The Return (4)
A woman was making a tour of inspection through Chang'an, her attendants at her side.
Every time she passed, merchants and pedestrians alike twisted around for one more glimpse of her face, and even married men with families waiting at home felt their hearts stir against their will.
It was no exaggeration — she was simply as lovely as a fairy descended from the heavens.
Hers was a beauty she could have lived off for the rest of her days, a woman who seemed to have stepped straight out of a celestial painting.
This was Diaochan — adopted daughter of Wang Yun, and the woman celebrated as the First Beauty of the Capital.
At Wang Yun's request, Diaochan had followed Liu Xie to Chang'an.
There were three reasons.
The first was that Ding Yuan's army — its true colors bared, no different now from a horde of brigands — had ended up seizing Luoyang, and its soldiers plundered the populace at will; it was only a matter of time before they turned to violating wives and daughters.
And that would have held for Diaochan as well — the bearer of the capital's supreme beauty, praised by men and women alike. She would have been no exception.
Foolish as it was, Wang Yun — the very man who had lent Ding Yuan his support — judged that he could no longer protect his adopted daughter, and so sent her to Chang'an together with Liu Xie, newly enfeoffed as the Prince of Fufeng.
The second reason was to attend Liu Xie, who was departing for an unfamiliar post as the Prince of Fufeng.
Unable to smuggle the Emperor himself out of Ding Yuan's clutches, they had managed to spirit away only Liu Xie — and she was the hope of the Han dynasty.
Having spent her life within the imperial palace, the girl was sorely unprepared for the duties of a vassal prince, so Wang Yun entrusted her care to Diaochan.
Adopted by Wang Yun in her childhood, Diaochan was clever, accomplished in music and dance, and even passably skilled in the martial arts — a beauty of many talents.
Serving as an attendant and aiding someone's work, too, came naturally to her; she had years of experience helping with Wang Yun's own affairs.
And the last reason was...
Wang Yun had asked her to look into Han Yeong.
It had been at Cao Cao's urging that Liu Xie was placed in Han Yeong's hands, but Wang Yun wanted to know more about the man himself.
His own misjudgment in backing Ding Yuan had shaken the very foundations of the state, yet he remained a man so wedded to integrity and rectitude that he needed grounds to break free of his own prejudices.
And so he had begged Diaochan to investigate how Han Yeong governed his people.
He himself could not leave Luoyang, so he meant to borrow his adopted daughter's eyes to correct his own errors and biases.
As she made her rounds of Chang'an, Diaochan was inwardly astonished by the public order and benevolent governance on display.
'...They're smiling.'
Diaochan had grown up in Luoyang, the capital where the Emperor dwelt, and she had watched time and again as the common people suffered under the feuding of the Ten Attendants and the Clear Stream faction.
Living in a city of luxury, and yet destitute and starving — she had seen such citizens more times than she could count. Their faces were drained of life, their complexions darkened by nothing but the constant dread of when calamity might next sweep them up.
But this place was different.
The people here were not living in riches, yet they looked thoroughly happy.
This was the Yong Province region, lying close to Liang Province, where unease over the foreign tribes should have weighed on every heart — and yet the people seemed to trust the soldiers who kept the peace, deeply and without reservation.
Theft did break out now and then, but the guards responded so swiftly that no harm came of it, and their strict punishments settled the public mind at ease.
It was the complete opposite of Luoyang, where the people feared and loathed the corrupt, venal army of the central government.
'...It seems Father misjudged, this time at least.'
Unlike Wang Yun — whose pursuit of rectitude and integrity, however well-meant, had made him seem hidebound — Diaochan, shaped by the life she had led before being taken in as an adopted daughter, kept her focus fixed squarely on the common people.
Perhaps that was why she regarded Han Yeong favorably.
One only had to look at the state of his governance to know how generously he cared for his people.
Beyond that, she had seen him kneel before the terrified, trembling Liu Xie to swear his loyalty and give her courage — the deeds of a man who could truly be called a faithful subject of Han.
Outwardly, Han Yeong had crushed rebel armies and defeated Dong Zhuo, yet the prejudice against him — a frontier warlord, and the blood of a traitor at that — meant he won little support for it.
Had anyone so much as tried to learn about him, the Emperor would never have been stolen away by Ding Yuan.
Watching the daily life of the people had made Diaochan personally curious about Han Yeong, and she requested a private audience.
But...
Time and again, Han Yeong refused her, citing official duties.
To be sure, it was hardly strange for a mere maid to be turned away — but for Diaochan, who held no small confidence in her own looks, the experience was a genuinely novel one.
Being refused an audience was more than enough to kindle a fresh wave of curiosity in her.
In Luoyang, the sons of officialdom who had fallen for her had piled up like mountains — so why did this man keep pushing her away when she only tried to approach?
She had come bearing Wang Yun's secret orders, yet her curiosity about Han Yeong only deepened by the day.
After returning to Chang'an, I had spent whatever hours I could spare visiting Liu Xie, building rapport and trust and tending to her state of mind, while the administrative work stacked up — and so a little time slipped past.
Yan Xing and Xu Rong, who had held their troops in ambush against a possible pursuit, drove off the White Wave Bandits — who, rather than Ding Yuan's army, had attempted a surprise attack on Hedong Commandery — and returned without loss.
According to their report, the scouts' words had proven true: Ding Yuan had roped in Zhang Yan, chieftain of the Black Mountain Bandits, and Guo Tai, leader of the White Wave Bandits — both old acquaintances of his — to swell his forces.
Guo Tai, the bandit who had built the White Wave Bandits out of the Yellow Turbans, seemed to have a greed with no bottom to it; even after receiving an official post, word was that he still fleeced the commoners every chance he got.
