How to Serve in the Army Twice
An imperial order to take the field, and my hands and feet were shaking so hard I was close to tears.
My station spared me from being ground down as a common soldier. I was to go as Campaign Marshal—commander of a field army, responsible for an entire front. That did not change the fact that I still had to go to war.
It was not, needless to say, welcome news. How had the twenty-first-century version of me died? Dragged onto a battlefield, and killed under a baptism of missiles loosed by an army of a million.
And before long, Lady Xiao was due to give birth to Teunteuni. That "before long" did not look likely to fall before the army marched, and there was no chance the war would be over before her time came.
It isn't as if Yang Jian doesn't know.
He knew perfectly well that Lady Xiao was with child. In private, it was his daughter-in-law's pregnancy; in public, the flourishing of the imperial house, the living symbol of the union between the Yang and the Xiao. Dugu Qieluo, in particular, was thoroughly pleased with the way I had conducted myself, and whenever she found an opening she poured the tale of our harmonious marriage into Yang Jian's ear. She might well have been the one person, after me, who remembered Lady Xiao's due date down to the day.
And that same man had gone and named me Campaign Marshal and ordered me to march. Even knowing her delivery was imminent, he meant to send me no matter what.
I can't refuse this.
Turn down a decision of state, weighed with care and handed down by the emperor himself, for the private reason that I wished to stay at my wife's side when she gave birth?
Devotion to wife and household makes a fine Confucian gentleman. Refusing an imperial command for their sake makes you a fucking Confucian villain. It would tank my favor with him, hard.
And so I bowed my head at once.
What I needed to show now was not Yang Guang the loving husband, but Yang Guang, Prince of Jin, obedient to the emperor's command.
I'm sorry.
At the same time, I apologized to Lady Xiao in my heart. I truly was sorry. I hadn't wanted this either. But when I thought of her safety, and of Teunteuni, soon to be born, I simply could not refuse.
The back of my head is prickling.
Even with my head bowed, Yang Jian's gaze—satisfied, and heavy with solemnity—was tickling the nape of my neck. Show so much as a flicker of reluctance or hesitation, and he might well have roared at me.
The moment I returned to the palace, I explained it to Lady Xiao. The final war for the unification of all under heaven had begun, and I had been given the grave charge of pressing upon Jiankang, capital of Chen, and taking it.
"I... I see."
Only a few hours earlier she had been sketching a happy future around the child about to be born. In an instant, she was sending her husband off to war.
Of course, the chance that a field commander and a prince of the direct imperial line would come to harm in the middle of a campaign was vanishingly close to zero. The ones in danger were the rank and file and the officers on the ground, not a Campaign Marshal who had received his authority from the emperor himself. But what wife, on hearing that her husband must march, says it will be safe enough, so go and come back well? Waiting in the palace for Teunteuni's birth put the odds of death at zero. Joining a war raised them by even a hundredth of a hundredth of a percent.
"As if command of a whole army were not already more than enough, you have been trusted with the most important role of all. That must mean His Majesty places his faith in you, my lord. This humble wife is truly proud of you."
After a brief silence, Lady Xiao bowed her head to me with a smile she had forced onto her face.
Anyone could see she was pretending to be all right, pretending to take pride in her husband's departure. I had lived with her for years. How could I fail to know?
"I will come back as quickly as I can. The peerlessly loyal and brave soldiers of great Sui will crush those frail, incompetent wretches of Chen with ease."
"If it is you, my lord, you will surely do so. His Majesty trusts you."
I drew her into my arms and promised a swift return, and she embraced me in turn, her hands trembling.
I hated myself for being unable to say, even as an empty comfort, that I would not go—that I would stay and see Teunteuni born.
Why me, of all people.
And the words the emperor trusts me burned a hole in my gut.
I still could not understand it. The Yang Guang of original history had shown off his ability whenever the chance arose, and he himself had harbored ambition, so of course he had caught Yang Jian's eye and been made Campaign Marshal. But no matter how I turned it over, I had never flaunted any ability before Yang Jian, nor shown the least hunger for honor or military merit.
I retraced my memories several times, wondering if I had slipped somewhere, and found nothing. I was certain of it. There could hardly have been another idle imperial kinsman as exemplary as I had been, another clansman so thoroughly harmless.
And yet Yang Jian had made me Campaign Marshal—and not merely that. He had laid on me the staggering charge of attacking the enemy capital itself and taking the enemy sovereign alive.
Why, of all people, give that to me.
By any common sense, wasn't glory of that sort meant for the emperor himself, or for the crown prince? Was it really all right to hand it to a man of twenty—the second son, a bare two years younger than the Crown Prince?
...
...
Ah.
I flinched before I knew it. Lady Xiao must have taken it for the heavy heart of a general on the eve of marching, because she pulled me in even tighter.
My heart was heavy, yes, but that flinch had another cause. I had realized why Yang Jian had planted me—more precisely, why he had planted a man of the Yang clan—in the post of Campaign Marshal.
Somehow, he has to justify the Yang clan's hold on the Mandate of Heaven.
He had not made me Campaign Marshal because he had taken note of my ability. He had to make even me Campaign Marshal, so that the great work of unifying all under heaven would belong to the Yang.
People of the twenty-first century remember Yang Jian, Emperor Wen of Sui, as the enlightened ruler who ended the centuries of China's division.
That memory is not wrong. He truly was the first to unify a China that had lain in pieces ever since the Western Jin collapsed in ruins—a splendid founding emperor, a unifying sovereign, the man who opened the age of peace known as the Era of Kaihuang Peace.
But unlike the people of the twenty-first century, who see him as the final victor and the hero of unification, the people of this age looked at Yang Jian with a rather delicate eye.
