Exterminating Dong Zhuo (4)
With a traitor working from within, Dong Zhuo's army had dug in for a last stand — and was beaten without offering so much as a semblance of real resistance.
Zhang Xiu's secret collaboration let us take Anding with ease, and I promptly gave my soldiers and officers their orders: Dong Zhuo was to be captured alive, whatever the cost.
The pig made to bolt on Red Hare yet again, but between the net we had drawn tight around Anding and the tide of soldiers pouring in from every direction, he got nowhere at all. The peerless stallion caught its legs in the chains carried by the men forming the encirclement and went down hard, and Dong Zhuo was hurled from the saddle, tumbling across the dirt like a sack of grain.
"Don't you dare mock me-!! Me, of all people!!"
Swinging his massive iron mace, Dong Zhuo fought on, caving in the skulls of any soldier who came within reach.
His power might have been broken, but he was still the same fierce general who had once stood on the frontier and carved his reputation out of barbarian tribes. As if to prove the saying that a man driven to the brink summons strength beyond the human, the soldiers were hurled back time and again by his furious valor — but while they dug in and weathered the storm, my uncle Ma Teng and the Ma siblings came charging in and dragged the man down.
Dong Zhuo's remaining commanders likewise tried some manner of resistance, but the gulf in both leadership and fighting strength was simply too vast; they were seized without putting up anything worth the name of a fight.
Once I had entered the city, I gathered the captives before me in a single place.
"You are Zhang Xiu, I take it."
I looked down at the commander who had stepped forward first and knelt on one knee before me.
"I am, my lord."
Zhang Xiu's expression stayed flat as stone as he knelt before the man who was, in every sense, his uncle's slayer.
Going by what Jia Xu told me, he does harbor a grudge over his uncle's death — but not one he'd stake his own life on.
She had further remarked that while he possessed a sense of fidelity, his instinct for self-preservation ran stronger still — the kind of man who, if his life hung in the balance, would fold up his grudge and bend the knee without a second thought.
Cold-blooded, in a sense. But as a means of surviving this treacherous age of chaos, who could blame him? Look at Xiahou Ba: the moment the Gaoping Tombs Incident saw his clan exterminated root and branch, he felt the noose tighten around his own neck and fled to Shu — the very state that had slain his father. Granted, the presence of blood relatives in Shu weighed heavily in that choice.
"...Good. I am truly grateful that you set aside the grievances of the past and came over to my side. Your request — your aunt's safety — will be honored without fail, and I will not lay a finger on your family either. You shall be rewarded separately as well."
"Thank you, my lord!! I will devote myself to your service body and soul!"
Grateful for treatment far kinder than he had braced for, Zhang Xiu bowed his head low and poured out his thanks.
By all rights, the officers of Dong Zhuo's army should have been put to the sword to a man. But he had buried his grudge, crossed over of his own accord, and rendered real merit besides — sparing him was only natural.
Zhang Xiu only looks unremarkable because Jia Xu eclipses him. In the official history, he was one of the more capable warriors in Dong Zhuo's military family. His martial skill would likely surpass that of the former-warlord commanders.
Of course, if he ever tried to knife me in the back the way the warlords who flocked to Dong Zhuo did, I would kill him.
"Unhand me!! You bastards-!!"
Dong Zhuo, face twisted into that of a demon, was dragged in bound hand and foot, alongside Cao Qinglong and the other warlords, who wore expressions of hollow despair. True to his porcine nature, the man had been trussed up as tight as livestock, and he gnashed his teeth, radiating murderous intent from every pore.
Come to think of it, this was the first time Dong Zhuo and I had ever laid eyes on each other.
Defeat after defeat, and he's still every bit as bloated as his original-history self?
It was likewise the first time Dong Zhuo had faced me — but with me seated at the head of the hall, he seemed to work out who I was, and sent a venomous glare my way.
"...So you're the one."
"...They tell me you sank into despair after losing to me — yet like the beast you are, you don't show so much as a trace of haggardness?"
"Why, you-!!"
The instant the mockery left my mouth, Dong Zhuo heaved his enormous bulk, trying to hurl himself at me — but his bound body was pinned fast in the soldiers' grip, and he could not move an inch. The helplessness of being taken without ever landing a proper blow, combined with the sight of Han Yeong gazing down at him in open contempt, sent the man over the edge; his eyes spat a frost-blue gleam of pure murder.
"I don't like that look in your eyes."
The murderous glare displeased me, so I turned my head and gave my orders to the soldier standing at my side.
"Gouge out one of Dong Zhuo's eyes. Shatter every one of his limbs. Then sever every last tendon, so that he can never again lift a hand in violence."
At a command of such cruelty that the usual me would never have dreamed of it, the soldier went white for a moment — but he soon hardened his face and carried out my instructions to the letter.
"GRAAAAAAGH-!!"
THUD!!
"Shut it."
As Dong Zhuo, one eye now gone, vomited up a last, desperate scream and made to threaten me, Ma Chao — standing at my side — cracked him across the back of the skull with her spear shaft. The man pitched forward, smashed his forehead against the ground, and went limp.
It might have looked pitiable, had the subject been anyone else. As it was, I felt not one shred of pity. If my heart had its way, I would have torn him limb from limb right there, but...
That part was not my role to play.
The fate of Dong Zhuo and his whole clique had been settled on my way here.
Dragged in after him came the hands and feet of his regime — Dong Huang and Niu Fu, along with the rest of his commanders. And behind them, the warlord generals, Cao Qinglong at their head.
"Y-you traitorous dog-!!"
"How could you do this?! You who basked in our lord's heavenly grace!!"
