The Proposal (1)
Dong Zhuo's Army Encampment, Bordering Longxi Commandery
Fan Chou, returned from his errand as envoy to Han Sui, had just finished delivering his report to Dong Zhuo and Li Ru.
"Fan Chou, did you do as you were told?"
"Yes, Military Advisor! I carried out your orders to the letter! Demand that they submit obediently, and those men's reactions are easy enough to read."
It was not because Fan Chou had asked for the mission that Li Ru had sent him—a man from the very same hometown as Han Sui. He had been sent to strip away the enemy's wariness and lay their weaknesses bare.
"And their reaction?"
"Han Sui's son and several of his commanders voiced their opposition, but the officers of warlord origin who had joined their ranks partway through gave off a distinctly lukewarm air about the war."
It was plain as day that the men of warlord stock shrank from making an open enemy of Dong Zhuo.
"Good work. Return to your unit."
"Yes, sir!!"
The moment Fan Chou left the tent, Dong Zhuo turned to Li Ru with an indifferent look and asked, "Not a crack in them anywhere. Is all this truly worth the trouble?"
"If Han Sui accepts the offer, we absorb his entire power base intact. How could that be anything but good?"
"True enough, but..."
If Han Sui's surrender were accepted and his faction and army taken in, Xiliang would become Dong Zhuo's land through and through, and he would rise above every warlord in the realm as the greatest power of them all.
The imperial court's writ barely ran in Liangzhou, which was why neither the other factions of the Turbid Stream nor even the Ten Eunuchs dared treat him carelessly.
"And there was more to the surrender offer than that, my lord."
With a vile smile, Li Ru began to explain.
"The soldiers of Xiliang are fierce and formidable, it is true—but the officers who lead them are, almost to a man, of warlord stock. And warlords are not the kind of men who pledge loyalty to Han Sui in the first place."
The warlords of Liangzhou had risen from the prominent clans of the region, men brimming over with personal ambition.
They had simply flocked to Han Sui when he crushed the rebels and seized Xiliang. Had the rebellion triumphed instead, those same men would have crawled to Beigong Boyu and ridden the uprising's coattails without a second thought.
Opportunists, as common in an age of chaos as dust. Loyalty was the last thing such men possessed.
Dong Zhuo and Li Ru knew exactly how to handle their kind.
"Which is why I deliberately offered them surrender—to hand them a choice. If these warlords value their necks at all, then even now they will be racking their brains over whether to stand against you, my lord, or to lay down their arms."
In truth, the troops of Xiliang were powerful enough to have pressed even Cao Cao, the one-time master of the Central Plains—but split apart by sown discord and attacked in that divided state, they had met with crushing defeat.
"I see. Then if we flaunt our overwhelming strength, discord will tear them apart and they will bend the knee on their own."
"Precisely. Drive back Han Sui's army with overwhelming force in battle, and the warlords who follow him will abandon him and come flocking to us."
The seeds of division had already been sown.
The warlords of Guanxi prized nothing so much as their own lives; the moment the war turned precarious, they would cast aside the very lord they served like a worn-out rag.
"Set your mind at ease. I will lead the attack with Hua Xiong at the vanguard."
Hua Xiong, the finest general in Dong Zhuo's army.
Dong Zhuo trusted that a man so renowned for his valor would make short work of Han Sui's vanguard.
"As I have said before, my lord, we must beware the general they call the Splendid Ma Chao of Xiliang. Word of her martial prowess, honed in the subjugation of the foreign tribes, is on every tongue."
Li Ru had kept a wary ear on the tales of Ma Chao's exploits that trickled over from Xiliang, even into the Central Plains.
However hard strategists racked their brains, it was the peerless champions—each worth a thousand men—who conjured the variables that decided a battlefield.
And so Li Ru watched Ma Chao, the most celebrated name in Han Sui's army, with particular vigilance.
"...Is she not just some brat short of her twentieth year? Do not fret yourself over it."
Dong Zhuo had been away from Xiliang during the suppression of the Yellow Turbans, and he dismissed the rumors of Ma Chao as surely inflated.
"She is no Flying General of Bingzhou. How strong could she possibly be?"
Dong Zhuo declared flatly that Ma Chao, strong as she might be, could not hold a candle to that general called the Flying General—the one who, while Dong Zhuo himself had been off fighting the Yellow Turbans in the Central Plains, was said to roam Bingzhou carving through foreign tribes and the Black Mountain Bandits single-handedly.
"I was in Tianshui in your stead at the time, my lord, so I cannot say... Is that general truly so formidable?"
"I have never laid eyes on him myself, but... they say he wields tremendous might. There are even tales that he annihilated an entire army alone."
"...Then for the sake of our great enterprise, it would be well to win that general over someday. Ah—there is something I would propose, my lord."
"And what is that?"
The conversation had strayed for a moment, but Li Ru now put forward another stratagem.
"Have Li Jue and Guo Si quietly lead a separate detachment, and when the two vanguards collide, strike the enemy on both flanks."
"To what end?"
"The enemy vanguard will almost certainly be the Splendid Ma Chao."
On the battlefield, the custom was to commit a general of outstanding valor and martial skill to the fore and seize the early momentum—and Han Sui's army would surely commit Ma Chao to that role.
The piercing power of the cavalry under her command was the stuff of widespread rumor.
"So set Hua Xiong at the vanguard with your other generals in support to hold her in check. While he withstands her, if Generals Li Jue and Guo Si hurl themselves in from the left and the right and fall upon the enemy's main camp—!!"
