A Journey Meaningful in Many Ways
"Brother Yunzhang, this is the wrong road. Out of Luoyang, this way leads to Yanzhou, not Hongnong."
"I know. There's a place I want to look in on."
Guan Yu had come under orders to take a turn through Luoyang, yet he stayed only a day before striking east. Luoyang belonged to Henan Commandery, and east of Henan lay Cao Cao's own ground.
"You're bound for Yanzhou?"
"Mm."
"Advance scouting, then?"
"Mm."
"...You're serious?"
"I mean only to look."
He truly did bring us up before Chenliu and Dong commanderies in Yanzhou, and from a distance he studied the walls of Chenliu with slow, careful eyes.
"His present Majesty first held the title Prince of Chenliu, didn't he?"
"So I've heard."
Ironic, when one thought on it. The Prince of Chenliu had risen to the throne and become Emperor Xian, Liu Xie—and that same soil of Chenliu in Yanzhou was the commandery where Cao Cao, as Inspector of Yanzhou, had sunk his roots. Emperor and the powerful minister who raised an emperor had both come up out of Chenliu. Cao Cao and Emperor Xian, it seemed, were not a pair one could ever quite pull apart.
"The defenses are tight, I'll grant them that. To break through this far, one would truly need twice the men, wouldn't one?"
"I'll hold my tongue."
"Heh. I'm only looking the ground over, on the chance of it. Surveying the defensive lines of the provinces south of the Yellow River, one by one—that, too, is His Majesty's command."
Ah. So that was it.
After Chenliu he swept his gaze the length of Dong Commandery, then circled back through Henei and Hedong in Sili.
"Isn't Hedong your homeland, Brother Yunzhang?"
"There's no clan village of mine there. I can't say the place stirs much feeling."
"The reason... I suppose I ought not ask."
"Are you curious?"
When we reached Hedong, Guan Yu settled on a nearby inn and bought wine. Cheap liquor and a single boiled chicken—but a meal eaten far from home has a savor all its own.
"Long ago there was a great salt exchange over there. They dug the rock salt of Sili and refined it in this place."
"A rock-salt market, then."
Sili lay inland, so rather than sea salt dried under the sun or scraped from saline earth, the region mined rock salt and moved it along its own trade. The Han held salt as a state monopoly, yet the great clans of a locality often took the rights of distribution into their own hands. Had a proper bureaucracy ever truly taken root, perhaps it would have been otherwise—but in the chaos at the end of the Later Han, where was any such thing? Ask Su Shuang when and how our own house laid hands on the salt trade out of Bohai in Jizhou, and he would not answer.
"There was a landlord who gouged the price of salt and swallowed the people's houses and fields. He split the take with the Grand Administrator of Hedong."
"Did you kill him?"
"He wasn't worth the blade. Three blows of the fist. His skull burst, and his arms and legs shot straight out. I dragged the corpse to the government office and threw it down."
Even to hear it told, it was an age of barbarity and romance at once.
"Houses and land were not enough for him. He seized good-looking children, sold them off as slaves and singing-girls, and hauled them to Luoyang. The moment I saw it, the blood came up over my eyes."
"So that is what they mean by a knight-errant."
"After that I took to the road with nowhere to go. Whenever men came running and shouted that I was wanted, I finished them with this."
Guan Yu clenched his fist. Look closely and it was a mass of scars; the knuckles especially had split open again and again until nothing remained but callus.
"And so you went all the way to Youzhou, and met Imperial Uncle Liu and Yide?"
"Yide first. A man has to eat, so when I heard they were raising troops to put down the Yellow Turbans, I stepped forward—and there was that fellow Yide, bellowing, 'Looks to me like there's no one here stronger than I am, so I'll have a reward a hundred times any other soldier's!' Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Hearing the Oath of the Peach Garden told in the flesh, the dopamine hit like a flood.
"We traded a few punches and fell into a test of strength, and the one who caught my arm and Yide's and broke it up was Eldest Brother. 'Warriors gathered to smite rebels,' he said, 'and you waste your strength on a contest like this?'"
I poured Guan Yu another cup and tore into a chicken leg while the rest of the tale came out.
"Yide was a strongman who had dealt in meat up in Youzhou. Eldest Brother was a scion of the imperial house of Han, a gentleman who had studied under Master Lu Zhi. And I had come all the way from Hedong because fate laid the road under my feet. We met beneath a peach tree, struck our cups together—tak!—and swore ourselves brothers."
"Even the telling of it is full of romance."
"When the wars are done, I mean to go back and drink in that place. I buried a jar of peach wine beneath the tree."
"If that day comes, may I come along and drink with you?"
"As much as you like!"
