The Summons (2)
In the original history, after his defeat by the anti-Dong Zhuo coalition left him feeling threatened, Dong Zhuo relocated his court to a nearby city so that he could draw soldiers and supplies more easily from his power base in Liang Province. That city was Chang'an.
Liu Bang, founder of the Han dynasty, had first intended to make Luoyang his capital, until a man named Liu Jing recommended Guanzhong instead — a land easy to defend, and a pivotal position from which one could seize the realm by the nape of its neck and rain blows on the back of its head.
Zhang Liang threw his weight behind Liu Jing as well, praising Guanzhong as "a fortress of metal walls stretching a thousand li" and "the storehouse of heaven." Taking their counsel, Liu Bang raised a city at Chang'an and made it his capital.
In other words, Chang'an was where the glory of the Former Han began, after the fall of Chu.
The city flourished under Emperor Wu of Han, its grounds dominated by palaces and government offices — a capital designed for the high officials of the court.
The Romance gives it little attention, but Chang'an later served as capital under Wang Mang, who toppled the Former Han and founded the Xin dynasty, until the uprising of the Red Eyebrows reduced it to ruins.
After Emperor Guangwu destroyed Wang Mang, founded the Later Han, and settled his court at Luoyang, Chang'an was left ravaged by the Red Eyebrows, never rebuilt, and faded into an abandoned capital.
Much later, in the official histories, Dong Zhuo did patch the ruined city up in rough fashion when he moved the court there, mindful of its standing as a former capital.
But that restoration lay in the future, and so I was beholding with my own eyes the sight of Chang'an in its abandoned decay.
The overall outline of the walls traced the shape of the Big Dipper in the north and the six stars of the Southern Dipper in the south — a city that had earned the name Dipper City and deserved every syllable of it.
The citadel was vast beyond any city I had laid eyes on, yet the aged walls had crumbled in places, and stretches crying out for repair caught the eye at every turn. The compound had briefly served as the Dong clan's garrison, and here and there the scars of their plunder of the people still showed. Starving commoners drifted through the streets — about on par with what I had glimpsed in Liang Province before we marched out to crush the rebels.
...No, if anything, this counts as fortunate. It's a far cry from what awaits later, when Li Jue and Guo Si's rebellion of the Three Adjuncts burns the whole city to ash.
Weigh its political and economic advantages together with its strategic value as a natural fortress, and there was no question this city yielded nothing to Luoyang, capital of the Han. Its population stood among the largest in the realm alongside Luoyang's, and its agricultural output was rich besides.
It was no accident that the saying existed: he who takes Guanzhong takes the world.
Fan Zeng, too — when Xiang Yu announced he would abandon Guanzhong and move his capital to Pengcheng, one can only imagine how violently he must have objected. But Xiang Yu dug in his heels in the end, refusing outright to stomach his mentor's loyal counsel. Pile on the massacre at Xin'an and a host of other blunders that helped bury the Qin, and Chu — for all its vaunted might — met its own ruin in the end.
Restoring Chang'an and making it our base will make preparing for what's to come far easier.
Our army entered Chang'an and set civil administration in motion for the sake of its people. Ma Chao and Pang De rode patrols through every county to soothe a populace left unsteady by the string of wars, driving off bandits wherever they appeared to shore up public order, while the crumbling walls were mended and rebuilt.
And to secure the people's hearts, we lowered taxes as we had in Liang Province and doled out relief grain from the wealth seized from Dong Zhuo, buying over the populace's loyalty.
Fa Zheng and Fa Yan, delighted in their own way to find themselves back in their home commandery of Fufeng, drove the restoration of Chang'an forward at a punishing pace.
I was buried in paperwork as usual, overseeing the repairs and the civil administration, when Jia Xu — who had departed earlier to win over the local magnates — came looking for me. She offered her congratulations wearing the same sultry smile she always did.
"My sincerest congratulations on acquiring Chang'an, a fortress gifted by heaven itself, my lord."
"You've already finished persuading the magnates of the Yongzhou region?"
"Yes, most of them agreed to our terms. You are now a warlord who commands two provinces — Yongzhou and Liangzhou. Or shall I address you as General Who Pacifies the West?"
"...Just call me what you've always called me."
