Homeward (4)
“Brother?”
“Xie… Your brother is here.”
“Is it really… truly you, older brother?”
“Yes. It’s your brother. It’s me, Byeon.”
Byeon, huh… Of course the characters were different, but homophones could be such subtle things. The great former Emperor Liu Hong, the little Emperor Liu Bian… without a surname attached it just sounded like… yeah. It brought to mind the kind of gag that only elementary-school kids would laugh at. It had to be a sign of my age.
The sight of a boy in his middle-school years and a girl who looked no older than an elementary student embracing with tears in their eyes was genuinely moving. Yet the only thing floating through my head was a bathroom pun. Truly lamentable.
“Duke Gongsun, I cannot thank you enough. I never imagined you would actually march on Luoyang because of the promise I made.”
“It was something that needed to be done.”
Yes, it had been necessary. The promise with the little queen had been a major factor, true, but Dong Zhuo’s reckless abuse of the imperial seal was sowing chaos across the Central Plains. My reasons for kidnapping the Emperor had not been one hundred percent about this little girl.
“Ah, and… later, could I… ride the hot-air balloon that His Majesty flew in? I’ve seen them rising from the empty lot over there, but no one will let me on board. They always say I need Your Grace’s permission first…”
Of course they did. Humans did not have wings, and without wings one could not fly. To ride a Yeolgigu one first had to sign a waiver accepting full responsibility for the risk of falling. Fortunately there had been no fatal accidents yet, but there had been passengers who were caught in turbulence and forced to experience skydiving on a Nakahasan. There was no way I could allow the Emperor’s only sister to board something that could not guarantee one hundred percent safety. Moreover, there was no parachute sized for a child who looked barely old enough for elementary school. Any sensible person would refuse Prince of Bohai Liu Xie’s request to ride a hot-air balloon.
Of course, if she abused her authority as Prince of Bohai she could probably force her way aboard, but fortunately our little queen was not the kind of tyrant-in-training who wielded power for her own amusement. Considering her father had been the butcher who nearly exterminated the Clean Stream faction and the economic sovereign who had designed occupation bonds, it was rather surprising. Still, since His Majesty the Emperor also seemed to dislike throwing his weight around, it appeared the previous Emperor had simply been the mutation in the bloodline.
…Then again, the emperor before him had started the Danggo prohibition, so… mm. Perhaps it really was the mystery of genetics. I was no biologist; if I wasted time worrying about such things I would never finish my own work.
I offered a brief greeting to the pair quietly recounting recent events in the Prince of Bohai’s quarters, then turned and headed for the research institute. I hoped they had produced some results by now…
The fortress being built in Pingyuan Commandery was roughly eighty percent complete. Naturally, that did not mean every fortress was built entirely of stone, nor did it mean we had erected triple walls on the scale of Theodosius. The delay came from the fact that we still lacked the technology to mass-produce the final component.
After turning over various idle thoughts and then deliberately cutting them off, I walked for about ten minutes until the research institute came into view. On one side of the grounds lay piles of intertwined steel wire. Craftsmen were taking smaller strands and twisting them one by one onto the larger bundles.
Yes. The final piece needed to complete the fortress line was the flower of trench warfare—barbed wire.
Someone might ask how it was possible to manufacture barbed wire in the third century, but the technical requirements for primitive barbed wire were not that high. The real problem was mass production. The manufacturing process itself was already feasible. Unlike Europe, East Asia had possessed something akin to the Bessemer process since this period. The craftsmen of Liaodong, who had already standardized their steelworking to a respectable degree, found drawing wire labor-intensive but not impossible.
After all, the Yeongangno arbalests were being built entirely of steel from stock to string. That gave them enough power to pierce even lamellar armor, and damaged ones could simply be sent back to Liaodong to be melted down. If we had been unable to draw wire, we would never have considered using steel wire for the crossbow strings in the first place.
The difference in length between wire for crossbow strings and proper barbed-wire strands, however, was like heaven and earth. Producing enough wire with current technology to make serious quantities of barbed wire would have required paying the craftsmen triple wages and still falling short. Instead of the “simple” solution of raising salaries, the researchers had naturally pursued the intellectual specialty of “complex and bizarre budget-saving methods.” Since I was already in Liaodong, I figured I might as well see what strange new devices they had come up with this time.
If their method turned out to be inadequate I would simply order them to keep turning the water wheels, but judging by the mountain of wire bundles they had already produced, it seemed they had reached a fairly correct answer.
“Ah, Your Grace. You’ve arrived?”
“How is the wire research progressing?”
“Yes. Using water wheels solved the problem quite easily.”
“Hmm… impressive. I had vaguely thought a water wheel might do the trick, but you’ve already figured it out and put it into practice.”
