Fa Zheng (4)
The night of carnage drew to a close, and dawn broke.
Under Fa Zheng's stratagem, the enemy had crumbled without mounting so much as token resistance, melting away like the dew of early morning. '...She's remarkable.' I stole a sideways glance at the mastermind herself — Fa Zheng, engrossed in conversation with her father, Fa Yan.
What she had devised was a classic piece of deception. We beat the drums and put on a convincing show of launching a night raid, all while deliberately withholding the attack, denying the enemy a single hour of untroubled sleep until their wits went soft.
Time and again, Fa Zheng had pounded those drums and waited for the moment the bandits stopped reacting to the sound. A full night of drumbeats had first ratcheted their vigilance sky-high, then slowly ground body and mind down to dullness. And at last, when the brigands could hear the drums without so much as a flinch — tension dissolved, buried in sleep — she gave the signal, and the troops we had kept in readiness swept in under cover of darkness.
The bandits, complacently convinced we would do nothing more than bang our drums and leave, were cut down in the space of a breath. By the time Ma Chao returned bearing Song Yang's severed head, the bandits holed up in the annex had already been annihilated to the last man at the hands of Pang De and the escort.
We were on our way back to Fufeng Commandery to dispose of the wealth those men had hoarded.
And the haul was far from small. Song Yang's accumulated fortune, loaded onto the carts, outweighed everything the bandits had plundered from the warehouses on our way down into Yong Province. '...Did he smuggle all this out when he fled Wuwei?' That was the sort of thought the sheer volume provoked. Hauling treasure this heavy all the way back to Jincheng would be asking for trouble; the day word got around, bandits from every corner of Xiliang would band together and come for our heads. Far better to dispose of it here, away from prying eyes.
'Even better if I spend some of it on relief grain and share it out among the people. Winning their hearts while we're at it — I won't say no to that.'
Our army was unusually sensitive to popular sentiment, and for good reason: before my father Han Sui changed his name, he had once raised the banner of revolt. The people of Xiliang no longer feared us and served us with easy hearts, but folk in other regions had never once crossed paths with us, and they dreaded what they knew only by rumor. That was why I handed out relief grain at every opportunity.
Of course, if anyone decided we were soft-touch fools who did nothing but hand out food, I would politely conclude the matter by breaking one of his arms. In an era where deceiving an official cost a man his head, that counted as positively merciful.
'And besides — I'm owed an answer.'
The night before we stormed Song Yang's stronghold, I had asked Fa Yan and Fa Zheng to join our staff as strategists. Fa Zheng's brilliance — celebrated far and wide as that of a genius strategist — spoke for itself, and her father Fa Yan was every bit capable enough to hold high office in the Han court. Fa Zheng's gifts ran to tactics and military stratagem more than statecraft; in politics and administration, her father was likely the stronger of the two.
So their names weren't famous. Passing them up would have been the height of folly. Fa Zheng had looked inclined to accept, while Fa Yan — lingering over some attachment or other, wrestling with himself — had promised an answer later. Judging by snatches of their conversation, it sounded as though his daughter was doing the persuading.
"Han Yeong."
Ma Chao, riding along on my right, called out to me out of nowhere. I turned my head. "What is it?"
"How'd you even know what that woman Fa Zheng was capable of? What made you offer to help her out?"
Ma Chao and the other officers had watched the stratagem unfold and acknowledged her ability. But this seemed to be her asking how I had spotted Fa Zheng's talent in the first place — and been so ready to extend a helping hand.
"Asking 'cause you don't know?"
"Huh?"
"I told you — I've got a sharp eye for talent. That's how I knew."
I answered with a perfectly straight face, shameless to the last. It wasn't as though I could tell her the truth — that I'd lived through the future.
"...Hmm? Is that so, now?"
The drawn-out pause before my answer made me tense up for a moment, but Ma Chao just shrugged and let it slide.
"Young Master. Once we've disposed of the spoils and handed out the relief grain, will we be heading home?"
"...I'd imagine so? Why do you ask?"
At my words, Yan Xing — a Xiliang native to the bone — let his disappointment show, plain as day. "It does seem a waste, doesn't it? We've come all the way down to Yong Province. Surely we ought to take in some sights?"
"Exactly!! Ever since we got here, all we've done is boring talent-hunting and fighting!" Ma Chao — Xiliang native number two — hammered her agreement onto Yan Xing's words with plenty of force to spare.
'Honestly, you two...' The entire reason we had come out here was to find men fit for civil office. I wanted to say exactly that — but one look at their pleading eyes, and the words died in my throat.
Then again, they had worn themselves out day and night crushing bandits who hadn't even been on the itinerary... They'd earned a breather.
"Fine, then. You lot go have a look around."
"And you, Young Master?"
"I want a word with Master Fa Yan."
"Aww... We came all this way. Just take one day off, won't you?"
Ma Chao looked genuinely put out that I wouldn't be resting.
