Is He Out of His Mind? (2)

THWACK!!

"Argh!!"

The instant the blow landed on my head, it stung so fiercely I could have sworn a lump was already rising.

"That's it for today?"

"Hah... hah..."

At Ma Chao's question I nodded in silent assent, gulping down ragged breaths. I let the wooden sword slip from my fingers and slumped onto the ground, my back soaked through with sweat, beads of it trickling down from my forehead.

The reason I'd been beaten into such a wreck was simple: I had accepted Ma Chao's proposal. Back in the old days I'd often served as her sparring dummy, but after Pang De joined us she had rarely trained with me. Then one day she'd come arguing that, for a governor's son, I ought to be able to take down at least five soldiers—so why not start sparring again? Drowning in administrative work as I was, I wanted the occasional breath of fresh air, and in a world as perilous as this one, keeping my body in fighting shape seemed only sensible. So I agreed. Before long, I regretted it deeply.

I should have been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠warned the moment the soldiers drilled by Ma Chao or Pang De in the camp began to wail. Framed as "conditioning," it was brutal beyond belief.

"Winded from just that much? ...Honestly. If you're that weak, of course I worry. That's why I can't leave your side, you know."

Curt and snippy as her tone was, Ma Chao handed me a cool canteen. My throat was raw from all the sweating; I took it and drank, letting the water soak down my parched throat. And as the coolness spread through me, I brought up the news I'd heard from Yan Xing.

"Ma Chao, did you hear what Yan Xing told me?"

"Ah, that lunatic who crowned himself king?"

Seemed the other commanders had caught the rumors too—about the crackpot who'd seized a single county and proclaimed himself its king.

"...What should we do about him?"

"What do you mean, what do we do? He's a traitor. We take him down, obviously!!"

Ma Chao's position was hardline: the rebel had to be seized, no two ways about it. After a year of sweeping up foreign raiders like a farmer catching mice, she had watched their incursions plummet of late—and perhaps the brief peace had left her itching for action. She'd been sparring the other commanders, Pang De included, while as for me, I got her special "conditioning." Bored stiff, she seemed genuinely fired up at the thought of a battle fought under the banner of crushing a rebellion.

"That's true, but..."

I let the words trail off, weighing it. A rebellion that had sprouted from a single county offered us precious little even if we stamped it out.

He hadn't been a figure important enough for the name to spring to mind when I first heard of the uprising—but Song Jian's bid for kingship I had stumbled upon in my previous life, while digging into the Three Kingdoms out of sheer interest. The sheer audacity of it, a man seizing some rural backwater and styling himself a king, had left an impression on me.

Song Jian had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠claimed his throne and ruled his county like a proper monarch for decades, living quite comfortably for himself. And why not? Gaining a mountain backwater won a warlord nothing. The terrain sat at high elevation, ringed by mountain ridges—a natural fortress of rugged peaks with no entrance worth the name except its gorges. In the final years of the Eastern Han, with the other warlords too busy warring with one another, there was neither purpose nor profit in striking such a place. A country village with nothing to offer militarily or economically—even after he usurped a crown, the warlords simply left him be.

'Then again, with war raging across every theater of the realm, maybe reigning as a country king for decades deserves some credit?'

Still, Cao Cao had hardly been ignorant of Song Jian's existence. In the original history, once his conquest of Ma Chao was finished and he moved to tidy up the Guanxi region, he had thrown first-rate famous generals at Song Jian—Xiahou Yuan and Zhang He among them. The terrain favored defense, yes, but even so Song ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Jian held those terrifying commanders at bay for a full month. Considering that Zhang He was a general so formidable that—masters of open-field battle like Xiahou Yuan and Zhang Fei aside—Shu had no one who could properly stand against him, a month's resistance was a remarkable feat. Of course, one month on, Cao Cao's army stormed Fuhan County, annihilated it to the last man, and put Song Jian and all his followers to the sword.

And that was the problem.

If the ground was so treacherous that it had let him hold out against famous generals like Xiahou Yuan and Zhang He, did we really need to force an invasion? With the Son of Heaven on the throne, and given that Song Jian had ruled for decades without a single major incident, there was a fair chance he had never been exploiting or tormenting his people at all.

'I'd heard the Emperor lay abed with illness, but if Song Jian had been squeezing his people dry or wallowing in tyranny, word would have reached our ears by now. The usurpation is the sticking point, true... but if he governs his people well, there's no reason to invade and let Fuhan's folk be swept into the flames of war. Charge in half-cocked and we might only make things worse. The urgent business, for now, is sending people out to learn what Fuhan is actually like.'

"I have no intention of attacking that place yet. No edict has come down from His Majesty, so first we send people to find out whether the people there are suffering. If we catch the bastards stirring up the people's hearts—then we invade."

