An Offer You Can't Refuse (1)
I was nothing more than a fraud trading on Tengri's name. Unleashing divine power and sweeping the enemy aside was not among my talents.
On top of that, I was seven years old. Even Wuhuan remnants reduced to beggary shouldn't have been something a child could face.
Or so you'd think.
A nomad starts learning to ride and shoot once he passes five. And my master was Lü Bu. I had come through a battlefield at Lü Bu's side. I had learned the bow from my father Yufuluo, and from Lü Bu as well.
Lü Bu's archery was the kind that could put an arrow through the tassel of a halberd standing at the camp gate, from inside his own tent. And he did it drunk.
I decided to trust not my own skill, but Lü Bu's teaching.
I drew the bow from its case and an arrow from the quiver. Next to a grown man's weapons they were toys — but they were still weapons, and they could still kill. I chose, too, to trust the meat-heavy diet of the steppe, and the years I had spent trying to turn that meat into muscle.
Seven years, at most. But still.
In the brief moment it took to nock the arrow, I ran the numbers on our strength versus theirs. Wei Xu was the only adult in our party. Beyond him: one seventeen-year-old girl, and two boys of eleven.
We'd barely left a region crawling with Yellow Turbans, and now we were in a place crawling with Wuhuan who'd turned bandit. Damn it. This journey was something that had never happened in the original history. Was I going to die here for that?
Straight on to hell... no. There was something that weighed on me more than dying.
Du Ying.
If these men had been reduced to banditry since 177 — two years ago — they would be little better than beasts by now. The thought of what beasts like that might do to her... I could not die here.
Someone's hands had moved before mine.
Shhk—thock!
"Aaaagh!"
A Wuhuan bandit went tumbling, an arrow through his cheek. The one who had loosed it was my uncle, Huchuquan.
"Nephew! How's that for your uncle's shooting?"
To shoot like that at eleven years old! I forgot whatever relationship Huchuquan and Liu Bao had shared in the original history, and admired him from the heart.
"As expected of you, Uncle! That's Tengri's own bow!"
I shouted it as I loosed my own arrow. It split the wind and buried itself in another Wuhuan's shoulder.
A pity. If I were past ten, like Huchuquan or Zhang Liao, I would have put it through his throat. For now, I'd have to settle for wounding him.
At least these Wuhuan had abandoned their horses to hide in the mountains and forests, while each of us was mounted. Without that advantage, we couldn't have managed even this much.
Thud.
"Ghk— keck!"
Another arrow flew and punched into a Wuhuan's throat.
"Oh. She's a natural."
Receiving Wei Xu's praise, Du Ying let the strength drain from the hand that still gripped her bow, her face white with terror.
"I... this is how you do it, right? Right? A p-p-person..."
Du Ying was not a woman of Bingzhou, where taking life well was counted a warrior's virtue. She was a young lady raised in Sili, the capital region, on Han-style moral education. Of course she would tremble after killing a man. That was the normal reaction.
"Well done, Sister!"
There was no time to explain that if she hadn't killed, we would have died, or that these men had already plundered and murdered plenty of people. Even if I'd said it, I doubted it would have eased her shock. So I left it at that one word of praise, and nocked another arrow.
Fear and bewilderment rose together on the Wuhuan faces. They'd seen us on horseback and taken us for a wealthy Han party — Wei Xu, the oldest among us, was dressed as a Han, after all. But they hadn't counted on facing Xiongnu who had been riding and shooting since childhood, no less than the Wuhuan themselves.
They knew better than anyone how terrifying mounted archers could be. A Parthian shot — twisting at the waist to fire while riding away — was still beyond us. But keeping them from closing in while we loosed arrows? That we could do.
And then—
"You bastards think I'm some kind of joke?!"
Wei Xu charged into the hesitating Wuhuan. In the original history, his eventual betrayal of Lü Bu had overshadowed everything else. But a man who had survived decades of war at Lü Bu's side was no ordinary fighter. Hadn't he charged the Xianbei lines alongside Lü Bu and Hou Cheng in the last war, and brought the infantry out alive?
"Did you think I was just some servant looking after a girl and a bunch of kids?!"
It was true that this journey had been as comfortable as it was thanks to Wei Xu's attentiveness. He grumbled constantly, but he got everything done. Still, a warrior reduced to minding children was bound to be irritated.
The way he swung that spear, you could have mistaken him for Lü Bu himself — a ferocious storm of thrusts, smashes, and cuts. A man creeping up behind him with a lasso ready found Zhang Liao's arrow buried in his temple.
The Wuhuan's eyes rolled back and he crumpled. That was enough. The rest of them broke and ran.
They hadn't answered with bows of their own, which meant their arrow supply had run dry long ago. Like the one who'd just died, they must have been relying on lassos to drag riders from the saddle. If they were that short on arrows, they might have eaten their horses a long time ago. Remnants who'd been hiding as bandits since the year before last — 177. Even the ones who'd survived would be little better than a pack of beggars.
The moment they fled, Wei Xu was back at our side.
"We can't chase them. A man on foot can't outrun a horse — but they might've dug pits up ahead to break a horse's legs."
That was the difference a soldier's years made. I nodded at Wei Xu's words and watched the fleeing men.
At our current skill, shooting from a gallop was hard enough — and even if we loosed, we wouldn't hit much. That Du Ying, Huchuquan, Zhang Liao, and I had been able to resist at all with our bows was luck. In a pursuit, we'd be worthless. It would just mean loading everything onto Wei Xu and sending him after them alone.
