The Battle of Didao (2)
"Are those the enemy vanguard?"
Hua Xiong, commanding the vanguard of Dong Zhuo's army, studied the host of cavalry arrayed against his own. Autumn had settled over the plain and a chill wind was blowing, yet the Xiliang horsemen sat their mounts with spears lowered, glaring across at his lines with a fierce, unbroken spirit. Tempered, like the riders of Bingzhou, through real bloodletting against the frontier tribes, they looked every inch the cavalry whose name rang throughout the realm—a reputation that seemed anything but hollow.
What nagged at him was the general leading that host. At its head stood a beauty of cool, unadorned grace, long black hair spilling loose down her back, a crescent blade resting in her grip. Mounted on a white horse, with eyes so blue they seemed to breathe frost, she fixed his lines with a glacial stare.
"So it isn't Splendid Ma Chao..."
That her moniker had been coined for the platinum-blonde hair on her head was a fact known far and wide—most anyone in Liangzhou could have told him as much.
"To think they'd refuse to send their most vaunted warrior of Liangzhou out against me..."
Standing at the enemy vanguard was a nameless officer, her name and face alike unknown. Hua Xiong, a general and a warrior in whom pride ran deep, had been aching for a duel with the celebrated Ma Chao—and feeling cheated of it, a cold fury circled his mind.
"...Then I'll ride out and show them what for."
"General Hua Xiong!!"
The instant Hua Xiong raised his spear to go himself, Hu Zhen thrust out a hand to bar his way.
"Why would you reach for the ox-slaying blade to butcher a chicken? Leave this to me."
Hu Zhen was quoting—word for word, and without the faintest inkling of it—the very line Hua Xiong had once used on Lu Bu in the Romance, deploying it now to talk his own commander down.
"...Very well."
Hu Zhen fell a shade short of Hua Xiong, the finest warrior in Dong Zhuo's army, but his valor ranked among the best the Liangzhou host had to offer. So fierce was his reputation that even Li Jue and Guo Si—men of utterly unchecked violence—walked carefully around him.
At Hua Xiong's nod of permission, Hu Zhen surged forward on the swell of that approval and thundered toward Pang De.
"I am Hu Zhen, the valiant general of Dong Zhuo's army!!"
Spear whirling, he bore down on the woman who sat serene and unhurried atop her white horse. Even at the sight of him charging her like an avalanche, Pang De's bearing did not so much as flicker.
She lifted the crescent blade at a slant, and the sunlight glanced off it, setting the edge ablaze with cold light.
"Empty bluster!!"
Convinced the unknown officer's poise was pure posturing, Hu Zhen sneered and pressed his charge without slackening by a hair. Unlike Ma Chao, Pang De had devoted herself not to hunting down the tribes but to drilling soldiers, and so her name carried little weight; even the fact that she had taken the head of Beigong Boyu, chieftain of the rebellion, was scarcely known to the people of the Central Plains. It was more than enough to breed Hu Zhen's carelessness.
Shff!
The moment Hu Zhen closed the distance, Pang De swung the crescent blade and parted the neck of the man who came riding on the wind in a single stroke. A crimson thread drew itself across his throat mid-gallop; never comprehending his own death, eyes bulging wide, Hu Zhen's head dropped to the earth, and the headless body, carried onward by its still-running horse, slumped bonelessly from the saddle.
"UWAAAAAA—!!!"
The soldiers of Han Sui's army roared their acclaim for the swordsmanship that had taken Hu Zhen's head at a stroke. Across the field, the sight of a head leaving its shoulders in the very first exchange sent the morale of Dong Zhuo's troops into a tailspin, and the officers who witnessed it were steeped in no less shock.
"Th-this can't be!!"
"General Hu Zhen—in a single stroke!!"
Hua Xiong was every bit as stunned by Pang De's might. '...Say General Hu Zhen was caught off guard—still, to take his head in one stroke? Ma Chao aside, since when did Han Sui's army field a monster like that?'
"How dare she lay hands on General Hu Zhen!!"
"General! Let me go this time!! I'll avenge General Hu Zhen—!!"
"Zhao Cen! Wait!!"
Zhao Cen, Hu Zhen's own subordinate officer, had been driven half-mad with fury at his superior's death, and he bolted from the ranks on his own. With the crescent blade planted in the earth, Pang De drew the great bow slung at her waist. She drew the string a bare fraction, took aim, and loosed—and the arrow leapt away, tearing across the field to punch clean through the brow of the fearless, charging Zhao Cen.
THUNK!!
Given no time even to flinch, head pierced through, Zhao Cen pitched from his horse, eyes rolled round in blank surprise.
Thud.
"Zhao Cen!!"
Two generals lost before the ranks had even met. The brimming morale of Dong Zhuo's army drained away, taking with it the imposing spirit they had worn at the outset.
"Charge."
Even with two generals felled to her name, Pang De kept her composure. She raised the crescent blade once more and gave the word, and the swelling ranks of Xiliang cavalry—poised and waiting for precisely that—broke into a full gallop as one. The thunder of hooves rolled across the plain like a coming storm, and a towering wall of dust closed in on Dong Zhuo's army.
