The War Begins (2)
Having marched to the very gates of Sishui Pass, the coalition army made out a host with black headwraps wound around their heads, entrenched in fortified camps before the walls. Even a rough count put the force guarding the pass at well over fifty thousand.
"...The Black Mountain Bandits."
And judging by the sheer size of the host arrayed out there, the general holding Sishui Pass could only be Zhang Yan, chieftain of the Black Mountain Bandits themselves. Zhang Yan was no general of great public renown — the Romance of the Three Kingdoms never spared him so much as a mention. But the official histories pinned on him the same epithet as Lu Bu — Flying General — and when the Black Mountain host that followed him was said to number a million, his power was nothing to sneer at. The figure of a million may have been inflated, as numbers in Chinese chronicles tend to be; yet when the Han dynasty — the very same that had crushed the Yellow Turbans — gave up on subjugating them altogether and resorted to buying them off with official titles, one could only conclude their strength was truly vast.
Zhang Yan's martial prowess is at least Hua Xiong's equal, I'd wager.
The chieftain leading that mighty host was skilled enough with arms to have crossed weapons with Lu Bu herself and barely lived to tell of it.
But for all that he flails about trusting in personal valor and the weight of his numbers, he lacks the systematic strategy and command talent of a trained soldier. That will be his weakness. Even his refusal to properly hold the pass was stubbornness — blind faith in his own bravery and in the horsemanship his bandits had honed raiding across Bingzhou. Strike at those flaws, and the enemy host would crumble easily enough. The complication was that we were the attackers and they the defenders, and an army dug in like that would hardly take the bait of a feint.
Well. If it came to that, there was always the option of punching straight through the front.
What was truly absurd, though, was what came next.
"Then, as we agreed beforehand, let us now decide upon the vanguard."
"...Ahem."
"......"
At the alliance leader Yuan Shao's words, the very lords who had so recently jostled one another to volunteer all glanced sideways and shut their mouths like clams. Right up until the scouts' reports came in and the Black Mountain Bandits loomed into view, they had squabbled over who would stand in the vanguard; now every last one of them had clammed up tight.
...Haah. Idiots, the lot of them. I knew this would happen. Judging by their faces, they'd have scrambled over one another for glory to catch Liu Xie's eye had the enemy been some pushover of a nameless rabble — but against Zhang Yan and the Black Mountain Bandits, whose savagery around Luoyang was the stuff of nightmare, they had visibly lost their nerve. Of all the lords assembled, only two still kept their hands raised: Bao Xin, Chancellor of Jibei, and Sun Jian, Administrator of Changsha.
"Even so, judging by the force garrisoned in the camps before Sishui Pass, the enemy is formidable — fifty thousand strong at the least. General Sun Jian and General Bao Xin alone will not suffice. What say the lords who so recently pledged to stand in the vanguard?"
Cao Cao, brilliant as ever, knew perfectly well what the lords were thinking — and asked anyway, out of pure mischief.
The vanguard was the most honored post in any army, the place where the greatest merit could be won — and, at the same time, the place that demanded the greatest risk. Awkward to claim for oneself, yet too precious to hand to another for fear that man might walk off with the glory — a chicken-rib of a position, too flavorless to savor and too good to throw away. Unless one was a general like Sun Jian, rich in real battlefield experience, nobody cared to step forward. Face to face with Ding Yuan — who had swollen his host by swallowing up the Black Mountain and White Wave Bandits that had once held the realm in terror — they were simply afraid to fight. You could almost hear the whir of eyeballs rolling as they tallied their own gains and losses in their heads.
"...Perhaps it would be best for General Sun to take the lead?"
"Quite right. We shall stand in the vanguard at the next sortie."
"Indeed."
The court-bred officials of Clear Stream stock, ever careful of their own skins, graciously offered up the vanguard to Sun Jian and Bao Xin.
There it is — the true nature of these lords. However grandly they spoke of restoring the imperial house and striking down the traitor, never once would they accept a loss. The only things they wanted were honor and glory with the risk left off.
Alliance leader or not, with everyone having raised their armies for the throne she treated them all as equals — and so Yuan Shao, too, could not bring the lords fully to heel.
"...To think the lords of the realm could be so short on spine. It won't do. Very well then — I shall join the vanguard myself."
Cao Cao — who, unlike the other lords with their ten thousand and more, commanded barely five thousand — had stepped in. With Bao Xin, her old friend and a man who had always rated Cao Cao highly, coming forward, she had apparently resolved to march out with him. And considering who served in her army, there was little cause for worry.
"Then our army shall join the vanguard as well, with a force of ten thousand."
With the lords all hanging back, I judged this the perfect moment to earn my share of distinction. The main army would stand by near Hangu Pass, watching for its chance; as for us, I meant to stack up solid merit within the coalition while taking as little damage as possible.
It was a chance to win the goodwill of the Liu-Guan-Zhang trio, too. Liu Bei was not serving Gongsun Zan, his old classmate from their days under the same master — he was merely a guest general under Cao Cao, attached to her by little more than a passing acquaintance. A man like that was well worth trying to coax away.
"I shall leave five thousand of my troops here, so Her Highness the Prince of Fufeng will want for nothing in the way of protection."
