Moling (8)
How much time had passed since the full-scale clash with the Shanyue tribe began?
"Break through, no matter what! Kill them all!"
"We can't let them push us back! Hold all the firmer!"
Our allies, who had managed to hold their ground at the outset, began to strain as time wore on, giving way inch by inch. As the old saying goes, there is no surviving a swarm. Kill the Shanyue and kill them again, and still they came surging in without end, like a tide rolling toward the shore.
"Hhk... haah..."
Under that relentless assault, our soldiers' sweat poured down like rain, and their breathing grew so ragged they seemed ready to collapse at any moment.
When things reached this state, there was nothing for it but to rotate fresh troops up to relieve the front and buy time.
Liu Bei, who had been watching the battlefield at my side, evidently arrived at the same thought, for she spoke up with respectful formality.
"My lord, we will move out shortly."
"Go on, then. Come back safe."
Mounted atop Dilu, Liu Bei bowed with perfect courtesy, then drew her Twin Swords of Male and Female from their sheaths.
"We will reinforce the left wing!"
"Yes!"
The adjutant I had assigned to her answered crisply, and with a glance at him, Liu Bei shouted to the soldiers nearby.
"Advance!"
Waaaaargh—!!
"And who the hell are you lot supposed to be?!"
"Hyahaha! Look, more bastards to kill!"
Drunk on the heat of battle and half out of their minds, the Shanyue paid Liu Bei's force no mind whatsoever, their eyes glinting wildly. Far from being rattled by enemy reinforcements, they were actually delighted that there were more people to kill...
These people really had gone completely around the bend.
"My thanks for the support."
Xu Huang, who had been holding the front, offered her thanks to Liu Bei in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Oh no. I only did what anyone would."
Liu Bei answered Xu Huang's gratitude with a gentle smile. Her personal troops—for she drew a strict line between public duty and private ties—were made up entirely of elite soldiers anyone would nod at in approval, but with the Shanyue pouring in without end, they were utterly spent.
Honestly, holding out this long was impressive enough on its own.
People are creatures who wear themselves out after mere minutes of violent exertion, after all.
"Hey! At that speed, you'll never kill me?!"
"That beast of a woman!"
...Of course, there were those who never tired, but let's set them aside as the exception.
Lu Bu there had been rampaging in the very heart of the enemy line for what must have been tens of minutes, and she was still going strong.
Just how many had she killed on this battlefield by now?
That question answered itself in the corpses piled up around her. There she stood, having single-handedly butchered several hundred of tribesmen whose fighting prowess could never be taken lightly.
"Whatever it takes—kill that woman!"
"Yes! Don't you dare give up!"
Lu Bu, holding court in matchless glory across the field, was one thing—but the Shanyue who kept hurling themselves at her without a shred of fear were every bit as much a handful. Normally, the moment Lu Bu went on a rampage like that, enemy morale would plummet until soldiers began losing heart and running; yet not one of these people showed the slightest sign of it.
Knowing full well just how enormous a power it was for soldiers not to rout on a battlefield, I could only find the situation troubling.
If we kept up this indecisive contest of strength, there would be no end to it.
...In that case, what if we poured in an even greater strength?
"Guan Yu. Zhao Yun."
At my words, the two women who had been standing in silence answered.
"Yes."
"You called."
Two voices pitched just subtly apart. Looking into each pair of cool, level eyes in turn, I asked:
"Could you churn through the enemy formation without taking a wound, the way Lu Bu is doing right now?"
...
At my question, the two women fell silent for a moment. It was a question of whether they could slaughter several hundred enemies single-handedly—the kind of foes an ordinary person would have to wager their life on just to face one at a time. Any hundred people out of a hundred would have shaken their heads, but the generals I had asked were no ordinary people.
"...If that is the path by which I may repay the grace my lord has bestowed, then gladly."
Guan Yu—the Match for Ten Thousand who would one day be exalted as a God of War.
"A spear pointed down the righteous path does not break."
Zhao Yun—the woman who had carved her way alone through Cao Cao's encirclement to deliver Liu Bei's kin to safety.
I looked between the two dependable generals, then gave a small nod.
"Then the two of you will move—one to the left, one to the right."
"Yes."
"Ah, and one more thing..."
...?
When I let the words trail off, the two of them showed puzzled looks. On a half-formed hunch, I said:
"Don't push yourselves too hard."
...
"And if it gets to be too much, pull back."
If they overdid it and something happened, I'd worry myself sleepless.
"Have no fear."
At my anxious admonition, Guan Yu spoke.
"I, Guan Yu, shall show you my martial skill—watch closely."
"...Huh?"
What was that? Why did it feel as though I'd just set a fire under something inside Guan Yu?
...
Even Zhao Yun, silent until now, carried an air that was anything but ordinary.
