Nanman (1)
"Prime Minister, Meng Huo is leading a great host toward our camp."
Word came racing in from the scouts: Meng Huo had already pitched his tents nearby. He had summoned every tribal chieftain under his banner, and the force he fielded now outnumbered the Shu army.
"As hasty as the stories paint him."
True to his nature as king of the rough, wild tribes, he came on with pure, headlong aggression.
"Where has Meng Huo made his camp?"
"At Wuji Peak, my lord."
Wuji Peak…
Zhuge Liang fell silent for a moment, then turned his gaze upon the generals ranked before him.
"Feng Xi."
Stripped of office for the catastrophe at Ma'an Mountain, Feng Xi had nevertheless drilled his men so thoroughly that he had been restored as a Commandant. In truth the disaster had been Liu Bei's, drawn into an enemy trap, yet Feng Xi's upright character would not allow him to lay the blame on his sovereign. Instead he burned to redeem himself with merit in this very campaign.
"Yes, Prime Minister. Command me."
Zhuge Liang handed him a map of Nanzhong.
"I give you thirty thousand men. With Ma Zhong, reduce every place marked upon this chart."
The marks showed the principal strongholds of the Man host. While the main army locked horns with Meng Huo, Feng Xi's flying column would methodically eliminate the tribes friendly to him.
"…But Prime Minister, if you give me the map, will it not hinder the movements of the main force?"
"What I have given you is a fresh copy transcribed from the one Lü Kai provided."
On the long road south, Zhuge Liang had had Lü Kai's maps carefully copied. Using the intelligence gleaned from Gao Ding, he had marked every tribal seat throughout Nanzhong.
Through Feng Xi he meant to smash the chieftains and powers loyal to Meng Huo and leave the man isolated. Feng Xi, who had once held supreme command, possessed outstanding generalship, and with Ma Zhong as his lieutenant the task should not prove difficult.
"Yet if General Feng Xi takes thirty thousand, will we not face Meng Huo with fewer men than he has?"
Numbers alone did not decide a war, yet the old saying about the few against the many was not idle.
"No. Meng Huo's host may be met and matched by fifty thousand of our elite."
The Nanman army was a patchwork of many tribes; they could never achieve true coordination. The Shu troops, though somewhat short on battle experience, had been drilled to iron discipline and moved as one body.
Having spoken so, Zhuge Liang laid out the plan for his generals. Each led his men to the positions the Prime Minister indicated. The rank and file, puzzled though they were, began under his orders to raise a camp of imposing size.
From his camp on Wuji Peak, Meng Huo marched straight upon the Shu main army. The vanguard that rode out to meet him was Wang Ping's.
"That one—is he Meng Huo, King of the Man?"
Wang Ping asked in his slightly thick speech of a former soldier of Gao Ding's.
"Yes, my lord. That is he."
…Big.
That was the first impression. The man's skin was burned dark all over, and his armor was nothing but cured beast hides. Broad of frame, he rode not a warhorse but a great red bull.
"Outlanders! You dare set foot in the lands of Nanzhong and expect to leave alive?!"
Meng Huo twisted his face into a demon's scowl and roared.
"Kill them all!"
He raised his axe; the Man host surged forward like a breaking wave. Bloodshot eyes fixed on the Shu lines, the tribesmen charged. Shu foot soldiers moved as one and thrust their spears, yet the enemy showed no fear of steel. Wounded, they still came on like beasts that had forgotten terror—a style of fighting that called to mind the old tale of flesh carved and bone severed.
The Shu infantry had been hardened by training in rugged mountains and possessed formidable stamina, but the Nanman warriors outstripped them in raw power and endurance on the open field. They came on like tigers; at their head the chieftains under Meng Huo displayed their might.
"I am Dong Dona, chieftain of the Southern Man!"
"Taste the spear of Jinhua Sanjie!"
Even the lords of the Three Dongs smashed through the Shu foot and tore the formation apart. Against them stood Shu soldiers of whom more than half were newly trained recruits, brought along to season them for the day they would face Wei. In true battle they could only give ground before the Nanman veterans.
Wang Ping locked his shield wall into a defensive stance and studied the field.
…Exactly as the Prime Minister said.
Unlike the armies of the Central Plains, which shifted formation to the beat of drums and gongs and the flash of banners, the Man tribes had no notion of battle array. They simply drove forward with brute force and ferocious spirit.
