Ah, fuck...
Ah, fuck...
"Hold them back! Do not give a single step!"
"Damn it! The east is collapsing! Send reinforcements at once— arghh!!"
The Yellow Turbans surged in like a flood from every direction,
and the government troops, entirely surrounded at the center, struggled desperately to break free.
They thrust their spears at the approaching enemy while holding their formation,
and from the rear they loosed every arrow they possessed, resisting fiercely.
Yet despite their efforts, the Yellow Turbans' encirclement showed no sign of cracking.
Each of the enemy was armed with shoddy weapons, but they were pressing forward with literally overwhelming numbers.
No matter how well-trained the soldiers, a disparity in strength of at least five to one could never be ignored.
In a situation like this—completely surrounded, with no hope of exploiting the terrain—
the disadvantage of numerical inferiority was magnified to the extreme.
Even so, the government troops were barely clinging on, maintaining their formation by a thread.
Their training played some part, but
the decisive reason they were still holding out lay elsewhere.
—Hiiiiiiing!!!!
"Damn! Here it comes again!"
"G-get clear! Try to block that up close and you'll get yourself ki— arghhhhk!!"
A horse galloping at a terrifying speed, looking at least three times faster than an ordinary steed.
Its crimson coat rampaged like a furious beast, smashing and trampling everything that barred its path without hesitation.
Mounted atop that monstrous horse, a figure who tore through the Yellow Turban ranks without restraint.
A woman, taller than most men, with a strikingly large chest.
Every time she spurred her horse and swung her sword, the Yellow Turbans fell in droves.
Fearsome strength that could only be called appalling, even allowing for the Yellow Turbans' poor equipment.
Worse, whenever the enemy showed signs of striking the formation from her opposite side,
at every such moment the woman switched sword for bow at a speed too fast for the eye to follow and loosed arrows in that direction to provide support.
Combat strength that ordinary people could not even dare to approach, an overwhelming force that defied description.
Yet victory remained out of reach.
Despite this conspicuous struggle, the woman's face grew darker by the minute as the battle dragged on.
'This is my blunder... I took the enemy far too lightly from the very beginning.'
News of the victory of Yuan Shu, General Who Guards the North, had reached her courtyard while she was Governor of Hedong.
She acknowledged that Yuan Shu was no ordinary man,
but the report that a mere green boy, nearly ten years her junior with no war experience, had trounced the Yellow Turbans struck her in a different way.
A conviction bloomed in her heart, separate from her thoughts about Yuan Shu.
It was... that although they bore the grandiose name of Yellow Turbans, at root they were nothing more than a disorganized rabble of weak and foolish peasants.
They could not possibly understand strategy or tactics, and their armaments were utterly pitiful.
Their sole strength was their sheer numbers—at minimum thousands, sometimes tens of thousands.
She had thought that such a feeble mob could never be a match for her, a veteran who had grown tough-skinned fighting frontier tribes in Xiliang.
Just then the news arrived that the Yellow Turbans had invaded Hedong.
This was naturally a matter she had to deal with as Governor—and it also seemed a golden opportunity to earn easy merit.
To counter it, she devised a slightly risky plan, one that would deal an immense blow to the enemy if it succeeded.
The operation called for a small main force under her own command to draw the enemy noisily away before a Special Detachment struck their main camp.
It was a tactic based on one of the fundamentals of warfare: Make Noise in the East, Strike in the West. She was certain that with this she could deliver a single crippling blow to the woefully unsophisticated Yellow Turbans, who had nothing but numbers.
That confidence did not last.
When she actually tried to execute it, an unforeseen variable appeared.
The Yellow Turbans were not the empty-headed idiots she had assumed them to be. Far from it.
They had never studied warfare, but they included not only simple farmers—hunters, too, in considerable numbers.
Men who knew nothing of war but were hardened in hunting beasts.
Just as they would set snares and wait for game, from the start they had lain in ambush on the routes where government troops were likely to advance.
As a result, the main force she now led was trapped like game with its leg caught in a snare—surrounded by Yellow Turbans pouring out from every side, unable to move.
Tens of thousands of Yellow Turbans with no proper formation, charging in and simply swinging their weapons wildly.
Yet in this simple yet maddening situation of being encircled by a great host, that alone was enough to pose a grave danger.
"Hell... these damn persistent bastards... hghhk!"
"Too many... of them..."
Enemies everywhere, and her own troops flagging by the moment.
