Lü Bu's Red Hare Has Two Heads
Because Tanshihuai had ridden out of Tanhan Mountain and driven on Goliu County, the entire Han strategy seemed to have come undone.
The original plan had surely been to pin Tanhan Mountain with armies from three directions, then strike in concert and hit them from behind. But once Tanshihuai marched on Goliu County, Ha Yu had advanced to meet him — and that left the Bingzhou and Xiongnu forces stationed at Mayi County, Anmen Commandery, with no choice but to move at once if they meant to relieve Ha Yu's Youzhou army.
The Han armies had split into three columns. Tanshihuai had concentrated his. In numbers, the advantage was obviously his. Worse, Tanhan Mountain — the original objective — had been shoved aside, and they were now advancing into country that had never been part of the plan. Coordination between the columns was bound to suffer. No one even knew where Tanshihuai and Ha Yu would collide. Existing intelligence was useless for planning; they had no choice but to keep sending scouts to read the ground.
Then Zhang Min received word that Ha Yu and Tanshihuai were on the verge of clashing, and he had sent Sun Jian's troops and a portion of the Xiongnu army ahead. The force under Lü Bu was still on the march with Zhang Min and his son Zhang Hong.
"Does it really have to be like this?"
My master, Lü Bu, looked down at me as he said it. Honestly, I had only done it because I felt I had to do something.
"Watch and you'll see."
I had gathered every scrap of red I could find — cloth, leather, anything — and draped myself in it until I was a walking patchwork of crimson. From the bones the Old Shamaness had left me, I had taken the largest wolf skull and set it on my head, then lashed more red cloth and hide over the top.
"Watch, hell. You look like a rotting horse carcass."
"So you're saying I at least look like a horse."
"...What the hell are you actually trying to do?"
This time I didn't answer. I turned my gaze toward our Xiongnu troops, who were advancing pressed tight against Lü Bu's column. I wasn't sitting up here just to get chummy with him. With me sharing Red Hare's back, the Xiongnu army had no choice but to follow in support of his troops — and that had been my great-grandfather's calculation as well, Tute Ruoshi Gongzhu Chanyu. Lü Bu's martial prowess would be more than enough to keep me alive, and if I — already making a name for myself among the Southern Xiongnu — rode out in front, it would be good for the army's morale.
At this rate I might actually end up becoming the Grand Shaman.
I kept my face as hidden as I could beneath the wolf skull and waited for the situation to change. If Sun Jian had already ridden ahead and collided with the Xianbei, he would soon be calling for the entire Bingzhou and Xiongnu armies...
"Looks like Sun Wentai sent a messenger."
Lü Bu seemed to have caught a signal from Zhang Min's main camp.
"Bao, you're better than those Han kids, but hang on tight anyway. This is going to be rough. We're going full tilt."
I nodded. Whether he could even see it under all that red hide and cloth was another question. Zhang Min, General of the Household Protecting the Xiongnu, had apparently decided to smash into the Xianbei at full speed.
For a moment, Han Dang simply stared at Sun Jian. When Sun Jian's face turned puzzled, Han Dang finally introduced himself.
"I'm Han Dang. Courtesy name Yigong."
"Wentai."
"Thank you for coming to our aid."
"Whether I've actually helped you, we'll know once we break this encirclement. Follow me."
The red headwrap whipped around as he turned. Han Dang signaled his men and fell in behind him.
Only then could he tell who the cavalry Sun Jian had brought actually were. They were no Han force — that much was certain. An alien army. And yet they were different from the Xianbei he had been fighting all this time as well.
They were Xiongnu.
So Bingzhou really does fight alongside the Xiongnu.
Having just been betrayed by the Wuhuan, the thought of fighting beside yet another foreign army sat poorly with him — but Han Dang kept it to himself. These were the people who had come to save him and his men, after all. And the Xiongnu, as far as he could see, fought with genuine ferocity.
Han Dang couldn't have known why, but their morale was high. The Xiongnu were hardly pleased to be used as Han auxiliaries. But their hatred of the Xianbei ran deeper still. By rights, the Northern Xiongnu's Mobei Steppe should have belonged to the Southern Xiongnu. To soldiers who thought that way, the Xianbei who had driven the nail into the Northern Xiongnu's coffin were nothing but thieves who had stolen the steppe.
The Southern Xiongnu's bitter poverty. Their fall into becoming Han mercenaries. All of it — every last scrap of it — was the Xianbei's doing.
Steal their lives back from the Xianbei bastards. Take their swords. Their horses. Their ornaments. And no matter how much they seized, it would be nothing but grains of desert sand compared to what those thieves had stolen.
The Xianbei who slammed into the Xiongnu were thrown into confusion.
The Han hated the Xianbei too, of course. But theirs was a defensive hatred — hatred of the Xianbei who attacked them, laced with a measure of fear. The Xiongnu had some of that as well. But Xiongnu hatred was different from Han hatred at the root. Theirs was an offensive hatred.
In Xiongnu eyes, the Xianbei saw the wrath of a master punishing a slave. They seemed to regard everything the Xianbei had built as a slave revolt. That alien quality — so unlike facing the Han — dulled the Xianbei, and Sun Jian and the Xiongnu carved through their encirclement like a blade.
The Xianbei barely recovered their wits and gave chase, loosing arrows as they came. Han Dang saw Sun Jian, riding ahead, gesture toward something.
What could that little wave even mean...?
