The General's Star (1)
Not long after Cao Cao set out for Xuzhou and Liu Bei entered my bugok, a messenger arrived bearing a report so far beyond my expectations that surprise showed plainly on my face.
"Sun Jian, the general Yuan Shu sent out — routed by Liu Biao?"
"Yes, my lord! He walked into an ambush while pursuing the enemy commander, and word is his life now hangs by a thread!"
Well, this was a new one. That Sun Jian might be beaten back by Liu Biao had happened even in the original history, so I found nothing strange in it. But Sun Jian wasn't supposed to sink into critical condition — his skull was supposed to be crushed on the spot, killing him outright. The description of brains spilling from Sun Jian's shattered skull after that rock struck him had, I'll admit, left quite the impression on me. I had foreseen a major incident breaking sooner or later, yet the news that Sun Jian had survived still came as a genuine shock.
I ordered the messenger, who had ridden hard from a long way off, to take his rest.
"You've done well. Go on now, and see to that fatigue."
"Thank you, my lord!"
The thought of being allowed to rest made the man's face bloom, and he bowed low to me.
I watched the messenger withdraw, then, as I so often did, murmured to myself.
"So what happens to Yuan Shu now?"
"With even the great Sun Jian beaten by Liu Biao, Yuan Shu will lose his nerve and give up on reaching into Jingzhou."
It was Sima Yi, standing nearby, who picked up my muttering.
"Yuan Shu? Scared?"
I could picture the man flying into a rage and storming out to take the field in person, only to be thrashed six ways to Sunday — but him being afraid? That I could not imagine.
When I let a shade of puzzlement show, Sima Yi added her explanation.
"Looking into his track record, I found that whenever a battle needed fighting of late, Yuan Shu delegated it entirely to Sun Jian."
"That much is true."
I nodded. Just as she said, ever since taking Sun Jian under his command back in the coalition days, Yuan Shu had never once led a campaign in person. Whenever troops had to be moved, the task went to Sun Jian, and Yuan Shu confined himself to sketching the broad direction of his faction. I couldn't fault him for it, either. It beat blundering onto a battlefield himself and squandering soldiers for nothing. Leave medicine to the physician, as the saying goes — a battle, likewise, belongs by rights to whoever fights it best.
Sima Yi went on.
"If even that overweening Yuan Shu deferred like that, wouldn't it be because he trusted Sun Jian to precisely that degree?"
I could not deny it.
"So picture it: he trusts Sun Jian and sends him off to war, and the very general he trusted comes home at death's door. What sort of reaction would you expect out of Yuan Shu?"
"Certainly nothing positive."
In terms of my own camp, it would be as if I'd sent Lü Bu to the front and she came home one day gravely wounded, driven to the very brink of death. A scene I could not begin to imagine — and yet Yuan Shu, who had dispatched Sun Jian, must be feeling exactly that.
"Precisely that."
Hearing the answer she'd predicted, Sima Yi bobbed her head with a triumphant look. Every time her foresight landed, she wore that quietly puffed-up expression, and it was genuinely adorable. Years on, when Sima Yi had grown into a full adult, I hoped she would never lose it.
"Put yourself in Yuan Shu's shoes and he'd jump clean out of his skin — frightened witless, and then some."
"……"
"I can't claim to know exactly what sort of man Yuan Shu is, but judging from reputation alone, the odds are high he'll abandon the invasion of Xiangyang Castle."
Sima Yi had seen straight through him — in the original history, the moment Sun Jian lost his life attacking Liu Biao, Yuan Shu gave up his invasion of Jing Province.
Hearing her out, I turned my head toward Jia Xu.
"Do you read it the same way, Jia Xu?"
"I do, my lord."
When those two agreed as one, there was nothing left to doubt. Nodding, I addressed Sima Yi.
"I find myself looking forward to the day you hold your coming-of-age ceremony."
"...Flattery of that sort won't get you anything, you know?"
At my praise, Sima Yi shot back curtly, every inch the embarrassed girl. Liking it, and pretending she didn't. Finding even that grumbling cute, I smiled to myself.
"The time to move will come soon enough."
"And how exactly would you be moving?"
she asked at my murmur, and I let the corner of my mouth curl upward.
"Haven't you already worked it out?"
"...Even so, one can never be too careful."
When I said that and looked at her, Sima Yi slyly dodged my gaze. She really did blush at the drop of a hat.
Pressed for the explanation, I answered with perfect calm.
"If Yuan Shu takes his hands off Jingzhou, only one place remains for him to go."
