Hulao Pass (6)
Lü Bu's out-of-nowhere assault had dealt the coalition no small measure of damage. Even so, the losses were minor next to the coalition's sheer size; all they needed to do was regroup, pool their strength, and carry the siege onward.
Yes—so it should have gone. That was the thinking, at least, right up until the coalition revealed its true colors.
"What a joke."
When Yuan Shu asked who would take the vanguard, every last commander rolled their eyes and sank into silence. Fight a battle half-heartedly, and even a battle you could win turns into a defeat. One loss, and suddenly nobody would step forward—each of them too busy reading the others to volunteer. However many tens of thousands they commanded, numbers meant nothing like this.
A rugged-featured man took in the sorry state of the coalition and heaved a sigh.
"Keep sighing like that and you'll chase off whatever luck you have left."
A general standing nearby had spoken up. At the gruff voice at his back, the man turned his head.
"A man already old before his years, sighing away like that—do you want to look even older, sir?"
The gray-bearded general needled his sore spot without a shred of mercy. The man, who had long fussed over the salt-and-pepper creeping into his hair before he'd even reached forty, narrowed his eyes.
"...I don't think you're one to talk."
"Hahaha! Me? I couldn't care less, so it's no trouble at all!"
The general—who looked, like the man himself, far older than his years—brushed the jab aside with a booming laugh.
"If anything, the men take me for a grizzled veteran with decades of battle behind him. Makes keeping discipline a fair sight easier!"
"Impressive."
Watching the man turn even his own flaws into assets, the other could only click his tongue in admiration.
"So what was it that had you sighing hard enough to gray your beard, then?"
"Ah, that would be..."
And so the man laid his worries bare before the general facing him.
"Haha. And here I wondered what could trouble you so."
Huang Gai stroked his grizzled beard as he spoke.
"I'm hardly the clever sort, so I can't offer you any grand, sweeping solution worthy of you, my lord."
"Is that so."
"We simply follow you, my lord! That is all we've ever done!"
Huang Gai beamed at Sun Jian and laughed heartily.
"These days the whole realm hails you as the Tiger of Jiangdong, but back in the beginning, didn't they all sneer and call you a country bumpkin from Jiangdong?"
"An unpleasant memory, even now."
At Huang Gai's words, Sun Jian frowned at the recollection. The jeering remarks. The contemptuous treatment. Sun Jian had cared for none of the men who had looked down on him.
"But look at you now! The moment you proved yourself, those same sneering jackals went white as sheets and started watching their step, haven't they?"
"Hmm..."
True enough. Victory after victory, and at some point "country bumpkin" had given way to a title that swelled his chest just to hear: the Tiger of Jiangdong.
"Whatever the situation looks like now, in the end, ability is what carries you over!"
"...Somehow that only sounds like you're telling me to suffer more."
"Haha! I, Huang Gai Gongfu, would never dream of such a thing!"
Having said his piece, Huang Gai's lips curled playfully.
"Though I doubt this world will leave a man as remarkable as you sitting idle for long."
"Fine. You win. You've got me."
Sun Jian cracked a rueful smile.
"It's in times like these that you need a hero. Someone who can pull the rest of them along."
Whenever hardship had loomed, he had always smashed straight through it, head-on. This time would be no different. And there had only ever been one question that mattered to Sun Jian.
"I'll speak to Yuan Shu myself."
"..."
"Tomorrow, this Sun Jian takes the vanguard."
Just how far could this Sun go? In an age thrown into chaos like this one, there could be no finer opportunity to find out.
At his lord's words, Huang Gai cast off all playfulness and folded his fists in a deep, respectful salute.
Three days after Lü Bu had torn through the coalition's formation and returned. The coalition, which until now had idled in the far distance without so much as throwing a stone, finally made its move.
"The vanguard is..."
Sun.
So he's finally come.
I nodded as I watched the crimson banners unfurl in the distance, bold and brash.
The man who had chalked up victory after victory single-handedly while even Cao Cao and Yuan Shao were being hammered flat by Dong Zhuo. He'd once been routed by Xu Rong and forced to flee with nothing but his life, yet in time he would go on to best even Lü Bu and drive his way to the gates of Luoyang—a truly exceptional general.
"About time, huh?"
Lü Bu, standing close by, rolled her shoulders loose and bared a savage grin.
