The Bingzhou Army (3)
There is no character in all of the Three Kingdoms as vividly three-dimensional as Lu Bu.
A general who possessed the prestige and martial might to shake all under heaven, yet would forget in a flash whatever kindness was shown him and answer it with a backstab so brazen it left your skull ringing. If the man needed an epithet, wouldn't "repaying kindness with enmity" fit him best? That was the very charm that came to define the figure called Lu Bu.
In the historical records, he put his adoptive father Dong Zhuo to death over an illicit affair with a maidservant and lusted after his own officers' wives—every inch the lecher. His martial skill was first-rate, but with so many defeats piled up behind him, he suited the image of a vanguard commander far better than that of a sovereign or a storied general.
The Romance, however, tore his lecherous flaws out root and branch, crowned him the finest warrior under heaven, and even invented a fictional woman named Diaochan to give him a love story. And then, ironically, it strengthened the element of betrayal another notch as well. In the histories, Ding Yuan had been nothing more than his superior officer, but the Romance recast him as an adoptive father—and Lu Bu, who traded in fathers three times over, thereby earned himself the infamous title of the Three-Surnamed Slave.
Even after his defeat by Cao Cao sent him fleeing to Xu Province to throw himself on Liu Bei's mercy, he betrayed the very man who had sheltered him, swallowed Xu Province whole, and carried on with jaw-dropping shamelessness. More preposterous still, he forgot completely the kindness he had received from Liu Bei, while remembering only the kindness he had given.
In the end, having committed every savage atrocity imaginable and squandered the loyalty of his own men, Lu Bu was taken captive by Cao Cao. Considering that the list of betrayers included even Wei Xu, one of Lu Bu's own kin, you could say he had been forsaken by his very blood.
Lu Bu groveled for his life, wheedling that with him at his side Cao Cao could surely pacify all under heaven—but when Liu Bei, standing nearby, counseled Cao Cao that Lu Bu had to die, Lu Bu spat back:
Granted, judging by how Liu Bei went on to stir up war everywhere his feet carried him, the charge had a certain credibility to it—but coming out of Lu Bu's mouth, it could only ring as the classic case of the thief crying "stop, thief." In later generations, the equation of treachery with Lu Bu passed into something like official canon.
And so I had rendered my own verdict on the man: peerless in nothing but raw strength, with a dull mind and a savage temperament thrown in as a matched set, his popular support scraping along rock bottom—a general no lord could ever afford to keep. The veritable icon of thankless, backstabbing betrayal.
And yet....
...Then what, exactly, is the Lu Bu standing before my eyes right now?
Pointing out that this Lu Bu was a woman would be hopelessly stale by now; it was the scene unfolding in front of me that left me simply flustered.
"Die, you sons of bitches!!"
Every time Lu Bu swung her fist, a soldier's jaw went spinning off in a merry arc. Had these been my own men taking the beating, there would have been no leisure for sightseeing—but astonishingly, Lu Bu was pounding the soldiers of Ding Yuan, her own ally.
"Gwaaagh! G-General!!"
"P-please, spare me!!"
When Lu Bu had first come tearing over on horseback with the Sky-Piercing Halberd in hand, I'd assumed she meant to attack me and had wound myself up to a record-setting degree. Instead, she had flattened the officer who came begging her for rescue, and was now delivering punishment with her own two hands to the soldiers who had tried to squeeze the common folk dry.
"Have you bastards lost your minds?! You dare plunder the people? You're a disgrace to Bingzhou, the lot of you—!!"
"Th-the Governor himself gave the order! We've done nothing wrong!!"
"Shut it! You're all just as guilty!!"
Wham—!!
With the dull, meaty crack of knuckles meeting flesh she seized and hammered away, reducing the soldiers to mush in moments. The hideous screams of men in their death throes rang out across the street—on an entirely different order from what they'd produced when we had merely pinned them down.
Needless to say, watching the spectacle, I couldn't help but find it baffling.
