The Nanman (3)
"My lord! Might I ask you just one question!"
"Hmm?"
A few days had passed since I released Meng Huo after capturing her for the second time. I had been taking a rest ahead of the assault on Yinkeng Mountain, her stronghold, when a general arrived at my camp, and I turned toward her.
"What is it?"
A woman of rugged bearing, with brown hair grown all the way down to her waist. It was Wei Yan — the very officer who had nearly been subjected to look-based discrimination after Zhuge Liang went on about her having the face of a born rebel.
Wei Yan called out in a ringing voice.
"I cannot help but wonder — why do you keep releasing that so-called King of the Nanman!"
"..."
A thought I had long harbored surfaced again: Wei Yan always seemed to pack extra force into her voice whenever she faced me. What on earth was the reason? Was it simply her way of advertising how driven she was?
At any rate, there was nothing strange about the question itself. Viewed from one angle, this could look like a war that could have ended by now, dragged out needlessly while our own casualties mounted. Great victories had been won thanks to the pint-sized strategists, but that didn't mean no soldiers had given their lives. Anyone might well wonder whether those men had thrown their lives away for nothing.
To that, I could answer with a firm no.
"As I have said before, the reason I keep releasing Meng Huo is to bring the Nanman tribes under our complete subjugation."
"..."
"The Nanman are quite the troublemakers themselves, you see."
In Romance of the Three Kingdoms media, the Nanman tend to leave the impression of a people who were quietly minding their own business at home until the thuggish Zhuge Liang barged in out of nowhere and beat them senseless. The reality was rather different. Like the nomads of the northern steppes, the Nanman were the sort who thought nothing of straying from their own lands to raid the villages of Yi Province.
Perhaps that was simply the common lot of barbarian peoples lingering around agrarian states since time immemorial. Short on something? Then you simply take it from the soft-hearted suckers over there who farm for a living. A people driven to nomadism by barren ground where nothing but weeds would grow and by merciless skies. A people eking out an existence in jungles crawling with beasts and plants hostile to humankind, where every disease imaginable ran rampant. They had their own circumstances, no doubt — but that didn't oblige anyone to keep turning the other cheek.
"I intend to use this opportunity to settle, once and for all, the foreign tribes that have plagued Yi Province since long ago."
I straightened my posture and continued, meeting Wei Yan's eyes.
"They are hardly pushovers, so our losses may well mount."
"..."
"But this is work that someone must do."
Had we contented ourselves with merely repelling raids, the day would surely come when we were stabbed squarely in the back. If Zhuge Liang had not captured and released Meng Huo seven times over, if she had not woven Nanman and Han together as she did, the roster of tribes running wild through the age of the Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms would have counted one name more.
During that era, the Di — one of the northern tribes — cosplayed as Han Chinese and founded the state of Cheng Han in Yi Province, claiming to carry on the legacy of Shu Han. From that alone, one could gauge just how dearly the people of Yi Province had missed the Han. Considering such things, Zhuge Liang's genius at domestic governance becomes almost impossible to fathom. Later generations did not sing her praises for nothing.
Of course, I had no intention of treating the soldiers who had died following me as expendable. We recovered every body so that each man could be laid to rest with a funeral in his homeland, and we showered the bereaved families with every manner of benefit and compensation so they would not fall into hardship. Naturally, this drained the treasury at a staggering rate — but an army has always been a hippopotamus that devours money. Pinch pennies on national defense, and you simply fall to the enemy all the sooner.
Perhaps this was part of why my soldiers' loyalty ran so deep. Well... the ancients did revere a death on the battlefield, so that element surely played its part as well. After all, didn't Luo Guanzhong send Huang Zhong and Gan Ning — generals who in history died peaceful, natural deaths — to their deaths at the Battle of Yiling?
"I consider it only natural that you would harbor such doubts."
Rising from my seat, I gave Wei Yan's shoulder a few friendly pats.
"When men's lives hang in the balance, how could the question not matter?"
"My lord..."
"Even so, I would ask that you understand this undertaking is one we cannot do without."
At a glance it might have seemed a trifling matter, but viewed through the lens of the future, it was enormously important.
"Should more questions arise, come to me without hesitation."
With what intentions had I first raised this army, and begun staining my hands with the blood of others?
"I am not a perfect man. I will always need those who see from angles I cannot."
