The Battle of Zhaoyang
A blue tide sheared across the battlefield. Gold-thread banners stamped with the mark of Nanling snapped in the wind as the cavalry thundered on, hooves drumming out a hard, relentless rhythm.
The charge of heavy horse kindles courage in one's own ranks and despair in the enemy's. A soldier swallowed by fear is nothing more than a scarecrow.
Crack!
Before the Wei officers could so much as rally their men, the riders streaked in like lightning and punched straight through the formation.
Every time a spear cleaved the air, a spray of blood leapt toward the sky. Before the enemy could gather their wits, their morale was shattered utterly. Spearheads that took throats cut the last threads of hope, and hooves that trampled the fallen crushed the first shoots of will.
"Hold fast! Second rank, rally toward the enemy cavalry! First rank, give ground by degrees and rebuild the formation! Trap their riders inside us! Cavalry that has lost its speed is prey even infantry can take!"
An enemy commander, still burning with fighting spirit though his formation had been breached.
I had never seen his face, yet he was plainly no ordinary man. This was Wei. Even the officers I did not know possessed skill of that order.
But no matter how exceptional a commander may be, his soldiers do not suddenly surge in ability. Reality is no game. Rouse their will all you like; their strength does not climb with it.
The spear whirled. Sweeping through a fluid arc, it flung aside everything that stood in its way.
Slash! Crack! Thud!
Heads flew. Armor shattered. Bodies tumbled. Such was the end of those who stood in our path.
Watching dozens, then hundreds, plunge into the pit of death, terror spread across the enemy's faces. Some, helplessness seeping into their hearts, even let their weapons fall. Beyond them the field was empty of resistance. Swallowed by fear, the Wei troops died staring blankly at the spearpoints driving in, not so much as thrusting their own as the cavalry swept past.
The enemy commander was close. Seen clearly now, he was no craven fleeing in panic, but a true general whose resolve still burned even at the cliff's edge.
And so he had to die here.
"Fu Qian! Guard my flanks! I'll take their commander!"
With the formation already collapsed, Wei's stand had reached its limit. Cut down their general as well, and the battle would tip entirely our way.
Clang!
The spearpoint sought the gap between armor and helm with perfect aim, and he twisted it aside on his blade. I recovered the shaft that had grazed him by a hair and chained the strike into a second thrust, then a third.
The blows came down like a sudden squall. On the sixth, his sword was knocked from his grip. On the seventh, the spear raked his arm.
Blood spread through the battle robe beneath the armor. With his right arm cut, swinging a sword was no longer possible. That meant the end. My spear gave him no room even for last words and, without mercy, opened his throat. Even as it passed through his neck, he died with both eyes wide, glaring to the very last.
Only when he toppled from the saddle did he show me his back. For a moment I regretted never having learned his name.
"The General Who Pacifies the North has slain their commander!"
Fu Qian's cry spread like a ripple across the whole battlefield. But I was not finished.
I turned my gaze at once. The center of the enemy line. Xu Huang stood there.
If I go to him myself, will he withdraw—or try to take me and turn the battle in a single stroke?
Eager to find out, I took the reins.
"General Zhu Ling has fallen."
The moment Zhao Yan saw Xu Huang return to the center, he ran to him and made his report.
They had struck while Xu Huang was away, supporting the opposite flank. No—they had aimed for that from the start. For the side that encircled and attacked, the proper course was not to hammer where the defense stood firm, but to pierce the formation where the far side had been weakened.
This opponent was no Lü Bu, hurling himself into a contest of raw strength. She relished a head-on clash, yet she also knew how to strike at a weakness.
Zhao Yan sensed the crisis. A breach opened once would now burst open in place after place. It was time to pull the army together and prepare to retreat.
"General, you must withdraw. The enemy's momentum is at its peak, and our morale is low. Fight on like this, and only we will bleed."
Xu Huang stared at Zhang Lan, who had cut down Zhu Ling and was riding that momentum straight toward him.
"We need only take Zhang Lan. Those men follow her even more than they follow Liu Bei. Capture her, and we can overturn the field."
"General, be calm! Zhang Lan is a fierce commander, the very image of her father! Remember what became of General Zhang He!"
At Zhao Yan's earnest plea, a faint twitch ran along the corner of Xu Huang's eye.
Zhang He. Counted with Xu Huang among the Five Elite Generals, he had in the end met his death on Zhang Lan's spear.
Yet Xu Huang was certain he was the stronger. As a commander, perhaps not—but in personal martial prowess, he stood above Zhang He. To defeat him, one would have to bring Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, the warriors said to match ten thousand. And even if they came, a victory without wounds would be a distant hope.
Xu Huang had in fact crossed blades with Guan Yu, back when Guan Yu had briefly served under Cao Cao. It had only been a sparring match, yet Xu Huang had held his own against that Guan Yu. The arrogant Guan Yu had kept company with Xu Huang and Zhang Liao, and treated them with respect, precisely because they were fierce men who could stand beside him.
Zhang Lan? He granted it. Once might be luck, but from the second time on, it was her own skill. How many generals of Wei had fallen to her spear? Cao Hong, Zhang He, Cao Zhang—all had fallen. Zhang Lan's strength was real.
Even so, he did not believe he himself would lose.
Reading the confidence beneath Xu Huang's silence, Zhao Yan hurried to add more.
"Of course you would defeat Zhang Lan, General. But how long would it take? Can our army hold until then?"
"A fight between the strong can be decided in a single exchange."
Xu Huang spoke while turning over the duel he had once watched between Zhang Liao and Guan Yu.
