Cavalryman Lü Bu
Lü Bu bellowed the name of his hometown, Wuyuan Commandery, as if it were a banner of pride, and charged.
Come to think of it, if this was the year 174, Lü Bu was barely nineteen. Wait—then he didn't even hold an office yet? He was still just a soldier? Maybe he'd only called himself "Lü Bu of Wuyuan" because he was nothing more than Cavalryman Number One.
What did it matter?
I was in Lü Bu's arms!
"Hiyah—! Ha!"
Lü Bu spurred his horse onward, bracing my chest with the hand that held the reins, his other hand sweeping a halberd as he charged. The mount beneath him was not Red Hare. But as a rider who could wring every last measure of power from a horse, even the nineteen-year-old Lü Bu was already extraordinary.
"Ryaah!"
I was nothing more than a leopard cub borrowing a tiger's majesty, yet my spirits soared of their own accord. I thrust out my hands and roared. What came out, against my will, was a toddler's babble—but the horse's furious gallop still sent the blood roaring through every vein in my body.
Lü Bu was so fast that even the Xianbei who had sprung the ambush were caught off guard, and that only made it worse. A Xianbei warrior's face, eyes blown wide with shock, ballooned in my vision. His own eyes must have seen Lü Bu's face the same way.
Arrows did him no good. The hand reaching for his sword was slower than Lü Bu's charge. I did not blink once, tension pinning my eyelids open as I tried to take in every instant. I tried—but Lü Bu's halberd moved faster than any eye could follow.
The Xianbei's head seemed to tilt at a strange angle. Then it left his body. A few hot droplets of blood spattered my face where I sat against Lü Bu's chest.
It was the first beheading I had witnessed since transmigrating, and I was barely shaken. Whether that was the memory-correction of the Xiongnu Liu Bao, the Xiongnu blood running through this body, or simply the high of having just cheated death, I couldn't say. Or perhaps that monkey-demon bastard had shown me worse, and a scene this gruesome no longer registered.
Even the Xianbei around the dead man barely managed a stunned stammer before they were slashed or run through and went down. A monster like Lü Bu bursting out of a Xiongnu band they had expected to hunt at their leisure—how could they not be stunned?
"......! ......!"
Watching the Xianbei shout for their comrades in a tongue I could not understand, Lü Bu snorted.
Lü Bu seemed thoroughly delighted. Not yet twenty, blood running hot—given the temperament and ambition history would one day record, this ordinary cavalryman was savoring the moment his name first rang among the Xianbei.
Without so much as setting the infant me down, he drove straight into a larger knot of Xianbei. The tableau was not unlike Zhao Zilong rescuing Adou at Dangyang—except Lü Bu felt no particular desperation to save me. He was a warrior of pure, unshakable confidence: one hand enough to keep me safe, the other more than enough to slaughter Xianbei. That was the difference between Zhao Zilong of Dangyang and Lü Fengxian of Lishi.
"Fengxian! Fengxian! You bastard!"
Other cavalrymen were pounding up behind us, shouting in clear Han speech. At the sight of them the Xianbei pack turned and fled. However fearsome the Xianbei who held the Mobei Steppe might be, these were nothing more than a scouting party—and they had pushed far too deep inside the border. They would not last against Bing Province's regular cavalry.
They had ambushed the Xiongnu band I was with only because they had been out scouting and decided we looked like easy plunder. If Bing Province cavalry rode out in person to protect Xiongnu, a handful of loot could turn into annihilation. Pulling back now was the way to keep their losses small.
But Lü Bu chased the Xianbei who had shown their backs. True to their nomad blood, they twisted in the saddle and loosed arrows behind them; Lü Bu flicked those aside as if they were nothing. His halberd stabbed and slashed a few more of them down.
"Lü Bu! Halt!"
Only when they called him by his given name instead of his courtesy name did he hurl his halberd, pin the last man through, and wheel his horse. A man who looked like a junior officer, gasping as he finally caught up, exploded at him.