It was far too late in the game to come sniveling apart under guilt now — far too much weighed upon my shoulders.
"Won't you at least stay for a cup of tea before you go?"
"...It is a gracious offer, but I must decline for now!"
Wei Yan answered in that vigorous voice of hers.
"I, Wei Yan, swear once more that I shall devote every ounce of my strength to the world you dream of, my lord!"
"..."
At the sight of Wei Yan abruptly running at full throttle, I could only nod along with a bewildered expression. What had gotten into her all of a sudden? Her eyes were practically sparkling — apparently something in my answer had struck a chord.
I held my silence for a moment, then asked her.
"...Is that the end of your questions?"
"Yes, my lord! Please rest well!"
"R-right."
With one last vigorous shout, Wei Yan bowed crisply and vanished like the wind. Had I really said something so stirring? Hmm... apparently that offer of tea at the end had landed rather well. Kindness toward others truly did bring its own rewards.
It was then that Lü Bu, who had been watching the whole exchange from nearby, opened her mouth.
"Good heavens... how could you invite her to stay for tea at this late hour?!"
"?"
What on earth was she on about now? I shot Lü Bu a look that asked whether it was, by some chance, exactly what I suspected.
Her response to that look was simple.
"There's that clueless face again!"
"..."
"How many times have I told you? Wear an innocent face like that and someone will eat you alive!"
Lü Bu admonished me like a grown-up lecturing a small child.
"Remember it! All women are beasts!"
Had she caught that off Seo Yeo? Hearing those words, I posed the one question I could not leave unasked.
"Then I suppose that makes you a beast as well, Lü Bu?"
"...Ngh."
Face flushing red, Lü Bu held her tongue for a moment — then shouted.
"Fine! I'm a beast too! So what!"
Unlike Seo Yeo, who had averted her eyes, Lü Bu declared it in a voice brimming with pride.
"If I didn't lose to you, I'd have devoured you day and night without pause!"
"..."
That audacious piece of sexual harassment left me at a loss for words. Judging by the way her eyes were spinning round and round, though, Lü Bu had no idea what she had just said.
...It was true that a fair stretch of time had passed since we left the city to fight the Nanman. Which is to say, quite a while had gone by since our bodies had last entwined. Perhaps Lü Bu running wild like this was proof of just how much desire had piled up inside her.
Even so, I could hardly tear our clothes off with a battle looming right before us. So I gently stroked Lü Bu's head and said,
"Well... hang in there just a little longer."
"What kind of reaction is that?! D-did I scare you or something?!"
I gave a wry smile at how utterly transparent her attitude was. She hardly needed to provoke me now — come later, I would torment her to my heart's content without being asked.
"..."
As I kept stroking Lü Bu's head, Seo Yeo, who had been watching from nearby, quietly leaned her own head in toward me. The two of them looked for all the world like pets vying for their master's attention.
Yinkeng Mountain.
Rendered roughly into plain words, the name meant Silver Pit Mountain — a mine that yielded silver. They certainly hadn't troubled themselves with subtlety when naming the place. At the very least, once this place was in our hands, I doubted we would ever want for money again. Search hard enough, and perhaps somewhere out there a Gold Pit Mountain was waiting to be found as well.
At any rate, Meng Huo — behaving not the least bit like a Nanman — was holding out inside the fortress built into Yinkeng Mountain. And therein lay the problem. The fortress occupied terrain blessed by nature itself, with rivers ringing it on three sides. It already stood on a mountain with steep slopes, and the encircling waters narrowed the avenues of attack down to a precious few. I could scarcely imagine the carnage a frontal assault on such a place would cost us.
"Honestly..."
Gazing at the fortress from afar, I couldn't help letting out a sigh of admiration. I had taken Meng Huo for the type to charge blindly into enemy lines without a second thought, yet here she was, surprisingly well-versed in the art of fighting dirty and grinding her opponent down. Her fierce determination to beat me by any means necessary showed through clearly.
Having pitched my camp beyond the reach of enemy arrows, I turned my head and asked,
"Well? Do you have a good plan for this?"
"Nothing difficult about it."
The white-haired strategist surveying the battlefield raised her White Feather Fan to hide the corners of her mouth, a faint smile playing in her eyes.
"For everything is proceeding precisely according to my calculations."
The strategist who, in the original history, had crushed the Nanman no fewer than seven times merely smiled, calm and composed.