Black Mountain Bandits (3)
Not long after Lü Bu chased off after the archer, the Black Mountain Bandits revealed themselves ahead of us.
"I think I've got a rough idea what they're playing at."
Their plan was to lure Lü Bu away from the army, then strike us in the gap she left behind. Her presence loomed so large over any battlefield that they seemed to have assumed that as long as she was out of the picture, the fight was theirs to win.
Bandits armed with twin axes and bows — a garishly distinctive set of weapons. Watching them draw their arms without a moment's hesitation, we made our own preparations for battle as well.
"All of you — loose!"
At the bandit's shout, arrows came sheeting down on us from the front and the left. I had expected it, but there was an ambush waiting all the same — a rain of arrows swallowing the sky.
"Shield bearers."
A quiet, level voice, calm as still water. In the same breath, the unit around me hoisted their shields in flawless unison. The shields interlocked into a wall that guarded every gap without exception — a formation that bordered on acrobatics, a barrier no mere arrow would ever pierce.
My view vanished behind it, and all that remained was the clatter of arrows glancing off shields.
Perhaps five minutes passed? The baptism of arrows that had hammered down for a while gradually sputtered out. The shields lowered, and I surveyed the ground around us — bristling with spent arrows, packed thick as a pincushion — before opening my mouth.
"They set that ambush strangely."
If they had waited for us to clash with the bandits at the front and then loosed from the flank, the damage would have been far worse. But firing in time with a frontal assault, into a force so openly braced against arrows? The harm was bound to be slight. The advantage of surprise was gone, and the ambush positions were exposed. In the end, they were nothing more than bandits.
It wasn't that there were no casualties, but they were far fewer than I had anticipated. Some had huddled together behind the shield bearers to ride out the volley; others had used the forested terrain, tucking themselves behind trees and rocks until it passed.
Even after pouring out nearly every arrow they had, they had accomplished almost nothing — I could feel the Black Mountain Bandits growing restless.
The woman who, moments before, had given her order to the shield bearers in that calm voice. In the original history, her unit was called the Camp Crushers — a name meaning that whatever it attacked would surely fall, for it was said never to know defeat. A loyal retainer who served one person alone, right up to the very moment of her own death.
"Gao Shun."
"Yes."
I gave my order to the woman whose grey hair was twisted up and pinned in place with a claw clip.
"Take Zhang Liao with you and sweep every last one of them away."
"I shall follow your command."
Zhang Liao's cavalry and Gao Shun's infantry crashed into the Black Mountain Bandits. It was a mountain dense with trees, but Zhang Liao and her riders drove their horses through it as casually as if it were open plain.
The bandits lying in ambush on the left shrieked as they sprayed crimson across the earth. Several had already turned to flee, only to have their heads taken by their own commanding officer.
"Run and you die by my hand! Fight to the very end!"
"Fuck! How the hell are we supposed to beat that?! Get out of the way!!"
"You think running will save y— gwaagh!"
It had even devolved into infighting, allies turning their weapons on one another. Their commander seemed to be struggling mightily to hold them together, but in the end he was surrounded by his own men and met his death.
Starting with him, every Black Mountain Bandit unit on the left scattered in blind panic. With no commander left to stop the rout, they must have decided it was now or never.
"Their organization is a complete disaster."
Faithful to nothing but their own desires — bandits through and through.
Zhang Liao rode down the fleeing bandits, spear whirling.
"Even with your backs turned, you'll only die in the end. Surrender quietly."
I had given the order beforehand: these were criminals who would go straight back to plundering the mountains if released, so unless they surrendered, every last one was to be killed. And no man can outrun a horse.
Under the relentless pursuit of Zhang Liao and her cavalry, the fleeing bandits finally dropped their weapons and began surrendering meekly.
At the center, Gao Shun's unit was shoving the bandits back one-sidedly. Her soldiers advanced slowly, moving as one, without a hair's breadth of error. Block with the shield, thrust with the spear — not an instant of hesitation in any of it. They looked less like soldiers than like a machine, immaculate and orderly.
"We should've just run…."
"Shiiiit… You said we could win! What the hell are the bastards on the right doing?!"
Not a single bandit managed to break through Gao Shun's Camp Crushers, a formation so precise it bordered on compulsion. A few showed flashes of genuine skill — perhaps they counted as the bandits' elite — but every flourish came to nothing.
In the end, the Black Mountain Bandits' front line collapsed around the Camp Crushers.
"Now! Follow me!"
The moment the enemy line crumbled, the generals who had been biding their time — Wei Xu and the rest — drove straight through the gap. The bandits who let the charge through went down with their last words cut short.
