Meeting Cao Cao (2)
"Before we go any further, may I explain the situation inside the Xiongnu?"
"Time is something we have in abundance. Speak as long as you wish."
"You have my thanks."
I bowed to Cao Cao once more, then began. I laid out the long, uneasy history between the Luandi, the traditional royal house of the Xiongnu, and the Xubu, the clan that the traitor Wang Mang had once raised to the dignity of Chanyu.
"The Xubu now submit to the Chanyu as merely one among many Gudu Marquesses," I said. "But in their hearts, they still mean to seize that throne again."
"A Chanyu installed by the traitor Wang Mang..."
Coming from the man who would one day be numbered among the Four Traitors — Wang Mang, Dong Zhuo, Cao Cao, and Sima Yi — the words had a peculiar ring. But Cao Cao was twenty-four. Whether the claim was true was hard to say, yet his family styled itself the descendants of Cao Shen, a meritorious minister of the High Emperor, and his grandfather had served the imperial house for decades as a eunuch. To a young man raised in that soil, the Han was the natural object of loyalty, and a traitor was a creature to be denounced without end. I had to judge the Cao Cao of the year 178, not the Duke of Wei he would become thirty-six years from now.
"In that case," Cao Cao said, "even if this Xubu Chang of yours usurped the Chanyu's seat, our Han court would never recognize him, would we? The age of Wang Mang is the one taboo the imperial house most refuses to touch."
Men said the Han had stood for four hundred years. Strictly speaking, two different Hans that happened to share a name had each lasted two centuries, with the Xin dynasty jammed between them like a thorn. Wang Mang, founder of that Xin, was — from the Later Han's point of view — a traitor among traitors, a man who deserved the lash for ten thousand generations.
And now a Xubu Chanyu, a line Wang Mang himself had raised, was to become the new Chanyu of the Southern Xiongnu? The Han would invoke Wang Mang's name on the spot and dispatch a punitive army to restore a Luandi Chanyu. That was what Cao Cao meant.
I nodded, then went on as if I were already one of his strategists.
"For the moment, there is no army that can come to suppress them."
Cao Cao's eyes narrowed, as though he had seen something strange.
"You..." He studied me. "Listening to you speak, I find it impossible to believe I am talking to a child."
"I received, through Tengri, the Heavenly God of the Xiongnu, a wisdom that exceeds my years."
"You claim to have received Heaven's mandate? You call yourself a prodigy? You boast that your wisdom surpasses that of most Han men?"
Ah. I had forgotten something, dazzled by the fact that I was sitting across from the famous Cao Cao himself.
It was only a story that had come down through the ages, but Cao Cao was said to have once killed a wise envoy of a foreign people. When receiving such an envoy, he had disguised himself as a guard and put a fine-looking subordinate in his own place. Afterward, someone asked the departing envoy for his impression of Cao Cao. The envoy replied, "Cao Cao is impressive enough. But the guardsman standing beside him — that man is the true hero." Startled, Cao Cao had the envoy pursued and put to death.
There was no such incident in the memories of the original Xiongnu Liu Bao. Of course there wasn't. Cao Cao already had his hands full with Liu Bei and Sun Quan; he would hardly have gone looking for more enemies. But there was no guarantee that something of the same kind would not happen here, in a different shape.
If a six-year-old could speak to Cao Cao as an equal and discourse on the state of the Han... would the man not grow wary? The Han was setting. Because of me, the Xiongnu were becoming a rising sun. Would any man of the Han not be tempted to arrange an "accident" and stop me, even if it meant killing a child?
Cao Cao watched the alarm flicker across my face and smiled. He crouched down in front of me until our eyes were level, then tapped his temple with the tip of his left finger.
"Hide a little of that wisdom, young prince."
He instructed me slowly, as if he were already my teacher, showing me the trick of it.
"The wisdom of the weak invites the suspicion of the strong. The wisdom of the good stirs the envy of the cunning."
"...I will take it to heart."
Cao Cao nodded and returned to his seat.