There's a whiff of him having gotten it for free. And it isn't nothing.
Northern Zhou, the predecessor of Sui, had been a realm ruled by the Yuwen. And Yuwen Yong, the once-in-an-age monster that clan produced, had eleven years ago—in 577—unified the north and all but locked in the unification of the world.
He had been only thirty-five then. Even supposing he were still alive, he would have been a mere forty-six. Yang Jian was forty-eight now, which made it plain enough why people had taken Yuwen Yong for the master of all under heaven. So long as Heaven did not commit some unprecedented act of sabotage, unification had been a certainty.
And then Heaven sabotaged him, and he died at thirty-six. His heir was a once-in-an-age piece of trash, and Yang Jian, grateful for the opening, usurped the throne.
In other words, Yang Jian was the man who had swallowed, in a single grand event called usurpation, every achievement Yuwen Yong had built.
Put it in an extreme analogy: Cao Cao drops dead just before the Battle of Red Cliffs, and Xiahou Dun steps up as leader.
Of course, say that where Yang Jian could hear it and he would fly into a rage. Call it a free meal or whatever you like—under Yuwen Yong, he had piled up merit on the order of Xun Yu, Guo Jia, Cheng Yu, and Cao Ren combined.
The problem was that the world still saw him as Lucky Xiahou Dun. However much merit he had earned as a subordinate, a subordinate's merit becomes his lord's achievement. That is the way of the world. And Yuwen Yong had been formidable in his own right; he had stacked up plenty of achievements that were his alone, not his men's.
Thanks to that, ever since the usurpation Yang Jian had had to live under a certain sidelong look. The look that asked whether he hadn't simply scarfed down Yuwen Yong's achievements for free. The look that said, honestly, feast on Yuwen Yong's legacy and still fail to unify the realm, and you're an idiot.
So he has to justify the Yang clan's Mandate of Heaven, one way or another.
The rise of the Yang, with Yang Jian at their head, was not a matter of having eaten Yuwen Yong's legacy for free. They had become the imperial house because the Yang possessed qualification and ability enough.
To prove it, I—a Yang—had been thrown in. Chen was indeed a frail realm that had lost its mind, but it was equally undeniable that Chen was the last gate on the road to unifying all under heaven. If I, a Yang, cut off Chen's breath, then the Yang could stand before the world and claim their Mandate without shame.
As for why Yang Jian himself did not take the field... perhaps he had judged that, until the great work of unification was done, leaving the capital was too dangerous.
...
Then why not send Yang Yong.
That, I did not know. If Yang Jian could not step forward himself, shouldn't Yang Yong have been the one to land the finishing blow on Chen?
Could it be that, having been a usurper himself, he feared that if too much merit piled onto the crown prince, the prince would start eyeing an early succession? And since I had lived as a harmless second son, had he decided that merit could pile up on me and it would still be fine?
I didn't know. And I could hardly go and ask Yang Jian, so there it sat.
"Brother!"
Hm?
I had been staring at the garden pond and nursing a headache when a familiar voice turned my head.
Yang Jun. My younger brother, the one just below me, and a prince like me—Prince of Qin, a title that sounded nearly the same as mine and was written with different characters.
Unlike me, who would be operating on the lower Yangtze, he was the one slated to press Chen's army from the upper reaches.
"I must say, I envy you, Brother! The honor of capturing the lord of Chen and hauling him back in bonds! Though I do wonder whether you can truly bear a charge so heavy!"
And that—put kindly, he was domineering and hearty, but to speak honestly—
No. No. He was still my little brother. I ought not speak ill of him.
And to think even that is the softened version, now that we've grown closer.
Yang Jun's temper had always been something to behold. Unfortunately, when we first met he had been an obnoxious eleven-year-old, and more than once, talking with him, I had wanted to crack his skull open.
Astonishingly, his words were rough, his actions short, and his character violent—and yet I had come to know he bore me, his own family, no malice, and so I endured.
Yes. Astonishingly, barging in and asking whether I could handle the mission was not a provocation. He was genuinely worried, and he had asked in pure sincerity.
Hard to believe, but true. How something like that had come out of Yang Jian and Dugu Qieluo, I would never understand.
"It is a task His Majesty, our father the emperor, has entrusted to me, so I can only do my utmost. And even if this elder brother of yours falls short, is great Sui not full of valiant generals and loyal soldiers?"
So I answered, with the gentlest face I could manage.
Honestly, neither he nor I had anything to do in this war but strike a pose and fold our arms. What ability did a twenty-year-old and an eighteen-year-old greenhorn have, that they should command a front? We would trust the generals beneath us and leave the work to them.
I, in particular, meant to fold my arms with everything I had. I would not pretend to know things, and I would not shoot my mouth off. I would watch, and nothing more.
The Area Commanders-in-Chief stuck under me are a glittering lot as it is.
Chief among them, He Ruobi, Area Commander-in-Chief of Wuzhou, and Han Qinhu, Area Commander-in-Chief of Luzhou.
Famous generals beyond any comparison with a certain pair who would one day enjoy a thorough soaking on the Salsu River, up in Goguryeo.
"Brother! A man worthy of the name ought to win his treasure by his own strength, not by another's!"
What the hell is this lunatic saying.
You became a prince because you are Yang Jian's son, when you have nothing of your own. From the very start, that was not your own strength.
Of course, the same went for me. I was only too delighted to have become a prince of the direct imperial line by someone else's power.
"And so, in this war, I shall win merit that brings no shame upon you, Brother! Look forward to it!"
"Right. Give it your all."
In any case, Yang Jun appeared like a storm and vanished like one.
As if that storm of his had been a portent, the day of my own departure came rushing in just as violently, and all I felt was bleak.
Damn it.