Thinking Some Dark Thoughts Again...
Thinking Some Dark Thoughts Again...
A little time had passed since General Yuan Shu departed.
Until that moment she had been...
Dong Zhuo stared blankly at the road the man had taken, her expression distant.
"My lord? Can you hear me?"
"Hm? Ah... yes... forgive me, a little tired, I simply..."
Hua Xiong's voice pulled Dong Zhuo back to herself.
She shook off the stray thoughts drifting through her head and turned her attention back to the subordinates before her.
"So... what were you saying just now?"
"That the Yellow Turban main camp was completely empty. By the time we arrived the bastards had already packed up and gone somewhere!"
"But it doesn't look like they ran away... They left about half the provisions and weapons behind, so it seems they planned it in advance."
"Planned withdrawal, concur. Possibility of other variables exists. Inference required."
Her subordinates' report made clear that the stratagem using Make Noise in the East, Strike in the West had effectively failed.
Yet at this moment Dong Zhuo focused less on regretting the failure and more on grasping what it implied.
"Hmm... the same enemy who had an ambush waiting abandoned their main camp. That certainly seems to mean something, but..."
At times like this a strategist to consult would make things easier,
but unfortunately Dong Zhuo's strategist and brain, Li Ru, remained in Anyi, where the main fortress of Hedong was situated.
Li Ru was the only person capable of handling internal affairs in Dong Zhuo's absence.
So for now the four of them had no choice but to put their heads together and wrestle with the problem...
Dong Zhuo nevertheless identified the cause far faster than expected.
"The Imperial Edict..."
"Hm? What is that you are saying?"
"The Imperial Edict General Yuan Shu showed me earlier contained the following: the Yellow Turbans are massing in force toward Henei. They probably mean to break through there and open a route into Henan, where Luoyang lies. Which means..."
"Oh?"
A picture was beginning to form. Hua Xiong was the first to smile as she spoke.
"Mufufufu, this Hua Xiong has also worked it out. The ones we fought here received the summons and went to Henei as well."
"Ho-ee... this Li Jue thinks the same, yes."
"Guo Si. Concur."
"Yes, that does seem the right view. And given the circumstances, the remnant troops who were routed by General Yuan Shu and by us will have fled in that direction too. In that case, here... fufufu."
With those words a chill smile settled on Dong Zhuo's lips, and she began to laugh quietly.
The smile belonged to the same woman, but at this instant her face held something unsettling rather than the warmth from a moment before.
The three who saw it flinched slightly and began edging away from her.
"Ugh... our lord is smiling."
"Hawa-wa... she's definitely thinking another dark thought..."
"Concur. All, caution advised."
Dong Zhuo was a good lord who cherished her subordinates, but at moments like this she radiated a menace that felt terrifying in every way, and she genuinely did terrifying things besides.
Uneasy about what serpent-like schemes might be coiling inside that head, the three stole wary glances at Dong Zhuo, who was still wearing that wicked smile.
Whatever the scheme turned out to be, they could only hope it wouldn't mean hardship for themselves.
*
Cleaning up after a battle took more time than expected.
Victory or not, when thousands upon tens of thousands clashed across a battlefield, some damage was unavoidable.
Reorganizing and replenishing the lost troops,
killing the prisoners who deserved killing,
absorbing the useful ones into the ranks with the excellent binary choice of "Would you rather lose your head here, or enlist and start as a private?", then sending the maimed back to their hometowns with a little grain and a stern warning to live decently from now on—
it took five days to complete that string of tasks, and we finally finished preparing to depart again for our original destination, Henei.
"I expected as much, but it dragged out longer than I wanted."
"Still, my lord, the right answer is to crush every Yellow Turban you set eyes on, isn't it? Besides, right before a big battle, those prisoners you pulled in brought our strength close to twenty thousand."
Ji Ling had long been unusually attentive to troop numbers.
Whether because our forces had roughly quadrupled in the span of a few weeks, she looked thoroughly pleased.
"The problem is that they're just numbers padded with rabble... well, better than having fewer men, certainly."
Inferior to elite troops, but men who could still swing a blade would have their uses.
In the end we had lost time, but we had replenished our strength,
and, most of all, with this dose of insecticide, the Yellow Turbans wouldn't be eyeing Hedong lightly for a while.
Moreover, no urgent news had reached us from Henei either.
So although it left a slightly unsatisfactory taste, I decided to treat "good enough" as good enough and stepped out of the encampment with Ji Ling.
A voice called after me.
"General Yuan Shu."
"Ah, Governor Dong."
Dong Zhuo and her subordinates appeared before us.
The wound had not been deep, but here she was up and moving around perfectly after only a few days.
Thinking that Dong Zhuo was Dong Zhuo even as a woman, I gave a respectful greeting.
"I was just coming to say farewell. As mentioned before, we shall proceed straight to Henei. Should another opportunity arise in the future, let us meet again."
In plain honesty, I'd really rather not see her again if at all possible. But since we were leaving anyway, I presented the proper courtesy of a subordinate in the moment.
My farewell was immediately refused.
"That will not be necessary. No need to exchange farewells for the present."
"Pardon? What do you..."
Dong Zhuo said something that made no sense.
Then she turned her gaze to the blue-drill-haired woman beside her... Hua Xiong.
