Cao Song (4)
Cao Song, having brought Cao Cao inside his own mansion, asked calmly from the innermost chamber.
"So I hear you've been out suppressing bandits near Qingzhou. What brings you all the way here?"
"I came to fulfill my duty as your child, Father."
At that answer, Cao Song murmured a single word under his breath.
"Filial piety, is it..."
"You know as well as anyone, Father, that Xuzhou is no longer safe these days."
Cao Song nodded, finding nothing there he could deny. He had fled all the chaos boiling over in the Central Plains and come as far as Xuzhou, only to find even this Xuzhou troubled of late, with bandits rising in one quarter after another to stir up the countryside.
"And in the very midst of it, they say the Governor of Xuzhou took a horde of bandits by the hand and plundered alongside them the very people he was sworn to protect. The hearts of Xuzhou's people are shaking even as we speak."
Though the man who led that horde had been dealt with, it had not been for the people's sake. It was a scheme to take the bandits under his wing and make his own forces that much stronger. Like most warlords who had carved out a place for themselves in the world, Tao Qian carried a cold-blooded streak beneath the surface.
According to Cao Cao's intelligence, Tao Qian had of late been quietly trading letters with Gongsun Zan. She had never laid eyes on those letters herself, yet she could make a fair guess at what they held. Ten to one they were an offer of alliance — join hands, drive out Yuan Shao and herself, and together make a bid for the Central Plains.
True, Tao Qian could have pretended the pact with the General-in-Chief meant nothing and struck at her all the same, but Cao Cao did not believe he would go that far. There was no guarantee he could actually take her captive, and should he feign ignorance of his word to the General-in-Chief, he would be branded a power that had betrayed its sworn faith — and that, without fail, would breed trouble for him down the road.
What a laughable age this is. Men like Tao Qian, who surely nursed any number of ambitions behind that face, setting such store by the outward appearance of trust.
A hollow laugh rose in her chest, but Cao Cao held her expression composed and continued.
"How could I simply stand by and watch, knowing my father resides in so dangerous a place?"
"......"
"And so, with such modest talent as I possess, I mean to escort you to Yanzhou, where I have brought the interior to peace."
She had reined in the local magnates whose power had swollen beyond all reason, and spared no effort to settle the people's hearts so they would not turn to banditry. Thanks to those efforts, the long-restless land of Yanzhou had at last become somewhere that could be called a place where people actually lived.
The endless wars had left Yanzhou so ravaged that the old boast of being the center of the realm rang hollow, but Cao Cao had already worked out a remedy for that as well.
Settle the many thousands of families belonging to the bandits I just took in across Yanzhou, and the land will fill again. Why else would the notorious Black Mountain Bandits of Bing Province have become the General-in-Chief's loyal hands and feet? Just as he treated the Black Mountain Bandits he took in from Bing Province, if I show their families grace, even bandits will offer me their loyalty.
Hm... though what name should I give them, I wonder. If only something with a bit of flair, like the Black Mountain Bandits.
"......"
"......"
And so Cao Cao, idly amusing herself with such fancies, gazed at her father — and Cao Song gazed back at his grown child — until their matching platinum eyes met, unmistakable proof of the blood they shared.
"Hahahaha!"
After regarding her for a long moment, Cao Song abruptly burst into a hearty roar of laughter.
"Father?"
Cao Cao's eyes widened ever so slightly, taken aback.
Paying her puzzlement no mind whatsoever, Cao Song pressed on with what he had to say.
"When a child wishes to take her parent under her roof, what good would refusing do her?"
"Then what you mean is..."
"Indeed. Let's go see just how well a man can live in Yanzhou, eh?"
Cao Song, whose silver hair was the very image of Cao Cao's, rose from his seat, the concubine beside him rising with him.
Cao Cao studied her father's concubine — a woman of remarkable height and imposing frame. Judging by how he kept the woman constantly at his side, his father doted on her a great deal.
"......"
Cao Cao put on a puzzled look. There was her father, breaking into a sweat under his wife's reproachful glare, yet stubbornly cherishing his concubine all the same. Was Father truly so taken with big, strapping women?
He was her own father, and still Cao Cao could not help thinking his tastes ran rather peculiar. A bizarre notion, truly — had Xiahou Dun heard it, she would have asked him straight out just who was calling whose tastes strange.
Xiahou Dun, however, was regrettably far too occupied at that moment, guarding the perimeter of Cao Song's estate.
Seeing how equally outlandish their tastes in the opposite sex proved to be, whatever anyone might say, Cao Cao and Cao Song were beyond all doubt father and daughter.
