The Romance Interloper (1)
Camels.
Zhang Min's words had set me thinking about raising a corps of camel cavalry — but Tanshihuai, it seemed, had never taken the idea that far.
"We gathered the testimony of everyone who survived the raid on Jiuquan Commandery," Zhang Min said. "Tanshihuai appears to have entrusted his entire supply train to camels and reserved the horses strictly as war mounts."
So he used the camels to support the cavalry, not to replace it.
Widen the lens to the rest of the world and the same logic appears again and again. When the armies of Islam crossed the desert to fight Rome or Persia, they forced their camels to drink past the limit of thirst and then bound the animals' mouths shut. Each day of the crossing they slaughtered a fixed number of the beasts and drank the water stored in the stomachs, and so they endured the march. Even if Tanshihuai never went to that extreme, the Mongols too are recorded to have stabbed their camels on the harshest marches and drunk the blood to keep going. Putting camels to work as pack animals in country that mules, donkeys, and horses cannot endure is an enormous help — militarily, and, as this conversation with Zhang Min made plain, commercially as well.
"If the Xiongnu prince can only secure camels enough," Zhang Min went on, "enough to open a road across the You Sha from the Four Commanderies of Hexi — then it would be possible to draw the merchants to your city."
"Tanshihuai's raid on Jiuquan Commandery, and the Qiang rebellion, have already cut the roads through Longshang and the Sanfu heartland," I said. "Western goods are no longer reaching Luoyang at all. In other words — if I revive the trade, Han profits as well. That is what you are telling me."
"It is a longer road, yes. But Luoyang's goods and the goods of the Western Regions would still change hands."
"Then the problem is how to get the camels…"
Catching wild camels and breaking them was a labor in itself. I could do it if I had to — but what I wanted was already-tamed beasts, and I wanted them quickly, animals fit to carry a load.
Zhang Min sank back into thought. Then he added something more.
"On the matter of the Western Regions, I know a man who can help you more than I can."
"Who?"
"Grand Administrator Dong of Hedong."
Dong Zhuo. Again.
After what Liu Bei had said, I had wanted nothing to do with the man for a good long while. I had not expected to hear his name from Zhang Min's mouth.
What now?
Zhang Min's argument was that Dong Zhuo, once Wuji Colonel of the Western Regions, could offer counsel far beyond his own. Lü Bu, from the look of him, had arrived at much the same conclusion.
"Bao. We think this through before we go running off to Hedong."
Fair enough. Lü Bu had already been offered a place at Dong Zhuo's side — leave Bing Province entirely and take service under the man. He had refused once. Of the two of us, he had more reason to find Dong Zhuo hard to swallow.
"Dong Zhuo is exactly the kind of man I cannot stand. The kind who does his business through war. No different from Duan Jiong, and Duan Jiong is dead."
"The Southern Xiongnu are in no position to refuse even that kind of man's help."
Lü Bu looked into my eyes.
"Let's be straight. It isn't the Southern Xiongnu's predicament. It's yours."
I had nothing to say to that.
"…It is."
"You've already heard from Grand Administrator Zhang how to draw the Western merchants in — camels, the desert. For now, we go back to Duman City."
I still hesitated. Lü Bu sank down and put his hand on my shoulder.
"I'll tell you the truth. I don't keep my guard up around Dong Zhuo just because I can't stand the man. He's a strange one."
"His way of handling the Rong and the Di. You found that peculiar too, Master."
"I did. The way he drags the Qiang in as soldiers for his own profit — I truly hate it. But Dong Zhuo told me the Qiang would use him until the day he died, same as he used them. That was not a pretty speech. He meant it."
Dong Zhuo would not let anyone lay a hand on the Qiang who served him. Under him they kept their freedom, grew their wealth, and protected their families.
"In a way, Master, that is your ideal already achieved."
"Maybe not for the whole empire… but I have thought that Dong Zhuo's way might be the direction Bing Province ought to take."
