Suppression of the Rebels (2)
"Han Sui's army has arrived?"
"Yes, my lord. Our scouts put the enemy at roughly twenty thousand strong."
"...Ha. So he means to strike us with a mere twenty thousand?"
Beigong Boyu curled his lip at a force less than half the size of his own, as though it were beneath contempt — and the man beside him, buckled into full battle gear, let fall a cold sneer of his own.
"It seems the warlord of Jincheng Commandery, once the likeliest man in all Liangzhou to wear its crown, has had his day. To think he would march on us with a paltry twenty thousand."
Bian Zhang scoffed at Han Sui's reckless posturing. He had concluded that Han Sui and Ma Teng, drunk on their victory in the last engagement, had lost both their reason and their fear.
"Quite so. Word is they've been lavishing benevolent governance on the common folk of late. His instincts have gone utterly dull."
Li Wenhou at his side thought much the same. A magnate who raised revolt in pursuit of ambition... coddling commoners no better than weeds...
To the frontier tribes — the Qiang and the Di above all — there was but one code of conduct: the strong despise the weak, devour them, and that is simply the way of things. To men who had spent their whole lives plundering the people as the natural privilege of the strong, Han Sui's conduct looked very nearly like madness.
"Hmph. So he means to polish his image, if only for show, so he can come crawling back to the Han."
This was the man who had burned hotter than anyone among the warlords of Guanxi in pursuit of his ambitions — and now he had bowed, in the end, to the hollow shell of the Han court. The laughter would not be suppressed.
Their jeers soon filled the barracks to overflowing.
Fool. He knows better than anyone how the Han have cast us Qiang out — knows it, and still he makes a choice this twisted.
That in the Central Plains the corrupt eunuchs called the Ten Attendants had governed through graft and rot until the Yellow Turban Rebellion tore the land apart was a fact even a child knew. To swear loyalty to a state rotten to the very marrow was the height of folly.
Having confirmed the strength of Han Sui's army, Beigong Boyu strode out of the barracks with his two generals and gave the soldiers their orders.
"Prepare against a night raid, and ready yourselves for a full battle tomorrow!! Tomorrow I will take Han Sui's head with my own hands!"
"As you command!!"
The camp was packed with men to its very walls, and the roar that answered rolled out and shook the earth. The soldiers dispersed to their stations, shoring up their night defenses and checking over horse, harness, and blade.
Watching them, Beigong Boyu wore a thin, twisted smile. Their position bristled with countless troops behind fortifications built solid as any fortress; against that, the armies of Han Sui and Ma Teng scarcely deserved a glance. Their victory was certain. And in that certainty lay proof, they believed, that their own answer — swelling their power by wringing the people dry — had been right all along.
Bian Zhang put on a cheap grin and sidled up with a leer.
"You know, they say Ma Teng's daughter is so beautiful they sing of her as the finest beauty in Liangzhou. Care if I claim her?"
"Oh, come now!! Are good things not meant to be shared?"
"Enough, you two. Spoils belong to whoever seizes them first, do they not?"
Even as Beigong Boyu cut them short, a greasy, unsettling light of greed flared in the eyes of the warlords trading their vulgar banter.
The warlords who lorded over Liangzhou were simple creatures at heart: trusting in nothing but their numbers, assured of victory, they whiled away the hours debating what exactly they would do with Ma Chao once they had taken her captive.
Having learned from their earlier defeat, the rebels had prepared rigorously against a night assault — and yet the night passed in a hush so complete that not a single bird dared sing. In contrast, from Han Sui's camp two separate bodies of troops slipped out under cover of darkness and made off toward some unknown destination.
The quiet hours of a night without a raid flowed by without incident...
The next morning, the hour of the decisive battle had arrived.
A scorching sun baked the open ground, and beneath it two armies stood facing one another.
"...Gods, there's a filthy lot of them. That plan had better work."
Hearing the worry in my voice, Yan Xing at my side grumbled back at me.
"You endorsed Lady Pang De's proposal yourself, young master. You even layered a few tricks of your own on top of it, if I recall."
"I only threw in my two coppers to raise the odds of the thing actually coming off... By the way, are you sure you belong here, brother? Wouldn't it be better if you joined the detachment too?"
"And if a blind arrow were to find you, young master, our lord would have me flogged to death for it."
As we of the center army exchanged words — the previous night's council among them — a single warrior burst from the enemy host, one who drew the eye like no other on that field. As if intent on advertising that he was their chief, he emerged at his leisure with a pelt of fur draped across his shoulders and a golden helmet gleaming on his head.
"...You curs who grovel before the Han!!"
Oh? Coming out swinging right from the start, are we?
"As though it were not enough to serve a kingdom already fallen, you would turn your arms on your own guiltless kin!! Learn shame, if you have the capacity!!"
A man preaching innocence. Taken at face value, he might have passed for one fighting for a righteous cause.
What a hilarious bastard. These are the ones who bleed the people dry to line their own purses...
At that brazen, unrepentant gall — and the full armor on his back — I put the question to my side:
"That one's Beigong Boyu, isn't it?"
