How the ladies seal the deal
How the ladies seal the deal
A natural fortress built between canyons—Hulao Pass.
But no matter how impregnable a fortress might appear, on a structure of such massive scale, a small sally port or two is bound to exist somewhere.
The mountains flanking Hulao Pass were rugged, but if you found the right path, they were hardly unscalable.
Moving an army in plain sight was impossible—that was all.
Pushing in a few men one or two at a time, disguised in enemy uniforms, was easy if you knew the way.
And now.
Before the soldiers who had secretly infiltrated Hulao Pass this way—a handful at a time over the past few days—stood Huang Gai, the commander of this operation and Sun Jian's right arm.
"Everyone accounted for?"
"Yes, Colonel Huang Gai. The infiltration unit of four hundred—all gathered."
"Good. You've all done well to reach this point."
With those words Huang Gai looked over the soldiers with a composed expression.
They were a handpicked elite force even within Yuan Shu's ranks, and their faces were set with resolute determination.
"Some of you may have already heard. This morning the enemy commander Ding Yuan left Hulao Pass together with Lü Bu. Is this not the perfect moment to execute the plan Sun Jian prepared?"
The enemy, for their part, were weary and slack from days of continuous combat.
Judging that the optimal conditions were in place, Huang Gai drew his sword and spoke.
"Now, let's move! We're opening the gate! We will put an end to this wretched Hulao Pass with our own hands!"
"Yes, Colonel!"
At Huang Gai's command, the soldiers moved swiftly through the dark of night.
When they reached the gate, security was, as expected, considerably thinner than usual.
That was because Lü Bu and Ding Yuan, who normally kept ironclad discipline, were absent, and, more importantly, everyone was worn down from one battle after another.
Even so, a lengthy delay here risked the enemy swarming in like ants, so Huang Gai and the soldiers sprang into action at once.
"Strike!"
With that curt command, the soldiers drew their weapons and closed in rapidly on the enemy.
"Gurk—!"
"Kh—!"
Amid brief death cries, sentries died never knowing what hit them.
The guards, half-asleep under the sudden attack, turned into cold corpses before they could even put up a token resistance.
"Open the gate at once. I'll raise the signal!"
With those words Huang Gai instantly nocked a fire arrow he'd prepared.
The arrow, glowing blue with copper filings, shot straight up over Hulao Pass—the signal that the gate had been secured according to plan.
In response, the coalition forces standing by after receiving advance word began their advance on Hulao Pass.
"Sweep them all away!"
"The gate is open! Seize the pass at once!"
Under Sun Jian's command, coalition troops poured into Hulao Pass in an instant.
Gongsun Zan and Gao Shun, who had been left to hold the position, tried to organize resistance in the face of the unforeseen emergency, but with neither Lü Bu nor Ding Yuan present, they couldn't bring the situation under control on their own.
"Damn it! Everyone, withdraw!"
"B-but General! If we surrender Hulao Pass like this..."
"We don't have time to dither! Don't you understand? Staying here means nothing but a pointless death. We're retreating to Luoyang at once!"
"Tch..."
Gao Shun had no choice but to carry out Gongsun Zan's order.
Under the two commanders' direction, the troops defending Hulao Pass began fleeing rapidly toward Luoyang.
Their sole stroke of luck was that darkness still blanketed the land and the enemy, whether from their own exhaustion after the successive attacks, could not easily mount a pursuit.
That was how the fortress called impregnable—
Hulao Pass—
fell in such a hollow manner, undone by a moment's gap and a touch of negligence.
*
Thanks to Sun Jian's prowess, Hulao Pass fell cleanly.
As soon as I entered the place we'd finally taken after more than a month of hard struggle, I immediately summoned Sun Jian, the battle's foremost contributor, and commended her achievement.
"You've done well, Sun Jian. I will not forget your service in this battle."
The other commanders had fought hard too, but honestly, taking Hulao Pass would have been far more difficult without Sun Jian's contribution.
From her flawless command, deploying the army in the right place at the right time, to the decisive insertion of Huang Gai and a handful of soldiers to open the gate—
She had unsparingly demonstrated the same caliber of a renowned commander that she'd shown in the Records of the Three Kingdoms.
I was in the middle of cheerfully pouring wine into Sun Jian's cup when it happened.
"Thank you, General. However, the scheme that opened the gate this time was not mine alone."
"Oh? What do you mean by that?"
Sun Jian brought up something unexpected.
With a quiet smile, she looked me squarely in the face and began to speak.
*
At the time when the coalition was still gathering,
Sun Jian had been serving as a guard while Empress Dowager He discussed the external situation with her.
"Hulao Pass and Sishui Pass..."
"Yes. The crux of this war will surely be how we break through those two places."
"I suppose so. They are the largest and strongest gateways toward Luoyang. That said, they are not without their gaps, I suppose."
"What? What do you mean, Your Majesty?"
Looking at Sun Jian, whose eyes had begun to widen, Empress Dowager He spoke in a calm voice.
"Did I not mention it once before? That in my childhood I roamed freely through the mountains and fields. Now, with a war on, the security will be tight, but when I was young, Hulao Pass was also one of my playgrounds. Pfft, back then I once didn't go home for almost a week and got quite a scolding from my parents..."
