“Yellow Sky”: Crisis for the Han Dynasty sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne
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“No!” Yuan Shao protested. “Not when there is so much at stake, Mengde!
Such recklessness is not just foolhardy… we are both clever men, or at least I
thought so.”
“Well, I’ve paid for it now, haven’t I, by the will of the Heavens,” Cao
Cao grumbled as he tossed his empty wine dish to one side.
“…I’m sorry,” Yuan Shao said sincerely.
“So am I,” Cao Cao scoffed. “I was even going to great pains to behave
myself after losing the job in the capital… if only to stop Father moaning so…
and now this.”
“Aiee… what seemed like a
blessing is now a curse,” Yuan Shao lamented.
“You’re telling me,” Cao Cao said with a miserable laugh. “I think we
were all fairly pleased: Lady Song wasn’t much to look at when considering some
of His Majesty’s other choices, but we know why it happened. Oh, how beautiful
it could have been! The Song family raised to the highest status, the
less-than-fair Lady Song made Empress, and me loosely connected to them by
marriage… and once again, the eunuchs destroy an entire family, and by cruel
design, mine too.”
“But after all these years…!” Yuan Shao said with anger.
Cao Cao laughed miserably and said, “Oh, the one thing that can be said
about these eunuchs… and perhaps that is because scheming is all they have to
do… they do know how to play the long game. To bring down a prince - perhaps their most incredible
feat yet - would satisfy most evil minds. But the extent of it… the wickedness…!”
Cao Cao’s head fell forward, and he exhaled woefully.
“The eunuchs feared retribution, of course,” Yuan Shao suggested
pointlessly. “They were scared… if Empress Song ever gained favour with His
Majesty, or-”
“That was never likely, was it???” Cao Cao chortled. “She was a heifer!
He had others, dozens of others, and he was waiting for an opportunity to be
rid of her! All those wretches did was give him an excuse!”
“They also feared the Emperor dying early from a life of vice, or
illness,” Yuan Shao suggested further. “Were she to become Dowager-”
“That’s now nothing more than what might
have been, my friend,” Cao Cao sobbed drunkenly. “What is true is what is
so: I avoid punishment for flogging that bastard Jian, yet by ridiculous fate,
I am disgraced by proxy! The loose connection to the Songs that once threatened
an improvement in my fortunes now
robs me of them indefinitely! What use am I to the world now, the disgraced
relative of a slandered clan… of a witch,
no less, those creatures have condemned me to now!”
Yuan Shao leant forward, patted the knee of his lifelong friend, and
said, “I will fight for your cause, Mengde… as true as I sit here before you now,
your day is not done. If you need help, I will help you, as you and I have
helped the ‘partisans’. We’ll get through this, and one day, you’ll join me in
the capital, paying respects to an emperor that has finally-”
“Spare me, Benchu!” Cao Cao
said with anger as he glared at his friend. “I have nothing now! Yesterday, I was the magistrate of Dunqiu; now I am
only slightly above a commoner! When will they go after my father, and ruin my
clan altogether, mm…? For we both know that is a ‘when’ rather than an ‘if’!”
“That will change,” Yuan Shao insisted. “The eunuchs have started to
relax their search for the so-called ‘lower-ranking leaders of the rebellion’.
They’ll not be able to hold that you-”