East of the River: Home of the Sun Clan sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne
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“Your eldest is ten or thereabouts… not really a fighting age,” Cheng Pu
noted. “And you suspect that your wife might be pregnant again… it’ll be another boy as well, I suppose, you lucky thing.”
Sun Jian scratched his head and laughed nervously.
Cheng Pu hummed thoughtfully and said, “Might they stay here, guarded by
your brother-in-law, and you go west ‘alone’…? I say ‘alone’, but of course
you’ll want a second, and I or Zu Mao, Han Dang or Huang Gai could fulfil that
role.”
“Zu Mao will insist upon it,” Sun Jian supposed. “But I’d like us all to
go, if I’m honest; this is big, and after Liang Province, I don’t want to take
any chances.”
“You have a big promotion to safeguard this time, after all,” Cheng Pu
said dryly.
“…I do, yes,” Sun Jian admitted. “This could be our moment… not just my
family, but all of us, because as Magistrate of Changsha, I’d need good men to
help me, and remember that the post allows me to appoint subordinates and pay
them what I deem appropriate… we can always come back if-”
“Very good!” Cheng Pu chuckled. “I’ll prepare, and let the others know
so that they can decide what they want to do. But I imagine that’s easy to
guess.”
“And I shall inform my wife and children!” Sun Jian declared as he got
up to leave.
“Wait, wait, wait… you came to
see me first?” Cheng Pu said with surprise.
“Ah… … …yes,” Sun Jian realised. “Yes, I… I did, didn’t I.”
“Go home,” Cheng Pu chuckled.
“Your family should have been the first to know, Lord Sun; honestly!”
Sun Jian laughed awkwardly and left Cheng Pu’s office after a series of
polite bows.
“Ayah… you got the job… you got the job…!” Lady Wu said as her feelings darted back and forth between delight, horror and foreboding.
“You should stay here until it’s safe for me to summon you,” Sun Jian
suggested. “I will need to do all the usual nonsense, like seeing off my
predecessor’s family, and preparing my residence, and actually fighting the
rebels that I’ve been installed there to fight… but I’m sure that within a few
months-”
“As long as it takes,” Lady Wu insisted. “Just… just be careful.”
Sun Jian gathered as many men as he could, and began the journey west toward Changsha County. The journey would take his forces through vast swamplands with simple road networks, through valleys, across rivers, past lakes, and through several underdeveloped or completely undeveloped regions of potentially usable land. As Sun Jian and his allies viewed the land, they wondered to themselves whether the court was doing as much with the south of the country as they could be.
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