"Ah, Prince of the Xiongnu. Before me, you may display that wisdom as freely as you like. Start again from 'there is no army that can come to suppress them.' Continue."
"Yes, Consultant Cao. The Han army — that is, the forces of You Province and Bing Province, together with the capital troops, the army that struck at Tanshihuai — was all but annihilated."
"So it was."
"If Xubu Chang usurps the Chanyu's throne, sees the Han's predicament for what it is, declares himself a vassal, offers to remain an auxiliary as before, and never slacks in his tribute... what would you report to His Majesty, Consultant Cao?"
"That a campaign is impossible for the moment, and that we should recognize Xubu Chang as Chanyu and stabilize the frontier."
"Precisely. Xubu Chang is a man of at least that much wit."
In truth, Xubu Chang's usurpation would not come until after the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the great Qiang uprising led by Han Sui — until the Han was no longer in any position to interfere with the Southern Xiongnu at all.
"Very well. I understand the Xiongnu's internal situation. Now tell me what any of this has to do with last year's failure to suppress Tanshihuai."
"Xubu Chang sent only a handful of troops on last year's expedition, and he himself stayed behind on the pretext of illness. He meant to keep his own strength intact while hoping we would take heavy losses."
If Tute Ruoshi Gongzhu Chanyu died, or if his power merely waned, Xubu Chang would be able to seize the initiative among the Xiongnu. It was something I had wanted to tell someone ever since I learned, when the Xiongnu host gathered in Yanmen Commandery last year, that Xubu Chang had not come.
"So you are saying that Xubu Chang, the Gudu Marquess, played the spy for Tanshihuai?"
"No. He would have had no part in the Han army's planning, and so he could not have passed any secrets to Tanshihuai. But I discovered that he has been in contact with someone outside the Xiongnu. That outsider is the spy."
"Who."
"Zhang Xiu, the former Zhonglangjiang Protecting the Xiongnu."
Cao Cao's brow twitched. It was not the reaction of a man hearing a name for the first time. His lips parted, then closed again. He had been about to say something and thought better of it. Information he could not share with me?
After a moment's consideration, he spoke.
"Do Zhang Xiu and Xubu Chang have interests that align?"
"Once Zhang Min, the present Zhonglangjiang Protecting the Xiongnu, is escorted to the capital and stripped of office, the court will send Zhang Xiu back to the post — Zhang Huan's successor, and Zhang Min's predecessor. All Xubu Chang need do is use his influence to manufacture a clamor inside the Xiongnu, a chorus of voices 'longing for Zhang Xiu.' After that, the rest will not be difficult."
"And once Zhang Xiu is reinstated, he helps Xubu Chang become Chanyu?"
"That the Chanyu harbored treasonous intent... that the last defeat was the Chanyu's responsibility... there is no shortage of slanders to choose from."
Cao Cao seemed to turn my words over in his mind.
"In fact, we have already caught wind of Zhang Xiu's suspicious movements in Luoyang."
That was welcome news.
"Is that so?"
"We have been tearing our hair out trying to pin down exactly what he is doing. You have my thanks, Prince of the Xiongnu. Your testimony gives us grounds to interrogate him."
"To be of use to you, Consultant Cao, is itself my joy."
At that, the sharpness left Cao Cao's face, and a gentle smile spread in its place.
"If it is true that Zhang Xiu was in league with Tanshihuai, the guilt of the three men now under escort will be greatly lessened. I will see that they hear of the prince's service."
"If you would do that, I could ask for no finer reward."
Ha Yu and Tian Yan were one thing, but if I could form a connection with Zhang Min, that would also tie me to Zhang Hong, who played no small part in the opening of the Three Kingdoms. When the anti-Dong Zhuo coalition rose, Yuan Shao was its nominal overall leader, but the troops he actually commanded were only those of the Hebei region. The leader of the Jing Province armies was Yuan Shu. And the man who became leader of the armies of Henan — Yan Province and the rest — was Zhang Hong. Influence on Zhang Hong's scale could check Yuan Shao or Cao Cao, and it could also open a path to the brothers Zhang Miao and Zhang Chao...
I was still turning that over when Cao Cao stared hard into my face again.
