King of the Nanman (7)
"M-My King! Our allies right now—!"
"I can see that!"
Meng Huo ground her teeth as she watched King Duosi—the force attacking the General-in-Chief's left flank—get mauled by the enemy cavalry.
'He told me to wait while he found a safe position to attack from!'
Safe? What part of any of this was safe? Judging by how they'd been ambushed the very moment they began their assault, the enemy had clearly anticipated King Duosi's force appearing on the left. Having weathered countless battles, Meng Huo knew it instinctively: unless King Duosi's troops turned the tide while they held out against that cavalry, defeat was certain.
Just then, another Nanman soldier near her cried out in a panic.
"My King! We have a problem!"
"Now what?!"
At Meng Huo's question, the soldier glanced around warily before speaking.
"G-General Zhurong, she's...!"
"What?!"
Having heard the report, Meng Huo shouted to her younger sister.
"Meng You! Just hold things down for me for a moment!"
"Wh-what?! Sis?!"
Leaving Meng You's flustered cry behind her, Meng Huo darted swiftly away. She arrived at the edge of the forest, and riding her ox as the soldier led the way, she could only widen her eyes at what awaited her there.
"Zh-Zhurong! What in the world happened to you?!"
"...Meng Huo?"
A red-haired woman, arrows jutting from her body, blood dripping steadily to the ground. Though they came from different tribes, Zhurong was Meng Huo's dearest friend—and right now she sat slumped against a tree, drained of all strength.
Zhurong spoke in a scolding tone.
"You fool... What kind of king abandons her post in the middle of a battle..."
"Is that what matters right now?! Just tell me what happened!"
When Meng Huo pressed with unyielding force, Zhurong answered as if there were no helping it.
"I just... did what I could."
"'What you could'—?! Don't tell me you actually went after the General-in-Chief?!"
"Somehow... it seemed doable."
Zhurong continued in a small voice.
"But I guessed wrong. He was far more of a monster than I'd imagined."
She had hurled her dagger from a spot he could never have anticipated—and he'd seen right through it. The instant she realized the assassination had failed, she fled her position, but the arrows came flying as if to ask where she thought she was going, and she couldn't dodge them all.
Of course. If her dagger could reach him, there was no way his arrows couldn't reach her. In the end she ran for her life and managed to shake off what was not quite a pursuit, but by then arrows were buried all over her body.
"You fool! You're always calling me the idiot, and the real idiot was here all along!"
"..."
Meng Huo's voice wavered with tears; Zhurong only pressed her lips shut.
"But you're alive, and that's what matters! Let's get back and treat those wounds right now!"
"Just leave me here. We're in the middle of a battle."
She was the descendant of the fire god counted among the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, revered and upheld by every tribe. If someone like her were seen in such a wretched state, morale would surely take a blow. Zhurong spoke with deliberate firmness, but she could not break Meng Huo's bull-headed stubbornness.
"When your king says move, you move! Less arguing!"
"Wait—I said let go of me...!"
"Quiet!"
Zhurong's martial strength was a match for Meng Huo's own, but right now wounds covered her body. She struggled at first, yet feeling the brute force of Meng Huo's grip, she gave up and went limp.
"Hey! Anyone who knows how to treat wounds, get out here right now!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
So Meng Huo hauled Zhurong all the way back to the formation where the fighting raged, hastily summoned help, and began emergency treatment. Taking in the battlefield, Zhurong let out a hollow laugh.
"This is a far worse mess than I expected..."
"And you've still got the presence of mind to joke around!"
King Duosi's forces looked ready to crumble at any moment. Zhurong lay gravely wounded. There was no longer any reason left for Meng Huo to buy time. Cornered in checkmate, as the saying goes, she had no choice but to push forward all the harder.
"Now we break through them, one way or another, and bring down the General-in-Chief! Follow me!"
"Y-yes, Your Majesty!"
MOOOOOO——!!
The massive bull beneath Meng Huo bellowed with tremendous force. All rippling muscle, it thrust its horns forward in threat and charged.
"...? What the—what is tha... AAAAGH?!"
"Can't you open the way, and quickly! Make way—Meng Huo, King of the Nanman, is coming through!"
When the red-furred ox slammed into a soldier holding formation behind his shield, the man—full armor and all—lost his footing and toppled flat onto his back. It was overwhelming force, plain and simple. Hide that spears and blades could hardly pierce, muscle beyond reckoning—the soldiers went pale. And with Meng Huo's own strength far from ordinary, even most generals could not have held them back.
Then Xu Huang, commanding the front line, shouted.
"Let that bull through! Don't forget—it's the Nanman soldiers we're here to stop!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Answering Xu Huang's swift judgment with a hearty roar, the soldiers gave ground before the red-furred ox already churning through their formation. Meng Huo laughed heartily.
"You dolts! Did you think our homeland had only one ox?!"
"I sure hope they're not raving lunatics like the one YOU'RE riding!"
Xu Huang shouted it back, but a faint, uneasy premonition stirred in her.
MOOOOOO——!!
Trailing behind Meng Huo, the ox corps revealed itself. Countless oxen, blades lashed to horns and tails, bellowed mightily with Nanman soldiers astride their backs.
Could this even be called cavalry? It was the moment their hidden trump card showed itself—the weapon that would have made the General-in-Chief clutch his head and groan, and what unit is THIS supposed to be?
