The Siege of Jiangling
Jiangling Castle.
A key strategic stronghold of Jingzhou, renowned as a vast and formidable fortress. Defended by Xu Shu, Zhang Fei, Jin Cheong, and others, it was currently the scene of fierce offensive and defensive battles.
“Push them back! Today we finish this once and for all!”
Pan Zhang, the Wu general who had stepped forward as a frontline commander, bellowed at the top of his lungs.
Infantry swarmed up the walls like ants, clinging to ladders. Jiangling Castle did not simply stand and watch.
“Loose! Don’t let a single one of them climb up!”
Archers on the battlements poured arrows down, and the soldiers trying to scale the walls collapsed like porcupines.
Wu troops clung on with desperate tenacity, straining to crest the ramparts, yet not a single man had succeeded so far.
“Aaaagh!”
A ladder braced against the wall was shoved outward and toppled; the men clinging to it screamed as they tumbled to the ground. Stones and boiling water followed, cascading onto the heads of those still trying to climb. The defense was solid. The corpses of Wu soldiers piled higher and higher at the foot of the walls.
“Prepare to return fire!”
Zhu Ran, co-commanding the siege alongside Pan Zhang, raised a hand and gave the order. The infantry ranks a short distance back locked their shields into a wall, and the archers behind them raised their bows.
“Loose!”
Whizz-whizz-whizz!
Arrows from both armies rained across the walls like a storm. When the fire from the battlements slackened for a moment, Pan Zhang issued the next command.
“Siege units, advance!”
“Yes, sir! Push, all of you! Today is the day we take Jiangling Castle!”
At the siege commander’s shout, the battering rams, mobile towers, and other engines that had been waiting in the rear began to roll forward.
They were painfully slow, yet each one was a weapon of devastating power against a fortified city.
Even Jiangling, which had held firm until now, could not help swallowing a tense breath at the sight of the approaching engines.
“Push! Put your backs into it! Get them up against the gate!”
Spurred by their officers, the soldiers strained harder. One battering ram creaked and groaned as it closed on the main gate.
The Shu forces were not about to let it come unopposed. Archers above the gate concentrated their fire on the ram.
But the men pushing it were well protected by shields, so the arrows did less damage than hoped. A few shafts slipped through and struck legs, yet the Wu soldiers, eyes burning with resolve, kept shoving.
“Fire arrows!”
A new order rang out from the walls. Moments later, flaming shafts began to fall onto the ram. The siege engines were built of wood; the defenders calculated that fire would cripple them.
Yet even those carefully prepared fire arrows failed to do serious harm.
The Wu army had already anticipated the tactic and draped the ram’s roof with water-soaked hides. The flaming shafts bounced off as if they were little more than an itch, and the ram ground its way right up to the gate.
“Breach the gate!”
Boom!
The siege ram’s head smashed into Jiangling’s iron-bound doors, sending a brutal shock through the wood.
After several more crushing blows, something previously unseen swung into view directly above their heads.
Creak.
It was an enormous cauldron. Pulleys and ropes groaned ominously as they swung the vessel over the attackers.
“Pour!”
With a single shout the cauldron tipped, dumping its contents.
“Aaagh!”
“It’s boiling oil!”
The Wu soldiers beneath the ram screamed. The scalding oil cascaded over the roof and the hides, then dripped and ran down onto the bodies of the men below, seizing them in its fiery grip.
“Loose! Burn them all!”
Another command rang from the walls, and a fresh volley of fire arrows descended.
“Aaaagh!”
Even water-soaked hides became kindling once they met boiling oil. The earlier defense had been nothing but a feint; that single strike turned the ram’s roof into a roaring red mass of flame in an instant.
The fire began to devour the ram whole, as if it were swallowing a single rice ball in one gulp.
Unable to endure it, the soldiers scattered in panic, and the ram—its fearsome power never fully unleashed—sagged and belched black smoke.
Yet the assault was far from over. This time a number of mobile siege towers rolled forward.
Slower than the battering rams, but taller even than the walls themselves, the towers loomed over the defenders as they approached.
Using that height, the attackers loosed arrows, forcing the garrison to crouch and take cover behind shields and the low parapets crowning the walls.
“Throw!”
When the towers drew close enough, defenders leaned out from behind their shields, whirled something in wide circles, and hurled it.
Crash! Crash!
They were jars filled with oil. The vessels shattered against the towers with sharp reports, splashing oil across the timber.
“Open fire!”
Just as before, fire arrows streaked in and thudded into the wooden frames.
The towers had been dampened with water before the assault, but against the combination of oil and flame they were helpless.
One after another the towers caught fire and ground to a halt.
A tower that could no longer withstand the blaze collapsed with a crash, the shockwave reaching the Wu soldiers nearby. Burning timbers rained from the sky; men fell on their backsides and groaned.
The siege engines Lu Xun had prepared with such ambition burned one by one and crumbled to ash.
“Damn it all!”
A rare curse slipped from Lu Xun’s lips. He had expected difficulty, but Jiangling’s defense far exceeded his imagination.
“Grand Commander! Send me out!”
Beside him Ding Feng shouted. With so few engines left, he too was growing frantic.
Lu Xun turned to look at him.
“Are you certain? It will be dangerous.”
He had heard the plan beforehand. Even for a warrior as fierce as Ding Feng, the scheme had seemed too reckless, which was why Lu Xun had never adopted it until now.
Yet if things continued as they were, the casualties would only snowball.
“Death is always a risk on the battlefield, and once a man takes the field he must stake his life. If we cling to our lives we will never achieve great things!”
Lu Xun still worried that he was sending the young general into a death trap, but he could hesitate no longer.
