The Jiangdong Conquest Campaign (8)
Having ultimately failed to stop the Han Empire's General-in-Chief from crossing the Yangtze River, Yan Baihu now threw every means at her disposal into destroying them.
"We face a common enemy, so we shall pool our strength! And the spoils of war shall be divided among us all!"
Her first move had been to entice the bandit factions who, at the news that the General-in-Chief had come down upon them, sensed danger to their own necks.
"...True enough. Cower in hiding out of fear, and sooner or later we'll simply be hunted down. Count us in."
"A wise decision!"
As she sealed the alliance with the bandits, Yan Baihu chuckled darkly to herself.
Hehe, I was planning to dispose of you all sooner or later anyway!
These were parasites who knew nothing but draining the lifeblood of others. Vermin like these had no place in the nation she intended to build.
This is the very art of using barbarians to strike down barbarians! As expected, I am brilliant!
The irony that the phrase had first been coined by the very Han people she dismissed as barbarians never crossed her mind. If a word sounded impressive, she used it without hesitation... though in fairness, no other term for her present circumstances came to mind either.
Wrenching herself out of her sinister musings, Yan Baihu put on a bright smile and called out.
"Then we shall exploit our knowledge of the terrain and ambush them from a place they would never dream of!"
"...If that's the plan, we'll follow it."
The bandit chief found Yan Baihu's manner of speech utterly bizarre, but the strength the Shanyue tribe brought to the table was real enough, so he resolved to comply without complaint.
"..."
After all, even now there was a woman silently making it clear that something unpleasant would happen the moment he misspoke. For a bandit, it was a grievous wound to his pride, but he had decided that survival was worth any humiliation.
"Come! Now that it is settled, we move at once! Victory awaits us!"
Beaming with confidence, Yan Baihu cried out and marched her army off to war.
...One week later.
The allied army of Yan Baihu and the bandits was swept away by the General-in-Chief's forces precisely like autumn leaves before a gale.
"W-what in the world is going on?!"
Yan Baihu, who had launched her ambush brimming with confidence in her army's command of the terrain, screamed at the scene unfolding before her eyes.
KRA-KOOM—!
"GYAAAAH!"
"GUHAAAK!"
The bandits she had pushed to the vanguard to apply a little pressure burst apart with a sound like something detonating, their bodies briefly airborne. Human beings are not, by nature, creatures built for flight, so the drifting bandits promptly dropped helplessly back to earth—and in their midst, a single figure revealed herself.
"Whoa! How long has it been since I got to really let loose?"
Hair red as though steeped in countless rivers of blood. Blood-colored eyes that turned the knees of all who beheld them to water.
"You're all dead now! Come here, every last one of you—!"
Mounted atop a red horse that took after its mistress in every way, the Peerless Under Heaven began her charge.
Neigh—!
"L-Lü Bu! It's Lü Bu!"
"Run, everyone—!"
The bandits—some of whom had once plied their trade in the lands upstream of the Yangtze—scattered to the four winds, shrieking at the mere sight of her. Under ordinary circumstances Yan Baihu would have clicked her tongue and dismissed them as mere rabble, but she had grasped intuitively just how strong the figure before her was, and no words came.
She was quite confident in her own ability to swing a weapon, yet even she could not summon the will to face that overwhelming martial might.
Her younger sister Yan Yu seemed to feel it too, crying out with a face drained of all color.
"B-big sis! We have to run, right now!"
"Uuugh...!"
Letting out a groan, Yan Baihu rolled her eyes rapidly this way and that. An ambush only had meaning when the enemy knew nothing of it; against an enemy prepared like this, pressing the attack would likely invite nothing but heavy losses.
Setting aside the blood-red general whom she didn't even dare look at, for fear that meeting her gaze would bring the woman charging straight over, weren't there simply far too many warriors out there mowing down the bandits she had gathered like sheaves of straw?
"Raise your shields and advance, holding firm! We will not be pushed back!"
RAAAAGH——!
Generals and soldiers alike reacting instantly and in perfect concert—someone had clearly anticipated her ambush.
...But how on earth?
She had deliberately let the hours simmer until their vigilance slackened, then exploited her army's familiarity with the terrain to appear from a direction no one could have imagined. She couldn't begin to fathom how anyone had predicted an ambush at this exact hour and this exact place, but that puzzle was best shelved for later.
"...This ambush has failed! We retreat, at once!"
"W-wait a moment! What of my men at the front?!"
"Then do you intend to die here alongside them?!"
To the bandit chief's desperate outburst, Yan Baihu offered a remarkably coherent explanation.
"This is what defeat in battle means! Did you not know that?!"
"Ghhk..."
