Moling (5)
A few days had passed since Zhou Yu's report that the Shanyue had appeared. Waiting in silence inside a military camp threaded with faint tension, I could finally tell that the moment had come.
"Reporting, sir! Another band of Shanyue is approaching from beyond the mountain range!"
"...How many?"
"By rough estimate, several thousand at least!"
They really do come in droves.
Which batch was this now? Yan Baihu must have summoned them with every ounce of resolve she possessed, because the Shanyue flooding in from all four directions had already begun to surpass one hundred thousand.
And that was despite Sun Jian and Sun Ce — both intimately familiar with Jiangdong's geography — steadily carving apart the smaller bands that strayed from the main horde. At this point, I could say with certainty that every last Shanyue tribe in Jiangdong had gathered here.
Unless these people genuinely were monsters out of a video game, there would be no large-scale Shanyue uprisings after this battle.
"Understood. You're dismissed."
"Yes, sir!"
I watched the messenger in his relatively light armor withdraw, then turned my head toward the adjutant standing nearby.
"Sun Quan. Is the fortification of the camp finished?"
"Yep! Just as you ordered, we've raised high walls in every spot ideal for exploiting the terrain!"
The moment my question left my mouth, Sun Quan snapped to and answered with boundless energy.
"We've also reinforced the fortress with mud and animal hides, so there's no need to worry about fire!"
"Uh... right. Good work."
So that was why she'd seemed oddly rumpled lately — she must have been working herself to the bone. The thought that the woman who, had history flowed as it was supposed to, would have become the Emperor of Wu was now running errands under me certainly made for a strange feeling.
At the very least, Cao Cao and Liu Bei got to command soldiers.
...Well, I supposed this was Sun Quan's first campaign, so it was only natural.
I gave a nod to Sun Quan, who was watching me as if expecting something more.
"You've done very well."
"Thank you!"
It was praise in words alone, but Sun Quan's eyes sparkled as though that alone satisfied her completely.
That gaze felt strangely familiar, though. To be specific, it was the very look I used to get from the people who constantly hailed me as some magnificent figure, endlessly pumping up my ego.
If it was mere flattery, I could simply ignore it and move on — but when someone came at me genuinely believing every word of it, I never quite knew how to react.
A sense of superiority? Sure, I felt it.
In the beginning, anyway.
But I wasn't magnanimous enough a man to soak up praise forever without it starting to weigh on me. Men like Dong Zhuo or Yuan Shu would have relished a situation like this — how did they manage it?
...Either way, right now I needed to focus on what lay in front of me.
"All that's left now is to wait."
"......"
"Pass the word to every officer and soldier: be ready."
I spoke in a calm, level voice.
"Before long, the gates of Moling will open, and Yan Baihu will show her face."
"Yes, sir!"
Well then — time to go see what the face of this woman calling herself the Eastern Wu King of Virtue looked like.
Which meant... the big one was Yan Baihu, right?
The smaller one spoke with a rather peculiar manner, like a young child. My guess was that girl was Yan Yu, Yan Baihu's younger sister.
By now, the fact that Yan Baihu was a woman surprised me not at all.
This world had always been that way.
"The destined hour has finally arrived!"
The girl watching the battlefield unfold from atop the walls of Moling cried out with total confidence.
"Yan Yu! How many comrades in all have answered my summons?!"
The girl with that peculiar hair color — a dizzying blend of white and black — posed her question to a beauty whose features were far more mature than her own.
Yan Yu bowed at her elder sister's question and answered in a voice every bit as loud.
"Yes! Not only the tribes friendly to us — even the ones that holed themselves up in the deepest valleys and never once came out have all sent word that they're joining us! Before long, a great host of hundreds of thousands will descend upon this place!"
The Jiangdong region of China held countless landscapes so breathtaking that later generations composed poems in their praise. Which was to say: its valleys ran deep and its mountain hollows stood high — ideal ground for repelling invasion and building a power base.
The Shanyue, who had dwelt in Jiangdong since ancient times, had claimed every scenic spot worth the name and waged guerrilla war from them, resisting the Han dynasty for hundreds of years. Now that the chance to drive the Han from Jiangdong forever had finally arrived, it was only natural they too emerged from their strongholds.
Yan Baihu threw back her head and laughed, declaring these were her kin after all.
"Wahaha! The heavens truly do take my side!"
