So This Is How It Turns Out? (3)
"The stirrups, from what I hear, are an improvement on a design the barbarian tribes used. Why is that? If the famous scholars of the capital province ever laid eyes on them, I imagine you'd be held in contempt as no different from the barbarians yourself."
"Even if the idea did originate with the barbarians, if it proves useful to the cavalry, then it ought to be used."
"Hmm. I see. So you're the sort without prejudices, are you..."
"......"
Cao Cao had fired any number of questions at me. Ironically, all but one had fallen comfortably within the range of what I could answer.
It began with absurdities like when I intended to marry, then moved on to when I had started helping my father, when I had first involved myself in court affairs, why I used stirrups identical to the barbarians', and so on. None of them would cost me anything to answer.
"Now then, one last question."
The long exchange of questions and answers had eaten up a good deal of time, and with my guards waiting outside, the conversation was clearly winding down.
"Han Yeong. For what purpose did you raise an army?"
"......"
"Was it out of loyalty to the Han?"
It seemed she had finally arrived at the question that mattered.
Loyalty to the Han clan? Or else desire, plain and simple? If her questions thus far, odd as they were, had been necessary for taking my measure as a person, this one was asking what I sought — what I fought for. One might call it a profound question, but my answer was already settled.
'...A stable nation means peace for the people — and an easier road for the me of tomorrow.'
Ever since my rebirth, from my days as a newborn in Liang Province onward, it was always the common people who died in the wars between the warlords who raised their banners against the dynasty. Bandits stripped their own countrymen bare to fill their starving bellies, while the haves squeezed the already-dying people even harder to fatten themselves further. Watching the powerless be robbed and destroyed before my eyes, the child I had been felt a deep, festering revulsion.
It was a world of the strong devouring the weak — one where the powerful annexing whatever belonged to the powerless was taken as the natural order of things. And because I had read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I knew which way the future would flow, which left me no choice but to lay the groundwork to keep the worst of the carnage from coming to pass.
I burned the midnight oil memorizing unfamiliar characters, and racked my brain searching for ways to improve lives of desperate poverty. The culprit behind it all was the age itself — an era of warlordism in which the warlords of the realm grew fat on power and drowned the whole world in chaos.
So I had simply judged, for my own part, that keeping the Han from collapsing would minimize the turmoil to come and the ill effects it would bring. If I stood by and let the empire splinter into three kingdoms the way it had in the history I knew, countless more people would die in the wars...
I had no sacred mission or righteous cause like Liu Bei's to restore the Han, nor the ambition of the other warlords to command the nation and rule as they pleased. I simply wanted to live in peace. And if the Han proved too rotten through and through — too far gone to save — I would abandon it without a second thought. All I wanted was for the people around me, and the people under my care, to be happy.
Not that, judged by the strength of my forces, I was yet in a position to declare such words with any confidence.
"I marched to war for the well-being of the people living inside my fence."
Describing the people of my domain as those within my fence, I conveyed my meaning to her.
"...I see."
Whether she deemed it a decent answer or not, Cao Cao gave the faintest of smiles.
'I really am interested in you, after all.'
Apparently satisfied with what I'd said, she promised to introduce someone to me in a few days' time and saw me off as I made my way back to my lodgings.
"This was a fruitful conversation. Thank you."
"And I gained something from your answers as well, Han Yeong. Think nothing of it."
"Then I shall call on you again."
"Yes. With that, I'll take my leave."
I bowed to Cao Cao and returned with Yan Xing to our army's encampment.
After Han Yeong left, Cao Cao sat with her chin resting in her hand, turning over the training of her soldiers in light of the conversation they had shared.
"Hmm. If we fit double stirrups, like the Xiliang cavalry use, onto the cavalry Zichu is drilling, their stability would rise considerably. It might be worth trying."
Cao Cao was agonizing over whether to adapt the Xiliang army's improved stirrups for the elite cavalry force her cousin Cao Chun had just established.
"Mengde."
A general with ash-gray hair and crimson eyes, a massive podao slung at her hip, called out to her.
"What is it, Yuanrang?"
"Don't tell me you've taken a fancy to that kid, Han Yeong?"
At Xiahou Dun calling Han Yeong a kid, Cao Cao gave a wry smile.
"And what good would calling him a kid do? Han Yeong has properly come of age, and he holds the office of General Who Pacifies the West of the Han."
"Quit dodging the question..."
Xiahou Dun studied her cousin — sharp as a blade since childhood — with eyes full of doubt. She had proven her competence all the way back in the Yellow Turban Rebellion, and serving under He Jin, who loathed the eunuchs, her talents had won recognition; she had worked at his right hand alongside Yuan Shao.
Cao Cao drummed her fingers for a moment, then spoke.
"...If I had to put a word to it, interest would be about right."
"Interest?"
"That's right."
The occasion for Cao Cao's interest in Han Yeong was the Battle of Didao — a war Dong Zhuo had launched on the pretext that the people of his domain were being massacred by Han Sui's army.
Of course, the truth of it was that Dong Zhuo, having pacified the whole of Liang Province, had set the war in motion to eliminate the threat at his rear before marching on the Central Plains, the heart of the realm. The Emperor lay critically ill and the Ten Attendants held the Imperial Seal in their keeping, so the war had been sanctioned through their tacit consent.
When word reached the capital that Dong Zhuo and Han Sui would go to war in Xiliang, the overwhelming majority judged that Dong Zhuo would win. True, he had led the government forces to defeat during the Yellow Turban Rebellion in place of General Lu Zhi — but in his youth, he had been the man they called the fierce hero of Xiliang. The world's assessment was that Han Sui, a newly risen warlord who had only just put down a rebellion, would be hard-pressed to beat him.
