The Bing Province Army (1)
The rebellion raised by the Ten Attendants was crushed by the generals and officers of the Grand General's headquarters, every one of them a man of the Clear Stream Faction. The eunuchs of the Turbid Stream Faction were butchered beneath their blades.
Yet the decisive honor of securing the person of the Emperor—whom the Ten Attendants had abducted—fell to neither the Yuan clan of Runan nor to any commander of the Grand General's headquarters, but to a warlord's army arriving from beyond the capital.
Ding Yuan, courtesy name Jianyang.
This renowned warlord of Bing Province arrived bearing the severed head of Zhao Zhong, one of the Ten Attendants, and succeeded in shielding the soundly sleeping Emperor Liu Bian and his younger sibling, Liu Xie, the Prince of Chenliu.
Asked for Zhang Yang's whereabouts, Ding Yuan gave this answer.
"Driven to the brink, Zhang Yang threw himself into the river and ended his own life. His corpse will have been swept away by the fierce current by now—it will be difficult to find."
With Zhang Yang and Zhao Zhong—the very spine of the Ten Attendants—eliminated, and with the added merit of protecting the Emperor, Ding Yuan's standing soared in an instant, pressing down upon the Yuans as his brilliance announced itself to all.
What was more, his Bing Province soldiers—an elite force that had faced the foreign tribes descending from the north more than any army in the realm—each wore faces so savage and menacing that they were more than enough to chill the blood of Luoyang's civil and military officials, men who had known nothing but books their whole lives.
Ding Yuan, now abruptly risen as the leading candidate for Grand General in He Jin's wake, ordered his soldiers to scrub the Luoyang palaces spotless while he himself strolled the inner grounds, taking in the scenery.
At the sight of the capital's resplendent, luxurious halls and beautiful gardens—Luoyang, the most prosperous city under heaven, where the Emperor resided—Ding Yuan swallowed hard.
Befitting the heart of the Central Plains, its grandeur did not even bear comparison with other cities.
...So this place becomes mine at last?
Endless desire seethed up from the depths of his heart. He forced a dry cough; if he did not keep his expression under strict control, an ugly grin was bound to crawl across his face.
"...Well? What do you think, General? Of the sights of Luoyang, capital of the Han?"
The question came from behind him, where a man with his face veiled in cotton gauze had appeared and addressed him.
"Tut! What are you doing, showing yourself so carelessly? There are men beyond counting who would tear you apart on sight—do you not understand that I would be ruined alongside you?"
"Rest assured. I am, at present, Zhang Gong, the General's strategist."
That was right. This man was Zhang Yang.
He had staged his own death as a leap into the river, shed the official robes of a eunuch, and entered Ding Yuan's service as a strategist under his command.
By killing Zhao Zhong, who had fled alongside him, he breathed credibility into the story that he had drowned himself as the encirclement closed in—his death faked to the last detail.
Of course, were his face ever seen, someone among the court's senior ministers was bound to recognize it, so he laundered his identity under the story of a face ruined by burns—painting his features with black charcoal, drawing a gauze veil over them, and remaking himself as a scholar-advisor.
A pitiful station for one of the Ten Attendants who had once twisted Luoyang's politics about his finger—but survival allowed no alternative.
Having exchanged the eunuch's garb for a scholar's robes, he would hardly be made so long as no one lifted that veil.
And only Ding Yuan and his most trusted confidants knew that Zhang Yang still lived.
Even Lu Bu and the Eight Elite Cavalrymen were ignorant of the fact.
Ding Yuan, whose political instincts were hopelessly dull for the games of the central court, fully intended to clasp hands with this man and seize the reins of power.
"What should I do now?"
"By now there will be men flocking to bribe the General who took the head of the Ten Attendants' chief, all eager to win your favor. Use the wealth I have quietly amassed to draw the military officers of the Grand General's headquarters to your side, and court the goodwill of the court's officials."
"If I do only that, can I truly suppress Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu?"
