King Mulu (4)
Having unfastened the collars of her savage beasts, King Mulu was striding along in grand style at the head of her elephant corps.
Painted from head to toe in some unidentifiable dye, she suddenly threw back her head and roared with laughter.
"Hahaha! By now my little darlings should be stuffing their faces!"
How could a pack of puny wretches possibly stop a horde of savage beasts? Even she, who tamed the creatures for a living, could think of no clear countermeasure — nothing but to bull forward with her elephants and trust in sheer momentum. Even now her trainers would be hot on the beasts' tails, giving their all to land the finishing blow, which left her with only one duty of her own: to work a touch of sorcery and put the fear into the enemy.
"Just keep pushing straight on like this, and... hmm?"
Then her gaze caught on black smoke billowing up not far away, and puzzlement crossed her face. Black smoke. Didn't that only rise when fire had something in its jaws?
"What in the world is..."
"Cave Master! Something terrible has happened!"
Just as an inexplicable unease was stirring in her gut — the work of her born instinct — one of the beast trainers came rushing up, crying out in a frantic voice.
"Th-the beasts we sent out, they're all...!"
"All? All what? What happened to them?!"
The trainer was too stunned to finish, and King Mulu hurriedly pressed for an answer.
The Nanman soldier finally got the words out.
"They walked straight into the enemy's ambush. Every last one of them was struck down...!"
"Wh-what did you just say?!"
The report hit King Mulu like a club across the skull.
"Not a single one survived?!"
"It's true...!"
The soldier, who had spent long years training the beasts and grown genuinely fond of them, answered through her sobs. And King Mulu, who of course cherished the creatures and called them her darlings, was no different.
"I refuse to believe it! I'm going to see for myself!"
"Cave Master, it's dangerous!"
At the soldier's attempt to hold her back, King Mulu only laughed the harder.
"Haha! Dangerous? Look behind me!"
"......"
At her shout, the soldier turned her gaze backward. Colossal elephants, daunting enough to cow a man with a single look, were marching in ranks behind King Mulu. The sight of them advancing so proudly, riders astride their backs, was enough to inspire outright awe.
"With a force this mighty standing right beside me, what is there to fear?!"
To so bold a declaration, the soldier could make no reply.
"...I will go and steady the trainers, then. They'll be in disarray."
"Good. Hurry along!"
These were soldiers who faced down beasts that no ordinary soul would dare approach without so much as a flinch, and with beast-trainers among them in considerable numbers, they would prove a substantial asset in the battle to come. Gritting her teeth, King Mulu fixed her eyes on the black smoke rising nearby.
The savage beasts that had gone berserk, eyes rolled back, and chased our soldiers down turned tail and bolted for the forest the instant they came face to face with the Tiger Chariots Zhuge Liang had developed. But a flamethrower is a flamethrower for a reason. That Greek fire of ours — manufactured in the East, of all places — finding itself with no beasts left to burn, promptly set fire to the very forest the beasts had fled into.
Watching the flames spread through the woods in the blink of an eye, I thought: Well, I've wronged the Earth again today. Having done my part for environmental pollution, I prayed the planet would kindly refrain from dropping a lightning bolt on my head, and kept observing the situation.
It did not take long for the raging fire to swallow the forest whole, and the beasts, realizing there was nowhere left to run, scattered in every direction in a desperate scramble to survive.
───GRAAAH!!
Beasts of every description came bursting out to the east, the west, and the south — every direction but the north, where the Tiger Chariots sat proudly entrenched.
Stopping creatures fighting tooth and claw for their lives would be no easy feat, but we could hardly simply let them go, either. These were beasts that had already tasted human blood. Turn them loose as they were, and just as Zhuge Liang had warned, the odds were good they would roam the countryside devouring the helpless and stirring up trouble wherever they went.
Folding them into a fighting corps of our own, the way the Nanman did, wouldn't be a bad idea either. Of course, we would first have to learn how to tame the things before we could organize them into a unit at all.
I nodded slowly as I watched Zhao Yun, Zhang Liao, and Seo Huang cutting down the beasts at the very front of our line.
"So we've cleared the first hurdle. Now for the second?"
"Yes."
Zhuge Liang, standing close by, answered my question in her calm, measured voice.
"Elephants... From what I hear, they are immense creatures with long, tapering snouts. I find myself quite curious what they actually look like."
"I see."
In a world with nothing so convenient as a zoo, I could well understand how she had never laid eyes on one. In this era, you had to march clear down into the deep south of China before you might — might — catch a glimpse of the beasts. If my memory served, you would need to travel all the way to Jiaozhou, the name the Later Han gave to the lands of Vietnam, to see one at all. And since the Nanman dwelled at the very southern tip of Yi Province, their territory differed little from Jiaozhou itself.
"...Hmm."
Hearing that even Zhuge Liang had never seen an elephant, I sank deep into thought.
