The Plan to Subjugate Tanshihuai

"A moment ago they were at each other's throats — the Xiongnu shouting that this was their pasture, the Han insisting their ancestors had farmed it for generations. Put the Xianbei in front of them, though, and they close ranks."

Lü Bu's words were few, but they caught the truth of western Bing Province exactly: a country where Xiongnu and Han lived tangled together, and only a common enemy could make them one. After several fights against the Xianbei, Sun Jian and Lü Bu had set rank aside and become friends. In Bing Province, capable soldiers who failed to build that kind of trust — who never learned the rhythm of each other's hands and feet — simply did not live through the next battle.

Sun Jian nodded along as Lü Bu spoke. Then a frown caught him.

"I always figured the Xianbei and the Xiongnu were the same thing. All just Hu."

Lü Bu snorted.

"The Xiongnu hate the Xianbei worse than we Han do. They can't even talk to each other. Lumping them together as Northern Di or Hu, as if they were one breed — that's a joke. That's the kind of idiotic mistake only the ink-stained pedants in Luoyang would make. Men who've never set foot in this country."

"Now that you mention it, they don't even look the same."

Sun Jian said it while the faces came back to him — the Xiongnu and the Xianbei he had seen since coming to Bing Province. The Xianbei cropped their hair short. The Xiongnu let it grow and hang. At first both tongues had sounded equally foreign, equally rough; listen long enough, though, and the accents pulled cleanly apart.

"So what you're telling me, Fengxian, is that if a man wants to stay alive out here, he has to work with the Xiongnu."

"The warhorses we raise ourselves, on the pastures of Bing's commanderies, will only ever go so far. Wentai — the mounts you bought weren't Yang Province stock. They were northern horses. Do you know where those horses actually come from?"

"I only know we purchase them out of Henei Commandery."

"Henei buys them from farther north. From Taiyuan Commandery."

Taiyuan was the seat of the Bing Province Inspectorate. Something in Lü Bu's face soured when he named it.

"And the horses that go into Taiyuan are the ones the Xiongnu put forward from here — from west of the Yellow River. From western Bing."

The way Lü Bu leaned on those two words — western Bing — Sun Jian understood now. In the south he had thought of Bing Province as one country, all of a piece. That had been a fool's idea. Originally the name had meant only what was now the east, and Han land had stopped there. The west had been a different jurisdiction entirely, the Shuofang Inspectorate, with its own inspector dispatched from the court. Not Han soil. Conquered soil. Opened by force among peoples who were not Han. And just as Lü Bu said, Han settlers kept pushing in, claiming the right to farm, carving pasture into fields. Between that and the Xiongnu, how could there not be blood?

"Hold on. 'Put forward.' Not sold?"

"Some are sold, I suppose. Most of it is requisition. Tribute for His Majesty the Emperor. Horses a man has spent years raising — and not only horses. Other livestock, taken outright. You think the Xiongnu are glad of that?"

Sun Jian let out a low sound and, unbidden, thought of home. Wu Commandery. North of the Yangtze, people had never been shy about looking down on a man born south of it. What was happening here in Bing was worse. If he had not found a superior like Zhang Min, he would have been worked to the bone and never risen at all. No — if the man above him had been anyone less than Zhang Min, the rebellion in Yang Province would never have been put down in the first place.

"The horses they hand over spend a season in Taiyuan getting used to the country, then they're sold on. Skip that, and they die. The water is different here. The wind is different. The ground is different. Even a fine animal drops if you throw it straight from western Bing into another land."

"If the men who raise them are Xiongnu, and the men who surrender them are Xiongnu… are the men who acclimatize them in Taiyuan Xiongnu as well?"

"It's work they're good at. And a great many of them have no other way to put food in their families' mouths back west."

Sun Jian jerked his chin toward the stables.

"Your Red Hare — that one was raised by Xiongnu hands too?"

"It was. They tell me it's a cross of the blood-sweating Ferghana and the Dayuan. The way that animal runs is one thing. But keep a stud like that and the foals you get later are worth a fortune. I owe them a great kindness."

Lü Bu was a cavalryman. He knew horses the way a man knows his own hands. Without the Xiongnu there would be no Han cavalry worth the name, and no defense of the north at all.

"And yet they treat the Xiongnu like dirt. From where you stand, that must sit hard."

When Sun Jian's understanding reached that far, Lü Bu smiled.

"If it were only the Xiongnu, I'd count myself lucky. Southwestern Bing, northwestern Sili — the whole country north of Chang'an — that's Qiang land too. Those people have their ground stolen out from under them by Han settlers at the drop of a hat. Sometimes their wives and children are carried off as well. It's pitiful. No. It doesn't stop at pity."

"Rebellion."

"We're hard-pressed enough by the Xianbei as it is. If the court can't settle the Hu — the Xiongnu — and the Rong — the Qiang — living inside the borders, and only knows how to wring them dry… how long do you think any of this will hold?"

For all his boldness, Lü Bu would not quite put the next words in his mouth: that the dynasty itself would not hold. The realm belonged to the Emperor. To speak of the realm's fall was to speak of the Emperor's. But Sun Jian heard what he meant.

"Then—"

Sun Jian's finger lifted toward the child in Lü Bu's yard, a small figure swinging ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a staff with grim, wobbly determination.

"That boy. Is he your own attempt at building something like friendship with the Xiongnu?"

I pretended not to notice Sun Jian pointing at me.

The year had turned again. It was 176. I was four years old. My steps still wobbled and my mouth still produced nothing but a toddler's thick-tongued noise, but if Lü Bu set me a task, I gave it everything I had.

