Homeward (3)
The arrows fired by Guo Si and the archers rode the tailwind, surging ahead of the Lu Bu army. What should have fallen just in front of their advance to stall their momentum instead carried farther on the breeze—straight to the wooden walls of the fortress, where they studded the ramparts like vicious thorns.
“Enemy attack! Enemy attack!”
The alarm bells inside the fortress rang without pause, and soon the surrounding outposts took up the clamor. The entire plain was swallowed by the sound of ringing bronze.
“The wind… has even the heavens abandoned us?”
“G-General… what do we do now?”
“You men retreat and report this to the rear. I… damn it all, I’ll try to clear up this misunderstanding as best I can. Even Gongsun Zan won’t want a head-on clash with us.”
Crack!
The ordinary-looking ground gave way, swallowing several soldiers from Bingzhou into the earth. On the walls above, Yan troops had already brought out their heavy crossbows and begun firing one bolt after another. The Bingzhou cavalry dwindled with every passing moment.
“Prepare the white flag. Attacking this place with only forty thousand men makes no tactical sense. If we honestly explain that this was the reckless act of a madman… the Duke of Yan will surely understand.”
“But weren’t we the ones who shot arrows into their walls?”
“That much can be overlooked. Lord Baigyu is a man you can talk to.”
Gongsun Zan had turned Dong Zhuo into a lightning rod for the rest of the Central Plains, buying peace for everyone else. Bingzhou was a barren land that offered little profit even if conquered. Xiliang was a wasteland so desolate that even the northern horse-riding tribes refused to raid it. As long as Dong Zhuo could hold Luoyang, he could sustain his troops. Even in the worst case, if Luoyang fell, he could regroup in Chang’an. Moreover, because Sili Province sat at the heart of the Han and bordered Yanzhou, Yanzhou, Yuzhou, Jingzhou, Yongzhou, and Bingzhou, Dong Zhuo made a better “common enemy” than any other warlord at this moment.
Had Dong Zhuo still been able to wield the imperial seal freely and plant his own inspectors across the provinces, the situation might have grown truly troublesome. But thanks to a certain modern man’s timely intervention, that disaster had been prevented from the start.
The only warlord of this era who knew the full truth was Cao Cao, Governor of Yanzhou. Meanwhile, the research institutes of Liaodong worked day and night on their “inventions,” and soon the survival reports stamped with the imperial seal would spread across the entire Central Plains.
But Guo Si knew none of this. To the average Dong Zhuo soldier, Gongsun Zan seemed like a warlord who “knew how to follow the tide.” He had been the benefactor who seized Jizhou and gave the anti-Dong Zhuo coalition breathing room when they reached the very gates of Luoyang. As Duke of Yan, he kept Cao Cao in check while serving as the perfect ally who blocked the soft underbelly of Qingzhou and Xuzhou—the coastal regions.
That was what most of Dong Zhuo’s troops believed. Naturally, a trivial incident like “a few arrows stuck in the wall” could be glossed over. And Lu Bu, whose madness grew worse by the day, had already fallen out of Dong Zhuo’s favor. While his martial prowess could not be ignored, Dong Zhuo’s army was no disorganized mob that would lose its advantage over the loss of a single vanguard commander.
Or so Guo Si thought.
In the beginning, every war starts with a plausible plan in everyone’s head.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
Beyond the walls, the urgent sound of bells rang out wildly.
“Enemy attack!”
“Enemy attack? Barbarians? Remnants of the Yellow Turbans?!”
“General Cao, please wait here. This is our affair.”
The Emperor’s farewell had ended and Gongsun Zan had already departed, so Cao Cao had been about to return to his post when the sudden clamor of bells and cries of “enemy attack” made him draw his sword.
Of course, the Yan troops were hardly so disorganized that they needed to borrow help from another warlord. The guest general Cao Cao was naturally moved to the inner fortress. Soon, dozens of outposts across the line entered full combat readiness.
“All cavalry, assemble at the designated points according to the black operational plan! Heavy crossbowmen, to your positions!”
“To your positions!”
“What the hell is going on?”
