Zhao Yun (1)
The one waiting to greet me as I crossed into Bing Province was Zhang Yang, who had succeeded my mother as Inspector of the province. A middle-aged general with a splendidly groomed beard, he bowed low before me.
"My lord! We have been waiting for you!"
"Good."
Gazing at the man who, even at a disadvantage, had refused to give up and had given everything he had to the very end, I nodded slowly.
"You've done very well, Zhishu."
Zhishu was Zhang Yang's courtesy name. "I can see exactly why my mother marked you down as her successor."
"To hear such words from you is honor enough!"
I went on, addressing Zhang Yang as he answered in a humbled voice.
"You may expect a proper reward before long, so feel free to look forward to it."
"Thank you, my lord!"
"For now, let's go inside and talk at our leisure. I'd like to hear how you held off the nomads."
"It would be my honor!"
Every time I opened my mouth, Zhang Yang answered promptly and with the most scrupulous courtesy. Was it because I was the child of the lord to whom he had once sworn his loyalty? Mixed in with the devotion in his eyes was a faint trace of something else — the fond warmth of a man watching a child grow up well.
Following Zhang Yang into the government office, I felt a complicated stirring at the sight of a scene I hadn't seen in a long while. Truly nostalgic... not. If anything, Luoyang — every building standing in tidy order — suited me far better. There was no reason on earth to like this land gone mad, where the only "event" that ever occurred was a nomad invasion. If there had been even one small thing to feel attached to, perhaps it would have been different.
I settled into the seat of honor prepared for whoever held the highest office, then looked over the staff waiting in attendance and spoke.
"Shall we get started on the reports, then?"
"......"
At my offhand remark, the generals who had defended Bing Province all tensed up. It was only natural — this was, for all practical purposes, a review of merits. Zhang Yang was the first to step forward and speak.
"My lord. The current losses of the Bing Province defense forces are..."
And so began a report that ran on for quite a while. Watching every word pour out of him without a single stumble, I could feel how hard he had worked to have everything wrapped up before my arrival. Then, somewhere in the middle of it, I noticed something odd.
Destroying thousands of Xiongnu while outnumbered was admirable in itself. But the how of it was a touch peculiar, I supposed. Piercing the enemy's center, smashing through the bodyguard detail, then driving the chieftain to flight to buy time — even to my eyes, that account was a little strange.
The garrison defending Bing Province — the Black Mountain bandits, in other words — had taken heavy losses, which made one thing certain: the quality of the soldiers on either side was not so very different. If the men were not the deciding factor, only one possibility remained.
Yes. This was a tactic only a general with overwhelming martial prowess could hope to execute — a maneuver impossible for anyone short of a household name like Lü Bu or Zhang Liao, or the second and third of the Peach Sisters.
And on top of that, she had supposedly managed it all by herself?
But as far as I could recall, no general of that caliber existed in Bing Province at present.
I opened my mouth to ask.
"Who is this general who pierced the enemy lines alone and drove off the Chanyu of the Xiongnu?"
"Ah, you mean that general."
Zhang Yang nodded as though he had expected the question.
"It would be quicker for me to introduce her in person."
"......"
"Come on out!"
The moment Zhang Yang called out, a figure emerged from the back.
How should I describe this... The vast open sea? The clear blue sky? Whatever it evoked, her blue hair carried an air of perfect calm, and her azure eyes — eyes the phrase "clear mirror, still water" might have been coined for — were as cold as ice.
Set beside Guan Yu, who was even now standing watch outside, she would never have come up short. Yes — I mean her bearing resembled that of the stern, dignified, unfailingly serious Guan Yu. Their eye color even matched, both a clear blue, funnily enough. Of course, that was only a first impression; her actual personality might be entirely different.
As I studied the woman with such thoughts, she stepped forward and offered me a respectful bow. She was quite tall, though her build was slender throughout.
"I am Zhao Yun. It is an honor to meet the General-in-Chief."
...Why is the woman who should be in Jizhou standing here?
And just where had that left Gongsun Zan?
Hearing the woman's name, I couldn't help but be thrown off balance.
Zhao Yun, courtesy name Zilong. A figure so famous that among anyone who knows the Three Kingdoms, there is not a soul who doesn't know her.
Strangely enough, Chen Shou, the author of the Records of the Three Kingdoms, had been careless in documenting the figures of Shu — and Zhao Yun was no exception. Did the detailed mentions even reach ten sentences? Probably a little short of that.
