King Mulu (3)
As a rule, carnivores move far faster than herbivores.
Think it over, and it's perfectly obvious why. If a creature that lives on meat were slower than the prey it chased, it might as well lie down and starve. Unless, like wolves, they band together for clever, coordinated drives, predators rely on explosive bursts of power to ambush and bring down an unwary herbivore.
And right now was no exception.
"ROOOAR!"
A tiger that had caught up to Ma Chao, who was guarding the soldiers' rear, sprang high into the air and swung its massive forepaw. A single blow from it would leave an ordinary man mortally wounded.
WHOOOSH—!!
"Eek!"
But the paw sweeping down at Ma Chao did no more than slice through empty air with a vicious hiss — for she had yelped in alarm and twisted sharply sideways. With both legs clamped tight around the Ferghana horse's flank and her waist bent nearly to a right angle, she looked for all the world like an acrobat mid-performance.
Ma Chao did not miss the split-second opening the attack left behind.
"Get lost, you crazy beast!"
KRAKAAK──!!
The tiger, skewered through on the spear in her hands, tumbled head over heels and crashed to the ground. The tremendous recoil that came with it posed no problem for Ma Chao whatsoever. Righting herself with ease, she shouted to the soldiers.
"Run faster! They're catching up!"
"This is already our top speed!"
"Then keep running at that speed! If you end up in a beast's belly, don't expect me to take responsibility!"
Having barked that out with plenty of spirit, Ma Chao turned her head back toward the rear once more.
...I never thought I'd live to see a sight like this.
Tigers and leopards, wolves and wild dogs, all charging down their enemies at a human's command. At the sheer unreality of it — like something out of an old folktale — Ma Chao let out a hollow laugh.
"GRRUH—!"
"Now what do YOU want?!"
This time it was not her the tiger was after but the Ferghana horse beneath her, and Ma Chao flinched and swung her weapon in alarm.
"KUH-HUUNG──!!"
"What a strange cry you have! Does it hurt?!"
Her lightning reflexes had carried her through the crisis, and now Ma Chao swept her blood-dripping spear in a wide arc, beating back the several leopards that had lunged at her all at once. The sight of them flung to the earth as though swatted by something enormous made the surrounding beasts falter for an instant.
Faintly creasing that beautiful face of hers, Ma Chao said:
"Tch. That's a jolt you only feel smashing head-on into enemy cavalry."
Any ordinary soldier would surely have lost balance and gone down the instant their weapon collided with a beast. It was only because she was her that she could take the impact and still stand there without a scratch.
If there was any silver lining, it was that the soldiers were holding up remarkably well.
"Don't take the beasts head-on! Keep as much distance as you can and loose your arrows!"
"Yes, my lady!"
The Qiang held the beasts in check, putting to full use the mounted archery they had drilled since childhood. They were hardly beasts that would drop from a few arrows, but a handful of unlucky ones struck in a vital spot collapsed where they stood and breathed their last.
One Qiang soldier shouted in high spirits:
"I'll have to brag to my family later that I brought down a tiger!"
"If you've got time to show off, draw that bow one more time!"
"Wouldn't that beat trembling in fear?!"
True to his word, the Qiang showed not a trace of fear even on a battlefield where lives hung in the balance. A hardy people who had lived their whole existence on battlefields — to them, combat was simply daily routine. Some of the beasts, guided by innate instinct, sensed that Ma Chao was the strongest of the lot and turned on other soldiers instead, but the Qiang handled them with practiced ease, drawing the beast corps deeper and deeper in.
There was not much farther to the target point now.
"There they are."
Watching from the crest of a gently rising hill, I gazed at the distant scene where dust was billowing up. Now, let's see... At the head rode the Qiang cavalry under Ma Chao's lead, and behind them came a horde of every manner of beast in hot pursuit. Tigers, leopards, wild dogs, wolves... What was with all the different species? What was this, a shoot for some animal kingdom documentary?
I'd heard there were elephants too, but they were such slow animals that they seemed to have failed to keep up. Then again, if something with that kind of destructive power could also run fast, the other animals would be cursing it as filthy and unfair.
Zhuge Liang, watching the chase unfold, murmured in a calm voice.
"The beasts appear to have grown considerably weary, my lord."
"Well, they have been running this whole time."
Carnivores may be faster than herbivores, but there was one thing they decisively lacked: stamina. A herbivore that truly commits can run without end; a carnivore cannot. Think of it as a long-distance runner against a sprinter. Of course, there were exceptions like the wolf — a creature that shadows its prey for days on end and hunts with savage persistence, which is why its hunting success rate is said to be far higher than other predators'. There is even a frightening piece of science claiming that a carnivore running flat-out for too long can have its heart burst under the excessive flood of blood, but let's skip past that.
