Is This How It Turns Out? (1)
"What?! Han Yeong, that brat — and Lu Bu?!"
"Yes, my lord! The soldiers who had gone into the streets of Luoyang to vent their frustrations were beaten so badly they can barely stand upright!!"
BANG!! Enraged, Ding Yuan brought his fist crashing down onto the table.
Though age had caught up with him, his body had once belonged to a warrior, and the strength forged in those years had not withered.
"Lu Bu... That woman..."
The rift between himself and the girl he had taken in as an adopted daughter had opened with the truce with the Black Mountain Bandits. When Zhang Yan, the bandits' chieftain, accepted an official post from the court and laid down his arms, Lu Bu had defied him outright, insisting the war against the brigands had to go on. And when Ding Yuan ordered his soldiers to dress themselves as Black Mountain raiders and slaughter civilians and plunder their goods, she had refused him to his face, stubborn as stone, on the grounds that a warrior had her honor to keep. The Eight Elite Cavalrymen, who revered her martial prowess, and the soldiers who followed them had refused to pillage right alongside her. Forcing the issue risked open mutiny, and so he had been left with no choice but to order them to stand by and watch.
"...And now, of all times, she throws cold water over me again!!"
Ding Yuan had made Lu Bu his adopted daughter, but he had never once thought of her as his own flesh and blood. With every foreign tribe she crushed, her standing — and her worth — in Bingzhou climbed higher, and with it his envy curdled into something thick and venomous. Unrivaled Under Heaven, War God of Bingzhou, the Flying General — he was sick to death of hearing her praised under every name the people could mint, and no less sick of the whispers among Bingzhou's populace that the old Governor Ding ought to start thinking about stepping aside.
If that woman ever learns what I did in the old days, she'll try to kill me. Not that she has any interest in official records — as long as she keeps her mouth shut, it hardly matters.
Left to his own desires, he would have hauled her before a military tribunal for defying a direct order, but Luoyang's armies were not yet in his grasp, and for now he still needed her strength.
Lu Bu. One of these days, you will...
Inferiority and jealousy thickened the fury on his face until it burned red.
"If anything, my lord, this is a fortunate turn."
"Fortunate?! My soldiers are the ones lying in the dirt!"
Lu Bu's act was rank insubordination, and Han Yeong's amounted to a declaration of war besides — Ding Yuan was livid.
"Had the sack of Luoyang's streets been carried through, the senior ministers of the court would have looked upon you with far from kindly eyes."
The chaos of the Ten Attendants had seen the eunuch-backed Turbid Stream faction purged almost to a man, and the central government now rested in the hands of the Clear Stream faction and its scholar-officials. Unlike the Turbid Stream, they set some store by the people's hearts, and nothing that might stir their wrath could be permitted. Until his grip on power was secure, there was nothing to gain from inviting their collective fury. At present, the court ministers kept a far warier eye on Han Yeong — whose pedigree bore an unmistakable stain — than on Ding Yuan, who could claim his own threads of acquaintance among the Clear Stream.
"Denounce it as the soldiers' own doing. You must make it plain that the general had no part in this. Then instruct General Lu Bu to proclaim that she has disciplined the men severely."
"Tch. What a tedious business."
At the click of Ding Yuan's tongue, Zhang Yang felt his chest tighten with exasperation.
...If General Dong Zhuo were still alive, I would never have been reduced to choosing this man.
A frontier general to the bone: careless of palace etiquette, thick-witted, eyes fixed on nothing beyond the day's gain. Dong Zhuo, for all his flaws, had been lining the Ten Attendants' pockets since long before, and his instincts for court politics ran circles around this man's — he would never have paraded such recklessness.
...Han Yeong. That whelp simply refuses to leave my mind.
Back when Han Yeong had carried Fa Yan off to Yangzhou, the man had been little more than a thorn in his side; the string of affairs the boy had since set in motion, however, had left Zhang Yang thoroughly cornered.
"And yet we cannot simply leave that brat to run loose. He must be made to taste something bitter."
"For the moment, our task is to bring the Grand General's troops in Luoyang wholly into our grasp. Do that, and we will hold numerical superiority over Han Yeong."
"War is not won by counting heads! It is won on battle-hardened experience and strategy, honed against the foreign tribes!!"
His words had evidently landed as an admission that his own host was the weaker of the two, for Ding Yuan bristled at once — and Zhang Yang hurried to smooth him over.
"I know I have no eye for war — that much I will grant. But did Han Yeong not bring down Dong Zhuo all the same? That is precisely why such care is needed."
Watching a man so easily set alight, Zhang Yang ached to simply cast him aside. A vessel hopelessly unfit for a ruler charged with seeing the whole board. And yet here in the capital, where those who wished him dead crawled through every street, the only way to stay alive was to go on leeching at Ding Yuan's side. As head of the Ten Attendants he had held even the Imperial Seal, entrusted to him by the emperor himself, and he was a master of manipulation and honeyed words. Against a man with no gift for politics, all the more so.