With those words, she subtly extended something.
It was a sketch of Hulao Pass and the surrounding mountains, with several red dots marked on it.
"It shouldn't have changed much from those days, so there ought to be suitable paths around here. A little footpath or a sally port, but... wouldn't they prove useful in war?"
"Ohh..."
Sun Jian's eyes gleamed at this unexpected intelligence.
Empress Dowager He looked at her and spoke again, her tone deepening with gravitas.
"Though there is not much I can do, I wish to help in this way. I need to have stamped my seal in that man's eyes, so to speak. That way, you and I alike can draw a future for our children, can we not?"
"... I understand perfectly, Your Majesty."
Sun Jian carefully accepted the map Empress Dowager He handed her.
A deep smile settled on the lips of the two women who, in their own way, were striving to earn their credit.
*
"That is how, thanks to Her Majesty the Empress Dowager's help, I was able to obtain intelligence on routes by which we could secretly penetrate Hulao Pass."
"Ohh... Her Majesty the Empress Dowager..."
Although she now held the rank of empress dowager of the state, Empress Dowager He had been born a commoner and had often roamed the mountains and fields.
And it was said that her childhood haunts had included this very Hulao Pass, which was not so far from Luoyang.
Sun Jian explained that she had been able to sneak soldiers in using the sally ports and footpaths the young Empress Dowager He had once used.
I was genuinely surprised that I'd received help, in such an unexpected way, from such an unexpected person.
'Honestly, I thought she would simply sit quietly and stay in place in the rear... to have helped me like this...'
This victory was the product not only of Sun Jian's efforts but of the efforts of many, and I felt grateful to all of them.
However, receiving such significant cooperation from someone I'd never expected left a striking and fresh impression on me in many ways.
'On this matter... I need to express my thanks to Her Majesty separately later.'
Thinking that with the situation settling I now had one more thing to attend to, I turned to the celebrating commanders and spoke in a weighty voice.
"Regardless, you have all toiled greatly—not only General Sun Jian, but everyone here. Now the only place remaining is Luoyang. Rest well today, and let us advance at once tomorrow."
"What—tomorrow, you say?"
"Wouldn't it be better to rest a little longer? The soldiers' fatigue has piled up considerably, and the enemy is, for all intents and purposes, defenseless now. I see no need to rush."
The objections came from Bao Xin and Wang Kuang, and the other lords seemed to hold similar opinions.
And I, too, would normally have thought it correct to take some time to catch our breath before advancing on Luoyang.
However...
Right now, one reason that made that impossible had taken clear root in my mind.
That was—
"...? Why are you looking at me? Do I have something on my face?"
"... No."
The thing Dong Zhuo of the Original Timeline had done precisely at this same juncture, when cornered to the extreme: the so-called "Relocation of the Capital to Chang'an"—burning Luoyang and fleeing to escape the coalition.
Their base was in the north, not the west, so it didn't seem likely they would go to Chang'an, but in any case, now that they had been cornered this far, the possibility that they would do something similar was far from nonexistent.
Depending on how things went, the same sort of horrific disaster Dong Zhuo had committed might repeat itself.
To forestall that, I hardened my resolve to advance on Luoyang and bring this to an end as soon as possible.
"It's true the soldiers are quite worn, but the same goes for them. More importantly, a cornered rat will bite a cat—if we leave them cornered, there's no telling what they might do."
"What they might do... meaning?"
"In the worst case, a calamity like the Rebellion of the Ten Regular Attendants could occur."
"!"
"Hmm..."
The Ten Regular Attendants had killed General-in-Chief He Jin and abducted the emperor.
The matter had erupted at the very end, when it was nearly all over, because He Jin had let his guard down, and it was precisely the aftermath of that incident that had brought about the current chaos—so no one here could easily raise a counterargument.
Then.
"I, General of the Left Dong Zhuo, concur with General Yuan Shu. Having begun, we ought to see this through definitively, even if it strains us a little."
"This Yuan Shao also agrees. I have no desire to repeat the same sort of blunder we saw with General-in-Chief He Jin."
"Likewise, this Cao Cao also believes we should suppress the traitors as quickly as possible."
"On the contrary, if we give them time to reform their army and strike again, even if we win, we may have to endure considerable casualties. This Sun Jian also judges that the best course is to strike now, while our momentum is high."
'They'—the ones arguing for a swift conclusion in agreement with my opinion.
With the most militarily powerful figures within the coalition concurring,
the lords ultimately reached a conclusion to follow my intent and advance tomorrow, reasoning that it would reduce as many variables as possible.
Thus, the march began somewhat forcefully, even at the cost of the soldiers' fatigue.
Even so, the biggest hurdle had been crossed, and because the only thing left was to finish it, the soldiers' morale remained quite high despite their weariness.
But—
"What... did you say?"
"Wh-what in the world does that mean?!"
"From Luoyang... black smoke is rising from Luoyang!"
It happened when we were barely half a day from Luoyang.
"... No..."
Along with a report that was what I most wanted to avoid—what I'd never wanted to hear—the most ominous feeling I'd experienced since taking this body began creeping over me.