Yuan Shu's base was Nanyang Commandery in Jing Province. With Jingzhou struck from the board, only three provinces could be reached from the city commonly known as Wan: Sili Province, the capital region where Luoyang sat; Ye Province, home to Xuchang; and Yanzhou, where Chenliu lay. Let's rule Sili Province out first. To come from Nanyang Commandery up to Luoyang's Sili Province, one had no choice but to cross a mountain pass, whatever the road — whether Hulao Pass on the right or Hangu Pass on the left.
But this was a man who had failed to crack a single pass even in the coalition days, and now he would cross one all by himself? How, exactly? Hulao Pass, as I'd said before, was precisely the sort of place to earn rave reviews for playing the game dirty as hell, while Hangu Pass was a heaven-sent fortress fabled for turning back enemy offensives without lifting a finger. Detouring around the passes wasn't impossible — though "not impossible" was, at best, the whole of its case. Should the power ruling Luoyang keep watch over those routes, the odds of a successful detour dwindled to nearly nothing. Xun You showed an interest in troop dispositions every spare moment she had, so she'd have those detour routes threaded through long ago. If Yuan Shu did attack Sili Province, I need only repel him and move to the counterattack. And yet — say what you would of him, Yuan Shu, currently holding nothing but Nanyang Commandery, could not be so stupid as to hurl himself alone at a fortified pass.
……
He wouldn't… right?
Either way, if Yuan Shu spooked and gave up on Jingzhou, the only places his hands could reach were the nearby Ye Province or Yanzhou. Yet the odds of his taking Ye Province first were slim. Ye Province remained a tangle of Yellow Turbans and entrenched powers even now, still mired in confusion. In such a landscape, even if Yuan Shu sweated and bled his way to pacifying it, Cao Cao might well step in and steal the prize from under him — and so, before making his play for Ye Province, Yuan Shu would move first to strike Cao Cao in Yanzhou and seize the initiative. That was the battle history would come to call the Battle of Kuangting.
And with Yuan Shu and Cao Cao both eyeing Ye Province, what, I wondered, was Gong Ju, the Inspector of Ye Province, doing at this very moment? I hadn't the faintest idea. Word had it he was doing his utmost in the province's defense, but what that meant in any concrete sense, I could not say. The Inspector of Ye Province had no presence to speak of. Then again, the instant he marched out an army, the Yellow Turbans in Ye Province would come swarming with fire in their eyes — hardly conditions in which to accomplish anything, however willing he might be. ...Those Yellow Turbans needed handling in their own right, too. How ought I to go about it? My list of labors seemed to swell by the day, and I pulled a troubled face.
Just then, Sima Yi spoke.
"When Yuan Shu begins moving in person, will you lead the army yourself?"
"I will."
I affirmed her question.
"Those who know will know, but I do owe Yuan Shu a debt or two, after all."
He had marshaled the connections of a great family to blanket the realm in every slander imaginable, then gone so far as to raise an entire coalition under the banner of toppling a traitor. Judged on the evidence, Yuan Shu had genuine talent for precisely one thing: running other people down.
It is easy to assume that gutter-born men insult better, but in truth it was the scions of great aristocratic houses whose barbs cut with breathtaking precision. They held back only for dignity's sake — yet let their blood boil once, and they would mobilize every word drilled into them since childhood to flay a man alive, so elegantly that admiration escaped me before I knew it. It was never a litter of vulgar curses, but stately sentences gently carving a person to ribbons, and watching it left me nothing but dazed.
Of course, I was no exception myself. In days past, a few fellows who took a dim view of me had treated me to the very mildest sliver of an insult at the Luoyang court. And then, at some point, those oblivious men simply vanished from court. That was not me having them dealt with. I could swear it on my life.
Turning my mind back to Yuan Shu, I continued evenly.
"Yuan Shu clubbed me over the back of the head, so clubbing him back over the head is the only way the ledger balances, no?"
Sun Jian was alive. Something the original history would never have allowed. And given the report that he lingered at death's door, if I left things be, the odds favored Sun Jian failing, in the end, to defy his fate. Should it come to that, the Sun family would climb the ladder just as history wrote them — advancing under Yuan Shu before striking out on their own in Gangdong, or whatever else it was they did.
The Imperial Seal lost in the Ten Attendants' Rebellion remained unfound to this day. They had dredged every well, exactly as the books described, and it never surfaced. Sun Jian had drawn his straight out of the water on the very first well pull — so why wouldn't the drop come for me? It seemed that during the chaos of the Ten Attendants' Rebellion, someone had already pocketed it in secret. I kept turning the question over, hunting for some way to put Sun Jian's survival to use.