Unrivaled Under Heaven vs. Splendid Ma Chao (2)
"...What!? Ma Chao and Lu Bu are fighting?"
While I had been busy working out countermeasures against Lu Bu, the duel between the two of them had already begun.
Was it because she could not stand by and watch her soldiers die? Or was there some other reason — whatever it was, Ma Chao had been the first to hurl herself at Lu Bu.
The two opened their contest at a speed so blistering that no weapon could be seen, only afterimages and flying sparks, trading blows in a furious exchange.
...No.
Cao Cao had once judged Ma Chao's ability to be Lu Bu's equal. But that assessment assumed Ma Chao past her twentieth year, in the full bloom of her physical prime, with her talent for commanding armies honed to its peak through years of subjugating the northern tribes.
Even without Red Hare beneath her, Lu Bu was still beyond what Ma Chao could hope to overcome — not yet, at any rate.
Ma Chao possessed martial skill that could trade blows with Zhang Fei, but even that held true only once she reached adulthood and the summit of her strength and experience. Young as she was, she had yet to cross into that prime, and her experience still fell short; she would not be Lu Bu's match, and she would be driven back.
"...I have to stop this."
Judging by Ding Yuan's conduct in Luoyang, there was no need to force a conclusion here. Another chance would come later.
More than that, Ma Chao was precious to me beyond words. I would never forgive myself if something happened to her in a place like this.
The problem was that everywhere except where Lu Bu had appeared, the battle was tipping in our favor — if I sounded the retreat gong now, in the middle of a winning fight, the whole line could dissolve into chaos.
"Everyone, follow me!!"
Left with no choice, I spurred my horse and galloped out.
"M-My lord!?"
Jia Xu and the others, ordinarily the picture of composure, stared at me in dismay and tried to hold me back, but I paid them no heed and drove my horse straight toward the ground where Ma Chao and Lu Bu were locked in combat.
Kaaang!! Chang! Kwaaang!!
Afterimages too swift for the soldiers' eyes to follow whirled and tangled as the two collided with ferocious cracks of cleaved air.
The horses, matching the violent dance of the two heroines trading blow for blow, bucked and wheeled wildly, kicking up dust that swirled like a thick fog.
To the onlookers who could only catch the blur of afterimages, it looked like a dragon battling a tiger — a true clash of dragon and tiger in every sense of the phrase.
And yet, in reality, Ma Chao was being pushed back — by the narrowest of margins, but pushed back all the same in raw strength.
Unlike her usual headlong assaults, Ma Chao was prioritizing defense, weathering her opponent's attacks while waiting for an opening — then, like a serpent, she darted her spear in.
The spearpoint flashed as it shot forward, and Lu Bu turned it aside lightly with the Sky-Piercing Halberd.
"Haha!! Not bad at all?!"
Lu Bu laughed with unfeigned delight, genuinely impressed by Ma Chao's martial skill.
She parried cleanly even strikes that used raw strength to twist their trajectory toward unpredictable angles, and Ma Chao's horsemanship was accomplished enough that she consistently claimed the most advantageous ground, deflecting each blow in full.
At an age that had not yet seen twenty, her skill was such that even in Bingzhou — a land teeming with vicious bandits and warriors of great renown — it would have been hard to find her equal.
In Lu Bu's estimation, Ma Chao's ability stood slightly above that of Zhang Liao, the strongest of Ding Yuan's generals after Lu Bu herself.
And to be this strong before she's even crossed twenty — her potential from here is enormous. Considering her youth, that potential was quite literally boundless; praise came unbidden.
Ma Chao, on the other hand, felt her limbs going weak under the crushing weight of Lu Bu's strength. How is she this strong...?
Every time the thundering weapons met, a dull ache shot through her wrists.
Ma Chao had never considered herself lacking in strength. Even sparring against Pang De or Yan Xing — two of the finest in Liang Province — she had never been seriously overpowered in a contest of raw might.
