Jiangdong (3)
The Yellow Turban Rebellion erupted six years ago. Corruption, the open sale of offices, and festering decay shook the last pulse out of the Han Dynasty, root and branch.
The Way of Great Peace.
Hundreds of thousands of faithful who had pulled yellow headscarves over their heads.
And the lawless who rode the chaos to become border raiders.
The land was devastated, the common people drained of vigor.
Hooves trampled fields. Wherever you went, the same gray famine spread.
It was hell.
Was there poverty and hunger worse than this?
The people of Han abandoned their ruined villages and drifted across the realm. They wandered endlessly, clutching a vague hope that somewhere a paradise overflowing with plenty and wealth awaited them.
"Have you heard! The King of Chen, they say, drove out every last Yellow Turban!"
"Unlike the other prefectures and counties turned to ash... Chen Kingdom, I heard, protected all its granaries and towns!"
The prefectures and counties caught in the grinding battle between the Imperial Court's armies and the main Yellow Turban host all collapsed into barren wastes beyond hope of recovery. The closer to Luoyang, the more gruesome the damage.
Yet
Chen Kingdom alone withstood the disasters of war.
And that was not all.
Because Chen Kingdom acted as a bulwark, Jiangbei and Jiangdong were preserved.
As the stunning news of victory spread, waves of Han refugees streamed south. Refugees who had severed every attachment to their homeland soon settled in Jiangbei and Jiangdong.
"Loose!"
"Yangtze River pirates are closing!"
It was not only refugees who were drawn by plenty and wealth.
River bandits.
Countless brigands who operated along the Yangtze were pulled in.
They must have pushed up the Wo River, a tributary of the Yangtze that reaches Yu Province. As if to prove it, dozens of vessels were faintly visible in the rear of the mass of bandits surging forward like a black tide.
"They're here!"
"Hold. They're still out of range."
Fierce war cries.
And the grim ring of metal.
Through heavy dust, hard-faced, ugly-looking river bandits emerged.
I could see soldiers outfitted in solid armor and armed with proper weapons, like regulars. Clearly deserters who had fled the ranks or stragglers left behind on the battlefield had joined the bandit gangs.
Crack.
Angry feet snapped a twig.
The bandits had finally entered range.
Without a flicker of hesitation, I drew a headless arrow from my quiver. The moment I nocked it, I sent it flying over the heads of the massed assault.
Fweeeeeeeeeeeee───!!!!
A Whistling Arrow.
A fierce shriek tore from the narrow hole in the shaft.
In the same instant, a volley of hundreds of arrows rained down on the same spot.
"Gaaaaah!"
"Ar- arrows! Shields up!"
Chen Kingdom's bows and crossbows turned the river bandits who had set foot there into pincushions. As the sharp volleys kept raining, bodies piled up with the reek of fresh blood.
Advancing was impossible.
Getting up at all was out of the question.
How could anyone push through a volley that hammered down like a monsoon?
They hadn't even gotten close.
The bandits who stopped in their tracks were slaughtered one-sidedly.
"Uwooooooh!!!"
A giant of a man, a brute boasting a towering seven-foot build, began to charge with a wild roar. As if trusting utterly in the protection of his solid helmet and armor, he spat defiance and broke through the barrage.
Tang.
Tang.
Arrows ricocheted off his armor without penetrating.
Worse, the giant charging in the vanguard was holding up an ironclad shield.
"Stop that bastard in his tracks!"
"Tch! Filthy tough plating!"
The imposing sight of the giant rushing forward like a starved bear threw Chen Kingdom's archers into a panic. Arrows struck him repeatedly, yet he kept coming — the sight radiated madness.
He was about to reach the front line.
Exploiting the window where concentrated fire focused on the ironclad giant, the bandits who had been helpless until now began their own rush. If I let them through this gap, the fight would turn into a pitched melee on open ground, and heavy casualties would be inevitable.
Fwoong─!!
Just as the ironclad giant reached right before our eyes,
an arrow shot out with a sharp crack that split the wind.
At the same moment, the ironclad giant charging with his shield raised staggered.
"Ggh...! Gaaah!!"
Lifting the shield with both hands had exposed the gap under the arm — the armpit.
A seasoned master archer would not miss that gap.
The ironclad giant screamed as an arrow struck his armpit, dropping his shield. Liu Seong-hwi, who had been waiting for a new opening to appear, drew the bowstring again.
"───!!"
A sharp arrow buried itself beneath the shoulder blade, where a gap existed between the shoulder guard and the breastplate.
And Liu Seong-hwi's third arrow found the only gap in the helmet — it pierced the giant's eye.
* * *
There is a proverb: making a fine bow is easy, but raising a master archer is hard.
You can turn out excellent bows in any number.
