Hulao Pass (8)
Unable to punch through the defenses of Jeong Reung's army—resisting far more stubbornly than any of them had anticipated—the coalition remained bogged down before Hulao Pass, exactly where it had been for months.
"Does anyone here truly believe it makes sense that we still haven't breached Hulao Pass?!"
BANG! Yuan Shu brought his fist crashing down on the table before him, and several of the assembled lords flinched, trading wary glances.
Yuan Shu, still grinding his teeth and unable to swallow his fury, roared again.
"A full half year—half a year! By my reckoning, half a year was time enough to have taken all of Luoyang and had days to spare!"
The coalition made no effort to hide their bewilderment at that.
Take Hulao Pass—and the capital, Luoyang itself—within half a year? Was that even possible? Especially when the force holding it was Jeong Reung's army, the very one that had driven out Dong Zhuo? From the coalition's perspective—every man among them had privately assumed it would take at least a year even in the best case—what Yuan Shu was claiming now was something beyond comprehension.
And yet not one of them said a word, choosing instead to wait for the man's tantrum to burn itself out.
Love him or loathe him, Yuan Shu currently carried the greatest weight of anyone in the coalition, and the moment he took offense, material support would be cut off without warning. They had hauled along as many provisions as they could manage, but a campaign this far from home was eating through those stores faster than any of them had planned for.
Sending fresh supply convoys from their home territories had been considered, of course—but with the bulk of their soldiers brought here, there simply weren't enough men left behind to escort a supply train safely. Among the warlords holding territory in the realm today, there was not a single one who wasn't plagued by bandits and brigands. Worse still, in certain regions, remnant Yellow Turban forces of no negligible size had dug in and lay in wait—without a proper escort, dispatching a convoy was a fantasy no one would dare dream of.
It was then that Yuan Shu spoke through gritted teeth.
"That's it...! That Sun Jian cur is deliberately refusing to take Hulao Pass—I'm certain of it!"
"...?"
What in the world was that supposed to mean?
"He whined that he needed supplies, so I sent supplies! He whined that he needed reinforcements, so I sent him soldiers!"
Yuan Shu, trembling from head to toe as he cursed a man who wasn't even present, bellowed on.
"And even after more than half a year, not one word of good news...!"
Did the fool not understand that it was precisely because the man in question was Sun Jian that no bad news had come?
But the coalition held their tongues and let the remark pass. Each man had his reasons. Some simply feared drawing Yuan Shu's ire; others, wary of Sun Jian's ability, were quietly content to see him reined in.
"..."
"Hm."
And if it was neither of those—well, some had never intended to commit themselves to this coalition in the first place.
Reading that silence as assent to his words, Yuan Shu summoned a messenger and declared with grand authority:
"Deliver this message to Sun Jian at the vanguard!"
"Tell him that from this point on, the vanguard shall be entrusted to the other lords!"
"At once, my lord!"
The messenger bowed low, clasping his fists in respectful salute.
"So I am simply to pull my army back now, is that it?"
"That is correct!"
"Hm..."
Outside the barracks, Sun Jian, having received Yuan Shu's order, sank into thought, a low groan rumbling in his chest.
What in the world does that fool Yuan Shu imagine a siege to be? If fortresses fell that easily, why would anyone bother raising walls and forging gates in the first place? They might as well leave the roads gaping open for the convenience of passersby.
He had written the man off as a fool from the very start, but this was worse than he'd bargained for. If the Imperial Seal ever happened to tumble into those hands, the man would no doubt proclaim it the mandate of Heaven itself and declare himself Emperor on the spot. Word had it he already lived near enough as an emperor back at his own seat of power, so it wasn't a possibility to be dismissed out of hand.
Huang Gai, having heard the messenger out, flew into a rage.
"That damned fool—the sheer gall of him! My lord! There's no need to lend your ears to such idiotic drivel—!"
"HAHAHAHA!"
Sun Jian, who had been scowling into thought, his naturally aged face creased deep, abruptly burst out laughing.
At the sight, Huang Gai could only gape.
"My lord?"
"There's nothing unwelcome in this arrangement—not for me!"
His losses had already been mounting by degrees, and now here they were, handing him a ready-made excuse to withdraw on a silver platter. He had been turning over just what to do about it, and now they were shoving him through the door. For Sun Jian, it was an order worth toasting.
"Very well. I withdraw from the vanguard."
Laughing a hearty haha as he swung up into the saddle, Sun Jian addressed the officers around him.
"Pull the army back. From this hour on, we sit and watch how matters unfold."
"Understood!"
The officers clasped fists in salute and bustled about, marshaling the soldiers as they struck the camp in a flurry of motion.