Judging by the thickness of their arms alone, she and Lu Bu were hardly different. And yet the force bursting out of those arms felt nearly twice her own — the monstrous strength of one born with the very frame of a warrior.
The instant she loosened her focus or let her grip slacken even slightly, either her weapon would be knocked flying or her stance would collapse and send her tumbling from the saddle.
Worse, Lu Bu was not merely strong; her technique was superb as well. Where Ding Yuan's soldiers had charged with nothing but bloodlust and swagger, this woman twisted her blade's arc with a veteran's cunning and went straight for Ma Chao's throat.
Lu Bu brought the two-handed Sky-Piercing Halberd down at the speed of a lightning flash, and Ma Chao raised her spear level just in time to catch it.
Kwaaang!!
Crushed under that overwhelming force, Ma Chao's spear bent with a groan so harsh it seemed the weapon itself was shrieking out its dying breath. As for the Sky-Piercing Halberd, some master smith had clearly poured his soul into forging it — even now it radiated an awe-inspiring presence.
Kagagak!!
As Ma Chao bled off Lu Bu's strength with deft technique, the shriek of shaft grinding against shaft pierced her ears.
Tung—!!
A child of the northern frontier, blessed with a warrior's frame and hardened by years of real combat spent sweeping the barbarians back beyond the border — judged by background alone, Lu Bu was her mirror image. Yet whether because of the difference in years, Ma Chao had not yet caught up to her.
What's letting me hold on at all is... the horse beneath her.
Shalifei, Ma Chao's beloved steed, was a Ferghana-class courser, and a finer mount than the horse Lu Bu rode.
Lu Bu's own steed had been seized from the Xiongnu and was respectable enough in its own right, but measured against the mare that had briefly kept pace with Red Hare herself, it did not compare.
And so the horse Lu Bu rode could do little more than grit through its rider's violent maneuvers; it could not serve her the way Ma Chao's mount did, angling for the positions that would turn the fight in its rider's favor.
A duel, in the end, is a contest between two people — but count the horses, and it is four combatants on that field.
Lu Bu held the advantage in weaponry; in warhorses, Ma Chao held the greater one.
But Lu Bu seemed to be savoring the contest itself, her spirits climbing higher and higher, her movements brimming with ever more vitality.
Kaaang!! Kwaaang!!
"What's the matter!? You came at me so boldly a moment ago!! Then keep coming—!!"
Roaring like a lion, Lu Bu hammered the Sky-Piercing Halberd down again and again, each blow carrying enough fury to shatter boulders and fell trees.
The halberd whirled with the crude brutality of an axe swing, and every time Ma Chao's spear caught one of those blows, it bowed like a straining pole, letting out another hair-raising shriek.
Steadying her ragged breath, Ma Chao knocked the halberd away and drove her spear at Lu Bu, thinking all the while. ...Even if I can't take Lu Bu, this battle ends the moment Ding Yuan is taken.
Capture the Thief, Capture the King.
One of the Thirty-Six Stratagems — to fell the enemy, first strike down its king — and the most fundamental principle of them all; it was the first lesson Ma Chao had ever learned in the art of war.
She was holding the Unrivaled Under Heaven at bay single-handedly. Hold out a little longer, and someone else would snare Ding Yuan. Pang De, for instance.
Never once had Ma Chao heard of a general who could stop Pang De's charge — Lu Bu excepted. Contrary to her expectations, however, Pang De had been caught up by someone else entirely.
Kwaaang!!
Pang De's crescent blade hurtled toward the figure barring her path, but the woman swept her Azure Dragon halberds around and turned it aside without apparent effort.
...She's strong.
Pang De, having burst from the camp in pursuit of the fleeing Ding Yuan, had collided head-on with a single enemy officer. The Azure Dragon halberds her opponent wielded were ponderous, and yet nimble withal.
She did not possess Lu Bu's overwhelming might, but she was stronger than Hua Xiong, whom Pang De had crossed blades with before — and her martial skill was in no way far beneath her own or Ma Chao's.
"We met once before at the camp, so I had some inkling — but you are strong indeed..."