"Take this, you do."
Still in that peculiar manner of speech, Hua Xiong held something out to me.
And.
"... Th-this...?!"
"An order from Lord Zhang Rang sent down from Luoyang. It says I am also to proceed to Henei with you and lend my strength to the Yellow Turban suppression."
"N... no... what on earth..."
"What is the matter? Could it be... you dislike it?"
Yes, I dislike it.
Since I could not actually say that, I scrambled for an excuse.
"N-no, that isn't it. But you are still the Governor who governs Hedong. Are you free to leave your territory unguarded like this, I wondered... as someone who has defended Hedong alongside Your Excellency until now, I was concerned."
"That... is so. Now that you mention it. All this time, we two together have...! Hmm..."
Dong Zhuo spoke as though her thoughts had floated off for an instant.
But she quickly cleared her throat lightly and looked me squarely in the face again.
"W... well, set that worry aside. I already designated someone to handle internal affairs in my place before I came here. Even should a problem arise, they can at least keep the situation contained until we return."
"I see... that is a relief... indeed."
Relief my ass.
No thank you, I don't want this, please don't come.
I mean, we could just go our separate ways and that would be fine,
so why is this budding future traitor of a woman suddenly trying to latch on and make a mess?
Those words were crawling up past my throat, but...
she was moving under orders as well, and right now I had no way to change it.
'The Ten Regular Attendants, those bastards—how desperate are they that they'd even drag the Governor of Hedong...? Is the situation really that dire?'
I couldn't know the enemy's exact scale, but measures this extreme suggested the numbers were truly no joke.
Though... it could also be that the Ten Regular Attendants had simply panicked and were overreacting.
With no way to learn the details immediately, all I could do for now was watch the situation unfold.
While I was having those thoughts,
my eyes suddenly caught the horse standing right beside Dong Zhuo.
A horse with a glossy red coat, a massive frame that looked half again as large as an ordinary horse.
Anyway, given that its owner was Dong Zhuo, I knew what horse this was.
'So that's... the famous Red Hare. Even for a horse, its presence is something else...'
Red Hare.
One of the Thousand-Li Horses said to run a thousand li a day, and beyond that, a terrifying specimen that could cover a thousand li by day and eight hundred by night, totaling 1,800 li.
The saying went that among horses there was Red Hare: by universal acclaim, the greatest steed in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
In the Original Timeline it was Dong Zhuo's beloved mount at this point, but later passed through Lü Bu's hands to become Guan Yu's horse, and when Guan Yu died it starved itself—a creature you could truly call a divine beast.
Seeing this legendary steed in the flesh before my eyes stirred an old sense of wonder in me.
But...
'... Hm? It... can't be?'
One possibility suddenly crossed my mind while I was looking at Red Hare.
I quickly shook my head, though, and concluded that couldn't be right.
'No way... what would that woman possibly find appealing about going to a war zone with me?'
The inference was possible, but I lacked enough evidence.
So, accepting the situation like swallowing bitter medicine,
I simply looked at this woman who was far more terrifying than Yuan Shao or Cao Cao and forced a smile with all my might.
*
Yuan Shu smiled broadly at the prospect of traveling together.
Watching the handsome young man beam so brightly, Dong Zhuo felt a quiet joy and a thread of relief inside her heart.
'What a relief. Everything wrapped up according to plan...'
The sudden order to deploy to the Henei region.
But
the decisive reason that order had been issued, in truth, was that Dong Zhuo herself had volunteered for it to the Ten Regular Attendants.
The five days Yuan Shu's party had lingered here to handle the aftermath of the battle—
during that time Dong Zhuo had a trusted subordinate ride Red Hare to deliver a letter to the Ten Regular Attendants in Luoyang.
A letter stating that the Yellow Turbans who had invaded Hedong had fled to Henei, that the situation suggested they were plotting something there, and that therefore Dong Zhuo herself would personally suppress the Yellow Turbans in Henei and requested an order to that effect.
The Henei situation was already growing critical, and since she had cultivated a close relationship with them through regular bribes, the Ten Regular Attendants granted her request at once.
And one more thing.
That official order also contained, as Dong Zhuo had quietly requested, the instruction to move alongside that man...
General Yuan Shu.
The pretext was simply to combine forces and oppose the Yellow Turbans together... but
in reality, Dong Zhuo's personal objective lay within it.
The most important thing for achieving great undertakings was capable people.
Keeping as many talented individuals close at hand as possible.
Following this principle, Dong Zhuo had consistently worked to draw able people into her service, regardless of their status or origin.
Hua Xiong, Li Jue, Guo Si—each was of frontier barbarian stock or from a lowborn house, yet Dong Zhuo esteemed their military talent and kept them as her closest generals.
Li Ru, who had originally held office in the capital but had been unable to advance after falling afoul of the Ten Regular Attendants, was the same.
For Dong Zhuo, with her deep avarice for talent,
that young man—a legitimate heir of the Yuan Clan whose intelligence and ability were already shining—
Yuan Shu,
was a prize as tempting as honey-glazed cake.
Someone who might let her grasp her ambitions even faster...
and,
a man who, for reasons she could not name, made her heart race just to look at him.
A man she wanted in her possession, whatever the reason.