The Bingzhou Army (2)
I was in a foul mood. The court ministers had been reluctant to meet with me at all.
He Jin—the one man who still had even a thread of connection to my father—was dead, leaving us, as they'd say in the modern world, with no strings left to pull. Under the pretext of looking after public order, the justification we were using to remain in the capital, I had bustled about making politely worded requests for meetings with the court ministers, only for them to turn me away with every excuse under the sun.
Was it my Liang Province birth? Or the absence of bribes? What exactly was the problem?
I didn't seriously entertain the bribe theory. As the General Who Pacifies the West, my rank was hardly a lowly one. The Clear Stream faction had its own record of greased palms, after all; it wasn't as though its ranks held only pure and upright men. That bastard Yuan Shu was Clear Stream too, wasn't he?
Unable to secure a meeting with the court ministers, I changed tack and used my connection to Fa Yan to arrange an audience with the most influential gentry in all of Luoyang—a famed loyalist of the Han dynasty. The man was Wang Yun: destined to one day sit among the Three Excellencies as Minister over the Masses, and currently serving as Intendant of Henan, holder of the capital's administrative authority.
What our army needed more than anything right now was connections.
Fa Yan was the only man among us with close ties to the central government. So the plan was to link up with Wang Yun, the most respected of the Clear Stream officials, through Fa Yan; to use him to weave a web of connections; and through those connections to recruit capable men. That was the end goal. There was also the matter of presenting myself before the Emperor to make an impression, while preparing for the bloodbath still to come.
But something else was nagging at a corner of my mind...
...The thing that bothered me was that Ding Yuan had gotten his hands on the Emperor.
In the history I knew, the Emperor's person should have fallen into Dong Zhuo's hands. Instead, Ding Yuan had taken him. And since I had usurped Dong Zhuo's place, the Emperor's protection should have been mine by rights. Was this another shift in history? Now that I had removed Dong Zhuo and taken his seat, something major seemed to have changed.
Whatever the case, unlike in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Ding Yuan had purged the heads of the Ten Attendants and, hailed as the foremost hero who had shielded the Emperor, watched his authority swell overnight. And so Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu—who had earned real merit clearing the Ten Attendants out of the palace and crushing the rebellion—were left holding the bag.
If Ding Yuan had truly been the loyal Han minister he appeared to be in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I wouldn't have given a thought to fighting him.
But.
From what I'd learned, Mengjin Port was raided by Ding Yuan's troops disguised as Black Mountain Bandits.
To be precise: troops under Ding Yuan, moving on He Jin's orders, had disguised themselves as the Black Mountain Bandits, massacred innocent civilians, and made off with their wealth. And now he strutted about without a shred of guilt, pressing his advantage with the Bingzhou army at his front. Acts like these meant Ding Yuan was every bit as dangerous a man to watch as Dong Zhuo had been.
...This has become a real headache.
Personally, I found Ding Yuan's army a far trickier opponent than Dong Zhuo's. The reason, naturally, was that Ding Yuan's roster of generals outclassed Dong Zhuo's by a wide margin. For one, Ding Yuan had Lu Bu. Though she had made her name not in the Central Plains but around Bingzhou, connoisseurs of war still spoke of her as the finest warrior under heaven, draped in a string of epithets—the Flying General, the War God of Bingzhou. A valiant general who single-handedly butchered the northern tribes and the Black Mountain Bandits with all their overwhelming strength.
If she'd had Red Hare, I might at least have tried luring her over...
Considering the nature she showed in both history and the Romance, that martial might was a double-edged sword—but still preferable to bleeding heavily in a fight against her. And then there were Zhang Liao and Gao Shun on top of that. Zhang Liao might fall a little short of Lu Bu in raw strength, but as a commander, her capability, exceptional valor, and cunning strategy would later butcher an army of a hundred thousand at the Battle of Hefei while holding the vanguard line—the finest general Wei would ever produce. In Wu afterward, the legend ran that crying children fell silent at the mere sound of her name.
Gao Shun, likewise, had never gotten to shine under Lu Bu—she was hopelessly unfit to be a lord—but it was said that under a worthy master he would have displayed his full genius. He was a talent far too good for the likes of her. Lu Bu alone was a handful; add Zhang Liao, Gao Shun, and the battle-hardened Eight Elite Cavalrymen, and it was a nightmare. The one saving grace? They had no strategist capable of commanding them in perfect concert.
