The King of the Nanman (9)
After Meng Huo fell to Zhao Yun, the battle flowed along with ease.
"O-Our King has fallen!"
"Run! Run for your lives!"
The soldiers of the Ox Corps, who had followed Meng Huo out of pure faith alone, scattered to the four winds without so much as a thought of resisting to the end.
Of course, for the Nanman warriors who had pushed deep into the camp, breaking through the encirclement a second time was impossible.
"You dogs! You couldn't push your way in fast enough when it suited you—and now you want to run?"
"Surrender, or we'll butcher you along with that ox of yours!"
The soldiers came charging in with terrifying ferocity, as if to say, now we've got you.
Most of the Ox Corps was already pinned down by our troops and at a complete loss, and any Nanman lucky enough to slip the net was soon cut down by Wei Yan and Gan Ning once the two of them had finished tidying up their own stretches of the battlefield.
Watching the scene unfold, I murmured to myself.
"...That really was dangerous."
That destructive power—smashing straight through a square formation to sow chaos—was not something to be taken lightly. It was only because our excellent officers and soldiers responded with level heads that we held; had we been any ordinary unit, the moment that ox charge struck, the whole situation would have flipped on its head.
It felt as though every animal I would ever see in my life had been gathered here in one place. This wasn't even a zoo, for crying out loud.
"Our King... has fallen?"
"Then... what are we supposed to do now..."
The Nanman infantry, who had tried to answer Meng Huo's charge only to be stymied by our formations, grew restless at the sight.
"Aaaah! Big sis—!!"
...And the reaction of the officer commanding that infantry was not much different.
There stood a girl who looked like Meng Huo shrunk down into miniature, her eyes trembling with sheer, unfiltered panic.
When the very officer who was supposed to be steadying the troops was in that state, how could the situation possibly improve?
Soon after, the reserves under Zhuge Liang's command moved to encircle the enemy, and the demoralized Nanman army threw down their weapons and surrendered one after another.
Fierce beasts, Vine Armor Soldiers, elephants—and now oxen on top of it all.
And so the campaign against the Nanman, which had truly seen one thing after another, came to an end.
Of course, the war with Meng Huo did not end simply because we had captured her once.
Seven Captures, Seven Releases.
The famous four-character idiom telling how Meng Huo, only after being captured seven times, at last surrendered to Zhuge Liang from the bottom of her heart.
And what does that idiom mean?
It means Meng Huo is not the sort of person who would surrender after being captured a mere once or twice.
"Surrender?! Don't make me laugh!"
There it was. She was the one who had invaded first, and yet she faced me with the upright indignation of someone with not a single fault to her name.
Not that I minded much—even if she hadn't come invading, I had every intention of attacking sooner or later anyway.
I gazed at Meng Huo, bound fast in ropes, roaring at the top of her lungs.
"You refuse to surrender, hmm? And why might that be?"
"What an obvious question! Because I wasn't fighting in earnest, that's why!"
There it was at last—the famous tantrum that everyone who has read Romance of the Three Kingdoms knows by heart.
"Not fighting in earnest, you say? Didn't you drag an army of at least a hundred thousand here with you?"
Let us take stock of the names who had attacked Yi Province alongside Meng Huo.
King Tasada, King Mulu, Oldolgol, Zhurong, and more besides. An all-star lineup with every Nanman tribe assembled under one banner. The Nanman I currently held prisoner numbered in the tens of thousands on their own. If anyone knew how much feeding those prisoners was costing, they'd faint clean away from shock.
"Haha! And you're trembling before a number as small as that?!"
But Meng Huo just threw her head back and laughed, as if to say, so what?
"If this body returns to the Nanman lands, I can come back with twice that number of troops!"
……
"Besides, I fought on terrain I didn't know! How could that possibly count as fighting in earnest?!"
Her talent for self-rationalization was simply superb.
All Meng Huo was doing was slapping a plausible excuse on top of it; at bottom, she was merely kicking up a fuss because she didn't want to surrender to me.
I spoke in a level voice.
"You do realize that if you refuse to surrender to me, you might die?"
"Then kill me, if that's what you're going to do! I don't fear death!"
Not a shred of fear could be felt in Meng Huo's eyes as she gave that answer. A person with absurdly stubborn pride, on whom threats simply did not work...
She's really the exhausting type, isn't she.
So that was how someone could be captured six times over and still throw a tantrum insisting the battle didn't count. Since we had already toppled every one of Meng Huo's allies, King Mulu included, in this campaign, we wouldn't need to go all the way to a seventh—but exhausting was still exhausting.
I suppose there was always the option of cutting Meng Huo down then and there and ending things cleanly.
But that would mean making yet another foreign people into enemies of mine.
