Dangtugo (10)
Just before the battle began in earnest, I stood gazing out at Yuan Shu's massive army and slowly opened my mouth.
"Seo Yeo."
"Yes."
"No thought of stepping onto the field this time either?"
"...No."
Seo Yeo gave that answer while looking at me with an expression that plainly asked why I was even bothering to question her. She knew exactly what reply she would give—so why ask?
I knew it, too. Long ago, Seo Yeo had made up her mind to devote herself to one thing alone: guarding me. Unless I personally stepped forward, she would never once intrude upon a battlefield.
The girl who hung on my every word, no matter what I said, would never bend on matters concerning my safety.
Because I understood why she was that way, I had never pressed her to ride out. She wasn't exactly a person you could coerce into anything to begin with.
Shock therapy was out of the question as well—the kind where you threaten not to speak to her unless she goes to war.
Why?
...Seo Yeo's mental fortitude turned out to be surprisingly fragile.
Once in the past, I had jokingly put a little distance between us, and that single prank left her shedding tiny, beadlike tears all day long. Startled, I stuck to her side and kept soothing her, but the tears wouldn't stop, like a broken faucet. I broke out in a serious cold sweat, genuinely convinced something terrible was happening.
If merely stepping back a little reduced her to that state, what would happen if I pulled the "I won't talk to you" routine? Even I couldn't guess where she'd go off the rails.
With things as they stood, the only option left was to dangle a lure and give it a seductive little wiggle. And when it came to bait Seo Yeo would take, there was really only one kind.
I briefly recalled the words Cao Cao had once said to me.
"Is it shame that stays your hand? Or is it fear?"
"It makes no difference which. The time will come when you must face it head-on regardless."
Words that had seen straight through to the heart of me.
"Act boldly."
...
"Only then can everyone be happy."
Having heard him out, I decided it was time to start changing my course of action. Surely striding forward with my head held high was far better than nursing a vague dread of an unknowable future?
Honestly, with a fair bit of modern sensibility still clinging to me, I had been dithering along half-heartedly until now. So, gathering every ounce of resolve, I decided—just as Cao Cao put it—to become a boldly shameless scumbag.
"Then how about this?"
...?
Seo Yeo showed a puzzled look at my words, and I quietly began to close the distance to where she stood.
Hmm... I'd made my decision, but I had no idea whether it would truly work.
The moment I drew near, Seo Yeo's body went rigid. The faint flush creeping over her ears said she was, unmistakably, nervous.
Putting on the most pleasant voice I could manage, I whispered to her.
"If you come back after achieving a truly great deed, I'll grant you one wish."
...!
Seo Yeo's eyes flew wide open, and she stared at me. At that rare sight, I offered a small smile, and she murmured in a worried voice.
"...But if I am not at your side, Master, then your safety..."
Good grief. So much worrying. Even now, how many guards were stationed around me, and she still fretted like this?
Not that I found her concern unpleasant. Thanks to her, I could count the times I'd been injured on one hand. Whenever I was about to topple over like an idiot all by myself, she'd catch me as though it were the most natural thing in the world—there was no reason for me to get hurt.
...Though the way she reacted within that split second of a stumble never ceased to amaze me.
"Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei."
...
"Those three are leading my bugok—what is there to worry about?"
The Peach Sisters, anchored by Liu Bei, counted not one but two warriors a Match for Ten Thousand among them. To punch through those two and lay hands on me, an enemy would need to drag along at least twenty thousand men.
...And if you threw Zhao Yun into the tally, how many would it take then? Even when I offered her a general's commission, she kept turning it down, leaving me simply baffled.
"You've crossed blades with Zhang Fei before, so you know exactly what she's capable of."
...
"Stop worrying. Go, and come back safe."
I gave my reply in my usual voice.
After the briefest silence, Seo Yeo's lips slowly parted.
"...I will finish this as quickly as I can."
?
And the result.
"Th-the Grand General has fallen!"
"GYAAAAAH!"
The army Yuan Shu had scraped together at desperate expense was being blasted apart in real time.
"...Ha. Unbelievable."
I let out a hollow laugh. To think the spectacle before my eyes had been wrought by a single warrior bewitched by a wish coupon. Just what kind of extraordinary wish was she planning to ask for, to go this far?
Seo Yeo drove straight toward where Yuan Shu stood, and the head of the Zhong dynasty's Grand General, who happened to lie in her path, left his shoulders in an instant. Seo Yeo tearing across the battlefield astride Ochyma was something beyond all description. Countless men toppling like bowling pins—it was almost surreal. Where the black gale had swept through once, only the corpses of Yuan Shu's army lay strewn across the ground.
