The Trap (1)
When Ding Yuan's army came advancing, Han Yeong's forces had sent out their vanguard to meet them — only to wheel about and flee almost at once. Again and again, the same dance repeated itself.
"Haha!! What did I tell you? Didn't I say that whelp's reputation had to be nothing but hot air?"
Every time Han Yeong's vanguard came to grips with them, it was driven back in retreat, and Ding Yuan's army rode its string of victories straight into towering arrogance. Carried along by the favorable tide, Ding Yuan — who had opened the battle in the center — moved up to join the vanguard himself. Two more victories in hand, they were now but a short advance from Han Yeong's camp.
"...And yet, General, it has all gone far too smoothly. Ought we not to be careful? The enemy's losses have not been especially heavy, either."
They had repelled the enemy vanguard time after time, it was true, but the enemy had taken little real damage. Whenever they fled, they abandoned scraps of military supplies along the way, and their pursuers kept breaking off the chase to gather the spoils. Watching the provisions left behind, Ding Yuan and the Black Mountain chieftains licked their lips at the thought of just how much must be stockpiled in Han Yeong's camp.
But at his officer's words, Ding Yuan's face twisted into a scowl.
"We marched right past open woodland made for ambushes and nothing happened, did it? Those fools are ignorant clods who know nothing of strategy or war."
Flush with power in the capital, authority and fearsome prestige in his grasp, Ding Yuan had grown arrogant beyond all measure. Zhang Yang had told him there was a way to send Han Yeong back to Yong Province without ever crossing swords with him, but Ding Yuan, blinded by his hunger for glory, let the counsel pass unheard.
"General!!"
A soldier came sprinting into the command tent, where toasts were being raised to one victory report after another.
"Han Yeong's army has marched out of their camp! This time Han Yeong himself leads them in person!!"
"Is that so? Then the hour to kill that whelp has finally arrived!!"
Ding Yuan laughed at his ease, baring his teeth. Once he took the boy's head, the officials of Luoyang would never dare oppose him again — and the standing and influence that had shriveled in military circles thanks to Lü Bu would shoot straight upward. Ding Yuan marched out in person at the head of his entire army, intent on claiming Han Yeong's head.
Xin'an County, Hongnong Commandery — a considerable distance from Luoyang.
Deep winter was closing in; a north wind laced with frost swept over the field, and beneath a leaden sky that looked ready to snow, two armies stood facing one another. The cold was sharp enough to stiffen a man to the bone, the plain rimed white with frost, and every breath came out in a plume of steam.
"...Look at their eyes."
Even in this cold, their vicious aura had not frayed in the slightest. The eyes of the officer at the very front — a man in a black hood who looked to be Black Mountain stock — were murderously fierce, and in sheer menace he was a match for any of the rebels or tribesmen Han Yeong had known in Liang Province. That gaze was steeped in frenzied bloodlust and hostility, carrying the peculiar chill that only repeated slaughter can breed.
'Just how many people do you have to kill before your eyes look like that?'
"Han Baekryeom-!!"
Ding Yuan's shout rang out over the field; old and decrepit though his body was — older even than Dong Zhuo — his voice still boomed like a war drum.
"Here and now, I will cut you down!!"
'...But did I actually do anything that terrible to Ding Yuan?'
He had showered curses on Ding Yuan's face, yes — the man's insufferable arrogance had made his blood boil — but Ding Yuan himself seemed to have no thought whatsoever for his own misdeeds. Granted, it was true Han Yeong had let his temper loose and spoken harshly; the central ministers had spent months freezing him out over his father's rebellion, and it had lit his fuse.
But then, the bastard had every curse coming. What he was doing was no different from what Dong Zhuo had done.
"I, Ding Jianyang, who upholds the Imperial House, shall drive you out!!"
'Is this man insane?'
A man plotting to replace the Emperor had no business proclaiming himself the guardian of the throne — it made no sense at all. At the banquet, even Dong Zhuo had merely called the coalition rebels; Han Yeong didn't recall him going so far as to claim he was upholding the Imperial House.
Faced with Han Yeong's open disbelief, Ding Yuan — flush with two straight victories — exuded easy confidence. He had the Black Mountain bandits, so notorious for savagery that the court itself had given up trying to subdue them, and the valiant soldiers of Bing Province who held back the incursions of the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, and the other northern tribes. On top of that came the central army: unlike provincial forces with their shabby weapons and gear, these troops guarded the capital, and their equipment was superb. They held the advantage in numbers as well. The odds looked more than good.
"Who will bring me the head of that archtraitor!?"
"General! I will go and take Han Yeong's head myself!!"
Sun Qing, one of the Black Mountain bandits, stepped forward boldly to win himself glory, and Ding Yuan granted it readily.
"Good! Go!!"
"Yes, sir!!"
The officer in the black hood spurred his horse out through the ranks and bellowed his challenge.
"I am Sun Qing of Lord Ding Yuan's army!!"
'I normally steer well clear of duels on the battlefield. Is it a Bing Province thing?'
"My lord. I'll be back."
"Go ahead."
Yan Xing — our vanguard commander, the man who had been losing on purpose — rode out to meet him.
"Hah! Out of the way, you third-rate general with your pathetic swordsmanship and your nonexistent talent for war!!"
'...This fellow.'
Yan Xing flared for an instant at the outrageous, insolent taunt from a mere Black Mountain bandit, but he swallowed it down and answered flatly.
"...Save the noise. Come at me."
