Intrusion (6)
The battle had erupted across the Taiyuan Commandery region of Bing Province. The first clash between the Black Mountain Bandits guarding the Han Empire's frontier and the Xiongnu tribesmen who had stormed into Bing Province at breakneck speed ended in a stalemate.
And there was, of course, only one reason for that.
"What in the world is this nonsense...!"
The enemy commander advanced in a perfectly straight line, heedless of how many warriors threw themselves into her path. The Chanyu of the Xiongnu had at first tried to hold his ground, sneering that some mere girl could hardly amount to much—but a very different feeling took root in him as he watched Zhao Yun carve through his army with terrifying momentum. The moment her spear so much as flashed, his mounted warriors went face-down into the dirt, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
At the sight of his men being reaped in real time, a Xiongnu officer hurried to Yufuluo's side. Yufuluo's younger brother, Huchuquan—clad in a sheepskin garment and wearing a fur hat that reeked of wealth at a single glance—shouted:
"Brother! You should fall back now, while you still can!"
"Quiet! Every eye around us is fixed on this very spot. If they see me being chased off, what becomes of the battle!"
Yufuluo roared back at Huchuquan's suggestion.
Peoples like the Xiongnu possessed tremendous individual fighting prowess, but in a pitched battle of this scale they labored under one grievous flaw: the moment anything befell the man commanding the host, their formation began to collapse like a leaderless mob.
No army in the world was wholly free of that weakness, but among nomads—who were forever feuding between tribes and erupting into open infighting—it ran far deeper than most. It was common enough for one side to keep fighting until the other had been wiped out entirely, unless a sovereign like the Chanyu himself stepped in to mediate.
And with the warrior rampaging across the field before them making such a spectacular show of it, everyone locked in the fighting had, without quite meaning to, narrowed their attention to this one corner of the battle. The Xiongnu watched so they could bolt the instant that enemy commander seemed headed their way; the Black Mountain Bandits watched to draw courage from the sight of that magnificent warrior.
Damn it all! Why did I ever ride forward, only to end up in a mess like this!
Yufuluo cursed his own complacency, but what was done was done. With the enemy commander who had been a speck in the distance now bearing down right before his eyes, Huchuquan let out a shriek that was nothing short of a scream.
"Truly, we cannot hold any longer!"
"This cannot be! A battle we had all but won, thrown away so absurdly—!"
"Brother!"
Even amid all this, the elite Xiongnu guards shielding the Chanyu were dying one by one. Not that Yufuluo could step forward himself and offer up his own neck. He stared into those icy blue eyes that had nailed themselves to him—and in the end, he had no choice but to wheel his horse about.
"...We fall back!"
"You heard him?! Shield them—quickly!"
At Huchuquan's bellow, the Xiongnu who had held the perimeter to the very last began withdrawing, forming a screen around the two men. The sight of the supreme leader of the Xiongnu fleeing from a single pursuer struck his own allies like a hammer blow.
One of the Xiongnu who had been pressing the Black Mountain Bandits spoke up.
"So what are we supposed to do now?"
"Shouldn't we go help him?"
In a situation unraveling so fast that no one could see an inch ahead, and with no fresh orders coming down, there was only one action the Xiongnu could take.
"Save the Chanyu!"
"Retreat! Retreat!!"
The Xiongnu began streaming off the battlefield at exactly the same blistering speed with which they had first stormed it. The Black Mountain Bandits, who had held the line until their mouths flooded with the taste of bile, could only stare in open bewilderment.
"Wh-what's going on?"
"Is it over?"
The very tribesmen who had been hammering them into the ground were withdrawing out of nowhere. Without even a thought of giving chase, the Black Mountain Bandits simply stood where they were, dazed.
"...Tsk."
Yufuluo clicked his tongue. Shaking off the enemy commander's pursuit had not been difficult in itself. The warrior who had come lunging in as if to part the Chanyu from his head at any moment had seen the mass of Xiongnu converging from every side, gradually slowed her pace, and then—somewhere along the way—simply vanished from sight.
Yufuluo turned over the idea of wheeling his army around and attacking again, but when he recalled the distance between Luoyang and Taiyuan Commandery, he shook his head. ...No sense in overreaching.
On a map it looked close enough, but between Luoyang, where Jeong Reung resided, and Taiyuan Commandery in Bing Province, where he now stood, stretched a full thousand li—some four hundred kilometers. Factor in the rough ground of hills and mountains scattered along the route, and even ridden at a dead gallop the distance would swallow a good week. Counting the time for a courier to carry word from Bing Province, and the time for Jeong Reung's army to march out in answer, he still had room to spare. They had already fled a fair distance, so the enemy too would have paused to catch their breath—and Xiongnu or no Xiongnu, turning back for another assault would leave any man bone-tired.
"Hm."
Right. What's one miserable day?