The answer came at once. Sun Jian wrenched his horse onto a new line, and the Xiongnu following him changed direction with practiced ease. Han Dang and his men nearly lost their seats, but they managed to stay mounted and followed a beat late.
And then, off their flank, the weapon Sun Jian had been hiding revealed itself: crossbowmen, and infantry behind their shields.
In the brief instant after Sun Jian and Han Dang's troops turned — before the Xianbei could react — the crossbows cracked with brutal precision. Horse and rider alike took bolts and went tumbling. The cavalry coming up behind slammed into the fallen horses and went down in turn. Even the Xianbei riders who managed to swerve around their fallen comrades could not escape Sun Jian's crossbows.
A soldier who had loosed his bolt stepped back. Another, already spanned, stepped forward and shot.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Thunk.
The snap and draw of the crossbows, the soldiers' feet driving into the earth, the clatter of armor and headgear — it all rang out as if from a single body.
Han Dang was in awe. It wasn't that he had never imagined a crossbow unit firing like this. Every commander who had ever led crossbowmen had probably pictured the same thing — if only they could train men to actually do it. It was not something a frontier officer, short on time and funds, could dare attempt. Systematic training of that caliber required the authority of a higher post, and to climb that high you needed connections in Luoyang. Few of the generals Luoyang sent down took any interest in such things. Most of them simply waited out their terms and hoped the next posting would be closer to the capital.
But this Sun Jian had done it. How in the world had he managed it?
I want to learn that.
That curiosity, that hunger, took root in Han Dang as he watched Sun Jian's back. Looking behind them again, even the mounted archery the Xianbei cavalry prided themselves on had fallen to pieces — their horses' gaits breaking apart in front of the Han crossbows. Mounted archery only worked when the horse ran with that special gait that didn't jolt the rider. Without it, even a nomad's arrows flew wild.
"Yigong."
Sun Jian called him by his courtesy name.
"Sir."
"We'll head for the Youzhou army and link up. I'd like you to guide us to the main camp — where the Colonel Protecting the Wuhuan is."
"Understood. But the rear...?"
Sun Jian glanced back at Han Dang and jerked his chin.
"Don't worry about it. The strongest warrior this Sun Jian trusts has arrived."
Han Dang followed the direction of that chin. A strange... red horse was tearing across the field.
A horse...?
Was it a horse?
Lü Bu no longer braced my back. Both his hands closed on the halberd, and he began to swing. His weapon had been modified, of course — the shaft shortened just enough that he could sweep it to both sides at once. At the signals he gave with thigh and knee, Red Hare leapt like a dragon. I, perched on its back, was shaken every bit as violently as that blade. I clung to the mane and held on. It was a mercy that Red Hare ignored the grip of a five-year-old.
Just as he had on the day he saved me, Lü Bu simply charged straight into the faces of the Xianbei cavalry. Even from beneath the wolf skull, I could see their faces go white with terror. And how could they not? Who wouldn't fear a death that came on, moment by moment, batting aside every last arrow with a halberd in both hands?
Lü Bu's martial skill was one thing, but Red Hare was just as terrifying.
Thud.
When Red Hare collided with a Xianbei mount, something broke or burst. Crossed with Western Regions blood, Red Hare had muscle and bulk that utterly overmatched any Xianbei horse. Even a casual kick would have hurt. A full-force collision left the other animal no chance of walking away.
"There's Sun Wentai, cutting through."
Sun Jian?
"Looks like he pulled the Youzhou army out of that encirclement. Even on the way out, he's making damn sure they remember the sting."
In that case — and with that, Lü Bu blocked an arrow with one hand and signaled behind him with the other. One man's valor cannot decide a battle. But you can set chisel and hammer to the crack that one man's valor opens. The cavalry following him picked up speed and charged through the gap he had torn. A horse-archer's arrows were deadly enough — but once it came to cavalry on cavalry at this range, they lost most of their force.
Wei Xu, said to be Lü Bu's kinsman. Song Xian and Hou Cheng, who had somehow survived alongside him. All of them cavalrymen of Lü Bu and Sun Jian's generation. That they had lived through Bingzhou together was explanation enough of how elite they were. Lü Bu watched them work with proud, satisfied eyes.
"I watched Sun Wentai drilling his infantry and figured I couldn't let him show me up."
"He even emptied his own purse to cover crossbow and shield repairs and new purchases."
"If Sun Jian of the infantry will go that far, how can Lü Bu of the cavalry lose?"
And so Lü Bu had wrung every spare hour from the day, drilling his cavalry even on the march after the war broke out. The results were showing themselves right here.
"Can't just sit here watching. Red Hare's itching for another go. Shall we?"
He didn't actually wait for my opinion. I gripped Red Hare's mane and started getting shaken to pieces all over again.
The Han army had only blunted the momentum of the Xianbei right wing. Lü Bu and Sun Jian had been magnificent — and that was all. Content to have checked the Xianbei charge and extracted themselves intact, they linked up with Ha Yu. Zhang Min's main force, arriving after them, had barely managed to keep Ha Yu from being completely surrounded.
But that evening, a strange rumor began to circulate among the Xianbei soldiers. Someone among the Han cavalry, they said, had ridden a two-headed red horse and swept through their ranks.
One head was alive and savage. The other was dead, the bone showing through the hide. The rumor swelled until those two heads governed life and death themselves, and every Xianbei rider who barred their path had his fate decided between them.
And the tale always ended with the demon astride that monster — a demon no arrow could touch.