The Gentry of Jing Province (6)
The gentry wasted no time at all. It had barely been any stretch since they sent me their letter, and already they were inviting me to a feast. Well, when a man has no way of knowing when he might wake up behind bars, he learns to move with remarkable speed.
They had promised an extravagantly luxurious banquet, and to have it ready in a matter of days — they must have been sharpening their knives with real dedication. I skimmed the letter, stuffed as it was with every flowery phrase the language could hold, and found where the feast was to be held.
Jiangling County.
Their reach was certainly nothing small. Jiangling was a region with real standing in Jing Province, and these men meant to hold a grand banquet there. ...Though if I remembered right, the governor of that county was thick as thieves with them. A provocation, then — come inside, if you're so confident?
If I refused this invitation, the gentry gathered at Jiangling would — just as Jia Xu had said — either raise a revolt and seize the county, or pack up their fortunes and flee somewhere far beyond my grasp. Jiangling sat right beside the Yangtze; if they boarded a boat and shot off downstream, running them down would be no simple matter.
As I've said before, the Yangtze was not merely long — it was staggeringly wide from bank to bank as well. On a map it looks like nothing more than a wobbly blue line some child scribbled, but reality is another matter entirely. And it wasn't as though these men couldn't handle boats. What smuggler in this world can't pilot a vessel properly? Smugglers aside, river transport was the lifeblood of Jing Province, and I couldn't imagine gentry born and raised there failing to grasp that. They would have made their arrangements already — hiring crews with coin, if nothing else.
If they slipped nimbly past my pursuit and escaped intact to Yi Province or Jiangdong, I would be nothing but a dog chasing chickens — all that noise, nothing to show for it. I wouldn't lose every last one of them, but the mere existence of even a few who got away clean was the problem. Catch hundreds of insects and let a single one escape, and before long they'd swarm all over again — and I judged these men to be exactly that breed. Crime comes easier to those who have already committed it once. If I let the gentry slip away here, wouldn't they simply return next time a good deal more sinister?
That was why I had decided to accept. Pests had to be purged in a single sweep; only then would they stop breeding back into a nuisance.
Yilmangtajin — to cast one net and take every fish in the water. The idiom meant seizing an entire group in a single stroke, and that was precisely what I was after.
The moment I set foot in Jiangling, the gentry would bare their fangs at me one way or another. All I had to do was wait for it, meet them with a counterattack, and take their heads.
That said, I couldn't bring many soldiers with me. Bring too large a force, and the gentry would take fright and bolt long before I ever reached Jiangling Castle. It was common sense that the bigger the column, the slower the march — and the road from Xiangyang Castle to Jiangling Castle was a good three days' journey even traveling light. And I had to walk it knowing full well those men meant to stab me in the back...
What an unsettling feeling.
"As you commanded, I've pared the escort down to a small contingent."
Liu Bei, commander of my bugok, delivered the report in her usual even tones. Black hair and black eyes — the coloring said to run in the blood of the imperial clan. Meeting the gaze of the woman who wore her hair down to her hips, I spoke.
"Then let's be on our way."
So murmuring, I rose to my feet.
"Let's go see just what the gentry have prepared while they've been waiting for me."
"Yes, my lord."
Liu Bei fell in behind me with respectful grace.
Here is how the escort commanders departing for Jiangling Castle shaped up. Seo Yeo, who never left my side under the standing pretext of guarding me, was there as a matter of course, and I had also included Lü Bu — a woman about as suited to complicated paperwork as anyone could be unsuited. Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei escorted me as well, leading a few hundred handpicked guards, so I figured no one could assassinate me by sheer force, at the very least.
In truth, I could have added generals like Zhang Liao or Xu Huang to the retinue. But when I raised the idea, Jia Xu told me it would throw off her plan.
"The gentry will no doubt understand the General-in-Chief's intentions. The key is to draw them in so that, even knowing, they cannot help but fall into the trap."
"..."
"If Your Excellency brings too many officers or soldiers, they will surely grow afraid, break their promise to attend the banquet, and do something rash."
Why else had I accepted the invitation? The whole point of this theater was to take every last one of them into custody before they could act as a group. But if I scared them into ruining the affair myself, it would all come to nothing.