"Of course. Are you not the hero who purged the traitor Zhang Yang—the murderer of the Grand General?"
Ding Yuan clicked his tongue at the composure of it, at the sheer gall of a man speaking of his past self as already dead.
"Then whom should I win over first?"
"To begin with, secure Wu Kuang and Zhang Zhang, the subordinate generals under He Jin, and Min Gong, the Central Clerk of Henan."
They were devoted retainers of He Jin, and core figures commanding the troops of the Grand General's estate.
Through them he would take hold of military authority, and once they had been quietly disposed of from behind the curtain, every soldier in Luoyang would pass naturally into Ding Yuan's grasp.
Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu—men whose power rested on illustrious houses and whose breasts overflowed with ambition—would never consent to stand beneath another, and so they were left out of the reckoning.
"Understood. So it shall be."
"And one thing more. Drive Dong Zhuo out to the frontier—and be wary of a man named Han Yeong, who has taken the strength of Yong and Liang into his hands."
Zhang Yang voiced deep vigilance toward Han Yeong, the General Who Pacifies the West, who now held two provinces in his grip.
"What could be so formidable about a whelp that green, that you would have me wary of him?"
But in Ding Yuan's estimation, both Dong Zhuo and Han Yeong ranked low.
Dong Zhuo was an incompetent warlord who had struck the first blow to swallow Liang Province whole and, in a spectacular failure, bled away his power. Han Yeong was simply a boy not yet twenty, green as new grass and shallow in experience.
He could not fathom what Han Sui—a man still fully capable of taking the field—had seen in such a cub to delegate authority to him.
Was it simply the folly of a fool besotted with his own son?
"Young as he may be, beneath his banner stand hardened officers and soldiers who have traded blows with the foreign tribes, and strategists possessed of remarkable insight. He is by no means a man to be taken lightly."
True, the young lord's strength had been sapped considerably after paying out a fortune to purchase pardon for his crimes—and yet he had repelled Dong Zhuo, whose fame as the bold hero of Xiliang resounded across the land.
As for the general who guarded his side, the epithet of Splendid Ma Chao had carried as far as the Central Plains itself.
And Fa Yan stands at the man's elbow, besides.
Zhang Yang remembered that Han Yeong had taken Fa Yan with him.
Fa Yan, son of the widely revered Master Xiande, had once served under Wang Yun, Intendant of Henan, enjoyed the trust of the central court's great men, and possessed connections that reached far and wide.
If talent was recruited through him, then Han Yeong—who had already built enormous power beyond the capital—might yet force his way into the politics of the center.
It was one of the reasons Zhang Yang had declined to entrust himself to Han Yeong and had sought out Ding Yuan instead: the recent friction between Fa Yan and the Ten Attendants still weighed upon his mind.
Of course, even with Fa Yan's connections behind him, weaving ties with the men of the court would be no simple matter...
Given Han Yeong's background, the court officials of the capital's old families—men for whom pedigree and house were everything—would spurn him and refuse him audience.
But then, that was precisely what politics was.
"Hmph. A cub is a cub no matter what you say. My own soldiers fight the foreign tribes just the same."
His men had heaped up years of hard experience in battle against the tribes flooding down from the north and against the Black Mountain Bandits in all their formidable strength.
Measured against any other power, he doubted a single rival existed who could stand against him.
"That is not all, my lord. Our army has the Flying General."
"Oho. The one they call your adopted daughter..."
Flying General.
The title spoke of a valorous commander who carried the majesty of a man soaring through the heavens themselves.
It had first described Li Guang, the divine archer of the Former Han, but when a military genius of comparable caliber appeared in this age, the epithet was bestowed anew.
Lu Bu, courtesy name Fengxian.
She had been held north to bar the tribes pressing down from the frontier, and so had not marched when the imperial armies went out to crush the Yellow Turbans—but it was said that had she taken the field, she would have struck off the head of their leader, Zhang Jiao, before sickness could claim him. Such was the stuff of this warrior.
