Luoyang, Castle of the Demon King (1)
As we passed back through the Guanglu Frontier Wall on our return to Duman City, herds of livestock appeared on the road ahead. The herders drove their animals freely through the pass, coming and going between the north and south of the Great Wall as if no barrier had ever stood there at all.
"At first I couldn't figure out what you were after," Lü Bu said. "Now I see it. This is the world you wanted."
"This is the world Tengri wanted."
The land Lü Bu pointed to no longer had a border. What wounds had the Great Wall carved into the lives of the Xiongnu? In truth, from the day it was raised, the Xiongnu pastures of Monan had never functioned as they were meant to. The Wall had destroyed the original shape of nomadic life south of the desert. I, Luanti Bao, had restored it.
"I never thought you'd use Dong Zhuo as a lever to squeeze more support out of Cao Cao."
"Dong Zhuo already knows Cao Cao is helping me, and he has no idea how far my reach extends into Luoyang. He won't dare treat us carelessly."
The first experiment in holding a balance among the warlords of the Three Kingdoms while drawing profit from every side had succeeded. Not long after, I began trading the funds Elder Cao Song had sent from Luoyang, along with the supplies Dong Zhuo had dispatched, through Taiyuan and a dozen other markets. Those goods I sold in secret to the great men of the Xianbei, taking as payment camels captured and broken in the desert. With the camels I opened a road southwest across the You Sha, the Flowing Sands, all the way to Juyan Marsh and Xiuzhe Marsh.
By the time the year 182 drew to a close, merchants of the Western Regions had at last set foot in Shouxiangcheng and Duman City. On the strength of that wealth I pushed our territory — our pasturelands — a little farther to the northwest. Someday our borders would meet the Western Regions directly. That would take a northern campaign in earnest. But that campaign would not depend on my granduncle Hozheng.
In winter, I gathered Grandfather Qiangqu, Father Yufuluo, Uncle Huchuquan, and even my younger brother Gebi, and made my declaration.
The time had come to meet Liu Hong.
The year was 183 by the Western calendar, the sixth year of Guanghe by the Han reign title. I had turned eleven.
"Bao, think this over again. You don't have to go to Luoyang."
Father Yufuluo hovered around me with worry written across his face. I listened while I finished the closing rites of the Dragon City Grand Sacrifice. When I glanced up into his eyes, something in my chest pulled tight.
I had brought in Han and Wuhuan with talk no one could quite follow, then marched north and won a great victory over Tanshihuai. I had taken our place in Duman City, the holy ground, and steadily widened the pastures around it — no small feat. A splendid temple to Tengri was rising in the city even now, and already merchants and the people who lived off those merchants had crowded in around the unfinished halls. Laid out on the model of Chang'an or Luoyang, it might someday look like a proper city. It had a long way to go before that. Still, we were making money, and with that money the livestock — a nomad's true wealth — were multiplying.
If I had been twenty… no, even fifteen, Yufuluo would have been nothing but proud. Watching an eleven-year-old do all this, though, was like looking at something that did not belong in the world. A nomad child of my age was supposed to ride and drive the herds, yes — but as a child helping with his parents' work, the way a farm boy feeds the oxen. An eleven-year-old who commanded his own tribes and accomplished things his father and grandfather had never dreamed of was hard to see as simply a beloved son. Or perhaps it was worse than that: the beloved son behaving like a stranger, and the heartache cutting deeper for it.
The Yufuluo I had met right after I woke in this body was a man of fierce paternal love. His eldest, the boy he had wanted to keep close and spoil a little longer, already carried himself like a son who had left the nest. That could not have sat easily with him. I understood the feeling well enough that I resented this life of mine, which left me no room to rest.
I had played my part as Grand Shaman-Khagan at the Dragon City Grand Sacrifice presided over by the Grand Chanyu, and in that same assembly I had announced that I would go to Luoyang and meet the Emperor. I had said I would go of my own will. I was a hostage all the same.
"Father. A Grand Shaman's word — spoken at the Dragon City Grand Sacrifice, no less. I cannot take it back."
Yufuluo's face said he knew that, and it did not help.
"Bao. I have never been to Luoyang, but I know the Han are terrifying."
"For someone who says they're terrifying, you get along well enough with Master."
"Fengxian is different. The Han I'm talking about are… the officials."
Fair enough. The men who browbeat and bled the Xiongnu were the officials, starting with the Colonel Protector of the Xiongnu — though Wang Yu, the present one, was a better specimen than most.
"I've heard Luoyang is a place where officials of that kind gather in countless numbers — and die in countless numbers."
He meant affairs like the Disasters of the Partisan Prohibitions.
"And the Emperor in Luoyang is the man who makes even those terrifying officials tremble."
I had felt the truth of that secondhand, through Cao Cao and Zhang Xiu.
"I cannot send you to a place like that…"
"Father."
I stopped arranging my things and turned to face him. Yufuluo was in his thirties now, and I was only eleven. But I could see what he could not. That was the natural advantage of a soul dropped into a world over the people who had always lived in it. I had no way to explain that to him, and it pained me.
Yufuluo was no fool. In the original history he had run himself ragged trying to save a Southern Xiongnu already cut in half by Xubu Chang's rebellion. As a herder, a hunter, and a warrior, his gifts were considerable. But his foundation had been too small, the Xiongnu of his reign too narrow in their view to grasp the chaos of the late Eastern Han, and the years allotted to him too few.