Just as I thought.
So it had not been Red Hare that bought Lü Bu. I had touched Zhang Min's ideal; Dong Zhuo had touched Lü Bu's. That was how he had been able to become Lü Bu's "father." If I had not been changing history since I was small, Lü Bu would have gone over to Dong Zhuo exactly as the record said he would. He might still be torn. He might be on the verge of going even now.
"Dong Zhuo is an inscrutable, bizarre man. Bizarre men are dangerous. The next time we stand in front of him, we do it prepared."
So that is why he will not go looking for Dong Zhuo again.
"Um…"
A young man's voice, behind me.
"You are…"
Lü Bu spoke as if to an acquaintance and rose. I turned. I knew the face as well.
Zhang Hong. Zhang Min's son.
"If the two of you intend to travel to Hedong Commandery, my father has commanded that I accompany you and offer what aid I can."
Zhang Min was sending his own son to help us. I made my bow to Zhang Hong, and in the same breath a thought took shape. If Dong Zhuo was dangerous, then the thing to do was to have a countermeasure ready against that danger.
I looked at Zhang Hong's puzzled face and smiled.
Lü Bu and I left Jinyang in Taiyuan Commandery and turned south. Southeast would have carried us into Shangdang Commandery, the gateway out toward Ji Province. We held due south instead, on a road that bent a little to the southwest. We covered a distance equal to the run from Yanmen Commandery to Taiyuan, and at last we reached Hedong.
It was my first time setting foot in Sili, the capital province, in this world of the Three Kingdoms. The territory Dong Zhuo ruled as Grand Administrator. And Guan Yu's native ground.
"Public order seems better than I expected."
Games and every other telling I knew cast Dong Zhuo as a demon king. I had half expected to find Hedong a slaughter-yard. Thankfully, it was nothing of the kind.
"This is Sili. Right under the Emperor's nose. However little Dong Zhuo gives a damn about anyone else, he is afraid of the Emperor."
Cai Yong, I remembered, had taken very seriously the way Sili bled the frontiers. Which meant the Emperor treasured Sili. If Dong Zhuo ran wild in the Emperor's precious home province, he would be dead before the season turned. Even an Emperor who had not yet rebuilt the armies Tanshihuai had annihilated still commanded a force against which Dong Zhuo's following was frail. The peaceful look of Hedong, then, was evidence of one thing only: Dong Zhuo was still lying flat. For now.
"Brother Zhishu — Zhang Yang — told me that when Dong Zhuo was Inspector of Bing Province he was almost absurdly timid about committing troops. And yet at the Battle of Yinshan he drove an army here himself. That tells you he fears the Emperor."
Which left me wondering how Guan Yu had been driven to the point of leaving Hedong at all. Haixian, his hometown, lay some way west of An'yi, the commandery seat. Perhaps whatever happened in Haixian had taken place beyond the reach of Dong Zhuo's hand — a subordinate acting on his own, or some local magnate. We had not come to take the pulse of Hedong, in any case. We rode straight for An'yi.
The stares in An'yi were much the same as they had been in Jinyang.
"A Hu?"
"That warrior on the red horse is Han, though."
"Dressed awfully fine for a Hu. And he's still a child."
"Some high-ranking Hu, then?"
As we had done at Zhang Min's gate, we called a servant out in front of the Grand Administrator's residence. We had barely sent in word that Lü Fengxian of Bing Province and the Xiongnu Chanyu had come to call when the servant…
"So you've come, Fengxian! And the Xiongnu Chanyu too!"
…was not a servant at all. Dong Zhuo himself came bursting out, and at his heels that sharp-eyed man.
Dong Zhuo rushing out in his bare feet to greet his guests — I am not sure a more awkward sentence has ever been written.