The result was the exact opposite. It was a crushing, ignominious defeat for Dong Zhuo, who had lorded it over both Liang and Yong Provinces.
The garrulous historians and celebrated scholars of the realm, ever fond of wagging their tongues, spread the tale far and wide through Luoyang, and it became the talk of palace folk and the public alike. Hearing it, Cao Cao took an interest in the man at the same stroke.
Cao Cao had known Han Sui back in the old days, when she had first taken office at court, and she knew he possessed no military genius of that caliber. So she had quietly dispatched people to dig into the matter and learned that command on the battlefield had belonged to Han Sui's son. That the talents he had elevated had performed brilliantly on the field besides.
The magnanimity to hear out others' counsel generously, and the eye for spotting talent — both were exceptional gifts. And the fact that, like herself, he was shunned by the stiff-necked court officials over the matter of his origins drew her interest as well. In Cao Cao's case it was being the granddaughter of a eunuch household; in Han Yeong's, being a general from the frontier and the child of a man who had once raised his banner against the state.
'Capable people are always needed.'
The kindness she had shown him stemmed from that same reason. Of course, the largest reason of all was that the only man commanding military strength enough to stand against Ding Yuan was Han Yeong, who had led his army from Chang'an — but calculation and goodwill mingled in it too.
'Wang Yun... that old man's flaw is that he insists on what is too clean.'
When water is too clear, it holds no fish... His pedantic obsession with finding only the incorruptible was the problem. And so, weighing whom to back between Ding Yuan and Han Yeong as she moved to crush the rebels, she had chosen Ding Yuan — a Bingzhou native like Wang Yun himself, and one who had faithfully carried out the decree to chastise the barbarians — over Han Yeong, whose background bore a stain.
Even though the man couldn't read what lay in other people's hearts to save his life.
'And...'
Cao Cao had liked Han Yeong's answer. She had naturally assumed he would claim he led his army to fight for the Han. Even when desire lurked beneath the surface, it was standard practice to dress oneself in the revival of the Han clan.
But the words that reached her ears were the last she expected. She liked the answer — that he fought not for the nation, but for the people and the folk under his rule.
'Unlike Ding Yuan, who carried out wanton slaughter at Mengjin under the Grand General's seal, there is more than enough reason to lend him my strength.'
Pleased with him, Cao Cao intended to introduce him to a friend from her web of connections, just as promised.
"By the way, Mengde... why on earth did you ask Han Yeong whether he was married?"
"For the most obvious of reasons."
Cao Cao — utterly unlike the cool, aloof air her usual dignified looks gave off — lolled her tongue, wriggled about impishly, and let out a sly, suggestive little laugh.
"Surely ripe is better than unripe, don't you think?"
"......"
There was only one reaction Xiahou Dun could possibly have to that.
'Crazy bitch.'
But she couldn't quite bring herself to spit it out.
"Why are you so late?! I was worried sick!!"
The moment I returned to the army camp late that night, Ma Chao came running to me, worry written all over her face.
"...Sorry."
"What? Why won't you look at me?"
"It's nothing."
"Something's off with you..."
When I avoided her gaze like a boyfriend with something to hide from his girlfriend, Ma Chao fixed me with a look thick with suspicion. As she and I talked, Pang De and Jia Xu, who had been seeing to the army's business, came over to me as well.
"Oh, right! I heard you tried to stop Ding Yuan's soldiers from looting in Luoyang? That's dangerous — take me with you from now on."
Ma Chao was venting her frustration at having been unable to follow me to Luoyang because she'd been commanding the soldiers in raising the camp.
"Indeed, my lord. Having General Yan Xing escort you alone is far too dangerous."
Pang De, too, earnestly advised that I had been in danger.
"I'm sorry. But if I hadn't stopped them, the damage would have been far worse."
"And how did your visit fare, my lord?"
At Jia Xu's question, I scratched my head and answered.
"Minister Wang Yun hails from the same province as Ding Yuan, so he refused to help me. Instead, I struck up a friendship with Colonel of the Vanguard Cao Cao, and she's agreed to introduce me to someone."
"...I see. I had anticipated as much."
Fa Yan, too, had tried his hand at persuading Wang Yun, but with Ding Yuan being a fellow countryman of the old minister and Han Yeong being the son of a man who had once risen in rebellion against the state, the effort had evidently gone nowhere.
"Then who might this person be — the one the Colonel will introduce you to?"
"Colonel of the Central Army, Yuan Shao."
She had been a close aide of the late Grand General He Jin, a friend of Cao Cao's, and the devoted daughter of the illustrious Runan Yuan clan — one of the great families that had produced Three Excellencies for four consecutive generations. When her adoptive mother passed away, she had resigned her office and kept vigil at the grave for six years, taking upon herself her late father's share as well, displaying a filial devotion so intense it bordered on excess — and through it had formed ties with countless guests and retainers.
Building on that reputation for filial piety, and armed with her outstanding ability and charisma, she had woven a wide web of connections within the court and commanded a power base that did not lag far behind Ding Yuan's, even as he busied himself consolidating his position.
"I see. A Colonel of the Central Army would be a great asset when it comes to the court's connections."
"We'll know the details once we meet her."
Only Cao Cao had taken a liking to me. I had never so much as met Yuan Shao, so I had no way of knowing what she thought of me. Whether she would lend me her aid or not was something I would only learn face to face. Until then, I decided, I would keep quiet and lie low so as not to put anyone on their guard.
However —
Two days later, Ding Yuan came marching into my camp with his personal guard in tow.