East of the River: Home of the Sun Clan sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne

Lu Kang smiled and said, “The court has been weakened by such things. We lost the war against the Xianbei and nearly lost half the land to the Yellow Turbans, but no lessons were learned. They always promise that they will be, but they never are. But I hear that Dong Zhuo might be promoted to ‘Inspector of Bing Province’, and-”
Sun Jian groaned involuntarily.
“…I suppose that your experiences are fresh in your mind,” Lu Kang said with empathy. “I’ll settle for simple answers, then, for my own curiosity.”
“Zhang Wen is unfit to be commander of the imperial forces; Zhou Shen is an arrogant mediocrity that failed his forces and his sovereign by closing his ears to sense; and Dong Zhuo… Dong Zhuo is a villain that will harm this country,” Sun Jian replied. “Liang has been abandoned, which was entirely the wrong thing to do. Zhang Wen is disgraced for being a poor leader: I don’t disagree. Zhou Shen is disgraced for the same: I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been disgraced because my advice was ignored, not because it was wrong, while Dong Zhuo… Dong Zhuo has been venerated because he feigned a success with cowardice.”
“Your appraisal of Dong Zhuo is notably harsh,” Lu Kang prompted.
“Were it only Dong Zhuo, Administrator Lu… but he is empowered by his advisers and officers,” Sun Jian continued. “He was openly rude when we first met, not just to me but to his equals and even his superiors, yet no action was taken. He refused to fight to avoid upsetting his Qiang neighbours, despite being commissioned to do exactly that: is that not treason of some kind? Yet he was spared punishment, so I was told, to avoid upsetting those same Qiang! That, Administrator, is almost a perfect summation of the entire sorry affair.”
Lu Kang hummed ambiguously.
“His ‘demonstration of super-human ability’ at the Wei River was entirely down to subterfuge and an obvious unwillingness by both sides to fight,” Sun Jian grumbled. “But when he had an opportunity to rout an army of ordinary people just like he and I are, well that was no assault on his conscience.”

“And his blatant disrespect was gradually reduced, which was good advice, not his own sense, for he has none.”
Again, Lu Kang hummed ambiguously.
“Alone, Dong Zhuo would be a loud-mouthed, devious braggart that would expose himself, but the cowards excuse him, the naïve aggrandise him, and his allies aid him, advise him, and fight for him,” Sun Jian despaired. “I cannot help but blame the men behind the man as much, if not more for why he is now so powerful. It’s the same with the criminals in Luoyang.”
“…Cronyism,” Lu Kang grumbled. “I quite agree, Mister Sun: men that act against the court or state are just men that might be easily thwarted, were it not for the scum that surround and aid them for personal gain. Zhang Jue was one man; it was the horde of greedy, short-sighted idiots that wore his yellow scarves and became his ‘acolyte army’ that made him a threat. And if Dong Zhuo is, as you say, a devious coward, he is only lord of Mei County and probable ‘General of the Van’ for the efforts of his counsel and other hirelings. The ‘Ten’ are the worst cruelty of all: they have their slimy forms encircled around His Majesty like a poisonous miasma, killing the virtuous, obscuring truth and choking justice, and yet their power comes from general inaction and cowardice and from those that are willing to shield them for their own gain.”
Sun Jian nodded agreeably.
“In a way, I almost hate the cronies more than the leaders, just as you say, because it is their support that empowers the wicked, not some invisible hand of fate or mystical whimsy,” Lu Kang continued. “Let no such man come before me and say ‘I was just following orders’, not when they know they’re wrong to do so. They’ll see no civility from me, no matter how plausible their excuses.”

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