Liao Is Coming, Liao Is Coming — The Battle of Hefei
Clash!
Ling Tong’s spear and Zhang Liao’s crescent blade met in a shower of sparks. The moment the weapons sprang apart, they crashed together again with the speed of lightning.
“Kh!”
Ling Tong caught the edge of the crescent blade on his spear shaft. He blocked it—but the sheer, overwhelming force set his arms trembling, and the shaft shrieked as though it would snap at any second.
Neither weapon had yet tasted the blood of its opponent, yet with every exchange Ling Tong felt the truth of his disadvantage settle deeper into his bones.
Still he did not give ground. If he fell back here, Sun Quan behind him might be put in mortal danger.
There has to be one. Somewhere—an opening…
Zhang Liao was not invincible. Straining to weather the storm of his assault, Ling Tong hunted for a gap.
“Haaah!”
He poured everything he had into a blow that knocked Zhang Liao’s crescent blade aside. In that instant Zhang Liao’s horse seemed to stumble, its footing lost; Zhang Liao himself appeared to lurch, his balance gone.
Now!
Ling Tong thrust, forcing the strike even if it cost him. If not now, the chance would never come again.
But in that same breath Zhang Liao’s eyes flared with a savage light—as if he had been waiting for precisely this.
Damn—!
By the time he realized the trap, it was already too late. He tried to pull back the spear he had driven with all his strength, and the recovery turned the attack clumsy and half-formed. Zhang Liao simply angled the spear aside.
It was Ling Tong himself who had lost his balance and left an opening bare.
Zhang Liao did not waste it. In a flash the crescent blade swept a half-moon arc and came straight for Ling Tong’s throat.
Clash!
“Ugh!”
He stopped it by a hair’s breadth. His neck was saved—but his horse had lost all balance and went down hard into the dirt.
Hurled to the ground with his mount, Ling Tong felt pain lance through every limb, yet there was no time to feel it. Flat on his back, he watched Zhang Liao raise the crescent blade over him. The next stroke would take his head.
Damn it…
His elite company had been all but annihilated; almost none remained. Nearby, sprawled on the bare earth in the same red uniforms as his own, lay the corpses of his men.
So my fate is the same as Father’s—to die in battle…
What is the point of living when every last one of them is gone…
I’ll follow them…
Ling Tong closed his eyes.
Then—clang!—the jarring dissonance of steel on steel snapped them open again. It was not the sound of his own head leaving his shoulders. Someone had charged Zhang Liao and stopped the blow.
Gan Ning?
Through the acrid haze of dust he saw Gan Ning locked weapon to weapon with Zhang Liao.
Gan Ning. The man who had killed his father.
As a boy, after his father fell to Gan Ning’s hand, he had imagined cutting that throat a thousand times. He had never managed it—and he had never once imagined that this man would be the one to save his life.
“Hold the enemy!”
Gan Ning drove Zhang Liao back with a flurry of strikes, then bellowed to his men. His personal troops surged forward against Zhang Liao and the shock cavalry.
“You all right?”
“…”
Gan Ning came to Ling Tong, seized his arm, and hauled him to his feet. Ling Tong picked up his discarded spear, got his horse upright, and swung into the saddle.
Ahead, Gan Ning’s men were already trading blows with Zhang Liao’s charge. They threw themselves in bravely enough, but they were being pushed back by degrees; they would not last long.
Ling Tong’s grip tightened on the spear shaft.
For my men’s blood—!
He gathered the reins and made to spur forward. A hand clamped on his shoulder and held him.
“Stop! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“Let go of me!”
“Cut it out. You looking to die like a dog?”
“I said let go!”
Ling Tong roared and tried to shake the hand free, thrashing his shoulder hard.
Gan Ning did not ease his grip.
“We pull back from here first. This is General Lü Meng’s plan.”
“My men are out there and you want me to run? I can’t do that!”
A single tear tracked down Ling Tong’s face. The three hundred soldiers who had been family to him—every last one of them—were dead.
