Clash (4)
...
Late December, in the borderlands of You Province, where a savage cold still held sway.
From a vantage point with a long view over the landscape, a red-haired woman gazed down at the enemy lines with an impassive stare.
"Great Khan."
"...Hm?"
The stillness lasted only a moment. The woman, who had been holding her silence and letting the quiet settle, turned her head at the voice addressing her.
"What is it?"
"The force under Borokhula's command struck at the enemy, but the attack failed, they say."
"How?"
"They pressed a surprise assault under cover of darkness, only to be met with a counterattack."
The Mongol officer explained that the moment their arrows had flown from long range, the enemy had answered in kind at once—and at that sight, the raiders had wheeled their horses around.
"Mmm... I see."
Even at word that her Four Steeds and Four Hounds—warriors she trusted beyond a shadow of doubt—had swung and missed, the woman showed no sign of dismay. She merely murmured, as though the news were only mildly unexpected.
"So every last one of them has lost at least once now?"
When Genghis Khan, sovereign of the Mongol Empire, let the words slip out, no one could easily find an answer.
Amid that silence, Genghis Khan turned over, one by one, the tactics her army had tried.
"Guerrilla raids don't work..."
The tactic of splitting their forces and striking without warning had fared no better than the attempt just now; if anything, they were fortunate the counterblow hadn't gone further and handed the enemy a chance to hunt them down in turn.
"Encirclement didn't work either..."
They had spread their forces wide and squeezed the enemy, bunched together in a single mass, from every direction at once. But an encirclement only means something for as long as you can keep the ring closed.
───"Where does a bunch with far fewer soldiers get that kind of confidence?! Get lost already, why don't you?!"
───"You damned bitch...! No help for it, then! Fall back, quickly!"
Outnumbered as they were, the ring had been loose to begin with, and it shattered to pieces the instant the enemy came charging out with their cavalry. Had their own withdrawal been any slower, the pursuing horsemen would surely have exacted a terrible price. This was the crack cavalry force said to have held these borderlands, turning back countless incursions since long before she had united the tribes—meeting them head-on was not beyond her, but the time for that had not yet come.
"Cutting the supply lines didn't work either, then...?"
If anything, the enemy's trick of overturning their own carts and turning the loss to their advantage had startled even Genghis Khan. That they had beaten back the raids every single time, despite countless assaults from every direction, proved it was no stroke of luck.
"Luring them out doesn't work either..."
They had deliberately closed for melee, swallowing the cost, and tried to bait the enemy into a chase—but the General-in-Chief, as if he had already scented the ambush, pursued only a short way before calling it off.
So an army no scheme of hers could touch was, indeed, a headache even for her.
───"Don't run! Stand and fight!"
───"Can't you just shut up?!"
That commander in particular had clung to her forces with maddening tenacity, dragging things out until the very battle order came apart at the seams. And there was not just one such commander, inside an army no stratagem could crack—none of which was good news.
"As I thought... there's no way but that."
Murmuring in an even voice, Genghis Khan put a question to her officers.
"How worn down are the enemy?"
"Yes. Save for a handful of elites, it was hard to find a single soldier still in decent condition."
This was the foremost line that had turned back the northern tribes' incursions. In climate, You Province differed little from the other provinces of the Han—but the farther north one climbed, the more the story changed. A land where farming was an impossible dream, where even the beasts wrapped in warm pelts sometimes froze to death where they stood. There was a reason Genghis Khan had chosen to wait for her enemy here rather than march south. However flawlessly that army concealed its weaknesses, they were, in the end, a people who settled and lived in one place. Exposed to this cold for long enough, they—unlike her own—could only wither.
"...And Subutai?"
"He says every preparation is complete. You need only give the signal."
"Good."
The Mongol officer, a composite bow slung at his saddle, offered a brief salute, and Genghis Khan spoke.
"Jebe."
"Yes."
"Not 'Great Khan.' Call me Temüjin."
"I shall engrave it upon my memory, Great Khan."
At that reply, Temüjin cocked her head for a moment before pressing on.
"...You did understand me, yes?"
"Of course."
Sensing Jebe's intent from that little exchange, Temüjin narrowed her eyes and studied him.
