The War Begins (4)
"Charge!!"
Buoyed by the struggles of the fierce generals standing at the coalition's vanguard, the soldiers' morale soared of its own accord, and they drove the Black Mountain Bandits back with overwhelming force.
Caught in the ferocious formations of the valiant commanders pressing in with the agility of lightning, the bandits were plunged into utter pandemonium. Ma Chao carved through the enemy lines spear in hand atop her prized steed, while Pang De, determined that the shattered front should never be rallied, picked off the officers scrambling to take command one by one, shooting them clean from their saddles.
Sun Ce and Sun Jian, each commanding their own contingents with brilliant generalship, squeezed Zhang Yan's crumbling formation from either flank.
The Black Mountain Bandits had spent their whole existence doing nothing but plundering and exploiting the helpless commoners who lacked the strength to resist the chaos of the age. Proper tactical training was something they had never known. And so, against fierce generals who had clawed their way to prominence in a perilous world, they could not mount even a semblance of resistance and were collapsing where they stood.
"What in blazes are you all doing?! Hold them back—now!!"
Zhang Yan, at last grasping both the urgency of the battlefield and the folly of his own misjudgment—the contempt with which he had dismissed every warlord beyond Bingzhou—shouted himself hoarse ordering the bandits to hold the line.
Overflowing with the hot blood and swagger of a man who led others by the strength of his own arm, he was sorely wanting in the seasoned eye required to read a battle and command it. Had Xu Rong remained in Ding Yuan's service, the Black Mountain horde might well have been led capably. But the bandits had already watched their chiefs cut down before their very eyes, and having lost all will to fight, they could do nothing but run.
No matter how numerous, how vicious—a rabble of bandits was still a rabble of bandits. They could not withstand regular troops drilled to a system under fierce generals, nor the bold officers who wore their valor like a badge.
'The battle... is turning against me...'
Zhang Yan held the advantage in numbers, yet the martial prowess of the valiant generals rampaging before him—while it could not compare to the monster that was Lu Bu—belonged, every last one of them, to a realm beyond his own. He knew it. He could not win.
"Damn it all!! We must retreat!!"
"...What?!"
"What are you waiting for?! Do you want to die too?!"
"N-no, sir!!"
True to form for a bandit with not a shred of loyalty in him, Zhang Yan abandoned the men holding the vanguard and fled, alone, for Sishui Pass.
But as the fugitives made for the rear of the camp, an army that had lain in ambush in the nearby forest burst out through a side path and barred their way. It was the force led by Bao Xin and Cao Cao. Their part, having quietly swung around to the rear through that same side path, was to seize the fleeing Zhang Yan. With the chief of the Black Mountain Bandits in hand, the bandits—who had no experience of siege warfare—would be annihilated by the siege engines without difficulty.
"Seize them!!"
Bao Zhong, younger brother of Bao Xin, Chancellor of Jibei, led his men forward with gallant bravado and planted himself in Zhang Yan's path.
"Uraaagh!! Out of my way-!!"
Zhang Yan, chief of the Black Mountain Bandits, whipped his spear in great arcs and began to smash his way through the encircling enemy. Though he stood plainly a rank below Match for Ten Thousand Men, in sheer martial skill he was strong enough to hold his own against Hua Xiong, once the valiant general of Dong Zhuo's army.
Thwack!! Shhk!!
"Gyaaaaagh-!!"
"B-Bao Zhong!!"
Living up to his famed epithet of 'Flying General', Zhang Yan ran Bao Xin's younger brother through with his spear, and Bao Zhong fell dead. Bao Xin was stricken with horror at the sight of his brother's end.
Emboldened by the fearsome presence of Zhang Yan in his black headband and tiger pelt, the Black Mountain Bandits surged forward behind their chief.
'Hm?'
At that moment, a woman came riding straight at Zhang Yan. Her features were strikingly beautiful, but judging by her saddle and harness, she was no general of wide renown. She wore white hair tinged with blue, let loose down one side, and her eyes were like the phoenixes of myth, smoldering with a refined, banked killing intent.
'Something about this one feels wrong...'
The aura of the warrior bearing down on him sent an involuntary chill up Zhang Yan's spine, but he could not stop here. Unless he fled to Sishui Pass at once, the fierce generals swarming up behind would tear him limb from limb.
"Out of my way! You mangy bitch!! I am Zhang Yan, the Flying General of Bingzhou-!!"
Vile curses spilling from his mouth, he hurled himself at the woman before him—Guan Yu.
"...How vulgar."
