Intrusion (5)
Yufuluo, Chanyu of the Southern Xiongnu, was watching from the rear as the battle unfolded.
Having surveyed the situation around him for a moment, Yufuluo gave a slow nod.
"Not bad."
His army was skillfully whittling the enemy down on the strength of its numerical superiority, and since his side held the advantage in the frontal fighting as well, it was hardly suffering crippling losses.
That said, it was not as though Yufuluo had never felt a chill crawl up his spine.
"Have you forgotten that this Bing Province is as good as our own backyard?!"
"Huh?!"
"Then let's show these thieves who crept into another man's yard uninvited exactly what we're made of!"
That had been shortly after his forces first clashed with the enemy in earnest. The Black Mountain Bandits, springing abruptly from the trees and hillsides, had shouted thus at their own soldiers.
"Loose everything!"
Even for Yufuluo, an ambush erupting from an unexpected quarter had come as quite a shock.
Had the enemy soldiers holding the front merely been a diversion all along? The ambushing bandits had loosed their arrows wildly, and a number of his men, caught in that sudden storm, dropped where they stood.
But the Xiongnu were not a people so soft that an ambush alone would break their morale.
"Idiots with black cloth wrapped around their heads are attacking us! Respond!"
"Yes!"
At the commanding officer's shout, his soldiers wheeled their horses with practiced ease and fired back in the same breath.
"Khek!"
"Argh!"
The Black Mountain Bandits had burst onto the field brimming with confidence, but once the Xiongnu began responding in earnest, they died in droves.
Their arrows struck home with uncanny accuracy. The bowmanship honed racing across the endless steppe in pursuit of wolves and other savage beasts proved every bit as deadly on a battlefield where men now hunted men.
"Hold fast—! We cannot break here!"
What was more, even the enemy general holding the front kept bellowing one cry after another, as though the situation on their end were far from good.
The Xiongnu refused to close with the bandits' formed ranks, simply pelting them with arrows from afar. The Black Mountain Bandits answered arrow for arrow, but short on numbers and shorter still on mobility, their losses only piled higher.
They were fighting for their lives, yet it was self-evident that their formation would collapse sooner or later.
With the battlefield flowing this way, Yufuluo could find no reason why he would lose this fight.
"Good. Victory will soon be ou—"
"We have a problem!"
Just as Yufuluo moved to pronounce his verdict, his aide came rushing up in an urgent voice.
Looking at the man gasping for breath, Yufuluo asked, "What in the world could be wrong at a moment like this?"
"Th-there's an enemy general sweeping through our formation all on her own!"
"What did you say?"
At the report, Yufuluo's eyes widened briefly before he sank into grave thought. Then, abruptly, he asked, "Could Lü Bu have appeared on the battlefield?"
"No, sir!"
"...If not her, then what in the world are you trying to tell me?"
This was a battlefield where no fewer than tens of thousands were tangled together. Even for a man called the Chanyu of the Xiongnu, it was a melee in which merely preserving his own hide would be a struggle. And now he was being told that, in the midst of it, a single general was crumbling his formations alone?
As far as Yufuluo was concerned, the only warrior alive capable of such a feat was Lü Bu, the Peerless Under Heaven. Nor was it as though he had never witnessed her with his own eyes.
"W-we've never seen this person before either!"
At Yufuluo's question—which was, in its way, only natural—his aide's eyes trembled with no small confusion.
The aide said, "One thing is certain: right now, a single enemy general is punching straight through our formation!"
"...Ha! Utterly absurd."
Wearing an expression of sheer disbelief, Yufuluo moved forward.
His aide, startled half out of his wits by what looked like an intent to charge into the battlefield himself, scrambled to restrain him. "It's dangerous, Chanyu!"
"Enough. I won't rest easy until I've confirmed with my own eyes whether that report is true."
Paying his aide's protests no mind, Yufuluo urged his horse forward.
"..."
The aide knew Yufuluo's violent temper far too well to try dissuading him a second time.
As he rode slowly forward, a scene entered Yufuluo's view.
"Out of my way! You're in the way!"
"Aaargh!"
A woman with sky-blue hair, clad in silver armor, tearing across the battlefield. Riding alone on a single horse, slaughtering every enemy who crossed her path—she was precisely as the aide had described.
