The House of Du (2)
I wasn't lying.
I fully intend to see Guan Yu and the girl of the Du clan united in the love that history left unfinished. And Guan Yu, after death, will be worshipped as a god—honored not merely as King Guan or Emperor Guan, but enshrined as a deity in his own right. If the man destined for godhood marries Miss Du, then my prophecy that she would wed a god will be fulfilled without a hair's breadth of error.
While the men of the Du household were still reeling, I beckoned to the girl. She leaned her head toward me, and I whispered.
"I will see to it that you meet him. For the time being, you will pose as a Divine Maiden of the Xiongnu Sky God—on our side."
The girl straightened and nodded with fierce, desperate energy. Was it longing for Guan Yu? The rims of her eyes had gone red. Those clear eyes looked ready to spill over at any moment.
The Du girl I had persuaded in a single breath. Her family's elders were another matter entirely.
"Changsheng! Did you just say Changsheng?"
"That bastard brought ruin on our entire house!"
"If it weren't for him, we'd never have had to flee to Bing Province!"
"Are you a man he sent?"
The mood among the Du men turned ugly. Hands hovered near sword hilts.
These uncles really have terrible memories.
Thud. Thud. Lü Bu eased the strength from his hands and let both ji-halberds strike the earth. The stench of slaughtered Xianbei still clung to the blades.
The Du men composed themselves in a hurry and settled back into the attitude of men prepared to listen. I dipped my head slightly, offering thanks for how quickly they had found their manners.
Hmm. Kidnapping her outright, or staging a "forced escape" by night, would have been one way to handle this. The House of Du had already lost every shred of influence in their native Hedong. If a Xiongnu prince and Lü Bu, the finest warrior in Bing Province, joined forces to carry off a bride, there would hardly be consequences.
But then the family left behind would be in a wretched position. This kind-hearted girl was agreeing to marry into the Qin clan—to Qin Yilu—because she was thinking of her house. She was not the sort of person who would abandon her people and run off to find Guan Yu.
And yet to give up... the friendship I might forge with Guan Yu would be a waste. More than that, I felt sorry for the Du girl. Marriage talks with the Qin clan were already underway. Leave things as they were, and she would be wed to a man named Qin Yilu.
Qin Yilu becomes one of Lü Bu's officers... and the trouble starts when Lü Bu sends him as an envoy to Yuan Shu. The situation is a little tangled. Around that time, Lü Bu—put up to it by Yuan Shu—attacks Liu Bei and seizes Xuzhou. The moment Yuan Shu tries to thank him and take the province off his hands, Lü Bu turns around and stabs Yuan Shu in the back. He has eaten Xuzhou, and he has no intention of giving it back.
That is the episode where, before Yuan Shu's general Ji Ling and Liu Bei both, Lü Bu shoots an arrow through the tip of a ji-halberd and stops a war in its tracks. Qin Yilu seems to have gone as Lü Bu's envoy around then, to speak in Ji Ling's defense... and Yuan Shu pulls him over with the gift of a woman from the imperial Liu clan as a new wife.
Miss Du is left alone in Xiapi. After Lü Bu's destruction, she becomes Cao Cao's concubine. And the tragic love of Guan Yu and the Du girl is never fulfilled.
I wanted to change that story.
The monkey devil might say my own lot is more pitiable—never knowing when I'll drop into hell. What's a pitiful wretch doing worrying about someone else? But just because I am pitiable does not mean other people stop being pitiable.
"The young lady of the House of Du must not go to the Qin clan. I myself shall receive her as a Divine Maiden of the Xiongnu Sky God."
"What in the world is that supposed to—!"
The Du men bristled and started to rise, then checked themselves in a hurry, glancing at Lü Bu. Before he could step in with another threat, I lifted a hand.
"Changsheng committed a murder in Hedong Commandery, and that is why all of you have been driven this far. The salt trade you lived by... every channel of it has been cut."
"...That is so."
The man who seemed oldest among them nodded at my words.
