The Ten Attendants' Rebellion (1)
The Black Mountain Bandits, long one of Bing Province's most stubborn headaches, had been dealt with at last. The wealth, the soldiers, and the population won from their subjugation proved a tremendous boon to a province that had been scraping by.
"To think we'd ever get to farm this close to the city..."
"And here I figured I'd spend my whole life eating whatever game I could hunt. Haha!"
Thanks to Zhang Jue's ideas, land that had lain idle for want of hands to work it began, little by little, to be broken open and tilled. If these fields saw their first harvest through safely and a share of the yield started arriving as tax, we would at least be spared any further agonizing over army provisions. Of course, until that first harvest came in, I would have to keep sending support and make sure the people now bent over their furrows didn't starve before the grain ripened.
"Anyone who needs rice, just write your name in the ledger over there and take what you need."
With the wealth taken from the Black Mountain Bandits, I had bought up enough grain to keep the fields under cultivation fed until their first harvest came in. The food was handed out on loan, to be recouped later through the taxes once the harvest was gathered.
"If I borrow one sack now, you're not going to turn around later and demand three back, are you?"
"You'll repay exactly what you borrow and not a grain more, so don't trouble yourself over that."
There would be no loan-shark tricks, no crushing interest piled on top—repayment was strictly the amount borrowed, measured out to the letter. The granaries would fill on their own in time even without interest, and I had no intention of blinding myself to some petty gain and carving flesh off my own bones to get it.
The surrendered Black Mountain Bandits were sorted into their branches of service according to what each was best at.
"Hah... hahh..."
"Oh? I can see your heels! Run properly!"
The fleet-footed ones, who had once made their living prowling mountains and forests to stage ambushes, were reborn as elite skirmishers, masters of the hit-and-run raid. Even now they were out racing through the nearby mountains with Lü Bu.
"Anyone I catch gets mountain sprints till sundown—again!"
"Aaargh—!"
Allow me to issue a correction: they weren't running with her. The skirmishers were being chased by Lü Bu. She didn't look to be trying particularly hard, and yet the gap between her and the soldiers began shrinking by the stride. Eyes bulging, the men cursed and threw everything into pulling away, and Lü Bu, smirking at their backs, closed the distance again without so much as a heavy breath.
"See? You can do it! Faster! Faster!"
"Gyaaaaaah—!!"
"That's how you run so you don't take an arrow in the back of the head—!"
Under Lü Bu's whip-crack pressure, the soldiers really did start running faster. Humans truly are curious creatures. Every time I watched a scene like that, I thanked my lucky stars that I was Lü Bu's commanding officer rather than the one she was chasing.
"Eyes front. Shield gripped tight. Trust the comrade at your side."
"Hup—!"
"Move as one. Breathe as one. The moment you break, everyone beside you dies."
A chosen few with uncommon grit and natural strength were pulled into Gao Shun's Camp Crushers, where they trained alongside the veterans already in the ranks. The Camp Crushers were elite enough to triumph against any force in the field, and that had always been their one flaw: there were never enough of them. But with the Black Mountain Bandits folding in, I couldn't hide the warm glow of satisfaction as I watched the unit—long stuck circling the triple digits—finally climb past a thousand.
Officers like Wei Xu, meanwhile, were drilling with Zhang Liao, honing their martial arts the hard way.
"I'm going to die... have mercy..."
"Don't worry. I'll stop right before you actually die."
"But I'm a general too..."
Wei Xu, thoroughly worked over by Zhang Liao, propped himself up on his spear and blubbered. Song Xian took a single uppercut, made an unidentifiable fwip! of a sound, and passed out cold. Hou Cheng, launched into the sky by the shaft of Zhang Liao's spear, hadn't moved since.
"Squawk!"
Wei Xu, who had endured to the very last, finally crumpled to the dirt with a sound most unbefitting a general under Zhang Liao's follow-up blow. Part of me wondered if they might actually be dead, but they were sturdy fellows—I figured they'd pull through. ...I'd have to send a bottle of wine over later.
When I turned my head back, I found myself locking eyes with Seo Yeo, who had been watching me the whole time.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"...Heh."
And so the staring match that had begun out of nowhere ended with a red-faced Seo Yeo looking away first. I won.
Ask anyone to name the first reason the Han had rotted to this degree, and every last soul would give the same answer: the Ten Attendants. A cabal of eunuchs who had pulled child emperors on strings and savored power for over a hundred years.
They had originally been created to check the imperial in-laws who toyed with young emperors like puppets, but somewhere along the way the Ten Attendants had become the ones kneading those child emperors in their palms and feasting on power. It was the Ten Attendants who had drowned the reigning Emperor Ling in wine and women so that he would never spare a thought for governance, and the Ten Attendants who, blinded by wealth, had committed every corruption under the sun.
The Ten Attendants collected bribes from corrupt officials and handed out offices in return. The officials who bought their posts then fleeced the common people to make back what they had spent. Trace the Yellow Turban Rebellion—raised by people who could endure no more—back to its roots, and you would find the Ten Attendants standing at the bottom of it all.
...Or at least, that is how Romance of the Three Kingdoms tells it. The reality was even worse. In truth, the most enthusiastic trader in offices of all was the Emperor himself.
