Mud Fight (2)
Dong Zhuo's officers and soldiers realized their line of retreat had been completely sealed. The bladed war wagons, coated in muck, stood arrayed in a U-shaped formation blocking their rear like Mount Tai.
The mud had completely caked on.
The heavy wagon wheels would not budge.
They'd walked straight into a trap.
The army of Liu Chong had deliberately pulled its line backward.
That had isolated the Dong Zhuo troops who'd kept pushing forward, clambering over the war wagons.
"Drive them all the way back to the wagons!"
"Long spears and shields, press the attack! The bastards have nowhere to run!!"
The dense phalanx of Liu Chong's army—a wall of razor-sharp long spears and stout shields—lumbered forward. The countless points aimed at the front conjured up the image of a forest of blades.
They're coming.
The bastards are coming.
The officers and soldiers of Dong Zhuo fell back in a stumbling scramble, screaming.
"Aaaagh! Get back, I said!"
"I— I can't die here! Out of my way!!"
The soldiers who'd crossed the barrier were lightly equipped infantry. Lightened for mobility, they were armed with nothing more than short swords and short spears.
Against them, the long spears of Liu Chong's army boasted an overwhelming reach.
Thirteen cheok—roughly three meters.
Some even reached twenty-six cheok—around six meters.
Short swords and short spears were useless for fighting back. As the razor-sharp long spears closed in, packed together like a dense stand of trees, the chaos and panic only multiplied.
"Slaughter them!"
"No prisoners! Crush them!"
The long spears rushed at the Dong Zhuo soldiers floundering and stumbling backward through the mire. The wet, sucking sound of butchered meat accompanied the screaming that echoed and rang out.
Shunk—!
Shunk—! Shlunk—!!
Countless long spears punched home.
Impaled on the spears, the men of Dong Zhuo's army retched up bloody foam, their faces twisted.
"Get the hell away! Get out of my sight, now!"
"The general is withdrawing! All officers and men, fall back!!"
They'd just watched their comrades slaughtered helplessly before their eyes. Their will to fight completely shattered, the officers and soldiers of Dong Zhuo's army chose to rout.
And so a scene of sheer chaos unfolded.
The squelching mire.
Men at the front shoving and dragging one another.
The narrow gaps in the war wagons, wide enough for only one man at a time.
And the troops from the rear ranks still pressing blindly forward, ignorant of the carnage ahead.
In the tight, reeking space—as foul and confined as a pigsty—countless soldiers were compressed to their very limit. The Dong Zhuo troops packed into that space, without even a crack to set a foot, numbered close to ten thousand.
* * *
Close-quarters battle implies a hard-fought, seesawing fight.
So this was not close-quarters battle.
Soldiers flailing helplessly in the mud.
Officers shrieking as razor-sharp long spears punched through their chests.
Warriors shoving and trampling one another, thrashing desperately to escape from this abattoir of hell.
A slaughter.
A one-sided slaughter.
There was no attrition.
Only death and sacrifice were forced upon Dong Zhuo's army.
The ten thousand officers and soldiers of Dong Zhuo who'd been trapped in the muck met their end.
"General of Agile Cavalry, are our men skilled at slinging? They mean to hurl things at Dong Zhuo's soldiers the same way Dong Zhuo's men used throwing pouches."
"They are, Your Highness. I'll pick the men with the best throwing arms."
Dong Zhuo's army had used throwing pouches to catapult mud.
In response, Liu Chong's army used their throwing pouches to hurl severed heads.
"Launch them into their camp!"
"Show those everlasting traitors what a miserable end looks like!"
Mud was a common material, available anywhere.
To Liu Chong's army right now, severed heads were an even more common material than mud.
Ten thousand men.
Every soldier on that field had been decapitated.
Liu Seong-hwi had gathered a picked corps of slingers and sent severed heads hurtling into the camp of Dong Zhuo's army.
"What in the...! Aaaagh!"
"Heads! Soldiers' heads are raining down on us!!"
It was a display of overwhelming victory.
And meant to sow terror and despair among the enemy.
The effect was brilliant.
As if to prove it, screams and howling erupted from the camp of Dong Zhuo's army.
Like hail in early spring, human heads rained down to spread chaos. Faced with a horrifying spectacle that defied imagination, the beautiful face of the Ever-Changing strategist twisted with deep consternation.
"They used the bladed war wagons... not just as a barrier, but as a snare as well."
It hadn't been a plan prepared in advance.
Liu Chong's army could not have anticipated the mud.
He had clearly seen the wagons bogged down and improvised on the spot.
No more than a split-second decision.
Liu Seong-hwi had devised a countermeasure in that brief moment and annihilated ten thousand officers and soldiers.
