The Proposal (3)
"Well then — how about it? Will you accept the information and stratagems I have offered as my terms?"
Jia Xu asked, her eyes resting on me.
"…But then, why do you wish to enter our command at all? With a mind of your caliber, I should think any banner in the realm would receive you well…"
"Ability counts for little when one's birth is lowly — that is simply the way of the world. And for those born beyond the frontier, the scorn and the slight run deeper still."
Jia Xu tilted her face up toward the empty air as if gazing at some far-off mountain, a trace of bitterness settling over her features.
…Now that I think of it, didn't Jia Xu go unappreciated in her younger years?
So even remarkable talent meant nothing without the connections to find someone willing to make use of it?
"I scraped my way into the service of General Dong Zhuo, a fellow son of Liangzhou — and even he pours his favor on none but his own son-in-law, Li Ru. He has never once treated me as a strategist worth his trust."
Dong Zhuo had been born in Liangzhou himself and had clawed his way up through battlefield merits in Bingzhou, where the foreign tribes raided without cease — perhaps that was why he had recruited frontier-born men like himself without the slightest hesitation.
But a general or a strategist left unused is nothing more than a white elephant. Jia Xu, it seemed, had not taken that treatment kindly.
"And then, as it happened, yet another rising power appeared in Liangzhou. That power, of course, would be you."
"The master of that force is not me but my father, however…"
"And was it not you, young master, who persuaded General Han Sui — once numbered among the rebels — to return to the court's allegiance?"
Jia Xu had plainly come knowing all the broad strokes already, and her tone made it clear she had no patience for excuses.
…How on earth did she know all that? Was it written on my face?
Letting nothing of it show, I put a question to her in return.
"And if we should fail to win? What would you do then?"
"Why, then I would naturally have to take my leave and go looking for a new lord."
Jia Xu was simply casting about for a lord who would advance the fortunes of a Liangzhou native and put her talents to proper use — and her manner said plainly that she could not have cared less who that lord turned out to be.
Even in the official histories, Jia Xu stood as the chief architect of Li Jue and Guo Si's seizure of Chang'an — in a sense, she had dealt the Han dynasty the blow that broke its back. And yet she had also stood as a shield over Emperor Shao's empress, and had shown Han's loyal ministers a road to survival, delivering them from ruin. A woman of many faces — one of them, for all of it, the face of a Han loyalist.
But above country and above crown, the thing she prized most was her own safety. Jia Xu was a strategist who changed her colors to match whoever truly knew her worth.
"Then may I ask — why ours, of all banners?"
Not that I wouldn't have welcomed her with open arms — but she had come fresh from Dong Zhuo's ranks, and I could hardly commission her on the spot. Certain questions needed asking first.
"For one, it matters a great deal that we are Liangzhou-born alike. The warlords of the central plains are in the habit of scorning anyone out of the frontier regions."
…That much is true.
What few people ever knew was that Jia Xu, like Ma Chao, came from a family of considerable pedigree.
She was no match for the famed Fubo General Ma Yuan, but Jia Xu was the twelfth-generation descendant of Jia Yi — the man who, at the tender age of twenty, became the youngest scholar and official in all the Former Han.
Jia Yi had been a brilliant statesman in his own right — a master of poetry and prose, versed in the teachings of the Hundred Schools, and entrusted with the confidence of the emperor of his day. Set beside that legacy, one could well say Jia Xu had inherited her ancestor's gifts in full.
So this is what they call a bloodline buff?
And going by the records of how Jia Yi drew the hatred of rivals and was banished to the provinces, one might even argue that in the art of getting through the world alive, Jia Xu was the more gifted of the two.
Yet the renowned warlords of the age showed little favor to men out of Liangzhou or Bingzhou, provinces forever bleeding under barbarian incursion. Such men paid their bribes poorly too — so far from being recommended for office, they were repaid with nothing but contempt and shabby treatment.
It was not without reason that Xiliang, its resentment festering against a Han court that sold offices and titles to the highest bidder, had risen in revolt.
Save for Dong Zhuo, who had made Yong Province his stronghold, the only powers Liangzhou had ever known were the rebel banners raised against the Han.
Jia Xu pointed at me once more, and once more I corrected her.
"Let us return to the matter at hand, then. Will you accept my conditions?"
I slid a sideways glance toward Fa Zheng. I wanted to see whether, in her eyes, Jia Xu looked like a woman telling lies.
Catching my look, Fa Zheng gave the smallest of nods. It meant there was no harm in accepting.
"…Very well. Let it be as you say."
It was hardly a losing bargain for me, and as I had said before, a talent like Jia Xu walking through my door was a welcome beyond words.
"An excellent choice."
Just then Ma Chao crept up beside me and whispered in my ear.
"…You sure about this? Can you really trust that shifty-looking woman?"
Ma Chao made no attempt to hide her hostility toward Jia Xu, a woman who had turned her back on the very lord she had once served.
"It'll be fine. Don't worry yourself over it."
"…Well. If you say so."
Ma Chao seemed to gather that my decision was not about to change; she fell back and resumed her post.
I was looking at Jia Xu, ready to pick the conversation back up, when a question of my own surfaced — just who was the officer guarding her back? From the moment he had arrived he showed not one shred of interest in the discussion unfolding before him; the man simply stood there, hands clasped behind him, solemn as a mountain.
