Values (2)
While the camps of the other lords seethed with bloodshot urgency, every man driving himself to prepare for a march out and a chance at glory, our own encampment held nothing more warlike than a modest banquet celebrating the victory.
"Haha!! You're a damn good fighter, you know that? Here — take a cup!!"
"······Thank you."
Zhang Fei, renowned as a prodigious drinker even in the Romance, had clearly put away a considerable amount; a deep, contented smile hung at the corners of her mouth and her cheeks were faintly flushed. She threw back her liquor with hearty gusto, then thrust a freshly filled cup toward Ma Chao, the hero of the battle at Sishui Pass.
Ma Chao, a little nettled by such unreserved familiarity, accepted the drink all the same, forcing out a stiff, awkward politeness as she did. She had watched Zhang Fei hurl enemies skyward during the siege at Sishui Pass, and had guessed — and grudgingly admitted — that the woman was every bit as strong as she was.
"You are Lady Guan Yu, if I'm not mistaken? Your strike the other day was magnificent."
"Your handling of the bow was every bit as impressive. The mere sight of it was enough to send a chill down one's spine."
Pang De and Guan Yu, stiff in their speech as their temperaments demanded, were nonetheless getting along in their own fashion, trading praise of each other's martial feats. A surprising pairing, when one recalled that far in the future the two would cross blades in a duel to the death — and that Pang Hui, Pang De's son, would butcher Guan Yu's descendants in Shu to the last soul. Without anyone intending it, the very people fated to tear at each other's throats in some distant age were here entwined, quietly forging a friendship.
Xu Huang, for her part, had declined the banquet altogether so that she could keep watch on the flies buzzing around Liu Xie. True to a woman who begrudged even the time spent pledging her loyalty, she was devoting herself to her duties with almost excessive rigor.
Liu Bei and I had withdrawn to a table of our own, passing cups back and forth. I invited Cao Cao to join us, but she begged off, saying there were matters she needed to discuss with Yuan Shao.
I had asked her whether Liu Bei — a guest commander under her banner — and her sworn sisters were to be folded into our army and given troops of their own to command, and for a talent-hoarder of her legendary appetite, she had consented with surprising ease.
...But seriously, what is the deal with those ears?
Liu Bei's signature oversized ears had drawn my eye entirely of their own accord. They were long enough to be called elven without exaggeration. Had her hair been golden, she might have passed for an elf out of a Western fantasy who had wandered into Chinese robes.
"······The General Who Pacifies the West lives quite simply, I see."
Paying no mind to me as I admired her ears, Liu Bei settled herself into my tent, glanced over my belongings, and delivered her brief verdict. There was nothing to see but scattered documents and a few blades and suits of armor, so the assessment was fair enough. Most lords of any standing kept at least a few ostentatious suits of armor or ornaments on hand to broadcast their own grandeur; my quarters held nothing of the sort, so her reaction was entirely natural.
"Luxury has never much agreed with me, I'm afraid."
It wasn't for show. I meant every word.
Privately, I considered extravagance fundamentally meaningless in an age of chaos like this. Naturally I dressed well when the occasion demanded — official appearances and the like — but I had no habit of buying treasures to line my walls and please my eye. The few ornaments gracing my home were gifts from the magnates and wealthy houses of Yong Province, kept out of courtesy and nothing more. If I had money to burn on finery, I would far rather see it invested in our ailing farmland or in weapons.
At my answer, Liu Bei smiled upon me with a face steeped in warm maternal affection.
"I see! How admirable!!"
Unlike her lifelong rival Cao Cao, Liu Bei wore her heart on her sleeve.
"······And yet — what was it you wished to ask of me?"
Before she could get to whatever she had in mind, I asked her outright what this meeting was for. Given Liu Bei's temperament, it was hard to believe she had arranged the occasion simply to deepen an acquaintance.
Liu Bei, Styled Xuande
Not quite to the degree of Cao Cao, but she, too, was a figure on whom opinion was sharply divided.
In the Romance she was painted — flatteringly — as an ideal ruler whose virtue and benevolence would one day draw all the realm's people to her, even if her abilities fell short of Cao Cao's; unflatteringly, as a sentimental soul who ruined everything through misplaced affection, who couldn't hold land even when it was handed to her, and whose military talent scored a flat zero.
The original history told a rather different story.
For one thing, it was Liu Bei — not Zhang Fei — who seized and flogged the inspector dispatched by the court. In the official histories her character was less unblemished benevolence than a short, violent fuse, and she possessed genuine military talent besides, amassing a weighty string of battlefield accomplishments.
Even the Battle of Bowang Slope — her debut in the Romance, the stage on which Zhuge Liang first stepped into the spotlight — was in truth Liu Bei's own stratagem, devised and carried out single-handedly to smash Xiahou Dun and Yu Jin to pieces. And when Cao Cao invaded Xu Province, sending Liu Dai and Wang Zhong in his stead, the pair were no match at all for a war-hardened Liu Bei. So much so that she taunted them openly: "If Cao Cao himself came, that might be another matter. The likes of you are no match for me."
