The Decisive Battle
Damn it. We've been had.
The faint glimmer of victory that had appeared when Han Dang's forces struck Liu Bei's personal troops was, in a single breath, bleeding into the colors of defeat.
Jin Cheong's army tore across the field like a gale, racing straight for Sun Quan's main force. Watching that spectacle, Lu Xun's face twisted with dismay.
Jin Cheong herself rode at the very tip of the spear. To her left and right came Yu Eun and Gou Fu. Directly behind them, Zheng Sui held the unit banner high and clung close, while Wang Ping coordinated the formation from the center.
Jin Cheong's force numbered only about fifteen hundred — less than half of Sun Quan's personal guard. She turned that very disadvantage into a weapon. Lightened, almost unburdened, she and her men swung wide around the battlefield and drove for the heart of the Eastern Wu army in a wedge formation. The speed of it was astonishing.
Lu Xun remembered the ferocity she had shown at Gong'an. With a mere handful of troops she had torn through Wu's ranks, rescued the Shu forces, shattered the pursuit detachment, and returned. And now she was attempting a breakthrough with her full unit intact?
Liu Bei and his guards were still locked in a hard, even fight against Han Dang's army; the line still held. Could Sun Quan show the same resilience? The answer was I don't know — and Lu Xun no longer had the luxury of wrestling with problems that refused to yield an answer.
Then another wave of dismay crashed over him.
There is no reserve left to save His Majesty…!
Every card already in his hand had been played. The trump he had been counting on still had not delivered. He had no time even to regret that he should have held at least one reserve back. He turned to a courier.
"Send a messenger to Ding Feng! He is to reverse course and defend His Majesty! At once!"
"Yes, sir!"
If Ding Feng pulled out, the center might buckle — but there was no room left to weigh that risk. All Lu Xun could do was hope Ding Feng arrived in time to save Sun Quan.
Meanwhile, in the rear, Sun Quan himself could see the force hurtling toward his main body.
Dust rose like a breaking wave. Blades and spearheads flashed with a hard, dazzling light. The soldiers' war cries rolled across the field. That single vast wedge was carving a long scar through the battlefield as it came on, as if determined to set the cold winter ablaze.
Sun Quan and a great many of the men under him had seen this sight before.
At Hefei.
A chill settled over Sun Quan's face — and over the faces of every soldier who had stood with him at Hefei — as if a killing frost had dropped from the sky.
"Hold the ranks and raise your spears! Protect His Majesty!"
The man directing the troops in Sun Quan's place was Zhou Tai.
"Song Qian, stay at His Majesty's side and fall back! I'll hold the front!"
Zhou Tai watched Song Qian begin to withdraw with Sun Quan over his shoulder, then clenched his spear shaft until it seemed ready to splinter.
"We still outnumber them! Hold until the center's reinforcements arrive — then we can crush them from front and rear!"
He shouted the words to steel his men, but even he was not certain. Could they truly hold? They had already lost the contest of momentum…
Thud-thud! Thud-thud!
The ground-shaking thunder drew closer and closer — and then Jin Cheong's army smashed head-on into Sun Quan's front.
At the point of impact, dust surged up like a tidal wave, and for a moment Zhou Tai could see nothing. When that moment passed, he saw all too clearly: his own lines were already giving way to a full breakthrough.
This far… already…
For an instant he almost mistook the general splitting his ranks at the tip of the charge for Zhang Liao. But he — no, she — was no Zhang Liao.
Zhou Tai and his officers bellowed themselves hoarse trying to rally the men. It did almost nothing.
I will not simply take this!
He had no choice. Zhou Tai spurred his horse and charged straight at the female general trampling his troops underfoot.
"I will not let you run wild any longer! I am Zhou Tai! You will not get past me!"
He did not need to win. He only needed to pin her down. With that thought, Zhou Tai drove his spear at the female general.
Clang!
If the whole battlefield had been compressed to this single point, it would have been the collision of its two strongest warriors.
Zhou Tai.
Jin Cheong caught his spear and thought. The sword and shield that guarded Sun Quan. Among every opponent she had faced, he ranked near the top. She felt it clearly the moment their spears met.
But as they traded several more exchanges, that impression began to shift.
She had grown sharper still through her duels with men like Cao Zhang and Ding Feng, and she could feel it now.
This is not an opponent I cannot beat!
She turned aside Zhou Tai's attack, spun her spear shaft to coil around his, and forced it down. The instant his strength faltered, she thrust for his face.
Clang!
"Wha—!?"