"By the way — who might that officer be? Judging by that towering build and the frame of a born warrior, I would take him for a first-rate general…"
"Ah, forgive my late introduction. This is my personal guard, Huche'er."
Huche'er?
When I turned my gaze on the warrior standing behind her, he answered with nothing more than a silent nod.
…Oh, I know him all right. The real question is what he's doing here.
Across the official histories and the Romance alike, he ranked among the very finest warriors ever to serve under Zhang Xiu — and the Romance, ever fond of embellishment, inflated him into a brute of impossible might, a man said to have shouldered five hundred catties and marched seven hundred li without rest.
Consider that Guan Yu's Green Dragon Crescent Blade — a weapon hardly anyone else could so much as heft — weighed a mere eighty-two catties, and the absurdity of the figure speaks for itself.
With strength like that, he could have gone toe to toe with Dian Wei and his eighty-catty twin iron halberds and still had plenty left in the tank.
Yet for all that outlandish legend, the story gives him exactly one feat to his name: plying Dian Wei with wine until he keeled over, and making off with his halberds. After that, his share of the pages simply vanishes — not a word of his deeds in Zhang Xiu's wars against Cao Cao, nor in the days after Zhang Xiu laid down his arms, and even his final whereabouts are left a mystery.
One look at that stocky, massive frame, those thick forearms, and the colossal greatsword slung bare across his back, and you understood at once that even if he fell short of the Romance's legend, this was a man of monstrous strength.
He certainly looks like he could throw his weight around… but why is a man who ought to be serving under Zhang Xiu playing bodyguard to Jia Xu of all people?
"And from where does that officer hail? One glance is enough to tell me he is a warrior gifted with prodigious strength."
At the flattery laced through my words, Huche'er said not a thing — but the corners of his mouth curved upward, just slightly.
The strong, silent type, is he?
He would be no match for Ma Chao or Pang De, the two who had fought Guan Yu and Zhang Fei to a standstill — but against Yan Xing, I suspected he could give a very respectable account of himself.
"He is a guard in my own hire. A fellow son of Liangzhou — and a general I trust."
"I see…"
Still — wasn't Huche'er supposed to have been one of Zhang Xiu's finest? His origins were unknown, so I could not speak to the particulars.
"Ah — and one more thing you may find worth knowing. Li Ru, the strategist of Dong Zhuo's army, is no dullard, but his strategic thinking runs narrow. He will come at you the simple way, seeking to strike at the weakness of the Xiliang cavalry."
"The weakness of the Xiliang cavalry?"
"Yes. For gentlemen so accomplished in the art of the horse, I trust my meaning requires no explanation."
With that said, Jia Xu rose from her seat.
"I shall excuse myself first."
"Allow me to see you out."
"There is no need. Instead, take this to heart: the success of my stratagem rests wholly upon the premise that you will annihilate Dong Zhuo's army."
What kept the magnates of Liangzhou cowed before Dong Zhuo, above all else, was the immense host of private soldiers at his command. And what Jia Xu was telling me was this: unless that army was hammered and sent running, no amount of persuasion would ever move them.
"I'll bear it in mind."
"When word of your victory reaches me, I shall come to you first. Until then."
Jia Xu wheeled her horse about and rode away with Huche'er at her side, and I turned to the man standing at my shoulder.
"Yan Xing — go to Father and give him a full account of everything we heard from Jia Xu today."
"Yes, understood."
Even standing in for Father as I was, leaving him out of the loop might easily have stung. That was why I had entrusted the errand to Yan Xing, and he set off at once for the government office where Father kept his desk.
"And — Fa Zheng."
"Yes?"
"When do you think we'll be able to take the field?"
"Two days hence. By then the inspection of provisions and arms will be finished, and every fighting man our forces can muster will have assembled at Jincheng."
"And the men from the warlord camps? Still skeptical?"
At my question, Fa Zheng gave a quiet shake of her head.
"You persuaded General Ma Wan and General Cheng Yin, and several of the officers have since declared they will join the campaign. That said…"
"That said?"
"A few are still weighing the balance of strength between Dong Zhuo and our army, turning it over on their private scales. And one of them, I am told, has been reported moving in a suspicious manner."
"Is that so? Keep the skeptics under close watch — and the suspicious one, the moment you have something solid on him, clap him in chains."
"Yes, my lord."
I had never placed much hope in those warlord officers to begin with. They were being employed for the simple want of better men to employ.
A pack of opportunists with honeyed flattery forever on their lips, and swollen with ambition besides — there was no telling when any one of them might turn his coat. They warranted every ounce of vigilance I could spare.
"…My lord."
"What is it?"
"Regarding the organization of the army you have entrusted to me… I have something in mind. We can go over the details on the way to your quarters."
Fa Zheng walked me through it as we went, laying out what she anticipated of Dong Zhuo's offensive at Didao, and I told her to proceed exactly as she saw fit.
Between me, who possessed not a single drop of military genius, and her cold, precise judgment, leaving it to her discretion was plainly the better call.
At my summons, Ma Chao and Pang De, armor still buckled on, returned to the camp as well.
This was a war that existed only because history had been knocked off its rails. With the outcome beyond anyone's knowing, the preparations had to be that much more airtight — and in seeing to every last one of them, two days slipped past.
"The whole army moves out—!!"
"WAAAAAAAGH—!!!"
At Father's command the soldiers raised their war cry and poured forth to war. The one actually leading that army, though, was me…
And so our army marched out, setting its course for Didao in Longxi Commandery.