Once I had sent Song Jian — the man who had usurped a royal title — to the grave, the court bestowed on me the post of General Who Pacifies the West, one of the Four Pacification Generals, in recognition of my crushing of Dong Zhuo and my seizure of much of Yongzhou. The Four Pacification Generals were offices created for suppressing rebellion and stabilizing the interior.
They figure there's nothing to gain from provoking me, so they're tossing me a suitable title to keep me sweet.
By conferring the post, they seemed to be soothing our resentment over having stood by and watched our war with Dong Zhuo, all while instructing us to go suppress rebellions and keep the peace.
Not that they'll have any attention to spare for other regions. Luoyang must be a scene of screaming pandemonium by now.
The Ten Attendants, who had committed every manner of atrocity under the dying emperor's protection, would be wary of He Jin, a man of lowly birth, and would be scheming to keep Liu Bian — the son born of his sister, Empress Dowager He — from taking the throne. He Jin, who regarded the eunuchs as thorns in his eye, would in turn issue a summons to the provincial armies to purge them in a show of force, and I, too, would answer that call.
In a sense, Dong Zhuo's fall had simply made us the warlords He Jin summoned in his place. That we were garrisoned in Chang'an now owed as much to He Jin as to the General Who Pacifies the West post that bound me to stabilize the interior... but personally, I wasn't pleased about it.
His rise from butcher had left him with decent political instincts, but his indecisive temperament and foolish judgment had led him to summon Dong Zhuo, helping to open the age of warlordism that would plunge the realm into chaos.
Well, I hate the Ten Attendants a great deal more, mind you.
He was still preferable to those eunuch bastards who wrecked the country for their private greed. They sold offices to corrupt officials for bribes, and the officials, once installed, fleeced the commoners to recoup what they had paid. And when Liu Bei's company earned genuine merit as volunteer militia, the Ten Attendants gave them nothing at all — on the pretext that they had offered no bribe.
The Ten Attendants were bad enough, but the emperor was a problem too.
He scraped wealth together with a miser's greed for his own pleasure, then squandered it just as fast. Of all the people who know the story of the Three Kingdoms, who could ever like these bastards? Dong Zhuo gets all the infamy, but they were every bit as rotten.
Jia Xu studied me and asked, "Now that you mention it, what do you intend to do about Dong Zhuo and the remnants of his clan who fled to Anding?"
"Once the repairs to Chang'an are more or less finished and the people have settled, I plan to deal with them straight away."
The Rebellion of the Ten Attendants
In the original history, that event took place in September of 189 AD. But before it could, I meant to annihilate what remained of Dong Zhuo's forces and take his head. Once I marched out from Chang'an at the head of my army, I would send word to Uncle Ma Teng, and in a combined assault with the Wuwei forces we would crush them utterly — this time for good. There would be no hole left for him to slip through on the Red Hare.
This time, without fail — I'll subjugate Dong Zhuo, claim the Red Hare, and then make for Luoyang.
In the Romance, the Red Hare was all but the key item for winning Lu Bu over. With it in hand, even if Ding Yuan's character proved as foul as rumored, I could brace for the worst. Of the famous names still serving under Dong Zhuo, only Zhang Xiu remained, so wiping out his forces would not take long. I could time it to coincide with the outbreak of the Ten Attendants' Rebellion.
This was the plan I had laid to prepare for the future.
As long as no wild cards turn up, there shouldn't be any trouble.
But I had overlooked one simple truth: life never goes the way you want it to.
I was still deep in discussion with Jia Xu over the road ahead when—
"My lord!!"
Yan Xing flung open the door of my quarters and came rushing in, a letter clutched in his hand.
"What is it?"
"A dispatch from Luoyang, my lord!!"
His urgency sent an uneasy premonition flickering through my mind, and when I unfolded the letter he handed me and read it through, that premonition proved dead on.
...Damn it all.
Emperor Ling, long bedridden with illness, had finally passed away. The letter ordered me to lead my army to the capital, where He Jin meant to drive out the Ten Attendants in a show of force.
It was a legitimate pretext for entering the capital — one of the very things I had been waiting for, and yet... The problem was that a good two months remained before the year 189 even began. We were being summoned a full year early. In other words, history had slipped its rails.