"Guh! Meet them in battle!!"
The opening exchanges had stripped him of momentum, but Hua Xiong was cut from stubborn stock; he clawed back his composure and took command. The battle was joined as the two vanguards—Arrowhead Formations built around their cavalry as their core—smashed into each other head-on.
'They've seized the momentum. To turn this around, Li Jue and Guo Si must hit the flanks, and quickly!!'
Sensing how far the spirits of his fierce officers and men had sunk with the deaths of Hu Zhen and Zhao Cen, Hua Xiong resolved to stand firm and endure for the time being.
"We hold the line!!"
But even under his orders, the soldiers were far too busy fleeing whenever Pang De drew near. As though to show off the full measure of her natural gift, she whirled the crescent blade in every direction without mercy. The blade's motion as she came gliding along on her white horse was almost buoyant—it looked like nothing so much as a traveler swinging her sword to lop off brush and low branches on the way through a forest. Each time the crescent blade traced its circles and arcs, men lost their limbs; with every cut, droplets of blood scattered on the wind, and the blood pouring from the dead soaked the plain red.
Pang De's prowess—sharpened further still by her sparring against Ma Chao and a body in the full flower of its prime—turned Hua Xiong's blood to ice as he watched.
'What terrifying strength... I'd never believe she was a nameless officer.'
Watching men die beneath her blade, Dong Zhuo's army had come to fear facing Pang De head-on. Everything hung on the vanguard holding until Li Jue's and Guo Si's armies struck the enemy's flanks and threw them into disarray. And so Hua Xiong spurred his horse to bar her advance—for in all of Dong Zhuo's army, he alone could hope to stand against the monstrous valor she was unleashing.
"Halt!!"
CLANG!!
Spear met crescent blade in a shower of thick sparks, and a bright ring of steel rang clear through the air.
"My name is Hua Xiong! The finest warrior in Dong Zhuo's army! Give me yours!!"
"Pang De. Lingming."
Her introduction delivered in the fewest words possible, Pang De settled into her stance—a warrior's signal that there was nothing further to say. To any other eye it might have read as discourtesy, but privately Hua Xiong found he rather liked it: a soldier with no time for idle talk, simply attending to her duty as a warrior.
"Here I come! Pang De!!"
Cast off was the arrogance with which he had first dismissed her as a nobody; now he swung his spear with everything he had, regarding her as an opponent a full cut above himself. So began the rough duel of the two vanguard commanders, the pair of them trading blows with savage intensity. With Pang De's advance brought to a standstill, the two armies' cavalry collided and tangled across the plain, settling into a stalemate of evenly matched strength. And so the shape of the battle held, and held, for a long while yet.
"First Hu Zhen, and now Zhao Cen dead as well—and Hua Xiong is locked in combat with the enemy vanguard?!"
"Yes, my lord!! They are trading fierce blows even now."
"I beg your forgiveness, my lord. I never dreamed they had a general to rival Ma Chao..."
Li Ru was dripping with cold sweat. An unforeseen variable. He had kept his gaze pinned on Ma Chao alone, never deigning to spend serious money gathering intelligence on Han Sui's army. Convinced that if only his strategy were flawless, even the Splendid Ma Chao would amount to nothing, he had quietly drowned in his own conceit.
The presence of an outstanding warrior carries weight enough to turn the face of a battlefield at a stroke—worth more than any ordinary stratagem. A general who can sweep everything aside with overwhelming force strikes a devastating blow to the enemy's will to fight.
Li Ru had warned his officers to beware of Ma Chao—but the one who emerged as the enemy's vanguard was Pang De, a general so lacking in notable exploits that the realm still called her a nobody. That was what had lulled Hu Zhen and the others, their vigilance fixed on Ma Chao alone, into carelessness—and what had cost them their lives. Dreading that the sparks might land on him next, Li Ru stole a furtive glance at his lord.
CRASH—!!
Having lost his beloved general Hu Zhen, Dong Zhuo brought his brutish fist down in a fury and smashed the table to splinters.
"What in blazes are Li Jue and Guo Si doing?! By now they should have the enemy encircled on both flanks and be falling on them!?"
Li Jue and Guo Si, each riding out with their own officers and cavalry, were meant to savage the rear of Han Sui's army from both sides once the battle was joined. Yet though a great deal of time had passed since the vanguards collided, not a single word had come from either of them.
Just as the tension in the tent grew thick enough to choke on, another messenger burst unbidden into Dong Zhuo's command tent.
"My lord!! Urgent report!!"
"What now? ...Don't tell me Hua Xiong has fallen as well!?"
"No, my lord!!"
"Then what in the devil is it this time!?"
At the sight of the messenger's frantic face, dread closed over Dong Zhuo like a shroud. And that dread became reality.
"Han Sui's army foresaw our ambush and set troops in wait on the high ground to our left and right!! The detachments under Generals Li Jue and Guo Si have been struck by a surprise attack and are locked in a pitched battle even now!!"
"What did you...?"
"To read our strategy in advance... does the enemy have a strategist gifted with rare insight?"
Dong Zhuo and Li Ru could not hide the consternation written across their faces, not this time either.