King of the Nanman (2)
The figure standing beside Pang Tong was, surprisingly, not a robot at all, but a human being.
Oldolgol.
The Nanman arc was the stretch of the original tale where Luo Guanzhong threw every last shred of his imagination onto the page, and of all the characters it produced, Oldolgol had the single most fantastical design. I couldn't recall the exact numbers anymore, but he stood nearly three meters tall, his body sheathed in scales and a natural carapace said to knock spears and blades clean aside — a truly monstrous general.
And now that I had one standing right before my eyes, exactly one thought filled my head.
'...Is this guy actually human?'
Was this what it felt like, looking at someone with gigantism back in the modern world? No — even a giant couldn't deflect spear and blade, so the sight wouldn't have left me this unsettled.
At any rate, watching a man like that lumber along trussed up in heavy iron chains was intimidation enough on its own. They must have bound him in chains rather than rope precisely because his strength was something else entirely.
King Mulu, her upper body lashed tight with rope, burst out laughing at the sight.
"Hahaha! Well, if it isn't Oldolgol! You look pretty hilarious right now!"
"...You wench... no pushover... either."
And so the two commanders of the Nanman's finest elite forces held their reunion, looking for all the world like a pair of plump caterpillars.
King Mulu's beast corps and Oldolgol's rattan-armor corps. All that remained now were the venom-snake corps of King Tasa, still utterly absorbed in pounding the castle, and Meng Huo's own corps as King of the Nanman.
"...What? Beaten again?"
"K-King of the Nanman! I have no face left to show you!"
Meng Huo, who had lent portions of her own troops to her subordinate commanders, scowled at the sight of her forces being smashed time and again by the enemy. But rather than berate a beaten commander and grind morale down with him, she chose a different approach.
"Fine. Then tell me — who exactly is this enemy?"
"...Pardon?"
At the sight of her conspicuously hapless subordinate, Dong Tuona, Meng Huo heaved out a sigh. These people simply never understood unless she spelled every last thing out for them. No wonder even those weakling sirs up north thought nothing of looking down on us.
Sighing, Meng Huo unraveled her question into words simple enough for Dong Tuona to follow.
"I mean intel. You've already traded blows with them, so surely you have some idea who's over there?"
"Ah! Is that what you meant, my King!"
Dong Tuona, his armor trimmed with animal fur, answered in a ringing bellow.
"The enemy did keep raising their war cries, calling out the name of a 'General-in-Chief'!"
"...The General-in-Chief?"
A rather impressive-sounding title... no, never mind that. Wasn't the General-in-Chief a figure you'd only ever meet after crossing well beyond Yi Province? Why would a man meant to be operating in Sili Province — or was it Sa-Ye Province, or whatever it was called — be showing his face in Yi Province of all places?
'...Could it be because of me?'
For a daughter of the Nanman, a people who knew little beyond the headlong charge, Meng Huo was remarkably quick-witted, and she pieced the situation together at once. It seemed those frail little sirs had flung the door wide open and personally invited the General-in-Chief in.
"The General-in-Chief, of all people..."
Even a Nanman dwelling in the deepest backcountry was not wholly ignorant of the world outside.
"...?"
With the exception of the fool standing right in front of her, that is. This one truly knew nothing at all.
The General-in-Chief. His name was Jeong Reung Hwahyeon, was it? The man said to spend every day of his life up north, hammering the horse-riding tribes flat and guarding the nation. From where the General-in-Chief stood, her own people would surely look like just another tribe of invaders gnawing at Han's borders, so it was hardly strange for him to come marching.
Having called him to mind, Meng Huo gave a dismissive snort.
"...Hmph. We were bound to cross blades sooner or later anyway."
Herself, with her eye fixed on the Han Empire — and the General-in-Chief, the final bulwark that stood to defend it. What was that, if not a duel decreed by fate itself?
"...Hold on a moment."
"Yes?"
Just then, still in the middle of sorting through her thoughts, Meng Huo spoke up with a look of sudden dismay.
"If the one who's been grinding on my nerves lately is the General-in-Chief... then what in the world happened to Mulu and Oldolgol — the ones I sent out?"
She had most certainly dispatched the very elite of the Nanman. So what did it mean that not one word had come back from any of them?
Don't tell me...
Just as Meng Huo arrived at a single conclusion and a thin sweat broke out over her skin, a scout came running up to her and shouted.
"My King! Report!"
"...What report?"
At her question, the scout answered from a deep, respectful bow.
"King Mulu's beast corps and Oldolgol's rattan-armor corps! Both units have been utterly routed and taken prisoner by the enemy!"
"Wh-What?"
The news that two corps — corps even Meng Huo herself could never have guaranteed victory for — had been crushed in a single stroke left her unable to conceal her shock.
Nearby, a red-haired woman who had been watching the whole affair unfold murmured.
"...We got well and truly outplayed there."
Somehow, it had felt like something like this would happen.
Two of the pillars propping up their army had now come crashing down. If King Tasa's snake corps and Meng Huo's own forces were defeated next, then everything they had built until this day would be forfeit.
Meng Huo pictured herself being driven back south yet again, and the cold sweat began to run.
The red-haired woman asked her.
"So what now? Throwing ourselves at that castle again doesn't seem like much of a plan."
