Clouds and Rain (1)
The sun still hung at its very peak in the sky. A soldier tearing across the open ground on horseback kept craning his head this way and that, clearly searching for something — and before long, he spotted it and let out a great shout.
"General! Over here!"
"Oh? You actually found him?"
No sooner had the soldier spoken than a woman with striking reddish-brown hair came into view. Sun Ce, courtesy name Bofu. She had once nursed plenty of grievances against Yuan Shu, but the moment her father's life was spared, she had surrendered to the General-in-Chief without a second thought.
Following the soldier's lead, Sun Ce made her way over — and at the sight of what he'd found, her face creased faintly. She studied it for a moment, then turned to Huang Gai.
"...Gramps, is this one dead?"
"Hmm... don't believe so, no."
Huang Gai answered with a puzzled look. It was a vague reply, but it meant that at the very least, the man probably wasn't dead. Life was a fickle thing — it could vanish without a trace one moment, yet at other times it clung to existence with more tenacity than anything else in the world. This time, it seemed, was the latter.
Sun Ce gazed down at Yuan Shu, lying unconscious where he'd collapsed, and muttered flatly.
"Any other day, I'd call you lucky... but this time, your luck's run out."
The General-in-Chief had ordered that Yuan Shu be taken alive if at all possible, and Sun Ce knew perfectly well why he wanted the man delivered breathing. Her voice carried a note of pity as she went on.
"You can forget about dying a clean death."
Yuan Shu, blissfully ignorant of his own future, lay there wearing the same expression he always did.
I swept my gaze across the Yuan Shu army, which had laid down every weapon and surrendered without a fuss. It went without saying that the vast majority of them were civilians who'd been dragged into service by force. Their bodies were so gaunt I half doubted they'd been fed at all; their pupils trembled, incapable of resting still for even a moment; and they hunched in on themselves whenever a soldier so much as drew near — timid clear down to the bone.
He really hadn't trained them one bit, had he? It was honestly a mystery how they'd held any kind of formation instead of bolting from the line. Cao Cao, standing beside me and surveying them much as I was, spoke up.
"What do you plan to do with these men?"
"What do you mean, what do I plan to do?" I answered, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Anyone who wants to go home to their hometown goes free."
Just consider what Yuan Shu had done to the most populous commandery in all the land. Nanyang Commandery — home to the largest population in the realm, linked by roads to every great city, a region that could hardly have failed to prosper. And yet when people saw how utterly Nanyang had come apart at the seams, more than a few were left speechless. The more gifted someone was at administration, the deeper their shock ran.
'Good heavens. Wrecking a place like this can't have been easy, either...' That was Sima Yi, who knew Nanyang's condition well from her days in the capital province.
'...A man fit to govern no one at all.' Zhuge Liang, who had entered my service, shook her head with quiet composure.
'Sh-should I even call that a talent...?' Pang Tong, whose own homeland was Jing Province, jumped in fright.
The man blessed with a heaven-given talent for ruining things was none other than Yuan Shu. If even Nanyang had ended up like that, what state must Jiujiang Commandery — smaller in every respect — be in? I'd given it a rough once-over while marching my army through, and it was a complete shambles. Starving commoners were the least of it; not a single young face was to be seen on the streets.
So where had all those young people gone? It was a question that answered itself with a moment's thought. They were all inside the host of one hundred twenty thousand that Yuan Shu took such pride in. That was part of the reason I'd waved a mouthwatering piece of bait under Seo Yeo's nose to get her onto the battlefield in person — the faster the fighting ended, the fewer of these people would bleed for it.
And Seo Yeo did not disappoint my expectations. She drove straight into the enemy's center and cut down their generals where they stood. Men who held the same office I did — the General-in-Chief of the Zhong dynasty, no less — she slaughtered without breaking stride. The crucial commanders meant to lead that host by their emperor's decree were dead in the blink of an eye, and the moment Yuan Shu's troops witnessed it, the whole host collapsed. Which was how I came to be staring at a simply staggering number of prisoners.
I regarded the captives, who still kept darting nervous glances at their surroundings.
"Sending back the people who ought to be farming their homeland's soil is only right."
"Hmm... I suppose it is."
Cao Cao nodded with an air of perfect indifference. Coming from her, that was no surprise — she'd long since worked out why I'd made this call. Then she said,
"Ah, now that you mention it, there is something I've been wondering."
"Wondering about?"
When I echoed her, Cao Cao posed her question in a tone of genuine puzzlement.