"...What in the world is that?"
Lü Bu, scanning the battlefield beside me, blinked in mild bewilderment as she muttered.
I answered her murmur in a level voice.
"Oxen."
"Huh. Oxen."
Of course, my own feelings weren't much different from hers. I mean, it wasn't even horses—why were oxen suddenly showing up out of nowhere?
Sima Yi, watching from nearby, spoke up.
"...Could they be attempting some manner of Fire Ox Stratagem?"
"I don't think so."
It was the stratagem General Tian Dan of Qi had once used against Yan. The famous tale—setting the oxen's tails ablaze and crashing into the unprepared enemy to wrest victory from Yan—was known to everyone who studied the art of war. The difference here was that these oxen had no fire tied to their tails. Which meant the Nanman had tamed their oxen and were wielding them much like cavalry.
"Wow, the more I look, the more astonishing it is. How does anyone handle animals like that?"
"You're telling me."
First savage beasts, then elephants, and now oxen? These people were truly beyond belief. What was with this pseudo-druid tribe of theirs, honestly...
I should have caught on back when Meng Huo went everywhere riding an ox. With no sightings reported by any other soldiers, I'd brushed it off—plenty of oxen or not, they were surely just beasts of burden. And that assumption had just smacked me in the back of the head. But honestly, who would ever have imagined this? Understanding for the first time how the Yan general had felt when the Fire Ox Stratagem was first sprung on him, I fixed my eyes straight ahead.
MOOOO——!!
The oxen, blades bound to horns and tails, came thundering forward with Nanman warriors on their backs. The archers, still swatting away the venomous insects and serpents King Duosi had unleashed, noticed them too late and loosed their arrows, but the gap had already closed.
"WHAAAGH?!"
"S-stop them! We have to stop them!"
As the oxen simply shoved in on brute strength, the soldiers holding the front ranks began to give way. There was nothing strange about it. When something far heavier and stronger than a horse comes ramming in, holding the line would have been the strange part. They say even a tiger quietly gives up its ground when an ox truly sets its mind on charging. It wasn't that the tiger couldn't win—but take one grave wound in the scuffle, and it would end in mutual ruin all the same.
The adjutant attending me went pale at the sight of the oxen bulldozing into our formation.
"My lord! You must withdraw at once!"
I shook my head at his counsel.
"No. The moment I pull back from here, the formation collapses."
The only reason the soldiers were hanging on so desperately was that I was near. The battle wasn't even decided yet, and the commander was going to lose his nerve and retreat? Imagine you're the rifleman grinding it out at the front, and then the command center and the barracks fire up their thrusters and bolt. Would you still feel like fighting? Or wouldn't you? A Buff Totem that grants no buffs has no reason to exist.
I stole a glance at Seo Yeo and Lü Bu standing nearby, then nodded slowly and spoke.
"Hmm... Yes. That does sound best."
"Why do you suddenly sound so ominous..."
Before Sima Yi could even finish, I roared with everything I had.
"MENG HUO——!! I AM RIGHT HERE——!!"
"M-My lord?!"
"If you want this war to end, then come and try to take me——!!"
At my sudden stunt, the adjutant could only gape, words failing him entirely. Sima Yi was every bit as startled.
"A-are you insane?! What happens if the enemy learns exactly where our commander is standing in the middle of a battlefield?!"
"Now, now. I've thought this through."
"Thought through, my foot!"
While Sima Yi and I tussled for a moment, Meng Huo apparently caught my voice too, and began charging straight at me. Naturally, the ox corps following her was no different. Enraged oxen with blades on their horns and tails, stampeding right at me. In my old life, trembling wouldn't have been strange at a moment like this—but right now I was calm to the point of absurdity.
The reason was simple.
"I trust my soldiers. And I trust my generals."
"..."
"Look. Look at our soldiers right now."
At my quiet murmur, Sima Yi, who had been staring at me, turned her gaze back to the battlefield.
"You blockheads—! Get over there and protect my lord, NOW——!"
"Just plant your blades in them and hang on! These things can die too, you know!"
Wei Yan, commanding the center column, bellowed, while Gan Ning—agile as a cat atop an ox—sent a Nanman soldier flying as she called out. With the formation already broken, the soldiers threw themselves into a desperate melee. They braced shields against the charging oxen, and whenever one so much as slowed, a whole crowd of men would grab hold, letting themselves be dragged along as they clung on. The Nanman infantry charged in support of the ox corps, but the elite troops under Xu Huang and Gao Shun barred their way, and they could advance no further. Even with beasts rampaging at their backs, those soldiers held the front and the flanks without a flicker of fear. Unable to crack that iron fortress, the Nanman infantry began to flounder.
MOOOOO——!
"AAAGH! Why is this mad ox so strong?!"
Apart from the red-furred ox Meng Huo rode, most of the other bulls failed to punch through that desperate resistance.
"No matter how grim a situation looks, there's always an answer."
I said, utterly unperturbed.
"Look at me. Do I still look like I'm in danger?"
"That... no, I suppose not."
Thanks to the struggles of soldiers and officers alike, only a few hundred of the enemy had managed to reach my vicinity. Holding my ground, I watched Seo Yeo and Lü Bu nearby shift their grips on their weapons.