Um... what, exactly.
This was going to be fine... right?
Faced with the two women's reactions, I could only wear a slightly dazed expression.
The Shanyue main camp.
Deep inside a military camp deliberately built modest, for fear of drawing someone's aim, Yan Baihu—the chieftain now leading the Shanyue—stood surveying the battlefield with all the bearing of a great commander.
"Ugh..."
The trouble was that Yan Baihu's expression was anything but good. Staring at the single most conspicuous spot on the vast battlefield, he cried out.
"This is simply beyond all reason!"
Lu Bu Fengxian.
The blood-red girl who had radiated a monstrous presence from the very first moment their eyes met was flaunting her existence on the battlefield even now.
"What, tired already? You lot crawled like earthworms to begin with—now you're even slower?"
"Every time she opens her mouth...! out comes that filth...!"
The countless corpses strewn about Lu Bu. Every last one of them was a Shanyue warrior who had swarmed in from all sides to strike her down and lost his life instead.
He had heard the northerners prattling on about Peerless Under Heaven this and Match for Ten Thousand that, but he had never dreamed it would amount to this. To Yan Baihu, the whole situation was an absurdity beyond words.
...And yet even so! There is a limit to how many a single person can face!
There was the Battle of Pengcheng, where the Hegemon-King of Western Chu had crushed Emperor Gaozu of Han's 560,000 with a mere 30,000. The Hegemon-King's unmatched martial might had certainly played its part—but so had the fact that every soldier of Chu in that army was elite among elites, each one capable of holding his own against ten men.
What was more, Gaozu's 560,000 that day were a scratch coalition—the kings of the realm had only temporarily bent the knee to Han. An army barely stitched together, lacking even proper command or discipline, had broken and fled the instant the Hegemon-King descended, and 300,000 of them died in the rout. Surely a great many had been shoved and trampled to death by their own comrades. Such is ever the way of an army in the grip of terror.
But what of our brethren now?
Having lived and breathed war their whole lives, they were old hands at war and knew no fear; unless an order came down, they would not retreat.
Not that the Shanyue charging the enemy at the front were listening to a word of his commands anyway! And how much grief it had cost him to calm them each time they flew into a frenzy, shrieking that every last Han alive needed killing!
"...Ahem."
Catching his thoughts sliding into self-pity, Yan Baihu reclaimed his composure.
In any case, we are no disorderly rabble whose only asset is numbers. If we simply keep pressing like this...
BOOM—!
"GYAAAAH!"
"Wh-what now?!"
The sudden thunder and screaming made Yan Baihu jump out of his skin. Half-sure it was Lu Bu's doing again, he whipped his gaze over to check.
...But it was not Lu Bu's doing.
"Oh. Not bad at all."
For even Lu Bu had turned her head just now, eyes fixed on someone.
"D-don't tell me..."
Conjuring the worst scenario he could barely bear to imagine, Yan Baihu turned his gaze, his features gone ash-pale. And unfortunately for Yan Baihu, his guess did not miss.
"GRAAAAGH!"
"URK!"
Out of nowhere, extraordinary women had erupted from the left and right of the enemy formation.
...
Each driving toward her own direction, the two women—cool and composed of temperament, it seemed—spared not a word, silently cutting down the Shanyue where they stood.
"Who in blazes is this one now?!"
"Do we look that easy to you—!"
At the sight of the two women mowing down their brethren like bundles of straw, the Shanyue nearby flew at them in a fury.
Shff!
And so the warriors who flung themselves at the enemy generals went down—some cloven by the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, others run through by the silver spear. Unlike Lu Bu, who had planted herself in a single spot, the two women swept across the battlefield from end to end, pulling the gaze of their own warriors along with them.
"You idiots! What are you doing, failing to catch even one woman!"
"How in the world did she dodge that...? Does she have eyes in the back of her head?"
An officer bellowing in frustration from afar; soldiers struck dumb by a martial art they could not begin to comprehend.
"Something... something about this bodes ill..."
Less dire than Lu Bu pinning down thousands single-handedly, perhaps—but having realized those two women were no pushovers either, Yan Baihu murmured in a small voice.
"Sis?"
"Virtuous King! We have a crisis!"
Just as Yan Yu, who had been watching him, began to voice her puzzlement, Yan Baihu's loyal adjutant came pelting up, shouting in haste.
"E-enemy cavalry sighted in force behind our rear!"
...
"They're charging straight for this position! We've been discovered!"
At the adjutant's report, Yan Baihu turned his head to look behind them, and—
"I will take the point! Follow only me!"
"My lord—! Be sure to watch me, the Splendid Ma Chao, in all my glory—!"
The moment I came face to face with that all-too-familiar figure, I very nearly lost my mind.