The Crisis (2)
Han Xin—the Unrivaled Hero of the Realm. Zhang Liang—the Divine Reckoner with a Demon's Stratagems. Xiao He—the Wartime Chancellor.
These were the men whose merits stood tallest in helping Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu of Han, found his dynasty, and history remembers them together as the Three Heroes of Han.
With a mere thirty thousand men, Han Xin toppled kingdom after kingdom and widened Han's reach with every campaign. Wei, Zhao, Yan, Qi—he smashed them all with brilliant generalship, leaving no one to dispute that he was a prodigy of war.
Zhang Liang gave Gaozu the wide-angle vision to paint the grand design. It was he who persuaded the Emperor to flatly reject the feudal system Li Yiji had proposed—a choice that would shape the politics of the realm for generations—and his counsel on how to govern the people and the land did much to set Gaozu securely on his throne.
Xiao He, meanwhile, was a sage chancellor in fact as well as name, sustaining his lord without pause through sheer administrative brilliance. The reason Gaozu could rise again even after the catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Pengcheng was that Xiao He never stopped streaming men and materiel up from the rear—and every time his lord stumbled into disaster thereafter, it was Xiao He who found some way for him to hold on.
The art of war that annihilates the enemy in the field. The strategy that fixes the course of what comes next. The logistics that keep soldiers fed and granaries full.
Each was an expert beyond compare within his own domain, and each alone was a genius who could shake a nation to its core.
And yet there was one general they had only managed to bring down because all three pooled their strength—and because Heaven's luck rode with them.
Xiang Yu. The Hegemon-King of Western Chu.
With an army scraped together in haste, he met the forces of Zhang Han—Qin's last great commander—nine times and won all nine; leading barely thirty thousand men, he fell upon Pengcheng and shattered an army of 560,000. An engine of war such as history had never seen.
Had even one of the Three Heroes been absent—or had Heaven not conjured a sandstorm to blind his pursuit of the fleeing Gaozu after Pengcheng—the Han dynasty would have died at the Hegemon-King's hands.
And no matter how fiercely Peng Yue harried his rear and severed his supply lines, the Hegemon-King never broke; he won on every battlefield he touched.
Common sense holds that an army starved of supply and grain falls apart. Yet his men, marching on empty bellies, kept seizing territory and driving Gaozu from the field, hurling the enemy back with a momentum that defied belief.
Judged by doctrine and tactics alone, none of it made sense. What incomprehensible power had let the Hegemon-King pile up such impossible victories?
"GYAAAAGH—!!"
The answer was sheer, overwhelming martial might.
Seo Yeo swung her colossal greatsword—a slab of iron closer to a club than a blade—and a dozen-odd of the nomad riders went down in one great sweep. Those standing nearest were halved as cleanly as a block of tofu being cloven, while others simply lost their seats to the wind-pressure alone and tumbled from their horses.
It was as if a barrier had formed around her.
Anything that closed within a certain distance of her simply died.
And she was swinging that impossibly massive Chu Heaven Sword so fast that all anyone could catch was the afterimage….
How many times could a person swing a weapon in the span of a single blink?
"W-what in the world is that…!"
The nomads' eyes bulged at the sight of Seo Yeo mowing them down without leaving a single man standing.
"Guh…! If we're stopped here, the battle is lost! Punch through, even if it costs your lives—!!"
GWAAAAAAAAH—!!
Entangled at every step by enemy soldiers and officers, and reduced to less than half its strength, Subutai's command raised its fighting spirit higher than it had ever been.
Their fearlessness in the face of death was admirable. But there are things in this world that fighting spirit alone cannot overcome.
"……"
One enormous sweep of the Chu Heaven Sword split the oncoming enemy in two, and Seo Yeo—already turning to face the next wave rushing straight at her—swung a second weapon.
Yes. A second weapon.
"Kh…!"
I do believe I've mentioned this before. Whether the Xiang Yu of the original history ever truly swung them, I couldn't say—but the man had, in fact, owned two signature weapons.
The Chu Heaven Sword and the Extermination Spear.
Put together, they weighed a full one hundred fifty jin—the undisputed final boss of weapon weight, the kind of arms that made anyone who merely heard of them shudder. And right now both were gripped in Seo Yeo's hands.
Unlike the Chu Heaven Sword, which had been recovered from the imperial vault, the Extermination Spear had turned up in the one place nobody thought to look.
"T-this is the last of the storehouses…."
"Oh?"
After the pacification of Gangdong, while I was shaking Ze Rong down for his hidden treasure, one spear of glaringly foreign make had caught my eye at a glance.
"What's that spear doing, parked all the way over there?"
"Steady yourself. That is none other than the Extermination Spear—said to have been wielded by the Hegemon-King of Western Chu himself!"