So in the official histories she was hardly all virtue and prestige. There was a fiery, quick-tempered streak in her, and given her entanglements with Lu Bu and the kingdom of Wu, some even suspected a sinister side.
At my question, the gaze that had seemed only gentle shifted — if only a little.
"Tell me, General Han Yeong — what are your thoughts on the Han?"
It was a question meant to sound out my heart. I answered without a moment's hesitation.
"If I speak honestly? I believe the dynasty stands on perilous ground."
"And your reason for thinking so?"
At her prompting, I laid out my reasoning step by step, citing example after example.
"Rebellion and famine, again and again, have beggared the people to the point that, unable to bear their hunger any longer, they take the road of banditry — a tragedy unfolding even as we speak. And until recently, the Han was batted about by the hands of that great evil, the Ten Attendants, unable to perform even the barest functions of a state,"
"······."
Liu Bei listened with a gravely serious expression.
"And now the Ten Attendants have been driven out, only for a frontier warlord named Ding Yuan to take the Emperor into his grip, dealing in tyranny and lawless power while the altars of state shake beneath him. One misstep, and the Son of Heaven might well have been replaced — the whole realm reduced to a puppet kingdom dancing in Ding Yuan's palm."
Of course, had it not been for Lu Bu, our army would simply have taken Ding Yuan's head and none of it would ever have come to pass — but that was water under the bridge now.
"······Then tell me, General — how do you believe this imperiled realm ought to be governed?"
The governance of the state.
She was asking me how a nation should be ruled. I gave her my answer. She seemed to have some particular reply in mind — one she hoped to hear.
"First, the traitor Ding Yuan must be driven out. Beyond that, the rotted court officials who gorge themselves on bribes for private gain while the Han teeters must be swept away, and the worthy men buried in obscurity raised up to office. That is what I believe."
Among those who still held their posts there were surely some loyal to the Emperor. But loyalty and righteousness were all they had to offer. Not one of them possessed the ability to lift a nation sliding into ruin.
...If such men existed, they wouldn't be backing Ding Yuan and going out of their way to hold me in check.
Among the worthy lying forgotten in the countryside were old ministers of Lu Zhi or Huangfu Song's caliber — men entirely capable of propping up the Han. With that thought, I continued.
"And as the old saying goes — People as Foundation — the hearts of the people are the will of Heaven. If we would set this nation at peace, we must govern for the sake of the people."
Ordinary human beings put their own safety first. Commoner or soldier, it made not the slightest difference; a state that would not protect them had no reason to exist at all.
The court's great ministers, after all, labored under one rock-solid delusion. A state, at its root, exists to restrain crime through law and let its people live in peace — and power is entrusted to the Emperor and the ministers who serve him for precisely that purpose. Yet the thinking of the present court was anchored to nothing more than the brute aim of keeping the Han from collapsing, leaving no room in it whatsoever for the people's welfare. I had learned that during the chaos of the Ten Attendants, when not one member of the Clear Stream faction — myself excepted — spared the common folk a single glance.
To put the state first while ignoring its people was a contradiction in itself — hypocrisy, pure and simple. What meaning was there in vague, abstract loyalty and noble self-sacrifice, offered up in a state that could not even protect the people right before its eyes?
It can't even manage its most basic function.
Liu Bei turned my words over in her mind for a long moment before she finally spoke.
"······I understand you perfectly."
The gravity that had settled over her face only moments before melted away; her expression brightened once more into its old gentleness.
"Forgive my endless questions. I wished to hear the considered view of the general who quelled the rebels of Liang Province and destroyed Dong Zhuo, who had savaged the people with his tyranny."
"There's no need to lay it on so thick. I'm still a green pup who hasn't even seen twenty years."
I wet my throat with the cup before me, then put my own question to Liu Bei.
"Then might I ask one of you in turn, General Liu Bei?"
"Of course. Ask me anything you like."
"As I understand it, General, you won great distinction in the Yellow Turban Rebellion only to be granted a title that honored none of it. And even that post, a corrupt inspector saw to it that you gave up."
At the mention of her past, Liu Bei's eyebrow twitched, ever so slightly.
"And yet you joined this war of your own will — a war to cut down the traitor Ding Yuan, who clutches the Han in his fist. Why?"
"······."
"For the state? Or for the people?"
A blunt question, stripped of all ceremony: the Han had done nothing for you — so what, exactly, were you fighting for?
Depending on whether the answer was the state or the people, the face I showed Liu Bei from that point on would have to change.
...If she says she fights for the Han...
...then she and I were fated to fall out one day. My own bent was to prize the people at my side, and the people at large, over any duty to the state. If ever I judged that the Han could not protect those within my fences, I would abandon the country without a second thought. And if it gained me the strength to shield the people around me, I would take in even a hated old enemy — so long as I judged her no danger. Having watched Liu Bei and Cao Cao, once as close as sisters, turn into mortal enemies over a difference of values, I needed to know exactly where Liu Bei's heart lay.
"···I······."
Only after an age of wavering — the candle flame trembling once, twice in the chill night wind — did Liu Bei's lips finally part.