What is this? Is she some kind of variant?
In the original history, after being routed and driven out by Li Jue and Guo Si, Lu Bu had at one point thrown himself upon Yuan Shu. What exactly passed between them back then I don't know, but Lu Bu—concluding that Yuan Shu owed him a debt of gratitude—went on a plundering spree against the people of Yuan Shu's own territory, and an incensed Yuan Shu had, naturally, kicked him to the curb.
With a track record like that, it was clear Lu Bu hadn't cherished the common people one bit. Appetite for wealth, appetite for flesh—and appetite for power on top of it all. A pure, uncut aggregate of desire. That the incarnation of rampant greed, equipped with every vice and none of the virtues, would condemn soldiers for extorting the populace—and with righteous words, no less—was simply beyond believing.
...Maybe she really is a different creature from the Lu Bu of the histories and the Romance.
Most of the generals I'd met so far, Ma Chao and Pang De chief among them, had given me little real sense of dissonance. Broadly speaking, their impressions matched their Romance counterparts. Fa Zheng, too, merely kept her brash temper leashed in front of me; knowing full well how venomous and grudge-harboring her true nature was, there was no gap between image and reality there either.
But the Lu Bu before me now was so wildly at odds with her legend that I could feel cognitive dissonance creeping in. Lu Bu, raging on behalf of powerless commoners being bled dry by brutal soldiers... could anyone even picture that image in their head?
This counts as a genuine wildcard.
I had naturally assumed Lu Bu was the sort of general who would betray an adoptive father as casually as downing a meal, so long as it profited her. Whether this Lu Bu's temperament—so different from the original history—would work as a liability for us, I couldn't yet say.
If she was a Lu Bu who truly understood fidelity to that degree, then even if I did hand over Red Hare, I would also have to weigh the possibility that she might never betray her adoptive father Ding Yuan at all.
Which would make her a real headache, then....
"...Haa. You people are a pain in the neck."
Having worked off a fair share of her fury on the soldiers, Lu Bu finally turned her gaze toward us. Yan Xing, who had roughly gauged her martial prowess from the way she moved, went rigid with wariness cranked to its utmost and reflexively threw up an arm to shield me.
"Stand down, Yan Xing."
"My lord!!"
Reining him in, I stepped forward myself. So long as Lu Bu's temperament diverged this starkly from everything I knew, I needed a detailed read on her—and the woman in front of me, at least, was showing no hostility.
"...So, who are you supposed to be? Why were you beating these men down?"
At the insolent question, delivered with her head cocked, Yan Xing and the rest of my retinue bristled, but I waved them quiet.
"I am Han Yeong, General Who Pacifies the West. I command the army that has come out of Liang Province."
"So you're the one they say smashed Dong Zhuo, then?"
Lu Bu, who until that moment had shown all the idle boredom of someone sizing up a nobody, now had curiosity plainly gleaming in both eyes.
...Cao Cao took an interest when I repelled Dong Zhuo, and now this one's the same.
Diluted though he was compared to his original-history stature, it was evidence enough that Dong Zhuo had still been a warlord whose name carried real weight across the realm.
"Why were you subduing soldiers of our own side?"
"Because these men were extorting innocent civilians. My intent was to pin them down first, then lodge a formal protest with General Ding Yuan."
"Knowing Father, it was probably his own order anyway. No point making an issue of it."
At the word Father, I understood: she stood as Ding Yuan's adopted daughter.
...So the Romance really is the baseline, then?
I would have to keep the conversation flowing if I wanted to learn more about her.
"Then might I ask, General Lu Bu—why did you put a stop to the outrages of men who fight on your own side?"
"You know me?"
I answered with the warmest business-grade smile I could muster.
"How could anyone fail to know General Lu Bu, the Flying General of Bingzhou, exalted across all under heaven for her valor?"
