The Choice (3)
The decision came quickly, and my orders were carried out exactly as given. Temüjin returned to the Mongol steppe with little more than two or three horses to her name, while the captured Kheshig and the Four Steeds and Four Hounds were to be escorted to Luoyang under armed guard.
"…Do you truly believe that woman will carry out your proposal just as you've laid it out, my lord?"
"Hard to say." I shrugged at Zhuge Liang's question. In this one battle we had captured three of the Four Steeds and Four Hounds and killed three more, which meant Temüjin's authority within Mongolia was about to take a devastating hit.
Even in the original history, Temüjin had weathered a rebellion inside the Mongol Empire while campaigning against the Jin dynasty. She had barely finished unifying the steppe before marching off on a foreign expedition, so it was hardly surprising that her foundations were shaking at home. A woman who had survived every betrayal imaginable would naturally have ground her teeth and flung her armies at the uprising without a second's hesitation—
—and what did she get for it? Word was that members of the Four Steeds and Four Hounds had died in the process of putting it down. These were the men who had somehow clawed their way through every battle against Jamukha, her sworn nemesis, and now they had perished suppressing a mere revolt.
Had the rebellion simply been larger than anyone expected? Or had the Four Steeds and Four Hounds let their guard down and caught a blind arrow? The real question was whether Temüjin could overcome an uprising that severe from an even worse position than in the original history — and my money was on yes. After all, even after losing everything in her defeat to Jamukha, she had stubbornly fought her way back up until she stood as ruler of the Mongol Empire.
I ran my fingers lightly over the bandaged wound at my side and spoke.
"Zhuge Liang."
"Yes, my lord. You called?"
"I'm going to get some actual rest now."
It was only thanks to Zhang Jue — who had trailed after me muttering that my fate looked ominous — that I hadn't simply died on the spot.
"Am I actually going to be okay?"
"…Every time you speak, the wound bleeds. Please do not move."
"Uh… right. Got it."
Zhang Jue's voice had carried a faintly sinister edge, so unlike her usual gentleness, that it honestly frightened me. And the way her expression never so much as flickered — even when a fleck of my blood spattered across her face — only deepened the dread. Honestly, the pain hadn't even been the problem; I was simply curious about the treatment and had wanted to watch it done. But Seo Yeo, Lü Bu, and every warrior within arm's reach had pinned me down and absolutely refused to let go.
"They said you'll tear something open if you move wrong, so lie still!"
"…Forgive me, my lord."
That was the day I learned what it truly meant to be unable to move a muscle. Somewhere along the way the women had apparently managed a quick wash; free of blood and dust, they gave off an almost absurdly pleasant fragrance. …Wait a moment, though — isn't the importance of hygiene in medical practice a concept humanity didn't properly absorb until the modern era? Was that the Divine Physician's influence at work too? Hua Tuo had been seen washing her hands in some unidentifiable medicinal decoction before every treatment, after all. This was the woman who had single-handedly developed anesthesia in the ancient world, centuries before the West managed it — at this point I had lost count of how many medical revolutions she'd sparked all on her own.
And so I spent the next several minutes rolling my eyes in every direction, the only part of me still capable of movement.
"…There. All of the urgent treatment is complete."
Zhang Jue, who had sealed my wounds shut with astonishing skill even amid those wretched field conditions, went on with a faintly weary look. "But do remember — this amounts to nothing more than emergency care. Until the Divine Physician arrives, you must not strain yourself. Rest, and keep resting."
"Understood." Remembering what tended to become of patients who ignored their physicians, I nodded along meekly.
With Temüjin's disposition settled, I then rested quietly for a good few hours.
"HEY—!!"
Having handed the cleanup over to Zhuge Liang, I jerked my head around at the colossal bellow erupting from nearby.
"How the hell am I supposed to move a wounded man in a piece of junk like this—!!"
There stood Zhang Fei, clutching the carpenters by their collars and demanding answers. "Huh?! Look at this!" KRAK! A single sweep of her Serpent Spear, and the carriage — a rush job if ever I'd seen one — burst into splinters. "Falls apart the second the road gets a little rough! You want to end up smashed to bits just like this, huh?!"
"W-we're sorry!"
Scolding them in the most familiar way imaginable. Motherhood had supposedly taken a bit of the edge off her temper, but Zhang Fei was still Zhang Fei. …Then again, wouldn't any carriage have shattered under a hit like that, rush job or not?
