The Western Regions Expert (1)
Thud-clang. Thud-clang!
The ring of picks and hammers from Duman City's reconstruction filled the air in every direction. Lü Bu and I had no choice but to raise our voices just to hear each other over the din.
"How much funding do we have left?"
The funds Lü Bu meant were Cao Cao's subsidies and the contributions each Xiongnu tribe had put forward. And those funds were...
"...Almost gone."
Lü Bu glanced past my shoulder. Behind me, the building that would serve as both a temple of the Tengri faith and my own residence was going up. The problem was that the money had run dry before the place was even finished.
"Bao. I'm your master, and thanks to you I've earned plenty of merit and taken home more than a few rewards — but there's a limit to how much I can help."
"Yes. Even if we pooled every last coin of everyone here, we still couldn't do much with this one little city."
It was all money. Hiring people to come as far as the Duman City worksite cost money. Feeding them and putting them up cost money. The sudden swell of bodies meant new wells had to be sunk for drinking water, and that cost money too. Want enough water to keep them washed and the plague from running through the camp, and the bill climbed higher still. They ate and they drank, so they had to relieve themselves — and if they fouled the wrong ground, that too became a seedbed for disease, so even putting the waste in the right place cost money. Grant that we might someday recoup it as fertilizer or gunpowder... the production process wasn't free either.
I could settle Han refugees around the city and put them to farming. Weigh the climate and the rest of the conditions, and it looked possible, up to a point. Farther north, where the desert began in earnest, it would be hopeless — but even if the fields took, feeding those households until the first harvest came in would still fall to me. And there was no telling whether the grain we wrung from the ground would ever be plentiful enough to count as profit.
Better to leave every acre beyond the walls as pasture than to let Han farmers and Xiongnu herders start fighting over land the way they had in western Bing Province. Raising livestock to sell, though, took time of its own. And the construction costs we needed right now were simply not appearing.
In short, we had slammed into a brutal shortage of funds.
"There's something I've been wondering. As of today you've come north of the Great Wall, same as your ancestors. How did they keep a city running up here?"
How you keep a city running. People assume nomads never build walls. They do, whenever they can. A city might serve as a Chanyu's palace or a mustering ground for the army. It might be a precinct for religious rites. It might house Han captives and defectors. The Xiongnu worked mines, forges, kilns — and the people who worked them needed somewhere to live. There were towns, small ones. How else would we have made our weapons and our armor?
The trouble is that a nomad's pasture is a homeland, yes — but beyond raising horses and warriors, its yield is wretched. The conditions are nothing like those of a Han city, which can lean on the surplus of the farmland around it. So how did the Xiongnu keep their cities and towns alive? Commerce. Trade. Even that was no simple thing.
You'd think, Now that we're outside the Great Wall, we can start trading with the Western Regions any day. But the Western Regions were staggeringly far from here. I hadn't even pushed west — I'd pushed north. And "the vast open steppe" is half a literary conceit. A little northeast of the fief I'd been granted, the desert began. East, and the remnant Xianbei still outnumbered my following. West, a narrow corridor twisted between folding mountains and sand. We would have to punch thousands of li through that terrain, and through a western country already drowned in war, before we even touched the Western Regions.
"No chance of wringing more money out of that Cao Cao fellow, I suppose."
"If I asked, I could get it — but everything we've taken so far is a debt."
I fully expected Cao Cao to come calling one day for a great Xiongnu army in return for his support. We could not simply swallow his gold and sit on it. The Cao Cao I knew would already have prepared for the chance we might betray him. He might, for instance, make an issue of what had happened during Hozheng's accession as Chanyu and detonate something inside our own ranks. Or he might deal my standing among the Xiongnu a wound it would not easily heal.
"We can't lean on Cao Cao's subsidies any longer. If he helps us, it has to be because helping us is good for him too."
With Cao Cao — no, not only Cao Cao, but every warlord I knew from Three Kingdoms — I wanted to hold a balance of trade, or of alliance. Even among the Southern Xiongnu my power was still pitifully weak. Until the day my army and I became a weight heavy enough to tip the scales of Three Kingdoms itself, that was how it had to be.
Lü Bu sat with that for a moment, then spoke.
"I hear Zhang Min, the former General of the Household Protecting the Xiongnu, has just arrived as Administrator of Taiyuan."
Zhang Min, Administrator of Taiyuan? Beyond being the man who had plucked Sun Jian from obscurity, beyond the merit he had won putting down rebels in the south, beyond even being Zhang Hong's father, Zhang Min had one further distinction. He knew a great deal about the Western Regions and the northern frontier. History itself recorded that he had once discussed the Western Regions with Yuan Feng, and that Yuan Feng had come away impressed. Of course, that was not why Lü Bu was bringing him up.
"He shared that defeat with us as General of the Household Protecting the Xiongnu, and now that we've broken Tanshihuai, he may well listen to you. Why not pay him a visit?"
"We should."
It was a good thought. If I could draw something useful from Zhang Min's knowledge of the Western Regions, so much the better — and even if I couldn't, winning his friendship and some support from Taiyuan Commandery would at least let us breathe.
"Then this time it'll be you and me. The two of us."
