Unrivaled Under Heaven vs. Splendid Ma Chao (3)
Trickle…
Dark-red beads of blood ran down from Ma Chao's shoulder. Blood spilled from the gash the Sky-Piercing Halberd had carved into her, soaking into the ground below, while a searing pain wrapped itself around her whole body.
"…Ugh."
Her face tightened at the wound, and she clenched her molars together to smother the groan.
She had taken the odd graze from an arrow in her fights against rebels and Dong Zhuo, but it had been a very long time since an actual blade had cut her. That forgotten agony—forgotten precisely because no blade had touched her for so long—now flooded her mind, lending weight to a tension that had gone slack.
That the wound was mercifully shallow, not deep enough to reach the bone, she owed to her own razor-sharp reflexes and the leather armor Han Yeong had given her long ago. The armor had been shredded to rags, true, but a master craftsman had poured genuine care into its making, and it had done its part as protection all the same. On top of that, she had sensed something off about Lu Bu's deceptively simple strike, and in the split second she felt the halberd stretch longer than it should, she had snapped her upper body backward—avoiding a fatal blow and confining the wound to her right shoulder. Had Lu Bu swung that weapon two-handed, with its full speed behind it, Ma Chao's head would have left her neck on the spot.
"…So it was, after all."
Lu Bu looked at her, the Sky-Piercing Halberd resting on her shoulder.
"You've never once fought anyone stronger than yourself, have you? That's why your improvisation falls short—and that's why you're being beaten like this."
…She'd taken hold of the haft?
Lu Bu had gripped the very end of the shaft, forcibly extending the Sky-Piercing Halberd's reach, and cut her down with it. Swinging so long and heavy a weapon one-armed might have looked like brute stupidity, but it was more than enough to introduce a wild variable into the fight. Against a commander still short on real battle experience—someone like Ma Chao—it was all the easier to deceive.
Ma Chao ran a hand over her wounded shoulder and ground her teeth.
…I let my guard down.
For all her reckless exterior, Lu Bu was rich in battlefield experience, honed against countless foreign tribes and bandits—and it was that experience which let her conjure variables out of such minute trickery.
Lu Bu swept the Sky-Piercing Halberd through a half-moon arc and drove another blow down upon Ma Chao.
CLANG!!
She caught the ponderous strike—a blow heavy enough to numb her to the bone just to block—and a metallic shriek rolled across the field.
Spurt!!
Kgh!!
Her body had reacted on instinct and turned the blow aside, but the shock carried through it tore the gash on her right shoulder wide open. Pain bored straight through her skull, and Ma Chao's face contorted. Blood began to stain her right shoulder and her clothes a deep red.
"…Ngh!!"
More blows came hurtling after, one upon another. Her shoulder wound was screaming, but Ma Chao clenched her teeth and somehow endured, swinging her spear again and again to meet the storm head-on. Yet where before the two had stood in something like equilibrium, Ma Chao was now being driven back beyond all doubt. Lu Bu was overflowing with strength, while the wounded Ma Chao's was draining away bit by bit; her responses lagged, gashes accumulated, and she struggled against the onslaught.
Just as even a drizzle will soak you through, so even the smallest cuts, as long as they bled, wore a person down and left her hollow and exhausted. The wounds slowed Ma Chao's reactions further and further, until simply keeping her body upright became a struggle. She caught the Sky-Piercing Halberd—flying at her in a haze of savage light—on the very edge of collapse, but at last Ma Chao's spear reached its limit.
CRACK!!
My spear!?
The spear that had never once broken since she had come of age and marched to war failed to withstand the monstrous force of Lu Bu's fierce onslaught—and snapped.
Damn it…!!
It was over. With her weapon broken, there was no way left to resist, and the world seemed to fall away before her eyes.
"…You did well enough. But this is where it ends for you—!!"
With that brief tribute, Lu Bu drove the halberd toward Ma Chao's chest to settle the contest—and in that instant—
KWAANG!!
Someone came charging into the fray and knocked the halberd aside.
"…Hngh. Heavy as sin. My apologies for being late."
"Uncle!?"
Yan Xing—having already cut down Sun Jing and then Wang Fang, a commander of Ding Yuan's army—had been pursuing Ding Yuan when he saw Ma Chao fall into peril, and he had rushed over without a moment's delay. Deflecting Lu Bu's blow had carved a dull, throbbing ache into his hands. Had he been even a breath slower, had his block not landed, Ma Chao might have ended right there.
"Lord Fengxian!!"
Zhang Liao and the cavalry, shoving aside the Han Yeong troops that barred their path, came running to Lu Bu. Pang De, too, caught sight of Ma Chao's wounds and hurried to her side.
"…What a shame."
Lu Bu glanced around. Ding Yuan had, it seemed, gotten out safely—but far from gathering up his soldiers, whose camp had collapsed around them, he had simply fled with his personal retainers in tow.
"Wei Yue and Cheng Lian are rallying as many of the men as they can and withdrawing ahead of us. You must retreat with us, my lord."
It was as Zhang Liao said. The purpose of charging in here had been served. Rescue Ding Yuan and his officers, gather up as many of the Bingzhou soldiers as possible, and get them out—once that was done, there was no reason left to stay. There was no time to save the Luoyang soldiers too, and Lu Bu had no intention of rescuing men who were not her own.
"…Fine. We pull out, Zhang Liao."
"Yes, Lord Fengxian!!"
Lu Bu wheeled her horse about and fell back with Zhang Liao before an encirclement could close around them.
"Where do you think you're going—?"
"General Ma Chao. Your wounds are grave. Fall back."
"That's right—leave the pursuit to us."