If those men got away, they might attack other people. But we weren't a suppression force...
In that instant, a shadow surged up ahead of the fleeing men. Even at that distance, I could see it clearly: a human body coming apart in two pieces.
"Wha...?"
While that sound was still leaving someone's mouth, the shadows multiplied.
Cavalry.
In the space of a blink, they had trampled or cut down every last one of the fleeing Wuhuan.
"Not government troops...?"
Wei Xu muttered it with his eyes narrowed. A mounted force that wasn't the imperial army. But they weren't dressed as Wuhuan, either. Han horse-bandits, then?
One rider burst forward from the cavalry. In a heartbeat he had closed the distance, his blade swinging for Wei Xu's throat.
CLANG!
"You— ngh! What kind of strength is that, from a brat?!"
Wei Xu barely got his spear up in time, and he was right — the force behind that blow was enormous. The face was still a boy's, barely a hint of beard, but if Wei Xu's hands had been a fraction slower, his throat would have been opened to the bone.
The boy wheeled his horse around Wei Xu's flank and raised the blade again—
"Brother Changsheng!"
His hand stopped. The boy's eyes went wide.
"...Ying?"
"Ahahaha, well, this is awkward!"
The boy who led the cavalry slung an arm around my shoulder — an arm that was strangely, unnaturally long.
"You're on horseback, you're carrying bows, your clothes aren't like ours... I thought there was some kind of falling-out among the Wuhuan!"
Never seen Xiongnu before, the boy leading them went on.
"Unlike those Wuhuan traitors, the Xiongnu are on our side. And a Xiongnu prince who's also a Great Hu Shaman! Ah — what do you call a shaman in your tongue?"
"Khagan. You may call me Khagan."
"Right, the Xiongnu Khagan. You're a benefactor to our Yu, too. We nearly did our benefactor a terrible wrong!"
The boy leader took his arm off my shoulder and clasped both hands in a formal salute.
"As Yu's elder brother, let me apologize in his place."
"Ah, no..."
I clasped my hands in return, the Han way. But before I could say anything more, Du Ying, standing beside me, put a question to Changsheng — no, to Guan Yu.
"Brother, did you change your name?"
"Ah, I'll explain that."
The boy with the strangely long arms — Liu Bei — smiled as he explained.
"Changsheng's too honest for his own good. He was going around using his real name, so I gave him a new one before it landed him in trouble. He's so light on his feet he could clear a mountain pass — a guan — as easily as a feather, a yu. Strong in the legs, too. When the time comes to pick a courtesy name, I might as well put a cloud — yun — in it, to match the feather."
So that was how the name Guan Yu, Yunchang, had come to be.
...And that hulking boy over there tearing into a hunk of meat, eyes glittering — that would be Zhang Fei, wouldn't it?
Whether this was Tengri's blessing or some monkey-demon's prank I couldn't say, but meeting Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei the instant I crossed into Youzhou left me more than a little dazed. Cao Cao, Sun Jian, Lü Bu — they had all been young. But these three weren't even twenty.
"More than that... the Xiongnu Khagan heard the voice of the Xiongnu Sky God, telling him he must bring that woman and our Guan Yu together?"
Liu Bei seemed rather more interested in that part. Well, Liu Bei was a man of antiquity. Of course talk of divine powers would catch his attention.
"That's right."
"So you protected the woman, and then somehow felt Guan Yu would be here, and came to Youzhou?"
I nodded. Now it was my turn to ask. Finding Liu Bei and Guan Yu myself could be explained away with Tengri as the excuse. But how had Liu Bei happened to come our way so conveniently?
"Ah, well, I have an elder brother I know — a man named Gongsun Bogui..."
"I've met him. During the last campaign against Tanshihuai, I followed the Xiongnu army as far as Dai Commandery."
"Wait, you— I mean, the Xiongnu Khagan was how old then?"
"Five. The Xiongnu Sky God granted me wisdom beyond my years."
"...Anyway, Brother Bogui said Tanshihuai would raid Youzhou again this year. Once Youzhou's main force is drawn off to the northern border, the Wuhuan hiding inside would raise hell."
"So you were riding the rear of Youzhou, and found us."
Wei Xu, who had been quietly watching our exchange, put in a question of his own.
"Hey, you lot look like you're barely twenty, if that. How'd you put together a cavalry force like this?"
Wei Xu had every right to wonder. Horses were expensive just to keep. You couldn't feed them grass alone — they needed beans and the like. A pack of wandering boys, each with his own mount, was hard to imagine.
Liu Bei's answer was simple.
"Whenever we saw a Wuhuan on a horse, we killed him and took it."
Surely the ones who died today hadn't already lost their horses to Liu Bei's party. No — considering that some twenty years from now, Liu Bei would cut off Lü Bu's supply of warhorses and start a war between them... it was entirely possible.
Anyway. Guan Yu was taciturn, Zhang Fei looked rough — exactly as I'd imagined. But Liu Bei came off as rather more of a rogue than I'd expected. Then again, knight-errants were basically gangs of violent men. Maybe this was inevitable.
And a man like this becomes the founding emperor of Shu Han, one of the Three Kingdoms?
Then Liu Bei's eyes lit with a strange gleam. It was a look far removed from the virtue — the de — painted in works like the Romance. And yet there was a force in those eyes that could only be called magnetism.
With those eyes, Liu Bei asked: