“Turmoil”: Battle for the Han Empire sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne
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“DO NOT LET THEM ESCAPE!” Cao Cao screeched as he raised his sword of authority aloft.
“NONE OF THEM MUST LIVE! NONE OF THEM! I WILL SLAY THEM MYSELF!”
Cao Cao was about to charge at the fleeing rebels, but Xun Gongda restrained him by grabbing his arm;
Cao Cao spun around to face his adviser and glared at him with hateful eyes.
“CORNERED TIGERS FIGHT HARDEST!” Xun Gongda protested. “WHY SEND YOURSELF
TO THE NETHERWORLD…?”
Cao Cao stopped struggling and clutched his forehead.
“LET OTHERS FIGHT NOW!” Xun Gongda continued.
“The smells, the sounds… are intolerable,” Cao Cao complained.
The Bandit-Xiongnu alliance lost dozens of its cavalrymen and hundreds if not thousands of its infantrymen;
there would be other battles, but the momentum was now with the Yan Province army and its leader, Governor Cao Cao.
Cao Cao’s army reached the western border of Chenliu Prefecture, having
fought a series of small battles with Fixed Gaze’s faction of Black Mountain Bandits and
Yufuluo’s rebels as he moved: Cao gazed westward at the lands of Central Province and sighed.
“It pains us all, Lord Cao, to know that Luoyang still lies in ruins and the Son of Heaven is
still a hostage,” Xun Gongda suggested.
“You and your uncle should, in a sane world, have the same privileged places in that court that
your fathers and grandfathers did,” Cao Cao replied. “Instead, you toil for an unstable
‘villain’ and fight rebels and bandits.”
“Xu Shao’s appraisal looms over you, but it shouldn’t,” Xun Gongda said.
“If it must, then remember all of his words…”
“…I do,” Cao Cao chortled. “He called me ‘An able statesman in times of
peace, and a crafty villain in times of chaos’. He didn’t want to share his opinion of me,
no doubt for fear of what it might trigger within me… and he was right. Since then, Gongda, all
there has been is chaos… and I yearn for peace so that I can be the good man that I want to be.”
“But he has done more than appraise you, Lord Cao: he has explained what must be done to restore
order,” Xun Gongda suggested. “No man that tries to resort purely to honest tactics will
put an end to this chaos… it is the never-ending struggle to rationalise ‘what is right
versus what is necessary’. There will always be those that will try and make the unjustifiable
seem necessary for personal ends… but one cannot beat an immoral enemy without, at certain times,
meeting them on common ground. Would Yuan Shao have defeated the corrupt eunuchs by continuing to
petition the court they controlled, as so many cold bones tried to…? Dou Wu, Chen Fan,
Hè Jin… none were successful because they were too fair to their enemy. The ‘Ten’
had to be put to the sword, one and all, because they were never going to change their evil ways
by polite request, and they would not have stopped until there was not a good man left.”
“…It is men like Benchu and I, so-called ‘heroes’, that do what must be done
to finally bring peace,” Cao Cao said tonelessly.
“I… I believe so,” Xun Gongda replied. “So does my uncle. So does Cheng Yu.
So do we all, Lord Cao. History will look kindly upon you, Lord Cao, for any minor wrongdoings that
you might be forced to commit in the pursuit of everlasting peace, if that is what you truly strive for.
The Heavens know that there is no other way, and so will all men, one day.”