The King of the Nanman (8)
By nature, I did my absolute best to keep Seo Yeo and Lü Bu from ever setting foot on a battlefield.
The early weeks of pregnancy carry a steep risk of miscarriage—even the smallest shock can end it. The baby is still tiny at that stage, so it is the one stretch where an expectant mother must tread carefully through every single day. And once a woman loses one child, the odds of losing the next climb as well, which meant she could easily have found herself caught in a cycle of one miscarriage after another.
But once the pregnancy enters its stable phase, the story changes.
Two to three months in, the baby has grown considerably and the mother's body has settled into its new shape, and the risk of miscarriage drops off sharply—or so I'm told. That's roughly when the belly begins to show, too, if I remember right.
Well... granted, even with the stable phase upon us, being careful doesn't stop being necessary.
I spoke to Seo Yeo and Lü Bu.
"Don't move unless it truly looks like I'm in danger."
"Huh? Then what are we supposed to do about all that beef over there?"
Already reducing them to cuts of meat, I see. That she could watch ferocious bulls charging in with blades strapped to horn and tail and think of dinner—I could only marvel. ...Though I'll admit, they did look tasty. Beef? How was anyone supposed to resist beef?
With Seo Yeo's and Lü Bu's eyes on me, I pressed on.
"Because there's still one last gate left."
At my answer, Lü Bu blinked rapidly.
"A gate? There's no gate here."
"...It's a figure of speech."
"Huuuh??"
Confronted with the pristine blankness of that reaction, I decided showing her would beat telling her, and gave the order.
"Honor guard—forward!"
"Yes, sir!"
Sensing that I had no intention of backing down, the guards moved up without a hitch.
People assume that a "bodyguard" means an elite picked from among elites. They're right. Back when Dong Zhuo had come barreling in intent on mutual destruction, hadn't they stopped that monstrous iron mace of his? True, the man who took the blow had gone down with his shield caved in—but he'd absorbed a surprise strike from a fierce general who had personally crushed foreign tribes in Xiliang, and risen without any real wound to show for it.
The famed Kheshig of the Mongol Empire, for that matter, were founded on the very same idea—an elite guard created to shield the Khan with their bodies. And the Jiangdong youths personally led by the Hegemon-King of Western Chu were said to have held their own against ten men apiece. Troops called honor guards or royal guards had always traveled a different road from common soldiers.
THUD—!
Heavy armor that looked punishing merely to behold. Soldiers who could rightly be called a living fortress wall locked their shields into a wall with not a hair's breadth of error.
'Gwaagh—!'
'Hey! You can't even block that properly?! How do you plan on being bodyguards like that?!'
'How are we supposed to hold against this...?'
'Quiet! You hold at least ONE blow!'
'UWAAAAAH——!!'
These were the same guards Lü Bu had tormented with her "personal training"—the kind that sent men on sightseeing trips into the sky. If anyone could blunt a bull's charge, even partially, it was them.
"Everyone, lock in!"
"Not a single one gets near the General-in-Chief!"
MOOOOO——!!
Even in this very moment of bearing down on me, a few of the bulls were being seized by other soldiers and hauled away bodily. I'd been singing the guards' praises, but the regulars had no small stubbornness of their own. You'd have thought they were staring down vengeful water spirits.
Thanks to my soldiers' efforts, the herd tearing through the heart of our formation had thinned to a visibly countable number. ...Not that it was a number I could afford to shrug at. Still, I felt no regret. If that herd had remained free to charge and wheel away at their riders' command, the damage would have been catastrophic.
A bull is no several-ton elephant, but it is still a massively built animal—which is to say, its impact force is nothing to scoff at either. Hadn't a square that had held perfectly just moments before been punched straight through the instant the herd struck? Picture a runaway car plowing into soldiers again and again, and you'll have the right image.
Just as Yuan Shao of the original history had drawn her own sword and stood with her soldiers to throw back the White Horse Volunteers, all I had done was lend my men my voice so they could find their courage.
"The time has finally come to show the fruits of your training! Go into this resolved to hold your ground even if your whole body is smashed to pieces!"
"Sir!"
At the adjutant's cry the guards answered with a roar, and a heartbeat later Meng Huo's bull corps and the guards shielding me collided head-on.
"Ugh!"
MOOO——!
Some bulls met their end skewered on spearpoints at the very speed of their charge; others cleverly knocked the spears aside and shoved their way in. One thing was certain: the guard corps was holding far better than I had expected. Even the bulls that had somehow deflected the spears and muscled through lost their momentum in a flash to guards who latched onto them without an instant's hesitation. The fate of a rider who loses his speed inside enemy lines is a well-worn tale, after all.
