King of the Nanman (1)
After taking King Mulu captive, I made a point of openly broadcasting my every movement thereafter, deliberately stoking Meng Huo's wariness. My reason for acting this way was simple.
"G-General, c-could you perhaps block any relief force Meng Huo might send…?"
"That much is easy."
It was to eliminate any threat that might warp the plan Pang Tong had devised. The scheme was to lure the Vine Armor Soldiers under Oldolgol into a gorge and wipe them out at a stroke—but if Meng Huo's relief force slipped neatly through the encirclement and rescued Oldolgol, we'd end up like the dog that lost sight of the chicken it was chasing.
Having smashed King Mulu in a single blow with Zhuge Liang's secret weapon and the overwhelming might of the generals under my command, I proceeded to prowl irritatingly close to Meng Huo's army, doing my level best to grate on her nerves. Cutting her supply lines did cross my mind, but if her army went haring off to rescue Oldolgol in the meantime, the whole situation would tangle up again. Supply lines could be severed later; for now, I resolved to focus on crushing the Vine Armor force.
Enraged by my string of provocations, Meng Huo did dispatch units after me several times, and each time I thought, well, what a windfall, and gobbled them up whole. If she insisted on peeling troops away for my benefit, that was fine by me. Riding high on her victories in Yi Province, Meng Huo apparently took me for much the same sort of enemy she had faced until now. Had the news that King Mulu had been utterly demolished by me simply not reached her yet?
"Since I'm the sort who tends to dawdle! I'd say she's probably thinking that's what's happening right now!"
King Mulu, her body daubed here and there with some unidentifiable dye, spoke up with plenty of energy for someone still bound in rope.
"So! How long am I supposed to stay like this!"
"Beats me."
"That can't be!"
King Mulu—whose lot it was to have her upper body lashed tight in rope except at mealtimes—cried out in a voice full of shock.
If I recalled Zhang Jue's words aright, it was best to somewhat restrict a sorcerer's freedom of movement. So long as the conditions were met, they could work outlandish magic at any moment—never let your guard down, she had advised.
Puuooo—!
Just then, the white elephant—contorted into a posture much like King Mulu's own—let out a bellow. An elephant running amok in the heart of the formation could spell genuine disaster.
"Hey now, gonna behave? Or should I turn you into meat for sure?"
Puuooo…
Lü Bu, standing nearby, gave the trunk a few brisk pats, and the elephant went docile at once. Deliberately thumping the very spot her own arrow had skewered—that was menace done properly.
They do say a beast's instincts are sharper than a person's.
"……"
With terrifying generals the likes of Seo Yeo and Lü Bu scattered all around, what beast would dare harbor a wicked thought? The survival instinct animals had evolved over eons was nothing to sneeze at. At the very worst, the instant it went berserk, a blizzard of javelins and arrows would turn the elephant into an elephant-that-used-to-be.
Beyond that, hauling along the prisoners from King Mulu's tribe had cut our mobility considerably. But what kind of army were we? A little lost speed hardly meant we couldn't handle Meng Huo.
"R-Retreat! Retreat!"
"Aaargh! What kind of monsters are those!"
I shook my head as I watched Dong Tuona, one of Meng Huo's generals, bolt away helter-skelter alongside her soldiers. A shame, that—only if Meng Huo herself came could I keep catching and releasing her, building up her life stack.
"Hmph, nothing special…."
Ma Chao, who had thundered across the battlefield with the Qiang cavalry, shook the blood from her spear as she spoke.
"The sooner I finish this job and get back, the sooner I can pick up where we left off…."
"Hmm? General, whatever do you mean?"
When the adjutant nearby asked, Ma Chao answered in a voice gone cold.
"…You have no need to know."
"Y-yes, ma'am! Understood!"
Sensing the off atmosphere, the Qiang adjutant swiftly put distance between them. She had it pretty rough too, huh. Honestly, why go asking pointless questions like that….
"……"
Zhao Yun, currently leading my bugok, held her post with a calm expression. The Peach Sisters, who were forever pouncing on me, had asked to remain in Luoyang on the grounds that 'you never know'(?). Truthfully, even without that excuse I'd have let them stay as a kind of furlough—but as for what they were doing in Luoyang right now, I hadn't the faintest idea. Knowing them, they were probably off somewhere laughing it up.