Of course, Seo Yeo was not the only one putting on a show.
"Ghhk—!"
Ji Ling, hailed as the fiercest general in Yuan Shu's army, glared with bulging eyes at the warrior before him.
"So you're the strongest one here?"
Lü Bu, who had just run Ji Ling through the belly with the Sky Piercer Halberd, smirked at him.
"Eh. Now I know your level."
Lü Bu swung the halberd in her grip as casually as someone tossing out the trash.
CRASH!
The moment Ji Ling—or what had been Ji Ling—struck the bare earth, Yuan Shu's army dissolved into pure, every-man-for-himself pandemonium.
Still, Ji Ling, of all people... If my memory served, this was the man who had crossed a good thirty bouts with Guan Yu in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms—and hadn't he then died to Zhang Fei in barely ten? Judging by the five or so exchanges he'd managed with Lü Bu just now, he must have been in fine form that day.
...Not that it kept him alive in the end.
With Zhang Xun and Ji Ling both dead in the blink of an eye, Yuan Shu's army collapsed at a staggering pace. The generals commanding the host had met their ends, and the battle formation was, quite literally, in ruins.
An army confronted with a situation this hopeless had only two possible responses.
"I don't want to die—!!"
"Spare me—!!"
Flee in rout—
"I surrender! I surrender!"
"Please, spare my life!"
Or surrender.
It was over. Watching the battlefield, I nodded slowly to myself. For peasant conscripts with no real training to speak of, holding out that long was impressive in its own right. Now, time to finish this.
While we smashed through the enemy front, Cao Cao had swung wide around to the rear and was hammering Yuan Shu's main body.
Somehow it felt as though we'd won handily even without Cao Cao's help—not that I had seen this coming either. Who could have imagined the Honey Water Emperor would march out and offer a field battle so brazenly? If it was enough to startle even Sima Yi, that said everything.
What on earth had possessed him to come waltzing out of his city? ...Either way, it was a fine thing for me.
The Grand General he had appointed with his own hands had lost his head to a general whose name he never even learned. His most trusted valiant general had met his end trying to bar the path of that Peerless Under Heaven.
The army of Zhong had crumbled, and the false emperor who had styled himself Dangtugo was now staging an endless flight for his life.
To Yuan Shu, fleeing at the very head of the rout, an attendant cried out.
"Y-Your Majesty! Sun Ce has appeared across the river!"
"There are enemies here as well?!"
Yuan Shu ground his teeth and wheeled his horse about.
"Cao Cao's army has appeared on our left!"
"Pursuers from the rear as well—!"
"Your Majesty!"
Ambushes bursting out at every turn, as though they had been lying in wait for him all along. Pursuers closing the distance by the heartbeat—and even commoners hurling stones the moment his downfall seemed assured.
That Yuan Shu escaped capture despite all of this came down to two things. First, his luck was uncannily good. Second, there was his genuine talent for escape—honed once before, when he had slipped safely clear of Cao Cao's Tiger and Leopard Cavalry.
Just how long did he careen about like that, in a blind panic?
"...No one? There is no one... no one left?"
Not a single soul remained at Yuan Shu's side now.
In a way, it was only natural. The General-in-Chief's army had hounded Yuan Shu relentlessly for a solid week, night and day without pause. Attendants denied any proper rest could never have endured it; drained of strength, they fell behind one by one and were snapped up by the pursuing troops.
...Or else, sensing there was no hope left in him, they had simply walked away of their own accord.
Yuan Shu now looked for all the world like a walking corpse.
"Huh...?"
THUD!
In the end, even the horse Yuan Shu rode could not endure the forced march and crashed over sideways.
"Hhk—!"
Sprawled on the ground along with his horse, Yuan Shu let out a single agonized groan.
"Y-you wretched beast. Get up. Get up..."
With his leg pinned beneath the animal, Yuan Shu whimpered and struggled for a long while—but he, too, had long since been driven to his limit by hunger and thirst.
"How strange. How strange... How did I ever come to this..."
At last, Yuan Shu gave up on freeing his leg and turned his gaze to the sky. A brilliant blue vault, without a single cloud.
"...My throat is burning."
Feeling the mild autumn sunlight pouring down over him, Yuan Shu murmured.
"Someone out there—anyone at all—please. Bring me honeyed water."
Naturally, no one answered.
"Honeyed water... someone, anyone... honeyed water..."
Yuan Shu's feeble murmurs, reaching no ears at all, slowly faded away.
And so another warlord who had reached for the world crumpled where he lay.