The Crisis (3)
I remembered reading something on the internet once, back in my old life.
It was an article, if I recalled right, about the survival rates of people who had been shot with arrows — a breakdown of which body parts people took an arrow in and still lived to tell about it. The vast majority of the survivors had been hit in an arm or a leg; those who had taken an arrow to the torso or the head and walked away were vanishingly few.
Then again, you hardly needed expert knowledge to understand why. An arm or a leg, so long as no major vessel was severed and the treatment was competent, gave you a decent chance of pulling through. But the head and the torso? The head needed no explanation, and the torso was where every vital organ in the human body clustered together — a hit anywhere in there was a death sentence.
"Ughhh…"
Yes. Exactly like right now.
The arrow that had punched clean through my torso, its head now peeking coyly out of my abdomen, still felt utterly unreal. It seemed to have missed my heart and liver — organs you might as well label spare corpses the moment a blade touches them — and since I wasn't wheezing and rattling for every breath, my lungs were intact as well. Judging by the location alone, my small intestine had probably taken the worst of it…
Whatever the case, if I stayed like this, I would go out with one final squawk and become the late Jeong Reung.
But none of that was the most urgent matter just now. The supreme commander of the entire army had taken a grievous wound in full view of everyone — the troops would be thrown into an uproar, and then they would slowly begin to crumble. On a battlefield, a commander poised between life and death was precisely the kind of situation that could turn a battle already in hand into a defeat.
Even Admiral Yi Sun-sin, whom every Korean knows, ordered at the Battle of Noryang that his death not be announced. The reason was simple. Some would boil over with rage at seeing the lord they followed struck down; others would sink to the ground where they stood, faces crumpled as though the sky itself had fallen, and simply despair. The enemy, meanwhile, would surge with morale and advance treating victory as a foregone conclusion. Our side, leaderless, would splinter and fight as scattered fragments — and theirs, fighting as one body, would cut those fragments down. Unless someone seized the army and steadied it, annihilation was the only ending left.
But the characters gathered on this field had personalities far too vivid for their own good, and without me there was simply no one who could pull the army back together.
"Ughhh…"
It hurt. It hurt like hell.
But I couldn't very well show them the pathetic sight of their commander tumbling off his horse, either. With every eye on the battlefield fixed on me, letting them see that on top of everything else would mean crossing a river there was no coming back over.
"My lord! Are you all right?!"
"…I'm fine. Keep watch on our surroundings."
"Y-yes, my lord!"
Answering the guard's question, I dug through my breast pocket and produced a small pouch. Now, then… this is what you're supposed to do when you take an arrow, isn't it?
I fished a single round medicinal pellet from the pouch, popped it into my mouth, and crunched down hard. The instant it crushed between my teeth, a sharp, biting taste flooded my tongue. It was like chewing raw mustard — the sensation blasted straight up through my sinuses, and my face screwed up before I could stop it.
Why does this stuff have to taste so awful?
I suppose medicine really is medicine.
But the effect was undeniable: barely moments after I bit down, every trace of pain from my torso simply vanished.
Hua Tuo, you never miss. Her pellets certainly do the trick.
From what I'd heard, she had taken the Mafeisan she used for her own surgeries and refined it into something with a proper painkilling kick. She had also explained that the pellet only worked once the medicine was absorbed toward the brain, so I wasn't to swallow it — just hold it in my mouth until it dissolved away to nothing. Come to think of it, modern medicine had painkillers taken exactly the same way… Performing surgery entirely with her own two hands, too. Just how many centuries ahead of her time was this woman's medicine?
The moment the pain stopped ringing through my skull, I sheared off the arrowhead and let it drop, then reached behind my back and wrenched the shaft free.
Hrk—!
Mmh.
I was bleeding enough to make it painful just to watch.
"KYAAAAAH!"
Just then Sima Yi, shoving her way through the surrounding soldiers, burst into view and screamed.
"Have you lost your mind?! What do you think you're doing, pulling that out!!"
"I'm fine, so calm down. The soldiers are wavering."
At my answer, Sima Yi rounded on me looking ready to breathe fire.
"Don't you think it's a little late to be saying that now?!"
"…Fair point."
"This is no time for jokes!!"
Seeing her like that, I couldn't help but chuckle. Sima Yi was right, of course — yanking an embedded arrow out of your body was a fine way to shorten your own lifeline, and with the wound in the torso, you'd bleed out in no time flat.
But I had that part covered.
"It's fine. Hua Tuo packed me full of medicine against exactly this kind of emergency."
"…Medicine?"
Unlike my other generals, who could carve through dozens of men at a stroke, I was a perfectly ordinary human being, and I knew all too well that one wound in the wrong place could send my life flickering like a candle. And I knew exactly what kind of catastrophe would erupt the moment that life went out, too.
I took another pellet from the pouch — a different color from the last — and pressed it firmly into the wound. It had a strange, squishy give to it. A truly unsettling sensation.
"Hrrlk…"
Pang Tong, who had already been watching me with a face drained white, took one look at the scene, foamed at the mouth, and dropped flat where she stood.
……
Zhuge Liang had her White Feather Fan raised over her mouth, but the hand gripping it shook like a leaf — she was every bit as rattled.
