Provocation (2)
Ding Yuan made it back to his own camp with his rage still bottled up — but there, unable to hold the humiliation Han Yeong had heaped upon him one moment longer, he brought his fist smashing down on the table.
CRASH—!!
"That damned bastard!!"
Old and decrepit though his body had grown, he remained every inch the general who had once held the front line against foreign tribes, and the raw strength behind the blow was enough to cave the table straight into the floor.
"Why did you hold me back!!"
Ding Yuan rounded on Zhang Yang, eyes brimming with resentment. Stung to the quick by the insulting words of a stripling decades his junior, he had all but spat the shout in the eunuch's face.
"Had a quarrel broken out there, General, you yourself would not have walked away unscathed."
As befitted the eunuch who had once gripped the Han court's power in the palm of his hand, Zhang Yang was a consummate reader of the air. Had Ding Yuan actually bared his blade in that hall, it would have spiraled into all-out war with Han Yeong — and his own neck might well have been forfeit with it.
'...I cannot quite decide whether I ought to count it a blessing that I went along.'
Han Yeong, fresh from the frontier, could not possibly know the face or frame of a man who had spent his entire life serving in Luoyang — which was precisely why Zhang Yang had felt free to tag along and fix the young general's countenance in his memory. Though, as it turned out, had he not gone, it might have been Ding Yuan who came to grief.
"There is no other way. This Han Yeong is your true enemy, General."
The hand of friendship extended to the young man had been severed with a single stroke; nothing remained now but war.
"...Of course. He refused my mercy — I shall see him punished for it, without fail."
With eyes gone cold as drawn steel, Ding Yuan fed the fire of his fury at the man who had repaid his magnanimity with curses.
He had already funneled the wealth gleaned through Zhang Yang's hidden fortune into largesse for the army's officers and men, and the soldiers — left unpaid by the state for longer than any of them cared to remember — had flooded straight into his command, swearing their loyalty on the spot. The bulk of the regular troops that had once answered to the Grand General now answered to him.
A handful of key officials, fenced off by Yuan Shao and the intimidating spread of her connections, had yet to be brought over — but with more gold to spread about, that, too, was merely a question of time.
"It is very nearly time, I believe, to set that in motion."
At Zhang Yang's lowered voice, Ding Yuan realized they were treading on the deepest of secrets and dropped his own to match.
"...You mean — the enthronement of a new emperor?"
The plan Zhang Yang nursed was to first drive overwhelming military authority into Ding Yuan's hands, then use that very power to depose Emperor Liu Bian and Empress Dowager He and set Liu Xie upon the throne in their place. The Ten Attendants had intended from the very first to push Liu Xie onto the seat of the Son of Heaven; this was nothing more than the next stroke of that same design.
If the new emperor owed his throne to Ding Yuan's own two hands, then no man in Luoyang — before or since — would hold power to rival his. With the Clear Stream faction's cooperation, the seizure of both military and civil authority was already mostly complete; the moment was ripe.
To be sure, the instant his ambition to swap out the Son of Heaven came to light, the Clear Stream men — Wang Yun chief among those who had already been stabbed in the back once — would turn from allies into enemies. But he had already sunk a small fortune into folding the Grand General's headquarters troops into his own host, and command of the capital's soldiers was his.
Combined with the army of Bingzhou, his strength crested toward a staggering seventy thousand. Beyond that, Bingzhou itself held the great hordes of the Black Mountain Bandits and the White Wave Bandits, who would come running at a single summons. And should any officer decline to bless their design — one need only dispatch an assassin in the dead of night and be quietly done with it.
"In a few days' time, the military power of Luoyang will lie within the General's grasp. When it does, send out the invitations for a banquet."
"...Very well. It shall be done as you say."
In the theater of Ding Yuan's mind, the play already ran to its end: once Luoyang's military power was his entire and undivided, he would bare his ambition in that banquet hall — and the first head to be struck down would be that of Han Yeong, the man who had dared to shame him.
I was still in the midst of drafting countermeasures against Ding Yuan — with whom relations had turned thoroughly hostile — when Cao Cao came to find me.
"So, Benchu says she wants to meet you. Off you go, then."
"Understood."
