The Upheaval (1)
The Mongols and the Jurchens. In original history, these two peoples were all but sworn enemies—though to be more precise, it was the Mongols who held the grudge against the Jurchens.
The reason was simple. The Jurchens had built their nation by driving out a Chinese dynasty—and that nation, the Jin, kept deliberately stoking discord among the Mongol tribes. Whenever one tribe grew too powerful, the Jin would funnel soldiers and supplies to its rivals; once those rivals grew too strong in turn, the Jin would switch its backing to whichever tribe opposed them, keeping the steppe locked in endless fratricidal war. The Jin knew all too well how fearsome a unified nomad people could become, which was exactly why they meddled so brazenly, inflaming those divisions at every turn.
It was easy to sympathize, all things considered—the Jin itself had risen from nomad stock. With another great power capable of threatening them liable to be born right next door, their desperation to keep the Mongols fractured was entirely understandable. But even such interference has its limits. When a leader of singular genius called Genghis Khan finally emerged, the Mongols—who had spent ages splintered into warring tribes—united as one.
And in that moment, who do you suppose the man who had unified the Mongols set his sights on first? Who else? The Jin—the Jurchens—who had made his people butcher one another for generations. So Genghis Khan first crushed and subjugated Western Liao, the Khitan state that had been on friendly terms with the Jin, then invaded the Jin itself, vowing that they, at least, would never be left in peace, and began blasting everything to pieces. In the end, once the stack of ill will they'd spent years piling up finally burst, the Jin was annihilated outright—and the Southern Song, who stabbed the Mongol Empire in the back while insisting they were nothing like the Jin, got wiped out just as thoroughly.
Well, none of that was the point right now.
"UWOOOOO—!!"
Watching the foreign warriors come charging with that monstrous howl, I found myself thinking: ...No matter how I look at it, the Mongols seem to have swallowed up the Jurchens too.
This much was obvious from the Mongol soldiers alone, the ones leading the horde at the very front. Apparently neither Wanyan Aguda, founder of the Jin, nor Nurhaci, the Tianming Emperor who founded the Qing, had crossed the centuries to be born into this world. Should I call it a blessing that they weren't charging in, pooling their strength with the Mongol Empire's? Or a misfortune that they never collided with the Mongol Empire and had that strength ground down? One thing was certain: the Mongol Empire had grown tremendously strong. In this world, the Mongols and Jurchens had no reason to quarrel, so it stood to reason.
"The Great Khan himself watches this battle!"
Most conspicuous of all was the general at the head of the charge, proclaiming his presence to the heavens.
"Even if you meet death, you merely return to the sky—so never fall back!!"
"WAAAAAH—!!"
I knew at a glance who that general was—the one leading a force on a scale rivaling Genghis Khan's own.
"...Subutai, is it."
I couldn't recall the exact figures, but this was the man said to have destroyed some thirty nations and won around sixty pitched battles. A general without parallel, reputed never to have tasted defeat in his entire life—save for a single exception. Which meant he wasn't absolutely invincible. ...The problem was that he came endlessly close to it.
"Break through—!!"
"BWOOOM—!!"
"GYAAAH!"
"Urk!"
As if to prove his legend was no exaggeration, Subutai swung his massive curved blade, and a tremendous boom erupted as Yuan Shao's soldiers went sprawling in every direction.
...Holy hell. He's a Match for Ten Thousand, isn't he?
To shine and claim victory in a pitched battle where two armies collide with everything they have, outstanding personal martial skill is a given—but Subutai's level of it seemed a touch excessive. Not that I'd ever assumed asymmetric power belonged to our side alone. Even if his martial might fell a shade short of Guan Yu's or Zhang Fei's, his command ability was in a league they couldn't touch. How should I put it—the Peach Sisters, for all their brilliance, each carry one fatal flaw if you pick them apart. Subutai was a flawless general with none of those. What manner of battle must Wanyan Chen Heshang have fought, to hand a monster like that his one and only defeat—and earn him a scolding from his own superior in the bargain?
"GYAAAH! Somebody save me!"
"How the hell are we supposed to stop that?!"
It was a bizarre charge—scattered as though split into many, yet in another sense fused into one. Just as Yuan Shao's army stood on the verge of total collapse before movements too uncanny for words, two generals stepped forward.
"Your rampage ends here!"
"Come, then—try felling us if you dare!!"