The bandit chief, robbed of words, could only groan, and after a long silence he spoke in a low, dark voice.
"...Next time, your forces take the front."
"Naturally! Is that not precisely what trust between allies means?!"
Yan Baihu declared this with the bright, innocent face of a girl who knew nothing of the world, nodding her head vigorously.
Of course, by then you'll already be gone from this world!
Even as she spoke, another sinister scheme was taking shape within. From the very start, Yan Baihu had regarded the bandits as hunting dogs to be used and discarded; there was not the slightest reason for her to keep faith with them. The only people who counted in her calculations were her own kind. Even within the Han Empire, her enemy's own nation, there was no reason whatsoever to treasure a pack of misfits who could not adapt to ordinary life and had developed a taste for slaughter.
Had her own forces been the ones being driven back by those bastards, the bandits would certainly have shoved the Shanyue tribe forward as a meat shield without a moment's hesitation.
"..."
Still, the last thing she needed was for a pack of rootless bandits to catch wind of anything amiss. And so, playing the part of a guileless girl ignorant of the ways of the world to perfection, Yan Baihu set the bandit chief's mind at ease.
There was a word for it: two faces, inside and out—a term for when one's outward words and deeds bore no resemblance to the thoughts hidden within.
Even the four-character idiom honey on the lips, a dagger in the belly—a phrase that would not be coined until the Tang dynasty centuries later, describing those who feign friendship while nursing murderous intent—would have fit her without the slightest stretch.
Had the General-in-Chief ever witnessed this side of Yan Baihu, he would surely have been astonished.
Yes, I lost another battle, but I learned even a little about the enemy, so I choose to look on the bright side!
Having wrenched her train of thought around by sheer force, Yan Baihu barked orders at the Shanyue tribesmen around her.
"Raise the retreat signal, quickly!"
"Understood!"
As she watched the Shanyue tribe spring into bustling motion, Yan Baihu's idle curiosity got the better of her, and she stole a glance off to the side.
"You cowards! Why do you keep running the moment you set eyes on me?!"
"S-stay back! You monster!"
"What did you just say?!"
Lü Bu's head whipped around toward the bandit who had dared call her a monster.
"Saying that to a mother with a kid at home—there's nothing you won't say, huh! You are SO dead! Get over here!"
"GYAAAAH!"
Charging straight ahead while smashing through every obstacle in her path by raw force, she was, just as the bandit had shouted, nothing short of a monster.
"Hiiik..."
At the sight of the bandit who had opened his mouth at the worst possible moment being skewered on the spot like a shish kebab, Yan Baihu shuddered from head to toe. There had clearly been a good stretch of distance between them even viewed from afar—how had she crossed it in that fleeting moment?
Snort—
The red horse, far larger than any ordinary steed, snorted powerfully, still in fine fettle.
"...Hm?"
——?!
At that moment, Lü Bu, sensing eyes upon her, turned her head toward Yan Baihu. Yan Baihu whipped her head down in a flash, but she knew their eyes had met, if only for a heartbeat.
"..."
Unbelievable. In the very middle of a battlefield where she already had more than enough to rampage through, she was staring holes through Yan Baihu, all the way over here at a distance!
Feeling cold sweat trickle down her back, Yan Baihu muttered to herself.
"I am an ordinary Shanyue cavalryman... I am an ordinary Shanyue cavalryman..."
"...Big sis?"
At her sister's desperate, self-hypnotizing display, Yan Yu tilted her head in puzzlement.
How much time passed like that?
"...Hmph. Lucky you."
Lü Bu, who had kept her gaze fixed on Yan Baihu, soon looked away as though she had lost interest.
"Phew! I have narrowly escaped with my life!"
It had looked for all the world as though the woman were deliberately letting her go, but survive she had, and Yan Baihu heaved a deep sigh of relief.
"R-run!"
"KRAAAK!"
Turning back to the front and resuming her proper work, Lü Bu set about demolishing the bandits at the vanguard.
At the sight of Lü Bu ranging across the entire length and breadth of the battlefield as though she would let not a single soul escape, Yan Baihu snapped back to her senses.
"N-now is not the time to be standing around! We run, this instant!"
"Yes, big sis!"
Yan Baihu's army had not brought its full strength, having come for a stealthy ambush. The Shanyue forces, intimately familiar with the terrain, withdrew from the battlefield at considerable speed, but the soldiers pursuing them were no slouches either, and the losses were heavy.
And the moment Yan Baihu returned to Moling, she heard the news.
"L-Lord Virtuous King! They say a general has broken through our encirclement in the south and fled, making contact with Cao Cao's army!"
"P-pardon?!"
...Yan Baihu's trials were far from over.