Undefeated
Wang De'an rose to his feet and bellowed toward the rear.
"Li Chunyao!"
Wang De'an's deputy general Li Chunyao hurriedly shoved his way through the crowd and stepped forward.
"I pay my respects to the Zhenguo Commandery Princess."
"Your Highness, Li Chunyao knows everything my scout knows about the situation at the front. Grant him leave to accompany you!"
Wang De'an added hastily, urgency plain in his voice.
Bai Jingyan gave Li Chunyao a single searching look before speaking.
"Mount up. We'll talk on the way."
No sooner had the words left her mouth than Bai Jingyan tightened her grip on her horse's belly and galloped off toward the north gate of Youhua City. Once all of the Commandery Princess's guards had mounted their horses, Li Chunyao quickly raised a cupped-fist salute to Wang De'an and spurred after them.
The report Li Chunyao delivered was more detailed than any prior military intelligence or the news Nuo Ping had sent. The Liang army had crossed Mount Chunmu and was breaching Fuwen City. General Zhang Danyue's soldiers had all fallen back to Longyang City. Wang De'an, the defending general of Youhua City, had feared that if Longyang fell without reinforcements from the court, the people of Youhua would suffer as well, so he had dispatched a man to deliver grain to Longyang — and that man had been Li Chunyao.
But when Bai Jingyan asked about the Gaoyi County Princess Bai Jinchi, Li Chunyao could only shake his head. The County Princess had led troops out of the city in a desperate bid to save General Zhang Danyue. Yet Xun Tianzhang had sent back nothing but the general's corpse — no word of her fate at all.
Bai Jingyan could not suppress her mounting dread.
It was not until the following morning that Bai Jingyan's party reached the south gate of Longyang City.
Li Chunyao rode forward and shouted up at the walls.
"I am Li Chunyao, deputy general to Wang De'an, defending general of Youhua City! I have come with the Zhenguo Commandery Princess — open the gate!"
"The Commandery Princess?"
The gate guards bowed their heads and peered down at the ground below. There were no reinforcements in sight — nothing but some twenty mounted guards. One of the defenders spun around and cried out urgently.
"Quick, report to the general! Tell him the Zhenguo Commandery Princess has arrived! Make sure he knows she brought only twenty-odd men!"
Before long, one of Zhang Danyue's deputy generals hurried up the gate tower and looked down. Having confirmed beyond doubt that it truly was Bai Jingyan, the Zhenguo Commandery Princess, he barked out his orders.
"Open the gate at once!"
The Commandery Princess had come — so why had she brought no reinforcements?
Zhang Danyue's deputy general Lin Gangluo had no time to puzzle over it; he rushed down toward the gate to receive her.
The moment the drawbridge was lowered, the gates swung wide open.
Inside the city, the acrid smell of gunpowder still lingered, not yet dispersed. The Liang army had evidently used explosive charges when they attacked; the collapsed walls were charred black by fire.
Every citizen who could flee Longyang had already fled. Those who remained were the elderly with failing legs, the sick, and those who simply could not bear to abandon their homeland — and now even they were helping the Jin soldiers lay out defensive emplacements along the northern side of the city.
As Bai Jingyan's party rode through the gates, Lin Gangluo came out with his soldiers to greet her.
Lin Gangluo had campaigned alongside General Zhang Danyue in the Southern Border war, and he had fought shoulder to shoulder with Bai Jingyan there. Like Zhang Danyue, he trusted her utterly and followed her without question.
People said Bai Jingyan's victory in the Southern Border campaign had been a stroke of luck — but that was merely the idle speculation of those who did not understand. Lin Gangluo, who had stayed at Zhang Danyue's side throughout, knew that Bai Jingyan had read Yun Paxing's every movement with razor precision. Even when the Crown Prince refused her counsel and the army nearly suffered a catastrophe beyond mending, she had turned the tide and crushed the great Xiliang host.
The Bai family seemed born for war. Their grasp of the battlefield and the brilliance of their strategies bordered on the supernatural.
She had come to Longyang with a mere twenty-some men, and yet to Lin Gangluo, Bai Jingyan was hope itself — the promise of victory made flesh.
Once Bai Jingyan and her party were all inside, the defenders shouted for the gates to be shut, and the drawbridge was raised again. Slowly, the great doors began to close.