For reasons he could not begin to fathom, the white horse beneath the woman effortlessly overtook even the hardy Xiongnu steeds, which made a panicked turn to flee all but meaningless.
A warrior of that caliber left him unable to summon a single soul fit for comparison. Yufuluo, who had contended with every manner of general under the General-in-Chief's command, could tell as much.
Back in the days when he and the General-in-Chief had been at each other's throats across Bing Province, even Zhang Liao—hailed as the General-in-Chief's second right hand—had seemed less formidable than this woman.
Having witnessed the sight, Yufuluo muttered in a voice thick with disbelief, "...Why is there a wench like Lü Bu over there?"
Strictly speaking she looked somewhat weaker than Lü Bu, but watching the scene unfold before him, the only name that came to mind was Lü Bu's.
His aide could only groan helplessly, unable to produce an answer, and since Yufuluo had hardly spat the question out expecting a real one, he let it pass with an impassive expression.
"...Tsk. But she is alone, in the end. How could a single individual overturn the outcome of a battle?"
Her martial prowess was overwhelming enough to conjure Lü Bu to mind, yes—but judged coldly, that general was merely one woman running wild on her own. Had the battle been a matter of hundreds, or a few thousand, the scales might well have tipped. But here, a full tens of thousands were entangled.
Whether for want of soldiers or what, the ambush force that had split into bands of barely a few hundred to rain down arrows had already been ground to double digits or fewer, while the enemy's main body, desperately holding the center against his army's assault, looked ready to collapse at any moment. Admittedly, their resistance was fierce enough that his own losses were no trifle—but this much lay within his expectations.
Then the unexpected happened.
The enemy general who had been striking down his men a short distance away turned her gaze upon him.
Eyes so cold it felt as though the chill sank into his very marrow. Meeting that gaze, Yufuluo felt his body flinch and shudder for an instant.
But neither had Yufuluo thrust himself into the battlefield without a thought. The general rampaging across the field was still a considerable distance away, and at this very moment the finest soldiers of the Xiongnu were guarding him on every side.
The enemy general seemed to have grasped this as well; she held her eyes on him for a brief moment, then turned her gaze back to the front. Naturally, even in that instant, she went on butchering his men.
Yufuluo found it absurd—and yet, at the same time, he was grateful that the terrifying woman had not come for him. Yes. What fool would hurl himself into a place where death was all but certain? However stout one's nerve, such a thing was simply impossible.
Having confirmed that his aide's report was true, Yufuluo gave his orders to the officers around him. "...Concentrate more soldiers on that woman. Let us see just how much she can hold off alone."
"Yes!"
Watching the messenger depart with the order, Yufuluo hurriedly turned his horse's head. "This much should suffice. Now I shall fall back to the rear agai—"
"Gyaaargh!"
"...?"
At a scream rising from nearby, Yufuluo turned his head with a creeping sense of unease. And that unease proved precisely right.
The enemy general who had so clearly turned her attention away was now charging straight toward him!
Startled by the woman's audacity, Yufuluo shouted, "That madwoman has finally come crawling to find her own grave!"
His aide at his side was every bit as flustered, and he asked with a desperate expression, "Wh-what should we do?!"
"You call that a question?! Stop her, now!"
"Yes!"
The aide attending Yufuluo drew his curved saber, and the surrounding soldiers, seeing it, drew their weapons as one. Leveling his saber at the enemy general, the aide gave the command.
"Kill that woman!"
At the command, the Xiongnu guarding Yufuluo surged forward with a roar.
Several hundred elite cavalry astride their horses—and a single general charging straight at them. Had she been an ordinary officer, she would have been thrown back a hundred times out of a hundred. But the enemy general bearing down on Yufuluo was no ordinary warrior.
"Khek!"
Zhao Yun whirled her spear a full turn through the empty air and pierced the throat of the first Xiongnu warrior to lunge at her,
"Gyaak!"
then, regripping the spear she had thrust with her right hand, she swept it around to the left and cut down yet another.
Now she bludgeoned men down with the shaft; now she deflected their strikes aside, closing the distance with every passing heartbeat.
Watching the scene, Yufuluo muttered in disbelief, "...How can such an impossible..."