"...Well, sure, if that's how it is."

Ma Chao didn't dig in her heels about starting a war. Since I was forever harping on the people's hearts, the fact that she'd come to accommodate it warmed me inside. And there was one more reason striking at that place was a delicate matter.

'Of all the counties in the world, that Longxi had to sit inside Dong Zhuo's sphere of influence...'

Dong Zhuo—the former Governor of Hedong, who had spent the past year out in the Central Plains putting down bandit hordes like Song Yang's—had returned to Longxi Commandery, his birthplace and old power base. As a result, the land of Xiliang now lay split in two. On one side, Dong Zhuo's faction, holding Longxi, Tianshui, and Anding; on the other, our own Han Sui faction—masters of Jincheng and Wuwei, and lately, under Fa Zheng's direction, expanding our reach into Xiping Commandery. The lands under Dong Zhuo's control would one day be folded into Yong Province, but for now they were Liangzhou soil, which meant Xiliang was, in effect, divided between the two powers.

But if we rashly marched an army into Longxi with neither an imperial command nor any special justification, who knew what that greedy pig might do with the pretext we handed him?

According to recent word from the Central Plains, Dong Zhuo—just as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms—had taken command of the army in place of General of the Household Lu Zhi during the Yellow Turban Rebellion, botched it spectacularly, and watched the faction backing him shrink dramatically. In the true history, he should have won great merit putting down the Han Sui–Bian Zhang Rebellion and restored his proper standing; but because we had hurried to submit to the Han court, that rebellion never came to pass, leaving Dong Zhuo without even a chance to earn face-saving glory. Rumor had it he'd scraped wealth from the common people and offered it up to the Ten Attendants, buying himself a pardon and a post once more—but with his power and influence diminished from what the true history promised, he would be champing at the bit for any chance to distinguish himself. In the middle of all that, if we led troops across a border without the court's sanction, we might as well hand him his pretext.

In short, poking the hornet's nest for nothing would only backfire on us.

Even so, I couldn't in good conscience leave a self-crowned king sitting there unchallenged, so I decided to go consult my strategist.

"Alright, let's stop here for today. I should go see Fa Zheng."

"...You've been visiting her an awful lot lately, haven't you?"

"Well, she is our faction's strategist."

Catching the flicker of displeasure on Ma Chao's face, I answered with a shrug. Ever since Fa Zheng had joined us as our strategist, I'd made a habit of consulting her before handling anything of consequence. She normally assisted Fa Yan with the domestic administration, and in between she overhauled Jincheng's laws, sitting down with me to work out sound, reasoned answers. The only trouble was how vigorously she sometimes argued for legalizing private vengeance—her eye-for-an-eye brand of justice. Beyond that, her counsel was measured and reasonable.

"Yes, I agree as well, my lord. There's no justification to be had. There's no need to shoulder the risk of attacking a place that offers us nothing in return."

When I went to Fa Zheng and laid it out, she too sided with my view. Crushing a traitor, she allowed, would help build our outward image as ministers faithful to the Han; but the land itself promised almost no benefit, and with the other warlords watching us closely, there was no need to step forward.

"See? I knew it. If the people there are suffering, that's another story, but..."

"If it truly weighs on your mind, I will dispatch people to assess the situation in Fuhan County myself."

"I'll leave it to you."

And so Fa Zheng and I settled on a watch-and-wait approach to Song Jian and his borrowed throne.

'He wouldn't be fool enough to actually raise an army... right?'

For some reason, I couldn't shake a bad feeling.

Several more days slipped past after we dispatched our people to Fuhan County.

"Young Master!! We have a crisis—!!"

At the crack of dawn, Yan Xing kicked the door open and burst into my quarters in a rush.

"...It's barely been a few days since I last heard those words... What is it this time?"

Yan Xing shouted as though this time it truly was a catastrophe.

"The people of Jincheng have been abducted!!"

"...What? The people have been abducted?!"

"Yes!! The people of Jincheng living near the Longxi border were carried off by some armed horde. They plundered everything the villages owned and cut down every soul who resisted!!"

What was this?

No such event existed in the Three Kingdoms history I knew.

"My lord."

Not long after Yan Xing's entrance, Fa Zheng stepped into my quarters, a single scroll in hand.

"Intelligence from the agents we sent to Fuhan County."

A chill premonition settling over me, I unrolled the scroll she handed over.

"...You son of a bitch. Is he seriously insane?"

Written there was a report that Song Jian's men in Fuhan County had raided the villages near Jincheng, abducted the inhabitants, and pressed them into service as subjects of his self-proclaimed state.

In other words, Song Jian—the man who styled himself King of Pacified Han of Heshou—was now committing open military provocation against us.

Nothing of the kind had ever been recorded in the original history, and I could only stand there, dumbfounded.