The General-in-Chief's massive shipment of gifts to Tao Qian had succeeded in cutting off that faction's interference.
But word of the gesture reached Xuzhou through someone's lips, and Cao Song's household drew more of the province's attention than it had ever bargained for. The bandit hordes infesting Xuzhou were no exception.
"Boss. That the place, over there?"
"Yeah. That's it, sure enough."
Men whose very bearing proclaimed them bandits lay hidden in the brush facing Cao Song's estate, trading words in low voices.
"Only thing is, boss... I reckon we're already too late."
"Hm? What're you on about?"
"Take a look at them vicious mugs over there. Half of 'em look like the sort that's run a man through long before now."
When the man called boss showed a puzzled air, his subordinate pointed out the cavalry making their rounds near the estate, standing watch. The boss took a single look and, sure enough — just as his man had said — the soldiers on guard looked every inch the killers.
"Never heard this Cao Song, Cao Sheng, whatever-his-name kept soldiers like that. Reckon it's Cao Cao who got here first?"
"Hm..."
At his man's words, the bandit boss sank into a low growl of thought.
"Maybe we'd best turn back while we still—"
"No. We proceed as planned."
"Boss?"
The subordinate's eyes went wide at the decision.
The bandit boss laid it out plainly. "I hear that if you cart off Cao Song's fortune, it'd take a good hundred carts and then some. Get our hands on all of that, and our whole lives turn around in a single stroke."
"......"
"Think it through. You figure we can live off banditry till the day we die?"
The subordinate held his tongue for a while under the boss's urging, then opened his mouth at last.
"Ain't that the same Cao Cao they say caught and killed tens of thousands of bandits like us in Qingzhou?"
"Heh. That was when Cao Cao had an army's worth of soldiers at her back."
With that, the boss glanced toward Cao Song's estate and gave a lazy jerk of his chin.
"Look for yourself. How many do they look like they've got down there?"
"......"
At the boss's word, the subordinate narrowed his eyes and slowly counted out the soldiers of Cao Cao's that he could see.
The bandits had picked themselves a spot with a safe, clear view of the estate, so rough-gauging the size of her force was no hard task.
"At least a few hundred, I'd say."
"But nowhere near a few thousand, no?"
Calling his own numbers to mind, the bandit boss smiled, brimming with confidence.
"Still, they're all cavalry, far as I can tell..."
"Hah. You short on bows, or short on arrows? Sitting a horse don't make a man immortal."
The boss brushed his man's worry aside in a stroke. True, he had scurried off to hide in some remote mountains the instant their leader Que Xuan had died — but the people of Xuzhou still trembled at the very sound of his name.
"An estate that size can't pack up all its goods in a single day. Get ready. Soon as the sun goes down tonight, we hit 'em."
"Got it."
Uneasy as the subordinate still felt, his boss was so utterly sure of himself that he fell in line without protest. And who was to say he was wrong? Just as the boss said, if they managed to crack that place open, turning their lives around was no pipe dream.
His man withdrew, but the bandit boss stayed right where he was, eyes fixed on Cao Song's estate.
Once upon a time, he had joined the Yellow Turbans in the name of some Great Peace or other, plundering the common folk — until he lost every last comrade to the sect leader and very nearly followed them into the grave.
Tsk. What lofty dream could the man have been chasing, that his own men weren't allowed so much as a moment's pleasure?
In the end, that holy sect leader proved unable to withstand the imperial army and, word had it, vanished without a trace at Julu — so looking back on it now, being cast out of that lot had been the luckiest thing that ever happened to him.
Blessed with such fortune, the bandit boss had fled all the way to Xuzhou, where he could not bring himself to quit his old trade. He fell to plundering the people once more, and his name began to carry real weight across the province.
And now the bandit boss licked his lips over the fortune of one Cao Song — father of Cao Cao, the most notoriously wealthy man in all Xuzhou.
"Heh heh. Cao Cao, was it?"
What could a paltry few hundred possibly do? The few cannot stand against the many — the most basic sense there is.
The men under his command were elite veterans who had long warred against Xuzhou's own soldiers — a different breed entirely from the hollow husks Cao Cao had supposedly crushed in Qingzhou.
Eyes still on the estate, the bandit boss let a murderous grin spread across his face.
Everyone who's laid eyes on Cao Cao can't stop singing about her looks. Well then — this time, I'll see that face for myself. And if luck was with him, he might even be the one to take her captive and spoil her personally.
And so the bandit chief — one Zhang Kai — tore himself at last from the estate he had watched so long and set his men in motion.
Thousands of bandits who prowled the country around Langya in Xuzhou began, slowly and quietly, to close in on Cao Song's estate.