Which is why most of what the public knows of Zhao Yun's exploits comes from the Zhao Yun Biezhuan, her supplemental biography. That doesn't mean her story is fabricated, mind you — the Biezhuan is broadly accepted as a genuine historical record, not some invented tale.
There's even a four-character idiom that traces back to her. Yishen shidan — "a body that is all courage." It literally means "his whole body is a lump of gall," a roundabout way of calling someone supremely bold. You know how people say a reckless man's liver has burst right out of his belly? Same thing.
Just as Zhuge Liang succeeded with the empty fort strategy against Sima Yi, Zhao Yun once ran the same bluff against Cao Cao and drove him into retreat. She won by turning Cao Cao's cautious temperament against him — and the troops she led at the time were a mere handful compared to his host. When Liu Bei heard of it, he laughed heartily and declared that Zhao Yun's whole body was courage.
Even so, if you asked for her single most famous feat, there was only one answer.
Changban.
The deed of shielding Liu Bei's son Liu Shan and his wife Lady Gan while breaking through the encirclement of Cao Cao's army. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Lady Mi appears in Lady Gan's place — and doesn't Lady Mi hurl herself down a well and die after begging Zhao Yun to save Liu Shan? In actual history, Zhao Yun protected not only Liu Shan but Lady Gan at her side as well, escaping unharmed from Cao Cao's pursuit. If anything, real history had produced the more novel-like scene.
Of course, she wouldn't have clashed head-on and cut down fifty enemy officers the way the Romance depicts — but then again, who could say for certain? For all anyone knows, Zhao Yun truly did skewer every foe who barred her path to carry the two of them to safety. And after that, well — time for Zhang Fei's lion's-roar moment...
Somehow Cao Cao has ended up the neighborhood punching bag of this whole story, but what can you do? If the lord with a taste for other men's wives had simply kept on winning, Shu and Wu would have been smashed to pieces long ago, and Wei would have unified the realm.
Gazing at Zhao Yun, who stood before me with flawless courtesy, I asked:
"Judging by your epithet, you're from Changshan Commandery in Jizhou, aren't you?"
"......"
"What was it again? Surely it was 'Changshan's Zhao Zilong'?"
The moment I spoke that nickname, a change came over Zhao Yun's perpetually composed face. Her cheeks, taken as a whole, had flushed faintly red.
...Don't tell me she's embarrassed?
Deciding to test it once, I brought up the epithet again.
"Changshan's Zhao Zilong. A very dashing epithet, that."
"......"
"Yun, as in 'cloud,' and Zilong, 'young dragon'... Does it mean a dragon swimming through the clouds?"
Honestly speaking, it is cool.
I am Changshan's Zhao Zilong!
Doesn't that line have something in it that strikes a man straight in the heart?
As I grinned from ear to ear, Zhao Yun spoke in a very small voice.
"Th... that is an embarrassing epithet, so I would rather you did not mention it..."
"If you say so."
So she was embarrassed. Unfortunately, it seemed Zhao Yun simply lacked the sensibility to appreciate how cool her own nickname was.
"Zhao Yun. If you're from Jizhou, then Yuan Shao is right nearby — and Gongsun Zan too, no?"
I returned to the matter at hand.
"You, who would be generously treated wherever you went — why were you wandering Bing Province?"
That was the thing I most wanted to know. Yuan Shao recruiting her made sense — that was how history had gone, after all. But that even Gongsun Zan had passed her over, leaving her to roam these mountains, was genuinely unexpected.
Of course, once she takes service under Gongsun Zan, she does go on to lament to Liu Bei that the two of them are exactly the same sort. Even so, loyalty keeps her from changing allegiances, and she leaves the frontier citing a funeral in her family. Then as now, it seems a death in the family was the excuse of choice for running from something.
At my question, Zhao Yun recovered her usual composure.
"Neither Yuan Shao nor Gongsun Zan — in the world they envision, I could find nothing of what I wish to see."
"Hm?"
"But when I looked upon this place, I felt hope."
Haven't I heard those words somewhere before? As a strange sense of déjà vu stole over me, Zhao Yun continued in a calm voice.
"A spear that bears benevolence and righteousness does not break."
Doesn't she break an awful lot of them for someone who says that? There's even a proverb about wielding a spear like one of Zilong's cast-offs. Of course, she wasn't so tactless as to blurt that out in this situation.
"I swear it here, before you."
Zhao Yun's limpid blue eyes fixed on me.
"My spear is yours."
Changshan's Zhao Zilong turns scarlet over an epithet, but that doesn't embarrass her?
...Seriously, this is a lot of pressure.