But Ma Chao paid Pang De and Yan Xing no heed.
"…No! We can't let her get away!!"
Lu Bu gave a single glance at the face of the woman still determined to hold her to the very last, then fled with Zhang Liao. Ma Chao knew that letting Lu Bu slip away would make every battle to come immeasurably harder, and she was desperate to pin her down before the encirclement could form.
"You—get treated and rest. We'll handle the purs—"
"Don't pursue—!!"
Ma Chao turned her head toward the voice.
"…Han Yeong?"
I arrived at the scene of the ferocious fighting leading my army, and frowned at the sight of Ma Chao's body, wrecked from her duel with Lu Bu.
…I rushed here as fast as I could, and I was still too late.
Sounding the gong to order a retreat amid the tangled melee would have been ambiguous at best, so I had raced over straight away—but Ma Chao's injuries were grave. While she stood frozen at the sight of me, Lu Bu and Zhang Liao were already fleeing with their cavalry.
"Where do those bastards think they're going…!!"
I spoke through fists clenched so tight my nails bit into my palms, choking down a deep fury.
"…Enough. Let them go."
"What?! What on earth are you—gh!!"
Ma Chao tried to defy my order, but her wounds wouldn't let her finish the sentence.
"Ma Chao. Go back at once and get yourself treated. That's an order."
"…But!!"
"I won't say it twice. Defy me again and I'll count it as a breach of military law."
At my unbending words the color left Ma Chao's face; in the end she broke off her protest and withdrew to the rear for treatment. The fire attack had already plunged the battlefield into a chaotic melee—with Ma Chao wounded and the troops' formation itself in disarray, there was no telling whether we could stop Lu Bu at all. Had we recklessly tried to take her captive, the enemy officers who had rallied their surviving men and were withdrawing in good order would simply have converged on Lu Bu and joined her. But with Ma Chao—the core of our army's ability to hold Lu Bu—wounded and in no state to keep fighting, avoiding battle here was the right call.
If Ma Chao had been in full fighting form, this would have been our chance to take Lu Bu…
With our target Ding Yuan already fled, fighting on held little meaning; rather than gamble everything on capturing Lu Bu on the spot, it was better to let her go and crush the Ding Yuan forces that remained. And so long as we had Jia Xu's cunning, even if Lu Bu ended up in someone's army down the line, our stratagems would make her drink her fill of defeat.
Had Lu Bu taken the field from the very start of this battle and been caught in our fire attack, none of this would have come to pass. As far as Ding Yuan was concerned, it was a twist of heaven-sent fortune: Lu Bu, duped by the estrangement scheme, had defied her orders and come to the rescue of the allied army. But above all, the plainest truth was this—I refused to weigh the life of Ma Chao, someone precious to me, on the scales for the sake of a rotting Han dynasty.
With Lu Bu withdrawn and Ma Chao retired to the rear, the intervention of Pang De and Yan Xing began to settle the field, little by little.
"All units! Escort the prisoners you've taken and see to the wounded—!!"
Though Lu Bu's charge had cost us the chance to take Ding Yuan's head, roughly half of the enemy's fifty thousand had been killed or wounded in the fire attack and the fighting that followed it. Beyond the Bingzhou soldiers who had somehow slipped away, the Luoyang troops who survived the flames surrendered—and among the prisoners was Xu Rong, who had tenaciously held our army's offensive at the rear guard until Pang De's arrow brought him down. The soldiers Lu Bu had rallied and carried off numbered barely ten thousand all told; combined with the garrison Ding Yuan had left behind in Luoyang, his remaining strength would come to some thirty thousand. Judged by the scale of the enemy's losses alone, it would not be wrong to call this our victory.
And yet our own losses were far from light. Ma Chao, one of our core commanders, had been gravely wounded, and the Xiliang cavalry—elite to a man—had taken a savage beating at Lu Bu's hands. Add to that the surrendering Luoyang troops now in our care and the military supplies we had spent luring the enemy in, and we were in sore need of replenishment.
I turned my head to look in the direction Lu Bu had fled.
Lu Bu…
When I had first met her, the impression she left had been good enough that I had genuinely considered winning her over. But seeing Ma Chao's wounds had changed my mind. Even after our estrangement scheme, she had chosen Ding Yuan's side—and that made her an enemy. She might have seemed to cherish the common people, but in the end, choosing to save and prop up a tyrant like Ding Yuan made her every bit as wicked as he was.
I let out a long sigh of bitter regret at my own complacency. Red Hare, Lu Bu—why was it that both of them, of all things, always chose the one decisive moment when the enemy leader's head was about to come off to stand in the way?
…Next time, I'll come at her with stratagems instead, and see her dead.
Having judged Lu Bu a sworn enemy beyond any doubt, I returned to camp.
Before long, word of the battle that had erupted at Hongnong reached Luoyang. Ding Yuan's army had walked into a fire attack and been routed, its lord barely escaping with his life; and Lu Bu's exploits, it was said, had left Han Yeong's own core commander, Ma Chao, gravely wounded and forced from the field. Afterward, the two armies continued to eye each other across the lines, each held in place by circumstances of its own.
With his great host swept away by the flames and his strength now inferior to Han Yeong's, Ding Yuan—desperate to refill his depleted ranks—left behind only a skeleton force to hold Luoyang and drew the rest of the garrison into his fortified camp. As a result, the watchful eyes that had been monitoring the scholar-officials of the capital on Ding Yuan's orders grew thin.
…Now is the time to move.
Cao Cao—who had outwardly bowed her head and feigned submission to Ding Yuan—set her feet in motion to meet someone.