Black Mountain Bandits (1)
With the Siege of Julu concluded, the Yellow Turban Rebellion had finally come to an end. Scattered remnants of the Yellow Turbans might still be lurking somewhere out there, but at the very least the Jizhou Yellow Turbans—the rebellion's heartland—had been wiped out to the last man.
As for what I'd been doing all this while... nothing at all. Cao Cao kept hovering around wherever Zhang Liao happened to be, and no matter how I looked at it, she had her eyes on me. So I'd sent Lü Bu on ahead, left word that I was handing military command over to Zhang Liao for the time being, and quietly slunk away. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what I'd done to deserve this, but I really wished she'd knock it off.
So it went, several days of hide-and-seek—until an urgent messenger arrived from Bing Province. The man had ridden hard through the night, sweat pouring down his face.
"An army of one hundred thousand Black Mountain Bandits under Zhang Yan is attacking Bing Province!"
"……"
What was coming had finally come.
The Black Mountain Bandits, exploiting the chaos of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, were making their grand entrance. It seemed absurd that so many men could pour out of those cramped mountain fastnesses. In the original history, at their greatest extent—when they held northern Sili, all of Bing Province, and northeastern Jizhou—the Black Mountain Bandits boasted a preposterous one million strong. Even allowing for some generous inflation, there was no denying they had been an enormous host.
And this was after I'd been thrashing them every time they showed their faces, to keep them from putting down roots in Bing Province. I dreaded to imagine how numerous they must have been before I'd started. No wonder, in the original history, the imperial court handed official posts to what amounted to common brigands and even recognized their autonomy. The Black Mountain Bandits received titles and the right to recommend their own officials to the court.
Just as they were celebrating the dawn of their own golden age, someone arrived in Jizhou to teach them some manners. Yuan Shao. The bandits stabbed her in the back while she was bogged down fighting Gongsun Zan, seizing Wei Commandery from her own territory—and her frenzied, relentless counteroffensive then slaughtered them by the tens of thousands with every engagement. Beaten bloody and thoroughly drilled in manners by Yuan Shao, the Black Mountain Bandits were driven back into a crouch.
In the end, having been fleeced down to his very soul by Yuan Shao, Zhang Yan lived on meek as a whipped mouse before surrendering to Cao Cao, who was riding high after the Battle of Guandu. He came over with a hundred thousand troops, yet while Cao Cao had lavished every favor on Zhang Lu and Zhang Xiu, all Zhang Yan received was a measly stipend of five hundred households. And yet, it's said, Zhang Yan was content with that and lived out his days in quiet obscurity.
How should I put it... a man who ran wild in his youth, too hot-blooded to know restraint, took a series of brutal beatings, and finally learned exactly where he stood in the world. Extraordinarily pragmatic.
But the Zhang Yan of the present was still the Zhang Yan who couldn't contain that hot blood, so a fight was unavoidable. I couldn't very well stand by while those bandits devoured the whole of Bing Province. I'd simply be doing myself what Yuan Shao had done—nothing more.
The Black Mountain Bandits had nothing going for them but numbers. At bottom they were a coalition of thieves, and their organizational discipline was pure dogshit—an unruly mob riddled with splits and feuds.
After asking General Huangfu Song's leave, I returned to Bing Province and readied my army while waiting for the Black Mountain Bandits to come. Every soldier I'd brought was cavalry, so I was able to race back and regroup long before the bandits could reach the cities. Naturally, I hadn't forgotten to bring the Zhang Jue sisters along either. The government troops were still turning Julu upside down in their hunt for Zhang Jue. They were unlikely to catch on—but if word ever got out that I'd smuggled her out, I did wonder what would happen. Just a little.
"Word has it this Zhang Yan, chief of the Black Mountain Bandits, is nimbler than a swallow?"
Lü Bu spoke up beside me as she loosened her muscles.
"Doesn't his nickname match yours? The Flying General."
"Ha! Funny."
It was true. Maybe that reputation alone was why the bandits under him never even dared think of defying him. Whether he truly lived up to the name of Flying General, though? I couldn't say.
Lü Bu flashed a grin, clearly entertained.
"Still, he's no Peerless Under Heaven, is he?"
"No, he certainly isn't."
Privately, I suspected the real Peerless Under Heaven was Seo Yeo, standing just behind me. But since Seo Yeo showed no interest whatsoever in the title, for now Peerless Under Heaven belonged to Lü Bu, fair and square.
Just as we were chatting atop the city wall, the Black Mountain Bandits revealed themselves in the far distance, marching forward in high spirits with dust billowing in their wake. Disjointed bands with no formation to speak of—an unruly mob practically begging to be picked apart. True to their nature, even at that distance the bandits had visibly split into factions. At the sight of them banking on nothing but sheer numbers, Lü Bu scoffed.