Yes—just like the northern horse tribes, who at the drop of a hat would ring your doorbell and bolt.
She had simply drawn a bad matchup; Meng Huo herself was by no means incompetent. If anything, you could call her capable. She had mediated the feuds of tribes that did nothing but quarrel day in and day out, and got along warmly with every Nanman alive.
Here she had been strutting about, styling herself nothing less than the King of the Nanman—and hers was a case where ability actually backed up the title.
...Though whether she truly lived up to being a king was another matter.
Squandering mountains of supplies and soldiers for the sake of her own pride was not how a king ought to behave.
I asked Meng Huo.
"Then may I take it that you will surrender if I defeat you again?"
"...Fine!"
"Good. Then off you go—give it your best."
……?
At my words, a question mark practically floated above Meng Huo's head.
"You're really letting me go? Honestly?"
"I am not a man who says two things with one mouth."
Perhaps even she sensed her own argument made no sense, because Meng Huo kept looking thoroughly dumbfounded.
I turned to a soldier standing nearby.
"What are you standing around for? Untie those ropes, and quickly."
"Y-yes, sir!"
Startled by my sudden pointing, the soldier hurriedly untied the ropes binding Meng Huo, Meng You, and the rest of them.
I opened my mouth toward Meng Huo, who still hadn't grasped what was happening.
"I trust you'll surrender the next time we meet."
"...Hmph! By the time that happens, things will look very different from now!"
Only then seeming to understand her circumstances, Meng Huo stomped off into the distance, her footsteps thudding heavily.
"B-Big sis! I'm coming too!"
Meng You, whose bonds had come off at the same moment as her sister's, hurried along in her wake.
Having gotten Meng Huo's answer, I turned to the other prisoners.
"And what will the rest of you do?"
King Mulu, Oldolgol, King Tasada, Zhurong... I put the question to the named commanders Meng Huo had scraped together from every corner of the Nanman lands.
The first to answer was King Mulu, her body painted over with dyes of unknown origin.
"Well, you see... even if I refused to give up here, there'd be nothing left for me to do."
She had lost every one of the prized beasts and elephants she had boasted of, and her sorcery had been seen through in a single stroke. With nothing left to her name but the soldiers I now held prisoner, the decision before King Mulu was a simple one.
"I'll simply surrender."
Unlike Meng Huo, King Mulu bent her pride and gave herself up to me without a fuss.
The next to speak was Oldolgol, whom even now I couldn't quite get used to.
"I, still, remember, that, time."
The Nanman robot, bound in chains while everyone else got mere ropes, spoke in a heavy voice.
"The sight, of the earth, surging, upward, and death, raining, down, from the sky."
……
"Had, it not, rained, then, we would, all have, burned, to death."
Pang Tong's ambush had apparently left quite the trauma behind. When I glanced over at her, Pang Tong hid herself behind Sima Yi in embarrassment.
Oldolgol, who had shut his eyes as though recalling the past, opened his mouth once more.
"We, feel, no more, desire, to oppose, those, who have, learned, our, weakness."
Though honestly, he speaks in such maddening fragments. Is he actually a robot, taking time to select the right words one by one?
Even as I entertained such strange thoughts, Oldolgol's words carried on.
"Wuge Kingdom, will not, fight, the General-in-Chief."
Wuge Kingdom... was that the name of the land Oldolgol ruled?
Hearing him out, I replied in a calm voice.
"Good. And the other two?"
"I'll surrender as well!"
No sooner had the question left my mouth than King Tasada ducked low.
"Something flashed before my eyes, I blacked out, and when I came to, I was tied up head to toe!"
……
Is that really something you can say with a straight face?
King Tasada went on with a hearty laugh.
"Our poison has all run out anyway, so we surrender too!"
Her admission of defeat was so refreshingly frank that I found myself nodding along.
"...I'm not surrendering."
Hm?
The most unexpected answer of all came from Zhurong. The red-haired woman, her bronze skin much like Meng Huo's, continued in a level tone.
"If you take me away too, what are that idiot and the idiot's little sister supposed to do?"
"That's no concern of mine, but..."
I gave Zhurong's body a once-over, then said,
"Will you be all right?"
……
She was wrapped in bandages all over, as though she had taken a serious wound. Meng Huo, possessed of a frame as tough as they came, seemed not to have noticed, but I could tell. In that state, she wouldn't last long.
"...Worrying about your enemy's health, too. What a kind man you are."
"That I am."
At my answer, Zhurong let out a short laugh and turned away.
"Knocking that bullheadedness out of her calls for at least this much."
……
"Let's meet again on the battlefield."
Despite her grave wounds, Zhurong marched off proudly without so much as a grimace crossing her face.
...Curing her bullheadedness, she says. What on earth was that supposed to mean?