Under Cao Cao's guidance I was ushered inside, and there I met Yuan Shao.
"A pleasure to receive you. Mengde has spoken of you."
A beauty whose thick golden hair gleamed like gold run molten greeted me with a broad, warm smile. Yuan Shao, Benchu. The woman who had served as the Grand General's right hand under He Jin, and who had taken the army's helm upon his death. Many were those who followed her, won over by her character and her exceptional insight.
In the Romance, Yuan Shao went down in memory as an incompetent lord — so paralyzed by indecision that he let the golden opportunity of an age slip through his fingers time and again, beaten at Guandu by Cao Cao despite an overwhelming superiority of strength, and finally ruined outright by the failure to name a proper successor. But that was the Romance cutting her down to size; in the pages of the official history, Yuan Shao was a leader of considerable ability.
To be sure, she had turned a deaf ear to capable strategists like Tian Feng and Ju Shou, and it was true that — on the counsel of Guo Tu, the worst advisor of the age, whose predictions sported a zero percent hit rate — she had thrown away the fierce generals Zhang He and Gao Lan, two of the Four Pillars of Hebei.
And yet, once the anti-Dong Zhuo coalition dissolved, she — unlike her Romance counterpart — had begun with no proper stronghold to her name at all. When Han Fu tried to swindle her, she answered with a stratagem of fomented rebellion, turning Gongsun Zan loose on him and tearing Jizhou from under Han Fu's feet; stronghold and a wealth of talent alike fell into her hands. She then toppled Gongsun Zan — the hegemon of You Province, who rode at the head of his White Horse Cavalry and loomed as one of the mightiest powers of the early age — and made herself master of all Hebei. As a final flourish, she had Gongsun Zan's severed head delivered to Cao Cao with a warning that she was next, an act of breathtaking audacity that turned the blood to ice.
Concubine-born though she was, this Yuan Shao — armed with political acumen and a sound eye for judgment — stood, to the Cao Cao of the official history, as something even more of a destined rival than Liu Bei had ever been.
'Her only failing was that she faltered when the moment of decision came.'
While I was still turning all this over, the lady herself came forward to greet me with a smile.
"I am Yuan Shao, Colonel of the Central Army."
"And I am Han Yeong, General Who Pacifies the West."
"Your renown has long preceded you, General; I have heard a great deal. It is a joy to meet you at last, and in the flesh."
Befitting an official seasoned in the politics of the capital, there was not a seam showing anywhere in her etiquette; her speech and carriage alike overflowed with cultivation — the very grace of an accomplished daughter of a great house. Nothing could have stood in starker contrast to the swaggering lout I had crossed not long ago, forever trumpeting himself the rightful heir of the Runan Yuans.
'So this is the measure of a true noble house?'
Where Yuan Shu had offered nothing but insolence propped up by his family's four generations of Excellencies, Yuan Shao radiated a pressure that was somehow gentle even in its weight. And perhaps to lend that weight its full measure, generals exuding a rugged, unshakable presence stood at guard on either side of her. I could make a fair guess as to who they were.
'Yan Liang and Wen Chou, most likely.'
"I hear you are at odds with the Commandant of Martial Valor."
Where Cao Cao had plied me with questions about myself, Yuan Shao moved straight to the heart of the matter.
"I am. We clashed over the way he bleeds his people dry — and over that, he and I became enemies."
"Ding Yuan, the Commandant, is purchasing the officials and officers of the Grand General's headquarters with mountains of wealth from who knows where, and connections to match, folding them one and all into his own command."
She hid nothing of her hostility toward the man who had barred her road. From where Yuan Shao stood, Ding Yuan was galling past bearing. She had succeeded in sweeping the Ten Attendants and their eunuch brood from the palace and smothering the coup in its cradle — only for Ding Yuan to snatch up the Emperor's sacred person, leaving her standing shoved to the rear. Call it the seat of foremost merit lost to a single instant's misstep.
