The Ten Attendants' Coup (1)
A broad-shouldered man clad in resplendent armor sat in the seat of honor at the General-in-Chief's residence, deep in agonized thought.
He was He Jin, the General-in-Chief who held the military authority of the Han Dynasty in his grasp. At present, he was wrestling with the question of how to deal with the Ten Attendants.
When Emperor Ling had suddenly succumbed to illness at a young age, a ferocious struggle for the succession had erupted across Luoyang. By good fortune, his nephew Liu Bian had taken the throne—but He Jin burned with the desire to wipe out the Ten Attendants, the men who had once tried to take his life, in a single stroke.
His reason for ordering Ding Yuan to pillage Mengjin disguised as Black Mountain bandits had been simple enough. The punishment of the Black Mountain Bandits was far too powerful a threat to be left to their own devices, and Emperor Ling and the Ten Attendants had been deeply implicated in the scheme of pacifying them instead by granting them official posts.
The plan had been conceived to impeach them by pointing to the pillaging and arson committed by Black Mountain raiders so close to the capital as proof that the appeasement policy championed by the Ten Attendants had failed outright.
When the Ten Attendants had tried to kill him, his sister had dissuaded him from seizing that heaven-sent opportunity to put them to death—and through his own indecision, he had let the moment slip by, only for them to commit outrages like this.
Yet He Jin felt no guilt whatsoever over it. He merely dismissed it all as the sacrifice of a few cattle for the sake of his dynasty.
But when even a show of military force failed to break Empress Dowager He's stubborn protection of the Ten Attendants, He Jin—who had already summoned warlords from every corner of the realm to the capital—fell deep into deliberation.
So long as his nephew had been designated the next emperor, a prolonged conflict with his half-sister, the Empress Dowager, could only harm him, and so he found himself hesitating over whether he should make peace with the Ten Attendants after all. When his brother He Miao came forward to urge reconciliation as well, He Jin's trademark indecision, the kind that always surfaced at the critical moment, reared its head once more.
...I, too, once joined hands with the Ten Attendants...
To the man who held the highest military post in the Han—the General-in-Chief, wielding overwhelming command of its armies—the past he had buried was, by any honest measure, disgraceful: he had been a butcher.
He Jin, born to the lowly station of a slaughterhouse worker, had considered his fate changed forever the moment his younger sister caught the Emperor's eye and entered the palace as a concubine. As she rose in the Emperor's favor and became Empress, He Jin—granted the minor post of Gentleman of the Palace, lowly though it was—found himself watched with wariness and contempt all at once as a relative of the imperial consorts by marriage.
Having amassed considerable wealth through the butchering trade, He Jin had offered bribes to win the goodwill of the Ten Attendants, the true power behind the throne, and under their patronage he had risen without obstacle.
In other words, He Jin's meteoric climb had owed a great deal to the Ten Attendants' support. That was how a man of humble birth had come to occupy the position of General-in-Chief, the supreme commander of the Han military.
By any measure, it had been a victory in life. Naturally, He Jin, who owed everything to his sister's fortune, could not help but tread carefully around her. She sheltered the Ten Attendants—what recourse did he have?
...No. How long am I to spend my whole life watching my sister's face?
His feud with Jian Shuo may have been the original cause of everything, but even if only to bury his own ugly past, the Ten Attendants had to be exterminated. He was no longer a weak, timid butcher. He was the supreme commander of the military, commanding countless generals from the General-in-Chief's residence, and the imperial in-law of Liu Bian, the future Emperor.
Here and now he had to kill the Ten Attendants who had plotted his death and remove the threat forever. He had to prove to all the world that he was no puppet of eunuch scum.
But to stand against my own sister...
Just as he wavered in his indecision once more, a palace maid dwelling in the imperial palace came to see him.
"General-in-Chief."
"...What is it?"
"Her Majesty the Empress Dowager summons you."
He Jin answered his half-sister's summons without a moment's hesitation, making ready at once to enter the palace.
She means to mediate between me and the Ten Attendants, no doubt.
He thought nothing of the sudden summons to court—but as he was about to leave, a beauty with rich golden hair that seemed to be molten gold poured over her head stepped into his path, her bearing cold and commanding, and tried to hold him back.
"General-in-Chief. You must not go."
Her name was Yuan Shao, Benchu.
A woman who could be counted among He Jin's closest confidants, she was born of the illustrious lineage of the Three Excellencies of the Four Clans, yet her ability and talent were extraordinary—and above all, she possessed beauty so striking that she was spoken of as one whose very bearing inspired awe.
Her talents had earned her recognition, and she held the weighty post of Colonel of the Central Army among the Eight Colonels of the Western Garden. As one of the leading figures of the Clear Stream faction, she now moved to dissuade He Jin from entering the palace unguarded.
But He Jin only glared at her in displeasure.
"The Empress Dowager summons me, and you tell me not to go? What nonsense is this?"
"The movements of the eunuchs are anything but ordinary."
The Ten Attendants, having had the Clear Stream faction led by He Jin attempt their lives again and again, had barely clung to survival like parasites by offering their vast fortunes to Empress Dowager He. As a political force within the court, they could no longer stand against He Jin at all.
But those treacherous eunuchs, wicked enough to seize the court in their grasp and shake it by the throat, could not possibly be sitting idle without some scheme in hand.
Jian Shuo, one of the Ten Attendants, held command of the Eight Colonels of the Western Garden and with it the authority to move the Emperor's personal army. That the Empress Dowager should urge the General-in-Chief to enter the palace alone, in such a place, struck Yuan Shao as deeply suspicious.
"The likelihood of a trap is far too great—it is dangerous. I beg you, decline the summons for now..."
