I'll hold them off here
I'll hold them off here
The duel between the two women-warriors unfolded before their eyes.
Astonishment and admiration began to creep onto the faces of the watching lords.
Zhang Liao's martial prowess was truly something to marvel at, proof that beheading three commanders had been no stroke of luck.
But—Liu Bei was clearly a cut above even that.
She had pressed Zhang Liao hard from the start, and even now, on the back foot thanks to the difference in weapon type and a less responsive horse, she was defending against Zhang Liao's assault with flawless steadiness. The sight was more than enough to pull exclamations from everyone watching.
In the end, Liu Bei hurled one of her twin swords, used the opening it created, and succeeded in landing a solid blow on Zhang Liao.
Exclamations broke from the lords. Yuan Shu, watching Liu Bei press the advantage, immediately brought forward the troops she had kept in reserve and commenced the advance, then issued his orders at once.
"Now, while the enemy's morale is broken, is our moment. Ji Ling, Xu Rong, take the five thousand cavalry each that you have waiting and assist Liu Bei. Break straight through the enemy lines."
"Understood, my lord."
"As you command."
"And the rest of the lords will advance at her back. Do not give the bastards time to re-form their ranks. We sweep them away in a single charge."
"Yes, General Yuan!"
"Everyone move! We assault Sishui Pass this instant!"
*
"Damnation! Where did that monster come from!"
Zhang Liao spurred her horse frantically, retreating.
A searing pain stabbed through her shoulder. Still, she did not release the Twin Halberds. She drove her horse at full speed.
She had encountered a foe whose strength she had genuinely never anticipated—and been defeated.
Zhang Liao had always believed that the only person under heaven who could defeat her was Lü Bu. At best, perhaps Ji Ling, the Sword of Yuan Shu, might manage it. To have that conviction shattered this way was a tremendous shock.
Liu Bei and her subordinates pursued her.
The force numbered only a few hundred, but their momentum was at its peak. Without the slightest hesitation, they threw themselves into the Bing Province army encampment stationed before Sishui Pass.
"E-e... enemy!"
"Stop them! Whatever it takes, stop the—"
Liu Bei, dual swords spinning at the vanguard, and the two warrior women following at her back.
The enormous Green Dragon Crescent Blade and the Eight-Zhang Serpent Spear lashed out, and the elite soldiers of Bing Province, their morale already destroyed, were swept away like fallen leaves in the autumn wind.
"G-General!"
"I'm fine. Just rally the soldiers! Bottle the bastards up so they can't rampage further!"
"Y-yes, immediately...!"
The next moment, the adjutant's face went rigid, expression freezing over. Zhang Liao felt the wrongness and turned her head.
And then—
"Son of a bitch!"
The curse burst from her lips on reflex.
There, she saw people whose faces she recognized all too well.
Yuan Shu's subordinates Ji Ling and Xu Rong were charging straight toward them at the head of thousands of cavalry.
"General! You must withdraw! If you stay, even you will be in mortal danger."
The enemy host was flooding in before they had a single chance to prepare. Soldiers whose morale had shattered with Zhang Liao's defeat were deserting one after another, or throwing down their weapons and surrendering. The enemy, on the other hand, rode an ever-rising momentum, crushing the allied camp without restraint.
The adjutant grasped the gravity of the situation and urged retreat.
But Zhang Liao slowly shook her head.
"A disaster has already happened. Because I let my arrogance run wild, I've set something in motion that can't be undone."
"This is no time for such—!"
"It's an order. Right now, lead the soldiers into Sishui Pass and devote yourselves to the defense. Use whatever means you must to hold the pass until General Ding Yuan's relief force arrives."
"I... will do so. But... what of you, General...?"
The adjutant's voice tightened with worry at Zhang Liao's strangeness. Zhang Liao simply turned her gaze toward the enemy charging toward her.
"I have to... take responsibility."
"G-General?"
"This happened because of me. You know perfectly well I'm the type who can't live with a debt unpaid."
"But General! Kh—!"
Zhang Liao silenced the adjutant with a gesture. Her attitude left absolutely no room for argument. He could no longer object.
"No more time. Just go. This body of mine won't hold them for very long."
"... Under... stood. Ngh..."
In the end, the adjutant gathered as many soldiers as he could and fled through the gates of Sishui Pass, following Zhang Liao's command.
With that, having fulfilled the bare minimum of her duty as a commander, Zhang Liao looked at the three warrior women racing toward her through the chaos of the battlefield.
The most conspicuous among them was, of course, Liu Bei, charging at the front.
Gazing at her, Zhang Liao let out a dauntless grin and shouted:
"Bring it on! You big-eared bitch!"
*
On Yuan Shu's command, the commanders and lords swiftly launched their offensive.
The host that had seized the tide of battle pressed its overwhelming advantage until the one-sided rout was nearly absolute, and the enemy, thrown into chaos, began to disintegrate in an instant.
"It seems the first battle is a great victory for our side. The enemy is collapsing without even putting up proper resistance."
"Yes. I'd like to push straight through Sishui Pass right now, but... that's probably asking too much."
"Even so, they won't last more than a few days. Most of the enemy have been killed, and their morale is in tatters besides."
"Heh-heh."
Yuan Shu let out a quiet laugh at Sun Jian's satisfied words. It wouldn't do to let his guard down until the very end, but with the enemy's momentum so thoroughly broken and their numbers so reduced, one could fairly say their side's victory was all but decided.
And at the heart of that victory, naturally, was Liu Bei.
