The Nanman (4)
Yinkeng Mountain. Sanjiang Castle.
Meng Huo, who had named her stronghold Sanjiang—Three Rivers—for the three rivers that walled it about, was at this very moment surveying the enemy camp from atop her battlements.
"So those bastards aren't moving an inch?"
"Nope! Looks like they took one look at the terrain around here and can't figure out how to attack!?"
At Meng You's report, Meng Huo burst into hearty laughter.
"Haha! Well, of course they haven't! I built this castle in preparation for exactly this!"
For the Nanman tribes, who made their homes in jungles and caves, the very concept of a castle wall was a foreign one. All the more so given that theirs was a people who, when tribes clashed, simply snatched up whatever blade lay at hand and smashed headlong into one another. But Meng Huo, who possessed one of the more open minds among the Nanman, took a keen interest in other cultures and adopted anything she judged useful without a moment's hesitation. There had been no shortage of trial and error—walls collapsing under their own weight, deadlines stretching far beyond expectations—but the tribe under Meng Huo's leadership had at last succeeded in raising a fortress gifted by nature itself.
"Our gifts for the enemy should be plenty by now, right?!"
"Don't you worry, big sis! I've got heaps and heaps stockpiled!"
Meng You, having just checked the arrows for the bows and the stones for the slingers, answered with plenty of wind in her lungs. As if to prove they shared the same blood, the sisters—alike enough to be mirror images—giggled together.
Meng Huo turned her head toward the red-haired woman and shouted.
"Well?! You still think we're going to lose after seeing this?!"
"...Yeah. Real impressive."
Zhurong, leaning against the wall, heaved a long sigh at the sight of Meng Huo brimming with confidence.
"You do remember the promise you made me? This is your last chance."
"Oh, come on, I know already!"
The promise that if she lost this time as well, she would obediently bow her head and surrender to the General-in-Chief. Refusing to bend under outside pressure was all well and good, but anything carried to excess turns to poison. Before natural calamities that even the tallest tree reaching for the heavens cannot withstand, the common grasses scattered across the plain bow their heads and lower their bodies—and come through unscathed, almost smugly so. What our tribe needs now is the suppleness to meet the world beyond our borders with a flexible hand. Piling up needless sacrifices for the sake of one person's stubbornness was something to be avoided at all costs.
Meng Huo, the promise with Zhurong fresh in her mind, planted a hand on her hip and declared.
"I'm not losing this time, so that promise won't mean a thing anyway!"
"Whew..."
Watching her, Zhurong exhaled yet another sigh, arms crossed.
The Meng Huo she knew would never surrender quietly even if she lost this battle—she would simply keep hollering to the very end. She had been that way since childhood. The sort who would sooner die fighting than bow her head to anyone who sought to crush her with force.
Meng Huo probably knew it herself. Knew exactly how absurd her position was, holding out like this without surrendering. And yet the reason she endured all the same was a simple one. Part of it was the ox-stubbornness she had been born with, but more than that, she believed that if even she bowed her head, the whole of her nation would become slaves to another people.
It wasn't hard to see why that fool thought so. The Han Empire, with its vast territories, had since ancient times seized land under the banner of "developing" the regions and worked the natives dwelling there as slaves. That, no doubt, was why the Shanyue Tribe, dug in across the eastern lands of Jiangdong, refused to acknowledge Han rule and kept up their resistance.
An entire nation turned into slaves. Even to her own mind, it rang with a fair measure of misery. Meng Huo was simply doing, as the king who led her nation, what she believed to be right.
"...I only hope I haven't misjudged someone."
Had she not seen the General-in-Chief with her own eyes, she too would likely have stood with Meng Huo to the very end. Birds of a feather flock together, after all—like Meng Huo, she was not the sort to stomach becoming a slave; she would have died before enduring it. Her tribe, a pack of fools who praised themselves as descendants of the god who governed fire, hardly amounted to a reason to become slaves.
"Hm? Turn you all into slaves? Do I look like that sort of man to you?"
When she had asked whether he intended to work them as slaves, the man had blinked in evident bewilderment. That dopey expression of his looked for all the world like a man who had never once conceived of such a plan.
"Er... I can't say whether you'll believe me, but I merely intend to resettle them onto ownerless land and set them to farming it."
