Dong Zhuo (2)
"Ahem. Now then, let us get down to business."
Yuan Shao, who had spent the last while watching my banter with Cao Cao like it was first-rate entertainment, finally composed her expression.
"I can sit this part out, you know. I don't mind at all."
"…Anyone watching would think you were the one who got invited."
I shot a weary look at Cao Cao, who still seemed to be off playing in a world of her own.
Yuan Shao gave a wry smile and pressed on.
"Judging by your recent movements, it appears you are picking a fight with Dong Zhuo. Am I correct?"
"You are."
"And with a frightened Dong Zhuo refusing to come out and fight, you have begun to find yourself hard-pressed over the matter of provisions. Am I right again?"
"That is also correct."
Just as I had expected, word that I was going after Dong Zhuo had spread all across Luoyang. It wasn't exactly untrue, so I felt no particular urge to go hunting down rumors.
"And what would your plan be, should your provisions run dry?"
"I could hardly let my soldiers starve. I would return to Bing Province."
By now I had a fair idea of why Yuan Shao had invited me here. She and I stood opposed to the same public enemy: Dong Zhuo. And I—the only soul in Luoyang capable of keeping him in check—was breaking my head over the provisions problem. So what would Yuan Shao, daughter of a family wealthy enough to boast Four Generations of Three Excellencies, be likely to do about it?
"And if a great store of grain were to arrive from somewhere?"
"…Then I could settle things with Dong Zhuo once and for all."
Either I would be driven out of Luoyang, or Dong Zhuo would be. One of the two was bound to happen.
"Then there is just one last thing I would like to ask you."
Yuan Shao's expression hardened, and she spoke with grave sincerity.
"Are you… a subject of the Han?"
"……"
A very important question. If I defeated Dong Zhuo and drove him from Luoyang, the next center of power would be me. Yuan Shao was asking what I intended to do when that moment came.
To her question, I gave the answer I had settled on long ago.
"I am on the side of the people."
"……"
To my answer—an answer that could be read any number of ways—Yuan Shao responded with an unreadable smile.
"That damned bitch Yuan Shao—!!"
CRACK! Dong Zhuo brought his fist down on the table in a fury, and the table, unable to withstand the force, split clean in two. By now there was not a single piece of furniture left intact anywhere near him. After all, this was the fierce general who had once led armies from the very front lines to crush the foreign tribes—and with strength no ordinary man could hope to match, it was only the poor innocent furniture that ended up smashed to splinters.
This was exactly why having too many enemies was such a nuisance. Whatever you tried to do, some meddler always crawled out of the woodwork to get in the way.
"To think I spared her because her beauty was too precious to waste—planned to keep her tucked away and savor her properly later—and this is what she pulls?! She will pay for this. I swear she will pay dearly!"
"……"
The moment Dong Zhuo heard that Yuan Shao had thrown her family's fortune behind Jeong Reung's provisions, his rage had boiled over. The officials at his side trembled like leaves before his wrath, too busy reading his mood to breathe.
Dong Zhuo's frost-cold glare swung toward the strategist standing beside him.
"Li Ru! That cursed woman has thrown my entire plan into chaos! What am I to do now?!"
"…My lord. There is no longer any way to let this pass peacefully."
Li Ru answered with a respectful bow of his head.
"We must accept the losses, take the field, and drive that Jeong Reung fellow out by force. It is the only way."
"Then it cannot be helped! I bestowed upon him my final mercy—a chance to return home with his life—and this is how he repays me!"
Dong Zhuo's voice thundered with fury.
"He truly believes that one measly Peerless Under Heaven is enough to beat me? The very thought is laughable!"
"Just so, my lord. Now go, and make that fool who knows not his place pay the price of his arrogance."
The officials listening to this exchange squeezed their eyes shut, knowing that before long, much blood would flow through Luoyang once more.
"Well, that worked like a charm."
Less than two days after Yuan Shao's provisions arrived, Dong Zhuo's army was on the move. The trouble was, his forces numbered far more than I had anticipated.
For some reason, I turned to Cao Cao at my side and asked, "Dong Zhuo marched in with forty thousand men, didn't he?"
"That's right."
"And now he has sixty thousand."
"I hear he swallowed up nearly the whole of the late Grand General's army."
Even from beyond the grave, that butcher's trolling me.
At my sigh, Cao Cao's face lit up with delight. "What, lost your nerve all of a sudden?"
"It's not that."
The army I had brought with me came to twenty-five thousand. Against the sixty thousand under Dong Zhuo's command, it was a pathetically modest figure—and this was me scraping together every man I possibly could.
With farmland to break and border defenses demanding far more of my attention, I had left a good number of soldiers behind in Bing Province. Winter was fading and warmth creeping back in, and the nomads had started poking their heads out again. Even after I'd thrashed them soundly for their shameless habit of forever eyeing chances to raid, they just kept coming back. At this point I was dead certain those tribesmen weren't born and raised like ordinary human beings—they plainly respawned somewhere out there, like monsters in a game.
