Ye Province (5)
Gong Ju, Inspector of Ye Province.
These days, the man whose office was to govern all of Ye Province could hardly set foot beyond his own city walls.
"Officials of Han, hand over your necks this instant!"
Waaaaah───!!
Whenever he tried to march his troops out for any purpose, the Yellow Turbans appeared. In the open-field clashes where force met force, they displayed staggering prowess and cut his soldiers down by the score. Plains, forests, rivers—it made no difference what terrain a battlefield offered, for they moved as though every possible turn of events were already an old acquaintance.
Nor was he alone in his plight; the other magnates of Ye Province fared no better. Just how far did those rebels range? The traitors in their yellow headwraps kept the entire province under watch, and no one dared make a careless move.
It was the popular uprising that had once shaken the whole Han Dynasty to its foundations. The last remnants of the Yellow Turbans—a host whose numbers alone had once swelled to nearly a million—were utterly beyond the likes of soldiers conscripted at random from his own lands.
"General Gwan Hae has taken the enemy commander's head!"
"All of you, charge!"
They could not even be countered in duels between officers. The sight of a Yellow Turban officer striking down the fierce generals he had handpicked, each felled in a single exchange, was quite enough to send a chill down his spine.
If there was any mercy in his misfortune, it was that their numbers were too few to mount a siege. Had they exceeded ten thousand, his head would long since have been dangling over the marketplace.
But cowering behind his walls solved nothing. He had heard they were still drawing volunteers from the nearby villages, swelling their strength even now.
So the choice was this: wither away slowly where he stood, or die fighting in the open field.
While Gong Ju sat sunk in that deliberation, his aide came hurrying to his side.
"My lord! They say the General-in-Chief's army has shown itself near our territory!"
"...What did you say?"
What nonsense was this? The man had pacified Yi Province and the Nanman far away; surely he would not stir again for the rest of the year. Could he truly have judged that Ye Province could be swallowed whole before winter came? Considering how few days it had taken the General-in-Chief to seize Jing Province, it was not impossible.
...Wait.
If the General-in-Chief's army was coming here, did that mean the Yellow Turbans keeping watch over Ye Province had already been crushed?
Gong Ju held his silence for a moment, then put the question to his aide.
"What of the Yellow Turbans' movements?"
"Yes, my lord! The Yellow Turban forces that had been operating near the city have not been seen of late!"
"That is welcome news indeed."
That the Yellow Turbans had vanished from the vicinity of Yingchuan Commandery, the heart of his own territory, was glad tidings beyond measure. And yet he could not simply rejoice. When a tiger arrives to claim the mountain, the wolf that prowled there is doomed to be wiped out—that is simply the way of such things. The Yellow Turbans disappearing, and the General-in-Chief's army drawing near, could only mean the tiger had finally closed its jaws on the wolf.
And if so...
What fate awaited the deer—a creature so meek that even the wolf had made short work of it?
"My lord. The General-in-Chief's army is even now advancing on this place, invoking the imperial edict."
Scarcely had the thought formed before his aide spoke the words, watching his face anxiously.
"I beg of you, my lord—make your decision."
Would he bow his head and beg for mercy? Or resist to the bitter end for the sake of his power?
Gong Ju had never been that great a fool. For him, only one choice had ever existed.
"Prepare the official seal of the Inspector of Ye Province."
"..."
"The time has come to swear fealty to Her Majesty once more."
Liu Biao, Inspector of Jing Province, had stood against the General-in-Chief to the very end—and it had bought him madness and the loss of his head at his own subordinate's hands. Yuan Shu, who had usurped the title of emperor without the faintest grasp of his own station, had died a wretched, agonizing death. Gong Ju was not a man to summon ruin upon himself over petty ambition. He asked for no treatment on the scale of Zhang Lu, Administrator of Hanzhong, or Liu Tan, Provincial Governor of Yi Province. To keep his life, and keep his clan fed—that alone would content him.
Watching the General-in-Chief's army close in from afar, Gong Ju gave the order to open the gates.
With a ponderous, grinding rumble, the gates swung wide, and there stood Gong Ju, the Inspector's seal held in both hands, bowing low in respectful welcome.
The sheer scale of the host made his head swim just to look upon it. The General-in-Chief's soldiers, clad in heavy armor and bristling with keen spears and blades, put his own men in their shabby gear to shame.
Gong Ju had once watched the power struggle between General-in-Chief He Jin and the Ten Attendants unfold before his very eyes, and the sight before him now stirred a fresh wave of old memories. ...So the Han Dynasty had not yet fallen after all.