"The Left General and Right General's commands lost three thousand. The General of the Guards and General Who Conquers the North's commands lost seven thousand. Because they threw in more troops the moment they sensed an advantage... the damage ended up far worse."
"Ten thousand men gone in less than half a day!"
Ten thousand officers and soldiers had been butchered as helplessly as children.
Half the men sacrificed in the mire were elite troops who'd served with him since his days as General of the Household of the North putting down the Yellow Turban Rebellion. When Dong Zhuo received the Director of the Palace Gentlemen Li Ru's report, he flew into a towering rage.
"It was my oversight. I beg you, punish me."
The stratagem had been devised by his advisor, the Master of Writing Jia Xu.
But Li Ru chose to ask for punishment himself, so that responsibility would not be shifted onto Jia Xu.
"Elder...!"
"What blame could you have? The scheme with the mud was a brilliant stroke. Didn't Liu Chong's army panic when the mud first hit them?"
The real cause of defeat was Liu Chong's army's swift response.
And the greed of the General of the Guards Niu Fu, who had rashly committed a large force in order to monopolize all the glory, had deepened the damage.
It was a humiliating, crushing defeat.
After losing the initial skirmish, they'd now suffered a major defeat.
For Dong Zhuo's army, which had raised the banner of Carrying Out the Imperial Edict to Punish Traitors, to be so routed was a truly humiliating result.
"Elder!"
Just as they were steeping in their string of losses,
a messenger arrived.
It was a dispatch from the scouts keeping watch on the armies of Liu Biao and Liu Yan.
"Have those decrepit cadet imperial clansmen made a suspicious move?"
"The forces of Xu Province and Yang Province—subordinates of Liu Seong-hwi—have both sortied. They're blocking the approaches while keeping an eye on Liu Biao's and Liu Yan's armies!"
Liu Seong-hwi had given the order to his closest subordinates.
Liu Bei, Governor of Xu Province, was a veteran commander who'd led armies since the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Sun Ce, Governor of Yang Province and Sun Jian's eldest daughter, was a fierce commander who'd won great renown as the most distinguished contributor to the Jiangdong subjugation.
The armies of Liu Bei and Sun Ce, which had finally sortied from Wan City, had now blocked the armies of Liu Biao and Liu Yan. Liu Seong-hwi had won a series of crushing victories and was now preparing to launch an all-out offensive to seal his advantage for good.
"Elder! The Jing Province fleet has reached Red Cliffs!"
Another urgent dispatch came flying in.
News that the fleets of Xiangyang Prefecture and Jiangxia Prefecture had arrived safely.
Red Cliffs.
Just as expected, Liu Chong's fleet had deployed at Red Cliffs.
Cai Mao and Huang Zu sealed off the waterways toward Yang Province to prevent Liu Chong's fleet from slipping away.
"Liu Seong-hwi means to fight on land and water at the same time."
"Arrogant wretch indeed. He thinks he can wipe us all out at a single stroke? I'll bring out every cavalryman I have and sweep them all away."
Jia Xu spoke up.
At the words, Dong Zhuo, still seething, gave the order to gather the cavalry.
* * *
Deep in the night, the Yangtze River was like a lightless abyss. Even the moonlight descending from the sky could not do its work.
The river water, dyed pitch-black.
A dread-inducing, profound silence.
It seemed to boast the depth of an abyss that had swallowed up the whole world's shadow.
Shhhh—
Hundreds of vessels materialized out of the dark.
And at the same instant, the Yangtze, which had just been an abyss, was enveloped in light as bright as broad daylight.
Cai Mao, Commander of Xiangyang. Huang Zu, Commander of Jiangxia.
The Jing Province fleet put its immense scale on full display with a multitude of lanterns and torches. Arrogance overflowed from it: the clear intent to utterly shatter every crudely built ship out of Yang Province.
"Commander, the flagships of Cai Mao and Huang Zu are at the very center of their formation."
"I expected as much... but that truly is an iron fortress."
Commander Zhou Yu and Deputy Commander Lu Su were naturally overawed by the sheer martial splendor of a fleet boasting an unprecedented scale.
Calling it the mightiest fleet in the Han Dynasty would not be an exaggeration.
Tower ships stacked three stories high.
Combat ships that would form the main line in a river battle.
Covered assault ships for charges and raids, and leather-clad ships reinforced with hides against fire attack.
In every respect, the enemy far outclassed their own forces.
If Cai Mao simply gave the order to ram, Liu Chong's fleet would be swept away in moments.
"All ships, furl sails! We're entering battle!"
"Aye, Commander!"
There was no hesitation.
Their sole purpose was to show the courage of Jiangdong to these arrogant foes.
The Jing Province warships advanced into Red Cliffs as Liu Chong's fleet made ready for battle.