Granted, a few bulls seemed determined not to die quietly, throwing a rodeo and churning the field into chaos—but no wounded animal can rampage for long. Then again, not every bull toppled so tamely either.
MOOOOO——!!
"W-what in the hell is that thing?!"
A colossal ox, its bulk dwarfing every other beast on the field. The red-furred ox Meng Huo rode was the one creature the ordinary soldiers simply could not handle.
Its hide was no impenetrable armor like Oldolgol's, but something about how the beast was put together meant that soldiers' spear thrusts amounted to no more than shallow nicks. And as for its strength—good grief. It punted soldiers through the air like paper dolls, one after another. It was positively absurd.
King Mulu's white elephant, and now this. The Nanman must simply produce spirit beasts—sacred creatures and beasts touched by the divine—with remarkable regularity. And Meng Huo herself was a superb martial artist on top of it all, so no ordinary fighter could ever hope to bring that pair down.
I called out to Meng Huo as she bore down on me.
"Your courage, at least, I'll grant. Charging straight into the enemy line yourself."
"And anyone who sees THIS and doesn't run is no slouch either!"
I regarded Meng Huo's bravado with a level gaze.
"Now, where was it... 'To take the enemy commander, strike at the mount first'..."
At that moment, Lü Bu trained an arrow on the ox beneath Meng Huo. Apparently she meant to put my proverb into practice on the spot.
SHWEEE—!
In the space of an instant, Lü Bu had drawn and loosed—
CLANG!
—and the ox beneath Meng Huo swatted her arrow out of the air as if it were nothing.
"...? What the hell was that."
At the sight of an ox parrying her arrow with its horn, Lü Bu's face went slack with bewilderment.
Watching the scene, I nodded slowly.
"Well, well. At least it reacts to Lü Bu's arrows."
The weapons thrown by the common soldiers, you see, it had brushed off like so much scorn. Every one of them had done no more than raise a tiny scratch on the ox's hide before clattering to the ground. The only throws that had looked remotely dangerous, Meng Huo had parried herself.
"...My lord."
Having confirmed that Meng Huo had come close enough, Seo Yeo finally spoke.
I shook my head at her as she made to step forward.
"No. Wait a little longer."
"But..."
"You have to think of the child, too."
"......"
At the mention of the baby, Seo Yeo held her silence—for now. Left unexplained a moment longer, she looked ready to charge in no matter what became of the child, so I had no choice but to open my mouth again.
"Don't worry. I still have a general whose hands are free."
"...?"
Yes. Called it.
Seo Yeo, who had never once spared a whit of interest for anyone but me, tilted her head at my words. Thinking how utterly consistent she was, I put a name to my lips.
"Zhao Yun."
"You called, my lord."
Scarcely had the name left my lips than a woman in silver armor, serene sky-blue hair streaming, appeared. The one who had announced her existence at the Battle of Changban by cutting down dozens of enemy officers single-handedly. One of the Five Tiger Generals—she who had always campaigned at Liu Bei's side and won great glory even after Liu Bei's passing—answered my summons. The very woman Zhang Fei had been eyeing hungrily for a chance at a duel.
I put the question to her in an even voice.
"Well? Could you take them alive, without killing?"
"I merely follow my lord's command."
That composed answer drew a short laugh from me.
"Good. Then take them alive."
"Yes, my lord."
The instant she had her orders, Zhao Yun shot forth like a gale, white horse beneath her.
At the sight of Zhao Yun bearing down on her, Meng Huo bellowed at the top of her lungs.
"Who the hell are YOU now?! You want to die?!"
"......"
"...You DARE ignore me?!"
Befitting the woman who had unified the Nanman, Meng Huo's martial skill was superb. Hoisting her massive blade high overhead, she roared.
"OUT OF MY WAY—!"
In an instant the two were upon each other, weapons swinging—and the bout was decided in a single exchange.
"YIPE!"
...It ended, that is, with Meng Huo toppling over with a remarkably unflattering shriek.
Before the woman's blade could even touch her, Zhao Yun had whipped her spear around and clubbed Meng Huo down with its shaft. They say subduing an opponent is harder than killing one. For Zhao Yun, it was no trouble at all.
Moo?
The moment her master went down in a single exchange, the red-furred ox—charging with furious momentum only a breath before—rounded its eyes in astonishment and stopped dead in its tracks. I had fully expected it to keep charging even with Meng Huo down, but it reacted remarkably like a person. For all I know, that thing isn't even an ox.