Having traded a fair number of blows, her opponent offered a warrior's courtesy and praised Pang De's prowess.
She was Zhang Liao, the officer who had ridden at Ding Yuan's side as his escort when he visited the army camp. The finest warrior in Bingzhou after Lu Bu herself, she had planted herself in the path of Pang De's furious advance and brought it to a halt.
Zhang Liao, rather than reveling in the attack, had settled into a defense-minded posture and was turning aside Pang De's crescent blade with practiced ease — because she knew full well that Pang De's martial skill was a shade superior to her own.
...I have no great love for Ding Yuan. But for Lady Fengxian's sake, I have no choice.
She owed that hideous old man nothing like the debt it would take to throw her life away for him. Lu Bu was another matter entirely.
Back when Zhang Liao was a nameless clerk in the army, nearly cut down in a Xiongnu raid, it was Lu Bu who had saved her life — and from that day on, she had sworn in her heart to follow her.
To Zhang Liao, who hated the tribes pouring down from the northern frontier for the wrongs they had done her ancestors, Lu Bu was the pioneer and hero of Bingzhou. The other members of the Eight Elite Cavalry revered her — an incarnation of war itself — for much the same reason.
Lady Fengxian's will is my will.
Zhang Liao forged her loyalty to her lord into burning fighting spirit and swung her Azure Dragon halberds at Pang De with all her fury.
More than sixty bouts into her exchange with Ma Chao, Lu Bu stole a glance sideways to survey the battle.
...Not good. I need to end this fast and get out.
While she had been tied up with Ma Chao, the tide had swung back toward Han Yeong's army. Zhang Liao, at the head of a few dozen riders, was holding back the enemy cavalry led by a general on a white horse, the two sides locked in a ferocious running fight, while Wei Yue and Cheng Lian shepherded the Bingzhou survivors in retreat.
This battle was, for all intents and purposes, already lost. Their commander, Ding Yuan, had fled first — abandoning his own men, no less. Who was left to fight to the death for him?
If this dragged on and the fighting burned itself out, the moment Han Yeong's army closed the ring, she and Zhang Liao would resist until their strength gave out and end up captured.
She had been made to struggle by Ma Chao's skill, which exceeded her expectations, and by the difference in their mounts — but it seemed age was against Ma Chao; her stamina was flagging, and the long duel had already drained her considerably.
Even so, the time Lu Bu had been granted was not generous enough to wear Ma Chao down until she simply dropped.
"...Whew."
What this fight needed now was a wildcard. Conveniently, she had already taken Ma Chao's measure well enough.
The air over the battlefield, which had done nothing but thicken with heat, turned razor-sharp in an instant.
Is she planning something? Sensing it, Ma Chao ratcheted her guard to its very limit.
Lu Bu, resolved to stake everything on a single throw, drummed her heels against her horse's flanks and closed the distance, then began whirling the Sky-Piercing Halberd like a storm.
Kwakwang!! Kaang!!
The halberd came slicing in as if to shred the very air, and Ma Chao answered thrust with thrust — but inch by inch, she was being driven back.
Afraid her stance would break if she endured any longer, Ma Chao gave ground and pulled her horse back — and Lu Bu, from just beyond that gap, swung the Sky-Piercing Halberd in one enormous arc.
Swinging it from there?
After all those clashes, Ma Chao had a fair measure of the halberd's reach. For a strike at her neck or torso, the arc fell just short — a hair's breadth out of range.
That much, I can dodge. Barely.
With her stamina already spent, she had to avoid direct collisions at all costs and hunt for a single decisive strike. Evade that broad, sweeping blow, then counter into Lu Bu's unguarded torso — and the victory would be hers.
No matter how long the Sky-Piercing Halberd was, at this distance she could slip it — so Ma Chao believed, and the instant she tilted her head back to evade—
...Huh?
Why is the halberd longer...?
SHRRK—!!!
The sharp, cleaving sound tore through the air by her ears, and scarlet drops of blood burst skyward, scattering like a spray of crimson mist.