That night we talked through a great many things, slept deep in our separate rooms, and took up the work again.
"Now we go to Hongnong."
"We make the circuit, and if there's no one worth the trouble, we simply go back and report?"
At that Guan Yu drew his long beard down through his fingers and smiled a smile I could not read.
"Who knows. In Hongnong we may yet see something of great purpose."
"Aren't you always a plainspoken man, Brother Yunzhang? Tell me plainly, now that we've come this far."
"They say Hongnong has been a land of warriors and scholars since old times. His Majesty wishes the Tiger-Brave Guards under the General of the Guard kept firmly in hand, and he would find strong men fit to stand as officers."
"Have you ties in Hongnong?"
"None. But search, and a man will turn up, will he not?"
Simply following Guan Yu as he roamed Sili wherever his feet cared to take him set my mind a degree more at ease. Coming down from Hedong toward Hongnong, I remembered the first time we had rescued the Son of Heaven. That had been truly vicious. To shake the pursuit of Li Jue and Guo Si, the old minister Shi Sunrui had flung even gold, silver, and jewels into the road—and those mad butchers had gone on slaughtering all the same. In the end they violated the women and cut away their long hair besides. Surely nothing of that sort would happen again. If we could only reach Hongnong in safety...
Clang— clang— shriiing—
"You mad bastards! Do you even know who we are, robbing us?"
"Heh heh heh. Wouldn't know about that. Gold badges on you, though. Must be some high-and-mighty sorts!"
Voices from off in the distance. Why did a bad feeling never turn out wrong?
"Looks like there's a band of brigands nearby."
"That way."
"Zhang Qian, with me!"
Guan Yu drew the Green Dragon Crescent Blade at once, and where we rushed we found a company of soldiers ringed in by bandits.
"You wretches! We are His Imperial Majesty's own troops!"
"Madmen! We're leftovers from the Grand General's army and the Grand Marshal's. These days we play at banditry..."
THOOM.
Guan Yu did not need to see more. He slammed the haft of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade into the earth and announced himself.
"Wh-what? That one?"
Terrifying, no doubt. In a mountain wood after the sun had gone, a black shadow of a giant was coming on, his beard hanging longer than two meters.
"Did you say you were the leavings of Li Jue and Guo Si?"
"Wh-who is this bastard? Where did he come fr—"
"Kill him!"
Guan Yu looked them over, swept his beard down once in a long stroke, flared his tiger's eyes, and swung the Green Dragon Crescent Blade.
Shwaaaak—
Three men in a single stroke. A head, a waist, an arm flew, and each body came apart in three.
"Y-you—!"
Crack!
He shot out a foot into the face of the next bandit who came charging, and the man died with the bridge of his nose and his teeth smashed to ruin. A fancy sixteen-form kick? No. A running clearance boot. Like some giant undertaker striding through a moonlit night, he killed them with nothing but those sweeping motions, and they died before they could even scream.
"Eek—!"
"Run!"
A few of them understood they were no match and tried to flee. Guan Yu ran one down and stamped his back flat, then raised the Green Dragon Crescent Blade like a harpoon and hurled it at the bandit already far off.
Shwaaaak—
The dragon's fang burst out through the man's belly. He staggered, then collapsed in a heap, and that was the end of them. Guan Yu stroked his beard once more as if it had been nothing, and beckoned me over.
"If a temple bell had rung just once, it would have been perfect."
"Why?"
"No, it's nothing..."
Anyway, I looked them over in a hurry.
"Is everyone all right?"
"C-could you be the Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk and the Commander of the Tiger-Brave Imperial Guards?"
They knew us? I could tell they were government troops. But who? They hurried forward and bowed their heads to me and to Guan Yu.
"You have our sincere thanks for coming to our aid. We are soldiers of the General of the Guard's headquarters."
"Hoh. Imperial In-Law Dong's men?"
"Yes, sir!"
The Emperor's escort rested with Dong Cheng, General of the Guard, and beneath him the Tiger-Brave Guards were commanded by Guan Yu in his office as their Commander.
"What—you are bound for Hongnong as well?"
"We are."
"Why?"
"Th-that is..."
While they hemmed and hawed, the door of a carriage opened. A woman in a familiar white face-veil inclined her head to me, and after her the palace ladies—terrified a moment ago, only just composed—offered their greetings.
"Ah— you?"
"So we are in your debt once again. Thank you."
The veiled senior palace woman. It had been a while. By now she was almost familiar.
"If it would not be an imposition, might we travel with you to Hongnong?"
"Why would it be an imposition? Of course."
Guan Yu stood with his arms folded, easy and unhurried. And so that strange little slaughter—former soldiers of Han turned brigands against the present troops of the General of the Guard—ended with Guan Yu.
