what I intended.
"That's a secret."
I answered with a faint smile.
Yan Xing, courtesy name Yanming.
A military officer serving under my father Han Sui, currently assigned as my personal escort.
He never appears in the official Records of the Three Kingdoms or the Romance, but the Weilüe contains a biographical account of him.
His most famous feat: as a vigorous young man in his twenties, in the prime of physical prowess, he defeated Ma Chao in single combat — a warrior at the very peak of his youthful strength — while serving under Han Sui.
The fact that he nearly killed Ma Chao, one of the Five Tiger Generals who represented Shu Han, shocked more than a few Three Kingdoms fans.
Of course, I doubt he could subdue Ma Chao here, but still...
This era differed greatly from the common knowledge I carried in my head.
Of the generals I'd actually heard of — Han Sui among them — the men were still men, but Ma Chao was a woman.
Well, given that her martial prowess was unchanged, being a woman hardly mattered.
In any case, Yan Xing possessed the finest valor among my father's officers.
Contrary to the accounts claiming he later turned against Han Sui due to Cao Cao's machinations and entered Cao Cao's service, this Yan Xing was upright and steadfast, and though I'd only just completed my coming-of-age rite, he was still young himself and listened to me readily.
With a man like that standing guard beside me, glaring with both eyes wide open, even the thieves who had been loitering around the neighborhood averted their gazes, hunched their shoulders, and slunk away down the road.
"Do be careful, young master. If anything happens to you, I'm a dead man before my lord."
"I know, I know. We'll just pick this one thing up and head back."
My father Han Sui — since no biological son of his appears in the Records or the Romance, I hadn't known this — turned out to be a man who cherished and loved his family deeply.
Considering that in the Records, Ma Chao abandoned his own family serving at the capital, rose in rebellion against Cao Cao, and then committed the unfilial atrocity of taking Han Sui as his adoptive father, there was a certain irony in it.
Born as Han Sui's son, I had never met my mother, who died during a war, but I grew up healthy and strong under my father's love. As befit a warlord magnate of Liangzhou, my life wasn't luxurious, but it was comfortable compared to the common folk's.
I never went hungry because raiders plundered our stores, never had to dig up roots to quiet a gnawing belly.
That said, my father wasn't a fool who simply doted on me — perhaps because he understood we lived on a turbulent frontier in a chaotic age.
This region was brutally dangerous, so he earnestly and conscientiously instructed me in martial training, horsemanship, and all manner of military arts.
And so I had studied the martial arts under Yan Xing's tutelage since childhood, but unlike the transmigration clichés in modern Three Kingdoms fiction, I was not capable of carving a bloody path through ranks of soldiers like some invincible war god.
Forget distant examples — every time I spar with Ma Chao, I just end up a punching bag.
And she claims she's even going easy on me.
My father Han Sui excelled at the statecraft and schemes required to lead warlords, but nothing in the historical record mentioned his personal valor, so there was no bloodline buff for me to inherit.
At best, I could hold out against one or two spear-wielding soldiers before managing, barely, to subdue them.
I guarantee you this much: I am confident I could be defeated by the Yan Xing standing next to me in a single exchange.
That said, when it came to horsemanship — perhaps because I'd been riding since my earliest years — I was skilled enough to eat my meals and sleep soundly in the saddle.
But horsemanship was such a basic accomplishment for the people of Xiliang, with their nomadic blood, that it drew no particular attention.
And yet, there was a reason why I — showing no special talent for strategy or the sword — had persuaded my father to rally the forces of Ma Teng, who at this point possessed no reputation whatsoever, and had succeeded in cultivating the wasteland to ease the people's impoverished lives, if only a little.
Because the knowledge of the modern era and the history of the Three Kingdoms remained intact in my head.
For a boy who hadn't even completed his coming-of-age rite to gain the authority to meddle in military affairs in this harsh land of Xiliang, there was no choice but to distinguish himself from childhood.
Even as a young boy, I spoke of the importance of trade and the reclamation of farmland, and I offered proposals on raising cavalry to improve the army. My father and his officers praised me as a prodigy.
When all I'd done was make use of knowledge picked up from the future.
I did consider building a racetrack in Xiliang to raise military funds, but the people were far too destitute, and since gambling was proverbially a highway to family ruin, I withdrew the idea.
Still, I did intend, someday, to provide some suitable form of entertainment as a means of easing the people's pent-up frustrations.
My reason for gathering materials at the market today to improve upon an item was to create a means of training cavalry in a short period — and doing so safely.
"All right, brother. Let's head back."
"...Yes, young master."
Yan Xing wore a puzzled expression at being addressed so familiarly as "brother" by the very man he served.
And then.
"Don't move!!"
A man's heavy voice thundered across the marketplace.
Yan Xing and I transformed our expressions in an instant and pushed through the crowd that had gathered around the man.
At the center of the throng, a rough-looking man brandishing a blade was holding a young woman hostage — a girl who looked as though she had only just come of age.
From his appearance, the man seemed to be a foreign-born vagabond.
All sorts of people flocked to Jincheng Commandery, so troublemakers like this did exist here.
A patrolling guard had his spear leveled at the vagabond as well, but fearing harm to the hostage, he couldn't approach recklessly.
But at the sight of that familiar woman's face, and of this whole scene, the eyes of both Yan Xing and me turned to ice.
"Out of the way!! You want to watch this woman die?!"
"Ugh!"
"You coward!"
The guards, afraid the frail girl might be injured, reluctantly cleared a path and backed away step by step, and the crowd, terrified of being caught up in violence, shrank away from him as well.
Before long, only Yan Xing and I remained in front of the bandit and his hostage.
"Who the hell are you? Why don't you clear off already?!"
I had been silently enduring the furious man's abusive tirade, his reason clearly unhinged, when I stepped forward to prevent a bloodbath from breaking out in the marketplace.
"...Wait. Let's settle this with words."
I raised a hand to hold back the bandit as he moved to leave, trying to calm him and resolve things through negotiation.
"Wh-what kind of crap is that?! Why don't you get lost already?!"
"Don't cause trouble. Just bear with it. That man's life is in danger!!"
Seeing my genuinely worried expression, the bandit's ferocious air softened for a moment.
But he soon seemed to decide I was mocking him, and his rage boiled over again.
"Open your mouth one more time, and this woman's life—"
"...No. Not you. Her."
"Huh?"
As the bandit faltered in confusion once more, the slender arm of the woman he'd taken hostage gently caught hold of the burly arm locked around her own throat.
"Behave yourself, Ma Chao."
Huh? Ma Chao?
WHAM!!
With that, the bandit felt his body leave the ground entirely.
I'm... flying? No way — the splendor of Xiliang...!!
For an instant he floated through the air, and then his body crashed down with terrifying force, slamming headfirst into the ground.
CRASH!!
The impact threw him flat against the earth, and dust billowed up in a great cloud from the sheer force of her strength.
"Gahk!"
The vagabond, flipped over Ma Chao's shoulder and slammed to the ground, shuddered from head to toe before losing consciousness entirely.
The platinum-blonde woman, a peerless beauty who had been taken hostage.
She flipped her ponytail back over her shoulder with a single sweep, clicked her tongue, and growled out in a rough voice entirely befitting nothing about her radiant features:
"Ah, damn it. I did it again. And my house arrest isn't even over yet... What now, Han Yeong?"
She scratched her head and looked at me with complete nonchalance.
...This is exactly why I was trying to settle things with words.
I had failed to prevent the disaster I saw coming. I pressed a hand to my forehead and heaved a long sigh.