Although her personal martial might had barely kept the formation intact, the one thing that mattered most—opening an escape route—had failed time and again.
It was called the main force, but in this operation its role was nothing more than a decoy.
To increase the mobility of the Special Detachment, which was effectively the true striking power, most of the cavalry had been committed there, while she and her troops—whose sole objective was to draw the enemy away from their main camp—were composed overwhelmingly of infantry.
No matter how formidable her personal prowess, unless she were the legendary Hegemon-King reborn,
breaking an escape route by her strength alone, without help from other cavalry forces, was impossible.
"Gaaak!!!"
"Grrrghhhk!!!"
The voices of dying soldiers on all sides,
and she herself, gradually starting to tire under an assault that had continued without pause for several shichen.
If the Special Detachment, which had set out to attack the enemy camp, were to return there would be hope, but holding out until then in this situation seemed anything but easy.
'Even so... I must endure. I cannot be brought down here and now like this...'
At that moment...
—Thunk!!!
"Aghh!"
A piercing, violent pain.
The agony driving into her back threw off her balance in an instant, and she fell from her horse.
"Got her! A hit!"
"She's down! Finish her!"
The Yellow Turbans rushed in at once, seizing the opening.
Watching the countless figures charging at her with spears and blades, she clenched her teeth and rose to her feet despite the fall and the agony of the arrow wound.
"Uaaaaaaaah!!!!"
She wrenched her strength out through the pain and swung her sword.
She battered aside the oncoming spears by force and cut the throats of the fallen.
Red spray began to fly in every direction.
Gazing at the enemy who flinched for a moment under that grim momentum, her eyes filled with killing intent.
"Come on, all of you! Did you think the Governor of Hedong would die at the hands of trash like you!"
A fierce roar amid the spraying blood.
The Yellow Turbans, who had been about to lunge at her right away, hesitated and began to edge backward.
What stood before them was a wounded beast.
Weakened, and therefore all the more perilous.
Knowing that to approach her carelessly meant they would be the ones to die first, they dared not attack readily.
Then...
—Shhhhk!!
"!"
Several arrows flying toward her.
Frantically she swung her sword to block them.
But.
—Thunk!!
"Nngh!!"
Another arrow she could not fully deflect, sinking into her shoulder.
With the surging agony, she lost her grip and the sword slipped from her hand.
"N-now!"
"Attack! The chieftain said he'll give a handsome reward to whoever kills the bitch!"
As soon as a single gap appeared, the Yellow Turbans began swarming in all at once.
Watching the scene,
she felt her last remaining will drain away.
'Ah... no...'
Despair descended.
In the instant she recognized that death had come before her eyes,
scenes from the past suddenly flickered through her mind like a galloping steed.
The path from her birth in a backwater village of Xiliang, racing for nothing but worldly success.
A life lived chasing power and desire alone, never once pausing to look back.
Memories of the hardship and anguish she had endured for that goal only made this moment feel more futile and wretched.
This was the end.
She no longer had a shred of hope, nor the strength left to resist.
Yet despite the cold reality before her, she did not want to die.
She did not want it to end like this.
After suffering so much, she did not want to vanish emptily having achieved nothing.
She had grasped wealth, shaken the world with her fame, and seized power.
And yet at this moment, with death before her eyes, all of it felt meaningless.
Amid it all, one truth she had suddenly begun to glimpse...
That which she had desired above everything...
but which somewhere in the torrent of chasing glory she had pushed aside.
Now, when she recalled it too late—now that it could never be fulfilled—
she watched the oncoming spears and found herself wearing a bitter smile without knowing it.
Then.
—Thunk!
"Gwaarghhh!!!"
"!!"
Arrows came flying in from seemingly nowhere.
As a Yellow Turban at the vanguard crumpled, the ones behind him also took arrows and dropped one by one.
"Huh?"
In that moment of bewildered confusion at the unforeseen development,
an enormous war cry and the sound of hoofbeats reached her ears.
"G-Governor! Look over there!"
"! That's..."
Her subordinates had belatedly reached her side.
Where they pointed, a wave of troops could be seen charging this way.
With cavalry in the lead, they flew the Han Dynasty banner of the government army and were breaking the Yellow Turban horde to pieces.
By scale alone they looked to be several thousand strong,
and the female commander at the head, swinging a massive Three-Pointed Blade in a rampage, was literally grinding through the layered encirclement and piercing the enemy line.