"Your Highness! Before General Zhang Danyue marched out, he ordered me — whatever happened, I was to hold Chunmu City. But I was incompetent... I lost Chunmu City."
When he saw Bai Jingyan, Lin Gangluo's eyes reddened. He dropped to one knee and pressed on, his voice breaking.
"Your Highness, I beg you — avenge General Zhang Danyue!"
The moment Bai Jingyan dismounted, she handed her reins to a guard and asked Lin Gangluo.
"Is there any word of the Gaoyi County Princess?"
Lin Gangluo clenched his teeth and shook his head.
"The County Princess took two thousand men out of the city to rescue General Zhang from the ambush. She never returned. It may be that—"
Bai Jingyan did not want to hear whatever followed "it may be." Shen Qingzhu was at Bai Jinchi's side. She would never, not in a thousand years, have let her mistress walk into danger alone.
At that moment, a warning horn suddenly split the air. The Liang army!
"The Liang soldiers are attacking! It's the Liang army!"
Someone screamed the alarm at the top of his lungs. The sudden blare of horns shattered the stillness of Longyang. The elderly snatched up their young grandchildren and scrambled to hide indoors, terrified that the Liang army would hurl another explosive charge over the walls and hurt a child.
"Your Highness!"
Lin Gangluo's hand clamped hard around the sword at his waist.
"Elder Madam!"
Nuo Ping came sprinting at the news and leapt down from his horse.
"Elder Madam!"
Bai Jingyan gave Nuo Ping a brief nod, then turned to issue orders to the guards behind her.
"First we drive them off! Change your clothes!"
At her command, all twenty-odd guards dismounted and donned their armor.
"General Lin, to the gate tower. I'll join you shortly," Bai Jingyan said.
Lin Gangluo raised a cupped-fist salute, mounted up, and rode off at speed.
"Any news of Jinchi?" Bai Jingyan asked Nuo Ping.
Nuo Ping shook his head, his face full of guilt.
"I have failed you, Elder Madam. I could not protect the Fourth Young Miss."
Bai Jingyan pressed her lips together.
"Has Shen Qingzhu sent word separately?"
Nuo Ping shook his head again. Then he drew from his robes a carefully folded leather map and several thin sheets of paper.
"Lady Shen sent me a topographical map of Mount Chunmu and her research into the battle formations the Liang generals favor. She instructed me to wait here until you arrived, Elder Madam, and then place these in your hands."
Bai Jingyan skimmed the roster and detailed notes on the thin pages, then donned her armor.
The moment word spread that the Zhenguo Commandery Princess had arrived with reinforcements, the defending troops and the remnants of Zhang Danyue's forces seemed to swell with renewed strength. On the wall above, General Wang Xiping's eyes flashed at the news, and he turned to confirm it with Lin Gangluo once more.
"She came ahead of the army herself? The Zhenguo Commandery Princess?"
"That's right! The Commandery Princess herself!"
Lin Gangluo straightened his helmet and clapped Wang Xiping on the shoulder.
The great Liang host came on in full swagger, then halted at some distance from the city walls. Their commander rode forward at the head of his lines and hurled a taunt before the walls of Longyang.
"Hey! Have all the men of the Bai family of Jin gone to the afterworld, leaving only that sacrificial Commandery Princess behind? They say she's an undefeated legend, no? Well, General Zhang Danyue is dead! So why hasn't the Emperor of Jin sent her yet? Don't tell me Bai Jingyan got scared and is hiding somewhere!"
At some point, the Liang army had taken to invoking the Bai family in every provocation they made. They repeated themselves so endlessly that the Jin soldiers could recite their jeers from memory — as if, short of cursing the Bai family, the Liang had no other way to insult Jin at all.
"General Wang! General Wang!"
Du Sanbao came sprinting over in a fluster, still fastening his armor, and hurriedly saluted when he saw Lin Gangluo was there too. Then he broke into a wide grin at Wang Xiping.
"General Wang, is it true? The Commandery Princess has come? I heard she reached Longyang before the reinforcements did!"
"She has! General Lin himself told me — the Commandery Princess is here!"
Laughter and confidence rang in Wang Xiping's voice, though he himself seemed not to notice it.