"This battle — did you truly need my help? You'd smashed that fool to pieces before I'd lifted a finger."
...
Hearing that left me feeling rather sheepish. In this battle, Cao Cao's forces had looped around through the rear to strike Yuan Shu's main camp — but Yuan Shu's army had already been falling apart, and the false emperor himself, perhaps traumatized by the sight of his soldiers disintegrating, had already fled the field. You really did have to hand it to the man: his talent for running away was beyond dispute.
"...I didn't expect Yuan Shu to offer battle in the open field," I admitted.
I meant it. I had come fully resolved to wage a siege against Shuchun and its enormous garrison — and instead the defenders threw open their own gates and marched out to meet me...
Cao Cao, reading the thought straight off my face, gave a wry little laugh. "I didn't foresee the fool behaving that way either, so I suppose we're even."
...
"In any case, I raised my army at your request. Surely you can indulge one small favor of mine now?"
At her words, I tilted my head slightly. "If that's all it is, fine, but..." Why did I have such a bad feeling about this? Cao Cao smiled at me as if to put me at ease, but that unreadable smile only made my unease grow.
"It really is nothing at all."
...
"...Still, I suppose now isn't the time."
Not the time? What was that supposed to mean?
"You do remember what I told you, don't you?"
Even under my puzzled stare, which all but demanded an explanation, Cao Cao merely kept smiling, calm as ever. "Don't be afraid. Act bravely — and very, very boldly."
Having said that much, she cast a brief glance at Seo Yeo standing behind me, then turned on her heel. Her footsteps as she receded into the distance were, to anyone watching, positively radiant with delight.
What on earth had Cao Cao so worked up? Watching her silver hair shrink away, I sank into a brief puzzle.
"My lord."
"Hm?"
Seo Yeo had called for me. She looked astonishingly clean for someone who, mere moments ago, had been reaping enemy soldiers by the dozen. Even Lü Bu came back from a rampage spattered with blood from head to toe, but Seo Yeo — barring a few faintly scattered droplets — was utterly spotless. Honestly, it was as if she lived in a world all her own. If Lü Bu was a superhuman who stood beyond ordinary people, Seo Yeo was something that transcended even that.
The moment my gaze settled on her, she fidgeted a little before speaking. "Um... my wish..."
"Oh, that?" I chuckled. Seo Yeo was asking whether she'd earned the right to have a wish granted. I answered in an even voice. "After a showing like that, how could I possibly say no?"
...
"Just name it. If it's within my power, you can have anything."
Seo Yeo's face brightened at my words. It amounted to nothing more than her expressionless eyes softening a shade and the corners of her mouth lifting by a hair — and even that was genuinely remarkable. Apparently she'd already settled on her wish, because she opened her mouth at once.
"My lord. What I would like to ask of you is—"
"General-in-Chief!"
Sun Ce's voice rang out from far away.
...I had seen scenes like this somewhere before. Many times, in fact. The very instant someone is about to say something monumentally important, fireworks go off, or some incident no one can afford to ignore comes barreling in...
...
And there it was. Seo Yeo, her crucial moment rudely interrupted out of nowhere, now wore a look in her eyes that was terrifying beyond words. Hoping to placate her, I set about ruffling her hair with abandon.
"Let's talk again once we're inside the city."
"...My lord."
"Don't worry. I'm a man of my word."
"...Yes."
Seo Yeo closed her eyes once, then stepped back. Watching her go, I understood instinctively that this was my final grace period. If I made her stand out in the wind again, a backlash of monstrous proportions would come crashing down on me. Something chilling along the lines of: Next time I'll handle it myself — far more thoroughly — so you'd best sit still and behave. I wouldn't put it past her.
I gave a wry smile and turned to Sun Ce as she came running up to me.
"...General-in-Chief?"
Sun Ce, striding over as if to say no one else could fill the Little Conqueror's boots, seemed to have sensed that something about me was off. I spoke.
"Yes. What is it?"
"Ah... Yes! We found Yuan Shu lying unconscious on the ground!"
Oh? All I had done was deploy troops exactly as Zhuge Liang had proposed, and sure enough, about a week later, Yuan Shu was in our hands. Even a man who had slipped Cao Cao's Tiger and Leopard Cavalry, it seemed, could not escape a net closing in from every direction.
I chuckled. "Prepare to escort the traitor to Luoyang."
"Understood!"
First things first — before heading home, I'd need to have a proper look around Shuchun. Time to secure the fortune Yuan Shu had scraped together tooth and nail, starting with the Imperial Seal itself.