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

“Send a man to Father at once!” Ma Chao ordered. “We cannot be everywhere, but look at what we can do wherever we are! Send a man now and have him renew Father’s spirit!”
“As you wish, Cousin,” Ma Dai replied.

Ma Teng received Ma Chao’s jubilant communication within a few days, but Teng had suffered two more serious defeats and lost a beloved consort during a raid, and those events had left him further demoralised.
“What will you do now, Father…?” Ma Teng’s second son, Ma Tie, asked quietly.
“…Your brother is an incredible man, but he is still just a man,” Ma Teng replied. “Were it that I could breed a thousand sons like Chao to lead my men, I would, but I have him and three or four other valiant leaders, and Han Sui has a lot more, and more men than me to go with it now. I will see whether Cao Cao can defeat Yuan Shao for a second time, just in case that first victory was some sort of luck. I will go to whichever of them wins, Yuan or Cao, and ask them to sue for peace. Han Sui and I have been harming each other long enough, and peace is long overdue. I must, therefore, write to Chao in the meantime and ask that he be less violent; if I could win, I probably would slaughter them all, but I can’t, so we must show restraint.”
“…A lot of the chieftains don’t want to show restraint, Father,” Ma Tie noted.
“They are chieftains of a handful of men each, and I am their chieftain!” Ma Teng snapped. “They will obey me, and so will Chao!”
“I hope so, Father,” Ma Tie replied.

*************

12

There were many factions that were nervously awaiting the outcome of the latest conflict between Yuan Shao and Cao Cao’s armies. In the northwest, Wei Kang’s government, the Qiang warlords and Zhang Lu, the ruler of the theocratic state of “Han’ning” - or, as it was once known, Hanzhong; to the west, Yi Province Governor Liu Zhang; to the south, the semi-autonomous prefectural administrators to the south of Jing Province and Sun Quan of Jiangdong; to the east, Zang Ba’s ex-bandits and the remnants of the Han government that controlled Xu Province and southern Qing Province; to the north, the Han and non-Han peoples in Yuan Shao’s increasingly-lawless domains in Ji, Bing, northern Qing and Yòu Provinces; and in the centre, Jing Governor Liu Biao, his invited guest Liu Bei, his uninvited guest Zhang Xiu, and the Han government in Yan Province.
     If Cao Cao won, then the apparent fluke at Guandu might be perceived as the ‘will of Heaven’, and Cao would decide the fate of the nation, whatever his unreadable will might be; if Yuan Shao’s army won, then there were two possible outcomes, namely a return to the ways of the past or another attempt to remove Emperor Xian and replace him with kin or Yuan Shao himself, which might then start the cycle of chaos all over again.

<< Main Product Page

<< Previous Page

Next Page >>