The Greatest Provocation One Can Give an Enemy Commander
The relentless thump of drums and blare of horns filled the night. Thump-thump-thump— Thump-thump-thump— Thump-thump-thump— Buuuuooo— Buuu— Buuuuooo—
“Damn it!”
Even after securing new weapons through Liu Ye, the prospect of the local gentry opening their storehouses deep into the night to muster men for tomorrow’s fight was enough to drive me mad. Two shichen of sleep? I hadn’t even managed that much, and my body felt leaden. The roosters had only just begun to crow, and the heavy air of predawn had settled over everything like a shroud. I had fallen asleep in my armor; now I opened my eyes and prepared to fight once more.
“Heh heh heh, what a mess. What an absolute mess.”
“Ah, father-in-law.”
“Will you be all right? My daughters must be suffering terribly as well.”
By morning the gentry commanders, tormented by the noise, had gathered at Qiao Gong’s residence along with Yang Xiu. The old man’s reception hall had abruptly become a war council chamber.
“We have spears, swords, bows, and arrows of truly excellent quality stored here. We need only gather the men capable of wielding them.”
“Even without that, the rage outside the walls has only grown because of that racket! There are men demanding weapons, swearing their ears are about to fall off from sheer fury.”
“Exactly. There are fellows throwing tantrums, saying they can’t endure it any longer and begging to be allowed to fight! Hahaha!”
BANG!
At that moment Qiao Gong slammed his palm on the table and glared at them all with a face of strict authority.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump— Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang— Buuu— Buuu—
“Can’t you hear that? We are in the middle of a war. They’re hammering us with drums, horns, and gongs all at once in a triple chorus!”
“F-forgive us, Master Qiao.”
“We too were momentarily pleased at the increase in our numbers…”
“Before our ears actually fall off, we must silence those bastards. So tell me—how many have you gathered?”
“We brought five hundred men.”
“Roughly the same here. I emptied every silver bottle in the house.”
“I managed about three hundred.”
Qiao Gong shook his head at once.
“Heh heh heh. If we lose this war, every last one of us dies. Even staking our entire fortunes may not be enough.”
He rummaged inside his robes and tossed a bundle of storehouse keys onto the table.
“There are a thousand men gathered inside my warehouses. That brings us as many troops as our private soldiers from yesterday.”
That brought us close to five thousand. With this we could certainly hold. Of course we could hold!
Yet the far greater problem was that maddening noise pollution. My head truly rang; I couldn’t sleep and fatigue weighed on me like a mountain. If this was Zhou Yu’s stratagem, it was brilliantly vicious.
“They mean to seize this city quickly before our reinforcements arrive, draining the fighting spirit of Lujiang’s defenders.”
“Colonel, do you have a plan?”
“Indeed. We’ve gathered plenty of enraged men, but I still don’t know how we should fight with them.”
“We have sufficient weapons, yet the greatest issue remains the enemy’s harassment, does it not?”
To the gentry’s questions I clutched my throbbing skull and pondered.
Sun Ce and Zhou Yu… both were hot-blooded rather than cold-blooded… and they were men whose full potential had not yet erupted in Jiangdong… In their current state of towering rage, the moment I showed myself they would try to tear me limb from limb.
“I must lure them in so the enemy focuses on only one sector from the front.”
“H-how could that possibly work? From what we saw yesterday, both Sun Ce and Zhou Yu possess extraordinary command skill. They constantly shift their harassment, shaking us without pause.”
“Precisely why I must draw both of them to one place at the same time and make them strike there. I will do it!”
I declared it to them all with absolute confidence.
Yang Xiu then reported to me.
“After yesterday’s battle, of the Colonel’s five hundred soldiers only about three hundred remain uninjured. Seventy-two are wounded, thirty are dead, and the rest were to be split between the south and north gates.”
“Deploy all four hundred to the east gate. Gather the best fighters from yesterday’s battle together with the new recruits and form exactly two thousand men.”
We would station the newly raised twenty-four hundred defenders at the east gate and draw Zhou Yu and Sun Ce there for a decisive siege.
“The remaining troops will be placed at the north and south gates, but I will ensure the enemy never reaches them.”
“N-no, how could that possibly—”
“Enough. Before he is my son-in-law, he is the peerless genius who won victory after victory beneath Lord Cao Cao.”