I had already instructed Jia Xu to make her move the moment war broke out at Sishui Pass. Some might call it underhanded, but I was sick to death of the Clear Stream ministers who had done nothing at Luoyang but flap their gums, and I had resolved not to be shortchanged again. With Liu Xie as my cause, this was my chance to build a name across the realm. The five thousand troops and Xu Huang would be held in reserve against anyone who might approach Liu Xie — the Prince of Fufeng who had traveled with us — with designs less than loyal.
The lords, evidently not having expected me to step forward, went wide-eyed — but none moved to stop me, and none moved to follow.
"...Is there anyone else who wishes to come forward?"
At Yuan Shao's question, the lords fell silent in perfect unison, as though bound by a pact.
And so the first sortie against the Black Mountain host led by Zhang Yan would field a vanguard of four warlords: Bao Xin, Sun Jian, Cao Cao, and myself.
Yuan Shu, eyes narrowed to slits, watched the four boldly forward warlords with open contempt.
Hmph. Fools. They don't even know how strong the Black Mountain Bandits are, and they step forward without the first idea of their place. The four combined mustered roughly thirty-five thousand; the host under Zhang Yan numbered around fifty thousand. Count in the garrison holding Sishui Pass itself, and the total crept toward a hundred thousand. Worse, the sortie was a hodgepodge stitched together from several lords' armies, and such forces never moved in step. At best, one could hope the worst of it would be the rest of them tripping up Sun Jian — the only man among them whose name, built on long experience and hard-won honors, carried any real weight.
Even though Sun Jian was his own subordinate, Yuan Shu hoped the man would not earn merit enough to rise above him. He was so base and small-minded that had Sun Jian marched out in the vanguard and started beating the enemy, he would already have been contemplating cutting off the man's grain supply.
I'll get to watch that insolent wretch disgrace himself. Kheheheh. Watching Han Yeong, Yuan Shu let a sour smile spread where no one could see, savoring the prospect of the man's grand humiliation.
Liang Province and the Guanzhong region, drained of real worth by ceaseless barbarian raids — and Yong Province, with its fertile lands. That green whelp, son of a traitor and blessed with nothing but lowly frontier blood, held — far beyond what his years deserved — the widest domain of any lord gathered here, and military might to match. To the lords, each nursing unspoken ambition and warily eyeing the rest, he was one of their greatest threats, rivaling even Yuan Shao as she built her power in Jizhou.
And yet the fool goes and volunteers like this... Whether it was youth or hot blood, who could say — but while the others played their games of nerve, his readiness to step forward was a boon to Yuan Shu himself. Of all those gathered in this place, few if any had taken up arms purely for the stated cause of the imperial house. Their true purpose was to topple Ding Yuan while keeping the other warlords in check — and to win independence for their own territories. This coalition would mark the very moment when governors and administrators began forming powers independent of the central court. Blissfully ignorant of Han Yeong's thoughts, Yuan Shu threw himself into belittling the young man within the privacy of his own skull.
"Glad to be working with you. You have no idea how relieved I am that you volunteered for the vanguard."
Perhaps uneasy at the thought of facing the enemy with only himself and Sun Jian up front, Bao Xin kept expressing his thanks to me over and over. In the Romance, he was the reckless sort who, fearing Sun Jian would claim the glory first, secretly sent his own younger brother out from the coalition to try to take Hua Xiong; in the histories, though, unlike the lords who squabbled among themselves, he marched at Cao Cao's side when she led her army, and even after losing that brother he stood by her to the very end — one of her staunchest supporters.
If Cao Cao was to be believed, Bao Xin had helped her raise her banner, along with Zhang Miao.
Once Bao Xin had delivered his thanks and gone off to find Cao Cao, Fa Zheng, who had been standing at my side, stepped closer and asked, "My lord. Why did you volunteer for the vanguard?"
When Fa Zheng asked, I answered as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. She only asked because I had originally argued for sitting back and watching how things unfolded; my sudden leap into the fighting naturally puzzled her.
"Because this is one battle we cannot afford to lose."
"...Might I ask what leads you to think so?"
Fair enough. Fa Zheng had no way of knowing who stood in our vanguard. That these were men and women whose names would one day shake the realm with their fame and fearsome renown — naturally, she could not know it yet.
An enemy holding a mountain pass makes stratagems awkward to unfold — and we're outnumbered in fighting men besides? Then what was the answer? The answer was simple: sweep them away with overwhelming force.
None of them a match for Lu Bu, the Unrivaled Under Heaven — but five warriors capable of trading full exchanges with her and holding their own stood gathered right here. Splendid Ma Chao, the Little Conqueror, the White Horse General, the Tiger of Jiangdong, and the Hero of Chaos. And last of all, the Peach Garden Oath trio. Three of Shu's Five Tiger Generals, and two commanders fit to stand comparison with them. And three more possessed of outstanding military genius. Add Sun Jian's own officers — Cheng Pu, Han Dang, and Huang Gai — to the tally, and...
If Zhang Yan meant to lean on personal valor and the sheer numbers of a bandit horde, then we would simply bury him under the quality of our generals and our soldiers. And had we not marched, a drawn-out battle would have left the vanguard at the mercy of the supply lines — at which point the Honey Water Emperor, green with envy at anyone else's glory, would inevitably have begun his trolling games. No — for the Battle of Sishui Pass, it was far better to commit everything from the very first blow and smash them to pieces.