"That's that, then."
The ambushers on the left had been routed by Zhang Liao, and the bandits who had held the front line crumbled without ever cracking the Camp Crushers. I turned my head toward the forest on the right.
The direction Lü Bu had gone.
Somehow, from that direction, I thought I caught the faintest drift of blood on the wind.
"Insane… you monstrous bitch……."
"That's a bit harsh, don't you think!"
WHAM!
"Gwaaagh!"
Zhang Yan, who had blocked Lü Bu's Sky Piercer Halberd, went flying with a scream.
"How is this… even possible…?"
His eyes trembled like a madman's as he slammed into a tree. A sight he couldn't believe even with his own two eyes.
"I told you, didn't I? You people are terrible at fighting."
The thousand bandits who had gathered to take Lü Bu down.
"I told you — it felt exactly like slaughtering beasts. Bandits are beasts, aren't they?"
The unit that had meant to seize her, then join the main force in striking our right flank—
"Anyway, that leaves just you now, doesn't it?"
—had been annihilated by a single person.
"You're supposed to be a fierce general too, no? There's no one left to hide behind, so hurry up and come at me."
Lü Bu began taunting Zhang Yan, who could do nothing but tremble.
"What's the matter? Scared?"
Zhang Yan ground his teeth and roared.
"Do you truly believe a monster like you could ever be accepted by other humans?!"
"……."
"You will never belong anywhere, and you will die alone like a dog!"
"……."
"Even that man you're so happily chasing after right now — in the end, he'll…"
In that instant, Lü Bu's Sky Piercer Halberd moved, and Zhang Yan felt one of his legs simply cease to exist.
His right leg lay severed.
"AAAAAAGH!"
"Too loud."
Lü Bu looked down at him, wailing in agony, with eyes of ice.
"You're the one barking like a dog."
His left leg.
"S-stop! Stop!"
"Honestly. Anyone watching would think I was the villain here."
His right arm.
"Spare me—"
"People cheer you on as a fierce general, and you actually start believing you're something special?"
His left arm.
"I'm sorry! I misspoke, I—"
"You're nothing but a bandit cur, feeding off the weak."
With all four limbs severed, Zhang Yan gagged and choked, a hair's breadth from losing his mind.
"You said I'd die like a dog, didn't you?"
"Ghhk… ghhok—"
"Well then — you can go ahead and die crawling like a worm instead."
Sneering with that frozen expression, Lü Bu did not kill him. She simply turned her back.
The wheezing Zhang Yan jolted, snapping back to his senses in horror.
"W-wait! Where are you going?"
"……."
"Spare me! I'll do anything you want — please, spare me!"
Zhang Yan wailed as he crawled across the earth like an earthworm.
"Fuck! What do you want? Money? Is it money?!!"
"……."
"You bitch!! If you're just going to leave me like this, then kill me———!!!"
As Lü Bu walked on, the voice that had begged for so long grew fainter and fainter, until after a while it could no longer be heard at all.
Caw— caw—
Where Lü Bu had passed, in that place filled with nothing but corpses, only the cries of crows and mountain beasts remained.
Having beaten back the Black Mountain Bandits, I was waiting for Lü Bu — and startled wide-eyed at the sight of her.
"Whoa — what's with all this blood?"
"……."
She was covered from head to toe in blood. At the grisly sight of her, reeking of gore, the weak-stomached soldiers edged subtly away with fear written on their faces.
"Did the horse you were riding die? You're not hurt, are you?"
"……."
"See, what did I tell you? They were baiting you, just like I said…."
"Um."
Just as I was lecturing her for running off on her own, Lü Bu spoke up.
"Hm?"
"It doesn't… bother you?"
"You're saying strange things again."
I rubbed her face with my sleeve. A soft, squishy feeling — the kind that could get a man addicted.
"Ugh — what are you doing right now?"
"There. All done."
Lü Bu's blood-smeared face regained a touch of its color. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than nothing.
"Now I can finally see that pretty face of yours again."
"……."
I smiled faintly into those gleaming crimson eyes.
"I don't know what you heard out there, but you don't need to give it a second thought."
Tough on the outside, tender on the inside — that was Lü Bu all over. Whenever she caught wind of something said about her somewhere, she would steal glances at my face and fidget, unable to settle.
"From the looks of it, you took Zhang Yan?"
"Yeah."
"Good. They were nothing but bandits, so they must have plenty of loot stashed away, right?"
"…Of course there's plenty. Let's hurry."
At my question, her voice — which had dipped slightly — returned to its usual tone. Seems she's back to normal. What a relief.