Having bolted his position together overnight, Ding Yuan had shaken down the estates of Turbid Stream eunuchs and the families tied to them, scattering the spoils among officers and men of talent alike. The soldiers — whom the court, under the Ten Attendants' tyranny, had not deigned to treat properly for years — lapped up the honey he poured out and slid, without ever feeling the slope, into being his lapdogs. A covetous old relic drunk on riches and rank he might be, yet he understood the hearts of men who had suffered on the frontier and been repaid with neglect far better than the court's own bureaucrats, who knew nothing but armchair debate.
'...Then who is it, I wonder, standing behind Ding Yuan?'
The way his own subordinates had smirked when he was insulted to his face made it hard to credit that he was loved. He was far too blunt and simple a creature to have weighed his men's hardships and rewarded them of his own accord. And yet here he was, displaying the same slippery cunning as Dong Zhuo — and the question would not stop gnawing at me.
"With the Flying General of Bingzhou at its head, his military strength is formidable indeed. Apart from yourself, General, who led an army out of Liang Province, he is the one warlord in the land against whom no one finds it easy to stand."
As matters stood, Ding Yuan had forged a great host of some seventy thousand — thirty thousand Bingzhou troops piled atop the soldiers inherited from He Jin. For my own part, what with the lingering aftershocks of the war fought at Didao, the need to keep watch against foreign incursions, and Dong Zhuo still not yet dealt with, I had brought a force of only about thirty thousand.
"For the present, I have no intention of crossing blades with him. There's no proper pretext, after all."
"A wise course. If you will buy us the time, I shall bend every effort to persuade the officials of the court and build a tide of goodwill toward you within the government, General."
Just as Wang Yun had told me, the court's officials refused to so much as grant me an audience, Fa Yan's introduction notwithstanding — not when I was the son of Han Sui, a man who had once raised the banner of revolt.
'Come to think of it, had Dong Zhuo never bared a traitor's heart and served the Han with stubborn loyalty, he might well have ended up painted with my brush.'
Not that my case rested on the prejudice against my home region alone — there was also, shall we say, my father's prior record of treason to account for. Yuan Shao, on the other hand — concubine-born though she might be — had her personal renown, the weight of the illustrious Runan Yuan name behind her, and the standing of a Clear Stream pillar at He Jin's side; even the most exacting of the court's officials would lend her their ears.
"Then while you, Colonel, labor upon the officials, I shall see to it that time is bought — time enough that Ding Yuan cannot finish swallowing the administration whole."
"Yes. Until I have a countermeasure in place, I leave the checking of Ding Yuan in your hands."
With that, Yuan Shao withdrew toward the palace, her twin guardians at her flanks, and Cao Cao — who had watched the entire exchange in silence — tossed me a wave of the hand before following her out.
Escorted by Pang De and Yan Xing, I made my way back to the camp.
'...The plan I drew up at the start has come badly unstitched.'
The plan had been simple enough: if the Emperor came to my side, I would shelter him, and through my connection with Fa Yan I would build a political footing firm enough to rebuild the Han from within. But with history itself rewritten, one variable after another kept springing up to snarl the thread. The Emperor had fallen into Ding Yuan's grasp — and the man, for butchering the leadership of the Ten Attendants and rescuing the young Emperor and the Prince of Chenliu besides, now enjoyed the rock-solid backing of the Clear Stream as well.
'For the Clear Stream, the state comes first and the people come after...'
To Wang Yun and the scholar-officials, it seemed, a Ding Yuan faithful to the nation — minor lapses and all — was the better bet over the son of a man who had rebelled and then come over. Hence my shaking hands with Yuan Shao, a contingency no plan of mine had ever contained.
'Somehow or other, I'll make it work.'
We had already strayed far from the history I once knew. Dong Zhuo lived on, yet his power lay in rubble — and the role he once played had been stuffed, willy-nilly, with me. From here on, the wisest course was to gather every talent with a keen eye and every general with a lethal arm, and brace for whatever came next.
With that thought, I returned to the army camp.
In the days that followed, Yuan Shao's help opened door after door — I met one official after another, and faces at court began to grow familiar. But a few days on, Ding Yuan summoned the senior officials of Luoyang and proclaimed a great banquet. And upon that summons list, in bold and shameless ink, sat the name of the man he was at open daggers drawn with: me.
'Don't tell me this bastard... He means to do, step for step, exactly what Dong Zhuo did?'