“Very well. Go, Ding Feng! If you take the castle, I will report your merit to His Majesty in full detail!”
“Yes! Thank you, Grand Commander.”
Ding Feng bowed to Lu Xun, then turned to face his own men.
“The Grand Commander has given leave! Now it is our turn. Are you all ready?”
“Yes!”
“Anyone who feels even a little fear may fall out!”
“None, sir!”
“Good! Tonight we sleep with our legs stretched out inside Jiangling Castle! We go!”
“Wah! Wah!”
Ding Feng’s men raised their swords overhead and roared.
They looked nothing like ordinary soldiers. They had cast aside both armor and helmets, wearing only ordinary clothes, and carried nothing but swords and shields.
By stripping their gear to the bare minimum they meant to maximize mobility and scale the walls in a single rush.
“Move!”
“Wah!”
Ding Feng and his men howled as they charged toward Jiangling Castle. They swept past the burning towers without slowing; arrows they met with raised shields. A few men fell to shafts and dropped out, yet the rest never slackened pace.
As the wall loomed close, Ding Feng snatched up a spear lying on the ground. Without breaking stride he put the full force of his run into a throw aimed at the battlements.
Whoosh!
“Guh!”
The spear flew almost dead straight and punched clean through the chest of an archer who had been drawing a bead on Ding Feng.
The man’s body flew backward as if struck by a siege ram and tumbled from the wall; the arrow he had nocked shot uselessly into the sky.
“Climb!”
“Waaah!”
Impressed by Ding Feng’s feat, the light infantry poured every last ounce of strength into their sprint.
Reaching the foot of the wall, Ding Feng seized a standing ladder and led the way upward; his men scrambled after him.
Incoming arrows they blocked with shields; falling stones they angled their shields to glance aside.
“Ding Feng is first onto the wall!”
Faster than anyone else, Ding Feng vaulted onto the battlements and bellowed as he began cutting down the defenders.
Crash!
“Ugh!”
He swung his shield and smashed the face of the nearest soldier.
Several more attacked at once, but Ding Feng met them all with the shield, then drove forward with a body check that sent a handful of men sprawling.
He flung the shield at an archer who was about to loose at him, then drew a curved blade from his belt—its edge already notched from hard use.
Freed of the shield, Ding Feng’s movements grew even lighter. He leapt among the soldiers like a man performing a lively sword dance, not a single motion out of place.
No one on that stretch of wall could match his martial skill. Wherever his blade passed, a storm of blood followed.
His men, climbing up behind him, began to seize sections of the battlements.
“Halt! I’ll stop your rampage!”
An officer who looked to be of deputy-general rank stepped into his path.
“Oh? Someone worth crossing blades with, perhaps?”
Ding Feng turned toward him and raised his sword.
Wah! Wah! Wah!
What reached my ears was a dizzying roar loud enough to leave them ringing.
What filled my eyes was the swarm of Wu soldiers and siege engines rushing forward like a cloud of bees.
These were the sights and sounds that met me as I held one sector of the wall defense.
Siege towers were closing on the castle right in front of me. Arrows poured from them, thudding into shields and the stone of the wall.
“Now! Throw!”
I had been waiting for the right moment. At my shout a soldier beside me leaned out over the shield wall, whirled an oil jar, and hurled it.
The moment the jar arced above the tower I loosed a fire arrow I had already nocked.
Crash!
The jar shattered in midair as the flaming shaft struck it, scattering a crimson rain of fire across the tower. The Wu soldiers riding it screamed.
In this fashion I burned several towers and held the line.
By now the enemy’s siege engines were nearly spent. I had just begun to catch my breath when—
“Wah! Wah!”
A sudden uproar erupted from a stretch of wall some distance away.
“What is that?”
It was a different kind of commotion from anything so far. Judging by the noise, enemy troops had already come over the top.
That sector was Gou Fu’s. Don’t tell me it’s been breached?
“General! General!”
A soldier came racing up, gasping for breath.
“General, disaster! The enemy general Ding Feng and his light infantry have scaled the wall! We need reinforcements at once!”
“What!”
I had thought we could finally breathe, and now this…
In our army the only ones who could face Ding Feng were Zhang Fei and myself. Zhang Fei was commanding farther down the line, so I had to go. Gou Fu alone would not be enough.
“Yu Eun, take command here the way we’ve been doing it. I’m going myself!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
I drew my sword and, with a handful of soldiers, sprinted toward the place where Ding Feng had come over the wall.
Wu troops were already up in numbers, locked in combat with our men. I drove into their midst and cut several down.
“Hiyah!”
Right beside me an enemy soldier who had just climbed a ladder leapt at me, sword raised high.
Before he could swing I drove a kick into his chest and sent him tumbling off the wall. Several more climbing behind him tangled and fell with him; a chorus of screams rose together.
I kept cutting my way forward through the enemy ranks—and then I saw him.
Gou Fu, clutching his shoulder, slumped on the ground.
And in front of him, Ding Feng raising his blade for the finishing stroke.
First Wang Ping, and now Gou Fu as well!
“Stop!”
I flew forward like the wind and barely managed to knock aside the sword that had been descending toward Gou Fu’s neck.
Clang!
“Huh?!”
I followed with several more cuts that forced him back, then spoke.
“Gou Fu, fall back.”
“Yes…”
Fortunately his life was not in danger; Gou Fu retreated.
“I came to take this place, you know.”
“Now that I’m here, you haven’t a chance.”
Ding Feng lifted his sword before his eyes.
“True enough. To swallow this castle, it seems I have to get past you first.”
“If you think you can, then try.”
Ding Feng and I clashed once more.