I flapped my hand at Cao Cao in a shooing motion. "Off you go, then. Things look about to kick off."
"Hmph. I'll be looking forward to it."
With a flash of a grin, Cao Cao stepped away and set off toward the city.
"Seo Yeo."
"Yes."
"You're not feeling all antsy in there, itching to jump in or anything?"
"No."
Thanks for making the one asking feel like an idiot.
I had asked in a roundabout way, just on the off chance she had any mind to step in, but Seo Yeo turned me down as crisply as ever. How on earth was I supposed to put this cheat code to use?
Dong Zhuo's soldiers and mine had formed up their battle lines on the open plain just before Luoyang and stood glaring each other down.
"What a pitiful little force compared to our army! I truly cannot fathom what confidence possesses you to pick this fight!"
"HAHAHAHA!"
As Dong Zhuo's general bellowed, the soldiers around him began to sneer and jeer at us. No doubt a ploy to grind our morale into the dirt before the first blade was ever drawn.
"Kneel and bow your heads now, while mercy is still on the table, and our lord may overlook your insolence and—"
Curious where he was going with this, I kept listening to the general's roaring speech.
"—as if he would ever forgive the likes of you! Nothing remains for you now but to die on this spot!!"
"PWAHAHAHA!"
Huh. That's actually a fresh bit of taunting.
Impressed or not, Dong Zhuo's general carried right on flaunting his silver tongue. "You traitorous dogs! Go quietly and sharpen your necks for—GHAK—!!"
A single arrow punched straight through the throat of the general who had been working so hard to provoke us.
"Ghhk… ghhrrrrk……"
THUD!
"……"
The general clutched at his throat and crumpled with a wet, rattling gurgle, and every soldier around him shut his mouth at once.
"There's always one who just has to run his mouth before a fight."
Into the silence that had settled over the battlefield, the archer herself spoke up, calm as could be. "And if you get yourself killed doing it, don't expect anyone to take the blame."
Need I even say it? The one who had put an arrow through Dong Zhuo's general was, of course, Lü Bu.
"Anyone else feel like talking?"
"……"
At her words, Dong Zhuo's army shuffled in place, trading wary glances. Lü Bu eyed them and sneered, cold as ice.
"If not, then come at us."
"…CHAAARGE────!!"
WAAAAAH—!
Twenty-five thousand against sixty thousand. The battle had begun.
Even from a distance, the gap in numbers was impossible to miss, and Yuan Shao ground her teeth in frustration. "If only I had done just a little better…"
She had done everything in her power to stop the defections, but in the end, most of the officials from the previous Grand General's camp had chosen Dong Zhuo. Fools who had bowed their heads to the dust, hoping to scrounge a mere handful of crumbs from Dong Zhuo's table. The hideous spectacle of men casting honor aside to chase nothing but greed set Yuan Shao's blood boiling.
Watching her, Cao Cao asked, "Do you believe Hwahyeon will lose?"
"…Yes. I don't see how he can win."
Dong Zhuo's soldiers were no ordinary rabble of bandits. They were elites who had purged the Qiang tribes pouring over the border and crushed even the Liang Province rebellion raised by Han Sui and Bian Zhang. On top of that, they had absorbed the bulk of the soldiers who had held up the Han to the very last—no one in the world could stand against Dong Zhuo now.
Yuan Shao had known all of this, and she had sent her grain to Jeong Reung all the same. To whittle Dong Zhuo's army down, even by a little, and buy herself the time to grow her own power. …In the end, she was no saint herself.
"I do hope he manages to escape unharmed."
Even if Jeong Reung lost and fled, Dong Zhuo would never pursue him to the bitter end; he would wheel his army around and march home. Hadn't he only just absorbed the Black Mountain Bandits? Those bandits, said to flit through the mountains like they owned the sky, were already dug in across Bing Province—a land of mountains to begin with—and unless Dong Zhuo was a complete fool, he would never force his soldiers into that terrain. All the more so when Dong Zhuo himself knew perfectly well how many troops he still had garrisoned there.
Hearing her out, Cao Cao turned her head to gaze straight ahead. "Who can say. My read is different."
"…Pardon?"
"Just watch."
"……"
And just as Cao Cao had said, as Yuan Shao watched the battle unfold, she caught sight of a small anomaly.
"…This is…"
While their left and right wings held rock-solid against an enemy force easily twice their number, the center of Dong Zhuo's army was slowly, steadily being torn open. And at that center, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, rode a general with hair the color of blood.
"…Lü Bu."
Each time Lü Bu passed through, a hole punched open in Dong Zhuo's square formation, and their battle lines began to shudder. The scales of victory were slowly beginning to tip.