Ordinarily we might have marched out and met them in the field beyond Hulao Pass, but a defeat out there would bleed away all the morale we'd built up, so there was no reason to shoulder that risk for nothing.
Hulao Pass was a fortress gifted by heaven, a military stronghold since antiquity—and its terrain was the kind that wrung groans from anyone fool enough to besiege it. Mount Song walled it off to the south, the Yellow River to the north; a natural stronghold, and just the place to earn rave reviews for fighting dirty. The attackers, for their part, had no choice but to cram their soldiers through a choked, narrow defile and grind themselves down in a war of attrition.
But seriously—when did they build all those siege engines? Did they haul the parts along and slap them together on the spot? That was decidedly not good news for us.
Honestly, I saw this siege as nothing more than a contest of time. A sluggish, mired slog in which the first side to tire would lose. From where I stood, all I had to do was stall, and the coalition would rot away and die on its own. The one worry was whether we could hold out until then...
"Fight the way you trained, and not one step less. Anyone who runs dies by my hand. Understood?"
"Yes——!"
We could manage that much. Probably. Watching Lü Bu and the soldiers bristle with fighting spirit, I nodded. Every spare soldier beyond the garrison had been pulled here, and Zhang Jue in Luoyang would feed us steady support from the rear. And just in case the enemy tried a slight detour and fell without warning on Pyeonghyeon Harbor, we'd stationed defenders there as well.
WAAAAAAGH——!!
With a rolling battle cry, Sun Jian's army came hurtling at Hulao Pass, siege engines and all. The true battle with the coalition had begun.
"LOOSE!"
Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip——!
At Seo Hwang's command, a storm of arrows leapt as one and came hammering down on the valiant charge of Sun Jian's army. The arrows, first out the gate to greet the guests, made their welcome very, very clear.
"Gwaaagh!"
Soldiers unprepared for such an effusive greeting were pincushioned on the spot—yet for every man who dropped, more came thundering on, fiercer still. And those monstrous faces. A man like me, caught in their path, would be on a one-way blade to the afterlife.
Under Seo Hwang's crisp, seamless command, the archers loosed and loosed without pause. The casualties piled higher with every stride, but the tiger-fierce advance of Sun Jian's army showed no sign of stopping.
This was no joke. Watching them keep running with arrows jutting from their shoulders, I felt my face go stiff.
"Forward! Push forward!"
Before long, Sun Jian's men had closed to the base of the wall and were setting ladders against it. The siege engines were creeping closer as well—things were about to turn properly ugly.
We were handling their onslaught well. They, in turn, were handling our handling of it just as well—raining arrows on the wall stretches where no ladders stood to thin our fire, or raising shields against the death pouring down from above. Obvious moves, every one of them; the question was only ever how well you could execute the obvious. By that measure, Sun Jian's army was doing its homework with flying colors.
"Aaagh!"
An archer loosing at my side took a lobbed arrow from below and crumpled where he stood. One drift further sideways and that shaft would have been flying at me instead. A chill crawled up my spine.
CLANG!
That startled me. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than an arrow came slicing in at my skull. Fortunately Seo Yeo swatted it from the air and nothing came of it—but my rattled heart went pounding like a drum and refused to settle.
I'm sure no one was aiming at me on purpose, and yet every single time I set foot on a battlefield, at least one arrow found its way to me. At this point I had to conclude I was simply the type luck abandoned in a fight. Sure, I wrapped myself head to toe in armor, but the shafts came screaming for that one ghost-blessed, wide-open hole of a face. Figures.
"Dangerous. You should fall back a little."
"Do I have to?"
When a commanding officer steps up to the front line, morale soars—but the moment anything happens to him, that same morale plummets in a straight vertical drop. And my position here wasn't truly perilous, not next to the front where Lü Bu was rampaging. And yet—
CLANG!
Seo Yeo batted away another blind arrow bound for my face. As if the battlefield itself had read my mind, the shafts just kept coming, and I let out a sigh.
"...Fine. Let's fall back a little."
"Understood."
Twice now she'd made her point through action alone—are you still not moving?—so the least I could do was obey gracefully. Seo Yeo would shield me, certainly, but leaning too hard on that was worth a second thought. A battlefield was, above all, a place where anything could happen.
Meanwhile, Lü Bu was making her presence overwhelmingly, unmistakably known, cutting down Sun Jian's men as they swarmed up the walls.