He barely blocked it — and then was immediately scrambling to stop the thrusts that followed, one after another. A rain of spear-points. Any lesser general would already have been on the ground.
What had begun as an even match was steadily tipping into Jin Cheong's hands. Once driven onto the defensive, Zhou Tai could not claw his way free. He tried to fall back a step and reset his stance, but her dazzling horsemanship gave him no chance even to open distance. Before he could draw a single clean breath, she had already closed inside his reach and was pressing him hard.
Damn it. I can't shake her off…!
The more spear-blades he turned aside, the more his hands and feet went numb and his posture crumbled. Counterattack was out of the question; even defense was becoming nearly impossible.
Unbidden, an old memory rose: the day the Shanyue tribes had ambushed them. Zhou Tai had taken a dozen spear wounds and still gotten the young Sun Quan out alive. He had hovered at death's door afterward, but he had clawed his way back and returned to a general's life.
Yet the crisis he felt now was greater than that one.
That she was this strong…!
Ting!
At last Jin Cheong's spear sent Zhou Tai's flying far from his grip — and drove straight through his body.
"Gah—!"
A scream tore out of him, thick with blood, and he toppled from the saddle.
"General Zhou Tai!"
Song Qian, who had just gotten Sun Quan to the rear, shouted and charged in. His beloved weapon, the Heaven-Overturning Halberd, swept for Jin Cheong's throat — but Song Qian had always been several cuts below Zhou Tai. After only a few exchanges, Jin Cheong's spearhead caught the crescent blade of the halberd and wrenched it away as if snatching it from the air.
The moment her spear moved to finish the disarmed Song Qian, a figure cut across her path.
Clang!
"You…!"
Jin Cheong's eyes narrowed as her strike was blocked.
"I've seen this scene before, haven't I? Only the positions are reversed…!"
The man who had stopped her spear, bloodshot eyes blazing as he spat the words, was Ding Feng.
He had ridden the instant Lu Xun's desperate order reached him — but not in time to save Zhou Tai.
"Lord Song Qian! Take Lord Zhou Tai and fall back! I'll hold this ground!"
"…Understood…"
Song Qian dragged the fallen Zhou Tai toward the rear. Ding Feng planted himself in Jin Cheong's way.
While Jin Cheong dueled three enemy generals in succession, Yu Eun and Gou Fu led the wings of her force and simply pulverized Sun Quan's main body.
For a moment it seemed Ding Feng's army, striking into the rear of Jin Cheong's troops as they shattered Sun Quan's, might turn the tide. Then Zhang Fei — who had already killed Zhang Qin and driven Xu Sheng back — slammed into Ding Feng's rear in turn.
The rear of the Eastern Wu army became a four-way melee of Sun Quan's force, Jin Cheong's, Ding Feng's, and Zhang Fei's. Slowly, inexorably, the advantage slid toward Shu. Wu had no reserve left that could strike Zhang Fei's rear one more time.
With nothing left to commit, Lu Xun bit his lip and pinned his last hope on Han Dang shattering Liu Bei's main force.
In that same moment, a conspicuous change swept through the chaos at Shu's rear.
"I, Jin Do, have taken Han Dang's head!"
Jin Do, commander of Liu Bei's elite guard, cut down the veteran Han Dang after a hard clash — and the trump card that had been threatening Shu's main body (their last card as well) effectively ceased to exist.
Jin Do and the guards sent a roar of victory into the sky, and a surge of elation ran through the entire Shu army. Han Dang's leaderless troops scattered in panic, and the morale of Wu's whole host began to collapse.
"Begin the general assault! Sweep the enemy away!"
Zhuge Liang's order for a total attack — aimed now at annihilation — fell like a hammer.
Riding the momentum, Jin Do and the elite guards charged the center.
"Open the intervals!"
At Xu Shu's command, the center troops who had held in dense formation until now spread their ranks. Jin Do and the guards poured through the gaps and drove straight into Wu's center, already weakened by Ding Feng's departure.
Xu Shu and Zhao Lei, who had been holding their ground, pushed the center forward as well and hammered Pan Zhang and Zhu Ran's forces. Having broken through the middle, Xu Shu swung his troops left and rescued the hard-pressed left wing. Even that left wing — the only sector that had still favored Wu — was finally overturned.
Nowhere on the field remained any chance of a Wu victory.
Judging that the battle was lost, Lu Xun at last had no choice but to order a full retreat.
"Fall back! All units, fall back!"
Driven hard, the Wu army withdrew. Only because Lu Xun never once released the baton of command, even to the end, did they manage — at terrible cost — a general retreat all the way to Gong'an.