With my plans knocked askew, I pressed a hand to my throbbing head and gave Yan Xing his orders.
"...Assemble the army at once. We make for Luoyang with all haste."
Securing the emperor's person and shielding him from the traitors' hands took precedence over finishing off a Dong Zhuo who was already finished, so I hurried the army's preparations and set out for Luoyang. Judging by the distances from the provinces, Ding Yuan would have received He Jin's letter first and already be on the move. For now I left Chang'an in Fa Zheng's charge and entrusted the subjugation of Dong Zhuo to Uncle Ma Teng and the other warlords.
Remembering how the official histories painted Ding Yuan as a tyrant while the Romance portrayed him as something of a loyalist, I allowed myself a faint sliver of hope. Let him at least be less of a lunatic than Dong Zhuo...
As for Lu Bu, I would have to lure her out with lavish wealth and a Ferghana steed. Turning the problem over in my mind, I took Jia Xu as my staff strategist and set off for Luoyang.
Mengjin Port, on the fringe of Sili.
Fires broke out across the villages surrounding the river port on the Yellow River's banks, and the people were thrown into chaos.
"P-please, spare me!"
Shunk!!
Toward the wretch begging so piteously for his life, an old general in a black headwrap and crimson armor swung his blade without a shred of mercy and cut him down.
"Gwahahaha!! Kill them all and take everything!! We are the Black Mountain Bandits!!"
Ding Yuan, Governor of Bing Province. With connections in both the Clear Stream and Turbid Stream factions, he had always angled to attach himself to whichever side profited him most. And so Ding Yuan, like Han Yeong, had received He Jin's summons — along with orders to disguise his army as Black Mountain Bandits and put homes and government offices to the torch.
But he went far beyond faithfully executing He Jin's orders. Ding Yuan was wringing the wealth out of the commoners and wallowing in the pleasure of it more eagerly than anyone, and the generals who served him faithfully relished the plundering, the slaughtering, and the ravaging of the people more than anything else. The defenseless commoners fled with single, strangled screams, while the command staff savored the spectacle.
Some of the soldiers under his banner had genuinely defected from the Black Mountain Bandits, so it would have been easy to believe this was no disguise at all — that they truly were the Black Mountain Bandits. Even those former bandits were drinking in the merciless slaughter, savoring it like a feast.
Yet one body of troops refused to join the horrific slaughter and pillage.
...Mad bastards, every last one of them.
Though she held the post of Master of Records in Ding Yuan's army, a red-haired woman stood apart, watching the plunder of the people without taking part. Her face twisted into a harsh scowl as she regarded the conduct of Ding Yuan's soldiers — in truth no different from the Black Mountain Bandits — with eyes full of contempt. In her right hand rested the Sky-Piercing Halberd, a crescent blade jutting from either side of its shaft.
What could possibly be so entertaining about tormenting common folk...
Raised in the harsh wilds of Wuyuan Commandery in Bing Province, she knew in her bones that a chaotic age was hell for the weak — a world where the feeble were culled and the strong reigned. Yet she, stronger than anyone in Bing Province, had lost her own family to foreign raiders, and because she pitied the frail common folk, she had no taste for tormenting them.
The only reason she remained in an army that committed such ugly acts was the great debt she owed her adoptive father, Ding Yuan. She had no desire whatsoever to take part in atrocities that had gone completely mad. She had once seen Ding Yuan rescue people left homeless by the raiders, drawing his sword valiantly for their sake — and now she gazed at her adoptive father with feelings too tangled for words.
She had pushed back against the plan to disguise themselves as Black Mountain Bandits and turn Mengjin into a sea of fire, but her adoptive father had refused to hear a word of it. All she could do was stand by here, watching, and turn a blind eye to the fleeing commoners.
...He said we're heading for Luoyang this time, didn't he?
Profoundly disillusioned with Ding Yuan's conduct, she had only one wish left: a battle against a mighty foe who could truly match her. She craved a ferocious, life-and-death struggle so fierce it would set her blood boiling — enough to burn this ugly spectacle from her memory. Nursing a faint hope that Luoyang might hold a general capable of standing against her, and unable to stomach the sight of this carnage a moment longer, she led her troops back to the encampment ahead of the rest.