Until now, wire had been made by hammering iron into thin cylinders, then drawing those cylinders through steel holes slightly smaller than the rods themselves, one strand at a time. The method itself was not vastly different from twenty-first-century wire production, but the problem lay in the fact that every single pull through those small holes had been done by human strength.
“Last year, while watching the water wheels operate the bellows, Researcher Deokjo had an idea. He suggested tying the end of the drawn wire to the water wheel.”
“But then the heated wire would touch the water. Is that safe?”
“Yes. When red-hot steel is plunged into cold water it becomes hard and tough. On its own it would be too brittle to use, but if the tempered wire is placed back into the furnace and allowed to cool slowly, it becomes perfectly serviceable wire.”
…Wait, wait, wait a minute.
“Are you saying you’re performing quenching and tempering?”
“Your Grace, you are familiar with the blacksmith’s craft as well?”
Of course I was. YouTube senseis and the big brothers from perpetually peaceful Pakistan had taught me all sorts of knowledge. It might not be immediately usable in the field, but for a former soldier even this much was enough to earn the label of “intellectual.” Truly.
“I’ve picked up bits and pieces here and there.”
It was already surprising that something like the Bessemer process existed in this era, but it was even more surprising that blacksmiths knew both quenching and tempering… although, come to think of it, since they had the ultra-strong steel method, it only made sense that tempering techniques had been handed down as well.
“That is fortunate. We have succeeded in drawing large quantities of wire. Now we are working on a technique to twist the barbs onto it easily.”
“Hmm… then when can we expect finished products?”
“We will need another year. Prototypes could be ready by next spring, but the volume you requested would require more time and budget than we currently have…”
“It’s fine. Producing in a single year a technology I expected to take five is already an impressive achievement.”
I was genuinely proud of them. When I told the researcher I would add a bonus to this month’s salary, the corners of his mouth rose all the way to his ears.
---
The vast plains of Pingyuan Commandery were filled with the stench of blood and the cries of crows. Cavalry who failed to spot the deep trench lines had fallen in and broken their necks. Those unlucky enough to be struck by Yeongangno bolts were thrown from their horses and trampled to death by their comrades. Blood flowed beneath the deep trenches, and the crows and flies rejoiced at the unexpected winter feast, holding an endless banquet.
Of the thousand cavalry Lu Bu had brought, roughly two hundred had died. One might think, Only two hundred? but cavalry were elites who could not even be compared to regular infantry. As the common analogy went, they were the tanks and fighter jets of the pre-modern era. Unless one belonged to a nomadic people who lived alongside horses from birth, raising cavalry required astronomical sums of money and years upon years of time.
And two hundred of those precious riders had died.
Retrieving the bodies would have to wait until the battle ended. The envoy who had gone forward under a white flag had not returned even as night deepened. The unrecovered corpses froze in the cold winter wind, turning blue and rigid.
It was not an irrecoverable shock, but the gap they left was certainly painful. In the hearts of the Bing Province cavalry who had lost their comrades, the two characters for “revenge” flickered like a mirage.
“Why haven’t we received orders to recover the bodies?”
“Obviously. That bastard Guo Si abandoned General Lu.”
“If the archers had given us proper covering fire, we could have crossed the moat and scaled the walls. A fortress line that wasn’t even fully prepared—General Lu could have broken through it.”
It is always easier to find fault in others than to admit one’s own mistakes. The Bing Province cavalry, having failed once, convinced themselves that if Guo Si’s forty thousand infantry had simply advanced a little further despite the casualties, provided arrow cover, and filled the moat with their own corpses, there would have been no reason they could not have destroyed that fortress.
Of course they had no strategy for the new fortresses that would appear after the first one, but they believed they could have won the battle they had just lost. Naturally they also had no countermeasure for the cavalry formation waiting behind the fortress, yet they told themselves that warriors who had fought the northern nomads for years could overcome anything with courage and spirit.
It was the logic of willpower, but given the deep-seated resentment accumulated in the hearts of the Bing Province army, such a reaction was only natural.
Because the Bing Province army had been the last to join Dong Zhuo’s forces, they had been saddled with all the miscellaneous duties. Until now, Lu Bu—Dong Zhuo’s adopted son—had somehow managed to suppress their discontent. While the peerless warrior still drew breath, few had dared to openly oppress the Bing Province troops who served directly under him. But now that the breakwater named Lu Bu had been shattered so easily, the future was painfully clear.
“Dong Zhuo has abandoned Bing Province!”
“Dong Zhuo has killed General Lu!”
It was a reaction bordering on madness, yet at the same time it was the desperate struggle of the Bing Province army to survive now that their shield, Lu Bu, had vanished. It had begun with eight hundred cavalry, but the rage spread through the entire Bing Province army in no time at all.
“Dong Zhuo secretly ordered General Lu to attack the Yan army!”
Of course, among the agitators were several faces the soldiers had never seen before, but the enraged Bing Province troops paid no attention to such “trivial details.”