The beasts chasing our soldiers seemed intelligent enough to pace themselves in their own way, but the ones they were chasing now made for a terrible matchup. The horse. A herbivore counted among the very finest of long-distance runners. If the beasts couldn't finish things off while their early momentum was hot, the outcome was as good as settled.
As the beasts tired and she gained some breathing room, Ma Chao somehow managed to spot where I stood and flashed me a radiant smile. Just the sight of me makes her happy — is that what that smile meant?
The Qiang mounted unit that had been baiting the beasts slipped deep into the broad forest, and the beasts — long since cut off from their handlers — trotted in after them without a thought in their heads. And with that, it was over.
"Raise the red flag, if you would."
"Understood!"
At Zhuge Liang's command, a soldier planted an enormous red flag visible even from far away. The unit waiting on the far side of the forest Ma Chao had entered confirmed the signal and began easing into their positions, one by one.
"My lord, I beg you to take care."
"Right. Come back safe."
"Yes, my lord."
Zhao Yun, who had been at my side, then led a portion of the soldiers off to encircle part of the forest. Being infantry, they were slow about forming the encirclement, but with the men spread wide in every direction there was no need to race the clock.
The north side of the forest, where Ma Chao would soon burst out, was entrusted to Gao Shun; the south went to Zhao Yun, who had just departed with her troops. The east and west were covered by Seo Hwang and Zhang Liao respectively, so there was nothing to worry about. The beasts were hardly few in number, but my soldiers now outnumbered them many times over.
With every preparation thus complete, how long did we wait?
"Phew! We finally made it out!"
Ma Chao and the Qiang cavalry burst from the forest's northern edge. They had not come through entirely unscathed — the Qiang's numbers had thinned considerably — while the beasts, though somewhat winded, still came on after them in full swagger.
Ma Chao brushed past Gao Shun and shouted:
"It's all yours now!"
"Understood. You have endured much."
Gao Shun calmly received Ma Chao's words, the girl's tone roughened a touch by the grueling chase.
"All of you, make ready."
"Yes, Commander!"
The soldiers hauled the weapon Zhuge Liang had invented forward and squared off against the beasts. An intricately carved wooden contraption in the shape of a tiger. And fixed to the tiger's mouth... a cylindrical tube. Gao Shun leveled her sword at the beasts and gave the order.
"Fire!"
FWOOOOSH───!!
The instant Gao Shun's command fell, flame erupted from the front of the weapon. That's right — exactly like a flamethrower.
KRAAAK───!
The beasts at the very front began to thrash in madness, their whole bodies wrapped in fire. Hadn't I said it before? That when fantasy comes for you, you answer with fantasy of your own.
"Hehe. I only imagined it, but it truly works."
"...And what will you name this weapon?"
"Since its frame is carved in the shape of a tiger, how does the Tiger Chariot sound?"
I remembered the sight of Zhuge Liang smiling sweetly as she gave the weapon its name. ...So this was Greek fire, built in the East. Zhuge Liang had knocked together, just like that, the trump-card weapon the Eastern Roman Empire had shrouded in such jealous secrecy.
KUH-HUUK──!!
The beasts, ambushed by a flamethrower out of nowhere, fled into the forest with piteous cries that sounded like wailing. Watching the woods catch fire, I sank into thought.
"You ask why we must lure the beasts into the forest at all?"
"That's right. With a weapon like this, couldn't we repel the beast corps even in a straight, head-on fight?"
Beasts terrified of fire would bolt straight back and crash into their own comrades, and if we struck in concert with that rout, we could dispatch King Mulu with ease. To my question, Zhuge Liang had answered with a smile in her eyes.
"We could hardly set masterless beasts loose upon Yi Province, could we?"
"...True enough."
I nodded at her explanation. Beasts like tigers usually make their homes in the mountains — and mountains are what Yi Province has in endless supply. It got bad enough that an entire word was coined for it: the tiger scourge, the calamity of falling prey to tigers. Unless we meant to turn the travelers coming and going through Yi Province into tiger feed, it was right to wipe them out here in one stroke, even at some cost.
"As ever, you've planned it all out. I can rest easy."
"You flatter me too much, my lord."
I still could not forget the sight that followed: Zhuge Liang dipping low in a bow at my praise, while Sima Yi cast her a faint sidelong glare. And Pang Tong, stealthily smothering her own presence as she hid off to the side, stood out rather noticeably in her own right.