"Insolent dog!! How many times have you run from me!!"
I honestly couldn't tell which of them was in any position to call the other insolent.
Sun Qing came charging, blade whirling, and Yan Xing met him spear first. Before long the two were trading blows in earnest, attack and answer, iron clashing against iron in showers of sparks.
KRAANG!! Shing!
To outward eyes, their duel looked nowhere near decided; blocking and thrusting, they fought as perfect equals.
"Haha! Not bad at all!!"
"......"
Where Sun Qing looked thrilled to have met his match at last, Yan Xing's face remained utterly flat, without a flicker of exhilaration. To anyone watching, he might have been bored — but Sun Qing, absorbed in the duel, never noticed.
"All forces, charge!!"
When the duel refused to produce a winner, the hot-blooded Ding Yuan could bear it no longer and gave the order; the host that had been hesitating, watching the duel, surged forward as one.
"Advance!!"
RAAAAGH-!!
Our own vanguard advanced in answer, and the two armies' front lines crashed together; I fell back to the rear and watched the battle unfold.
'Just as Jia Xu said.'
The enemy had the advantage in numbers, yet from the moment the lines met, our troops — outnumbered as they were — barely gave an inch. The reason was simple: for all that their host had been scraped together from a dozen different places, they had never invested the time needed to drill it properly.
'...In the truest sense, an army cobbled together from separate commands, with no cohesion to speak of.'
Naturally, it could hardly digest any real tactics. Things might have been different if he had enough capable officers to wield so vast a host — but Ding Yuan, who had refused to employ the Eight Elite Cavalrymen, Lü Bu included, was letting his numerical superiority go to waste.
Part of why Yan Xing's vanguard had been able to fall back again and again without heavy losses was the supplies they had dropped along the way — but part of it, too, was how wretched the enemy's formations were. The Bing Province troops and the Black Mountain bandits were strong and savage, hardened by real combat, but their battle lines were a shambles. If anything, the moment the Bing Province troops tried to form ranks and press an attack, the bandits would barge in and ruin it.
The central army that had served under He Jin, for its part, lacked the menace of those two contingents; measured against officers and men rolled hard on the frontier, they were plainly short on battlefield experience. Of course, riding a string of victories, their morale was high enough just now to pierce the heavens...
'He'd have been better off leaving the Black Mountain bandits out of it entirely and leading with the Bing Province troops as his spearhead.'
At the banquet, Lü Bu's overwhelming presence had pushed everything else into the shadows, and Han Yeong had never taken Ding Yuan's measure — but judged purely as a handler of troops, the man was simply a lesser copy of Dong Zhuo. At least Dong Zhuo was a formidable warrior in his own right, with Hua Xiong besides, and even if his officers were mediocre, hadn't he still handled He Jin's army flawlessly through his host of commanders? However many soldiers a man gathered, numbers alone were never an unqualified good.
A good while had passed since Yan Xing and Sun Qing had first crossed weapons.
"...Sound the signal."
"Yes, my lord!!"
At my command a soldier beat the drum announcing the withdrawal, and the rear corps — my own — began pulling out toward the camp first.
"Fall back! Fall back!!"
The instant Yan Xing heard the drum, he shook Sun Qing off in a single decisive motion and ordered his men to withdraw. At that command, the soldiers who had been carving through the enemy ranks broke away and scattered in an instant. This was exactly why I had placed most of the cavalry under Yan Xing.
'With the cavalry's swift mobility, they could disengage from the battlefield at a moment's notice.'
Our abrupt retreat left the enemy host visibly bewildered.
"Hehahaha! Running away again!! This time we finish them once and for all!!"
"AYE-!!"
But the moment Ding Yuan's command came down, the puzzled enemy troops wheeled their horses about as one and thundered off in pursuit.
"Do not let them escape!! All forces, charge!!"
Convinced he had broken our vanguard yet again, Ding Yuan meant to press straight on and annihilate the troops garrisoning Han Yeong's camp. And with his eyes on the mountains of military supplies he had heard rumors of, he intended to seize every last crate of them besides.
"You must not!!"
At that moment an officer commanding the central army in the rear came galloping up and hurriedly tried to dissuade him.
"An enemy that falls back again and again without suffering real losses — there is something deeply amiss here, my lord. Do not order the charge. Send the vanguard ahead first and observe how matters stand..."
But Ding Yuan, certain that victory was already in his grasp, had no ears for good counsel.
"Silence!! A nameless footsoldier without so much as a proper rank thinks to lecture me!? Do as you are ordered — now!!"
Ding Yuan lashed out, sneering that he was a general who had never amounted to anything under He Jin — but the officer would not bend.
"But, my lord..."
"Defy my order once more and you will answer to military law!!"
The imperious old man, self-willed to the marrow, gave the officer's counsel no genuine hearing and went tearing off on his black horse.
"...Haah. Damn it all."
If the enemy was retreating this suspiciously, then before anything else a commander ought to be asking whether it was a trap... Chafing with frustration, the man raked a rough hand through his hair.
When He Jin's central army had been absorbed into Ding Yuan's command, he had found himself serving a new lord — but this one, like He Jin before him, turned a deaf ear to everything he said.
Letting out a long, deep sigh, Xu Rong lamented that, just as with He Jin, he had bound himself to the wrong lord yet again — and at the head of the central army, he followed in Ding Yuan's wake.
And so the army of Ding Yuan advanced upon Han Yeong's camp.