They had been brave. They had dealt real damage to Zhang Liao’s shock troops; that much was true. But they had been too brave to ever fall back.
And so the result had been annihilation, pure and simple.
Ling Tong could not turn his back on them.
“If you don’t take that hand off me, I’ll take your head first!”
“Chen Wu’s already dead. If you go and get yourself killed too, how much grief do you think His Lordship will take?”
“…”
“This is the time to keep a cool head. And first—live. You have to live…”
Gan Ning swallowed once and looked away from Ling Tong’s eyes.
“You have to live… if you ever want to settle a score…”
His voice trailed off on the last words. A score? Whose? Do I even have the right to say that? To Ling Tong, the man who owed a blood debt was—
“So… what do we do, then?”
Ling Tong’s tone had steadied. Gan Ning let out a quiet breath of relief and answered.
“We fall back for now. I’ll explain on the way.”
“Understood…”
“All right—full retreat! Clear this ground!”
At Gan Ning’s order his men wheeled about and withdrew at speed.
“So what is this plan of his?”
“That…”
The plan Lü Meng had given Gan Ning was this:
Zhang Liao’s momentum was a raging tide. Meeting a raging tide head-on was the work of fools. Better to let it drive as deep as it liked—until at last the force of it spent itself.
Give the shock troops breaking through the center room to charge, then stop them at Xiaoyaojin in the rear.
Meanwhile Xu Sheng’s and He Qi’s wings would close from left and right and crush Zhang Liao’s army between them. Once they looped around and pressed his rear, even Zhang Liao would have no way out.
Pan Zhang and Lü Meng were already preparing their own forces to squeeze that rear as well.
Gan Ning, under Lü Meng’s orders, had pulled his unit back to reorganize and come to extract Ling Tong.
“Fine. Whether it works or not—we try it.”
Zhang Liao was still coming on, howling as he rode.
Meanwhile Xu Sheng and He Qi were driving their left and right wings hard against Zhang Liao’s flanks. Enemy resistance was fierce, but in numbers they held an overwhelming advantage.
The shape of the field was this:
As Zhang Liao’s shock troops drove deep, his army as a whole had stretched into a long triangle. Sun Quan’s forces were wrapping around that triangle, swelling their pressure by degrees. A little longer and the encirclement would close, trapping Zhang Liao’s army whole.
“Break through!”
Xu Sheng, commanding the left, barked the order in a raw voice. He knew how dangerous Zhang Liao’s charge had become, and he was racing to seal the net as fast as he could.
At last one side of Zhang Liao’s line buckled under the assault.
“There—that’s it! Push through the breach and tear into their rear!”
One more step. One more step and Zhang Liao would have nowhere left to turn.
Under Xu Sheng’s command, Sun Quan’s troops surged forward with rising spirits, boots hammering the earth.
But then a fresh body of troops came up from Zhang Liao’s rear—the support force under Xue Ti.
Xue Ti was leading a mixed force of light infantry and archers. He had posted them somewhat apart from the main army, charged with disrupting any attempt to loop around the rear.
He had little experience commanding troops in the field, but he was not about to shirk the duty.
Zhang Liao, Li Dian, Yue Jin—three generals who had never gotten along, who at first had done little but snarl at one another. For all that old bad blood, they were now fighting as one against an enemy that outnumbered them many times over.
At the start I worried their feuding would drag us down… I can hardly be the one to drag us down now.
He held the title of Protector of the Army, after all. He would live up to the name.
“The enemy is trying to circle into our rear, sir.”
An officer watching the field reported.
“Understood. Archers—ready!”
The bowmen nocked as one and drew.
“Aim true and loose!”
Whish! Whish!
A rain of arrows slammed into the flanks of Sun Quan’s troops as they tried to punch through Zhang Liao’s defensive line and race for the rear. In their haste to complete the encirclement they had left themselves open to fire from behind; a great many men went down.
After several massed volleys, Xue Ti gave the next order.
“Charge! Secure our rear!”
The light infantry, spears in hand, advanced with a roar. When those spear points bit into the flank, Sun Quan’s push against the rear faltered still further.