"Hmph. You said a hundred thousand, right?"
"That's right."
"By the end of today, they'll be down to thirty thousand at most."
Her confidence drew a smile from me—which earned me a frosty glare.
"What are you smiling at?"
"I like watching you be so sure of yourself."
"That is exactly why you can't just say things like that out of nowhere!"
Leaving Lü Bu to her flustered screeching, I turned my eyes to the Black Mountain Bandits closing in from afar. Even if we won today, we'd have to fight them in the mountains at least once. Left alone, they'd swell their numbers and invade again—we had to tear them out by the roots. Even a beast fights half-mad in its own den; how much harder would bandits fight in their own mountains?
Lost in thought for a moment, I turned my head to look at Seo Yeo.
"……?"
When I just kept staring at her without a word, Seo Yeo tilted her head slightly.
"You can protect me, right?"
Honestly, I was confident I'd keel over with a wheeze and die if so much as two bandits laid hands on me. No matter how I looked at it, I simply wasn't the fighting type. Generals seemed to be born that way, not made, so there was nothing to be done about it.
"Yes. Unconditionally."
To my question, Seo Yeo answered, her voice brimming with resolve.
The Black Mountain Bandits assaulting Shangdang were crushed without much difficulty. A siege overwhelmingly favors the defender, and the bandits were nothing but a ragtag mob—however numerous they were, they'd never breach a city without an extraordinary leader to wield them. Even Zhang Yan, the only man among them worth a second glance, excelled solely at personal combat and was thoroughly mediocre at commanding soldiers, so what did that make the other chiefs?
When the bandits finally withdrew after losing a huge portion of their men, we exploited the pre-dawn darkness to ambush them. The Black Mountain Bandits met their end screaming, tripping over themselves half-dressed as they fled. Ah—and Zhang Yan had been the very first to run.
"The so-called Flying General tucks tail and runs first?! Come back here and fight me!"
Barely into the raid and already past a hundred kills, Lü Bu burst from the city gates on horseback. She was painted head to toe in gore and radiating pure murder—who in their right mind wouldn't run?
"GYAAAAH!"
Seo Yeo guarded my side, and the instant any bandit drifted the slightest bit too close, she cut him down with her sword, no hesitation. Except I never actually saw her swing. All I witnessed were bandits approaching, then abruptly spraying blood and toppling over of their own accord. Generals like Zhang Liao and Wei Xu were carving through the bandits as well, each leading their own troops, while the Black Mountain Bandits who failed to flee began throwing down their weapons and surrendering.
I looked around. Corpses lay strewn everywhere. Just as Lü Bu had promised, a good seventy thousand must have met their end here at Shangdang today. They say the bloodiest casualties in war come when a broken army takes flight, so many more would die before dawn was done.
This was why I hated war. A world where human beings died like insects. No matter how many times I witnessed it, the carnage was something I could never, ever grow used to.
Dwelling on it any further would only sour my mood, so I'd finish this quickly and take it easy for a while after. Their numbers were so vast that a substantial portion of the Black Mountain Bandits had slipped through our fingers. We'd rest for a day, then pursue them into the mountains and land the killing blow. That fight would be harder than today's. The bandits would throw themselves at us like cornered animals, the forest would smother our line of sight, and Zhang Yan—who knew every fold of those mountains—was guaranteed to ambush us. The cost could well be heavy. But to bring stability to Bing Province, it simply had to be done. Between the cursed Xiongnu and the Xianbei, Bing Province was already hell enough. We didn't need bandits multiplying like cockroaches on top of it all.
How on earth had it come to this?
Fleeing on horseback without even his armor properly buckled, Zhang Yan thought bitterly. A hundred thousand strong—a truly staggering host of gathered bandits—had been following him. And now, in the space of a single day, the better part of it had been ground to nothing.
Where had it gone wrong? The endless, mind-numbing infighting? The enemy's veteran cavalry? Or that demon of a general drenched head to toe in blood?
Zhang Yan clenched his teeth. It would be all right. Three thousand elite veterans were still fleeing at his side, and another five thousand or so from the other chiefs' bands would fall in behind him now that their leaders were dead.
He would return to the stronghold in the mountains, rebuild his numbers, and strike again when the moment was ripe. He knew better than to meet them head-on in a trial of strength; from now on, he'd gnaw away at them with guerrilla raids. And when they inevitably lost patience and marched into his mountains, he would repay them in full with the terrain on his side.
Just you wait. The war was far from over.
Suppressing the fire of vengeance roaring in his chest, Zhang Yan gripped his horse's reins in an iron fist and rode on.