King Mulu (6)
Once the countermeasures for war elephants were drawn up in advance, the battle began flowing our way none too badly.
"……."
"That's ten of them now!"
Ever since becoming pregnant with my child, Seo Yeo and Lü Bu had begun refraining from stepping onto the battlefield in person. The pair contented themselves instead with an unbroken chain of thrown spears and loosed arrows before the elephants could ever close the distance.
PWOOOO──!!
Needless to say, every time a weapon left one of their hands an elephant rider dropped, and the very next moment that elephant would go berserk and rip the enemy formation to ribbons.
"Aaagh! We're your own side! Cut it out!"
"N-no, you've got it wrong! It won't listen to a word I say!"
What was it they said — the most fearsome enemy is the one within your own ranks? The Nanman soldiers, utterly helpless against elephants bearing down on their own heads, spun in circles and dissolved into confusion. Some elephants, like the very first one that had bolted, bored highways straight through the formation and exited the battlefield entirely, while others rolled their eyes back into their skulls and kept mauling Nanman soldiers right to the very end. That, I supposed, was the difference in temperament I'd mentioned a moment ago — the docile sort that runs off in tears the instant anyone strikes it, and the ferocious sort whose rage boils over the brim and thrashes blind to everything in sight. Whichever sort it happened to be, the result was the same: the Nanman army's formation was being turned into one colossal shambles.
"We haven't even reached the enemy yet — what in the blazes is going on!"
King Mulu spat out her vexation at the battle sliding out from under her. "The moment we close to grips, this fight is ours! Move, and move faster!"
WAAAH──!
The situation was ugly, but turning tail now was out of the question, so King Mulu roared at the top of her lungs and drove her soldiers' footsteps onward.
"Faster! Move faster!"
"W-who's next?"
Having apparently twigged some time ago that only their fellow elephant handlers were being singled out for death, the Nanman men who steered the beasts wore grim expressions. How does one dodge a javelin from Seo Yeo atop an elephant that daren't take a single careless step? All they could do was pray that the next turn would not be theirs. One look at the destructive force riding on those thrown spears, and shields and armor ceased to mean a thing.
"Uwaargh!"
"Damn it all!"
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than another elephant rider lost her life. There hung the handler, dangling limp off the outer rail of the fighting platform where the elephant archers stood — a corpse stiff as a stuffed and mounted specimen, and hardly a pretty sight. Then again, I imagine the enemy's feelings on the matter weren't much different from mine.
"Uuugh... are we sure this thing actually works?"
With the elephant corps they'd believed in for victory collapsing so spinelessly, the Nanman soldiers' morale fell off a cliff. A few riders even got themselves hurt trying to subdue their own rampaging mounts in head-to-head brawls — sheer bedlam from top to bottom. They weren't even inside archery range yet. What were they doing falling apart this early?
I didn't know whether to call it a personal quirk or what, but King Mulu's army did not contain a single soldier mounted on horseback. Had cavalry once existed, only to end up as lunch for the beasts? Or had she judged from the outset that with a beast corps on hand, horses were redundant? Whatever the reason, the bill had come due. Even now the elephants thrashed about blind to friend and foe alike, and the Nanman infantry hadn't the faintest idea what to do about any of it. And even if those men somehow clawed their way to our lines, what awaited them was elite cavalry slamming into their flanks and their rear.
PWOOOOO──!
WHUMP─!
"Oh-ho."
I let out a low whistle as the white elephant beneath King Mulu flattened one of the rampaging elephants in a single blow. A white elephant was a marvel in itself, but its strength was monstrous on top of that. Was the creature something like a spirit beast? Where ordinary elephants needed a rider perched on their necks to issue instructions, King Mulu's white elephant acted entirely of its own accord, no rider at all.
And where did that rider go, you ask? Skewered by one of Seo Yeo's javelins ages ago — at this very moment she was dangling from King Mulu's fighting platform.
"...You were blocking my line of sight, so it couldn't be helped. My apologies!"
Oh — and down she went.
King Mulu wrenched the spear her rider hung on clean out of the deck, then flung it whistling down below. PWOOOO──! The white elephant, which hadn't so much as flinched under the many arrows Lü Bu had put into it, let out a thunderous roar. So it cries in much the same voice as that elephant living a life of idle luxury up at the imperial court these days. Is this what they mean by choose your master well?
"...Hm. A white elephant, hm."
