Pet (2)
The day after the Emperor accepted my proposal, I went straight out to find a pet and brought it before her.
When I arrived, the Emperor—now thoroughly accustomed to my visits—waved her attendants away and received me alone.
Finding a suitable pet had not been difficult. Creatures trickled in as gifts from one place or another even when I did nothing at all, and while uncommon, a patient search would occasionally turn up a merchant with one for sale.
She had said any animal would do, but I had been quietly fretting over what would happen if she truly ordered something like an elephant or a tiger. Had she actually demanded such a beast, my plan was to refuse on the grounds that those were not, strictly speaking, pets...
Thankfully, the worry proved groundless.
The Emperor's tastes fell comfortably within the bounds of sanity. Declaring a weakness for small, cute things, she weighed the puppy against the kitten I had brought, and finally settled on the cat.
Her reasoning was simple.
"They're both adorable, but this little wiggler is even more adorable."
When it comes to kittens, there is simply no argument.
Watching the Emperor hug the squirming bundle and giggle, I let a fond smile spread across my face.
"Then surely it is time you gave her a name, Your Majesty?"
"Ah, of course."
The Emperor closed her eyes and sank into deep thought.
"A name. A name, you say..."
Even a glance told me the naming process was already running aground. Which was only natural—few things in this world inspire as much agonizing as naming something.
Still, with the sharp mind she possessed, I assumed her naming sense could not be all that bad.
After a moment of grave deliberation, the Emperor opened her mouth.
"...Yaongi?"
"..."
I clenched my jaw and held my expression steady. That had been close—I had very nearly laughed out loud.
Not that laughing would have cost me my head for insolence, but the odds of the girlish Emperor sulking over it were high. The Emperor, sulking? Oof. Just picturing a future of walking on eggshells around her moods sent a shiver down my spine.
She looked up at me with those black eyes that proclaimed the imperial bloodline.
"Well? Not bad, is it?"
"...It is not bad. However."
"However?"
When I cut myself off mid-sentence, the Emperor tilted her head up at me from the throne, curiosity plain on her face. Petite as ever, she possessed a fatally adorable quality—much like the cat cradled in her arms.
"It is a name with rather no majesty to it."
"No majesty, you say?"
I nodded. Bluntly put: picture Her Majesty wandering the palace right now, calling "Yaongi~ Yaongi~" as she hunted for her cat. Undeniably cute, certainly—but to the bureaucrats who prized dignity above all else, it would be little wonder if they fainted dead away from the shock.
And then they would ask the Emperor why she had suddenly taken up keeping a pet. Her answer would lead naturally to my name, and every gaze in the Emperor's faction would fasten itself on me.
Lately, whenever the officials of her faction looked at me, it was with the strangest expressions. Not hostile, mind you—since I visibly deferred to the Emperor's authority, they thought well of me in return. Those odd glances were not negative so much as... how do I put this? Like fathers watching their beloved daughter toddle devotedly after some no-good fellow. Yes. That sort of look.
Either blind to my worries or simply indifferent to them, the Emperor set her chin with pride.
"If I have decreed she shall be called thus, who dares say a word?"
"...Fair enough."
"Worry not! Should anyone overstep, I shall simply slice them down, quick as that!"
Slice what, exactly? Their official posts, presumably. Right?
"And if any man displeases you, speak of it whenever you please! I shall teach him a lesson he will not soon forget!"
"You honor me."
I answered with a wry chuckle. As spoken, the sentiment was adorable. But the actual sight of the Emperor demolishing someone at my request would be anything but cute.
Entangled in political bloodletting since childhood—well, shall we say Her Majesty was not particularly squeamish about seeing blood spilled.
Seeing me prop up the Emperor's standing, the occasional fool would cross the line in pursuit of his own interests, presumably judging himself safe so long as he hid in her shadow. And what, I ask you, became of every last one of them?
Before I could so much as lift a finger, the Emperor had already summoned the transgressors with a smile, and after that, not one of them was ever seen within the palace walls again.
There were no exceptions. Cross the line, and it mattered nothing whether you were a stalwart of the Emperor's faction or even an imperial kinsman by blood—you were summoned, and then you were 'disappeared.'
...So this was why they said early education mattered. An Emperor who had survived the power struggles between the consort clans and the eunuchs, who had witnessed every manner of ugliness, had no qualms about any of it.
And because she made such unmistakable gestures of standing wholly on my side, her faction never once grew fat on borrowed power or threw its weight about. With their own leader personally 'disappearing' anyone who got above himself, what fool would dare?
Thanks to the Emperor's example, I never had to lose much sleep over the faction splintering from within.
"General-in-Chief."
"Yes?"
As I sat lost in thought, the Emperor called to me in a low voice.
"You are the only one who ever thinks of me this way."