A powerful attack unleashed without warning.
The Yellow Turbans' tightly maintained encirclement began to waver in an instant.
"E-enemy! The enemy is here!"
"Wh-what... do we... do? Keep fighting?"
"We... shouldn't we run for it first? Who knows if we can win this or not?"
They had succeeded in trapping their foe in a simple fashion, but in the end the Yellow Turbans were still mere rabble.
They had no ability to respond flexibly to a rapidly changing situation like this.
"R-retreat! Fall back!"
"Damn it! What are you doing! Don't run! Fight! Fight them now, I said— grraghhhk!!!"
In the end, caught in their indecision, the Yellow Turbans' center was broken through on the spot.
As their ranks split and the chaos deepened further, the Yellow Turbans at last abandoned the encirclement and began to flee.
Not knowing that showing their backs was the beginning of a one-sided slaughter.
"Gwaaaarghhh!!!"
"S-spare... spare— gaaak!!!"
The Yellow Turbans were cut down amid horrible screams.
Their numbers were so vast that roughly half got away.
But the enemy had been a great host several times the size of our own force from the start.
A victory this decisive could rightly be called a triumph.
As she watched the crisis from moments ago dissolve as though it had been a lie, looking on with a dazed expression...
—"Hiiiiing!"
"Ah..."
A familiar whinny suddenly rang out.
At the sound of the crimson horse, already back at her side, she collected herself and began examining her wounds.
"... Ngh... nnghh!"
She pulled the arrow from her body, enduring the pain.
Fortunately neither wound seemed very deep, but blood kept flowing from the one in her shoulder.
As she pressed a hand hard against it and watched the fighting wind down...
a body of men approached her.
Government troops who appeared to be from the same force as those who had rescued her.
At their head, a man astride a black horse was looking in her direction.
A young man, clad in a black war-gown, bearing the air of a young noble and a strikingly handsome appearance.
One glance told her he was the commander leading these men. Despite the pain of her wounds, the woman mustered her strength, straightened herself, and offered a gesture of respect.
"My thanks. I owe you my life."
"I merely did what any fellow soldier of the Han ought to do. More importantly, you appear injured—are you all right?"
"It's nothing. This much is... nngh..."
Though she tried to feign composure, the searing pain made her brow crease.
Blood still flowed from the wound she pressed with her hand, and on seeing it the young man immediately dismounted and hurried to her side.
"This is bad... someone fetch a physician at once."
"Yes, General."
Right after giving the order, the young man drew a small cloth from his robes.
Using it, he immediately began binding the wound on her shoulder as a stopgap.
"Ah... um..."
"Please hold still. Stopping the bleeding comes first."
"... Mm."
Even though the cloth looked rather fine, he used it without a second thought, wholly intent on stanching the wound.
Watching as the process drew to a close, she spoke cautiously.
"I... I'm sorry. To show such a face to my savior..."
"Do not let it trouble you. A person is hurt—a woman, at that. What do etiquette and form matter here."
"Ah..."
The young man's words, spoken so casually.
At hearing them, a queer emotion began to steal across her face.
The countless men she had met until now had almost all shown discomfort when dealing with her in one way or another.
Whether it was because she stood taller than most men, or because of the air given off by her distinctive features, she could not tell.
This man's actions—calling her a woman and personally treating her wounds.
Watching a sight she was experiencing for the first time in her life, she felt something tremble inside and stayed silent for a while.
Then.
"Now that I think of it, I haven't even introduced myself yet. I am Yuan Shu, serving here as General Who Guards the North of Hedong."
"!... I see... So you are that Yuan Shu... you?"
The name she had heard constantly of late, and the person she had wished to meet at least once.
She truly had never imagined she would meet him like this.
With a hint of tension in her voice, she said,
"Mm... I am the one serving as Governor of Hedong. I received a request for aid from you some time ago and sent troops and provisions—does that perhaps... ring a bell?"
"! Ah, I see. So you are that..."
For a moment a trace of tension and a touch of pleased recognition crossed the young man's face.
Seeing his attitude, which seemed fairly favorable—perhaps thanks to the generous support she had provided in the past—
she allowed a quiet smile to reach her lips and spoke.
"Yes, I am Governor of Hedong, Dong Zhuo."
"?!! What the fu—"
"?"
In that instant the young man's face went rigid.
At that, she—
the woman who bore the name Dong Zhuo—felt a small flicker of curiosity.