There was, to be fair, sense in what Zhang Yang said, and Ding Yuan forced his seething temper back down for the moment.
Turning the question of Han Yeong over in his mind, Zhang Yang put forward another thought.
"...Or, my lord — how would it be to draw him over to our side instead?"
"What did you say?!"
Ding Yuan could not make sense of it. If a man bared his fangs at you, the only proper answer was to make him pay — and this creature was counseling surrender?
"Why in the world would I bring Han Yeong to our side?"
"If we bring him over without risking so much as a hair, then in practical terms no force in Luoyang remains to stand against you. Offering a man generous terms costs nothing, and it is no bad move."
Han Yeong grated on him, certainly — but Zhang Yang had judged it better to concede a measure of power and break the boy to harness, reasoning that a son of Han Sui would share his father's temperament.
"...That fellow, under our banner?"
And yet — if he displayed such broad magnanimity as to take the boy in as a retainer, an opening might well present itself to check Lu Bu, who of late had grown altogether too fond of eyeing his position. Ding Yuan swallowed his anger at the soundness of the counsel and began to weigh it, chin sunk in his hand.
Han Yeong had subdued the Bingzhou troops rampaging through the streets and gone straight to Wang Yun's residence — but the hour was far too late, and he had been obliged to promise a return visit the following day.
"I must apologize for last night."
"Think nothing of it. Come in, come in."
When I arrived that morning, Wang Yun received me as an honored guest, bursting into hearty laughter, his face all benevolence. I gave thanks for the hospitality — smiling outwardly, and quietly taking the man apart in my head.
...So this is Wang Yun.
For a man wearing the lofty offices of palace lieutenant and Intendant of Henan, the exterior of the house was almost austere; within, the mansion was arranged with surprising simplicity and order, and a warrior wearing a treasured blade stood guard at Wang Yun's side. That said, here and there treasures and prized swords that must have cost a small fortune did catch the eye.
Was the Seven-Star Precious Sword hiding in there somewhere, I wondered?
Unlike Dong Cheng, exalted as a loyal pillar of the state for his conduct in Yan Province, or Kong Rong — a descendant of Confucius whose reputation was, frankly, a rather ambiguous thing — Wang Yun was the loyalist who had played the decisive hand in egging Lu Bu on to cut down the traitor Dong Zhuo. His name stood so high for principle and clean hands that one would scarcely credit him as a son of the same treacherous Bingzhou that had produced Ding Yuan and Lu Bu. Even in a Han court left reeling by the deaths of the Ten Attendants and He Jin, he wielded no small standing and power.
One of the very few men in this rotting Han dynasty who could be trusted — and one who simply had to be made a friend.
That his blind devotion to justice and purity would, in the end, cost him his own life was another matter entirely; given the makeup of our own camp, borrowing Wang Yun's strength remained the most rational course open to me.
"Might I ask who stands beside you?"
I asked out of simple curiosity about the armed man at Wang Yun's flank. For all I knew, he might even be one of the talents I was hunting.
"Ah — that would be Wang Yue, my kinsman, who serves as my guard. He is held to be the finest blade in all of Luoyang."
Wang Yue?
I had a feeling I had come across that name before — a man recorded in Emperor Ling's day as a master of the sword.
Well, if he's blood kin to Wang Yun, poaching him was never on the table.
In any case, that was not what mattered.
Wang Yun and I took our seats and shared a cup of tea. A faint bitterness filled my mouth.
"...I had already heard about you, as it happens — from Jimou, when he came to see me earlier. He asked me to lend you every assistance, so that you might find your way into the politics of the court."
The original plan had been to call on Wang Yun together with Fa Yan, but word had come back that Wang Yun would prefer to meet me alone. And so our meeting had gone ahead one-on-one; Wang Yun was evidently on the closest of terms with Fa Yan, for he spoke of him familiarly, by his courtesy name.
"Yes. I place myself in your hands. Please, lend me your aid."
I bowed with the fullest courtesy as I said it. But against all my earnest hoping, Wang Yun's face clouded into deep apology.
"I am sorry, but I cannot help you."
"...May I ask why?"
"I come from the same province as General Ding Yuan, you see. He and I are old acquaintances. So it is I who have been helping him — a man quite unaccustomed to politics."
Goddamn it.
So this was what sharing a home province was worth. And in fairness, with Ding Yuan presently standing guard over the emperor, a loyalist of the Han like Wang Yun could scarcely have done otherwise than extend his hand and cooperate. Perhaps it helped, too, that the man was not yet running wild threatening to swap out the emperor, as Dong Zhuo had done?
