“Intention”: War for the Han Frontier sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne

-

JavaScript is off/unavailable on your browser. You will not be able to experience this website as it was intended without JavaScript enabled.

“Inspector Liu Fu is certainly more effective than ‘Inspector Yan Xiang’ was,” Cao Cao said. “It’s funny: that fool Yan ran back and forth, trying to protect his heretic lord and his own neck, and actually doing everything from feigning his death to trying to recruit mercenaries to finally seeing sense and offering his allegiance to me... and in the end, after achieving a position of relative safety and surviving being the counsel of a traitor, Yan Xiang’s as dead as the rest. Ridiculous.”
The adviser Yuan Huan - who had once served the renegade warlord Yuan Shu alongside Yan Xiang, but had defected immediately when Shu betrayed the Han Empire - nodded agreeably but offered no words.
“Yan Xiang’s not only ridiculous, but irrelevant, so we shall forget him and return to more pressing matters,” Guo Jia said. “My lord, I will tell you when it is the right time to fight Liu Biao and Sun Quan, or others will.”
“...Fine, we’ll content ourselves with ignoring ‘Jing Governor Liu Biao’ and let Sun Quan keep his undeserved dominions for now,” Cao Cao grumbled. “Liu Biao would do well not to shelter Liu Bei, but we all know that he almost certainly will; Bei will doubtlessly urge him to renew his coalition pact with Yuan Shao and gather support for a pincer attack on Xuchang, but while the ambitious Sun Quan continues his harassment of southern Jing and diverts most of Liu Biao’s limited resources to that southern front, we can ignore him as well. We now control Yan Province, Central Province, Xu Province, parts of Yang Province, most of Yu Province, and the southwest border regions of Qing Province; and as for Yuan’s potential alliance with our other long-standing problem, the Qiang chieftains Ma Teng and Han Sui in Liang Province... Wenruo...?”
“Ma Teng is suffering surprising defeats,” Xun Wenruo reported. “His eldest son, Ma Chao, is truly a force to be reckoned with, but Han Sui commands a generally more efficient army that is gaining ground in every place that Ma Chao is not placed to take or defend.

That means one of two things in the short term, I suggest: either Ma Teng will capitulate and seek peace in exchange for loss of territory, or he will hand power to Ma Chao and retreat to some far-off place while the tribal war continues.”
“...In the short term, we might want the latter, since it keeps them busy, but in the long term, the former is preferable,” Jia Xu said. “A Ma Chao that is reined in by Han Sui will not be as much of a threat as a Ma Chao that forces Han Sui to sue for peace and present an opportunity to seize control in the northwest.”
“A definitive set of options may exist, but that’s entirely up to Heaven,” Guo Jia chuckled. “With any luck, it will be one of those options, because either would keep them where we want them.”
Jia Xu smiled, rubbed his bearded chin and said, “I do not know the order that your mind chooses for those further options, but I concur that they are most desirable. An alliance against Yuan Shao... or a hostage to control Ma Chao... are both very much desired both now and in the future, but either would do.”
Ayah... you advisers are not human, I swear it!” a military official cried; all eyes turned to the one-eyed face of Cao Cao’s trusted ‘cousin’ Xiahou Dun, who added, “All of a sudden, we’re looking at the Qiang barbarians giving us hostages or helping us fight Yuan Shao! Why would any of that happen???”
“I admit, Yuanrang, that I consider the possibility myself,” Cao Cao replied. “I’m sure that Wenruo, Gongda, Chen Qun and Cheng Yu, at the very least, hope for as much.”

<< Main Product Page

<< Previous Page

Next Page >>