Unlike our visit to Zhang Min, we were received in a rather more splendid chamber and served food that was actually good. Dong Zhuo's idea of splendor, though, had nothing to do with the usual gold and jewels. The room was hung with the hides of hunted beasts, with skulls and horns, and it reminded me, in an unguarded way, of the tent of the Old Shamaness who had left me her inheritance and died. Even the gold ornaments in his reception hall were not Han work. Han pieces ran to geometric and abstract patterns; Dong Zhuo's were crowded with animals rendered from life — horses, deer, tigers. Things made by the nomads of the Western Regions, or of the Central Asian steppe beyond them.
Imports from the west, then?
Zhang Min might have been right. This was a man worth hearing on the Western Regions. The question was what he would choose to bring up.
"I knew you'd show, Fengxian."
So he is going to try to poach Lü Bu again.
Dong Zhuo turned from him and smiled at me — the smile of a neighborhood uncle looking down at a small boy. I tensed all the same.
"But with the Xiongnu Chanyu here, you haven't come to take service under me."
He told us to eat, and then started in on the meal himself.
"So it was the Xiongnu Chanyu who wanted to come."
Lü Bu nodded. I spoke at once.
"I wish to hear the Grand Administrator's counsel."
"A Xiongnu prince, asking this Dong Zhuo for advice! Well. What counsel do you want?"
"The matter of Western Regions trade. I want to handle as much money as I possibly can."
Dong Zhuo's eyes went round. The man seated beside him looked just as startled. I had been too blunt, and I knew it. But the Dong Zhuo I knew would take this better than a speech that wandered around the point.
He threw his head back and laughed.
"If that's the trouble, Grand Administrator Zhang of Taiyuan was sitting on the road that brought you here."
"We stopped there on the way."
"Ah. So he pointed you at me."
"He did."
"Good. After hearing Grand Administrator Zhang, how far has the Xiongnu Chanyu taken the idea?"
"Sanfu and Longshang are in no condition to carry traffic. I mean to turn the merchants bound for Jiuquan, Zhangye, and Wuwei north, and bring them into Duman City. I will stockpile at Duman City the goods I can obtain from Luoyang, exchange them, and build a fortune."
"Which means crossing the You Sha."
The geography of the northwest sat in Dong Zhuo's head as if someone had driven nails through it. He did not hesitate for a breath. If that was how he meant to talk, I would come to the point as well.
"Yes. I need camels. Urgently."
"Catching desert camels and breaking them is a long, ugly labor. In the end you will have to buy beasts already tamed — and those you can only get from the Western Regions. Trade with the west is the problem, and the cure is also the west. Frustrating, isn't it."
"I ask only that the Grand Administrator light the way."
"…Before that."
His voice dropped.
"The Qiang and I struck a bargain to use each other. With your great-grandfather I have years piled up since we were young men. With you I have nothing."
"You want a bargain."
"Hah! How old is the Xiongnu Chanyu?"
"Ten, this year."
"Enough to put a fright in a man. Going straight at a deal with this Dong Zhuo. Fine. I will give you counsel — and I will take something from the Xiongnu Chanyu in return."
"If what you want is Lü Fengxian, I cannot give you that."
Dong Zhuo threw his head back and roared, then slapped the man beside him on the back.
"What did I tell you? I said he'd refuse."
The man did not give an inch.
"And I told you the Xiongnu Chanyu would be no ordinary child."
So it was not my imagination. This man has been watching me.
Dong Zhuo let the laughter die and looked at me again, all business.
"If you will not give me Lü Fengxian, what will you give me?"
I knew he would not be moved the way Zhang Min had been. He would have to be approached by an entirely different road. And the truth was I needed Dong Zhuo for what was coming — to keep a check on Cao Cao, and to meet the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which was now only two years away.
"There is a saying making the rounds, I hear. That Wei shall take the place of Han."
Lü Bu started. So did the man whose name I did not know. Dong Zhuo and I did not.
"And so the ambitious, and the idle gossips, all seem to have their eyes fixed on Wei Commandery in Ji Province."
A smile touched the corner of Dong Zhuo's mouth.