"...And — forgive me for saying this with my own mouth, for it may sit poorly with you — but the ministers of the court are rather wary of you, I am afraid."
"I beg your pardon?"
What exactly did I do?
To keep suspicion at arm's length in Luoyang, I had put down rebellion after rebellion in Yangzhou, working to fix in their minds the image of a man nothing like that treacherous rabble. And now I was being told I was watched? Only one explanation occurred to me.
"Is it because I come from the frontier?"
The celebrated names and gentry of the Central Plains — of the capital province of Sili above all — held men of frontier birth in no small contempt. Jia Xu, a strategist of the first order who had never once been offered a post, was one such case among many.
"...No, that is not it. What the officials flinch from — what keeps them on their guard — is that you are the son of General Han Sui, a man who once raised his banner against the state."
"..."
What kind of bullshit is that...
So this is how it turns out?
In the original history, when Dong Zhuo had trampled them beneath sheer military might, these same men had been unable to do a thing — they had groveled to stay in his good graces — and now they showed wariness toward the one who came to them obediently? I managed my expression with every ounce of discipline I had, for one does not commit a breach of courtesy to a man's face, but inside, a thousand fires of rage were burning.
Oh, they're incorruptible, are they? Incorruptible how, exactly? I know for a fact some of them bought their posts outright.
Yes, my father had once raised his banner in revolt — that much was true. But to be told so to my face that this was why they kept their distance... As Han Sui's son, I felt lower than the dirt on his floor.
"I am sorry. Jimou did ask it of me, but I do not believe I can be of help to you."
Wang Yun bowed his head with perfect courtesy and apologized once more. Watching him, I put a question to him instead.
"...There is something I would ask of you, Minister. Are you aware that yesterday the soldiers of Bingzhou plundered civilians who had done nothing wrong?"
"...I did hear. I understand you were late to our appointment because you had put a stop to their savagery? And I heard, too, that a commander of Lord Ding Yuan's — one Lu Bu — chastised them on the spot. I am grateful to you for protecting the people."
"..."
"Do try to understand. Soldiers of Bingzhou, raised in that harsh border country, are wild-tempered men; only by letting them vent in such a fashion can their lord hope to hold an army together."
Then what in the hell does that make our army, which bled on that very same frontier? For fuck's sake.
Watching him bend over backward to cover for Ding Yuan out of nothing more than shared hometown sentiment, the profanity came pouring out of me entirely on its own. Perhaps because Wang Yun shared a province with the man, he seemed to feel little genuine hostility so long as Ding Yuan did not persecute the emperor or trample the court the way Dong Zhuo had.
This was, after all, the stiff-necked man who had put the eminent scholar and litterateur Cai Yong to death on a bare pretext — because the old man had dared to grieve for Dong Zhuo, the very lord who had given him his office. A man whose father had once risen in revolt was simply not to be trusted, it seemed.
...That's that, then.
So long as Wang Yun trusted Ding Yuan and threw his weight behind him, I could hardly expect any help from that quarter. I declined his offer to at least finish my tea, and walked out of the man's residence.
What now? Without ties to the court's officials — without connections to build on — everything from here on out only gets harder...
The plan to swell our army by drawing the Grand General's soldiers over through alliances with the court's ministers had dissolved into nothing. By this point, Ding Yuan would already have won a fair share of them to himself. Worse, with the emperor in his keeping, the added backing of the court's ministers would make him a difficult man to oppose — and talent would grow harder to lure away. And if I forced my way in by raw strength, the way Dong Zhuo had, I would be nothing more than another traitor cut from the same cloth.
...Bullshit. Setting Xu Rong aside, Xun You was the one recruit I absolutely had to win over.
For men of celebrated scholar-gentry stock, personal connections were everything — the toll you paid before you could recruit them or earn their help. This was not a game, where a quick scan of the roster was all it took to sign them. With Wang Yun — one of the Clear Stream's most honored names — refusing me his aid, the road ahead had gone suddenly bleak.
If only someone with the right connections would happen to come along...
"...You look like a man in a difficult spot."
"Huh?"
As I left Wang Yun's residence and made my way back to my lodgings under Yan Xing's escort, a woman in a gauze face-veil came toward me. Flanking her walked a pair of women who looked every inch warriors — the one on the right carrying a podao slung across her back, the one on the left a great bow.
"Who—"
"Do you remember a promise that we would meet again?"
She raised the straw hat that had shadowed her face, and her features were laid bare at a glance. Hair of deep navy blue, dark as the night sky, and crimson eyes that glinted with bewitching light. Stunned by the appearance of the one person I had never expected, I could only stand there, thrown.
"How would you like to share a conversation with me?"
Cao Cao Mengde.
The Hero of Chaos had come seeking me out in person.
Unhurried, perfectly composed, she watched me with a quiet smile playing at the corners of her mouth.