The Battle of Mount Dingjun
Wring a rooster's neck, and dawn still comes. Stop the hands of a clock, and time still flows.
The day of the decisive stroke. The final act that would bring the Battle of Mount Dingjun to its close had arrived.
Morning began in quiet. Only a handful knew the day's plan, and none of them were green enough to fidget and give themselves away.
Whether from the aftershock of yesterday's assault and withdrawal, Wei's army was quiet as well. To fight a furious battle two days running demanded tremendous stamina, and the exhaustion borne by the attacking side went without saying.
Generals of the caliber of Xiahou Yuan and Zhang He would hardly fail to consider a counterattack. They would take today, naturally, for a day to catch their breath.
And so it proved. From the hour the sun passed its zenith, through the spilling of dusk, until it vanished beyond the mountains, Wei's encampment lay still—ignorant of what was about to fall upon them, and ignorant that this brief peace was only the windless calm before the storm.
Then at last, when darkness settled over the earth, the movement began.
They wrapped the curtain of night about their bodies to hide their shapes, and bound cloth about the feet of men and horses to kill the sound. The descent from Mount Dingjun was carried out in a silence that raised the hair on the neck.
To deepen the secrecy, the fifteen thousand soldiers moved split into fifteen companies of a thousand each. The Lanling Army, too, was divided five ways: Wang Ping, Zhang Yi, Ma Zhong, Ma Dai, and myself.
I arrived first, and one company after another joined me in turn.
"Prepare the fire arrows."
The instant I confirmed that the last of the rear echelon had arrived, I set the fire attack in motion, exactly as I had arranged with Father beforehand.
In the gloom, flames blossomed all around Zouma Valley. Zhang He's scouts caught sight of them and began ringing bells and shouting in frantic alarm, but it was already too late.
"Loose."
Fire streaked across the night sky. The loosed arrows lodged wherever they struck—abatis, tents, brushwood—and set them burning, until smoke smothered a sky that had been black and clear, without a single cloud.
As if the heavens, ashamed of the slaughter about to come, had covered their own eyes, a ringing shout echoed through the valley beneath the thick smoke that blotted out even the starlight.
"All-out attack—!!"
At Father's command the soldiers surged forward as one.
I signaled those who rode with me.
"Xiaoxing. We're going too."
The iron cavalry under Ju Fu, and the personal guard that followed me—a force made entirely of horsemen—broke into a headlong charge. The target was Zhang He. I gripped my spear with a sincerity I had never felt before.
"Out of the way!!"
Wei's troops lived up to their name as elite. Even caught in an unexpected night assault, they armed themselves swiftly in the firelight and moved to meet us. It was a counter possible not only because of outstanding commanders such as Zhang He, Guo Huai, and Han Hao, but because the soldiers themselves were thoroughly drilled.
I knocked aside a spear driving for my flank and, in the same motion, drove the spearhead into an enemy's throat. The spear Pu Yuan had made for me flexed like a willow and swept the man aside.
I was not the only one with enemies clinging close. A Wei soldier who had not even managed to don his armor hooked the legs out from under one of our cavalry and brought the horse down, while our iron riders trampled enemy troops without mercy as they drove on.
If the word ferocious were given flesh, it would look like this. A desperation in which neither side would bend its fighting spirit held the field in its grip.
Even surprised under cover of night, Zhang He's command had been thrown into confusion only at the first instant. Before I could so much as pick out Zhang He himself, they had recovered their cold composure.
One host striving to take the enemy general. The other striving to protect its own commander.
The balance of a contest in which neither side yielded an inch was tipping, at last, toward us.
Heaven's timing. Earth's advantage. The harmony of men.
Of the three factors Father had taught me decide a victory, the enemy held only the ground. Even in a fight whose circumstances were the reverse of Dangqu, the winning momentum inclined to our side.
However well they had braced for a night attack, we had poured out everything we possessed, staking the fate of the battle itself. There was no way they could hold.
"Do not fall back! I take the lead! Follow me!"
In the Wei camp burning crimson, spear and blade danced.
However the enemy barred the way, our steps did not stop. We cut them down and cut them down again, and pressed forward—treading a road of corpses, treading a carpet of blood, cutting straight across the heart of a hell where the fire-demon raged.
Judging, it seemed, that an advance they could not check was hopeless to stop from the outside, Wei's army abandoned the outer soldiers caught half-armed by the surprise and drew inward to mass.
In the time those outer soldiers bought with their lives, fully armed Wei elites formed a defensive square behind abatis and palisades, and our own troops could not rashly break the line.
"Now I see him."
Across the way, an enemy general came into view, urging his men in person and issuing orders. Zhang He.
Beneath him, his lieutenants moved busily through the ranks, bellowing to boil their morale back up.
Guo Huai. Fei Yao. Han Hao...
Not one of them was a man to take lightly. Their grip on their troops had succeeded in raising a banner of resistance even inside the onslaught Father was driving.
It was only barely raised, for now. But if Xiahou Yuan's reinforcements arrived, that banner would become the beacon of a counterattack.
I'll break it before then.
"We'll punch through in a single breath. Is there anyone here who fears death? If there is, you may withdraw."
"There is not!"
"We go with the general!"
"Good! Then we ride!"