Her twin swords moving freely, she trampled the enemy. Bearing an aura that seemed capable of piercing anything, she was literally tearing apart the foes arrayed before her, piece by piece.
Surging along the path Liu Bei had ripped open, the coalition host cleanly swept away the enemy troops who hadn't managed to retreat into Sishui Pass—taking little damage in the process.
"That Liu Bei truly is impressive. To be honest, when Your Lordship first received that person warmly, I had a few doubts. Now I think I understand why."
"She may not look it, but she's the one who made the greatest contribution during the Yellow Turban Rebellion suppression in You Province—though the Ten Regular Attendants' schemes saw her merits belittled."
"Is that so... Even so, to identify and recruit a hidden talent like that—General Yuan's eye for people is truly remarkable."
Yuan Shu and Sun Jian surveyed Liu Bei's dazzling achievements with satisfaction.
Yet in this moment—amid the soaring excitement, one person alone remained apart. The person who had watched Liu Bei's performance from Yuan Shu's side more intently than anyone else. The person who, just earlier, had urged her to go.
Dong Zhuo's gaze was cold as she bit her lip.
'I misjudged her... that woman is far more trouble than I expected...'
Dong Zhuo had not personally taken the field this time, owing to her position as Vice Alliance Leader, but she herself possessed considerable martial strength. That was exactly why she had been able to see at a glance that this Zhang Liao was no ordinary fighter.
Zhang Liao was skilled enough to take the head of any opponent who underestimated her and attacked her carelessly. Understanding this, Dong Zhuo had persuaded Yuan Shu to grant Liu Bei's request to take the field. The intent had never been goodwill; it had been to remove an eyesore.
A ploy to eliminate a rival in one stroke by using a formidable enemy commander—without dirtying her own hands. By her original reckoning, the natural outcome should have been Zhang Liao lopping Liu Bei's head off with a single blade.
But Dong Zhuo had miscalculated. Liu Bei's combat power was far more monstrous than she had thought. Far from being defeated and losing her head the moment she took the field, Liu Bei had instead overwhelmed Zhang Liao and come within a hair of taking Zhang Liao's head herself. And then, the instant the wounded Zhang Liao fled, Liu Bei had moved her waiting troops and snatched victory in one breath.
Watching this woman who, sent practically to her grave, had instead bloomed brilliantly, Dong Zhuo felt a genuine, burning irritation—and her wariness toward this woman Liu Bei sharpened yet further.
And beyond that... there was one more thing secretly snagging at her thoughts.
'He already had arrangements in place... Gonglu too. As if he'd been certain from the start that that bitch Liu Bei would win.'
Yuan Shu had always been a man of deep trust and good faith toward people. But even taking that into account—he had displayed an absolute conviction that Liu Bei would prevail.
The sight of her own man showing such excessive trust in another woman—and the sight of that woman answering his trust with such an enormous achievement—settled over Dong Zhuo as a natural, crawling unease.
'As I thought... I can't let things stay this way...'
*
The first battle ended in a perfect victory, thanks to Liu Bei's performance.
The result was that while the allies had suffered only light casualties, the enemy—out of an army of forty thousand—had managed to retreat into Sishui Pass with barely ten thousand. The remaining thirty thousand or so lay dead, had scattered, or were taken captive.
And among those captured enemies—that person was there. The vanguard commander who had led the Bing Province army. Zhang Liao was among them.
She had fought tenaciously to the last, wielding her Twin Halberds, but in the end Liu Bei had subdued her. Now Zhang Liao was separated from the other prisoners and confined alone in a small tent.
'So it ends... like this? I... without leaving a name, so futilely...'
She had wanted to make her name resound across the land. She had wanted to escape the constant shadow of Lü Bu and sear the name Zhang Liao into the minds of the world. That was why she had insisted on taking the field ahead of Lü Bu. That was why she had chosen direct confrontation—valiant and reckless in equal measure.
And... she had failed. Countless soldiers had lost their lives. Sishui Pass itself, which she was meant to protect, now stood in danger. Ten thousand soldiers still held it, but with morale so thoroughly destroyed, no one could place much hope in them.
She had failed as a commander and as a warrior. Now, as a prisoner, what waited for her was simply execution by the enemy's hand—or, failing that, a miserable existence reduced to a plaything. Having seen how the frontier tribes of Bing Province handled female captives, she thought the latter was the more likely outcome.
'... If I could choose, I'd rather be the plaything of a good-looking man, but... there's no way matters will arrange themselves so conveniently...?'
Barring special circumstances, a captive's treatment was generally decided by the person who had captured her. That was the law of the Bing Province tribes, and the rule among warriors who lived there. It was no different for Zhang Liao, who had been born and raised in that place her entire life.
If so, then Zhang Liao's immediate future rested entirely in the hands of the woman who had captured her: Liu Bei. Unless the reason they had gone out of their way to take her alive was something like a public execution ceremony...
'Ah—... no... wait...'
A scene abruptly flickered through her mind. Come to think of it, the union of man and woman was not the only sort in this world, was it? Especially for someone with a flat chest like hers, she seemed to recall hearing somewhere that there were well-endowed women who had a taste for such figures...
'Whoa... I hate it...'
The moment her thoughts reached that point, a filthy sensation crept over her on instinct. And yet, she could not say it was absolutely impossible. Zhang Liao felt the world grow darker than before, and a thicker worry began to take root about what was to come.
That was when—
"!"
A sudden presence. Amid her apprehension, Zhang Liao looked toward it.
'C-could it... be that big-eared bastard?'