Guan Yu murmured the words calmly, raising her crescent blade—engraved with the pattern of an azure dragon—in one fluid motion.
The instant the distance between them closed, she swung the blade with a speed the eye could not follow.
-Shhk!
"...Huh?"
A line of cold light flashed along the crescent blade, catching the sun, and drew itself straight through the air—and Zhang Yan exhaled a sound that seemed almost bewildered.
His gaze, fixed ahead on Guan Yu as he charged, dropped downward. The scene before his eyes flipped and flipped again, the world tumbling in chaos—ground above, sky below, everything jumbled beyond sense.
Thud.
A cold, rough sensation met his face, and Zhang Yan watched a familiar body slip from its horse. It was his own. The enemy commander had severed his neck in the space of a heartbeat.
'Th-that's impossible...'
Only then did Zhang Yan understand, with utter finality, that he was dead. A fountain of blood geysered from the headless body as it toppled limply from the saddle—the last sight he would ever see.
The head of Zhang Yan—half of the pair who shared the epithet 'Flying General' with Lu Bu—went flying from the blade of a woman he had taken for a nameless officer.
The death of Zhang Yan—supreme chief of the Black Mountain Bandits and the famed 'Flying General'—plunged his horde into the extreme of confusion.
"Th-the chief is dead!!"
At their leader's death, the Black Mountain Bandits raised their final screams and broke, fleeing in every direction. The moment the enemy's morale snapped, the coalition pressing from the front surged forward as one and hurled itself at Sishui Pass. Behind them, the rest of the allied army—apparently loath to be robbed of the credit—dressed its ranks and came racing up at speed.
'Flailing about, trying to lay their spoons on a meal that's already been dished up...'
But Zhang Yan's head had already been taken and the Black Mountain forces annihilated; by the time the latecomers arrived, it was far too late. Sishui Pass, its garrison strangers to siege defense and robbed of any commander who could lead the Black Mountain horde, fell into the coalition's grasp scarcely any time after the assault began—all thanks to Zhang Yan's personal arrogance.
The soldiers manning the pass, who felt no loyalty toward a lord who ruled by tyranny, surrendered straight to us without a fight.
While the coalition warlords who had not even joined the battle fussed over the military stores stockpiled in Sishui Pass, Fa Zheng studied the prisoners and made her preparations for the next fight.
"Now then, to make our next battle at Hulao Pass an easy one, allow me to set the board."
So saying, Fa Zheng ran her eyes over the prisoners—or rather, over the military gear they wore.
That night, without a word to the coalition's warlords, a force of about a hundred slipped away toward Hulao Pass. So small was their number that not a soul noticed.
In Luoyang, Ding Yuan and Zhang Yang put their heads together, devising countermeasures against the coalition.
"There is a way to drive Yuan Shao and Han Fu back."
"Oh? Now that's worth hearing."
At Zhang Yang's words, a spark of interest kindled in Ding Yuan's eyes—eyes that had been aching over the coalition for days.
"Yes. Just as was done with Han Yeong, we need only borrow the arms of an outside force. The man I have in mind is Gongsun Zan, at Beiping."
"...Gongsun Zan? That young whelp who styles himself the White Horse General?"
Ding Yuan's face twisted of its own accord. True to form for an old man who envied every talented soul around him, he displayed open jealousy toward Gongsun Zan, whose renown as the hero of Youzhou had only grown as he ground the foreign tribes to dust.
"Yes. At present he is said to be at loggerheads with Liu Yu over the treatment of the tribes. Grant him the title of Governor of Youzhou, have him kill Liu Yu—a man he already despises—and bid him invade Jizhou, the power base of Yuan Shao and Han Fu. That is all there is to it."
With the governor's cap of Youzhou on his head and the death of the hated Liu Yu to sweeten the bargain, Gongsun Zan would be drawn in as a willing ally; and once he invaded Jizhou, Han Fu and Yuan Shao, whose strength was rooted there, would have no choice but to pull back. And once Yuan Shao, the alliance's leader, withdrew, the coalition's unity would begin to waver.
At Zhang Yang's counsel, Ding Yuan sent the Emperor's edict off to Gongsun Zan.
Not long afterward, one of his messengers came sprinting in with a report.
"General!! General Zhang Yan has fallen in battle, and Sishui Pass has been taken!!"
"What?! How could they fall so swiftly?!"
At the news that Zhang Yan—bearer of the revered title 'Flying General' and chief of the mighty Black Mountain Bandits—had thrown his life away so cheaply, and that Sishui Pass had fallen with him, the Black Mountain-born generals under Ding Yuan's command began to murmur.