The General-in-Chief had said there would be no unjust treatment along the way. Taxes would be gathered exactly as from any other subject, and whatever remained after they were paid would be theirs to keep as their own property.
"If any of you wish to rise into office, you may. ...Though of course, you'll have to learn a thing or two first."
He had even played the tough, declaring that if anyone dared discriminate against them, he would settle the matter personally.
"...You think it's easy for different peoples to mix together?"
"Haha! Zhao, Qi, Yan, Qin, Chu... all those countless nations were in the end merged into Han. What is one more added to the count!"
It was an era when language, script, and units of measure all differed from state to state. Peoples so distinct that one might rightly have called them separate ethnicities had, over long ages, been fused into one.
"And besides, I happen to have a talented person for precisely that sort of thing, so worry yourself not!"
With those words, the General-in-Chief had vigorously ruffled the head of the white-haired little pipsqueak standing at his side.
"...My lord?"
The one actually having her head rumpled wore a faintly startled look. He had shown a touch of the fool, perhaps, but at least he had not seemed to be lying.
"Can we truly change, though?"
Zhurong said this while gazing up at the sky. They were, by nature, a violent people who had forever bared blades at one another. Meng Huo had united the nation for now, but it remained at best a loose confederation, forever one step from sliding into chaos. How many tribespeople had been lost to beasts bursting from the jungle? How many had perished from tainted water or spoiled food? The result was a tribe where only the hardiest warriors survived. Everyone who fell short of the mark had died, after all.
She herself had long since grown numb to it and thought nothing of the matter, but there were surely tribesfolk who yearned to change such a fate.
"Well, watching how it all changes, bit by bit, might be fun in its own way."
Zhurong smiled, clutching at the wound that ached more sharply with each passing day. If her read was right, that ox-stubbornness of hers would break before long.
"Dragging things out over a long stretch is not a good course."
"Hm? Why not?"
Listening to Zhuge Liang's stratagem, I could only wear a puzzled expression. With Meng Huo planted squarely on top of her mountain, I had assumed we would ring her in with a siege and strangle her into submission.
Zhuge Liang answered my doubt with a soft smile.
"Our soldiers are not accustomed to the heat of the Nanman lands, and above all, there is a strong likelihood that pestilence will spread and the toll will grow heavy."
"...I see."
Tropical diseases—the kind that commonly take root in jungles—were known to send a man to an early grave in no time if he caught one badly. Natives born and raised there might weather them, but for an outsider from another climate, an infection was a one-way express ticket to the underworld. And in this era there was no such thing as a vaccine; prevention in advance was simply impossible.
Zhuge Liang cautioned that if we lingered too long in the Nanman lands, we might find ourselves waging war not against Meng Huo, but against sickness itself. Hearing her out, I asked once more.
"Then what would you have us do?"
"In such cases, the simplest method tends to be the way through."
Zhuge Liang gave a slight nod and swayed her White Feather Fan with a gentle flutter.
"Have our soldiers and the Nanman prisoners we've taken each prepare a bundle."
"The prisoners too?"
"Yes."
At my question, Zhuge Liang allowed herself a faintly black-hearted smile.
"Do consider how much food they have eaten until now. Is it not about time they paid for their keep?"
"..."
Apparently the Nanman prisoners, who had done nothing but devour the army's provisions, had grated on her rather considerably. Well, she was the one who had stockpiled that grain in her capacity overseeing domestic administration, so it was hardly strange for her to react this way.
Perhaps because they lived in a jungle where strength drained away even at rest, the Nanman ate more than any other soldiers. And with tens of thousands of such Nanman prisoners on hand, the expenditure had to be staggering. Were the civil officials in Luoyang to see the books, they would likely faint at the mountains of grain being put away.
Then again, these people would become subjects of Han in due time, so I felt no particular sting about the cost. Yi Province itself was an immensely wealthy region, and outlays at this level were well within what we could bear.
"Having them prepare bundles is no great task, but what do you intend to do with them?"
"If they have stacked up castle walls, then we need only build hills out of earth."
Hearing that much, I could guess what Zhuge Liang's plan was. Hadn't Zhuge Liang taken Yinkeng Mountain in exactly this fashion in Romance of the Three Kingdoms as well?
I turned my head and looked upon the castle where Meng Huo had holed herself up. The walls of the castle Meng Huo had raised were not so very tall.