“Intention”: War for the Han Frontier sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne
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The giant Xu Chu - who, unlike his predecessor Dian Wei, was known for
his enormous appetite, gentleness in daily life and enormous girth - frowned
and said, “Are you calling me fat now
as well, Mister Hong?”
“Oh, Heaven forbid that I would,”
Cao Hong replied. “Do I want you to snap my neck like a chicken? Mengde, can I
go now?”
“Please, yes,” Cao Cao muttered; Xu Chu moved slightly, and Cao Hong
retreated, passing Xiahou Dun as he did so.
“And now here’s the other one,” Cao Cao sighed.
“What’s wrong with Zilian?” Xiahou Dun asked.
“He said I was fat!” Cao Zhen whined.
“You are,” Xiahou Dun replied. “But it isn’t your fault; I mean, I see
how little you eat, and yet you still-”
“Please don’t make me hit you, Yuanrang,” Cao Cao said irritably.
“I was just going to say that he should tell Zilian that at least he
hasn’t got a weird fetish for barefoot prostitutes,” Xiahou Dun retorted.
“That’d-”
Lady Bian and Lady Huan started to usher the younger children from the
room; Cao Pi was the only one to remain and observe the exchanges.
“Aiee… shut up, and listen to
me,” Cao Cao ordered. “No more heckling Jia Xu.”
“Three guesses who told you I did that,” Xiahou Dun said as he turned
his eerie monocular gaze toward Cao Xiu. “The only reason that a toady like
Xiu’d be dirtying the floor by coming in here in boots would be to tattle on
me.”
“Don’t be like that, Yuanrang,” Cao Xiu pleaded. “Part of me wants to
gut Jia Xu and hang him from the gates of the city, but what good would that
do?”
Cao Cao covered his face with his sleeve.
“It’d avenge Ang, and Anmin, and Dian Wei!” Xiahou Dun suggested. “It
would avenge all of the people that were killed by Dong Zhuo!”
“No, Yuanrang, it wouldn’t,” Cao Cao insisted. “Sometimes one must
separate the tools from the craftsmen and the craftsmen from the patron, and in
some cases that isn’t easy to do but it is always necessary!”
Xiahou Dun turned to look at Cao Cao and asked, “What do you mean,
Mengde…?”
Cao Cao lowered his arm from his face and said, “Advisers seem, at
first, to be at fault for all things, for they are the craftsmen, and they
create the plans that the lords are seen to follow; but it is the lords that
are the patrons, those that demand the products of the craftsmen, and they who
are to blame. The advisers are the craftsmen, the generals the tools, and the army
the materials. But what good are all of those things if there is no patron to
desire or request what is made?”
“…I do see what you’re saying,” Xiahou Dun admitted, “but-!”
“I, too, want to kill Jia Xu every time that I see him,” Cao Cao
confessed. “I see him and I see the blood of thousands on his hands; I see an
architect of the suffering of many, many people, including people dear to me,
and I seek his end because of it, even though I know that he was simply doing
what Zhang Xiu had asked of him. In Wang Lang I see Tao Qian, who robbed me of
my father, and in Jia Xiu I see Dong Zhuo, who did more to us all than can be
sanely recounted. But I also see me.”
Xiahou Dun exhaled loudly.