"Yes, my lord. Just as you described — the appearance is an exact match."
My father, the army's commander-in-chief, was not with the center host just now. For the sake of the operation Pang De had devised, he had been attached to a different formation — and in truth, it was hardly a post he had claimed of his own accord, either.
...No one else would step forward, so I volunteered to go with the detachment myself — and he flew into a fury, insisting he would go in my place.
It was not a force carrying any great risk, so I was not especially worried. Uncle Ma Teng would be riding at his side, after all...
Command of the center army was to have been shared between me and Cheng Gongying; in practice, Cheng Gongying held the reins.
He must take me for a green whelp short on experience. Well — can't be helped.
I had my share of campaigns behind me stretching back to boyhood, but a battle on this scale was a first, and that, it seemed, was what had him concerned.
Even with my thoughts wandering thus, Beigong Boyu was out in front, pouring furious abuse over our army until his voice threatened to tear.
"...If you feel any shame at all, then surrender this inst—"
"Oh, knock it off, you bastard!! God, you're loud—!!"
Rudely cleaving Beigong Boyu's droning sermon in two, the blonde woman commanding our vanguard urged her white horse forward at an unhurried pace.
The Splendid Ma Chao of Xiliang.
Under the sun her golden hair blazed all the brighter, a beauty every bit its match — and the enemy soldiers stared at her as if bewitched. When she bared her teeth in a grin, a few of our own men went crimson to the ears as well.
Watching the spectacle, I found myself recalling a certain fact.
Come to think of it — isn't Ma Chao practically an idol to the Qiang?
The Ma clan, of mixed Han and Qiang blood and towering martial gifts, would one day stand among the Qiang as something like living icons. She carried the blood of their people, yet shook all under heaven with her name — small wonder there were those who revered the Ma household for it. Indeed, the histories record that in Shu Han's dying years, Ma Dai forged ties so close with the Qiang as to draw troop support from them.
So in this world, where Ma Chao is a woman... are the frontier tribes simply losing their heads over her face?
Twirling her spear one-handed in her slender grip, Ma Chao taunted Beigong Boyu in a voice rough as gravel.
"Since when do you fight a war with your mouth?! If words are all you've got, throw away that armor and those weapons and go be a civil official!!"
"Wh-what!? The gall of this insolent wench—!!"
Beigong Boyu, too, had been briefly spellbound by her lovely face, but the scathing insult snapped him back to himself and set his teeth grinding. He had meant to go easy on her for the sake of that pretty face — her insolent attitude had incensed him instead.
"Drag that bitch before my eyes, now!!"
With that, Beigong Boyu fell back behind his lines.
Well, he is the supreme commander. I suppose that's only proper?
"Yes, sir!! All forces, charge!!"
WAAAAAAH—!!
The rebel host across the field came on all at once beneath a rolling roar, and Cheng Gongying, who had been reading the battlefield, shouted in answer.
"All forces, charge!!"
Our own army surged forward as one man. The vanguard cavalry drove ahead in the Arrowhead Formation, a wedge of riders knifing into the enemy line sharp as a spearpoint at full gallop. Simple as it looked, it was a tactic any army was glad to employ when its vanguard — fighting on open ground — had utter faith in its own martial prowess; for whether the enemy's leading edge held or broke could turn the tide of a battle in a heartbeat. Ironically enough, on this day both sides had that confidence in equal measure.
"So you're Ma Chao, wench?! Take my blade!!"
Bian Zhang, one of the rebel warlords, took the vanguard upon himself and hurled himself at Ma Chao with heroic bravado. Befitting the man at the head of Liangzhou's warlords, he was a towering slab of muscle, wild and brutish — the very picture of strength.
But he had drawn the wrong opponent.
Easy, unhurried amusement played across Ma Chao's face as she watched him come — and her spear flicked out, swift as a bolt of light.
"Ghhk—!!"
Bian Zhang failed to stop that lightning stroke, and mid-scream his throat was run through. A streak of light, too fast for the eye to catch in that instant of instants, had hurtled for his neck — and punched clean through it.
He tumbled from his horse, and the onrushing cavalry trampled the corpse beneath their hooves until every bone in its body had been crushed to splinters.
"L-Lord Bian Zhang!!"
The death of their commanding officer at the very front dealt the rebel army's morale a grievous wound.
Droplets of blood beading and streaming from her spear, Ma Chao thrust and whirled it through enemy after enemy, smashing through the vanguard and driving ever onward.
"The Splendid Ma Chao of Xiliang is here!! Traitor Beigong Boyu — stick out your neck this instant—!!"
None could halt her dazzling spearwork and exhilarating charge alone, and those who stood in her way simply forfeited their lives to her spear. The base lust that had lain thick on the faces of Beigong Boyu's soldiers was washed away as though with water; in its place terror resurfaced, their complexions draining an ashen blue. Men tucked tail and fled from the horror bearing down on them, and the ranks of deserters swelled by the moment.
Golden hair streaming as she flew through their midst, Ma Chao shone radiant among them.
And to the rebel army she was proving, flawlessly and without mercy, precisely why history would remember her as one of the great valorous generals who shook all under heaven.