"What? You and I, Master?"
"...Got a problem with that?"
"No, it isn't that..."
"I already have the General of the Household Protecting the Xiongnu's leave to settle the 'territory' we took in the last war. For a while I can move as I please. And Administrator Zhang used to be my superior — it'll sit better if I'm the one who speaks first."
That left a problem. If Lü Bu and I were both away, who would hold Duman City and Shouxiangcheng?
Lü Bu summoned Hou Cheng, Wei Xu, and Song Xian. The voice that fell on them was not the easy tone of an older brother or a senior comrade. It was a commander's order, hard and clean.
"Hou Cheng, Wei Xu — patrol the pasture borders! Song Xian! Stretch whatever budget we have left until we get back. Make it last, however you have to."
In the Three Kingdoms games they had been extras, nothing more. After years in the field together, having three men this distinct, this dependable, was a comfort I had not expected. Or perhaps the word was convenient. The same kind of convenience you got from leaving Jian Yong, Sun Qian, or Mi Zhu to hold a city...
No. That, too, depended on how you used them. Since falling into this world I had learned that when a great commander is allowed to show his full measure, the nameless officers of Three Kingdoms can be formidable in their own right.
Lü Bu turned to his other disciple, Zhang Liao, who had turned fourteen this year.
"Liao. You stick with those three and learn the work."
I called for Huchuquan separately. He had turned fourteen as well.
"Uncle, I'd like you to take charge of Duman City and Shouxiangcheng alongside Liao."
"Hold on, nephew — you want me sitting home playing housekeeper?"
"...When we get back, I'll see whether Liao handled it better, or whether you did."
"Got it!"
I could thank heaven that Huchuquan was simple, or thank heaven that he could not stand to lose to Zhang Liao. That the two of them still got along, even while snapping at each other like that, I counted as a blessing.
Perhaps it was because my body had turned ten. The road was nowhere near as hard as the journey I had made to find Guan Yu.
Lü Bu and I left Duman City and passed south through the Guanglu Frontier Wall.
"You ought to take this place too."
"The Guanglu Frontier Wall as well?"
What use was seizing a gate in a Great Wall that had already crumbled...?
"I've been living north of the Wall long enough to see it now. From the south, the Wall is a fortress that keeps the northern enemy out. From the north, you can just as well read it as a fortress that keeps the southern enemy out."
Ah. Of course. I had never thought of it that way. If we ever came to blows with Hozheng and the other great men of the Southern Xiongnu — or if we lost the Hetao Plateau and found ourselves fighting some power out of the Central Plains — holding the Guanglu Frontier Wall would not only stop them from spilling north. It would also let us seize the initiative when we struck back south. Lose it to a southern power, and we would spend the war staring at that one gate while they held the whip hand.
"And it isn't only a matter of war. If you want merchants coming and going from Duman City, the roads have to be safe first. Take the pass, and the security of the road running either side of it is as good as guaranteed."
"The road the merchants would travel."
Listening to him, I pictured inns and waystations rising around a restored Guanglu Frontier Wall, the whole stretch ripening into a commercial hub. Even as a daydream it was a satisfying sight — and it was the path my walls would have to take.
We came down through the Guanglu Frontier Wall into Wuyuan Commandery, then turned east through Yunzhong and Dingxiang before entering Yanmen Commandery.
"The counties haven't been rebuilt, but it's still better than when Tanshihuai was alive."
Lü Bu had chosen this route to stay as clear as possible of any stray Xianbei raid. Fortunately, we never saw a single Xianbei rider. Which meant the Xianbei, just now, could not spare so much as a glance for the Han empire's troubles.
"What are they doing, I wonder. Fighting over the succession?"
"We've got nothing but rumors to go on. They say a wind of blood is blowing across Mobei."
"To confirm it..."
"We'd have to throw ourselves into that bloody storm ourselves."
We passed through Yanmen Commandery and dropped into the basin between the Luliang Mountains and the Taihang Mountains. The hills along the road were steep enough, but nothing like Jingxing, where I had fallen ill. Or perhaps my growing body had simply learned to endure a hard road.
At last we entered Taiyuan Commandery and went straight to Administrator Zhang Min. My clothes drew the stares of every Han we passed as we moved through Jinyang, the commandery seat — but I had grown used to that by now.
"Please tell the Administrator that Lü Fengxian of Wuyuan Commandery in Bing Province, and Luanti Bao, a prince of the Xiongnu, request an audience."
We put the request to one of Zhang Min's servants, and the answer to come in arrived before long. The man led us into the residence.
"Well now."
The exclamation came from a Zhang Min who looked far older than I remembered, as he came forward to greet Lü Bu.
"Who do we have here? Fengxian, isn't it?"
"I should have presented myself the moment I heard you had come as Administrator of Taiyuan. Forgive me for being so late."
"Not at all. I heard you distinguished yourself again north of the Wall, riding with Administrator Dong. You smashed Tanshihuai and paid back a grudge of mine!"
So that was how Zhang Min saw it. His eyes turned to me.
"A Xiongnu prince... is that what you said?"
"That is correct, Administrator Zhang. You may not remember me — but I remember the Administrator from the last war."