The Gangdong Campaign (6)
Having entrusted the west to her younger sister, Yan Baihu meant to march north herself and bar the enemy's path. After all, Cao Cao—that woman already waiting in the west—had gone and crossed the Yangtze, using Lujiang as her bridgehead.
She knew all too well that if the General-in-Chief in the north crossed the river as well, on top of that, the war would tilt badly against them. That was why this battle mattered more than any other. However brilliant Cao Cao might be, even she could not easily break soldiers who had lived and hardened in Gangdong all their lives. Which meant that if they could only somehow hold back the host descending from the north, Cao Cao's army would have no choice but to slink back to Lujiang, its grand crossing of the Yangtze rendered a hollow boast.
No matter how many campaigns such a veteran had survived, tearing through the Gangdong region—a climate wholly alien compared to the lands north of the Yangtze—as though it were her own backyard was simply impossible. As for Liu Yao's forces and their allies, who had fled south, her troops had sealed every road there was to seal; those trapped within had no way of knowing how the war was unfolding beyond. And unless some commander of extraordinary daring could punch through that encirclement alone—and surely no such general existed in Liu Yao's camp—to join hands with the General-in-Chief's army for a coordinated campaign, Yan Baihu had every confidence she would collapse right where she stood, dumbstruck.
And so time flowed on and on, until at last—the present.
“Th-this—what in the world is even happening?!”
Yan Baihu, who had completed every preparation for the naval battle to come, was jolted wide-eyed barely moments after the fighting began. How long had it been since the first arrow flew, and already her tower ships were being shoved back in droves, powerless to bring their strength to bear?
“Let us show Han the measure of our strength! Never yield a single step—ghk!”
A general cheering on his men at the very front had his head sent flying by a beautiful woman. The auburn-haired woman who had taken it called out in a bright, ringing voice.
“Woohoo! That's one more feat of arms on the record! I win this round, Gongjin!”
Another woman, who had swarmed aboard the allied ship hot on the auburn-haired woman's heels, let out a long sigh.
“…Which is exactly why I keep saying there's no reason to turn this into a contest.”
“What's that? Pulling out early because you're scared you'll lose?”
“……”
It was no illusion that, from that exchange onward, the platinum-haired woman's blade grew fiercer still.
“Ughhh… by my every expectation, those people should be completely unaccustomed to naval warfare…!”
Watching her ships get captured or sunk the instant they so much as touched an enemy hull, Yan Baihu could barely contain her bewilderment.
“Virtuous King! Disaster! Our van has piled into itself in a chain-reaction collision!”
“Wh-what?!”
“Reporting! Weapon fire from the enemy command ship is raining down—our vessels are taking on water…!”
“Wh-what did you just say?!”
Just then, messengers came pouring in from every quarter like a hailstorm, knocking the soul clean out of Yan Baihu.
What? The Shanyue—born and bred on the Yangtze waterways—triggering a chain-reaction collision? And hauling siege engines onto ships where a single person could scarcely keep their footing? Either one alone soared far past the limits of her common sense; together, they made her head swim.
“Virtuous King! At this rate the enemy will be upon your command ship! Give the order, and quickly!”
“Ughhhh…”
Yan Baihu racked her brain until her eyes nearly spun in their sockets, then asked a Shanyue warrior at her side:
“A-aide! What say you! Do you judge this situation to hold any hope?!”
“That is…”
Hearing the question, the Shanyue aide let the end of his answer trail away. At the sight of him squirming, quite unable to force the words out, Yan Baihu nodded hard, as though that hesitation were answer enough.
“A battle without hope is to be abandoned! Abandoned, I say! Sound the retreat signal!”
“At once!”
Yan Baihu was a woman who acted the moment a decision was made—and true to that boldness, the Shanyue sounded the retreat without a flicker of hesitation.
Gooong— gooong— gooong—
The great gong's toll rolled out across the entire battlefield. A crippling defeat for a navy, which once it takes heavy losses needs long years to rebuild. It was a loss vast enough to proclaim, to all the world, into whose hands the Yangtze had finally fallen.
“Hahh… hahh… I barely made it out alive…!”
For all that she had ridden the most conspicuous command ship on the battlefield, Yan Baihu had withdrawn unscathed thanks to the Shanyue guards hurling themselves into her defense, and now she wore the face of a woman risen from death itself. Once she had caught her breath, she tossed a question to the warriors around her.
“They have stopped pursuing us?”
“Yes. We cannot fathom their intent, but partway through they began pulling their forces back.”