I didn't really have anything to say — even Guan Yu, who would normally have reined her in, was maintaining a composed silence. If things took a strange turn, she would move on her own.
"J-Jeong Reung. You're not tired?"
"Hm?" Perhaps she had caught Seo Yeo's restless energy by contagion, because Lü Bu pressed on next, her voice edged with anxiety. "If you're worn out, you could just sleep it off, you know…"
"No, I'm fine. You don't need to worry." I answered her evenly. Truthfully, there was one prisoner who might quietly vanish — without so much as a mouse stirring — if I fully let go of the reins, so I couldn't afford to be out of it.
Jebe. Before he took that name, he had been called Jirghogatai. Even in Mongolia, a land crawling with human weapons, he was a general whose name towered above the rest for one thing: the bow. The man had once nearly ended Temüjin herself with a shot from hundreds of paces away. Yet rather than punish him, Temüjin had prized the very skill that had threatened her life and taken Jirghogatai into her service — and he, renaming himself Jebe, had set out on a new life…
…a new life that had now landed him in our custody. Along the way, no less, he had committed the colossal blunder of punching a hole clean through my stomach.
"…Excuse me."
"No."
Sima Yi shot back at my flat refusal with a voice dripping disbelief. "How can you refuse before I've even said a single word?"
"You were going to ask whether we couldn't make an exception for Jebe and torture him to death."
The violet-eyed little strategist fell silent for a moment, my words apparently landing dead center. "…And why, exactly, can't we?"
There she went, asking a question whose answer she already knew perfectly well. Her eyes made it plain: if I failed to respond properly, she would seize on any flaw in my logic and make the man disappear one way or another. Facing this adorable bit of petulance, I replied in an even tone.
"You don't see the value that man carries?" Sima Yi said nothing. "Temüjin would rate a single Jebe above a few thousand royal guards."
The Four Steeds and Four Hounds — the eight generals in whom Temüjin placed her trust. It goes without saying that no two people are ever quite the same, and even among those eight the gaps in ability were unmistakable. First place? That would be Subutai, obviously. And Jebe was probably second.
The Mongol Empire of the present day — its army lost, its ruler busy fleeing — was a penniless wretch with no means of paying any ransom. But what if she followed my proposal to the letter, smashed open the road to Europe, and began building the great trade route? Wealth would come flooding in so thick that no one would ever again remember these were nomads who had once survived solely by stripping others bare. A nation entrusted with the great artery linking East and West couldn't afford to stay poor — that would be the stranger absurdity.
"And what if she invades the moment her hostages are handed back?"
"Don't worry. I intend to bleed them so magnificently dry that it won't matter."
War reparations included; I meant to collect every last coin with meticulous care. And if she decided the ransom was too steep and simply never paid? That would be fine too — the Mongol captives remaining in Han hands would deter war all on their own.
…I had even considered the possibility of her charging in without a thought for any of this, but that would be betrayal, the one thing Temüjin despises above all else. I'd mentioned it before, hadn't I? Betrayed and stabbed in the back by everyone imaginable since childhood, Temüjin gnashed her teeth at the very word. Far from praising enemies who surrendered by seizing their own lords and handing them over, she found such men repulsive and put them to death. I suppose it's something like the scene in Romance of the Three Kingdoms where Liu Bei, on Zhuge Liang's advice, refuses to accept the surrendered Wei Yan and orders him slain. Not that Liu Bei actually went through with killing Wei Yan, of course.
I had already extended her a measure of grace and built a friendly relationship; the thought of Temüjin trampling all of that underfoot to come charging in was beyond imagining. To begin with, subjugating the nomadic peoples of Central Asia and carving out the trade route would take years at the very least. More than enough time for me to flatten Gongsun Zan over there, unify the Han, and build up the nation's strength.
"Understand now?"
"…Hmph. Do as you please." Having heard me out, Sima Yi turned her head away, her face full of displeasure. Blunt as ever, that one.
Then again, mulling it over, something began to nag at me. What was Gongsun Zan doing in his Yijing Tower these days? Still living like a shut-in hermit, even now? For the final gate standing on the road to unification, he was a distinctly anticlimactic opponent — but one could never be too careful. If Gongsun Zan abruptly awakened some hidden martial prowess and went on a rampage like the hero of a wuxia saga…
…No. That was never going to happen. I had conjured the scenario all by myself, and it was so absurd that a snort of laughter escaped me before I could help it.