“General Xu Sheng—the enemy reserve is holding the loop.”
“Stiffer resistance than I expected.”
They had the numbers, yet nothing was breaking clean; the delay burned in him.
“I’ll take the van myself. All of you—with me!”
Resolved to clear the path with his own hands, Xu Sheng spurred hard.
“Break them however you can! Once He Qi comes up from the other side, we can turn this reserve and drive it back on itself!”
Xu Sheng shouted as he cut down men of the enemy reserve.
Meanwhile Zhang Liao kept driving forward with his shock troops.
The field was a sea of Sun Quan’s banners, yet for him and his charge there seemed to be only one direction: ahead.
After shattering Ling Tong’s unit, Song Qian, Zhou Tai, and others had ridden out to intercept him—but none of them could stop Zhang Liao’s advance. Their resistance, however, had kept Sun Quan himself out of sight.
His momentum only began to flag when he reached Xiaoyaojin. On Lü Meng’s orders, Zhang Qin had fortified the ford, and when Zhang Liao’s army arrived he met them with an iron defense.
Then, from every quarter, the urgent cries of messengers began to arrive.
“Word from General Li Dian—he says he cannot hold much longer!”
“General Yue Jin is hard-pressed as well!”
“Lord Xue Ti reports he can no longer maintain the line and requests a withdrawal!”
Sun Quan’s numerical superiority was finally telling.
A little farther and I could have taken Sun Quan’s head…
The regret was real. But Zhang Liao was no stranger to the shape of a battlefield. Drag this out any longer and his own army would be the one annihilated.
“Full retreat. Keep order and fall back to Hefei.”
With Zhang Liao’s command, the fierce and desperate struggle for Hefei drew to a close.
Zhang Liao—who had been the most devastating force on the field from first to last—had at last reversed course.
Even as he turned his back, not a soul mocked him. Sun Quan’s army and Zhang Liao’s alike let out the same long breath of relief.
He moved as swiftly in withdrawal as he had in the charge, rallying troops that had nearly been cut off and bringing them safely home to Hefei.
Sun Quan’s side made no desperate attempt to stop the retreat. Too much blood had already been spilled; their morale was broken. Better to pull back and reorganize than fight to the death.
Zhang Liao’s army had taken no light losses of its own—but Sun Quan’s had suffered not only in flesh and numbers, but in spirit, a blow that cut deep.
Judging that they could not sustain the campaign, Sun Quan’s forces resolved to withdraw all the way to their own country.
A handful of Zhang Liao’s men had won a victory over Sun Quan’s host.
After that battle, Zhang Liao’s renown shook the realm. In Wu especially, a saying spread until it became a byword for terror: Even a child stops crying at the name of Zhang Liao.
As for Sun Quan, who had barely escaped with his life, he spoke not a word the whole way home. Ministers, fretting for their lord, came to comfort him—but he turned them all away and shut himself in his chambers.
It was not despair that held him. It was a deep and smoldering rage.
Damn it! Damn it all! Once again I’ve taken nothing but losses without end, and gained not a single thing. When will I ever produce a real result? What in heaven’s name am I supposed to do…!
When the fighting ended, Hefei was swept up in a festival mood. They had overcome a grim disparity of strength, dealt the enemy a crushing blow, and driven them off—no wonder the city celebrated.
Even the ever-stern Zhang Liao, for once, ordered wine and meat brought out so that the soldiers who had suffered through it all could eat their fill.
“Your Excellency’s majesty and valor will make the whole realm tremble. Who would dare stand against you? Peerless under heaven—there is no other word for it.”
Xue Ti’s praise drew a faint lift of Zhang Liao’s mouth as he drank. Then the familiar blank mask settled back into place.
This world holds no shortage of the brave besides me. My own army needs no saying—but in the lands of Shu as well…
One by one he called to mind those who might stand as his equals.
Guan Yu.
Zhang Fei.
Zhao Yun.
Ma Chao.
Huang Zhong.
And…