Honestly, any bearer of the Sky-Piercing Halberd—a weapon even stout veterans could scarcely manage as an armament—announced herself as Lu Bu at a glance. On top of that, even the soldiers who had been on their plundering spree had addressed her deferentially as "the Lady General," so there was never any chance of failing to recognize her.
"I just had no wish to be lumped in with that rabble, that's all."
In the look Lu Bu cast down at the soldiers of Bingzhou, a faint thread of contempt glimmered. A cold expression to be turning on one's own allies.
"Are you not afraid of making an enemy of the Governor?"
"Hmph. Still, someone had to stop it. Father or no Father, this is simply wrong."
......
...This is Lu Bu?
"Thanks to you, this got sorted out before it turned ugly. I appreciate it."
...Lu Bu not only calls out wrongdoing but also says thank you...?
Seeing her deliver her thanks and then break into a bright, toothy smile, I quietly shuffled one of my fixed ideas about Lu Bu to the side. If everything went to plan—if we captured Dong Zhuo, claimed Red Hare, and then stoked Lu Bu into toppling Ding Yuan and crumbling the Bingzhou war machine—I had also kept a follow-up in mind: to discard her like a spent hunting dog the moment her usefulness ran out.
She had knifed in the back Liu Bei himself, who in the Romance was practically a living saint—what safety would someone like me enjoy? A general who would betray the lord she served without blinking, purely out of her own greed, was nothing more than a double-edged sword loaded with risk.
Granted, that had also been Liu Bei's counsel, delivered beside the talent-hungry Cao Cao with Ding Yuan and Dong Zhuo trotted out as precedents—but even so, Cao Cao had not put down the man ranked as the finest warrior under heaven for nothing.
Having confirmed, however, that the Lu Bu I'd met here possessed a distinctly human side, my alarm eased a degree.
"...Why are you staring holes through my face?"
While my mind had been grinding away at the question of what to do with her, I had apparently been boring my eyes straight into her. By any measure, that was a breach of courtesy.
"Ah—my apologies. Your character proved every bit as admirable as your martial skill; I found myself staring without meaning to. Forgive the rudeness."
I bowed my head in apology.
"...Oh. Uh, right."
Lu Bu accepted the apology while squirming at my manner; going by her face, she was embarrassed.
Should I invite her into my service?... No. Withdraw for now. We've only just met—pressing her on the spot could earn me her suspicion.
With no point of connection between us whatsoever, would she accept it if I said right then and there, "Hey, you—be my comra—no, wait. Be my subordinate"? At the very least, I now knew that things between Lu Bu and Ding Yuan were far from warm. That alone was worth something.
Judging by how gentle she was with the people, and how little she seemed to care for riches, I couldn't be sure that treasure or a famous steed would tempt her—but I would bide my time and make the offer when the chance came.
Before the flustered Lu Bu, I folded my hands in a formal fist salute.
"I shall take my leave for now. We will be meeting again before long."
"...Meeting again, you say?"
With Ding Yuan's troops subdued for plundering the populace, a dispute was all but guaranteed. Either Ding Yuan comes to find me, or I go to find him. One or the other.
Ding Yuan enjoyed the warm, devoted backing of the Clear Stream officials for his part in snaring the Ten Attendants, and I found myself genuinely curious how things would stand once this affair came to light.
"Well, then...."
Han Yeong made his way toward Wang Yun's residence with Yan Xing and the rest of his retinue, and Lu Bu alone was left standing there.
"...That one. He's got a decent character, that one."
Lu Bu had taken a fair liking to Han Yeong's bearing. She had wondered what sort of man could possibly take Dong Zhuo captive—and the sight of him extending courtesy to a woman of frontier birth like herself had won a measure of her goodwill.
"If only Father were even half the man that one is."
Measuring Han Yeong against what Ding Yuan had become left her with a pang of loss. Feeling it keenly, Lu Bu called her own soldiers over and set them to clearing away the men sprawled across the ground and the market district turned to wreckage.