True, apparently some woman named Cao Cao or whatever-her-name-was kept hammering their allies in the south — but the saying that the few cannot stand against the many hadn't been coined for nothing. Hadn't even Mencius, whom those Han dogs worshipped morning, noon, and night, taught that a small force cannot contend with a great one?
No matter how brilliant the enemy's abilities, they would have no choice but to buckle before the violence of overwhelming numbers!
"The insufferable arrogance of the Han dogs ends here and now!"
So shouting, Yan Baihu confidently cast her mind back over the past.
How many humiliations had she suffered at Han hands in those days? In the name of "developing the land," the Han had worked the Shanyue as slaves and abused them without remorse. Swine who dismissed every people but their own as backward, savage brutes. She couldn't speak for other regions, but every last Han who had settled in Jiangdong had shown exactly that face!
But hatred only begets further hatred.
Yan Baihu had chosen to rise and cast that hatred aside herself, nursing instead the dream of uniting every people dwelling in Jiangdong into one. When you thought about it, weren't the Han living in Jiangdong refugees too — people who had fled here when the heartland was swallowed by the flames of war? In a world where everyone suffered, spurning others would only make the world crueler!
And so, even after seizing Moling, Yan Baihu treated the Han residing there without cruelty, strictly forbade her followers from plundering homes, and won over the hearts of the local residents.
...Yan Baihu was, without question, a woman woefully unfit to found a nation.
Her martial arts were decent, if a cut below her own younger sister Yan Yu, and complicated stratagems only made her tilt her head in bafflement.
But in an age when human beings died like beasts, she possessed the quality that mattered above all else.
Virtue.
The strength of character to carry moral and ethical ideals through to reality.
"Come on, everyone! Let's get moving, quick quick!"
"Yes, big sister!"
The Eastern Wu King of Virtue.
That was why the Shanyue followed Yan Baihu to the very end, despite her string of defeats at the General-in-Chief's hands.
When word came that Yan Baihu, so long cooped up in Moling, had finally begun to move, I headed for a spot with a good vantage point and took stock of my surroundings.
Surveying the field wasn't particularly difficult. We had felled every tree in the vicinity that the attackers might have used as cover against our arrows, after all.
Those same trees had been put to use, as a bonus, reinforcing the camp. ...So once again today, I had done my part for the destruction of nature. But what could I do? Human lives take precedence.
"Hmmm..."
Having swept my gaze across the landscape once, I couldn't help but mutter.
"They're countless."
Quite simply, Shanyue filled every place my eyes could reach. I'd expected as much, but hundreds of thousands really had assembled. I had waited a good while near Moling, after all.
I had waited, exactly as Yan Baihu wished, so I could catch the whole Shanyue race in a single net — and Yan Baihu had taken all the time she needed to bury me under overwhelming numbers. Come to think of it, the situation carried a certain irony. The side that was supposed to be laying siege to a fortress had somehow ended up the one surrounded.
If I lost here, I supposed I'd flee in heaving sobs, crying out for Guo Jia like Cao Cao after Red Cliffs.
...No, maybe not quite Cao Cao after Red Cliffs. Yuan Shao after Guandu would be the more fitting measure — the kind of defeat that stung like hell, but still left you capable of fighting another day. After Red Cliffs, comeback or no comeback, Cao Cao lost all ability to control the south of China.
"Good grief. There really are a staggering number of them."
Lü Bu remarked from beside me, rolling her shoulders loose.
"Judging by the look in their eyes, none of them plan to bolt like last time, huh..."
I nodded at that.
"We'll probably be fighting for days. Go all out — fight to your heart's content."
"Let's gooo!"
Bounding on her toes at my permission, Lü Bu spun back toward me with a shout.
"Oh — and don't you dare get hurt while I'm gone!"
"...Right."
She fussed like a parent worrying over a small child. Well, it was true that if I got caught in the middle of that ferocious warrior race, the Shanyue, I'd be carved into five separate pieces in under a second.
Not that I'd be without guards, of course. Even if I lost this battle, I very much doubted it would kill me.
"...Lady Xuande."
"Yes. Let's stay sharp."
There stood Liu Bei and Guan Yu, leading my retainers and keeping the perimeter under strict watch. And there was Zhao Yun, who in the original history had served as Liu Bei's bodyguard general.
"......"
And above all...
"My lord."
"Hm?"
"Should anything happen, I will protect you."
With the Hegemon-King herself posted at my side, the only way I could possibly die now was if a thunderbolt fell out of a perfectly clear sky.