Half a year had passed since the assault on Hulao Pass began. On Yuan Shu's order, Sun Jian's army withdrew from the vanguard, and a host of other lords moved in to fill the vacancy.
The second act of the Battle of Hulao Pass had begun.
Enduring Sun Jian's ferocious assaults day after day, half a year had slipped by before anyone noticed. Nothing much had happened in all that time. Come morning, Sun Jian's army would come charging in; when they did, the pass would erupt into a long, deafening free-for-all of clashing steel; they would fight from dawn to dusk, and when the hour came to ease off, the retreat signal would sound and they would fall back. A siege so utterly by the book there was hardly a thing worth saying about it.
Summarized that tightly, it sounds like nothing—but Sun Jian's offensives, never once burdened by worry over supplies, were savage without fail. Had it not been for the exploits of Lü Bu at the fore, backed by Zhang Liao and Seo Hwang, Hulao Pass would have fallen long, long ago.
The moment the morning sun rose, I was preparing the day's defense as I always did—and sensed at once that something unusual had stirred on the coalition's side. The red banner that had greeted my eyes, day after tiresome day, every time I climbed atop the walls had vanished without a trace. In its place, banners of every conceivable crest had taken root—and one look at them told me exactly what had happened.
I couldn't say why he'd pulled out, but Sun Jian had withdrawn from the vanguard, and the other warlords had rushed in to fill the gap.
That's right.
Warlords—plural.
"CHARGE—!"
The coalition that had claimed Sun Jian's place came on like a bursting flood, hurling itself at Hulao Pass. At first they looked set to carry the siege forward with the same surging momentum as Sun Jian's host, but as the hours wore on, the coalition's weaknesses began to show.
"Wh-what? Where am I even supposed to attack?!"
Coalition soldiers thrown into disarray by orders that flatly contradicted one another.
"And who in blazes are you?! Out of the way, you're blocking the road!"
They outnumbered Sun Jian's host by a wide margin, yet with no coordination to speak of, they only tripped over one another. Measured against Sun Jian, the assaults of the warlords who had taken his place were hardly worth the name.
Well, of course. How could men who had never once drilled in concert hope to mesh their armies together? If anything, it was Sun Jian who had been the strange one—moving coalition soldiers like a single body without so much as a joint drill to his credit.
Had this been an open city with avenues on every side rather than a mountain pass, their plight would at least have been more forgivable. They could simply have split their overflowing ranks and thrown them at all four points of the compass at once. But Hulao Pass, where the attack could only come head-on, allowed no such luxury.
Apparently Yuan Shu had convinced himself that with enough men shoved into the fray, a place like Hulao Pass would fall in no time. But if sheer numbers were all it took, would Hulao Pass ever have become the strategic bulwark shielding the capital of Luoyang in the first place?
Then again—fine. They say numbers trump everything; keep pouring in supplies and soldiers, and the pass would fall eventually. But who was going to cover the staggering losses in the meantime? What of the soldiers and the supplies—and all that time squandered for nothing? I would stake my word on it: the coalition would splinter and fly apart long before that day ever came.
For my own part, Hulao Pass was a linchpin I had to defend with everything I had. Which was precisely why I had packed the pass with an all-star lineup—Lü Bu, Zhang Liao, Seo Hwang.
"Come at me, you freeloading leeches—!"
Lü Bu, who by now left every battlefield she crossed shaking in her wake, needed no introduction from anyone. Still, her language has gotten crude again. I'll have to have a word with her before long. She shoots me a glare every time I do, but she does listen in the end.
"Whew..."
Zhang Liao took a moment to steady her breath, then swept the crescent blade in her grip through a wide arc, cutting down a whole file of soldiers in a single stroke. Even in the thick of it she was commanding her troops in the spaces between swings, shoring up whichever stretch of the wall was in danger—watching her work, I could hardly hold back my admiration.
"..."
Seo Hwang, lips sealed into a hard line, was performing every bit as brilliantly at her side. With two fierce generals, each a master of both pen and blade, the pass had settled into a strange equilibrium where nothing could break through. Even I, standing on their side of the wall, felt my head swim a little—Heaven only knew what it was doing to the men below.
The coalition's morale was bleeding out, visibly so, even to my eyes.
"R-retreat! Retreat—!"
In the end, right up until the sun sank beyond the horizon, the coalition withdrew without managing to inflict any real damage at all.
Holding Hulao Pass more easily than on any ordinary day, I felt the tension drain out of me at last. The crack that had opened between the coalition's members would only widen from here.
For now they would throw themselves into the assault, but with time, they too would begin to sense that something was wrong. Huh? Why isn't it breaking?
Even in the history I once knew, the anti-Dong Zhuo coalition had never lasted long. So what chance did this one have, in circumstances even worse than that original history?
The day the coalition came crashing down was close at hand now.