"Have no fear. They may hold Jiangling Castle, but they fall far short of what it would take to break through the General-in-Chief's escort."
At that, Jia Xu had looked at me and — for once — smiled. Granted, it was only the faintest upward curl at the corners of her mouth, but considering how rarely even that much happened, it was genuinely astonishing.
"We will stand ready at Xiangyang Castle in case anything should go wrong. So please, General-in-Chief, make the trip as lightly as if you were out for a stroll."
When Jia Xu herself went that far, what reason did I have to be afraid? I dipped my head in a small nod and answered.
"Very well. I won't press you for the details of the plan — do as you see fit."
"I will repay your trust."
Ordinarily I ought to have heard her stratagem through and then weighed its soundness myself, but I had faith that she would manage it capably without me. Hadn't I mentioned this before? In the official histories, not one of Jia Xu's schemes ever failed, and posterity rated her extraordinarily highly for it. It wasn't for nothing that her Intelligence stat ran so high in every game ever made about the Three Kingdoms. She traded blows, stat for stat, with famous names like Sima Yi, Zhou Yu, and Pang Tong.
The journey from Xiangyang Castle to Jiangling Castle passed without incident. We marched while the sun was up and rested while the moon was out, over and over. If I remembered right, quite a few mountain bandits and river pirates had made their dens in this region — yet a silence hung over the road so complete it felt uncanny. The very picture of the night before a storm.
Lately word had been reaching me that my notoriety only kept growing among the lawless — so how would a pack of outlaws like these behave? It was perfectly reasonable to assume they had simply taken fright and gone to ground somewhere remote, but I chose to predict something less pleasant. What if they had joined hands with someone to hunt down a common enemy? And what if that someone was the gentry currently sitting in Jiangling Castle? For all I knew, there were far more men hiding behind those walls than we had estimated.
...I'm going to survive this, right?
Seo Yeo and Lü Bu, who belonged in the pages of a wuxia serial, needed no worrying — nor did human killing machines like the Peach Sisters. Besides, even the rank-and-file soldiers guarding me were elite troops selected from the selected, and they could be trusted to look after their own necks. But not me. I was just the sort of fool who'd end up dead trying to catch an arrow with his bare hands.
The people around me batted arrows aside as though it were nothing, but arrows were never made to be batted aside in the first place. Even Richard the Lionheart — the Lion-Hearted King himself — met his end to a blind bolt. I would hardly fare any differently. Blades have no eyes, and death calls on everyone with perfect impartiality. However faithfully Seo Yeo guarded me, there was no way I could calmly shrug off a blade flying at my face. When Huang Zhong had taken her shot at me from Xiangyang's walls, I had looked composed enough on the outside — but inside, I had trembled.
Having pitched camp in a suitable spot, I dropped down wherever my legs gave out, tilted my head back, and gazed up at the night sky.
"..."
...Geez. Keep this up and I'll never get to die a natural death.
Just then, Seo Yeo called for me.
"My lord."
"Hm?"
I turned my head toward the voice and looked at her. Ochyma, magnificent as ever no matter how many times I laid eyes on her. The enormous Chu Heaven Sword that looked crushing under its own weight just to behold. And last of all, that expressionless face where it was so hard to catch the slightest shift of feeling.
Seo Yeo dismounted and looked at me with her chestnut-brown eyes.
"..."
"...?"
Having dismounted, she simply came around beside me and stared at me in silence, saying nothing else at all. I puzzled for a moment over what had gotten into her — then caught the emotion pooled in her eyes and let out a soft chuckle.
Right now, Seo Yeo was worried about me.
Fair enough. Musing about death and the like wasn't at all like my usual self. Nightfall must have turned me sentimental without my noticing. No wonder people say the small hours make you dangerous.
To tell her there was nothing to worry about, I took Seo Yeo's cheek in my hand and gave it a long, slow stretch. I say this every time, but that feel really is addictive. It wasn't for nothing that I stretched out her and Lü Bu's cheeks at every opportunity.
"..."
Watching my antics, Seo Yeo looked a good deal more at ease.