"Can't you hear me?!"
"He's not dead, is he."
"If you'd kept chasing it could have been dangerous! What if they were bait and the main force was waiting in ambush to the north? Were you trying to put all of us at risk, not just yourself?!"
"I judged we needed to secure those Xiongnu's safety."
"Why the hell should we be responsible for Xiongnu safety?!"
"A handful of warriors, and the rest nothing but old men, women, children, and livestock. From the direction they were heading toward Lishi County. If we Bing Province cavalry don't protect them, who will?"
"They're still just Xiongnu. A few of them dying to the Xianbei isn't our responsibility, and fewer Xiongnu is a gain for us Han, if anything."
In those few exchanges I understood exactly what the junior officer thought of the Xiongnu, and how sharply his view diverged from Lü Bu's. Lü Bu's hometown, Wuyuan Commandery, sat in the western reaches of Bing Province. He would have grown up among Xiongnu. Of course he would think to help them in their hour of need.
The junior officer was from another province—or perhaps eastern Bing? In the eyes of a Han man like that, the Southern Xiongnu were nothing more than a refugee horde that had settled in the Han realm. The kind of people who were always squabbling with Han farmers over pastureland.
"It won't be like that."
Contrary to my expectation that he would flare up, Lü Bu lifted me in a calm, even voice. The junior officer looked at me with a puzzled frown.
"What's this?"
"From what I overheard, this child is the son of the Right Guli King."
I could feel the calculations racing behind the junior officer's eyes as he stared at me.
"If he's the son of Right Guli King Yufuluo,"
"Then he's the grandson of Right Wise King Qiangqu."
"And the Right Wise King is the current Chanyu's second son, so—"
"This child is the great-grandson of the Xiongnu Chanyu."
The junior officer let out a considering breath and reached for me. Lü Bu casually evaded the hand and gathered me back against his chest.
"It's a chance to look good in front of the Colonel Protector of the Xiongnu."
The Colonel Protector of the Xiongnu. After the Xiongnu had split north and south and the Southern Xiongnu had fled to the Han, the Han Emperor had created the post to keep watch over the Southern Xiongnu Chanyu.
"We saved the Chanyu's great-grandson. That puts the Colonel Protector in the Chanyu's debt. Once the Colonel Protector finds it easier to negotiate with the Xiongnu, we'll naturally earn his trust as well."
"Ahem. Ahem. I see. ...If it goes well, we might even win the Inspector's confidence, eh?"
Lü Bu laid the profit calmly before the junior officer's eyes, and the persuasion took.
"Then that band must be Yufuluo's household."
"We can collect a reward from Yufuluo right away. We'll split the horses of the Xianbei I killed, too."
"Good. All of you! Escort the household and livestock of the Xiongnu Right Guli King to Lishi County!"
The resentment toward Lü Bu for charging off alone had already evaporated. The Han cavalrymen broke into grins, imagining the trust and assorted benefits they would reap from men as high as the Colonel Protector of the Xiongnu or the Inspector of Bing Province.
Lü Bu laughed along as he followed in their wake. Then, for a single instant, the smile vanished, and he muttered in a low voice I would never forget.
The Colonel Protector of the Xiongnu, Zhang Xiu, walked into the Southern Xiongnu Chanyu's yurt still in full armor, his guards at his side, without the slightest hesitation.
The Xiongnu warriors guarding the entrance could not stop him, nor could the retainers clustered around the Chanyu. Not even the old Chanyu himself. It was the same even after Zhang Xiu clanked to a halt a few paces from the Chanyu, armor and blade rattling.
This Chanyu, who had taken for himself the title Toutuoruo Shizhuzhu, preserved what dignity he could by staring Zhang Xiu down in silence.
Zhang Xiu offered a courtesy so slight it was closer to a nod, compounding the insult. He did not wait for the Chanyu's answer. He simply spoke.
"It's an annual affair, but—a Xianbei raid."
"I have heard."