They hurled abuse at Zhang Xiu, denouncing the man who had betrayed them all.
Zhang Xiu, however, as though refusing to hear a single word of it, kept his mouth clamped shut like a clam and turned his face away from their wailing.
Meanwhile, I faced the former warlords who had turned on our army.
"Cao Qinglong. Why did you betray me?"
At my question, he chewed at his lips as if nursing some burning grievance, then spat his accusation at me.
"Didn't you seize our estates on the excuse that we hadn't thrown ourselves into the war against Dong Zhuo's army?! And then, instead of giving us real command, you snubbed us and treated us like dogs!!"
Cao Qinglong must have understood that having betrayed me, nothing remained for him but death — his voice rose to a shout.
"Seizing your property, yes — that much is true. Mistreating you... I have no memory of any such thing."
I had confiscated their assets purely as punishment for failing to follow their lord's orders faithfully. And since there was no telling when such men might turn their cloaks, I had simply declined to elevate them to positions of real authority — though I had, in fairness, assigned them troops and given them duties to perform.
A few of the warlords, this one included, had never raised arms against the state the way the rebels we crushed before had, but they did carry records of wringing ruinous taxes from the common people to fatten their own purses. They had come to surrender first, so I had accepted them — but with no sign whatsoever of repentance, they were men marked for purging sooner or later.
"...Well. If that's how you saw it, then there is nothing more to be said."
When I raised my hand, the soldiers stepped up beside the warlord generals.
Those who betray must die. There was nothing else for it.
"Behead these traitors. Every last one of them."
"Yes, my lord!!"
At my signal, the Liangzhou soldiers hauled off the traitorous warlord generals, every man of them, and took their heads.
"HIIK-!!"
Dong Zhuo's officers, who until that very moment had been heaping curses on Zhang Xiu, watched the traitors meet their end, grasped exactly what awaited themselves, and snapped their mouths shut like clams.
Every talented man worth offering a commission to, apart from Zhang Xiu, had already died at Didao. As for the rest — left alive, they would be nothing but refuse preying on the common people. And yet, cutting down this lot was not my role to play either.
Because there are those who carry a hatred and rage toward these men far deeper than my own, buried in the very bottom of their hearts.
"Sever their tendons as well, same as Dong Zhuo. Let them never again have the strength to do harm."
"S-spare us, I beg you!!"
"We only ever did as our lord commanded!!"
The very men who, moments before, had been denouncing Zhang Xiu for treachery now scraped together the most pathetic excuses as death closed in — they had merely followed orders, they claimed. As if their own hands were clean of it all.
I knew better. These were the men who had rushed to the front of the line to carry out Dong Zhuo's every directive, the men who had savored their massacres. Far from a shred of sympathy, they earned from me nothing but fury and contempt.
Bastards like these were the very worst of the lot.
Disgust crawled up my throat, and I turned my head away, declining to watch. Before long, screams of utter despair — the keening of slaughtered beasts — rang out through the hall.
A few days later.
Having instructed my soldiers to hand out relief grain and, along with it, deliver a single message to the people, I loaded Dong Zhuo and his family onto the cart carrying the condemned.
The beasts, their tendons severed, could offer no resistance as the soldiers led them aboard. As for the men who had so recently howled for their lives — days without a proper meal seemed to have drained even the strength to spit curses at me.
"...Where are you taking us?"
"You'll see when we get there."
Granted, this lot was the reason our army's march on Luoyang had been held up. But there was no shortage of people whose grudge against Dong Zhuo ran far deeper than mine — and I had judged, privately, that killing him by my own hand simply wouldn't be right.
Escorting the condemned, we made for the main square of Anding Commandery.
There is more than one way to govern the hearts of a people. Handing out relief grain to win their favor and trust is the classic method; another is to make them strike down, with their own two hands, the mortal foe who stole their very fields from them.
I summoned to that square the people of Anding's towns and counties — the ones who had lost so very much to Dong Zhuo's pillaging and slaughter. In their hands they carried every manner of weapon: thick clubs and sharpened bamboo spears, farming implements and kitchen knives, even fist-sized stones.
"...Y-you. Don't tell me you intend to..."
Dong Zhuo had worked out what I meant to do, and the color drained from his face until it was a sickly white. His kin and underlings, too, felt chills crawl unbidden up their spines at the people's menacing ferocity.
"Do as you please."
The instant my permission fell, the people surged upon Dong Zhuo and the other prisoners all at once, stones and farm implements in hand.
Those who had suffered so long under Dong Zhuo's army's atrocities began to repay every humiliation — butchering the beasts who had robbed them of the ones they held dear.
Heads shattered by clubs. Flesh torn apart by sickles. Bones pulverized under stones.
CRUNCH!! SQUELCH!!
Bone-chilling sounds, driving straight into the ear, echoed across the marketplace.
"GRAAAAAAGH-!!!"
"You animals, worse than any beast!! Just kill me already-!!!"
...And just where is that dog howling from?
Those bastards had forfeited any right to choose their own deaths.
A mercy killing was far more than the likes of them deserved, for the sins they had heaped upon the people.
Thoroughly ignoring the pleas that mingled with the desperate screams, I quietly watched the carnage unfold.
Little by little, the screams warped into bestial howls, degenerating into sounds no human throat should make. Those who witnessed the gruesome sight might knit their brows — but never once did they pity the men before them.
Sin demands punishment; that is the way of the world. And so this was the end that befitted Dong Zhuo and his men, whose atrocities had earned them the wrath of every soul under heaven.
Spewing out their pent-up rage and grief, the people swung their weapons without mercy, passing judgment at last upon the beasts who wore human skin.