Li Ru clenched his fist as he laid out his design.
"We can annihilate the enemy in their confusion in the space of a moment."
"Hahahaha!!"
Dong Zhuo clicked his tongue in admiration at the meticulousness of Li Ru's scheme and let loose a thunderous laugh.
"...Very well. Have it your way."
"Thank you, my lord."
Li Ru bowed low in courtesy to Dong Zhuo for embracing his stratagem—and in the same breath, his mind turned to the woman who had quit their ranks without a word of warning.
...Jia Xu. I know not where that damned woman has gone, but... good riddance. The strategist worthy of my lord's side is me!!
The two of them were both natives of Liangzhou and had studied under the same master, yet Li Ru had always burned with envy of her talent, which outshone his own in every respect—the art of worldly survival above all.
Blinded by jealousy and spite, the strategist had counseled Dong Zhuo to turn a deaf ear to Jia Xu's remonstrances, driving her out of the army's councils the moment she had entered its gates.
This time, I will prove my talent beyond all doubt.
With Jia Xu gone, Li Ru had spun out countless schemes and stratagems for this war, determined to cement his position and standing once and for all.
So long as no variables intervened, Li Ru was confident his calculations would not stray by so much as a hair's breadth.
Dong Zhuo had massed his forces in Longxi Commandery, and so our army, too, meant to march out and meet him there.
I had no intention of letting the land of Liangzhou—only just restored, after so long, from the ravages of war—be trampled underfoot once more.
While the generals under my command spent their days in a whirl of inspections, counting weapons and measuring army grain, I summoned Ma Chao and Pang De to see me privately.
"What's up?"
"My lord, what business brings you to summon us...?"
Ma Chao and Pang De looked at me with puzzled faces at the summons.
"I have something to give you."
I opened a large wooden chest, took out two sets of armor, and handed one to each of them.
"You two. Put these on."
"What's this?"
"...And this?"
"Leather armor."
I had given Ma Chao and Pang De armor that would let them move far more freely.
"Every other commander under me wears armor into the field, but you two go without because it cramps your movement. So I made a special request of the smithy and had these crafted just for you."
Being made of leather and wrought iron, the armor would not hamper them in the slightest—and it would stop an arrow loosed from a blind angle before either of them had any chance to react.
"Huh?"
"..."
Gifted with leather armor, the two reacted each in her own way. Ma Chao's eyes lit up with delight, while Pang De kept her usual reserve, though something like quiet emotion had softened her face.
"...Thanks. I'll make good use of it!!"
"...Thank you, my lord."
Ma Chao rejoiced with the artless honesty that was pure her, while Pang De—so unlike her usual cool and diligent image—voiced her thanks with a trace of shyness.
Watching the two of them give thanks so guilelessly, each in her own way, warmed me through.
Worth every coin it cost to have them made.
"Young Master."
Just then, Yan Xing came looking for me.
"What is it?"
"A visitor has arrived, my lord."
"A visitor? Now, of all times?"
The moment the inspection of arms and supplies was finished, we would march, and the war with Dong Zhuo's army would begin in earnest.
And in the thick of all this, a visitor?
"Did you ask who it was?"
"They would not give their name, my lord—only asked that you be told a strategist had come to sell information. They wore the robes of a civil official, and a burly man stood guard at their side."
Here to sell information?
My interest sharpened. Every strategist and famed mind in these parts had long since been snatched up—who on earth could this be? Curiosity got the better of me.
"Fine. I should meet them. Did you show them to the guest quarters?"
"Yes. I did, for the time being."
"Good. Let's go."
"Wait."
Just as Yan Xing and I moved to leave, Ma Chao brought us up short.
"What is it, Ma Chao?"
"Uncle. That strategist of yours—what are they? A woman?"
Ma Chao asked with a fearsome glare in her eyes, and though Pang De said nothing, her gaze slid over to Yan Xing as well.
Ah—now that I think of it, I never asked whether they were a man or a woman.
Still, no way it was a woman. Right?
"...Huh? How did you know? It was a beautiful woman with white hair."
...No. Seriously, why is it always like this?
"...Haah."
At the news that the visiting strategist was a woman, Ma Chao scratched vigorously at her head and heaved a deep sigh, as though she had seen it coming all along.
"Wh-why is every single person who shows up a woman? I'm losing my mind here."
...She has a point. I'd honestly like to know the answer to that myself.
With her face scrunched up in tangled feelings, Ma Chao's words carried more than a thread of complaint, and I found myself with no way to argue back.
Every talent I had personally brought into our fold, without a single exception, had been a woman. What could I possibly say to that?
The atmosphere, warm and easy only moments before, seemed to plunge into a sudden chill.
"...Ahem!! Let's go and see, for now."
I cleared my throat to break the awkwardness and set my steps toward the guest quarters.
For some reason, a prickling gaze bored into my back, as though I were being sized up as some shameless philanderer—but that had to be my imagination. Surely.
"Would you be Lord Han Yeong? A pleasure to meet you."
A beauty with white hair stood there, greeting me with eyes curved in a smile. Her ripe, mature allure and languidly seductive smile looked fit to bring even the hardiest of men to his knees.
"I am called Jia Xu, styled Wenhe."
"..."
And why, of all people, is she here now?
The woman who had all but attained the Dao of changing lords, whose arts of survival and social graces were maxed out to the very limit—the strategist I had searched for so long and so desperately in Liangzhou—had come walking to my door of her own accord.