'Frankly, I'd like to rest too. But Fa Yan was still agonizing even after his daughter's persuasion — it fell to me to win him over.' The man had held no lesser posts than Clerk to the Minister over the Masses and Left Supervisor of the Commandant of Justice. To put it simply, he had deputized for both the Minister over the Masses — one of the Three Excellencies, the most senior posts among the Han court's ministers — and the Commandant of Justice, one of the Nine Ministers. No one alive would have a keener, more penetrating grasp of the court's present condition. For Liang Province, utterly blind to the politics of the central government, he was a talent we needed every bit as much as Fa Zheng herself.
I had to win him over. No two ways about it.
"I'm fine, really. You all go and enjoy yourselves."
"Then I shall take charge of your guard, my lord."
Pang De brought her horse alongside mine with quiet grace. "In my days as a commandery clerk, I visited Yong Province several times. I have no need of sightseeing, I assure you."
"Really? Then Pang De alone guards me — everyone else, soldiers included, gets a proper rest. There'll be reward money in it for you."
Ma Chao stuck out her lower lip in a pout. "You could just rest with us while you're at it... You're such a workaholic."
All I could do was smile wryly at that.
Less than two years remained before the Ten Attendants' Rebellion. To involve ourselves early in the affairs of the Central Plains, we would have to make our strength known and join the cause the moment He Jin called the outside warlords to the capital. If we were too late, Dong Zhuo would depose the reigning Emperor Shao — the spark from which the Han's ruin would spread.
'Knowing what comes after, that much I have to prevent.' The crusade against Dong Zhuo was one thing, but dragging the Emperor off his throne? That had to be stopped, whatever it took.
"Hmm. Very well, then. If the Young Master insists..."
When Yan Xing swallowed his longing to play and made to stand guard at my side, I waved him off — with Pang De here, he should rest while he could. 'They've earned their rest. Let their bodies recover.'
While the rest of us hashed out the itinerary this way and that, we reached Fufeng Commandery. The wealth went straight to the merchants, sold off to the last coin, and the proceeds bought relief grain for the poor.
Now and then some local tough from Fufeng County who didn't know his place would bellow at us to hand the goods over — but one level of Yan Xing's blade and they crawled off on their own. Ma Chao, Yan Xing, and the rest of the escort slipped away to go sightseeing, while Pang De and I followed in Fa Zheng and Fa Yan's footsteps.
"It's this way, my lord. I'm afraid our circumstances are modest — I doubt we can offer you proper hospitality."
"It's quite all right."
"Xiaozhi!!"
We had just reached her house and were about to step inside when a man came striding toward us, calling out Fa Zheng's courtesy name. It was the same man who had brushed her off so coldly and turned her away two days prior.
The gentle Fa Zheng transformed in an instant. The moment the voice reached her, her face twisted into something vicious, blood rising to her brow.
"I'm sorry! Xiaozhi!!"
The man threw himself to his knees the moment he drew near, face creased in servility, hands clasped in pleading. "Our family's finances were stretched thin — that's why I couldn't help you!! So please, I beg you, forgive me!!"
'What's this? What's gotten into him?' Only days ago the man had been steeped head to toe in vanity — and now here he was, groveling pathetically on his knees. Never mind that he had ignored Fa Zheng's earnest plea when it mattered.
"Get lost. I must have been an idiot to ever count trash like you as a friend."
To his desperate begging, Fa Zheng offered only a frostbitten expression and cold contempt — the very same face she had worn the night before, when she drafted the plan that butchered the bandits.
"Thank the heavens you're safe, elder! I simply lacked the strength to come to your aid!!"
Her words having apparently flowed in one ear and out the other, the man rose from the ground and bowed so fluidly his spine seemed made of rubber, apologizing for all he was worth.
"On the contrary, my boy, I have no need of your help whatsoever."
Even Fa Yan — a man respected at court, no less — wore a look of pure disgust as he scorned the fellow. I found myself wondering just who he was. 'Who is this guy, that he's hated this thoroughly?'
Fa Zheng, her irritation boiling over at the man's habit of ignoring her every word, vented her fury outright. "I told you to get lost, didn't I? You'll take my help all day long when it suits you, but the moment a friend needs something, it's suddenly a stranger's business — why does a scheming snake like you keep hovering around!?"
Provoked past endurance by the man's relentless needling, Fa Zheng let that fiery, unyielding temperament of hers blaze once more.
"F-forgive me. That's why I've come to offer my sincerest—"
"I don't need your apology, I never did!! Get lost, Meng Da—!!"
At the name that left Fa Zheng's lips, my brow furrowed all on its own.
'...I'm sorry, what?' Meng Da?
Hearing that name, I felt heat lance through the depths of my skull. This was one of the chief culprits behind the death of Guan Yu — one of my favorite figures in all of Romance of the Three Kingdoms — and a treacherous snake who, the moment his life and standing grew precarious, threw away the state of Shu he served and bolted for Wei. Worse still, when Cao Pi died and his stock in Wei went into decline, he had the sheer gall to defect back to Shu — the traitor of traitors.
Three betrayals in all — a record that put him on par with Lu Bu — yet where actual martial prowess was concerned, he was a consummate nobody. In the books and the games he had worn the face of a scheming, bearded general; the fact that in this world he sported a perfectly presentable one irritated me in some vague, unaccountable way.
Now that I knew the identity of the man who had been slinging cheap insults at Fa Zheng, I found my own gaze settling on Meng Da with a distinctly sour edge.