“Intention”: War for the Han Frontier sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne
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“Of course it is!” Yuan Shao replied.
“Do we not enjoy the services of Tian Chou, a man that once fled the
region citing Lord Yuan as a traitor that colluded with Gongsun Zan to murder
his master, Liu Yu…?” the adviser Pang Ji asked.
“Yes!” Yuan Shao said excitedly. “That’s right! Does Mister Tian Chou
not now live and work in his home region of Wuzhong as a magistrate - my magistrate - after abandoning the
capital…?”
“Yes,” Cui Yan sighed, “but-”
“Well then, that settles it!” Yuan Shao chuckled. “Chen Lin!”
Yuan Shao’s secretary, Chen Lin, nodded his head obediently.
“Your magnificent skill with the pen is required once more,” Yuan Shao
continued. “This is what I want to say to Zang Ba…”
*************
9
Qing Province was situated to the east of Yuan Shao’s base in Ji
Province; the region had long been overwhelmed by unrest, and this point in
time was no different. Powerful crime families, the Yellow Turbans and the
‘Mount Tai Bandits’ - so called because the confederacy originated in the hills
around the imposing Mount Tai - had been contesting the corrupted and
ineffective Han government for more than 10 years, and much of the
aforementioned corruption dated back to the activities of the ‘Ten Attendants’
from a decade before that.
Many innocent people suffered, and one of those people
was a prison warder called Zang Jie; his career was brought to a halt when he
queried the arrest of innocents while known criminals operated without
punishment, and his own imprisonment followed. The false charges that were
brought against Zang Jie guaranteed his transportation to Luoyang for quiet
disposal; his desperate son, Zang Ba, then turned to the very criminals that
his father detested in order to save him. Father and son were then fugitives
from the government, and in Zang Ba’s case, that meant reassessment of what was
right and necessary in a complicated age. Zang Ba joined the ranks of the
bandits that operated around Mount Tai Prefecture and quickly ascended to a
senior leader; he extended operations into the rest of Qing Province and Xu
Province to the south, becoming a feared name and the main founder of the
bandit confederacy.