'Before I go after those bastards, I'll need to deal with the man behind them — Dong Zhuo — first.'
The frigid north wind had already driven the cold down from the north, and now winter had arrived in earnest — snow had begun to fall.
The frost-hardened earth lay buried beneath a blanket of white, until marching an army over it became all but impossible.
Just as planned, I had settled on a policy of drilling the troops for as long as the ground lay snow-covered.
Now and then Diaochan requested an audience on personal business, but mindful of my unpleasant memories of Wang Yun and wary of any interlocking scheme, I kept her at arm's length for the time being.
'Setting Wang Yun aside entirely, now is hardly the time to go losing my head over the First Beauty of the Capital.'
Then, as on any other day, Pang De came to find me while I sat buried in the backlog at my desk.
Work had been swallowing me whole lately, so I had left a single request in her hands.
"...You're here? How's Ma Chao doing?"
"It appears that what happened in the recent battle has left her unsettled in mind and body, my lord."
"I knew it..."
Worried by how worn Ma Chao had looked since our return to Chang'an, I had advised her to rest and recover for a while.
But just in case, I had also asked Pang De to keep a close eye on her.
'So even with the rest I prescribed, her mind and body remain unsettled...'
"The reason?"
"She seems to believe it was her own fault that she failed to take Ding Yuan's head in the last battle and had to fall back, my lord. She's been blaming herself terribly for it."
At the worry threaded through Pang De's voice, I let out a long, deep sigh.
"I told her not to dwell on it..."
The last battle did end with our army withdrawing — but if you set aside the partial matters, like Ma Chao's injury and the losses among the Xiliang cavalry, it could hardly be called a defeat.
True, we had missed our chance to take the Son of Heaven into our grasp thanks to Lu Bu's wild charge and Dong Zhuo's resurgence, but the campaign had not been without its gains.
In the end, we had built friendly ties with Cao Cao and Yuan Shao — the two who would one day rule the Central Plains and Hebei — and we had won Xu Rong in the field, once one of the finest generals in Dong Zhuo's army.
And there was Liu Xie as well, who could become a great political asset if we drew her to our side — perhaps even a symbol for the coalition.
We had gained much, and our losses in the fighting had been lighter than Ding Yuan's; by no stretch could it be called a defeat.
If anything, you might call it a draw.
Honestly — our discord-sowing ruse and the fire attack had both succeeded, and even outnumbered we had held the winning hand. Who could have guessed that Lu Bu, struck from the army's rolls or so we'd heard, would defy military orders and come bursting out with a few dozen horsemen?
Even Jia Xu, who kept her composure through everything, had been caught off guard in that moment.
If Ma Chao bore any blame for the lost battle, then I shared in it too — for wracking my brains over countermeasures against Lu Bu and failing to react quickly, dithering when I should have acted.
Which is to say, it was no one's fault at all.
While I was lost in thoughts of the battle, Pang De went on.
"You did urge her to rest and recover, my lord, but as of now General Ma Chao goes out to the training grounds at dawn and does not return until late in the evening. Her brothers have pleaded with her, but she pays them no heed whatsoever."
The Ma siblings had begged her as well, warning that pushing herself might make her wound flare up again — to no avail, Pang De said.
Since her relationship with Ma Chao had mended, Pang De occasionally bickered with her over their clashing temperaments — but beneath it all, she was genuinely worried for the woman.
It was the same with her soldiers; for all her stern, cool bearing, Pang De quietly and kindly looked after the people around her.
"Good work. I'll see her myself and have a word with Ma Chao."
"Yes, my lord. Then, with your leave..."
With her business concluded, Pang De bowed and withdrew, and I set my work aside and sank for a while into thoughts of Ma Chao.
'...With all the business over Liu Xie of late, and the backlog on top of it, I haven't once managed to see Ma Chao alone.'
As far as I knew, Ma Chao had never once lost to anyone back in Liang Province.
And of all the opponents for her first battle since venturing into the Central Plains, it had to be Lu Bu — the acknowledged strongest warrior of the Three Kingdoms, at least as the Romance told it.
The two had one thing in common: each had come within a hair's breadth of killing Cao Cao, and both were rated in the highest terms on every side.
Cao Cao herself, who had been there for it, went so far as to rank Ma Chao on equal footing with Lu Bu.
Indeed, it was Zhang Fei who had traded ferocious blows with Lu Bu for a hundred rounds and more at Hulao Pass — and it was Ma Chao who later fought him dead even from dawn to dusk.
But that was a Ma Chao long past her physical prime, tempered by battlefield experience beyond anything her younger self had known — not the girl of today, who had not yet even reached her twentieth year.
However convinced Ma Chao might be that she had grown stronger than her counterpart in the original history, a loss here was no shame.
'I should go see her tomorrow.'
Looking after the bodies and minds of one's generals was a duty a lord had to attend to with the most meticulous care.
As I mulled over how to lift Ma Chao's gloomy spirits, I glanced out through the window.
That was when the servants at work outside caught my eye.
"Hold on. That's..."
There it was — the white menace that every man who has ever served in an army comes to despise.
To an adult — above all, to one who had faithfully discharged his duty of national defense — it was nothing but an object of loathing, a white burden to be shoveled and swept away. To young children, though, it became a plaything for shaking off the winter doldrums.
The sight of it brought old memories surging back.
'...If it's that, wouldn't it go some way toward lifting Ma Chao's spirits?'
With a way to comfort her at last in hand, I threw myself at the backlog and cleared it as fast as I could — and two days later, in the early hours of the morning, I set my steps toward Ma Chao's home.