Sparring Match (2)
As requested, I kept Ma Chao at my side, walking her through the broad strokes of how Luoyang actually operated.
I let her know that unlike Xiliang, Luoyang exacted a heavy price from anyone who tried to settle things with their fists, and gave her a summary of how one was expected to carry oneself before the court.
"So no matter what happens, I must never resort to force?"
"It's not quite to that extent."
I shook my head at Ma Chao's question.
"As long as you have a just cause, it's fine."
"A just cause..."
Say that bastard struck first, so I struck back, and who was going to hold it against you? Whatever else might be true, the pretext was what mattered.
"Failing that, you'd need power so overwhelming that no one would dare make a peep."
The Emperor was the textbook example. When the sovereign opened her mouth, that in itself became both the just cause and the pretext—what could possibly be the problem? The trouble was that no matter how impeccable your cause, without the strength to see it through, the position turned into nothing but a gilded shell.
The Imperial Guards—the Emperor's personal troops—had disintegrated in the chaos after the former General-in-Chief He Jin was murdered by the Ten Attendants and Dong Zhuo swallowed up the remnants of He Jin's faction, and the crown's power had withered drastically as a result. That was why I had drawn off a portion of my own soldiers and raised a new Imperial Guard to put muscle back behind the throne. Thanks to that, the Emperor, armed with force once more, held a position within Luoyang that could only be called absolute.
Now this was imperial authority restored to its rightful form.
The Imperial Guards charged with protecting the royal family were normally commanded by the Commandant of the Guards, yet our Empress—apparently short of anyone she trusted enough—had left that post vacant to this very day. Men whose loyalty had been proven beyond all doubt, like Huangfu Song and Ju Jun, were now simply too old, and had shut themselves away in their estates.
Can't quite picture what sort of office the Commandant of the Guards is? Well, those "commandant of the household" posts—the Left Commandant, the Right Commandant, and the rest of that family—were all positions that moved at the Commandant of the Guards' behest.
With the office standing empty, the Imperial Guards could currently be commanded by one man and one man only: me, the General-in-Chief.
She wasn't leaving it vacant on purpose... was she? If I so much as recommended a candidate, Her Majesty would seat that person in the post without delay, but I had no particular desire to arrange such a thing. Judging by its duties—defending the palace and standing guard over the Emperor—it was an office bestowed only on someone the sovereign could trust without reservation. Rather than planting my own man in the seat, I wanted someone who would remain at Her Majesty's side and uphold her no matter what situation arose.
"You mean one who would take Our side regardless of the circumstance?"
"Just so, Your Majesty."
That exchange came from a conversation I had once shared with Her Majesty about official posts.
"One who would stand at Our side and support Us..."
"..."
Having heard my opinion, the Empress wore a pensive air for a long moment before she spoke.
"Why, he is standing right in front of Me."
"...?"
The Empress, still in the middle of our conversation, let a smile curl at the corner of her mouth.
"Well? Is there any office you desire?"
"Your Majesty?"
I still haven't forgotten those obsidian eyes boring into mine in that instant. The Empress had asked in jest, but I sensed that if I so much as nodded along, I would end up as something that truly surpassed even a General-in-Chief, so I hurried to decline.
"I am content as I am."
"Hmm..."
At my answer the Empress sank into thought yet again, then muttered:
"Not a shred of appetite for power... I shall have to think of another way."
"...What do you mean by that, Your Majesty?"
"Nothing at all."
Even now, the look in her eyes as she said it—gazing at me, and gazing, and gazing—sat on my chest like a weight.
Watching Ma Chao turn something over in her head, I picked the conversation back up.
"If you can't get a feel for it, just tell me."
"...Pardon?"
"If anyone gives you grief, I'll deal with them personally—so speak up."
I said it in a perfectly offhand voice.
"If someone's determined to strike at a person under my protection anyway, that means they've made their peace with the consequences."
"I'm... one of the General-in-Chief's people...?"
Ma Chao, who had been puzzling over my words, went round-eyed at my reply.
"Did I come on too strong? If so, my apologies."
"N-No, not at all!"
When I said it sheepishly, Ma Chao shook her head so hard it whipped from side to side.
"Good. Then there's nothing to worry about. Anyone who gives you a hard time, you report it straight to me."
"...Yes."
Head bowed low, Ma Chao nodded slowly up and down.
"Well, if it isn't the General-in-Chief himself. What are you doing here?"
At the clear voice from beside us, Ma Chao and I turned our heads at the same time. I'd heard that tone plenty of times before—so like Lü Bu's, and yet not quite.
Sure enough, when I turned, a black-haired woman with an extraordinarily long weapon in hand was standing blankly in the middle of the wide training ground laid out within the barracks. Its blade undulated like a serpent's body, forking into two prongs at the tip—a spear boasting a staggering length of one zhang and eight chi.
In Han times a single chi measured roughly twenty-three centimeters, and one zhang meant ten chi; run the numbers at eighteen chi and you arrive at about four meters from end to end. It wasn't as though she was hauling an entire tree around, but it was a monstrous length that wrung a fresh gasp out of me every time I laid eyes on it. A weapon that left you wondering just how anyone was supposed to swing the thing.
If that description hasn't tipped you off, the weapon before my eyes was none other than the famous Serpent Spear.
Its owner—Liu Bei's famed sworn younger sister—looked back and forth between Ma Chao and me, then said:
"Hmm... wooing another woman, are we?"
