“Turmoil”: Battle for the Han Empire sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne
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“…I cannot worry about possible threats when actual ones are so pressing,” Yuan Shao said miserably.
“Besides, wouldn’t a Yellow Turban uprising force us all to cooperate, perhaps force my
brother-cousin to abandon his selfish ambitions and return to the fold…? And wouldn’t Gongsun Zan surrender
his bloodstained seal of Yòu Province in the face of mass unrest…? And wouldn’t all of that allow us to
do everything else that we want to do…?”
Cao Cao looked up and hummed purposefully.
“When the famine has fully abated and the numerous rebels and bandits are quelled, then we can petition the court about
Lü Bu, finally deal with my brother-cousin Shu, Zhang Yang in Henei and Gongsun Zan in Yòu Province, and then I will
see about some form of reparation from the Tao clan for the loss of your father.”
“Blood is all that I want, Benchu!” Cao Cao barked. “I-!”
“Mengde… no,” Yuan Shao ordered. “I do not like to remind you that I am
still, in many senses, your lord and commander, but it seems that I must.”
Cao Cao did his best to hide his anger.
“…You talk of changes, and rightly so,” Yuan Shao continued. “When I heard of your massacres in
Xu… of bodies in the tens of thousands damming the Si River… of cannibalism, wiping villages and even cities
out of existence, I… I…”
Cao Cao fought tears as he said, “Felt sick…? …Wondered if you could still be a friend to a monster that
could massacre the ‘innocents’ so guiltlessly…? …Marvelled at how accurately
the appraiser Xu Shao had prejudged me as a ‘Crafty Villain’ all those years
ago…? …Perhaps wondered if I am another Dong Zhuo, a-”
“No,” Yuan Shao insisted. “To avenge my friend Hè Jin, I… I ordered the massacre of every
palace eunuch… some of them boys, recently ‘converted’… I killed many of them myself. Many of them
were ‘innocents’… but I did not care. So long as the deaths of a thousand innocents led to the death of
one or two dogs that had brought misery to the country, then… then I did not care.”
The two men fell silent for a few moments.
“…But now, Benchu, how does it feel…?” Cao Cao asked at last. “How does it feel - as a man
that once sheltered the ‘Partisans’, the ‘innocents’, from the ‘Ten’ - to know that you shed so
much innocent blood and didn’t care, so long as the ends were met…?”
Yuan Shao tipped the entire contents of his wine dish into his mouth before he replied, “I… I live with it.
The ‘Ten’ were vanquished. We’re not like Dong Zhuo or the ‘Ten’, Mengde. They
did what they did to remove threats to their own greedy ambitions; we did what we did to avenge good men and punish the
wicked. No man in our position can say that they have never said or will never say or do something that could cause
someone harm: Zhang Miao aided a heartless murderer, a man that he knew to be
evil, because he judged you - wrongly - to be worse.”
“…I do not regret my actions in Xu as much as I probably should,” Cao Cao admitted. “I would do
it again if I had the time and the moment again. My father was the centre of my world, Benchu, the person that shaped me:
that villain Tao Qian had him killed for his money. Liu Bei, like Zhang Miao, feigns piousness and innocence while he
befriends murderers and hankerers, and-!”
“Liu Bei will remain in his post until I can spare someone suitable,” Yuan Shao insisted. “I need Shen Pei,
Ju Shou, Xun Chen… and you need your men to defend your own borders from Yufuluo and perhaps, you suggest, the Yellow
Turbans as well. Liu Bei must wait, Lü Bu must wait… one and all, they must wait.”
Cao Cao nodded slowly and silently.