Fanaticism

"So Tanshihuai wasn't pursuing Tian Yan at all?"

"He used the site of his own royal court as bait and closed the net around us..."

Mutters like these ran through the ranks, and unrest spread through the entire army.

They hadn't even managed to pitch a proper camp, let alone clear the wreckage Tanshihuai had left behind. Occupying the high ground was their only advantage now—and it was no advantage at all.

If there was one mercy worth naming, it was that Tanshihuai's cavalry host had wrapped around Tanhan Mountain so swiftly the shaken soldiers couldn't simply desert at random.

A grim joke.

They would just huddle on this mountain, trembling, and serve as archery targets for the Xianbei.

"So they never even left the area around Tanhan Mountain in the first place?"

Wei Xu said it with a look of stunned disbelief.

"That can't be... We scouted thoroughly."

Hou Cheng shook his head, equally at a loss.

How could this have happened?

"Scouts are only as good as the scouts themselves. You can't expect soldiers who don't know this terrain to find every last ambush point the Xianbei had already mapped out."

Song Xian, ever the one to run the numbers, seemed to have it right.

No.

What did it matter now how the Xianbei had hidden their tracks and lain in wait? Tanshihuai had returned, and we were surrounded by his vast cavalry host. That was the only reality that counted.

Ah. Right.

And with Sun Jian, Han Dang, Gongsun Zan, and Left Wise King Hozheng all peeled off toward Juyong Pass, we were doing it with a reduced force.

Was this it, then? Failure? The road to hell the monkey demon had shown me? Had I been unable to change history even a little? Had all my struggling only steered us into a deeper mire, toward a greater defeat?

Just as I let the strength drain from my body at that thought—Lü Bu decided faster than anyone.

"Wei Xu, Song Xian, Hou Cheng! Gather every cavalryman on a red horse, just as I ordered last time! The red cloth and leather too—collect all of it, and if there isn't enough, then there isn't enough! I'll propose a breakout to the Zhonglangjiang!"

The three men were different in every way that mattered, but they shared one trait: when Lü Bu issued an order with the force of the plan does not change, they carried it out without delay.

Leaving me in the command tent, Lü Bu and his three subordinates all rushed outside. The situation was so urgent, though, that Lü Bu was back in an instant. The time I spent alone in the tent was not long.

"Bao!"

He called me with a voice like a thunderclap, and my back went ramrod straight before I knew it.

"Y-yes! Master!"

"The Zhonglangjiang Protecting the Xiongnu has given the order. The Colonel Protecting the Wuhuan signed off on it too. Word's already gone to the Chanyu, so all the Red Cavalry will be assembling shortly."

Lü Bu lowered himself until his eyes were level with mine.

"What do we do from here? Have you thought of something? What does your Sky God say?"

A concentrated strike at a single point in the Xianbei encirclement, using a red cavalry force made to look like Lü Bu himself, to punch through. That was the operation that came to mind at once... but we needed more of a scheme than that.

The Sky God. Tengri.

The claim that I heard His words was nothing more than a plausible lie, a way to put faith to work. So if I couldn't think of something, there would be no Word of Tengri either.

A god's greatness is decided by whether his faithful win their wars.

So think of a scheme, and think fast. Lose this one, and there would be no voice of Tengri, no Grand Shaman, nothing. Even the prophet act that had only ever worked on the Xiongnu would be finished...

...Wait. Was that it?

Did Tengri... only ever work on the Xiongnu?

Xu Rong found himself taking a liking to the Bing Province man who was heading back to his own tent with that grim face.

His name, he had learned, was Lü Bu. Moments ago the man had proposed to his own superior and to Xu Rong's that they break the encirclement with a cavalry charge.

Zhang Min and Ha Yu had had no choice but to agree. Stay isolated on this mountain and they would be whittled down by Xianbei arrows until nothing remained. And it would not be arrows alone. They would die of hunger, of thirst, of disease. They could not afford to stall. Lü Bu's plan to charge before Tanshihuai could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠set something in motion was sound.

There was just one problem with the operation.

Xu Rong approached Lü Bu as he prepared the charge.

"You..."

Recognizing him, Lü Bu gave a slight nod. There was no time for formalities. So Xu Rong, too, kept it short and said only what needed saying.

"Don't concern yourself with the infantry."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Lü Bu flinched and stopped what he was doing.

"How did you—?"

"After you proposed the operation, it weighed on you, didn't it? That even if the cavalry breaks through, the infantry might not be able to follow."

"It did."

Lü Bu had already heard, through the little Luanti Bao, a prophecy that no one but the Xiongnu would make it off this battlefield alive. But hearing a prophecy did not mean he could simply stop caring whether the infantry lived or died.

Bing Province, where Han and Hu lived intermingled. Lü Bu's ideal could not be built with the Xiongnu alone. The other pillar of that ideal—the Han people—had to survive as well.

And yet, however much that ideal mattered, he also knew that if the moment came when the Han infantry had to be abandoned, he would abandon them. Lü Bu himself had become a soldier young. He had watched countless men die. The infantry who would fail the breakout today and perish would not be a sacrifice especially different from those he had already seen.

It still hurt.

Xu Rong had seen that pain on his face, and he had come to lighten the load.

"I'll command the infantry. Men will die, of course. But I'll make them run with everything they have. Even if their lungs are bursting and they feel like they're dying—I'll make sure they die on the far side of the encirclement."

Xu Rong clapped him on the shoulder.

"So you look only forward. Focus on the breakthrough. Even if some infantryman is lucky enough to catch the cavalry's tail, it won't mean a thing if you don't punch through."

Lü Bu was taken aback by the encouragement from this Youzhou man, a soldier some ten years his senior. Encouragement from a man prophesied not to make it out alive had a strange quality to it.

At the same time, he found himself hoping that when he turned thirty, he might become someone like this Xu Rong.

He hid the grimness, let only the resolve to break the encirclement show on his face, and nodded.

The Han war drums rolled.

Tanshihuai rode forward until he could see it with his own eyes.

"So they mean to try breaking out."

Watching the Han and the Xiongnu thrash in desperation, Tanshihuai was about to sneer—

The amusement died on his face.

When the reports had first come in, he had dismissed it as a rumor invented by frightened soldiers about some unusually skilled Han officer.

"It really is a two-headed horse."

A chill ran through his chest, but Tanshihuai tried to think coldly. Such deformities were occasionally born among horses, cattle, sheep. They never lived long. The mother often died in the birthing.

"...They must have raised one that happened to survive, all the way to that size. Impressive, I'll grant. But with a body like that, it won't be able to run like a normal horse."

He was mistaken.

The two-headed red horse came flying down the mountainside and was at the Xianbei army's very noses in an instant. Before they could even respond, while the Xianbei ranks were still reeling, a sound like thunder splitting the sky reached even Tanshihuai's ears.

I was being shaken senseless, wedged between Lü Bu and Red Hare's head. But I couldn't afford to black out. Arrows I could trust to Lü Bu's martial skill—but not everyone could be Lü Bu. I had to watch whether they were following the plan.

The moment Lü Bu drew a great breath, I covered my ears. A rumble like thunder striking the Xianbei lines passed through my skull and down my back.

That was the signal.

The cavalry on red horses, or decorated red in any fashion, was a mix of Han and Xiongnu. They had assembled a unit solely for the breakthrough, regardless of original company or tribe, and that was how it had turned out.

The Han cavalrymen followed Lü Bu's cry.

"I!"

"Am Lü Bu!"

They had been told in advance to repeat these words, and the phrase wasn't long, so the Xiongnu could mimic it too.

"Lü Bu!"

"I!"

"Lü Bu!"

In this moment.

Lü Bu.

That name was carved deep into Tanshihuai's heart. If a name could be carved into the heart of a hero of Tanshihuai's caliber, then of course it came as terror to the Xianbei soldiers under him.

"That's him! That one! The living head and the dead head! The demon on the two-headed horse!"

"Ah... there wasn't just one demon..."

"We couldn't even kill one of them, and now there's this many?"

"Th-they keep coming! The demons!"

Tanshihuai issued orders to steady his men, but even those orders were drowned by the sound coming from the enemy lines. To Tanshihuai's ears, which understood the Han tongue, it was merely the enemy commander announcing his name as Lü Bu.

But to the great majority of the Xianbei, it was not.

"They're just repeating a name! It's nothing! Just a Han bastard on a deformed horse!"

But to Xianbei ears, Lü Bu sounded like the wailing of a host of demons.

The first stage seemed to be working. But at best it had made the Xianbei soldiers hesitate slightly. Given time, Tanshihuai could certainly restore order.

So the second stage had to begin.

I looked up at Lü Bu, nodded, and covered my ears again.

Lü Bu roared.

That was enough from the Han. Mixed with the Xiongnu soldiers' cries of Tengri, it would simply sound like Tengri to Xianbei ears.

What mattered was that many voices kept shouting it all at once, over and over. The droning roar came like a sinister sutra.

Lü Bu's own intimidation. The terror he had planted among the Xianbei in the previous battle. The red cavalry host mimicking that. Red cloth and leather slapped on in patches, so they looked like a death-cavalry whose skin had been flayed and torn away.

The Xianbei were watching that with their own eyes, and listening to our cries.

One word that both Han and Xiongnu were speaking—a word the Xianbei could understand too.

Tengri.

He who came sometimes in the form of a wolf, sometimes as a bird of prey—every people of the steppe believed in Him. The Xianbei included.

In other words: I, Luanti Bao, Grand Shaman of Tengri, hereby declare that the heretics shall be punished.

Lü Bu, and Red Hare—the beast that was as good as Lü Bu's other four legs—began their charge.

Come to think of it, some of the Northern Xiongnu went far west and came to be called the Huns. The Romans called the Hun king, Attila, the Scourge of God.

Then, Lü Bu. Master.

Before the breakout began, there was one thing I had spread among the Xiongnu.

I hadn't founded any kind of church yet, so Tengri faith differed in its transmitted traditions from tribe to tribe. There were even myths so different in content that you might wonder if they were the same "Tengri" in name ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠only—actually different gods. Among them were stories in which Tengri was a goddess.

People just unthinkingly assumed a male god, but Tengri-related legends themselves were full of goddesses, so it wasn't impossible that Tengri too was a goddess.

Well. Even if I left Tengri as a male god, a father god—I decided to make use of the goddesses. Modeled after a rather extreme warrior-cult I knew, that is.

I fabricated a mythology, mobilizing every scrap of religious knowledge I had, deep or shallow, and even the inaccurate impressions.

Ah, whatever. Beats going to hell.