King of the Nanman (4)
The battle raged on, as endless as ever.
On a field where both sides had committed an enormous host, the force currently holding the upper hand was the General-in-Chief's army.
"Fear not! The enemy are nothing but savages who know nothing but the charge!"
"Yes, sir!"
Their steel-hard formation held unshakable as they skillfully dealt with the Nanman tribesmen pressing in headlong. It was a tactic that made plain their resolve: whatever happened, they would not allow a chaotic melee to break out.
"Ugh, these bastards are so damn frustrating to fight!"
Faced with the sour turn of events, Meng Huo voiced her frustration aloud. The enemy fought with such confidence, as if victory were already theirs, and it set her teeth on edge.
...Though what truly made her blood boil was that their prediction wasn't exactly wrong.
The Nanman, who knew no fear of pain, excelled at frantic melees where bodies tangled together and weapons swung wild and blind. Not drawn-out formation battles like this one, where time bled away to no purpose.
"Gwaaagh!"
Meng Huo ground her teeth as she watched a soldier waiting in the rear collapse to an arrow.
"Tasa! What in the world is your unit doing?!"
"Just hold a little longer! We are searching for an ideal position from which to strike the enemy!"
King Tasa's unit had remained hidden in stealth ever since the front lines first clashed. True to a people born and raised in the forest, they moved with astonishing quiet—resembling nothing so much as a venomous serpent ambushing its prey in a single instant.
Even under Meng Huo's prodding, King Tasa answered with an easy expression.
"Surely you do not expect us to drive poison into the backs of our own allies?!"
"Do not worry! It should just about be time to strike now!"
"Hmmph... Well, if you say so."
Having heard the reply, Meng Huo barked orders at Dongdona standing nearby.
"You! Take the reserves and break off on your own—wage a running battle!"
"Uh... Then what do we do about the enemy cavalry?"
When Dongdona asked, blinking, Meng Huo answered as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Are the spears in my soldiers' hands mere ornaments?! Move, this instant!"
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
Dongdona, thoroughly rattled, scurried off at her urging. Unless those bastards were fools of the highest order, they would never hurl cavalry against a wall of bristling spears. Having already lost the war beasts and elephants that had served as her cavalry, all Meng Huo could do now was shake the enemy formation senseless and drag them into a melee.
"Let fly──!"
Fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh─!
The slingers in the rear, mirroring what the enemy had done, wheeled slightly aside while the front line held, and loosed their long-range attacks.
"Ugh!"
"Gwaaagh!"
The Nanman slinging boasted exceptional accuracy, its stones flying true into the enemy ranks without a single friendly casualty. Though their range fell short of the archers', their destructive power—punching through armor and helms to inflict fatal wounds—was beyond any comparison to arrows. Literally bone-shattering force.
They had grown their archer companies with bows and arrows seized in Yi Province, but the backbone of the Nanman's ranged corps were slingers who had spent their whole lives honing the art of hurling stones. Slingers, who demanded even greater practice than bowmen, were no troops the enemy could afford to sneer at.
WAAAAAAGH─!
Just then, King Tasa's unit revealed itself at close quarters to the enemy and threw itself into the fight. These, the elite of King Tasa's forces, had endured brutal training in preparation for close combat besides—hurled jars brimming with every manner of venomous insect and serpent, and loosed poison-coated projectiles besides. The sight of them firing shots through hollow blowpipes showed, in plain terms, exactly what jungle-dwelling natives were made of.
"Come! Warriors of the tribes! Let us teach the enemy what true battle is!"
King Tasa roared with vigor and shook the formation loose.
The moment I started thinking I was winning the contest of strength up front, the tide of battle began to turn.
Right out of the middle of the Nanman infantry charging head-on with madness in their eyes, slingers appeared as if from nowhere. As they whirled slings that looked threatening at a single glance and flung stones, our soldiers began diving for the ground.
A strike on an unarmored spot shattered bone in one blow, and even where armor took the hit, the shock came through intact—damage that could hardly be shrugged off. And what was even more astonishing?
The Nanman soldiers were flinging rocks as big as a grown man's fist. Ordinarily, throwing stones that size meant a dislocated shoulder or a torn sling—one of the two, guaranteed. So what in the world was this?
KAANG─!
"Whoa! Why the hell are those bastards hurling meteor hammers at us?!"