Sending the corps out piecemeal would only get them picked off one by one, yet flatly ignoring the General-in-Chief left the supply lines at their back a constant worry. An army on empty stomachs cannot fight — everyone knew that much.
"...I suppose there's nothing for it."
After a brief silence, eyes closed in thought, Meng Huo reached her decision.
"Tell Tasa. We lift the siege for now — the General-in-Chief comes first."
"We don't need to worry about the enemy inside the castle?"
"The ones in the castle?"
At the woman's question, Meng Huo let out a short, derisive laugh.
"How's a rabble that already looks half-dead on its feet supposed to march out of those walls?"
True, the defenders had held out longer than expected — but they were hanging on by their fingernails. Give it four more days, and the castle would have fallen without a doubt.
The one problem was that four days was also more than time enough for the General-in-Chief to tear her supply lines to ribbons. Yi Province's terrain was so brutal that large-scale transport could pass through only a handful of routes; what would happen if the General-in-Chief simply plugged every last one of them? They would end up hauling grain down trails too narrow for a single horse — and losing every grain of it along the way.
"Don't worry. Those men are too worn out to set one foot outside the walls."
Their commanders still looked hale enough, but the soldiers trailing behind them were dead on their feet. Whoever commanded that garrison was clearly no fool; he would know as well as anyone that what his men needed now was rest.
"And besides, Tasa's already thrown his little 'gifts' inside the walls, so..."
The sight of venomous snakes and scorpions packed into jars and hurled into the castle was one she had never quite managed to get used to. At the very least, while they were cleaning up that mess, the defenders would not so much as dream of marching to anyone else's aid.
"Weren't you the one calling those little ones your darlings? Is it really fine to be flinging them about like that?"
"Haha! They're being raised for the war that's bound to come someday anyway, so it's fine!"
King Tasa, a massive venomous serpent draped across his frame, answered Meng Huo's question with a laugh.
"They spawn so many young at a time that unless I cull them like this, I can't possibly keep up with them!"
"...Hmm. Is that so?"
"Yes!"
Meng Huo, who had seen a clutch of eggs with her own eyes on more than one occasion, could only nod along — well, if he said so.
"But those darlings of yours. Can they punch through armor?"
"...At the very least, they're guaranteed to hold the enemy's gaze!"
Well, it would do that much, wouldn't it...
The snake corps was a unit that fought with poison smeared across its weapons. Hurling live snakes and scorpions was, at most, a bonus activity (?).
"They're clever little things — they'd never go lunging at armor worn right out in the open!"
Recalling King Tasa's confident assurances, Meng Huo turned to the red-haired woman.
"Let's move. If we don't seize this chance, there'll be no chance to fight at all."
"...Right."
Her wild ox-hide armor adorned in all its finery, Meng Huo led her army into the field astride not a horse but a red-furred ox. Riding an ox rather than a horse was, purely and simply, Meng Huo's own taste.
After lifting the siege and marching out at the head of her army, Meng Huo ran into the General-in-Chief's host far sooner than she had expected.
Unlike her own people with their russet-bronze skin, the enemy's flesh was a strikingly pale shade. They held their formation without a hair's breadth of disorder, as though the entire army were fused into a single living body.
But Meng Huo felt not the slightest ounce of intimidation. Stepping out ahead of her ranks, she called out.
"You sirs who spend every day of your lives playing at being noble!"
"..."
"This King of the Nanman has come to deliver your punishment in person!"
Great blade drawn, Meng Huo raised her voice even higher at the silent ranks of the General-in-Chief's army.
"And you — the one strutting about calling yourself the General-in-Chief — step out here in front! Let's have a good look at your face—!!"
"..."
"Don't tell me you mean to keep skulking in the back like some coward—?!"
Not long after Meng Huo's challenge rang out, the enemy formation parted down the middle, and a figure emerged.
"Fair enough. If we're to look each other in the eye, then out I come."
A rugged-featured man advanced to the front of the formation with a handful of guards at his back. The man looked Meng Huo over and spoke.
"So you're Meng Huo?"
"Then you're the General-in-Chief!"
Refusing to yield an inch in the contest of presence, Meng Huo thundered straight back.
"All that talk had me expecting great things of the General-in-Chief, but you're a sight homelier than I imag—"
SHREEEK──!!
"HYAAH?!"
Mid-insult, Meng Huo caught the flash of a javelin hurtling straight at her, choked off the words, and ducked flat. Had she not been a warrior with strength to rival Oldolgol's own, that single throw would have left her mortally wounded.
"GHK!"
"Wh-What in the world was that?!"
An unlucky soldier had taken the javelin in her stead and died on the spot — and Meng Huo's face froze in bewilderment.
Watching it all, the General-in-Chief spoke.
"...I don't much like saying this myself, but you'd best watch that mouth of yours."
"..."
"One slip, and something very bad happens to you."
With that, the General-in-Chief reached off to one side — and took hold of a girl's cheek, tugging it out long and taut, exactly like a parent scolding a child mid-tantrum.
"..."
Even as her cheek stretched and stretched, the girl's eyes never once wavered from Meng Huo — and pinned beneath that flat, unblinking stare, Meng Huo could only feel the cold sweat roll down her back.