Yan Liang and Wen Chou. The two fierce generals of Hebei, whom only Guan Yu could bring down in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, hurled themselves at Subutai.
"KAGAK—!"
"CLANG—!"
"Hm?!"
"...Formidable!"
The Hebei Twin Pillars—whom old man Luo Guanzhong had buffed so generously they'd even defeated Seo Hwang and Zhang Liao—showed unmistakable surprise at Subutai's martial skill.
"General!"
"Momentum decides this battle! Leave me to them and punch through!"
"...Yes, sir!"
At Subutai's shout, the Mongol army kept galloping hard toward a single point. After all, even facing those two at once, he hadn't shown the slightest sign of being pushed back. He must have judged he could hold them off well enough on his own.
The Mongols and Jurchens wheeled as one at Subutai's command—and when I saw what lay at the end of their new path, I muttered flatly:
"They've spotted my position."
Had they really pinpointed the commander just by sweeping their eyes over the formation? Whether that was Genghis Khan's gift or Subutai's, I couldn't say—but their eye for a battlefield was nothing short of superb.
"Is now really the time to stand there muttering?!"
Sima Yi cried out in exasperation, then shouted to the soldiers around her:
"Everyone, hold them with your lives!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
The enemy had burst clean through Yuan Shao's army on the east, and before anyone realized it, they were boring into our own lines. However thoroughly we had prepared, when horsemen carrying vastly more mass than any spearman came charging in endless waves with utter disregard for their own lives, gaps in the formation were simply inevitable. That first collision alone had flattened a good several hundred, if not a few thousand—and behind them still came mounted warriors numbering in the tens of thousands.
"Get on them, quick!! Stop that charge—now!!"
"Don't be afraid! Keep calm and trip their legs!"
Our own soldiers, elite veterans who had marched through every battlefield imaginable, responded with practiced skill—but watching them, I realized the situation was turning against us. The soldiers are sluggish. Battles erupting nearly every other day were draining enough, but above all, the men who had held their posts for months in the merciless cold couldn't help but wear down. If you knew how many fires we'd lit to keep frostbite at bay, it would knock you flat. Yet for all that effort, the cold itself could never be fully conquered, so the dip in their fighting strength was simply the price.
"You young punks! Where do you think you're going, disrespecting your elders?!"
"Shut it!"
...Still, they seem to be holding their own. Experience really isn't something to sneeze at, huh.
Caltrops scattered so the horses couldn't run, nets hurled to snare them, long hooks snagging legs to send them tumbling. It was, quite literally, a deluxe gift set prepared exclusively for these foreigners—but they knew as well as we did that losing speed meant dying, and they clawed their way through with desperate abandon. Comrades seized by the enemy and dragged from their saddles. And the foreigners charging onward over the backs of those very sacrifices.
"There! The target's over there!!"
When a soldier of the Mongol Empire finally picked me out of the chaos and shouted, the enemy roared as one and came surging at me. Even in this madhouse of a battle, they just had to find me. Sharp eyes, as expected.
"Jeong Reung?!"
Lü Bu, who had been rampaging like a wild beast in the thick of the enemy line, glanced back at the main camp and tried to wheel her horse around to guard me—
"KAANG—!"
"Where do you think you're looking?! Since it's come to this, why not settle things with us once and for all?!"
"These weakling bastards...!"
The foreigners, who had crossed blades with Lü Bu many times by now and worked out how to handle her, clamped onto her ankles with a death grip and hung on for all they were worth.
"KAGAGAGAK—!!"
"UWAHAHA—! You're terrifyingly strong—!"
"Out of my way—NOW!!"
To think they could actually stand their ground against Lü Bu, even with several of them swarming her at once. Could they too be generals who had claimed seats among the Four Steeds and Four Hounds?
Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and the other generals wore startled looks as well, but like Lü Bu, they were already fighting at the very front and couldn't simply turn their horses around. The instant any of them so much as tried to come back to me, the foreigners nearby hurled themselves in the way, heedless of their own lives. It looked for all the world as though they'd received separate orders from Genghis Khan himself.
As I watched the tide of foreigners who would reach me within minutes, a familiar voice sounded nearby.
"My lord."
"Hm?"
"...Never... leave my side."
At those words, so steeped in resolve, I nodded.
"I know. I'm counting on you."
"...Yes."
Seo Yeo gave the faintest of nods, then began to move—slowly.