"So you fled in haste to Bing Province, knowing you needed a suitable protector to keep the pursuers off you... but your house had fallen so far that no family of any standing would even glance your way. Am I right?"
The Du men lowered their heads, their faces grim.
"In a plight like that, the only way to borrow another house's strength—the only way to win the protection of a house more powerful than your own—was marriage. That is what you concluded, is it not?"
"You see it clearly. If this child becomes the Divine Maiden this Xiongnu prince speaks of, our house will have nowhere left to lean."
"And if I solved that problem for you?"
"What...?"
"If I take the young lady and make her a Divine Maiden of the Xiongnu Sky God, Tengri, she will stand under the protection of my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father. Those three men are..."
I flicked a glance at Lü Bu. He kept that fearsome downward stare fixed on them as he took up my words.
"The Great Chanyu of the Xiongnu, the Wise King of the Right, and the Luli King of the Right."
Chanyu. King. King. Even those words alone would sound like a house of staggering power. The eyes of the Du men wavered wildly.
"T-to take the protection of the Hu..."
So that was what stuck in their throats. Lü Bu's voice rolled out above my head.
"If you mean to live in Bing Province, you will have to know how to live alongside the Xiongnu. That is the first thing. If that offends you, go east to Taiyuan Commandery. There are plenty of Han people there. But you will find no one there who will shield you from the men on your trail."
"Then... if we are to receive the Great Chanyu's protection, must we live as the Hu live?"
Ah. The question of daily life. What they were really asking was whether they would have to dwell in tents and herd livestock. Between the grain-eating Han and the meat-eating Xiongnu, the gap ran far deeper than diet. Hedong Commandery belonged to Sili, and Sili was the metropolitan heartland of the Han. For people like these, simply living on Bing soil would already feel strange and hard. Being told to change their entire way of life might strike them as something close to death.
I shook my head.
"We Xiongnu live mostly on the open grassland and tend our herds, but we pitch our tents close to the cities where the Han dwell. The Great Chanyu's palace-yurt, in particular, keeps mostly to the steppe near Lishi County in Xihe Commandery. A great many Xiongnu come into the Han cities to buy and sell. I myself go into Han cities whenever I visit my master."
Relief began to surface on the faces of the Du men.
"The young lady will have occasion to visit the Han cities as well, and all of you may reside inside the walls entirely, if you wish. We can still protect you."
"...Just how great is the Xiongnu's strength, that you can promise to keep us safe?"
The eldest of the house put the question. Yes. Now we were getting down to something concrete. A family willing to sell a daughter for the sake of the clan would hardly blush at bargaining over her price in detail.
"Not long ago, you will have heard that the Han army suffered a crushing defeat in its campaign against Tanshihuai."
"A grievous thing."
"My master here fought with everything he had, and because of him, most of the cavalry—the Xiongnu among them—came away with their lives."
"Mm..."
Only then did the look in the Du family's eyes seem to shift, fear giving way to something like respect.
"Which is to say—and it is a sad thing to admit—that at this moment, the most powerful military force in Bing Province is us. The Xiongnu."
I felt the sharp intake of breath. Even setting Lü Bu aside, their faces said they had not grasped what it meant to offer a threat to me in this province. Faces that had just realized how close they had come to disaster. I looked at those faces and smiled.
Ah. So this is what the afterglow of a powerful house tastes like.
"I will give you my word. No one will dare strike those who stand under the Great Chanyu's protection."
And so we took the road back to Yanmen Commandery with the House of Du in our company. I turned to the Du girl... ah. I hadn't asked.
"Miss, what is your honored name, if I may?"
"Ah, I—I'm Ying. Du Ying. No. Ying, Your Highness."
"You can speak comfortably when it's just us. I'll call you Sister Ying."
Du Ying giggled, the way a girl her age would.
"You said you were Luanti Bao, right?"
"Just call me Bao."
"All right, then... how old are you, Bao?"
"I'm six."