So said Lü Bu, sweeping her Sky Piercer Halberd around and knocking a stone away with a hearty clang.
Meteor hammers... it wasn't an inaccurate way to put it. Calling something that heavy a mere pebble would be downright rude to the rock. These looked like stray throws, but for a stone to reach this far at all was monstrous. Just how long was their range?
The instant a throwing lane opened before them, the slingers let their stones fly without a shred of hesitation, and—
THWACK─!
—every single time, against all reason, the stone nailed one of our own men locked in combat with the enemy. They threw with the precision of absolute masters. Had these people spent a lifetime honing nothing but this?
And they weren't alone. King Tasa's poison-serpent unit was every bit the headache, hurling jars packed with vipers and huffing away on their blowguns—both sights equally grating to watch. Judging by how the soldiers struck by the darts collapsed shuddering, poison was clearly in play.
Shuuung─!
Before I—having read the situation—could begin to give the signal, a thrown blade came slicing at me out of nowhere. A small dagger, flying true for my heart. ...I'd lived this scene before, hadn't I? Just as Huang Zhong had once put an arrow at my head, now some hidden weapon came winging toward my chest.
KLANG!
Seo Yeo—who had at some point drawn the Chu Heaven Sword—batted the dagger aside as if it were nothing, and—
KR-KR-KRAANG!
—turned the daggers that followed just as easily. So that was why they aimed for the chest. They meant to run me through like a skewer.
"......"
Seo Yeo fixed the forest atop the cliff with the same lethal glare as that day. No doubt that was where the daggers had flown from. Then again—to hurl a dagger from that kind of distance. The Nanman apparently kept nothing in their ranks but people absurdly good at throwing things.
"...Ugh, they're such a pain in the ass."
With that, Lü Bu drove the Sky Piercer Halberd into the earth, took up the great bow slung at her hip, and set an arrow to the string.
FWSHHHH──!
Then she opened fire on the clifftop, though heaven only knew what she was aiming at. Nor did she stop at a single shot; the string sang again and again.
"......"
She began shooting flat, then shifted to high, arcing shots—and apparently something did come into view for her, because she kept right at it. Of course, to my eyes there was nothing at all.
Anyone could see it was no moment to disturb her, so I turned the dagger my guards had retrieved over in my hands. It was a rather refined-looking piece—by its look, a weapon that had once belonged to someone of considerable rank. As I flashed it through the sunlight at one angle and another, I caught something strange.
"...There's something odd smeared on this."
Some unfamiliar liquid coated the edge. It had a faint sheen to it somehow. Colorless. Odorless. I wasn't so dense that I couldn't make a fair guess at what it was. One look and anyone could tell—it had to be poison. War beasts, then rattan armor, and now poison. Whatever else you could say about them, these people certainly had a style all their own.
I spoke to Lü Bu, who was still peppering the clifftop with arrows.
"That's enough. Keep that up and you'll catch a rock."
"Hah! You think their pathetic little pebbles can do a thing to me?"
Scarcely had the words left her mouth than a stone came screaming in at terrifying speed—and Lü Bu simply swayed her body out of its path as though it were a passing breeze. It was like watching a scene from an action movie.
"Well... doesn't look like I'll be getting hit anyway. I'll stop."
So muttering, she tucked the great bow back at her hip.
"Honestly, I hate it. Why do they keep coming after you?"
"Going for the head first is only proper."
Catch the bandits—first catch their king. Wasn't that the old saying? The Art of War teaches that to seize the thieves, you must first seize the chieftain who leads them. An assassin of unknown identity—and that person had merely done the obvious thing a battlefield demands. Most likely they had tried to take my head while Meng Huo and King Tasa held every eye on the field. The attempt had failed, and Lü Bu's retribution had come down on them for it—but then, the assassin's trade was always an arduous one. Judging by how true those daggers flew from such a distance, the skill was first-rate... they had simply picked the wrong opponent this time.
Brushing off the assassination attempt as though it were nothing, I spoke in an even voice.
"Raise the flag. It's time."
"Yes, sir!"
I sank deep into thought, picturing the formation our little chick of a strategist had arranged. Meng Huo at the front. King Tasa at the flank. ...Every last bit of it was unfolding precisely as Zhuge Liang had planned.
Meng Huo could not overcome the nemesis who had captured her no fewer than seven times.