Honestly, it was pretty damn cool. Hadn't that Hannibal himself ridden elephants onto the field to command his armies? For the first time, I understood the man's heart. Slow beside a horse, true — but having one's romance within reach mattered far more than speed ever would.
"Whoa, does that thing not feel pain or what?"
Lü Bu could not hide her astonishment at the white elephant stoutly weathering her arrows. Perhaps its hide was simply thicker than the others', or perhaps, as she said, it truly felt no pain. One thing was certain: an arrow to the trunk did not send it into the frenzy that gripped every other elephant on the field.
"Aim for the other elephants first," I told Lü Bu. "It's not as though there's no way to put one down."
"Got it."
At my word, Lü Bu swung her gaze straight to the other elephants. King Mulu, for her part, evidently knew she was the commander; off in the distance she poured all her strength into simply holding her formation together. If Seo Yeo put a spear into it, that white elephant would topple over like the rest — but what if, in the process, King Mulu met a sudden death? One glance said she wasn't the sort to be casually swept up and killed in the confusion, yet you never can tell with people. After all, that... fellow. No, that woman was recorded in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms as having died amid battlefield chaos, and the moment I let my guard down could be the moment she dropped dead. You see, I happen to have an extraordinarily keen interest in that beast corps of hers. The current stock had all been converted into charcoal barbecue, but so long as the secrets of taming remained, nothing stopped her from raising more. As Zhang Jue had said, she was a treasure bundle stuffed full of information begging to be pried loose — the likes of her had to be taken alive while the chance lasted. And so I watched the battle unfold, savoring the delightful fantasy of that detestable barbarian chieftain getting clobbered senseless by a tiger.
"Archers, make ready."
Gao Shun gave the order in a placid voice the instant the enemy crossed into arrow range. In the middle of the chaos the elephants had sown, the Nanman soldiers were somehow still advancing, and the archers laid their bows upon them.
"Loose!"
SHWISH-SHWISH-SHWEE───!!
Riding the wind, the arrows drowned the sky in shadow before plunging down onto the Nanman soldiers.
"Gwaak!"
"Kheok!"
They had plainly not come dressed in lamellar made to turn spear and sword; King Mulu's soldiers crumpled where they stood the moment the arrowstorm found them. Among their number were men who, like their king, wore paint over every inch of skin and not a strip of armor besides. That was probably their own brand of confidence on display — as the plan went, the beast corps would have shredded the archers long before a single arrow came anywhere near them. That sort of confidence. And given that they were alive and well after battle upon battle, it wasn't confidence without any foundation at all. But the hour had come to fold that confidence away for good.
SHWISH-SHWISH──!
The arrowstorm poured down without letup, and the archers' concentrated mark fell, above all, on the riders perched atop the elephants.
"Gaaargh!"
PWOOOOO─!!
The elephant handlers could not endure that focused barrage, and soon after, elephants bristling with arrows from trunk to tail began convulsing into frenzies as well. The thick-hided beasts looked to be in remarkably decent shape despite the hits, but pain is pain — and one after another they swung their heads about and fled the field.
"M-madness! Another one's charging straight at us!"
"Everyone, get clear!"
Naturally, the fleeing elephants' paths ran straight through Nanman soldiers advancing in neat ranks and files, and those too slow to dodge the charge were bowled over and sent flying like bowling pins. Elephants running amok on every side; infantry being swept away by the archers without mounting any real resistance; and on top of it all, elite cavalry biding their time to strike the enemy's unguarded seams. This was now a battle we could not lose.
"H-how did it come to this...?"
King Mulu pulled a slack-jawed face, as though she couldn't believe a single thing before her eyes. Well, what could she do about it? King Mulu was a woman whose druidic warfare had put even generals like Zhao Yun and Wei Yan to flight, but this time the matchup was simply rotten. When the other side already knows every countermeasure in the book, how exactly are we supposed to lose?
WAAAAAAH──!!
I watched Zhang Liao's cavalry charge into the left wing, where every last elephant had bolted, then turned my head. On the right, Ma Chao and the Qiang horsemen would surely be eyeing an opening — before long, they too would come crashing in.
"What in the world is wrong with that deranged woman?! Stop her, now!"
The blue-haired woman famed for the tale of tearing through Cao Cao's host single-handedly — one rider, one horse against an army — was now carving up the Nanman formation all on her own. ...A sight to marvel at, every single time I see it. Martial skill that would scarcely yield to Guan Yu or Zhang Fei. And with that, one of Meng Huo's lives was spent. Six left now.