Du Sanbao split his face in a grin of gleaming white teeth, then turned and roared to the soldiers around him.
"Everyone! The Commandery Princess has come! In the Southern Border war, she led us to defeat many with few — she smashed a hundred thousand Xiliang troops! Didn't those Xiliang cowards shake in their boots, wet themselves, and beg for peace? So this time too, she will grind down every last dog and pig of Liang that set foot on our Jin soil — every one of them who murdered the people of our borderlands!"
Du Sanbao's voice was thick and thunderous. As it rolled across the ramparts, the soldiers seemed to drink in his words, their fighting spirit rising like a tide.
"Drive them out!"
"Drive them out!"
"Drive them out!"
Bai Jingyan climbed the gate tower clad in silver armor with a crimson war cloak billowing at her shoulders, the Sun-Shooting Bow in her hand.
When the officers saw her swift, unshakeable stride — vigor brimming from every step — their blood began to boil. The mere sight of her filled them with fighting spirit. The soldiers watched the woman in silver armor leading her guards up the steps with eyes burning past mere heat into open fire.
If respect went to the strong in the mortal world, it went to the strong all the more in the army.
Bai Jingyan had followed the Zhenguo King in the conquest of Shu, and in the Southern Border war she had overcome many with few. She was not yet called a god of war — but in the eyes of the Jin army, she remained an undefeated deity all the same.
Taking the head of Shu's Grand General Fang Pingguo and slaughtering a hundred thousand Xiliang elite could not be dismissed with a single word like luck.
A general who led soldiers to victory — above all, a general who had never once tasted defeat — could rouse an army's morale by her very existence.
And more than anything, Bai Jingyan was a Bai. For generations the Bai family had been a house of soldiers; having followed the founding emperor in establishing Jin, they had stood ever since as pillars of the realm, its unshakable shield.
Bai Jingyan had been taught personally by the Zhenguo King himself. She was the rightful granddaughter of Bai Weiting, King of Zhenguo — and the vanguard banner of the Bai Family Army!
The Liang soldiers encircling the base of the walls stared up at the Jin troops shouting on the gate tower, exchanging bewildered glances.
"Did the Jin soldiers take the wrong medicine?"
"It's not just one or two of them — why are they all carrying on like that?"
"Is this some new tactic? Yell your lungs out and win?"
The Liang troops tossed out their jibes with lazy contempt.
The Liang general Zhao Tong, mounted on a fine black steed, rode out at the front of his lines and leveled his long spear at Lin Gangluo on the tower, his silver-chased armor flashing.
"Hey! With Zhang Danyue dead, is there no one left in Jin worth putting on a battlefield? Hiding inside the walls and trembling like that — seems you're even more of a coward than that Bai woman, what was she called, the Gaoyi County Princess!
Come to think of it, that County Princess is about to fall into our great Liang army's hands anyway, isn't she? I should have saved her for later and brought her here to Longyang myself. Stripped her bare and had a proper look at her. Let me tell you — there's a real difference between Jin women and Liang women!"
Zhao Tong turned in his saddle and bellowed back over his shoulder.
"Ah! We seized that banner the woman was carrying, didn't we? Yes — yes! Bring me that black-cloth White Python Banner!"
When Bai Jingyan emerged in full armor, Lin Gangluo hurried over and saluted.
"Your Highness!"
"General Bai!"
At the sight of Bai Jingyan, Wang Xiping felt his throat tighten. This was the woman who had shared life and death with them in the Southern Border; the mere sight of her steadied his heart and stirred his reverence. With Bai Jingyan here, he knew with certainty, victory would be theirs.
Above all, Wang Xiping could hardly believe she had left the great reinforcement army behind and raced ahead to Longyang first. Even a rough calculation of the days it must have taken made it clear how she must have ridden day and night without rest. Looking at her now, how could he not be moved?
"General Bai!"
Du Sanbao's eyes grew damp as he dropped to one knee.
"General Zhang Danyue has fallen. General Xiaobai led troops out of the city to reinforce him and has gone silent — no word since. General Bai, I beg you — save General Xiaobai!"
Bai Jingyan stood on the gate tower, gazing down at Zhao Tong, who sat on his black horse venting his vulgar filth with bored contempt. The more she listened, the more certain she became: this man knew where Jinchi was.