Unlike his own bouts, which had run past dozens of exchanges, Zhang Liao and Guan Yu had held their ground and watched for a long while, traded a single clash, and Zhang Liao had conceded. He had not understood it then. Now, more seasoned, he knew why they had settled victory and defeat in one exchange, and why the loser had accepted it. Xu Huang's realm had risen to stand with theirs. How, then, could he lose to Zhang Lan?
But Zhao Yan was not wrong.
If Xu Huang himself were pinned down by Zhang Lan, the Wei army would be slaughtered where it stood. And if Xu Huang fell, the Wei reinforcements even now gathering from every quarter would meet the same ruin.
"We should never have left Wan in the first place."
"General…"
"The Consultant speaks truly. We withdraw. Send word to Lu Zhao and Feng Kai as well."
Xu Huang could not answer a gamble staked on the whole of Jingzhou. He was no sovereign. He was a garrison general, holding territory under his lord's command.
If one could not be certain of victory, then choosing not to fight was itself a general's virtue. In the end Xu Huang folded his personal hunger for a strong foe and his love of the contest, and chose the greater interest of the state.
The clash between Zhang Lan and Xu Huang that erupted at Zhaoyang ended in Zhang Lan's victory.
Of Xu Huang's army, more than ten thousand strong, fewer than half returned to Wancheng alive and whole. The losses were not slight. His lieutenants, Zhu Ling and Lu Zhao, were among the dead.
Even that much had been barely preserved by the desperate efforts of Xu Huang and Zhao Yan. Wang Ping had cut the line of retreat with precision, but Tian Yu was a cut above Wang Ping.
Zhang Lan did pursue, but it was little more than a formality. After a forced march and a battle fought without a breath of rest, the weary Nanling army needed to recover. Thanks to her choice to abandon the chase in favor of that recovery, and to Tian Yu's cooperation, Xu Huang was able to return to Wancheng.
Yet none of the inner circumstances mattered—that Xu Huang's ranks had been thick with raw recruits, that Zhang Lan had brought the Nanling army whose hands and feet had long moved as one, or how remarkable it was to withdraw at all under such wretched conditions. Only the rumor swelled and spread: Zhang Lan had beaten Xu Huang.
After Guan Yu's Quaking of Huaxia, which had swept Xiangfan and all of Nanxiang, came the Flight of the Southern Roc. Struck by loss after loss, Wei had in effect lost its hold on Jingzhou south of Wancheng.
And Zhang Lan and the Nanling army, having recovered their strength in place of pursuit, immediately began to tear through the Nanyang region. Defeating Xu Shang and Lü Qian in succession as they came on with further reinforcements, she achieved every operational aim she had set.
Even so, Cao Cao and the army of Wei gathered men and horses in silence and devoted themselves to the next battle. Though the lives of Cao Ren and Man Chong, shut inside Xiangfan, hung like a candle in the wind, they clung to war rather than negotiation, because they too had found something to trust.
That something was a secret alliance with Sun Quan.
On the very day he met the envoy Sima Yi, Sun Quan accepted the secret pact.
It so happened that Guan Yu, short of grain, had trespassed without leave at Xiang Pass and carried off the military rice. Taking that as his pretext, Sun Quan raised his army.
Lü Meng was cunning.
He put forward Lu Xun, still unknown, and sent Guan Yu a letter thick with flattery to loosen his guard. Not content with that, he entered Jingzhou disguised not in warships but in merchant vessels, the better to deceive the watchposts Guan Yu had set along the riverbank out of fear that Sun Quan would turn.
But their plan had been exposed from the very beginning.
On high ground overlooking the river, a man watched those watchposts fall into Lü Meng's hands.
Mingjing. As expected, your judgment and mine were sound.
His name was Pang Tong.
Pang Tong had always thought the same thing. If Liu Bei were ever to fall, it would not be by Cao Wei. It would be by Sun Quan. Conversation with Zhang Lan had taken that thought and given it a clear, concrete shape.
Zhou Yu, Lu Su, Lü Meng. Not one of them was wanting beside me, or beside Kongming.
Of the three, Pang Tong watched Lü Meng.
Zhou Yu had been a prodigy heaven itself had sent, but he was short-lived. Lu Su's character stood as high as his ability; he was not a man to cast aside the duty owed an ally.
Lü Meng was different.
A wolf. Keen enough to tear out the throat of a staggering tiger.
Some would call Sun Quan's betrayal a fool's devouring of his own flesh, a man who had forgotten that when the lips are gone, the teeth grow cold. Pang Tong saw it as inevitable.
Not simply because Lü Meng, who favored war, had taken hold of the army. From Sun Quan's seat, a Liu Bei who grew without end was perhaps a deadlier threat than Wei itself. The Yangtze was already a poor thing to lean on, and Guan Yu had gone so far as to raise a river fleet. Jiangnan was weak in a fight on land. A Liu Bei who had beaten Wei's army even in a head-on clash was a crisis in truth.
And Sun Quan knows Zhou Yu's plan to divide the realm.
Sun Quan would remember that grand design: split the world into north and south, take the south, and aim a northern campaign from there. The growth of his neighbor Liu Bei was not something he could ignore. He must have felt, at least once, the need to twist the current running in Liu Bei's favor.
"But he is far too late. If he meant to move, he should have moved while we were still fighting in Hanzhong."
Every arrangement was already in place.
Pang Tong was certain. This was a grand design that he, Pang Tong himself, and Zhang Lan had put their heads together to devise. Whatever small errors might arise, the success of it would not change.