Thud-thud-thud—!!
The drum of hooves beating the earth swallowed the battlefield's roar and raced on.
Then the impact.
Crack! Crunch!!
Iron cavalry sheathed in horse-armor smashed the abatis and charged. Without slackening their speed, our riders' spears took enemy lives without a miss.
A brilliant mounted fight, all but impossible for the ordinary armored cavalry of this age. Braced on the footrest of the stirrup, both hands free, their charge was nothing less than living chariots—moving calamities.
It was a headlong rampage that seemed as if nothing could stop it. Yet the roll of war drums from the rear acted upon it as an invisible force of resistance.
"So they've come."
The drums announcing that the enemy's reinforcements had arrived rolled through Zouma Valley.
With this, Xiahou Yuan's death was sealed. Unable to look away from the crisis of a lamp guttering in the wind that had come upon Zhang He, Xiahou Yuan had, in the end, accepted the crisis that had come upon himself.
"General, I'll hold them!"
"Dexin."
Ma Zhong, who had been following close on my heels among the cavalry, looked at me with eyes that begged for the order. The situation was razor-tight. Every moment was urgent.
"Take Fu Qian with you."
"By your command!"
I split the army into three. My own company, with Ju Fu and Yueun beside me, to break the front. The company led by Zhang Yi and Wang Si, mainly infantry, to follow in our wake and widen the line. And the company Ma Zhong was now taking aside, with Fu Qian, to stop the enemy reinforcements.
"From this moment we do not stop. No matter what happens in the rear, do not look back! We break through—or we die here! There is no third way!!"
"Stubborn bastards...!"
Watching Liu Bei's army claw its way up while a handful of men held the reinforcements at bay, Zhang He let the rage boiling from the pit of his gut burst free.
How could she do this, in a woman's body?
Seeing the majesty of Zhang Lan as she flung aside soldiers who clung to her like flies, Zhang He spat a fury shot through with admiration. Zhang Fei on the opposite flank was menace enough to chill the blood, and now the daughter was running mad as well. There was no way Zhang He's insides could keep from burning.
In his mind, the nightmare of Dangqu was playing out again. It had been the same then. Zhang Fei had cut them through the waist, Zhang Lan had barred the way ahead, and Zhang He had been forced to abandon even his horse and flee, ugly and desperate, down a side path.
But this time was different. The enemy would pay the price of a reckless plan.
The reinforcements are here. We can win this. Easily.
Zhang Fei and Zhang Lan were peerless braves who raised the hackles—all the more so because they were not merely strong in some mindless way.
But hem them in with a greater host, and even they would be hard-pressed. All they could manage would be to spend every ounce of strength just slipping the encirclement.
This place will be your grave.
Zhang He made the arrival of the reinforcements known with everything he had, and drove his soldiers without pause to wring out their strength down to the last grain.
Yet the lift in Wei's morale lasted only a moment. The shock that followed drove that soaring spirit straight down, as if a blade had been plunged through it from above.
"Xiahou Yuan is dead! Huang Zhong, General Who Campaigns Against the Caitiffs of Great Han, has taken the head of Xiahou Yuan, general of Wei!!"
At a cry from Liu Bei's army no different from a bolt out of a clear sky, Zhang He's mouth fell open, and he plunged into shock.
"Wh... what..."
Zhang He clawed his reason back with difficulty. He was the commanding general. No matter what unforeseen disaster struck, he was bound to answer with a calm, cold head.
Barely catching hold of a mind that was slipping away, he denied the words of Liu Bei's men. There was neither leisure nor reason to test the truth. It had to be a lie. It had to be.
"General! Disaster!"
Fei Yao, who had been fighting on the line, came running to Zhang He in desperate haste. From that face gone the color of earth, Zhang He sighed inwardly.
Xiahou Yuan's death was the truth.
"Do not act rashly. The soldiers are watching."
"General, this is no time for that! They say the General Who Conquers the West has truly fallen to their scheme!"
At Fei Yao's desperate cry, Guo Huai, who had been listening at Zhang He's side, turned a devastated face on him.
"You must withdraw at once. The men who were attacking the General Who Conquers the West will be here soon. If you fall as well, then we are truly finished!!"
"..."
Zhang He's throat worked. The order for a mutual destruction—to counterattack and drag at least one of them down with him, Zhang Fei or Zhang Lan—rose to the tip of his tongue and turned back.
From between teeth clenched hard, a grinding sound forced its way out.
"Again..."
In the end, Zhang He could not keep hold of his reason.
"You mean I am to turn tail and run again!!"
A humiliation Zhang He would not suffer twice. The Battle of Dangqu.
That nightmare was being reproduced before his eyes once more.
"General! You must decide!"
"Aaaagh!! We withdraw! Withdraw!"
The instant Zhang He's order fell, Fei Yao and Guo Huai moved with a snap, as if they had settled their lines in advance.
Guo Huai stayed at Zhang He's side and formed up the units that would retreat, while Fei Yao ran forward again to throw up a final blocking line.
Taking Guo Huai's support, forcing feet that would not leave the ground to move, Zhang He screamed.
"Ghk— Zhang Fei... Zhang Lan... I will never forget this day's shame. I will repay it... I swear I will!!"