If only I could bring them under my banner...
For now, I had to hurry and do what I could. The moment a strategist as brilliant as Xun You joined Ding Yuan's camp, a menace truly beyond stopping would be born.
I was on my way to meet Wang Yun when...
"...What the hell? What is with those lunatics?"
I was witnessing something I could scarcely believe. Right in the middle of Luoyang's streets, soldiers in full battle gear were looting the citizens' property like a pack of brigands. Just when it seemed the city might finally know some stability after the Ten Attendants' rebellion, the very men sworn to protect the people were running riot and playing the bandit...
What kind of farce was this? This was Luoyang, capital of the Han, where the Emperor dwelt and reigned. And yet they were pulling this insane stunt not in some distant county, but in the very heart of the capital.
"...Yan Xing. Subdue every last one of them."
"Yes, my lord!!"
Yan Xing wrenched his spear free from the neck of the soldier who had crossed the line and died for it, then charged, escort troops at his side, at the band stripping the citizens of everything they owned.
— An hour before Han Yeong witnessed the Bingzhou army's atrocities —
Ding Yuan's camp, pitched outside the walls of Luoyang. The majority of the soldiers loyal to Ding Yuan had entered the city, but the officers who followed Lu Bu and a small band of troops remained behind here.
"...Big Sis. Are we truly to keep following Governor Ding?"
"Exactly. Honestly, with skills like yours, Big Sis—or Zhang Liao's, or Gao Shun's—any other army would take you in and prize you highly, wouldn't they?"
They were unloading their grievances about Ding Yuan's unjust treatment of Lu Bu to her face. The Eight Elite Cavalrymen followed her with blind faith—adopted daughter of Ding Yuan or not, her superb martial arts had pulled them out of countless deadly scrapes on the battlefield. In practical terms, the Eight Elite Cavalrymen and their men were a separate army serving Lu Bu alone.
"......"
The arguments were sound, and Lu Bu could not much refute them. With wealth of unknown provenance gathered in Luoyang, Ding Yuan was swelling his power by degrees while quietly edging out Lu Bu and the Eight Elite Cavalrymen. Ding Yuan and the officers who fawned on him had all climbed in rank, while Lu Bu and the Eight were denied promotion and left to languish as low-ranking officers—evidence as plain as day.
"Then let's just tear it all down and start over!! With your martial arts, Big Sis, Governor Ding is nothing!!"
"Quiet, Hou Cheng."
Lu Bu cut down her excited subordinate with a single bark. She too was brimming with grievances against Ding Yuan, but the thought of betraying her adoptive father had never once entered her mind. No—more precisely, she could not betray him.
...I know. I know Father is trying to ease us out, little by little.
Yet even knowing it, there was a reason she could not forsake Ding Yuan. He was their benefactor. She had lost her parents in childhood to the raids of nomads sweeping down from the north, and from that day on she had taken him as her adoptive father and served in his retinue—a bond built up over long years. He was the man who had shown a way to fight to people like her, left to die after losing family and homeland to the barbarians pouring over the northern wall, and who had taken them into his army despite their lowly birth and made officers of them.
Their relationship had soured, yes, but she could hardly repay that debt with betrayal. More than that—taken in as his adopted daughter, the moment she betrayed Ding Yuan she would be branded an unfilial monster, and her honor as a warrior would collapse. For Lu Bu, who burned to one day make her name ring across the realm as a general of great renown, that was an enormous shackle. It was why she had talked Ding Yuan down from his outrages time and again, yet could never actively stand in his way.
"Big Sis!!"
"What is it, Cheng Lian?"
She had been deep in talk with her officers, gathered in the camp, when Cheng Lian came sprinting up from behind.
"You said you were off buying wine to wash the bitterness from our stomachs. What took you so long?"
"It's a disaster! That mad old bastard Governor Ding has ordered the Bingzhou soldiers to strip the people of everything they own!!"
"What?! Is that the truth!?"
Lu Bu surged to her feet in fury.
"It is. He won't listen no matter how I try to stop him, so I've come to fetch you."
"That greedy, besotted old fool!! Move—lead the way!!"