But Jebe met her gaze head-on, unblinking—and reading the sheer stubbornness written in his eyes, Temüjin let out a long, deep sigh.
Temüjin had kept luxury at arm's length all her life, and wished to be spared imposing titles like Genghis Khan or Great Khan. Her loyal generals, it seemed, felt otherwise.
Gazing at the enemy camp planted a short distance away, Genghis Khan spoke.
"...Let us make ready."
"Yes."
She had no intention of lingering here for long. The steppe had only just been unified; its interior remained unsettled, and their stores of food were far from generous. Should this war turn into a long one, the tribes who resented her would seize the opening to stir up discord—and her enemy, the Han Empire, would never let such a chaotic chance slip by. As they always had, they would take her fellow tribesmen by the scruff and coax them into endless division.
If it came to that, how many more long years would her people spend spilling one another's blood?
For Genghis Khan as well, this was a war upon which the future of her people hung.
A month had slipped by since the first skirmishes with Genghis Khan.
No—two months by now, perhaps? This cold plays havoc with your sense of time.
However one counted it, the Mongol Empire had spent that whole stretch striking at us from a dozen directions without pause, needling our nerves raw. The cold was already draining a man's strength even when he stood still—and with the constant knowledge that a single lapse in vigilance could bring everything crashing down, it drained faster still.
"...My lord, might I suggest withdrawing into the fortress?"
"Withdraw into the fortress, you say?"
"Yes, my lord! The soldiers show signs of exhaustion with every passing day!"
I snorted at the proposal from my adjutant—formally an adult now, though in my eyes still a fluffy little chick.
"Sun Quan. You still have such a very long way to go."
"I—is that so?"
I nodded at Sun Quan's dopey expression and went on.
"Never mind whether those foreigners would simply stand by and watch us retreat. The moment we pull back behind our walls, the whole of Hebei becomes a wasteland."
...
"Nothing strange about that. Pillaging villages for supplies in wartime is practically the basics, no?"
At that, Sima Yi muttered from nearby:
"For all that talk, you've never once plundered so much as a single village around here, have you?"
"...Anyway. You know what irritates me even more?"
"You're ignoring me."
"A good General-in-Chief wouldn't know the first thing about pillaging, after all."
After all, the Liu Bei of the original history never once plundered the villages near her war zones either—and wasn't it precisely that which won her countless followers? I couldn't speak to her motives, but the conduct itself was worth borrowing.
Sliding past Sima Yi's question as neatly as a snake gliding over a garden wall, I pressed straight on.
"Once they have laid the Hebei region to waste in that fashion, they will fall back north."
"...Why?"
"Why, you ask."
The insight long experience had bought me came out without the slightest effort.
"To refit their army once—and then come again."
...
"They don't imagine for a moment that they can swallow the Han in a single battle."
Which meant the war would drag on—and the country would be smashed apart all the more thoroughly for it.
In the first place, waging a siege war against the Mongol Empire guaranteed nothing; these were people who would reach for any means at all to win a battle. Raze the surrounding villages, then—rather than killing the people outright—let them flee into the fortress to swell the burden on its granaries. Or take them captive wholesale and drive them to the front to serve as arrow-catchers. Could soldiers forced to cut down defenseless civilians with their own hands truly fight with any heart—when their own kin might be standing in that crowd? Morale would bleed away, of course, and the Mongol army would fill the moat with the prisoners' corpses before storming the walls and burning everything to ash.
Looked at coldly, it was a method only the Mongol army could employ: an army that deliberately seeded terror in its enemies, teaching them that resistance meant nothing but death. Like a certain emperor of some interstellar war, they carried the chilling conviction that what they could not possess, they would sooner see destroyed.
"And if those foreigners come again next winter—do you plan to hide behind the walls then, too?"
"That's..."
Arms crossed, I told Sun Quan—who could not bring herself to answer—in a firm voice:
"The only way to end this war as quickly as possible is to settle it here."
"...As expected of you, my lord! My own insight was far too shallow!"
Sun Quan, who had been the one to propose falling back, now looked up at me with shining eyes.
"Please keep teaching me in the days ahead!!"
"...Right."
And there go the exclamation marks again.
I couldn't help but smile at the sight of Sun Quan, wholly unchanged, even today.