My father, Yufuluo, sent me to Lü Bu's house often. A capable Han warrior, he said, was the kind of patron a boy like me would need. He sent the gift of a Red Hare along with me.

In the games it had been an item called a famous steed. In the novels, a unique horse of which only one existed in all the world. The truth was plainer and more interesting. Red Hare was the name of a breed the Southern Xiongnu had spent years improving. A coat with a cast of red. Muscle built for covering ground in great rabbit-leaps. A temperament that could endure the training those leaps required. Western Region blood, native Han stock, Wuhuan horses — crossed and recrossed until those qualities held. That was a Red Hare.

Lü Bu was a cavalryman. Of course he was delighted. In return, he had taken it upon himself to teach martial arts to a baby with a strangely stubborn patience — namely, me. Keep walking this road and I might well begin my career as a Xiongnu officer in Lü Bu's army.

I tipped the water-skin and gulped, replacing what the sweat had taken, then went back to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠work Lü Bu had given me: the dull, grinding, merciless swinging of a staff. Staff was a generous word. It was a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stick.

My ears, though, stayed on the two men talking.

Lü Bu and Sun Jian were both twenty-one this year. One led cavalry, the other infantry. They had learned each other beating back the Xianbei, and friendship had followed. I had not expected Sun Jian to turn up here at all. In the history I remembered, this was the season he should have been making his name in the south of Xu Province. Then again, Liu Bei and Cao Cao had both been in the habit of walking away from any post that did not suit them. Sun Jian was probably cut from the same cloth.

Lü Bu answered the question Sun Jian had just thrown him with a nod.

"That's right. Yufuluo, the Right Guli King, is the grandson of the present Xiongnu Chanyu. The seat itself will go to the boy's great-uncle, of course — the Left Wise King, Hozheng. But—"

"Thrones being what they are," Sun Jian cut in, "there's no law that says Yufuluo's father, the Right Wise King Qiangqu, couldn't take it instead?"

He laughed once, sharp and bright, and kept going.

"All right. Let's say fortune smiles and Yufuluo — the man you've made a friend of — becomes Chanyu of the Xiongnu. You'd take a great deal of good from that. But that isn't where you're actually aimed, is it?"

Lü Bu's mouth hooked into a grin to match.

"You're not wrong, Wentai. I didn't take the boy in just to live off Xiongnu generosity. Their gifts aren't small. But no. I'm pointed somewhere else."

He let the words sit a moment, then took them up again.

"I'm Han myself. But the way the Han, the Hu, and the Rong stand with one another right now is wrong."

"A man only calls a thing wrong when he already knows what right would look like."

"It's simple. Live together. Han, Hu, and Rong."

"Do they not already?"

"This is not living together. This is the Han using the Xiongnu and the Qiang as half-slaves. And the ones who fall far enough get sold as the real thing."

"Then what do you propose?"

"Guard the way they live. The Xiongnu way. The Qiang way. Bind it so that no Han — not one — can put a hand on it."

"That sounds like a dream."

Lü Bu started to agree — yes, a fine dream — and then his face hardened.

"A nightmare."

"If the Xiongnu and the Qiang in Bing Province break cleanly from the Han, what follows? Force them onto the plow, and who raises the horses? And after that—"

"—how do you stop the Xianbei."

Lü Bu nodded.

"This is not an age a man can survive by calling an ideal a dream and leaving it there, Wentai."

"Then how large is the thing you're after? Does it stop at Bing Province? Or does it run farther than that?"

"I'm too small a man to think as far as All Under Heaven. I know nothing of the Shanyue, or of the Man tribes in Jing Province. So I'll ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠think of Bing, and Bing only."

If he stretched the map at all, he added, it would be as far as Liang Province and You Province. No farther.

Sun Jian dropped his eyes to the packed earth of the yard and was quiet. Mid-swing, I faltered. The air had changed. This was no longer the bright talk of young men feeding each other their hopes. Something heavier was being set on the table.

"I heard something," Sun Jian said, "that may have a bearing on that goal of yours."

"What did you hear?"

Sun Jian was well down the road from Lü Bu's gate, nearly back to his own quarters, when he stopped and looked behind him.

As a soldier who had matched himself to the man in battle, and as a private companion, he liked Lü Bu. That was how the friendship had begun. It was not, however, why he kept it.

He wanted to read Lü Bu. How useful was the man, to Sun Jian? Useful enough to cultivate, to draw in, to make his own in the end? Or not quite that? Or — someday — an enemy?

I claim descent from Sun Wu, who wrote The Art of War…

The truth was thinner. An obscure house, its origins lost. Even the surname might be nothing more than an accident, the same sound as a famous dead man.

If a claim like that is ever going to become a fact, it will take a deed large enough to carry it.

That was why Sun Jian hunted battles. Why he fought for merit as if it were air. So that one day men would say the blood did not lie — that he was, after all, Sun Wu's heir. So that one day the Sun clan would stand among the great houses of Yang Province as an equal.

I can't take his measure yet.

Having heard Lü Bu's dream, that was as far as Sun Jian would go. Did the man only mean to change the climate of Bing Province? Or did he mean to lay hands on the contradictions of the Han itself?

Set beside that, is what Sun Wentai wants too small a thing?

There was common ground, even so. Sun Jian hated the contempt the men north of the Yangtze reserved for the south, and the contempt the great houses reserved for families with no name. Lü Bu hated the contempt the Han reserved for the Xiongnu and the Qiang.

Then let's see what he is. Give him a wider water, and watch how he swims.

That was why Sun Jian had let slip what he had heard from his superior, Zhang Min. The plan to subjugate Tanshihuai.

In that campaign, what kind of man would Lü Bu prove himself to be?