A large share of the soldiers in Ding Yuan's army were bandits drawn from the Black Mountain Bandits, and he had almost certainly turned a blind eye to their atrocities—crumbs of the spoils trickled down to him too. But as long as they marched under the Bingzhou army's banner, every stain the bandits left on its reputation would spread to her and the Eight Elite Cavalrymen as well. For Lu Bu, a warrior who prized honor above nearly everything, it was something she wanted no part of.
I thought he'd lost his mind back when he had them plunder the people disguised as Black Mountain Bandits... but has Father truly gone senile?
In front of her men she flung around words like "old fool," but in her heart Lu Bu regarded Ding Yuan—the man who had raised her, an orphan alone in the world—as a true father. Yet the warlord she had once admired, the man she had watched crush the nomads and lift people out of utter misery, was gone without a trace. All that remained was a self-willed tyrant in the grip of hunger for power and stubborn obsession.
Heart a tangle of conflicted feelings, Lu Bu spurred her horse for the streets of Luoyang, her men behind her, determined to stop the Bingzhou soldiers mid-plunder.
CRACK!! WHUMP!!
Through the streets of Luoyang rang the vivid, dull crack of flesh splitting open. Since the objective was capture rather than slaughter, Yan Xing brought the Bingzhou soldiers down with blows of his spear shaft, hammering heads and vital points until they dropped. He had already put one in the ground for good. Common rabble was never going to be a match for Yan Xing; within a bare ten minutes, every pillaging soldier lay subdued.
"D-do you people realize who we are and still dare this!?"
The officer—who looked to be the highest-ranking of the surly soldiers—demanded it of us. Watching him stiffen his neck like a man grievously wronged and shriek his outrage, I genuinely wanted to put him down for good.
"...And who are you supposed to be?"
"We are soldiers of General Ding Yuan, Governor of Bingzhou!!"
"......So what?"
"This was our reward for driving back the traitors, carried out with our lord's sanction!! Do you not realize that raising a hand against us makes you enemies of the Governor!?"
"......"
...This bastard is shaking Ding Yuan's name at me like a threat.
The soldier was obliquely advertising Ding Yuan as the true power in Luoyang, wielding it against me—and I found it galling.
"...So?"
"What?"
"You think His Majesty licensed your pillaging just because you're General Ding Yuan's soldiers? He didn't, did he?"
"Th-that's..."
They had moved on their lord's orders without the court's sanction, and their discomposure showed plainly.
They're supposed to be soldiers, not bandit scum, and this is their mentality? Might as well have dressed a pack of bandits in soldiers' uniforms.
What Han Yeong did not know was that the soldiers before him were men Ding Yuan had absorbed wholesale from the Black Mountain Bandits.
"My lord, what shall we do?"
"For now we hand these bastards over to the authorities to be punished..."
Just then, from somewhere down the street, came the thunder of galloping warhorses.
"......Who is it?"
Riding at the head of the charge appeared a woman with crimson hair so deep it might have been blood soaked into it. In her hand was a halberd bearing vicious crescent blades on both sides.
The Sky-Piercing Halberd.
I had exactly one reaction to the sight of it:
...Ah. We're screwed.
An uneasy premonition settled over me as the subdued soldiers, still pinned kneeling before me, erupted in cheers at the sight of the general.
"It's General Lu Bu!!"
"We're saved!! Now repeat after me: you bastards are dead men!!"
At the mere mention of her name, the men who had been cowed moments before flipped their attitude in an instant. An unprecedented crisis was bearing down on us.
To think I'd run into Lu Bu of all people here...
Yan Xing alone could never stand against Lu Bu. My arithmetic said it would take at least Ma Chao and Pang De alongside him to bring her down. If I had Red Hare, I might at least try opening negotiations—ask whether she'd care to serve under me... But I didn't have it.
While I was still turning countermeasures against Lu Bu over in my head, the officer who had been directing the plunder walked up to her as she dismounted.
"General Lu! So glad you've come!! Quick, those bastards—!!"
CRACK!!
But instead of an answer, Lu Bu drove her fist into the officer.
WHAM!!
The blow buried itself in his face and drove him flat into the dirt, the deafening, bone-heavy report of it beyond anything a human swing should have made.
"...What kind of garbage was that. Bandit bastards."
Deep in Lu Bu's gray eyes lay thick disgust and contempt.