"Six? Wait... really?"
"I look a bit older than I am, don't I?"
"The way you carry yourself certainly does."
I lifted a finger and pointed at the sky.
"This is what happens when you hear the voice of the Xiongnu Sky God—Tengri."
As with most people living in this ancient age, the excuse landed perfectly with Du Ying.
"Ah. I see... Then what you know about Lord Changsheng...?"
Hmm. First, let me put in order what I had gathered from the Du family.
Guan Yu, just as his biography in the Records of the Three Kingdoms has it, seemed to be using the name Changsheng at present. Which meant he had not yet taken the name Yu, nor the courtesy name Yunchang. I could not say at what point he would cast Changsheng aside and begin to use Yu and Yunchang. But one thing was certain.
"He should be in Zhuo Commandery, You Province, around now. That man Changsheng. But he will change his name, so finding him will take a little time."
"Y-yes, I suppose it will..."
Du Ying's face crumpled toward tears in an instant. I gave her a smile.
"But Lord Changsheng must have been a formidable warrior, yes?"
"That's right! He was incredibly strong! He snapped a man's neck in a single crack—ah."
Oof. So that's how he broke the neck of that Hedong power broker. I nodded with a wry smile.
"I'll find him as quickly as I can. I, too, have received Tengri's word that I must seek Lord Changsheng out and meet him."
I had used Tengri as the excuse, but I had another reason for wanting to find Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei.
People who trade in Three Kingdoms memes like to sneer that Guan Yu's reputation is hollow and Liu Bei's military talent is pathetic. The truth is, they really were extraordinary men.
Take Lü Bu's assault on Xiaopei in 198. The Romance makes it sound as if Lü Bu gave the city a light tap and Liu Bei simply ran. Read the historical records properly, and that is not what happened at all. The campaign is recorded as lasting from the spring of 198—the first through the third month—until the ninth month of the same year. Which means Liu Bei held out against Lü Bu's furious offensive for at least seven months, and as many as nine. And that offensive included not only Lü Bu himself, but Gao Shun and Zhang Liao.
In the same span of time, Cao Cao was clearing Yuan Shu's remnants from the country around Xudu—Yingchuan and Runan Commanderies—and sending men to kill Li Jue, stabilizing the western half of his power. In other words, if Liu Bei had not held the east that long, Cao Cao could never have secured his west.
Liu Bei did not abandon Xiaopei—Pei State, in Yu Province—and flee all the way to Xudu. He held the border country between Yu Province and Liang State until he could join Cao Cao. And so, in the twelfth month of that year, they succeeded in killing Lü Bu.
There was a reason Cao Cao doted on Liu Bei. There was a reason he tried to claim Guan Yu for himself, and offered governorships to Jian Yong, Sun Qian, and Mi Zhu to bring them over. A prepared Liu, Guan, and Zhang—together with Jian Yong, Sun Qian, and Mi Zhu—were a force capable of weathering more than half a year of assault from Lü Bu's army. They held the eastern front of Cao Cao's two-front war and bought him the time to lay his foundations around Xudu.
That was the kind of strength I wanted... if not as subordinates, then at the very least as allies.
In the end, a prison cart arrived from Luoyang to carry the condemned.
The answer would decide Luoyang's policy toward Bing Province for years to come.
That question was bound tightly to the policy Luoyang's court would now unfold across Bing Province. And so our Xiongnu royal house entered the fortress of Mayi to receive the Emperor's envoy.
The eunuch Wang Fu had treated the official residence of the Administrator of Yanmen as if it were his own house. The imperial envoy went straight there.
The envoy seemed a little on the short side, yet a peculiar dignity flowed from his features and his bearing. In the corner, I caught sight of the eunuch Wang Fu's face, watching the envoy for every cue.
The moment the envoy glanced that way and cleared his throat—
The eunuch, with no scrap of dignity left to salvage, ran barefoot and weeping toward the envoy.
...Huh?
Mengde?
The Mengde I know?