"You already know how to calculate what friendship with the eminent men of the Han is worth, don't you?"
He laughed — a great, ringing laugh — and slapped his own knee.
"I have found unexpected wisdom on the frontier. What do you say? Will you come with this Cao to Luoyang?"
Ah.
I had been so busy wondering whether I would kill Cao Cao or Cao Cao would kill me that I had overlooked something. For all the massacres he would commit, there was a reason so many lovers of the Three Kingdoms still held him dear: the image of a man who cherished talent, the man of "employ only the able" and the Decree Seeking Worthies.
I had worried only about losing Lü Bu. Of course. In Cao Cao's eyes, I too might look like a man of talent.
"Being of Rong-Di stock does not close the road to office," Cao Cao said. "In the age of Emperor Wu, the famous generals Wei Qing, Gongsun Ao, Gongsun He, and Li Guang were all men close to the Rong. And among those of Xiongnu blood, there was Jin Midi, son of the King of Xiuzhe, who surrendered to the Han and became an official."
Every name he had chosen was an uncomfortable one from the Xiongnu point of view. The famous generals of Emperor Wu's reign had all campaigned in the wars against the Xiongnu. As for Jin Midi, son of the King of Xiuzhe... the King of Xiuzhe had fallen to Huo Qubing, and that was how the Xiongnu had lost what was now the Hexi Four Commanderies. It was a wound that still ached.
Jin Midi's descendant Jin Xuan would, in time, become Administrator of Wuling and live quite comfortably until Liu Bei put him down — but that was neither here nor there.
That Cao Cao had chosen to tell this story at all meant he was testing me. Are you a man who will go on serving the Han, like those Rong who wore Han armor, like Jin Midi who surrendered? Or are you not?
I bowed to Cao Cao from the waist.
"I will be nothing more than a loyal auxiliary of the Han, as my ancestors were before me. If you, Consultant Cao, seize the traitor Zhang Xiu within, I will seize the traitor Xubu Chang without, and together we will stabilize the realm from both sides."
Honestly, Cao Cao's offer had shaken me. Only for a moment — but I had felt something like a teacher's presence in him. If Cao Cao had not been a magnetic man, how could he ever have founded Wei? Growing up at his side, I might have become a formidable strategist. Opportunities would have come thick and fast. I might have done as Sima Yi did: risen under Cao Cao, and the instant the man was dead, swallowed Wei whole and taken northern China...
But could I do any of that if I abandoned the foundation I had only just begun to lay among the Southern Xiongnu? Even Sima Yi had spent decades building his base inside Wei, held off Zhuge Liang's offensives, and conquered the Gongsun clan's state of Yan before he finally closed his fist around power. And even then he had died without ever styling himself a duke, as Cao Cao had.
I had to accomplish everything in my own lifetime.
Besides, if I went down that road I would inevitably collide with Sima Yi. Without the Xiongnu as my base, fighting Sima Yi as a pure strategist — could I win?
I doubted it.
Before Cao Cao's expression could change, I added:
"The Han can find men as wise as I am whenever it likes. Which means that my counsel alone is not enough. Only as a prince of the Xiongnu do I become a man of any real use to you, Consultant Cao."
Interest kindled in Cao Cao's face.
"You propose a bargain to this Cao Cao."
Yes. The way Sun Jian and Hozheng had struck their bargain — bargain with me, Cao Cao.
"The Xiongnu are split not only among the Lushuihu and the Xiuzhigehu, but among the factions of the various Gudu Marquesses. Xubu is not the only one. The Huyan, the Dangyu, the Yulzhi, the Han, and the Lang each style themselves Gudu Marquesses and divide the Xiongnu's strength among them."
Word of the Tengri faith I meant to raise would have reached every faction that had joined this expedition... but that alone was not enough.
Cao Cao laughed, as if he were enjoying himself.
"Like Zhang Xiu and Xubu Chang. You want us to work together."
"If I am to become the friend you need, Consultant Cao, would it not be simpler if you, in turn, made it possible for me to command the Xiongnu as a whole?"