Confronting a weapon that had lain unfound for so very long, I couldn't hide my astonishment. On reflection, though, its presence there was hardly unnatural. Xiang Yu had been a son of Gangdong, and there was nothing strange about his weapon resting in his homeland. In all likelihood he had handed it over as a protective talisman when he ordered his men to flee by boat—after all, the man had meant to charge the enemy lines clutching a single sword, fully resolved to die.
"But it's so absurdly heavy that we've been treating it as half a nuisance, half a piece of furniture…."
As Ze Rong finished with a small shrug of his shoulders, I stepped up beside the spear and turned my head to ask.
"You heard the man. What'll it be?"
"……"
What came after that—did it really need explaining?
"H-how is she lifting a weapon like that with one hand…?"
"Look at what's strapped across her back. Does it still seem impossible?"
"…No, I suppose it doesn't."
Ze Rong, who had been gaping in open bewilderment, bobbed his head in jerky little nods.
…Then again, I did find myself wondering whatever had become of that Ze Rong fellow. When I had only just returned from Gangdong, I talked Her Majesty out of carrying out his sentence—on the grounds that it would be poor prenatal care—and had him thrown into a dungeon instead.
Well… he'd still be alive, surely. A prisoner of that much importance would never be allowed to die in his cell through sheer negligence.
Even with my thoughts drifting for those few moments, the massacre went on without pause.
WHOOOOM—!!
As if to prove what manner of man the Hegemon-King had been, the utterly unadorned spear wheeled about, and for one brief instant a raging gale howled through the air. A black typhoon—the description would not have been far off.
KRAKOOM—!!
"AAAAGH—!!"
The sight of horse and rider alike cleaved apart inside a single exchange made me half wonder whether I'd tumbled into some fantasy world after all. Chu Heaven Sword in her right hand, Extermination Spear in her left, Seo Yeo shut out every enemy on the field.
"How does not one of you survive even a single clash—?!"
A commander of the Mongol Empire cried out in wounded disbelief at the impossible spectacle. But what could anyone say? Better to conclude you'd simply met the wrong opponent. The battle was as good as won the moment you seized the enemy commander and plunged his army into chaos—and how would it feel, with that commander standing right before your eyes, to be walled off by one single person?
I've never been the one enduring it, so I can't speak from experience—but I can well imagine it must feel desperately unfair.
"…!"
Only once I had confirmed that the nomad chieftain had dropped before Seo Yeo without even a dying word did I let my gaze sweep our surroundings.
"With things as they are, perhaps a slight detour—"
"Ah-ah, and where might you be off to?"
"What the—?!"
CLANG—!
The Mongol commander, just then angling his troops aside for that detour, snapped his weapon up in haste and beat the thrown dagger out of the air.
"Caught you good. Babysitting the rear and hauling supplies had me all stiff and cranky anyway!"
"Where the hell did this bitch crawl in from—!"
Gan Ning, dagger spent, bounded high into the air with her twin halberds whirling, and the Mongol commander met her with a roar and a sweep of his curved saber.
The charge had been broken a good while ago, and plenty of time had slipped past since. Which was to say, more than enough time had passed for our little strategists to take the reins of the soldiers and close the encirclement around the tribesmen.
"Hahaha! What a crying shame this is!"
"A rather bland finish for such a gallant charge, wouldn't you say!"
Off ahead, Yan Liang and Wen Chou—who had Subutai pinned down tight—seemed to have read the situation as well; grins every bit as vicious as their hulking frames spread across their faces as they pressed him harder still.
And then Subutai, holding off the enemy officers and soldiers crowding in around him all alone, murmured in a grave voice.
"…The Great Khan is a most thorough man."
"What?"
"Did you truly believe no plan was laid for the moment our charge was checked?"
…Huh?
What's with the ominous remark all of a sudden—
"……?!"
At that very instant, Seo Yeo—mid-slaughter somewhere ahead—jerked her head around as though she had sensed something.
SHWOOOONG—!
"MASTER—!!"
THWUCK!
"……"
An unnatural shock jolted through my body, and I glanced down.
A single arrow, punched clean through the armored wall of my abdomen.
"…Kgh!"
The moment I saw the head of the arrow—flown in from behind my back—jutting out through the front of my torso, a monstrous surge of agony crashed over me.
"My lord—!!"
Shouldering past the people scrambling toward me, I cast about for the direction the arrow had come from, my face gone white.
"……"
Far off to the west stood a Mongol general, composite recurve bow still in hand, gazing straight at me.
"…After Subutai comes Jebe, then."
Several hundred meters at the very least. I knew instinctively who had loosed that arrow from such a distance, and all I could manage was a crooked smile.
"Kagh!"
"No—!!"
The instant I sagged in the saddle, hand clapped over my mouth, and vomited blood, Lü Bu's scream tore through the air beside me.