“We don’t know yet either. We’ll find out soon enough.”
“Lord Liu, we will assist as well.”
“It’s fine. If our forces change before the operation even begins, the entire plan will collapse.”
To carry out Yan’s operations required education high enough to grasp the battlefield situation, understand it, and immediately adjust tactics. Cao Cao’s troops were quite elite, but they were not like the Yan cavalry—each man trained to revise his own tactics on the fly. Nor had they often coordinated with Yan soldiers. Assisting Cao Cao’s advance would have been extremely difficult; in fact, they would only get in the way.
Liu Bei had phrased it politely, but a man as sharp as Cao Cao could hardly miss the meaning.
“Hmm… then if you need us, just say the word. I’ll roll up my sleeves and help with both arms.”
“I thank you for the kindness. First rank, loose arrows! They haven’t even reached the fortress yet!”
Hmm… Since things have come to this, I might as well watch how Gongsun Zan’s soldiers fight.
It was a fine opportunity. Cao Cao had never once seen the Yan troops fight in person. He had witnessed the nomadic cavalry at Hulao Pass using sorcery to defeat Lu Bu, but no matter how he thought about it, a handful of sorcerers could not have crushed Jizhou in a single night.
At present, Cao Cao had no reason to oppose Gongsun Zan. Still, no one could predict the future. If that was the case, he needed to see with his own eyes how an undefeated army fought.
Fortunately, the fortress where Liu Bei—who was in charge of defending the plains—her master Lu Zhi, and the Emperor had recently resided was the largest and tallest in the area. The entire battlefield unfolded clearly before their eyes.
Heavy crossbowmen are lined up on the walls. Their rate of fire must be slower than archers… Wait, not that slow. Is it because of the stirrups?
He had heard the name Yeongangno before. In fact, it would have been stranger if rumors hadn’t spread about that bizarre weapon—its limbs, stock, and even the bowstring forged from solid steel. Moreover, the string was not one but three strands twisted together in a strange pattern, so it was only natural that it captured people’s interest.
An ordinary man would have struggled to draw even one of those strings, yet every Yan soldier could pull it. Wild rumors flew: that they were born with the strength of dragons, or that Gongsun Zan used sorcery to grant them power. But a thousand years later, the latest model of Yeongangno—an arbalest equipped with stirrups and a lever—could be drawn by any healthy adult male.
Step on the stirrup, pull the steel lever. That lets you use the strength of your entire body, so even a heavy steel prod can be drawn. And such a heavy bow would naturally require heavy arrows. Even if they wear armor, stopping those bolts will be impossible.
A specialized arrow weighing roughly eighty-three grams in modern terms was nocked on the string. Compared to ordinary arrows that weighed around twenty-five grams, these were three times heavier. Science had placed the arrow on the Yeongangno’s string. When the cavalry bearing Dong Zhuo’s banners entered effective range, a heavy thunk sounded as a steel rain was unleashed.
A skilled shooter could loose two to three bolts per minute—slow compared to archers—but if the power was enough to stop a charging cavalry charge, the story changed completely.
“Aaaargh!”
Sparks flew where iron met iron, and fragments of metal exploded in every direction. One by one, cavalrymen were thrown from their horses and died on impact.
“Hah…”
A sigh escaped someone’s lips. It might have been Cao Cao, or Xiahou Dun and Chen Gong standing beside him watching the battle, or perhaps all of them. They all shared the same thought.
Attacking someone who follows Mozi’s principles is practically suicide.
Shooting arrows from a high place naturally carries them farther than shooting from flat ground. That was common sense and the law of nature. So if Yeongangno bolts that could fly several hundred paces from level ground were instead fired from atop a wall, could cavalry possibly charge through that storm? Could their own archers suppress the crossbowmen?
The answer was no.
The vanguard commander, his helmet pulled low, swung his spear shaft to deflect arrows as he charged. But no matter how elite the Bingzhou cavalry were, not every rider possessed such skill. Hundreds of bolts soon began culling the unlucky ones.
