The Jiangdong Campaign (5)
Between the exploits of the navy under Zhou Yu and the long-range sniping of Lü Bu and Seo Yeo guarding me, the battle kept flowing in our favor.
"Another one incoming! Everyone, dodge!"
"How am I supposed to dodge an arrow flying that fast—?! Uwah!"
Having run out of anchors to hurl, Lü Bu had taken to methodically clearing out enemies one per step—
CRACK—!
"Sh-she's insane! Another hole in the ship! Bail, bail—get the water out!"
"We're already doing that!"
And when another Shanyue commander stubbornly refused to close the distance, Seo Yeo simply started punching holes in the ordinary tower ships that drifted within her range instead.
She really was a walking human weapon.
Small as the impact area was, every spear she threw pierced clean through whatever it struck and kept on going—her javelins belonged to some entirely different order of existence altogether.
...Could the Xiang Yu of the original history really do this too?
"Hmm..."
By any common-sense measure the answer should be a flat no, so why wouldn't it come to me right away?
The very fact that I couldn't simply call it impossible made me feel, all over again, just how staggering a figure the Hegemon-King of Western Chu must have been.
Honestly, with the sheer number of things Xiang Yu had pulled off, dismissing it all as absurd didn't quite hold water.
A man strong enough from boyhood to hoist an iron cauldron clean overhead, and one who—so the records say—marched through a lifetime of battlefields without taking a single wound.
There's even a surviving account of Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu of Han, taking an arrow to the chest while scuffling with Xiang Yu and coolly playing it off: "That bandit merely hit this old man's toe."
From the Shanyue's standpoint, closing to grips meant facing Zhou Yu's far-from-soft navy—and on top of that, a terrifying individual who could sink ships from afar was holding the line.
"Fall back! Fall back, I say!"
"Run! Move!"
In the end, the Shanyue—whose morale had been ground into the dirt—began to flee, banging the gongs that signaled withdrawal in a deafening clamor.
The Shanyue commanders watching the battle had realized it too: let things run on like this, and the hundreds of tower ships under their command would sink straight to the bottom of the Yangtze.
But Zhou Yu was never going to just let the enemy run.
"The enemy is retreating! Pursue them—all of you!"
"Ooh... huh. That's actually kind of cool."
"...I told you to keep quiet."
At Sun Ce's playful remark, Zhou Yu's face creased slightly.
Those two really did make quite the picture together.
In the original history, Sun Ce had been called Son Rang—the "Young Master Sun"—and Zhou Yu was known as Meizhou Lang, the "Beautiful Zhou Lang."
Lang—a word for a handsome man.
In other words, Sun Ce and Zhou Yu were infuriatingly unfair: talented, and gorgeous on top of it.
And Zhou Yu went one further still, with "beautiful" quite literally built into her epithet—no more needs be said.
...Though neither of them lived long, in the end.
These two were so close that later ages would call their friendship "a bond not even iron could sever," and even now, trading banter as they fought, they were getting everything done that needed doing.
One glance at the blood caked over their armor told you as much.
Sun Ce and Zhou Yu hurled themselves into the Shanyue as if racing each other, cutting down every enemy who moved to bar their way.
...My one question was how they managed to command while rampaging like that—but this was Meizhou Lang we were talking about; she'd have it all thought out.
"All of you, follow the General!"
"WAAAAAH—!"
Indeed, every time those two surged ahead, the sailors around them charged after with morale blazing.
Hmm... come to think of it, was this our navy's first real battle?
On paper, at least, no pirate band in its right mind would pick a fight with the largest navy on the river, so...
Whenever Zhou Yu's navy appeared, every river pirate near Jiangdong bolted with their tail between their legs, and so for the past two years they had trained relentlessly without a single true engagement.
Under those circumstances, there was never going to be a chance for a proper battle.
Perhaps Zhou Yu had stepped to the very front for the sake of soldiers nervous about their first taste of real combat.
Sun Ce, though... uh...
She just seemed to have wandered off to kill enemies without a thought in her head.
She'd always taken after her father—the vanguard type, piercing through the enemy line at the very front.
In actual history, too, Sun Ce had grappled hand-to-hand with enemy commanders in ferocious close-quarters duels even while conquering Jiangdong.
"M-My lord! What are we to do now?!"
Sun Quan, realizing the battle's outcome was decided, asked me in a very loud voice.
She was seriously, tremendously tense.
I wonder if Sun Ce—Sun Quan's older sister—was like this on her first campaign, too.
I turned the ship's bow and said evenly, watching the Shanyue scurry away.
"We chase them, obviously. Get everything ready."
"Yes, sir!!"
Time to play a little tag, then.
A perfectly ordinary game—except for the terrifying rule that anyone the tagger caught would die.
I was willing to spare those who dropped their weapons and surrendered as prisoners, but still.
Would folk who had defied the Han for hundreds of years, stirring up every kind of trouble, really lay down their arms so meekly? I had my doubts.
...Still, it wouldn't be zero.
There would surely be those who valued their own necks over their hatred of the Han.