With Qiao Gong lavishing such affection on his son-in-law, I had to live up to it.
“Yang Dezuo, watch the flow of battle. If you see me being pushed back, travel between the north and south gates, scrape up every man you can, and send continuous reinforcements.”
“Understood.”
While we organized the army, we prepared to crush Sun Ce and Zhou Yu’s forces that continued to rattle us with that insane drumming and horn-blaring.
“Colonel, I am curious as well. Exactly how will you drive Sun Ce and Zhou Yu into striking a single point?”
“Only I can do it.”
“In the middle of this noise… is provocation against the enemy even possible?”
“It is. So go prepare what I ordered.”
“Understood.”
Covering my ears, I entered the bridal chamber in the deepest part of the separate residence. Even there, in the most secluded spot guarded by servants and wet-nurses, my two wives were trembling inside the room.
“Husband!”
“Husbaaaand!!”
As Qiao Xuehua and Qiao Xuelan rushed to me I caught them in a fierce embrace and soothed them.
“I will finish this today.”
“I-I’m scared. When will those horns and drums ever stop?”
“Soon.”
“H-how…”
I held them as tightly as I could and whispered.
“Only a few days ago we met for the first time, yet we formed the bond of husband and wife, didn’t we?”
Both Qiao Xuehua and Qiao Xuelan nodded inside my arms.
“Either one of you is a peerless beauty; simply taking one would earn the envy of the world, yet I was blessed with both.”
Again they nodded.
“It truly was a night of fire, wasn’t it? We spent the whole day at it until my nose bled, and our clothes became so soaked with tokens of love that we changed them again and again.”
Bringing that up now made Qiao Xuehua suddenly lift her head and stare at me.
“Could we perhaps find the ‘token of our first night’ from that time?”
“???”
Qiao Xuehua’s expression grew even more baffled. Qiao Xuelan hurriedly ran out and returned with the pile of old laundry that should have been washed. From within it they retrieved the ‘token of love.’
“W-what are you doing?”
“Ah! This is it! This one!”
“Sister, what is that?”
“I heard about it once long ago! They say if a wife gives her husband her underclothes before he leaves for the battlefield, he will return safely!”
“B-but why that right now!”
Still, thanks to the distraction the two girls who had been frozen in terror were now whispering in embarrassment as they searched for the underwear that carried the proof of their first night.
“The bloodstains match exactly what happened that night. Especially this one has so many other marks on it… That’s the one, right?”
In particular, Qiao Xuehua’s garment bore many stains besides the blood. That night, after she had thrown it aside, Qiao Xuelan had wrapped it around me and used her mouth in those intimate ways.
“If you keep that close to your chest, you’ll return safely from the battlefield, right? Then please take it and have good fortune…”
“No.”
“?”
I found a brush, spread out the two pairs of string panties still bearing the stains of their virgin blood, and wrote upon them. The right pair: Qiao Xuehua (Daqiao). The left pair: Qiao Xuelan (Xiaoqiao).
Right pair — Property of Qiao Xuehua (Daqiao)
Left pair — Property of Qiao Xuelan (Xiaoqiao)
“Done.”
“You even wrote their names… You truly mean to use them as lucky talismans. It’s embarrassing, but… yes…”
“They are lucky talismans. With these, we will win.”
I gathered them up, hugged my wives tightly one last time, and patted their backs. Then I headed for the east gate to end this noise and bring the battle to a close.
The twenty-four hundred troops Yang Xiu had prepared stood waiting, fully armed. As the sun rose I gazed at the army of more than ten thousand visible beyond the walls. Their military band was in front, continuously blasting noise to rob us of our minds. Two large tents stood behind them—one belonging to Zhou Yu, the other to Sun Ce.
“I sincerely hope they come separately. That will make them even angrier.”
“Colonel, what exactly are you attaching to those arrows?”
“Something that will make their eyes roll back in their heads.”
The bow Liu Ye had given me was special A-grade, and the arrows were likewise superb. I took out two of them and tied what I had brought to each shaft.
“Colonel… what you’ve tied to those arrows… aren’t those women’s undergarments?”
“Correct. Everyone, prepare yourselves.”
“???”
After giving firm instructions to my soldiers, I drew the bow toward the right outpost.