"Wooing? I would never—"
This was pure slander. Anyone overhearing would take me for an idle philanderer with nothing better to do than chase women all day. Exhaling a small sigh, I asked Zhang Fei:
"And what, pray tell, are you doing here all by yourself?"
Zhang Fei, hair gathered in a side ponytail, normally clung to Liu Bei's side like a burr, much as Guan Yu did—yet for once, she was alone.
"Huh? What am I doing?"
At my question, Liu Bei's Accessory No. 2 gave a faint smile and sent her Serpent Spear—a weapon two and a half times her own height—whirling through the empty air. A shriek of parting air, vicious just to hear, rolled out across the field, and a tremendous cloud of dust began to churn up around us.
After spinning the Serpent Spear for a spell, Zhang Fei at last drove its butt-end into the ground with a crack and declared:
"My body was all stiff, so I was getting in some practice."
"...Right."
I nodded with a perfectly flat expression. The training ground had been built spacious for precisely that purpose, so there was nothing odd about it.
As the wind she'd whipped up died down, dust billowed up thick from every direction. I understood the urge to show off, but I'd have appreciated a little restraint when it blinded everyone standing nearby.
"Uh... huh? That's not how it goes..."
Zhang Fei, evidently not having anticipated this turn either, looked around with a bewildered expression. The longer I watched her, the more she seemed to resemble Lü Bu. Shave a little martial might off Lü Bu, stir in some cunning, and wouldn't you get Zhang Fei exactly?
Entertaining that idle thought, I eyed the dust cloud, which looked terrible for the lungs at a single glance.
"My lord. Behind me."
It was then that Seo Yeo spoke to me. I nodded and stepped into position at her back. A flick of her eyes confirmed I was where I belonged, and Seo Yeo drew the Chu Heaven Sword from across her back.
Wondering if she truly meant to swing it, I opened my eyes wide—just as Seo Yeo swept the Chu Heaven Sword in a tremendous horizontal arc.
...Or so I would describe it, but in truth I never saw the swing at all. One instant she had simply raised the sword; the next, a monstrous gale howled past and every speck of dust around us went flying off in some other direction.
Seo Yeo, both hands still wrapped around the Chu Heaven Sword, slid it back into its sheath with a face devoid of all expression.
"..."
I emerged unscathed. Zhang Fei, standing directly in front of her, could not say the same—the gale Seo Yeo raised had hurled the dust cloud dead-on into the face of the very person who'd kicked it up in the first place.
Was that what they called reaping what you sow? Honestly, why did she have to strike a pose...
Watching someone whirl a four-meter spear about would surely have been an awe-inspiring sight to an ordinary observer, but for me—someone who had witnessed overwhelming feats of arms time and again—it fell well short of astonishing. With Xiang Yu and Lü Bu forever at my side, my threshold for surprise had simply been raised far too high. Wasn't that what people called a raised threshold?
In any case, Zhang Fei, having eaten that dust cloud dead-on, was staring at Seo Yeo with a dazed expression.
"When Yunchang said I'd be dead if I stepped in back then, I wondered what she meant, but..."
Had I just laid eyes on a strike from Seo Yeo that had never once met mine?
"...This is truly beyond anything I imagined."
Muttering that, Zhang Fei shivered as though a chill had run down her spine.
"General-in-Chief! Couldn't I cross blades with her, just once?!"
"...?"
Zhang Fei's eyes had suddenly lit up as she asked me.
"Now I see why Yunchang called her Matchless Throughout the Ages!"
Goodness. So Guan Yu—that woman whose pride was the stuff of legend—had praised her that highly?
Old, for what has passed. Now, for this very moment. Joined together, they span past and present alike—and fused with musang, "without equal," they form the four-character idiom that had just left Zhang Fei's lips.
Matchless Throughout the Ages.
For Guan Yu to call Seo Yeo that meant she acknowledged Seo Yeo stood, at the very least, on par with the one hailed in this world as the Hegemon-King of Western Chu. Xiang Yu cast so overwhelming a shadow across Chinese history that in other works built on the Three Kingdoms, Lü Bu might be hailed as Peerless Under Heaven—but never Matchless Throughout the Ages.
Her crimson eyes—a shade paler than Lü Bu's—glittering, Zhang Fei pressed her plea.
"Just once! Can't you let me face her just this once?"
"..."
Honestly, the more I looked, the more her behavior echoed Lü Bu's. I turned my gaze to Seo Yeo for a moment. As ever, she said nothing, silently devoted to the duty of guarding me.
"I don't mind—but there's one condition."
"Huh? What is it?"
"Face Ma Chao first."
With Zhang Fei and Ma Chao gathered in one place, surely we owed it to history to reenact a scene from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms at least once.
At my proposal, Zhang Fei stared blankly at Ma Chao standing beside us.
"...Ma Chao? Her?"
"That's right."
"...I don't mind, but..."
Tilting her head once, Zhang Fei nodded slowly. Ma Chao, abruptly singled out, wore a flustered look of her own.
"Y-You mean me?"
"You don't have to if you'd rather not."
Saying that, I held Ma Chao's gaze steadily.
"It's just that Ma Teng can't stop praising how superb your martial arts are. Might I see it for myself, just once?"
"...I'll do it!"
"Much appreciated."
I gave Ma Chao my thanks.
"...So you were wooing her after all."
Watching the whole scene unfold, Zhang Fei merely wore a puzzled expression.