But raising a single skilled archer demands enormous time and money.
Throughout history and across every border, the course of a battle was decided by the shock of cavalry, yet the shooting of archer companies frequently turned the tide of melees. Sometimes the battle was decided when the overall commander directing the host took an arrow and died.
When facing large armies, no weapon matches the bow and crossbow.
Chen Kingdom's unbroken string of victories had proven the importance of skilled archers.
"My lord, what are you making?"
"Arrows."
Scrape. Scrape.
I sat in place, trimming wood.
The girl with the flowing platinum hair, her curiosity clearly piqued, stuck right to my side. Eyes as lustrous and clear as jewels took in the arrow taking shape under the short carving knife.
"Pfft. You're lying."
"About what?"
"Who's ever seen arrows that short? You couldn't even draw the string."
"You use a different tool."
Pyeonjeon. A short arrow.
A stubby arrow that tears through iron plate in one blow.
Its flight path is so swift it cannot be tracked; it is also called a weapon suited for assassination.
As Lu Xun noted, a pyeonjeon cannot be shot by regular means. You need the help of a cylindrical aid called a tonga to loose this short assassination arrow.
I had no intention of using it in actual combat just yet.
Because of its peculiar nature, a pyeonjeon is considerably more cumbersome and difficult to use than a standard arrow.
"My lord, petitions have come up from the prefectures and counties."
"I'll see to them today."
Perhaps my father meant to prove that his loud boasts about abdicating soon to his magnificently grown Crown Prince were no empty words.
From last year—
No,
maybe the year before that?
Liu Chong had delegated all military affairs connected to war, and then, bit by bit, he began handing over the authority and roles of a Vassal King to me, his eldest son. His rotten scheme was to dump it all on the son who had risen as a hero of the troubled age after repelling every rebel army and barbarian incursion, and then retire.
-A spectacular invention has struck my mind! I must build it before I forget! But I lack the funds!
-To increase revenue, we must expand the market. I beseech you.
-Please... I beg you... something, to eat...
-A burglar has been about lately and it is troublesome. Would you tighten the watch?
Agh, I don't want to.
If it doesn't involve a bow, I can't muster any motivation.
Wearing a look of patent annoyance, I fidgeted with the pyeonjeon I had just been making. The girl glued to my side stepped up in my place and unrolled a bamboo slip from the mountain of them.
"The man who is going to be enthroned as King of Chen the moment his Coming-of-Age Ceremony is over cannot afford to look worn out already. Though I do understand your desire for help from me, the utterly peerless beauty."
"Damn it! If the enthronement ceremony happens at the same time as the coming-of-age... that's next year! What kind of bastard spouts that nonsense?"
"His Highness the King of Chen."
"..."
Great. Insulted my own father.
Father has clearly been spreading that around openly.
Just how desperately does he want to become a Retired King?
It's not easy to hand over power this readily.
Don't most emperors and kings cling to their seats like drowning men for as long as possible, reluctant to permit a succession?
As if to shatter that common sense, His Highness the Vassal King kept demonstrating his will to pass the throne to his son, somehow, even in a chaotic era where the future was unclear. It was possible only because he genuinely trusted his son, but for the son being saddled with the succession, it did not sit comfortably.
"My lord!"
While these idle thoughts ran through my head,
an ominous shout tinged with urgency rang out.
An official who had received word through a messenger came hurrying into the office, breathless.
"G- guests... Di-Distinguished guests have arrived..."
"Distinguished guests? General Sun Jian must have gotten here already. He was in Nanyang Prefecture in Jing Province; he could make it in good time."
Sun Jian.
The fierce general of the age must have arrived leading his officers and troops.
With that guess, I moved to prepare a reception for Sun Jian.
"No. The distinguished guests visiting Chen Kingdom are... kinsmen of the Han Imperial House."
"What?"
Kinsmen of the Han Imperial House.
In other words, a whole mob of esteemed imperial relatives had come flooding in.
What is going on.
We'd had no word of this at all.
"They asked... to be lent fiefs and the people of the prefectures and counties."
"Shameless of them. They're the gentlemen who ran away because their own lives were precious to them."
It is no exaggeration to say that the noble status and supreme power wielded by kings and feudal lords all arise from the territories and common people inherited from their ancestors.
Stipends and taxes,
soldiers to protect their persons and their households,
and their authority and dignity as lords — all originate from their territory and people.
And so—
The imperial kinsmen who abandoned their fiefs and people and fled the moment the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out were now little more than penniless paupers and destitute beggars who could not even get their next meal.
"Still, we ought to show basic humanity. Feed them and send them off."
These were clearly distant relatives, far removed down the branches of the clan.
I had no obligation to take them all in.
But they were penniless wretches who had visited the royal domain as guests, so I decided to at least offer them a meal.