Liu Biao (11)
Cao Cao had held her army back on the pretext that Tao Qian was invading her lands, while Yuan Shao invoked Gongsun Zan and kept her silence altogether.
With no relief force coming, I had nothing left to hold back for. I put my army in order and resolved to commit to the siege in earnest.
But first — one last appeal for surrender.
Mounted on horseback with Seo Yeo and Lü Bu riding behind me, I moved slowly toward Xiangyang Castle. The moment I abruptly rode out of the camp, every eye among Liu Biao's army inside the walls fixed itself on me.
"My lord."
With every soldier's nerves drawn taut, I was guiding my horse forward when Seo Yeo's voice made me turn my head.
"It becomes dangerous if you go any closer."
"Yeah?"
She was right — press on much further and I could well take an arrow and die a miserable death. Well, at this distance they ought to hear me well enough.
Just as Seo Yeo advised, I halted beyond the reach of their arrows and shouted as loudly as my lungs allowed.
"Liu Jingsheng! Out of my mercy, I grant you one final chance!"
How long had it been since I'd bellowed at the top of my lungs like this?
"We are all subjects of the same Han — what reason is there to spill blood here for nothing!"
At the sound of my voice, Liu Biao's soldiers stirred and murmured atop the ramparts. Fortunately, it seemed my words had carried.
"Surrender!"
Having shouted that, I pressed on without pause.
"Open the gates and kneel even now, and I swear on my name your lives will be spared!"
Naturally, I had no intention of honoring the high office I'd once dangled before Liu Biao. What was it I'd promised him again? The Grand Minister of Agriculture, wasn't it?
An office that managed the gold and grain flowing up from the provinces as tax. Unlike the Honey Water Emperor, Liu Biao had no record of ever amassing a private fortune, so I had offered him the post on the belief that he wouldn't siphon off state wealth behind my back.
It was a seat among the Nine Ministers — a rank that could be called a step directly beneath the Three Excellencies. I had made the offer generously, and it was Liu Biao who had refused it.
Even if he surrendered now, he would have to climb his way back up from the bottom, promotion by promotion. Still, that had to be better than dying, no? And if he truly worked diligently and proved his loyalty, I wasn't opposed to raising him up again someday...
But it seemed Liu Biao saw things differently.
"Silence! You traitorous rebel—!"
Whoa. Vicious words right out of the gate.
Turning my gaze toward the voice, I saw a man standing atop the wall, towering even among his own soldiers.
"How could I ever kneel and surrender to a traitor who tramples upon the imperial house!"
The man who had seized an entire province starting from nothing shouted on, his eyes blazing fierce and bright.
"Know that I will never, ever surrender to you—!!"
I had expected as much, but Liu Biao made his resolve plain: he would resist me to the very end. Why was the man who claimed his health was too poor to even make the journey to Luoyang so full of fight?
He kept accusing me of toying with the imperial house and wielding power at my whim — but what did he want me to do about it, when it was Her Majesty the Empress herself doing all of it? By her own account, she was exercising restraint as much as possible.
It was honestly a little frightening to imagine what would happen the day she stopped. I hadn't hoisted the Empress onto my back — she had latched onto me entirely of her own accord.
Yes. The way a baby panda clings to a person. Pale skin, black hair — a panda, all right.
"If that's your answer."
Hearing Liu Biao's reply, I gave only a short response. I had hoped that beholding my enormous host with his own eyes, with no relief in sight, might have changed his mind.
But it seemed Liu Biao was even more far gone than I'd thought.
And yet his performance didn't end with hurling insults at me.
"Is there no one who will shoot down that audacious rebel who has crept up to our very walls!"
Huh?
I had deliberately halted beyond arrow's reach, just as Seo Yeo said — and he meant to have me shot anyway? Unless he kept an officer who handled a bow extraordinarily well...
...Huh? I froze stock-still. A crack archer under Liu Biao's command, at this point in time?
Fwoooosh—!
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than a sound of something cleaving the wind came from dead ahead. There was no mistaking it — anyone could tell that was an arrow in flight. One streaking in fast, aimed precisely at my forehead. At that speed, even a seasoned general would have failed to react. An ordinary man would have died on the spot, unable to do a thing about it...
But then, I hadn't ridden out without something to place my trust in, had I?
Clang!
"...The audacity — not even knowing your place."
Seo Yeo, who had swung the Chu Heaven Sword in her hand to flick the arrow casually aside, glared up at the ramparts with terrifying intensity. Her reaction was dramatic enough, but Lü Bu beside her was little different.
"You little shit."
Lü Bu spat the curse, then drew the great bow hanging at her hip and leveled it at Liu Biao.
"You're dead."
A second, perhaps, to draw a bead on him — and she loosed the string without a moment's hesitation. Such was the strength behind it that the great bow shuddered once as the arrow flew.
The officer who had fired at me saw the arrow streaking toward Liu Biao and hastily tore the sword from his waist, swinging it up.