The sway war elephants held over a battlefield was immense. An overwhelming size that even cavalry could not hope to match. Combat power so vast that defensive formations meant nothing. And on top of it all, the bone-deep terror they struck into every soldier forced to face them.
Granted, upkeep being what it was, no nation short of truly wealthy could drag hundreds of them about. The trouble was that even a few dozen were more than enough to turn a battlefield on its head.
And our soldiers would be seeing elephants for the very first time? ...The first engagement or two, I'd wager they panic and break.
Even I, who had known of elephants long beforehand through videos and photographs, had taken quite a shock the first time I stood face to face with one. Heaven only knew what it would do to men who knew the beasts only from scattered fireside tales.
I still remembered how staggering it was when the giant elephants appeared in that movie about the ring everyone was obsessed with — the sight of an army that had seemed on the verge of victory being blown to pieces in moments. I could never forget it.
In battles of this age, an army was defeated the moment its formation collapsed — and the war elephant was a troop type whose entire purpose was to shatter formations. My worries could only deepen.
Come on, brain, remember. How did that Alexander the Great beat an elephant army again? I did have capable generals at my disposal these days, so if we played our cards right, we might just manage.
Even as my worries deepened, the forest blazed fiercely on, and the savage beasts were steadily whittled down in number. We had lured them a long, long way, so there was still time before King Mulu arrived — time I would have to spend finding a way to drive back her elephant corps.
It went without saying that the first thing to come to mind was the Tiger Chariot. Fire was a natural phenomenon that every living creature feared — elephants could be no exception — and judging it a fine plan, I had moved to put it into action.
Right up until the Tiger Chariots themselves broke down.
"...My apologies. The weapon has malfunctioned."
"Ah."
The Tiger Chariot had only just been built for the first time, off an idea of Zhuge Liang's, and thrown together in such a hurry that its reliability left a great deal to be desired. Its firepower had been tremendous — so tremendous that the machine could not endure its own output. Small mercy that it had not taken any of our own people with it.
Staring at the charred-black husk of what had been a Tiger Chariot, I could not hide my bitterness. To be fair, no weapon had ever been put to proper use without a long road of trial and error. As it stood, the thing was closer to a disposable contraption — fire it once, then throw it away. What it had needed was proper field testing first.
So reality and imagination truly were different things. Dazzled by that tremendous firepower, we had never gotten around to testing its durability — and even Zhuge Liang, who ought to have been the one to flag the flaw, was far too busy preening over how everything had gone exactly by her calculations.
...Not that I had any idea how to raise its durability. I'm sure the other geniuses in our ranks will sort that out on their own. Which meant that, for now, that was the only way.
"H-how dare you reduce my darlings to such a wretched state?!"
Mounted atop her white elephant, King Mulu — the shock must have been considerable — burst out in a fury on the verge of tears. And in fairness, the spectacle of beasts turned to lumps of charcoal and skewers strewn this way and that was hardly a pretty one.
"You bastards! Fine, then — let's see how you deal with this!"
So crying out, King Mulu pressed her palms together and began to chant something under her breath.
"It appears she is attempting her sorcery again."
"Sorcery?"
"Yes."
Ma Chao, drawing near, spoke to me in a respectful voice.
"Strange things began happening out of nowhere — the whole area abruptly going dark, savage winds whipping up without warning."
"Hmm..."
Our men's fighting spirit was already sagging thanks to the war elephants, and now sorcery on top of it? Morale would plummet straight through the floor, and the formation would come apart at the slightest touch.
Savage beasts and an elephant corps, with outlandish sorcery piled on top. She really does sound like someone who walked straight out of a fantasy world. Not that I was unprepared for this, either.
A woman with brown hair grown to around her shoulders stepped forward and spoke.
"...When you summoned me so suddenly, I did wonder what for. So this is what it was."
"That's right. I'm counting on you."
"Of course. If it is the General-in-Chief's request."
───Ting.
At that very moment, King Mulu rang her bell, and just as Ma Chao had described, the world around us began to change. A furious wind rose without warning, and darkness pressed in from every side.
Just as the soldiers around us began to waver at the unnatural display, the woman with the amber eyes spoke, calm and unhurried.
"A few people I know are fond of saying what a wide world this is. It seems they were not wrong."
No sooner had the words left her lips than King Mulu's sorcery came crumbling down in an instant.
"Wha—?!"
"After all, there are those who can work sorcery you have never seen before."
Zhang Jue — the woman who had once led an army of Yellow Turbans numbering more than a million — met King Mulu's gaze with a faint smile.
"Might it be some traditional shamanism of her tribe, I wonder?"
"......"
"I shall have to look into it, should the opportunity arise."
Realizing in a flash that her sorcery had been shattered at a single stroke, King Mulu could only stand there wearing a foolish, dumbstruck expression.