Traveling on to Hongnong together, I heard the tale from the veiled matron through the carriage screen.
"It is His Majesty's command. We are to go to Hongnong and offer a single flower at a tomb."
"Before the spirit of His Highness... the Prince of Hongnong?"
"Yes."
Liu Bian, Prince of Hongnong. The Emperor's half-brother—and, after Emperor Ling, the legitimate son of Empress Dowager He, who had duly ascended as Emperor Shao. But Dong Zhuo had deposed him together with the Empress Dowager, poisoned him, and reduced him to Prince of Hongnong, and his tomb stood in Hongnong Commandery. So His Majesty, in his own courtesy toward a half-brother, had sent palace ladies and soldiers of the General of the Guard to mourn, and to return.
"How fares the General of the Guard these days?"
"I have heard he is to be promoted to General of Chariots and Cavalry. But real authority, as ever..."
"Must one watch Minister of Works Cao's face so closely? I am not even his man."
"No! How could we speak so, with the Left General's own brother before us..."
We had met by chance, and yet the air of it was already turning toward something fated. In any case, we arrived in Hongnong. The disorder was gone. It was simply a quiet town. We climbed a sun-facing mountain, and before a tomb far too mean for an emperor of the Han, a spray of poppies was carried up.
"Lady Yu's flower. His Highness loved it."
In this age it was not yet the flower later ages would hang on Lady Yang of the Tang. They called it Lady Yu's flower, after Consort Yu, the beloved of Xiang Yu. Gorgeous, and poisonous within—but just then it was offered only in mourning. While the veiled matron was setting the flowers down, I stepped up to the place.
"Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk? What are you—"
"How could I mourn a former emperor of the realm with empty hands and nothing but a bowed head?"
I set before the gravestone the finest wine I could find in Hongnong, and the steamed buns they called jiaozi, and bowed with the rites due an emperor. Then everyone knelt and bowed, and among them palace ladies broke into tears. They were the older ones, who had served in the days of Emperor Ling and Emperor Shao.
"Brother Yunzhang, the moment we return, this place must be restored as a proper mausoleum, in my name."
"Hoh. Was that your thought?"
"I've seen it with my own eyes. How could I pass it by? On this journey I've found a truly meaningful place."
"..."
The rites finished, and we all came down.
"You've all had a hard time of it."
"Not at all."
"I could use a drink, but the travel money's just enough to get us home."
"Then drink when we're back. What else is there for it?"
As the soldiers of the General of the Guard muttered among themselves, I spoke.
"You've all worked hard. Don't spend your travel money—keep it. The wine is on me."
"L-Lord Palace Assistant!"
"By office, am I not the highest man here?"
Guan Yu laughed aloud in that instant, and the soldiers looked at me as if the honor might kill them.
"And you palace ladies—before we leave, if anything in the Hongnong market catches your eye, choose it. You've come all this way in good faith."
And so we held a great feast through the Hongnong country, and in the course of it drew people in. We had come as two—myself and Guan Yu—with fifteen soldiers of the General of the Guard and ten palace ladies. We went back toward Xudu a hundred strong.
When everyone had arrived, I pressed ample cart-and-horse fare into their hands and sent them on. Then, in a place whose air had changed entirely, I paid my respects at court and went straight to the Left General's headquarters. But something had happened while we were gone. What Liu Bei had to say drove Guan Yu's eyes wide and brought him to the very edge of fury.
"What—you're telling me that bastard Cao Cao seized the Son of Heaven's bow on the hunting ground and shot the quarry himself?"
A royal hunt, held in the interval while Guan Yu and I were away. The Emperor himself had gone out to the field, and with the civil and military officials in attendance he had shot at a deer—except that, in truth, it was Cao Cao at the Emperor's side who had loosed the arrow and struck it.
"He committed a profanity like that!"
"Yunzhang. Calm yourself."
"Brother!"
"His Majesty himself said it. 'A beast came charging all at once. I was startled, and in haste I passed my bow to the Minister of Works, and it was he who shot it.' How am I to step forward against that?"
Then Zhang Fei spoke, his face sour and unimpressed.
"Not even a stag with horns out to here—a doe ran at the horses? And the one that charged 'em head-on up and died with the arrow in its back?"
"That certainly... doesn't hold together."
"If it sounds wrong even to Master Zhang Qian and Brother Yunzhang, then the whole thing's already finished, ain't it?"
"Even so. His Majesty said it was so."
However one looked at it, Cao Cao had taken a sounding in the absence of Guan Yu, captain of the Tiger-Brave Guards. And Xudu, it seemed, would go on feeling unclean for a while yet.