Clang!
The man's martial skill was clearly exceptional as well; he knocked aside Lü Bu's arrow with little trouble. Liu Biao, startled out of his wits, could no longer manage a single word — he only stood there with his eyes blown wide as lanterns. Paying her blocked shot no mind, Lü Bu simply kept loosing arrows at him.
"...! ...!!"
The officer deflected arrow after arrow while shouting something, and a soldier who heard him hurriedly gathered up the stunned Liu Biao and hustled him down from the wall.
"...Tsk."
Having confirmed that Liu Biao had vanished from sight, Lü Bu clicked her tongue and lowered her arm.
"He's actually not bad."
Watching her, I remarked, entirely unbothered.
"Good work."
"...Yeah."
At my praise, Lü Bu nodded, a trace of disappointment on her face.
I turned my gaze to Seo Yeo, who was still staring hard in the direction of the wall. Her expression was as blank as ever, yet something about the way she watched the officer who had shot at me seemed faintly off. She was angry, it seemed. Seo Yeo looked composed on the surface, but where anything concerning me was involved, her boiling point dropped precipitously — so this behavior was hardly surprising.
I spoke up.
"Seo Yeo."
"Yes."
At the sound of her name, Seo Yeo stopped watching the officer and turned her gaze to me. I said, in as even a voice as I could manage.
"Let's head back."
"..."
Had she realized what sort of face she'd just been making? Seo Yeo held her silence for a moment before answering.
"...As you command."
As I led Seo Yeo and Lü Bu back, I turned the situation over in my head. I had deliberately let those messengers slip away, so word that no relief army was coming must have reached Liu Biao's faction by now. If events were unfolding as Jia Xu anticipated, his camp would be in considerable turmoil at this very moment. Surely some were urging an orderly surrender, while others insisted on resisting to the bitter end.
Since I needed to frighten them regardless, I would needle their nerves in whatever manner cost us the least. If I hounded them until they truly believed death was upon them, wouldn't they abandon their dithering and finally act?
Back at the camp, I gave my order to Gao Shun, who stood nearby.
"Use the trebuchets to keep the walls pinned down, and keep raking at their nerves without letup."
"I shall carry out your orders."
Grey hair, the very same shade as my mother's. Gao Shun, that grey hair pinned up into a tidy updo with a hairpin, bowed with perfect courtesy. Her blue-green eyes met mine once, and then she withdrew.
Not long after Gao Shun departed, the troops who had received their orders began to move with disciplined precision. First the shield bearers advanced, and threaded between them, the shield-carts — war chariots screened at the front by enormous shields — edged slightly forward to unnerve Liu Biao's army. The idea was to feign filling the moat and force the defenders to waste their arrows.
Sure enough, when we needled Liu Biao's army from a position that seemed just barely within arrow range, the other side took the bait.
"Get the fire ready, now!"
The officer commanding the wall defense urged on the soldiers around him. As Liu Biao's men hurriedly set the fire they'd prepared to their arrowheads, the officer directing them spoke.
"Burn every last one of them, shields and all!"
Having said his piece, the officer of Liu Biao's army raised his voice even higher.
"FIRE───!!"
At the command, the archers atop the wall released their strings.
Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip—!!
Fire arrows numbering in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, came pouring down like a curtain of rain. The arrows loosed from the wall flickered with flame as they rained toward the shield bearers and shield-carts at the head of our formation.
"AAAGH!"
Even with the shields packed tight as a wall, one soldier took a fire arrow in the body and shrieked. But only the desperately unlucky suffered such wounds; the overwhelming majority of the burning arrows failed to punch through the shields of the infantry and the shield-carts. The shield faces of the carts had been sheathed in dried animal hide, so even when a fire arrow buried itself in the plating, no flame ever caught.
The officer atop the wall clicked his tongue at the sight and issued another order.
"Ready the arrows again! Squeeze every wound you can out of them before they reach the moat—?"
Zhang Yun, an officer of Liu Biao's army, was midway through the command when he caught sight of a boulder hurtling straight at him and screamed.
"WHAAAGH—!"
CRASH—!
Zhang Yun, who had flung himself aside with startling speed thanks to his exceptional physique, spun around at the sound of something being pulverized. A soldier who had failed to dodge the stone in time had been smashed into a bloody pulp without even the chance to cry out.
...
At that gruesome sight, the morale of Liu Biao's men, who had been readying their arrows, plummeted. Cold sweat trickled down Zhang Yun's back, but he clung faithfully to his duty.
"What are you all doing! Even now the enemy advances to fill the moat! Hurry and ready those arrows!"
At Zhang Yun's bellow, Liu Biao's army, which had frozen stiff for a breath, recovered its wits and began to move again.
...They must have been rattled badly indeed. Anyone who looked closely could see that the shield bearers had stopped mid-step. And if they insisted on squandering their arrows, then I, for one, was only too grateful.