"D-does it not hurt?"
"Nope. Took the medicine, so I'm fine."
I answered Sima Yi as though nothing were the least bit wrong, then lowered myself slowly from my horse and turned my head.
"Seo Yeo."
"Ah… agh… ah."
At some point Seo Yeo had drawn near me, and now she could only manage sounds with no meaning in them at all.
"M-my… lord."
……
"I was… I wasn't enough…"
"It's all right. There was nothing you could have done in that situation."
Tens of thousands of tribesmen had hurled themselves at me up ahead without a moment's rest, all of them sworn to end my life — the fact that she had held back that charge alone, even briefly, was already extraordinary. And of all the directions an arrow could have flown in from, it had come from the exact opposite side of where she stood. If anything, the real wonder was that this was the first wound I had ever taken.
"Seo Yeo."
"…Mm… mm."
"There's only one way left for us to win now."
I stepped up to her and patted her head, twice.
"You have to go yourself and put their commander out of the fight."
Having said my piece, I swept my gaze across the field one more time.
"Ahahaha! What's the matter?! Why has it suddenly gone quiet?!"
Up ahead, a Mongol general was clinging to Lü Bu's ankle, dragging her down.
"……Shut…"
"Hm? What was that?! Speak up! A little louder!"
The nameless Mongol general guffawed and hauled his weapon back around for another swing — and in that instant, the red-haired girl screamed louder than she ever had in her life.
"SHUT UP——!!"
WHAM——!!
"GAHK?!"
The Mongol general, who until that moment had been holding his own well enough against Lü Bu, took the Sky Piercer Halberd square in the chest.
"…General?!"
At the sight of his commander sailing through the air in a spray of blood, the adjutant's face froze in disbelief — but it was already far too late.
"Kh…!"
"AAAGH!"
The adjutant and the soldiers who had joined their general in pinning Lü Bu down died in a fountain of blood before the eye could follow.
The red-haired girl, a gale of blood raging around her, roared in a voice seething with killing intent.
"KILL THEM ALL————!!!"
RAAAAGH———!!
Watching our own soldiers abandon formation and charge with their orders forgotten, I let out a sigh. I might have been crowing about our advantage only moments ago, but the battle as a whole was still dead even.
The moment the Mongol Empire confirmed that our commander-in-chief had been gravely wounded, the forces that had driven deep into our formation wheeled about at once — and even Subutai, who until then had done nothing but hold his ground, shook off Yan Liang and Wen Chou and began to flee. Half of Subutai's force had already fallen, and more would fall in the fight to break out of the encirclement, but even so, tens of thousands would slip away unscathed.
And the units that had bolted out alone with Lü Bu, their reason burned away, were primed to be cut to pieces piecemeal — exactly like the countless armies that had stood against the Mongol Empire before them. It meant that war was not so forgiving as to be won on raw emotion alone.
"The enemy formation has broken! Open the distance!"
There it is. The instant our own formation collapsed, the Mongol Empire's movements shifted yet again, and nothing about the shift looked benign. Left like this, our lead units would walk straight into a trap and pay for it dearly.
And the most important thing of all was…
Hrk—!
"…Mmh."
"M-my lord!"
My wound was simply too grave.
I had patched it up for now, one way or another, but there was a limit to how long I could hold out like this. Having finished weighing everything, I wiped the blood from my lips and spoke to Seo Yeo in a level, unhurried voice.
"If we don't end this war now, I die."
……
Even now, several of the tribal contingents were spread out in wide formation, sealing off the ground beyond the battlefield's edge. They were hardly going to stand by and watch me withdraw in peace. An army pulling out of a fight meant swallowing brutal losses by its very nature — and with losses like that, the second round against the Mongol Empire would only become that much harder.
"This is no time to be standing next to me."
I said it while meeting her ceaselessly trembling eyes head-on.
"DIE———!!"
Even now, Lü Bu was blind with fury, charging out alone and tearing through everything in her path.
"Ha! You wish to reach the Great Khan?! Then come — try cutting through me, Kublai!"
Yet even she was brought to a halt, as a horde of Kheshig led by the Four Steeds and Four Hounds hurled themselves into her path.
"…So many of them."
"Tch! Then I'll just kill every last one of them!"
Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, their eyes just as wild, had charged in on her heels, but punching through a full ten thousand of the empire's elite guard was a hope beyond hoping. Worse, Jebe — the man who had loosed that arrow into me — was nowhere to be seen. Drag on like this, and we would never finish it.
"Seo Yeo."
……
"Go. And come back."
"…Yes."
When I said it with a warm smile, Seo Yeo nodded slowly.
"My lord."
"Ah — there you are."
Just then Zhao Yun and Zhang Liao returned, having rallied the cavalry, and I thought their timing could not have been better.
"Sorry to hand you orders the second you're back, but go help Seo Yeo."
……
"I'll… be watching from here."
I lowered myself onto the nearest thing that would bear my weight with a pained grunt, and the two of them stole a glance at my wound before answering, calm and steady.
"Even if it costs this life of mine — gladly."
"Please, stay safe."
I couldn't say how it would all end. But one thing was certain: sooner or later, in one form or another, this war was going to be over.