In the end he kept choosing the losing side between pairs of Han strongmen, and the situation grew worse with every choice. He sided with Yuan Shu against Cao Cao. He sided with Gongsun Zan against Yuan Shao. He sided with Yuan Shao against Cao Cao. Those decisions accumulated through Huchuquan's reign after him, until the Southern Xiongnu were reduced to mercenaries of Wei and Jin — no, to slaves in all but name.
I was going to stop that history from happening. The foundation I had built before turning eleven was already larger than everything Yufuluo had accumulated in the original history across a lifetime as Chanyu. How was I supposed to make him understand that? Could I make him understand it at all?
Next year the Taiping Dao will raise the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the Han will collapse, and we will be dragged into putting down uprisings all over the empire until we go down with it. If I could have made him see that, I would not have been going through any of this.
I had turned to face him squarely, but nothing came to me, so I simply stood there and looked at him.
"Bao."
Yufuluo's face twisted into something that was neither quite a frown nor quite a smile.
"What is it that's driving you to Luoyang like this — breathless, as if something were chasing you?"
"…I have to meet the Emperor in Luoyang."
In the end, that was all I could say to a father who could not possibly understand.
"I'll leave the management of my pastures to you and Grandfather. Guard them well, so the other clans cannot encroach. The merchants coming and going from Duman City, too."
I could not take Lü Bu, nor Hou Cheng, Song Xian, or Wei Xu beneath him. All three men were far too busy with their duties as soldiers of the Han. So this time I decided to bring Huchuquan and Zhang Liao. Both were fifteen this year; they could carry a grown man's share of the work, or close enough.
"I hear Luoyang's got all kinds of delicious food!"
Huchuquan said it in a bright, excited voice and looked over at Zhang Liao, who did not bother to answer and kept his eyes on the road ahead.
"And the girls are supposed to be fair-skinned and pretty!"
A fair enough topic for a fifteen-year-old in the thick of adolescence. Zhang Liao let out a long sigh.
"We're here to escort Senior Brother. This is hardly the time to be looking at women."
"Oh, come on, you—! What, you're just going to stare at Bao's face the whole time we're in Luoyang? We'll get a moment to breathe, at least."
"If you're talking about buying a courtesan, we don't have the money, and no proper young lady is going to so much as glance at a pair of country boys from Bing Province."
"You don't know that!"
"Stop talking nonsense and keep watch on our surroundings."
"Anyway, you're older than Bao, so why are you the junior brother and he's the senior?"
"Seniority among martial brothers is decided by who entered under our master first."
"And he's only your senior brother. To me he's my nephew!"
"What a fine example of an uncle, carrying on like this in front of his nephew."
By the time I had grown used to Huchuquan and Zhang Liao snapping at each other, we had entered the eastern reaches of Bing Province. We crossed Yanmen Commandery into Taiyuan, then turned southeast toward Shangdang Commandery. The route kept us clear of Hedong, where Dong Zhuo was, and the ground made it the faster road besides.
The Taihang range, which had run due south all the way from the north, bent at a sharp right angle south of Shangdang Commandery and turned west. That bent ridgeline formed the border between Shangdang and Henei. Upon that border stood the mountain that had given the entire range its name: the Taihang itself. In later ages the eastern reaches of Bing Province would be called Shanxi — west of the mountains — and the name would come from this very range. Near it lay the Taihang Pass, a crossing as brutal as Jingxing, where I had fallen ill years ago on my way into Ji Province.
It was a hard crossing, but we made it through the Taihang Pass at last, and the plains of Sili opened before us. We joined Xiahou Dun at Yewang County in Henei Commandery.
"Let's be on our way. Mengde is waiting."
Huchuquan and I were Xiongnu, but Xiahou Dun and Zhang Liao… In the original history they had fought side by side under Cao Cao. Splitting them up like this left me feeling almost guilty. Then again, I had nothing to apologize for. You could even call it a balance patch. Cao Cao had far too many talented men as it was.
The day might yet come when I would have to set Zhang Liao on Cao Cao, so I was working hard to keep our bond strong. We trained in martial arts under the same master, of course, but we also sparred together, ran the open fields, and played until we were caked in dirt. What I had with Zhang Liao and Huchuquan could fairly be called the friendship of boys. It had to be. On top of that I was learning Han custom through Zhang Liao, and he was learning the Xiongnu tongue and Xiongnu ways through me. I had wanted us to become brothers, not merely friends.
At first it had been so I could make use of the legendary martial prowess Zhang Liao had shown in the original history. Now… a man whose home was northern Bing Province dying of illness on the border with Wu was simply too cruel. Even as a general who had once surrendered, he could have been given high office and a comfortable life at the Wei court. If I became the master of northern China, I wanted Zhang Liao to live a little easier in the capital of my empire. That feeling had grown stronger than the rest.
While my thoughts ran on like that, we reached the Yellow River. A river usually turns to muddy soup only when it floods. The Yellow River was this color even when it didn't. Well. That was why they called it yellow.
Under Xiahou Dun's guidance we boarded a boat, crossed the river, and came to Mengjin, the northern gate of Luoyang. Cao Cao had come out as far as Mengjin to meet us.