"General Zhang Yan, defeated...?"
"Then... aren't our own lives in danger as well?"
The Black Mountain chieftains garrisoned in Luoyang at Zhang Yan's side felt the cold breath of crisis at their necks. They feared that if things went on as they were, their lives would be forfeit—and unlike Zhang Yan, they had no reason of their own to be bound to Ding Yuan.
"Silence, the lot of you!! We have the Flying General Lu Bu!! This is a fight we cannot possibly lose-!!"
Ding Yuan brandished Lu Bu's name to silence and rein in the trembling bandits. At the name of the woman called the War God of Bingzhou, the Black Mountain chiefs-turned-generals shut their mouths as one. Ordinarily Ding Yuan chafed at his inability to bring her to heel, but to quiet a rabble of bandits, there had been no help for it.
Afterward, he doled out suitable ranks and formally folded the Black Mountain chieftains into his own command.
"General. We must somehow hold the coalition at bay until Gongsun Zan moves."
"...I know."
Ding Yuan understood perfectly well what Zhang Yang was getting at.
"Summon Lu Bu!! The Unrivaled Under Heaven shall hold Hulao Pass!!"
Intending to stop the coalition with Lu Bu, the Unrivaled Under Heaven, Ding Yuan made the proclamation to his assembled generals with brimming confidence.
"...Lord Fengxian, are you well?"
"...Yeah. I'm fine."
Days of agonizing had worn Lu Bu's eyes ragged and left her face visibly gaunt. Deep in her heart, she knew with certainty what the right answer was: killing Ding Yuan was the best course. And still she hesitated, unable to make the bold decision.
For Lu Bu, who still carried the memory of losing her mother to the foreign tribes, the choice to kill with her own hands the adoptive father she had cherished as her true father was a cruel one—and even if she did the deed, she had no idea how she was to go on living afterward. As Ding Yuan's adopted daughter, notorious by reputation and scorned in the Central Plains as a frontier-born soldier, she could not imagine that she and the Eight Elite Cavalrymen would ever be taken into another's service. And even if she did kill her adoptive father—would the lords who had formed the coalition truly spare her and her riders, who had helped Ding Yuan seize his power? To butcher the man she had loved as a father was impossible unless something shattered her very foundations, and the future beyond was dark with uncertainty.
Some of the Eight Elite Cavalrymen, disillusioned by her endless wavering, had already gone back to Bingzhou.
'...Yes. Better to die fighting. At least that would sit easier.'
After long torment, Lu Bu concluded that dying sword in hand was the kinder fate, and resolved to march for Hulao Pass—not for Ding Yuan's sake, but in a spirit of sheer self-abandonment. In a place where so many lords had gathered, surely there would be a warrior capable of killing her. Of course, she had no intention of simply trotting out on command; she named her conditions to Ding Yuan, and only then set out for Hulao Pass. Though she had said she would go alone, several officers—Zhang Liao and Gao Shun foremost among them—rode out to war behind her.
"...I beg your pardon? General Lu has taken the field?"
Xun You, deep in her own secret plotting, was thrown into bewilderment by the belated news that Lu Bu had set out for Hulao Pass. Even as she worked in the shadows, the court's great ministers had failed again and again to assassinate Ding Yuan, and so she proceeded with the utmost caution, taking pains never to leave a thread for anyone to seize. But Lu Bu she had not yet approached at all. She had assumed that Lu Bu, at odds with Ding Yuan as she was, would sit this battle out.
With Sishui Pass fallen, Wang Zhi, one of Ding Yuan's close aides, had grown uneasy for his own skin. Just that day he had sent word to her: in exchange for revealing what Ding Yuan was hiding from Lu Bu, he wanted his safety guaranteed.
'To secure His Majesty's safety while he remains confined, Lu Bu is indispensable...'
Judging by Ding Yuan's character, the moment the coalition cornered him he was exactly the sort of man who would commit the monstrous outrage of taking the Emperor hostage to force them to withdraw. And as long as the Emperor was imprisoned somewhere unknown even to the court's ministers, the plot demanded painstaking care—and her plan needed Lu Bu. Forging official documents on the strength of Wang Zhi's testimony, and laying out the conspiracy for the court ministers in meticulous detail, would take time yet.
"...Please see that this letter reaches Zheng Tai, who is serving with Han Yeong's army."
And so Xun You dispatched a single secret letter to Zheng Tai, who marched with Han Yeong's forces.