Granted, the buying and selling of posts had long been practiced in the already-rotten Han by imperial in-laws and eunuchs alike. But this money-mad merchant of an emperor was a lunatic without precedent in all of history, diving into the trade personally. Seriously—what kind of emperor personally hawks government posts?
And for all that, the man was also a prodigious devotee of wine and women, an incarnation of appetite who had reached his thirties with every disease imaginable hanging off him. A fool of an emperor with not one genuine accomplishment to his name. In an age already crawling with corrupt officials on the rampage, for such a man to wear the crown—the Han, with its centuries of proud history, had no choice but to come crashing down.
That foolish emperor would soon die young, in his thirties, and his death would plunge the court into chaos, igniting the Ten Attendants' Rebellion. And what came after that? Dong Zhuo would seize the court by the throat, warlords would occupy cities across the realm, and an anti-Dong Zhuo coalition would form. Seen in that light, the Han was as good as extinct the moment the Ten Attendants' Rebellion broke out.
Even now, in the capital, the in-law faction gathered around He Jin and the eunuch faction under Jian Shi glared at each other across a taut, silent war of nerves. And right about now, Yuan Shao would be pressing He Jin to purge the Ten Attendants before it was too late, while the indecisive He Jin brushed her counsel aside. He Jin. Dither like that, and it will get you killed.
There was still some time between Emperor Ling's death and the outbreak of the rebellion, so the wisest course was to keep the domestic front in order as much as possible and brace for the storm that was coming.
A few days after I had settled on that resolve, I received a piece of shocking news.
The Emperor was dead.
Why was he dying already? The man should have lived until 189, yet he dropped dead barely after 186 had come around. Apparently this world's Emperor Ling had been built a little more fragile. ...But hold on—didn't that mean the Ten Attendants' Rebellion would move up as well? Faced with a situation where not even an inch of the future could be read, my head began to throb.
The Western Garden Eight Colonels—the personal army Emperor Ling had created. Jian Shi, who headed the Western Garden Eight Colonels, could barely contain his bewilderment when the Emperor died so suddenly without even leaving a final testament behind.
For a man who had been plotting to cast aside Crown Prince Liu Bian and raise Liu Xie, Prince of Chenliu, in his place, this was very bad news indeed. Fierce wrangling had raged over who would be enthroned next, but in the end, Crown Prince Liu Bian—He Jin's candidate—took the throne.
With the Emperor who had always defended them now dead, the Ten Attendants could expect help from no one. The young Liu Bian would lean on her uncle He Jin and her mother, Empress Dowager He, and the power of the imperial in-laws would now swell beyond anyone's ability to curb. The Ten Attendants' corruption had already piled up past all counting, and a few of the bigger fools had been caught red-handed by Wang Yun with documents recording their collusion with the Yellow Turbans. In short, He Jin could now sweep away the Ten Attendants—stripped of all protection—whenever it pleased him.
His mind made up, Jian Shi summoned the Ten Attendants.
"...He Jin must die."
"...!"
At Jian Shi's words, the Ten Attendants went pale with shock.
"His Majesty, who always took our side, died without even time for a final word. Crown Prince Liu Bian sits the throne now—if we let things ride as they are, every one of us is a dead man."
The Ten Attendants fell silent at Jian Shi's words. Listening to him, they understood now that any one of them could be dead tomorrow. Ever since their protector had dropped dead without warning, every day had felt like walking across thin ice. They knew all too well how ugly the looks the palace officials gave them had always been.
"Every day we wait only tilts the scales further against us. The time for leisure is over."
Jian Shi held the authority to move the Emperor's personal army. As the tense eunuchs gulped and shifted, his eyes gleamed hard in the darkness.
"We must get He Jin to enter the palace alone. And then..."
"We kill him."
Zhao Zhong, chief of the Ten Attendants, nodded.
"Send He Jin an edict. Tell him there is urgent business, and that he is to come to the palace alone."
The moment Zhao Zhong's decision fell, the Ten Attendants bowed low and received the order. Zhao Zhong smiled coldly and went on.
"A butcher who once spent his days slaughtering dogs and pigs—and who was it that raised him all the way to General-in-Chief? And now this cur dares, without a shred of gratitude—"
"It is dangerous."
A woman with golden hair that seemed cast from molten gold was warning General-in-Chief He Jin that this was a trap. He Jin only laughed at her words.
"My niece has ascended the imperial throne. What danger could there possibly be?"
"This is, without question, a trap laid by the Ten Attendants to take the General-in-Chief's life."
Golden hair braided long down her back. Golden eyes that glittered like bullion.
"People with nothing left to lose rarely stop to think about what comes after."
At Yuan Shao's unflinching verdict, He Jin's expression stiffened.
"The moment you enter the palace alone, the Ten Attendants will surely—"
"Enough. I've heard enough."
"..."
He Jin cut her off with an air of displeasure, and Yuan Shao held her tongue.
"You think the Ten Attendants would attempt something that idiotic? Those cowards would never dare."
"...Then at the very least, allow us to escort you to the palace gates."
"Suit yourselves. Tsk. All this fussing..."
Clicking his tongue, He Jin turned his back and set off for the palace, where the Ten Attendants awaited. A girl approached Yuan Shao, who had said nothing at all.
"I told you it was no use."
"...Mengde."
Cao Cao turned her gaze and watched He Jin walking on alone.
"A wind of blood will blow before long."