"When the Xianbei raid, the Xiongnu army and the Bing Province army respond together. The Colonel Protector of the Xiongnu handles communication and operational coordination between the two forces... Was that not the foundation of how a Chanyu who 'styles himself a subject of the Emperor' is supposed to defend the frontier?"
"It was."
"And that is not all I am charged with. When the Chanyu's ancestors begged the Emperor for aid, what did they say? 'We shall be the Emperor's bulwark.' That is why His Majesty entrusted you with the grave duty of guarding the northern frontier. Not merely here in Bing Province, but along the long border that runs west to Beidi Commandery in Liang Province and east to Dai Commandery in You Province."
Bulwark. A fence.
For a moment the old Chanyu resented the ancestors who had used that word. Every one of them had spoken it when the Xiongnu split east and west, or north and south—when the Chanyus of the Eastern and Southern Xiongnu had begged the Han Emperor for support.
Yes. Begged.
The Colonel Protector's phrasing was not wrong. Enduring humiliation for the sake of the Xiongnu he could have understood. But his ancestors had bowed their heads to the Han merely to win a civil war. Those acts had piled one upon another, and today they held the old Chanyu by the ankle.
Paying the Chanyu's regret no mind, Zhang Xiu pressed on.
"And so I must sometimes correspond with the Inspector of Liang Province, sometimes with the Inspector of You Province, and oversee operations. And I am obliged to report those operations to the Emperor in Luoyang, from beginning to end. And yet... from the moment this began until I came here to the Chanyu Court in person, I have received not a single word?"
It was not the tone one used with the Chanyu of the Xiongnu. It was the tone of a superior dressing down a subordinate who had failed to report. At that note in Zhang Xiu's voice the Chanyu squeezed his eyes shut. He could feel the rage and killing intent rolling off the ministers around him.
But that it had come to this—that his ministers should harbor such feelings at all—was a still deeper humiliation.
At last the old Chanyu opened his eyes and gathered what dignity remained, as if mimicking the majesty of ancestors who had once stood equal to the Emperor—or above him.
"Though the Xiongnu have styled themselves subjects of the Han, a Colonel Protector of the Xiongnu ought to know where that rank stands."
Having spent the audience citing the origins and principles of frontier defense, Zhang Xiu faltered at this unexpected counterstroke.
"That is..."
"A subject of the Emperor—yet placed above the feudal kings. That was the pact between successive Emperors and my ancestors. Is there any part of what I have said that is untrue?"
"...There is not."
"And is your manner, Colonel Protector, truly the manner in which one addresses a man who stands below the Emperor and above the feudal kings?"
Zhang Xiu closed his mouth. But the old Chanyu knew he had not yielded to reason.
The Chanyu lifted a finger and drew it from his brow down the length of his nose. The high brow-ridges, deeper-set than any Han man's; the sunken eyes; the great bridge of the nose. The far thicker beard. In Zhang Xiu's gaze he felt contempt for every one of those alien features.
Zhang Xiu spoke as if chewing and spitting the words.
"I hear that when the Chanyu's granddaughter-in-law fell into distress among Xianbei bandits while crossing the Yellow River, our Han cavalry rescued her."
This time it was the Chanyu who faltered. If Zhang Xiu's words were true, gratitude was the first thing required.
"I thank the officers and men of the Han."
"We merely did what was required. Protecting the Chanyu and the Chanyu Court is, after all, the Colonel Protector's duty. However... the location of the attack."
Both Zhang Xiu and the old Chanyu knew a blade was hidden in the words to come.
"It was near Lishi County, I am told. Do you understand what that means?"
Bing Province's defensive line ran west to east through four commanderies: Shuofang, Wuyuan, Yunzhong, and Yanmen. Xihe Commandery lay behind that line, straddling western and eastern Bing. Whatever the size of the Xianbei force that had attacked the Chanyu's granddaughter-in-law, an assault at that location meant the northern four-commandery defensive line had been breached.