"Nonsense!! Do you expect me to flee in fear of mere eunuch vermin?"
He Jin roared at her and brushed her words aside. Though he had made use of Yuan Shao's talents, deep down he nursed an inferiority complex born of the gulf in their stations.
"I speak only out of concern for your person, General-in-Chief."
Her crimson eyes, the color of nobility itself, gleamed.
Even a cornered rat will bite the cat. The Ten Attendants, stripped of their vast power after enjoying dominion over all things—there was no telling what scheme they might yet weave.
"The Ten Attendants have no retreat left. There is no telling what they will do—"
"Enough. I will hear no more."
"..."
He Jin dismissed the words of Yuan Shao, whom he took for an alarmist.
"If eunuch rabble frighten you so, what work would you ever accomplish?"
"...Then at the very least, allow us to escort you as far as the palace gates."
"Tch. Do as you please."
It seemed to He Jin that Yuan Shao's cautious attitude reeked of cowardice, and he clicked his tongue in irritation as he swept past her.
Snip—
"What a fool of a man..."
Yuan Shao ground her teeth, venting a cold fury at He Jin's stupidity.
If he had simply listened to her from the start, there would have been no need to agonize over the fate of the Ten Attendants, no need to stage military demonstrations by sacrificing innocent civilians near the harbor—the Ten Attendants could have been purged long ago. He was a man who clung to petty stubbornness and made every task harder than it needed to be, and nothing about him bred more exasperation.
"...Just as I foresaw."
From behind her appeared a beauty with crimson eyes and hair of deep navy blue, dark as the night sky.
Her bewitching beauty rivaled Yuan Shao's own, and at her waist hung a famous sword of no ordinary make.
"Did I not tell you? He Jin is not a man who listens to anyone."
"...Mengde."
Yuan Shao murmured the courtesy name of her friend—she who possessed an eye for talent sharper than anyone's, the foresight to glimpse what was yet to come, and a mind so quick that no one at court could stand against her.
"...It seems the winds of blood will blow before long."
Once again, as though gazing into the future, she looked up at the heavens. Dark clouds hung heavy and threatening overhead, and the dampening air stirred a sinister mood throughout the imperial palace.
As if something dreadful were indeed about to happen this very night.
Escorted by the troops under the General-in-Chief's command, He Jin left his guards at the palace entrance—for no man might enter the palace proper with a large force—and proceeded on foot with only a handful of personal retainers at his side. Somewhere in his chest, a chill crept over him.
Something is unsettled... I can feel it.
He Jin, who had privately dismissed Yuan Shao's warnings, was not immune to a vague, creeping unease of his own.
From childhood he had labored at the exhausting trade of butchery, and so he had strength—but he had never truly fought a battle, and his nature was far too timid for a General-in-Chief. Judged on ability alone, Lu Zhi or Huangfu Song would have been better suited to the post; He Jin had risen to it only through the patronage of his sister and the Ten Attendants.
All he had ever done was dress himself up and play the part of a proper General-in-Chief of Han, so that no one would look down on him.
Is it truly a trap? No—my nephew is the Emperor, and my sister is the Empress Dowager of Han. Who would dare reach for my life...
"He Jin!!"
As he made his way toward Changle Palace, where the Empress Dowager resided, someone appeared before him and shouted his name.
Zhang Rang.
He was the eunuch so powerful that the Emperors Huan and Ling had called him father and obeyed him—the chief of the Ten Attendants, who had wielded dominion over all things.
"Zhang Rang? What are you doing here—!!"
"We raised a lowborn commoner up to be General-in-Chief, and now you would have us killed... Did you truly believe you would be spared?!"
At Zhang Rang's shout, the private soldiers and Palace Guards who had lain hidden throughout the palace revealed themselves all at once—and even the eunuchs nearby drew their blades, closing in on He Jin step by step.
He Jin, who had believed his imperial connections would protect him from death, shrank before that murderous sight and that murderous momentum, terror flooding through him. An unspeakable dread pinned him where he stood.
"Y-you wretches...! I am the General-in-Chief of Han! I am the Emperor's own uncle, and my sister is the Empress Dowager of Han! Do you gutter-born things dare reach for my life?!"
He Jin somehow wrenched free of the fear that had shriveled his heart, jabbing a finger at the eunuchs and shouting.
"Hah. The lowborn one here is you, I should think. You filthy butcher."
To He Jin's outburst—bravado trembling over fear—Zhang Rang answered only with glacial contempt.
Jian Shuo, who had long nursed his grudge against He Jin, cried out at Zhang Rang's side.
"Kill He Jin, here and now!!"
"Uwaaaaah—!!"
The private soldiers, the Palace Guards, and the eunuchs alike charged at He Jin with raised blades.
"Uwaaah!! You wretches!!"
Left with no choice, He Jin bellowed and drew the sword at his waist to fight back—but for all his imposing frame, he had never once swung a blade in true battle.
Unlike Dong Zhuo, who shared his bulk and matched it with monstrous skill, He Jin possessed no martial ability worth the name, and the moment his retainers fell, he was overwhelmed in an instant.
Spears bit into his flesh and tore through him; blades hacked him apart, severing limb from limb. He looked for all the world like a beast led to slaughter.
"Kraaaaagh—!!!"
At the agony of cold metal burrowing deep into his body, he howled like a beast, shrieking his death cry to the heavens.
Slish—!!
"The traitor He Jin's head is mine—!!"
Mu Shuo of the Office of Head Attendants, famed for his swordsmanship within the palace, delivered the final blow, severed He Jin's head from his shoulders, raised it toward the sky, and roared.
It was the signal flare for the Ten Attendants' Coup—the rising that would dye the imperial capital of Luoyang, where the Emperor resided, red with blood.