Creeeeak—
At the arrowhead hung a string panty that had once been vivid red but was now dried to a dark crust, bearing the name of Qiao Xuehua.
Twang!
The instant I loosed it toward the right outpost the entire Jiangdong army stirred.
“And now this side!”
Creeeak— Creeeeak—
To the left outpost I sent an identical arrow bearing the panty labeled with Qiao Xuelan’s name. Please let the left belong to Zhou Yu and the right to Sun Ce.
The arrows flew straight into the tents and embedded themselves. Soldiers immediately began to buzz around them. Before even one ke had passed, the horns and drums suddenly fell silent. Instead, two voices louder than the military band itself thundered across Lujiang.
The effect was tremendous.
“From now on the Jiangdong army’s commander and vice-commander—Sun Ce and Zhou Yu—will focus solely on this sector! Prepare yourselves! As promised, one tael of gold for every enemy commander’s head you take!”
From this point on, fancy tactics, textbook siege warfare—all of it was irrelevant! We simply had to endure the onslaught of Sun Ce and Zhou Yu, both driven into a two-hundred-percent rage frenzy.
Creeeeak— Creeeak— Twang!
The Jiangdong soldiers charged with such terrifying momentum that arrows fired at random still found targets. Our own defenders had lost the orderly appearance of yesterday; they were rattled by the chaotic enemy charge, yet precisely because of that they fought even harder.
“Throw every rock you have! Pour the water we just heated until it’s scalding! Anyone who knocks away a scaling ladder gets a silver bottle!”
I too kept shooting arrows to thin their ranks, then switched to a spear after confirming the black mass of Jiangdong troops clinging desperately to the walls.
“Don’t let them climb! Minimize any hand-to-hand fighting on the battlements!”
Even in a siege, ten thousand men were charging at once and we had no siege engines of our own. If only we had repeating crossbows or catapults inside the city—we could have wiped them out in a single volley the moment they massed like this.
“The enemy is climbing—!!!”
The instant the first Jiangdong soldier crested the ladder I thrust my spear through his throat and shoved him off with raw strength.
“Axes!”
At my call, soldiers wielding axes mercilessly hacked at the grappling hooks of the ladders clinging to the wall, knocking them away.
“If you survive this, each of you gets a silver bottle!”
But such banter lasted only moments. The enemy waves crashed over us like a tide; there was no time to breathe.
“Kuaaaagh!”
“Pull up the ladders! They keep coming!”
Whenever a ladder hooked onto another section, everyone rushed over and hacked the climbing Jiangdong troops to pieces.
“Three hundred fifty from the south army!”
“Two hundred from the north!”
“…They’re sending quite a lot.”
Thanks to the timely reinforcements I was able to rotate out the exhausted soldiers who had been reaping lives on the battlements. Of course I never rotated; I continued blocking the enemy waves without rest. The battle that had begun at dawn stretched all the way until evening.
My mouth had gone dry several times over. On battlements turned into pools of blood I felt an impulsive urge to shove my face down and drink the stuff. My entire body was already crusted with the enemy’s blood and brains. The moat below the walls was filling with corpses.
Sun Ce and his uncle, who had charged in a fit of towering rage since morning, seemed to have exhausted themselves after their initial all-out assault. They rotated their troops three times while continuing the attack, but they too must have realized what result their rage-fueled “reckless charge” had produced in a siege battle.
“Colonel! Colonel!!!”
Amid the chaos Yang Xiu came running.
“It’s done! Look toward the north gate!”
“!”
In the distance, clouds of dust rose from the north. A cavalry force flying the Cao clan banner was galloping straight toward the Jiangdong camp. Uncle Cao Hong had arrived in exactly two days.
“It’s over now. Lujiang belongs to us.”
Yang Xiu handed me a water bottle as he spoke. I drank it down in one go; never had water tasted so sweet or so refreshing.
“Kuaaaaaah! That’s enough! Prepare the Tiger and Leopard Cavalry!”
“C-Colonel? You mean to open the gates in this situation?”
“I have a score to settle with those Sun and Zhou bastards!”
I immediately ordered my horse readied and selected a hundred of the most bloodthirsty men still eager to end this fight, forming them into a Tiger and Leopard Cavalry unit. I poured the last of the water over myself to wash away the blood, cooled my heated head, then took up my spear.
Now let’s finish this, you old enemies south of the Yangtze River!