Relieved that his choice had not been wrong, he bowed himself lower still.
──Neigh.
The general leading the van reined in her horse with perfect calm, riding right up to where Gong Ju stood. The crescent blade she bore was still slick with blood not yet dry—she had plainly come straight from a fight.
"..."
Just how many had met their end beneath that weapon? Faced with the grisly sight of the crescent blade dripping blood, Gong Ju could not stop the cold sweat from running down his back. One misstep, he understood all too well, and he would be the next stain of rust upon it.
Then the woman's voice reached him from up ahead.
"Ah—it seems I've come across rather more intimidating than I meant to."
"..."
A voice at once pure and bright. But something fierce and potent lay beneath it, and Gong Ju did not dare raise his head.
"You see, we ran into a pack of bandits on the road here."
"..."
"It didn't mean anything in particular, so please don't take it the wrong way?"
"Th-there is surely no cause for suspicion."
She had plainly just fought a battle, yet her bearing was utterly untroubled. It was the ordinary face of any commander who had lived on battlefields—but for some reason, his body would not stop trembling.
"In any case, you chose well."
When Gong Ju surrendered, the woman gave a cheerful laugh and shook the blood from her crescent blade in a single motion.
Splat!
"..."
"No blood was spilled in vain, so I'm sure the General-in-Chief will be pleased too."
At the dreadful sight of droplets scattering wherever the blade swung, Gong Ju held his tongue. By her own account she meant no threat—but turn it over as he might, he could not bring himself to believe her.
Having collected the seal of the Inspector of Ye Province, the woman carried on.
"If you keep hunching like that, your back will give out. Go on, stand up."
"Th-thank you."
"Now, let me see... Chen State was off in that direction, wasn't it?"
The woman kept smiling from beginning to end, but to Gong Ju it felt like walking on thin ice the entire while. Holding a conversation with someone who could cut you down at any moment was, it turned out, exhausting work.
Leading her soldiers under the General-in-Chief's orders, Seo Hwang watched Zhang Liao conversing with Gong Ju a short distance away.
"One look at him and you can tell he's in no mood to fight. Wouldn't you say?"
"...Yes."
Gao Shun's blunt voice, as unreadable as ever. Seo Hwang settled her great axe across her shoulder and offered a faint wry smile.
The general beside her was quiet by nature; unless someone addressed her first, she never opened her mouth. If even Seo Hwang drew some line between her public duties and her private self, this woman seemed to have no private self at all. She lived as though the sole meaning of her existence were carrying out her lord Jeong Reung's orders to the letter. Were she commanded to take her own life, she would drive a blade into her own throat without a heartbeat's hesitation—and have resolve to spare besides.
Seo Hwang studied Gao Shun—a soldier to the bone—then turned her gaze forward again and remarked:
"Still, running into bandits the moment we set foot in Ye Province was quite the surprise."
"..."
Gao Shun offered no answer to that.
"M-madness! Why are imperial troops here of all places?!"
"There's no running! Everyone, take up arms!"
The bandits had been prowling near the villages, angling for something to plunder, when the scouts caught sight of them. Naturally, this was not a force inclined to let such men pass on its way.
"You sons of bitches! You tricked u...! Gyaagh!"
Even as they went down beneath spear and blade, the bandits were unmistakably cursing someone.
Zhang Liao, who had been cutting men down at the head of the line, looked over the corpses and spoke with a puzzled frown.
"Yellow Turbans... no, they're not. Just ordinary bandits?"
"How strange. I'd heard it was the Yellow Turbans who dealt with bandits like these."
Where had the Yellow Turbans gone—the ones said to be raising havoc across Ye Province—leaving nothing behind but common brigands? And why had those bandits gathered in so unnatural a spot to begin with?
Gao Shun held her tongue. The brown-haired strategist, catching her eye, smiled.
The woman had surfaced as if from nowhere in the wake of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, and had been holding the force together ever since. Gao Shun regarded her a moment, then turned her face back to the road ahead. Whatever anyone's past might hold, it was no concern of hers, so long as that person proved useful to her lord.
"Wow. So you really were marching with the army as a common soldier."
"...?"
"Hey, you. Ever thought about becoming a general?"
The one who had seen worth in her when she was nothing but a nameless soldier. The only one in this war-torn world who carried peace wherever he went.
To trust that lord's judgment, and to follow it—that, and that alone, was how Gao Shun lived.