You know how it is—like people whose anger management works just fine in front of anyone stronger than they are.
I opened my mouth at once to my aides, who had just begun bustling about.
"Pass the word down: no killing any Shanyue who do not resist. That is an order."
"Yes, sir!"
The officers serving under me bowed as one and answered with vigor.
……
Of course, that number included generals like Liu Bei and Zhao Yun.
No matter how I turned it over, running those two as a separate, independent force seemed far more advantageous...
...The moment I brought it up, they'd refuse point-blank.
Firm as a pumpkin, those two.
They granted my every other request but dug in their heels over a general's commission; I let out a long sigh inside.
Sun Ce and Zhou Yu were far from the only ones chasing the Shanyue fleeing the battlefield.
"Hey, you lot! Run all you like—but where exactly are you going?! Got anywhere left to run to?!"
Gan Ning—Xingba.
The woman who, with a mere hundred men, had successfully pulled off a night raid against Cao Cao's grand army of several hundred thousand.
The general Sun Quan had once praised to the skies: "If Wei has Zhang Liao, then Wu has Gan Ning."
There was even a record from actual history: when a dispute over Jing Province left them facing Liu Bei's forces with only a river between them, Guan Yu—rating Gan Ning very highly indeed—did not rashly attempt a crossing.
Considering what kind of person Guan Yu was, that was a startling thing.
It meant Guan Yu—proud enough to hurl every insult she pleased at Sun Quan, the ruler of Wu herself—had acknowledged Gan Ning.
"...Damn it all."
And the Shanyue who'd had the rotten luck of running into Gan Ning spat a curse and squared his stance.
"Brocade-Sail Bandit! How dare a mere pirate bitch bar my way!"
"Ah... well, when you put it that way, I've got nothing."
Having her dark past dredged up and thrown in her face, Gan Ning just looked sheepish.
"It's 'cause of that, y'know. Why I'm always watching myself around other people."
……
"It's not like anyone above me calls me out on it. It's more like... I end up watching myself, I guess."
Muttering so, Gan Ning spun the twin halberds in her hands with a lazy flourish.
"But what's this about ranks among bandits, huh? We're the same thieving scum, you and I."
"What was that?"
"What? Your Shanyue lot come bursting out onto the Yangtze to throw your weight around every chance you get. Am I wrong?"
"Silence!"
The Shanyue commander's face flushed red as he shouted over Gan Ning's words.
"You think we move like you, to sate our own desires?! This is, from first to last, an act for the great cause!"
"Ah... is that so."
Realizing that any more of this talk would only be exhausting, Gan Ning lunged at him without a moment's hesitation.
"Then be a dear and go die for that precious great cause of yours."
"You beast of a woman—!"
The Shanyue hastily raised his sword, but he couldn't stop Gan Ning's strike, and his chest was run through.
The Shanyue commander's breath failed him with his eyes still bulging wide.
Gan Ning stood a moment, halberds dripping blood, gazing down at him—then muttered flatly:
"...A bandit, huh."
Just as everyone has memories they're ashamed to look back on, Gan Ning hated her past self—the girl so blinded by gold and treasure that she'd played at being a pirate.
To the point that, if she could, she'd go back in time and beat the daylights out of her.
"Whoa! How much is all this?! I'm rich now!"
...Just a reckless little kid who did whatever she pleased.
For a brat that insolent, the whip was the only cure, really.
The problem was that the brat had been born with too much strength for anyone to stop.
Of course, the world is a wide place—had the reckless child not come to her senses, even belatedly, her head would have rolled one day.
"This Guan Yunchang shall measure your martial skill."
A general who whirled the enormous crescent blade—a weapon an ordinary person could scarcely lift—as lightly as a pair of chopsticks.
"What're you looking at, pirate bitch? Gonna lower those eyes?"
A general glaring down at her, a monstrous weapon a full zhang and eight chi long—over four meters—slung across her shoulder.
Either of the two could have cut her down without the slightest effort.
And beyond those two, there had been others—people who seemed to dwell in an entirely different world altogether.
"Hmm... borderline. A pass?"
"Your standards are as strict as ever."
"Shut it."
The petite woman of towering name now hailed as the Peerless Under Heaven snapped back at Zhang Liao.
"Hey. Try anything funny and you're dead. Got it?"
"Lü Bu. Watch your tone."
……
The Peerless Under Heaven—who had been threatening Gan Ning with her beloved Sky Piercer Halberd leveled at her—held her tongue for a moment at the man's words, then opened her mouth again.
"...Do anything strange and you die. Understood?"
She'd best take to her grave, for her own safety, the fact that she'd found the whole scene hilarious.
Truthfully, Lü Bu's threat back then hadn't been all that frightening.
Because someone far more dangerous than Lü Bu had been standing right there.
……
Those expressionless eyes, whose depths even her instincts couldn't read.
"Whew. Let's just get to work."
Shuddering at the memory of him, Gan Ning snapped into motion.
Nothing in the world was easier than chasing down fleeing enemies, after all.
And she'd be damned if she let anyone poach her kills while she dawdled.