The Han Empire's finest heavy cavalry? So what of it? He granted that on the field of battle they made for a thorny enemy, but they knew nothing of covering vast distances at speed. That belonged solely to the brothers and sisters of the steppe—those who slept in the saddle, ate in the saddle, and made the horse their second body as they roamed from place to place. Settlers who whined and staggered after merely a few days under the open sky could never hope to match that pace of advance.
Treating a single day's delay as beneath notice, Yufuluo gave his orders. "We will do no more today. Let the men rest."
"Yes, my lord!"
The adjutant answered with due respect and withdrew. Watching the camp spring up around him, Yufuluo told himself that this time he had withdrawn only through his own carelessness—and that next time, no such thing would come to pass.
The next day.
Yufuluo appeared at the head of his soldiers exactly as he had the day before and looked upon the force arrayed opposite him. The Black Mountain Bandits, dug into the very same ground as yesterday, still clutched their weapons tight, exhaustion written plainly across their faces. Call it a day, but in truth only a handful of hours had passed since the fighting ended, so there was nothing strange about their condition.
"..."
He had likewise made preparations for the enemy commander who had run wild through his lines alone. Yufuluo gestured forward and gave the command.
"Attack."
WAAAAAGH—!!
No sooner had the order fallen than the Xiongnu massed behind Yufuluo began their charge as one.
One day. A single day had passed, and yet with their numbers slashed so drastically, only one cynical thought offered itself to the Black Mountain Bandits: could they possibly hold out today? Not that those barbarians would spare them a shred of consideration—so they could only picture the families waiting at home and cling to their ground as best they could.
"LOOSE—!!"
As if by appointment, the Black Mountain Bandits lying in ambush among the nearby ridges burst out and loosed their arrows into the Xiongnu, and the Xiongnu, yielding not a single step, answered with a volley of their own.
Watching it unfold, the chieftain of the Black Mountain Bandits, Sui Gu, turned to Zhao Yun. "I'll hold this ground as long as I'm able. You—go raise hell out there, same as yesterday."
"Understood."
Zhao Yun answered in her flat, unadorned way. Sui Gu studied her a moment longer, then turned back to his own lines.
"What are you idlers about! Front rank, shields up! Rear rank, pour those arrows into them!"
As the Black Mountain Bandits crashed into the Xiongnu with a thunderous roar, Zhao Yun moved out with the precious few riders Sui Gu had scraped together for her. The cavalry remaining to the bandits had thinned dramatically compared to the day before. The Xiongnu simply kept their distance from the riders and rained arrows down on them one-sidedly, and no ordinary officer had the craft to withstand it. Had there been even foot soldiers to hand, a man might at least have glared the horsemen down—but the tribesmen were mounted archers to a man, leaving their foes to play a meaningless game of tag while their strength was shaved away.
They were outnumbered on top of everything else. The officer who had originally led the cavalry had fought hard amid those wretched conditions only to be struck down by a blind arrow—an absurd, meaningless death—and when a catastrophe of that scale struck, the riders under his command naturally bled alongside him. When the report reached Zhang Yang, he sighed from the depths of his chest and set Zhao Yun into the vacant cavalry command, a decision owed in no small part to Sui Gu, who had watched her performance the day before and come away deeply impressed.
"Haha! Wench! I've all but snapped my neck waiting on you!"
Zhao Yun, leading her scarce riders, brought her column to a halt at the sight of the force directly ahead. The Chanyu's own blood—his younger brother Huchuquan—was waiting for her with a press of Xiongnu that had to number in the thousands. Her eyes narrowed, ever so slightly, at the sight of him.
"...You committed this much just to stop one person?"
"My brother is not the sort of man to make the same mistake twice!"
Huchuquan threw back his head and laughed. "The fools who do nothing but spit arrows from beyond reach can be driven off with a handful of soldiers! It's on you, wench—the one who can conjure up variables—that our strength ought to be spent!"
"..."
"So then—thrash about as best you can, and—"
CRASH—!
"...?"
A colossal sound, of all things, tearing in from nowhere—and Huchuquan froze solid.
One of the Xiongnu scrambled helter-skelter to his side and blurted out:
"It's a disaster!"
"What in the world is it now?"
Huchuquan asked with an air of perfect composure, but at the messenger's hushed report, his face drained white.
"Wh-what did you say?"
Huchuquan asked again, his voice trembling. The Xiongnu soldier answered.
"Lü Bu! Lü Bu has appeared on our right flank!"
At the unbelievable news, Yufuluo cried out. "Impossible! Do you have any idea how far it is from here to Luoyang? How could she have led an army here already!"
"Well, you see..."
In answer to Huchuquan's question, the Xiongnu soldier spoke each syllable with painstaking care.
"She's alone."
"...What?"
"Lü Bu is sweeping through our army—by herself, without a single troop behind her!"
"..."
And with that, Huchuquan understood why Lü Bu had arrived so soon. That madwoman had abandoned the very army she was supposed to command and set out ahead, all on her own.