Hmph, adopted daughter? I took the brat in as a child for one purpose only—to keep her bound within my command.
For all that he had sheltered Lu Bu as his daughter, Ding Yuan envied and feared her—she who ignored his orders at every turn, revered across Bing Province as its war god and hero.
She remained under his banner because only Ding Yuan, a man of the same frontier soil, would employ a general of frontier birth, and because he had showered her with overwhelming favor.
Should she ever leave him and attach herself to another warlord, she would become a terror to reckon with—and so he had fastened the leash of "adopted daughter" about her neck.
Worse still, if she ever uncovered the rot beneath his surface, his own life might hang by a thread; the leash had to be kept good and tight.
"...By the way—where might General Lu Bu be?"
Zhang Yang, who had not glimpsed Lu Bu once since arriving in Luoyang, craned his neck this way and that.
A warrior that superb, and an adopted daughter at that—surely she ought to be guarding her lord?
"No idea. She says she will stay at the army camp pitched on the outskirts rather than enter the city."
Her manner of posturing as some paragon of noble virtue—as though she were any different from him, who squeezed the people dry—gnawed savagely at Ding Yuan's temper.
"In any case, as you say—winning over the subordinate generals and the rest will require a considerable quantity of wealth, will it not?"
"Yes, my lord."
At Zhang Yang's affirmation, Ding Yuan curled his lips into a vile smile.
He detested parting with so much as a coin of his own hoard, while the plundering of the people's goods at Mengjin Port had filled him with deep, lingering pleasure.
"I have the soldiers I brought along, men out of the Black Mountain Bandits. We shall simply gather the wealth through them."
"But doing so will draw the fury and backlash of the Clear Stream Faction. Unless your grip on power is absolute, you must avoid being watched with suspicion."
"It was my soldiers who put down the rebellion in the capital!! For their reward, may I not permit them that much?!"
If the loyalty of men who had endured such hardship was to be preserved, letting them off the leash now and again mattered in its own right.
Thus Ding Yuan justified his cruelty, proclaiming himself the loyal subject who had delivered the Han from ruin.
...Tsk. What a fool.
Watching Ding Yuan—so thoroughly steeped in vanity, so careless of consequence—Zhang Yang clicked his tongue.
The thing could be managed perfectly well with the fortune he had already laid away in secret; why commit an act that could only invite hostility?
This was why frontier men would never do. Their political sense fell leagues short of the court ministers, and a man who thought to rule by force alone—who would follow such a lord willingly?
Had it been Dong Zhuo, with his keen political instincts, his own position would have been a far more comfortable one.
So Zhang Yang thought to himself, and lamented the straits he had fallen into.
The soldiers acting on Ding Yuan's orders began plundering the commoners without restraint, all under the pretext of collecting taxes.
"Hand it over!! Wahahaha—!!"
They had already tasted the sweetness of plunder once, and now they were bandits in all but name. Eyes gone mad and gleaming with greed, they reveled in their cruelty.
"Oho? A pretty one, eh? Oi!! Bring that woman here—!!"
"Eeek! My lord!! Please, I beg you—not my daughter—!!"
"We are the loyal soldiers of Han who held back the traitors!! How dare you raise a hand against us!?"
Wham!!
"Oof!!"
"Father!!"
"Heh heh heh. Come along now, girl."
One of the Bing Province soldiers booted the helpless commoner aside and advanced upon his daughter, intent on taking her by force, a sinister grin smeared across his face.
But at that very moment—
Shunk!!
"Kehk!!"
A spear hurtled in from somewhere and punched clean through the soldier's throat.
Every soldier who witnessed it recoiled in horror. A dead hush settled over the street, and a man walked up to the spear now blooming from the soldier's neck and drew it back out.
"...What is this? What's wrong with you mad bastards?"
Han Yeong, escorted by Yan Xing and on his way to meet with someone, took in the deranged spectacle of soldiers butchering and robbing the very people they were sworn to protect—and his face showed nothing but genuine loathing and contempt.