Whether horses were struck and fell or riders were knocked from the saddle, the result was the same: massive mammalian corpses became obstacles in the cavalry’s path. Those unlucky enough to fail to leap over them in time tumbled down, adding yet more obstacles to the plain.
The vanguard continued its charge, but the following riders were slowed by the obstacles and falling under the arrow storm. Huge gaps tore open in the formation that was supposed to fight as one body.
“Now! Send the advance signal!”
Bong—! Bong—! Clang-clang! Bong—!
A great bell sent the signal. The Yan cavalry gathered behind the fortress gripped incredibly long lances under their arms and began to advance at a walk. They lowered their face guards, lightly tapped their horses’ flanks, and gradually increased their speed.
One-sided. It’s far too one-sided.
Cao Cao, who had faced Dong Zhuo’s army directly, knew their strength well. Even when all the heroes of the thirteen provinces of the Later Han had gathered, they could not cross a single pass at Hulao, nor overcome a single general named Lu Bu.
“Even if every army under heaven gathered, they could not defeat the Yan army. Even if every hero under heaven gathered, none could match Gongsun Zan. If we joined in, we would only have gotten in the way.”
Yet those elite Bingzhou cavalry were being slaughtered one-sidedly by Yan horsemen clad in full plate armor. The absurdly long lances pierced their bodies from distances their own spears could never reach. The plate armor that covered them from head to toe could not even be scratched by arrows weighing less than two ounces.
The Bingzhou cavalry was torn in half in an instant. Without any visible signal, the Yan riders split into four groups and pursued the remnants. It was an era without radios, yet their movements were so perfectly coordinated it seemed as if sorcery had linked their minds.
The vanguard commander of Dong Zhuo’s army swung his lance and crescent halberd in desperate resistance, but he was soon struck by hundreds of bolts and fell from his horse.
In the distance, a messenger bearing a white flag was approaching.
The soil of Liaodong, which he had not trodden in several weeks, felt warmly familiar.
Dried fish hung in the winter wind gave off a peculiar fishy scent. Cats trying to steal them, dogs released to chase the cats, and the little children who slipped past all the animals to swipe the fish for their own snacks scattered at the sight of the massive trade ship that had docked. A few especially curious children, however, sucked on their fingers and crept closer to the pier.
“Hey, hey! Scram! His Excellency the Duke of Yan is arriving!”
The sailors came down first and set up a temporary gangway between the deck and the pier. The Emperor’s attendants who disembarked first tried to disperse the children by invoking Gongsun Zan’s name rather than the Emperor’s, which was still a secret.
These kids don’t even move when they hear my name… I guess outsiders wouldn’t know that.
As he had said many times before, in the Central Plains, Liaodong was treated almost like a foreign country—a remote backwater. Many of its people were simple folk who knew nothing of central government offices. Some understood that a duke must be “some high-ranking person,” but to them he still felt more like the “Liaodong district chief” working under his older brother, the mayor of Liaodong. Gongsun Zan himself found that treatment more comfortable and had never bothered to correct it.
“Huh? Uncle Gongsun is here?”
“It’s Uncle Gongsun!”
“Get back this instant! If you interfere with state affairs, I will punish you severely!”
“It’s all right. What would children know?”
The children were remarkably good for his mental health. Occasionally an ill-mannered brat would play a prank, but compared to the “cute little rascals” of the twenty-first century, the mischief of children in this era was truly nothing more than harmless play. He could laugh it off easily.
He gave a piece of jerky to the little boss of the alley, the Zhang family’s kid, and told him to take his friends and go play somewhere far away. The boy nodded obediently and moved the playground to the opposite pier where the yellow croaker were drying.
“You are so lenient even when they interfere with official duties?”
“What would children know? Ignorance is not a crime. If they act rudely when they grow older, then we can punish them.”
“I cannot tell whether you are lenient or strict.”
“People are all complicated and subtle, aren’t they? The residence of the King of Bohai is not far. Please get in the carriage.”
“Indeed. People are all complicated and subtle. I have learned one more thing today.”
Whether the Central Plains burned in war or not, the land of Liaodong remained at peace.