“Hmmmm… why on earth would they do such a thing…”
Did they simply mean not to waste their strength, knowing full well the Shanyue had Gangdong's terrain down to the last stream?Or was there some deeper design in letting them slip away so meekly? Yan Baihu and her people knew every shortcut under the sun that a Han native had never so much as heard of, so she could not fathom why the enemy would forfeit the chance to bleed them further and withdraw so tamely.
She stewed over it for a good while, but soon realized that a fresh opportunity had opened before her, and balled her fist with a snap.
“In any case, a chance to rise again has been granted! Soon enough we shall make them regret ever letting us go so meekly!”
“Yes! Virtuous King!”
Even though Yan Baihu had retreated after taking quite serious losses, the Shanyue followed her in trust, harboring no second thoughts. Part of it was her martial might—enough that she styled herself the White Tiger—but above all, unlike every Shanyue chieftain who had come before her, she never monopolized the spoils, cherished her followers, and never treated them as expendable.
Indeed, was it not precisely because she treasured her people that so many tribes across Gangdong, each scratching out their own survival, had rallied to her banner? And were she ever to lose her life, the Shanyue would sooner raise the cry for vengeance and resist with their final breath—be it years, be it decades.
“Now! Rally the routed and rebuild the army! So long as we draw breath, opportunity is endless!”
“And do you have a plan for beating them?”
“Hmm… all I can come up with is to smash straight into them…”
…Her wits, admittedly, seemed in rather short supply. But for a frontier people who had lived by nothing but brawling since the day they could first close a hand around a sword, a scarcity of sharp minds was only to be expected. Had one blessed with both body and brain ever been born among the Shanyue, Gangdong would have broken away from Han long ago.
Yan Baihu owned her shortcomings with perfect candor and turned to her aide.
“Now it is my turn to ask! Do you, by any chance, possess a fine plan?!”
“…Hahaha! You expect a great deal of me!”
“I knew it would be so!”
…The Shanyue tribe. For hundreds of years they had been so adept at war and guerrilla fighting that they resisted openly from within Han territory itself—yet perhaps as the recoil from all that brawn, when it came to using their heads they proved as weak as any other frontier folk.
Straightening her posture, Yan Baihu shouted once more with undimmed vigor.
“We move at once! First, we link up with my dear younger sister—!”
“B-big sis! Something terrible has happened—!”
“…Hm?”
At that moment a voice far, far too familiar drifted over from nearby, and Yan Baihu cocked her head. The instant she recognized it as her own younger sister's, she started in shock.
“Yan Yu?! What in the world are you doing here?! Did I not expressly order you to hold the enemy in the west?!”
“Th-that is…”
Cold sweat trickling down her face, Yan Yu explained.
“…We lost.”
“You WHAT?!”
Seeing at a glance how hard the blow had landed, Yan Yu hurried on.
“Anyway, big sis! We have a very big problem right now!”
“…Do you mean the fact that the two of us have both been defeated?”
“Gah—you lost too…?!”
Yan Yu, who had been raising both hands to cover her mouth, shook her head hard and cried out.
“…No, that's not what I meant!”
“Then what is it, I ask?”
“The Nanman!”
Yan Yu blurted out.
“They're attacking with the Nanman tribes driving the front!”
“…I beg your pardon?”
The Nanman—were those not the bronze-skinned people said to dwell far to the south of Yi Province? Hearing so improbable a name at so unforeseen an hour, Yan Baihu's expression went slack and blank.
Deep within Gangdong. There, an army whose features were alien to both Han and Shanyue alike was advancing in immaculate order.
“Wow! I've never set foot here before in my life, and yet it feels so familiar!”
A golden-haired, bronze-skinned commander draped in buffalo hide moved with the sprightly steps of a fish returned to water. Behind her, a petite woman nodded along with all her might.
“Right?! If only the weather here would bake us just a little longer!”
“See? I knew you'd feel it too!”
The two sisters, so alike in looks, laughed with bright abandon.
“…Keep carrying on like that and lose, and they won't dare show their faces again.”
As the woman watching the scene heaved a deep sigh, Meng Huo shot back a reply that said, in effect, don't worry your head over it.
“Aw, come on—we're just doing what the people upstairs told us to! What could possibly go wrong?”
“I learned that too much worrying makes you old before your time!”
“…Right. And I feel myself aging fast indeed, thanks to you two.”
At voices so helplessly sunny, Zhurong pressed a hand to her forehead.
The Unmatched Flying Army. This elite corps of Nanman stock—named by the General-in-Chief himself, who had pronounced it the perfect choice—was now on the march under Cao Cao's orders.