East of the River: Home of the Sun Clan sample -- TPMThorne.com

General Dong Zhuo returned to his command tent with a bitter scowl on his face and a growing tenseness in his chest. Two of his advisers - a small, humble-looking man in plain blue robes and a taller, thin-faced man in purple robes - awaited a summary of the meeting that never happened: Dong Zhuo passed them, sat in his host seat and continued to fight his inner rage with diminishing success. After a short while, the purple-robed adviser looked at his colleague, coughed quietly and whispered, “Shall I ask, Mister Jia Xu…?”
“Allow me, Li Ru,” the blue-robed Jia Xu replied, and Li Ru smiled gratefully.
Silence returned while Jia Xu gathered his thoughts: Dong Zhuo glared at the space directly in front of him, and his followers shifted themselves as discreetly as they could to avoid being within his line of sight.
“…I sense that Zhang Wen and Zhou Shen have upset you, my lord,” Jia Xu prompted cautiously.
“Them and that idiot Sun Jian,” Dong Zhuo grumbled. “I’d heard of the fellow, of course, and his ‘amazing exploits’ during the Yellow Turban Rebellion; he obviously lacks any respect for me, and-”
“Forgive me for interrupting, my lord, but what role is Sun Jian taking…?” Li Ru asked plainly.
“Not the vanguard, for some reason,” Dong Zhuo chortled. “No, he’s been sent by his friend Zhu Jun to advise Zhou Shen… you were obviously right about Zhou, Mister Jia, and Zhu Jun knows it. There’s a hope that Zhou will listen to a ‘great hero’ like Sun Jian… but my opinion of Zhou is poor, and I think he’ll fail.”
“Scouts report that the rebel army is on its way, led by Bian Zhang and Han Sui,” Jia Xu announced. “They’re former Han officials, and are exactly what we hoped for. No doubt we’ll engage them without stratagem, and nothing will come of it but a stalemate. We’ll see how things progress; once an opening appears, we should grasp it firmly and destroy the rebel force. We can worry about repairing the damage to our relationship with the Qiang later; for now, we have possible imperial rewards to consider.”

Dong Zhuo almost drooled at the idea and said, “Very good indeed! To hell with Zhou Shen, Sun Jian and Zhang Wen! Glory is ours for the taking!”

“…We should never have come here.”
Zu Mao sighed audibly at Sun Jian’s comment, while Cheng Pu hung his head low and grimaced. The night was cold, so Sun Jian’s command tent had to be warmed with a fire.
“I’m sorry, truly I am,” Sun Jian continued. “But I promise that I won’t take any more assignments like this… if we live through this one, at least.”
“We will,” Zu Mao replied. “We’ll hurt, but we’ll live.”
Cheng Pu looked up and said, “We’re not here to fight; we’re here to give advice. We’ll have to watch others die needlessly.”
“Like the siege,” Sun Jian murmured.
“Only there won’t be any heroics,” Cheng Pu retorted. “Let the generals do the fighting, Sun Wentai. Our fight isn’t here; it’s at home, where we won’t have men willing to cross the empire to help us in the way that we’ve been expected to.”
“…You’re right,” Sun Jian replied. “We need to do something about all the problems in Wu Prefecture. We need to make our own home a better place.”
The three men parted company and went to their own personal tents; they knew that they would soon face an alliance of Qiang, Yuezhi and Liang Province inhabitants that would test their faith in the Han Empire, but they could not know that the events would fatefully alter the reputations and destinies of all of the men involved, including the ambitious Dong Zhuo.

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