She stroked the cat in her arms. The kitten—Yaongi, henceforth—purred contentedly and burrowed deeper into the Emperor's embrace.
"The grace I owe you has passed beyond all counting."
"You flatter me."
"No. It is no flattery."
The Emperor shook her head.
"So whenever you have need, merely say the word."
"..."
"Those within who vex you—I shall sweep every last one away."
Yep. Something about her is definitely a few degrees off true.
Not long after I sent the Liu Bei sisters on their way, the incident finally erupted: word arrived that Liu Yu, Inspector of Youzhou, and Gongsun Zan, the White Horse General, had come to blows.
And as predicted, Liu Yu had failed to overcome Gongsun Zan—that walking blender of nomads—and been utterly demolished, just like that.
"Liu Yu's forces were short on numbers, and the gap in battle experience was enormous. The result was only to be expected."
So spoke Xun You, calm as still water, upon hearing the news of Liu Yu's defeat. I turned my head to look at her.
"How would you have fought it, Xun You?"
"Hmm... were it I..."
She fell silent a moment, then fetched a Go board and began laying out the stones with unhurried care.
"Please imagine Liu Yu's army as the black stones, and Gongsun Zan's as the white."
Is she casting Gongsun Zan as white because he's the White Horse General?
"From the reports, the two sides met head-on on open ground—which can hardly be helped, the surrounding terrain being nearly uniform. So we take that as given."
Shaking off my idle musing, I nodded along.
"Gongsun Zan's method on flat ground is simplicity itself. While the infantry grapples like so..."
Xun You slid the black and white stones from their respective camps until they locked together at the center of the board.
"...his famed White Horse Volunteers gallop wide and rake the enemy's flanks and rear with crossing volleys."
Then she glided the white stones—spread like wings at the back—smoothly into position beside the embattled black stones in the middle.
I nodded. "Simple."
"Simple, but effective," Xun You continued evenly. "Neutralize the cavalry somehow, and your chances of victory grow considerably."
"Except the White Horse Volunteers shoot from horseback."
"That is precisely the nuisance."
Gongsun Zan's prized Volunteers had one more peculiarity beyond dressing every rider in matching white steeds: to a man, they were horse archers, trained to loose arrows from the saddle.
What a bunch of nomads.
To hunt the abyss called 'the nomads,' they had made themselves into nomads—become the abyss itself. Such was the White Horse Volunteers.
Where Yuan Shao was a genius of politics, Gongsun Zan was a genius of the art of war—of leading soldiers in the field. A general whose record included coming within a hair's breadth of killing Yuan Shao even in a battle where the tide had swung so completely against him.
"But Gongsun Zan's forces do have a limit."
"A limit?"
"If no strategy existed to counter horse archers like the White Horse Volunteers, would the nomads not have swallowed the Han whole long ago?"
Well, that was true enough. Had the horse archer been an invincible arm, the steppe tribes would have devoured the Han an age ago.
"With well-trained soldiers and a strategy to match, shattering Gongsun Zan is not impossible."
"...And how would one go about shattering him?"
"Have you not fought the nomads a great deal yourself, General-in-Chief?"
...Huh. She had a point.
The moment I began thinking of the White Horse Volunteers as simply another band of steppe riders, the whole problem abruptly looked far more tractable.
I spoke slowly. "In that case—lead with shield bearers to soak up the Volunteers' arrows..."
"...and return fire in kind. Simple enough."
"And if that proves too difficult, we simply meet them with horse archers of our own."
Why, after all, had the White Horse Volunteers become horse archers in the first place? Because against an enemy who rode and shot across open plains, nothing answered better than horse archers of one's own.
Bing Province had been a different matter—too mountainous for horse archery to shine, where striking by surprise over broken terrain worked far better. Heavy cavalry, meanwhile, has a miserable time against horse archers: the archers simply exploit their speed to dictate the range and pepper you with arrows at leisure, leaving no avenue of reply whatsoever. Heavy cavalry fared far better against infantry and foot archers than against its own kind.
Countering with horse archers did demand cavalry of exceptional quality—but since when had our cavalry ever been ordinary? Gather it up, drill it in mounted archery, and raise the unit, and our army could field a second White Horse Volunteers all its own.
"Gongsun Zan has fought cavalry-centered nomads nearly all his life; against the infantry-centered armies of the Han proper, he has scarcely ever contended."
"..."
"Liu Yu's defeat was inevitable, lacking as he did in military experience. But..."
Xun You smiled sweetly as she finished the thought.
"Should he ever cross a general well-versed in horse archers, I suspect he will come apart spectacularly—sooner rather than later."
"I see."
Recalling how the Battle of Jieqiao—where Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan had clashed—had actually unfolded, I conceded the point. Just one more reminder that betting everything on a single strength deserves a second thought.
Balance, it seemed, mattered in all things.