The moment had come.
"Retreat—!!"
Wang Ping gave the order as previously instructed. Drums and gongs sounded the signal; the soldiers who had been locked with the Nanman broke and fled without a heartbeat's hesitation.
"Hahaha! Look at them! Nothing to them after all!"
Meng Huo sneered at the Shu troops bolting for their lives. To withdraw the moment the clash began looked like pure cowardice. The Man warriors swelled with pride, shoulders thrown back.
The Han can never beat us!
Meng Huo brandished his axe and shouted in triumph.
"Pursue them! Take Zhuge Liang's head and send it to Chengdu! Bring me a general's head and I will reward you handsomely!!"
Nothing feeds a soldier's arrogance like the chase of a broken foe. Blinded by greed for glory and spoils, the Man troops hunted like animals that had lost all reason. Habit had taught them that a turned back meant annihilation; they never paused to read the enemy's design.
Wang Ping and the Shu force paid the pursuit no mind and poured straight into their own camp. Watching them flee without a backward glance, Meng Huo threw back his head and laughed.
"Hahaha!! All mouth and no spine—and masters of running away! What kind of peerless talent puts a coward like that in the van?"
He roared with laughter, mocking both the fleeing Wang Ping and the man who had chosen him. He could not fathom how Yong Kai had ever fallen to such cravens; the pitiful spectacle of the Shu army only made him snort.
"Great King, why not seize their camp while we are at it?"
Jinhua Sanjie proposed they take the fortifications then and there. The camp was vast—partly because many troops were quartered there, but also because the stores of grain and arms must be enormous. The lust to plunder the enemy's supplies stirred in every breast. Still flushed with the easy victory, most of the Man host agreed with him.
"Good! Strip them of every last scrap of their supplies!"
The Man warriors crashed into the Shu encampment in a single roaring tide. Yet those who first crossed the threshold stopped dead.
"…What is that?"
In the broad center of the camp, antlered frames and great wagons had been drawn up in a solid barrier. Mounted upon the wagons were enormous crossbows.
Repeating crossbows? But the size…
Meng Huo eyed the massive engines with suspicion. What the wagons carried were not ordinary repeating crossbows but the improved Yuanrong Crossbow—a weapon that, once drawn, loosed ten bolts, each eight cun long, in a single volley. Designed by Zhuge Liang and refined by Po Yuan, it outclassed every earlier model.
Originally built for siege defense and still being perfected, only a few had been brought south. Against Nanman troops who had never seen the like, however, they were ideal.
"Loose!"
At Wang Ping's command—having drawn the enemy deep into the camp—the Yuanrong Crossbows fired as one. A rain of bolts blackened the sky and fell upon the Man ranks.
"Aaaaargh!!"
In an instant men bristled like porcupines and collapsed with short, choking screams. Jinhua Sanjie, who had led the way into the camp, died before he could even cry out.
"A trap! Fall back!!"
Clang!
Meng Huo swatted aside the bolts streaking toward him with his axe and ordered the retreat. The shafts were heavy, yet his monstrous strength turned them aside.
Bookish schemers—always with their little tricks!
If they had lured him into the camp, he need only fight his way out again. But the army would not obey. From the rear, more of his own men were still pouring into the enclosure.
"What is this?! Did you not hear the order to withdraw?!"
He needed to break free at once, yet soldiers kept shoving into the camp; Meng Huo bellowed in fury.
"Great King!"
At that moment Ah Huinan, Marshal of the Three Dongs and commander of the rear, came racing up.
"Disaster! The enemy had an ambush waiting behind us!"
"What? An ambush?!"
"Yes. They were hidden in the nearby woods."
Troops concealed in the forest had fallen upon the Nanman rear. Striking the overconfident, careless tail of the host, they cut the line of retreat while linking with the force in the van—intent on surrounding and destroying the whole army.
"Counterattack!"
At the same instant Wang Ping led the soldiers inside the camp out in a fierce reverse charge. In the blink of an eye the pincer closed: front and rear locked tight around the Man host.
This was the plan from the very beginning!
Only then did Meng Huo understand the trap he had walked into. He ground his teeth. Believing the Shu army knew nothing of Nanzhong's terrain, he had pursued without a second thought.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Drums thundered from every direction. At the signal, soldiers who had lain hidden all around rose as one and closed in.