I'd have loved to do the same, but I feared that without me, the formidable talents who each fancied themselves a cut above might start splintering into factions. Sitting in a post like General-in-Chief and merely lounging about the capital didn't sit right with me anyway. In the first place, if only for the sake of authority, taking the field in person left the deepest impression. Why else did the likes of Cao Cao and Liu Bei keep leading armies in person well into their old age? Partly to build prestige, surely—but at bottom, they marched because they worried how the war would run without them.
Granted, they did go and pull a Red Cliffs or a Yiling—but those happened because the people concerned overtrusted their own abilities and refused to heed the counsel around them. Sun Quan, too, led her army out in full majesty only to pull a Hefei, so they were all much of a muchness.
…Who was to say the day wouldn't come when I pulled some nonsense of my own and suffered a crushing defeat. I really must learn to listen.
"My lord! I bring a report!"
While I was sunk in idle thoughts, a messenger drew near and saluted. I looked at him and asked.
"What is it?"
"Yes, my lord! The Second Unit reports that it has crushed the Vine Armor force led by Oldolgol!"
So Pang Tong had pulled it off. No wonder black smoke had seemed to be rising from within the gorge lately…. Evidently the fire-attack operation Pang Tong had proposed had succeeded. Now, please let Huang Zhong have done her part properly.
In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, there is a passage in which Zhuge Liang laments at the sight of Nanman soldiers burning to death. 'To have slain so many so wretchedly, I am surely fated never to die a natural death'—or words to that effect. By that logic, one might well ask, what of Cao Cao's million-strong army that burned at the Battle of Red Cliffs? Honestly, I still wonder about that myself. Well, there's no divining what old Luo Guanzhong was thinking, so let it pass.
Come to think of it, I remembered that not long after the black smoke rose, rain came falling—now how did that work, exactly?
"We have taken prisoner the Vine Armor soldiers who survived the fire attack, but… what would you have us do with them?"
"Prisoners, you say?"
They had herded the Vine Armor soldiers into the gorge and set it alight—yet there were survivors? Was it thanks to the rain that fell with such impeccable timing, or had even this been part of the calculation? If it was the latter, I was quite confident I would be very surprised.
"How many prisoners in all?"
"About ten thousand, my lord."
Our already sluggish advance was about to slow further still. Provisions kept arriving from Hanzhong and Jing Province, so starvation was no worry—but managing prisoners was a considerable chore, and it weighed on me. Even so, turning them loose with no plan at all would be idiotic. Released near their homeland, they would find their own way back to their families, but freed in unfamiliar country like this, nine of every ten Nanman would only drift back to Meng Huo. With no food and no knowledge of the roads, what else could they possibly do? The one mercy was that we had taken King Mulu and Oldolgol prisoner as well….
──"Do you know the way back home from here?"
──"Uh… I, I don't really know!"
──"……"
Frankly, I couldn't quite bring myself to believe they would ever make it home in one piece. It was plain they had simply trotted after Meng Huo without a thought in their heads. I considered attaching a guide, but something about it nagged at me, so my heart was never really in it. They had pledged not to aid Meng Huo, to be sure—but no one can say how things will unfold. And considering the renown of Meng Huo, called the King of the Nanman, it was simply safer to keep holding them. Besides, there were things I needed to learn from King Mulu in detail, too.
"King Mulu, was it?"
"Yes!! That's right!!"
I was hardly a drill instructor working over a raw recruit—why did she strain so hard with every answer? Figuring she was simply trying to make a good impression, I asked King Mulu what I was curious about.
"How did you organize fierce beasts like tigers into a fighting force?"
"…? You just feed them well and train them."
"……"
King Mulu replied as though I had asked something perfectly self-evident. That was exactly what I was asking—how did you train them?
"…Well, the matter before us is urgent. I'll ask again some other time."
"…? Yes, understood!"
Tearing my eyes from King Mulu's vigorous reply, I turned to the adjutant nearby.
"Let it be announced that anyone who mistreats the prisoners for being of a foreign tribe will be punished to the fullest extent."
"Yes, my lord!"
Mistreat the Nanman people, and they might nurse a grievance and cause trouble. But kill the prisoners? Remembering why Xiang Yu—victor of every battle he ever fought—had come to ruin, it was an idea I could never put into practice. That would be the act of a man manufacturing enemies who would resist him to the bitter end. Unless I meant to erase the Nanman as a people from China altogether, such a choice was unthinkable.
I held my position and waited for Pang Tong to join me, and before long her force revealed itself in the far distance. …Bringing along, I might add, a single figure who was, even at a glance, monstrously enormous.
What was that thing—a robot?