Lü Bu, Become a Legend (2)

Lü Bu, Hou Cheng, Wei Xu, and Song Xian drove straight at Tanshihuai.

They were only four men, and their arms were still crude next to the ideal I carried in my head — but the force behind them was unmistakable. A blade only needs to be sharp at the point. Once it has forced a gap, the mass of iron behind it has only to hold.

Lü Bu already overwhelmed any man in a fight of flesh against flesh. In the contest of horse against horse — of bulk and raw power — Red Hare was just as overwhelming. Barded in armor, the stallion was all but impossible to wound. Even if someone aimed for the gaps in the barding — an eye, a jaw — they could barely land a hit, and any arrow that somehow found its way was swatted aside by Lü Bu.

A cavalryman sat high. The Xianbei army's existing weapons could not even reach Red Hare's exposed hooves beneath the barding. Dismounting to go after those hooves on foot might have offered a chance — but the next instant would certainly be death, and there was no guarantee such an attack would succeed anyway. Cavalry is stronger than infantry only while mounted. The moment a horseman becomes a foot soldier, he is thrown into a style of fighting he does not know, and often becomes something less than an infantryman. The ferocity of nomad cavalry, after all, is the ferocity of the horse.

"They've broken through!"

The shout rose around me at the same instant I clenched my fist.

Behind Lü Bu — now a cataphract — Hou Cheng, Song Xian, and Wei Xu followed in the same heavy armor, forcing the Xianbei line open. Anyone who looked even slightly as if they might get in Lü Bu's way was cut down by the horse archers coming up behind. The Xianbei tried to answer the Han horse archers with arrows of their own, but they could do nothing about Lü Bu driving straight at them, and they went down. Once their ranks were pierced, they could neither drive him back nor rebuild a line.

Only then did the Xianbei realize where the point of his lance was aimed. They tore down what remained of their defensive line and crowded in around Tanshihuai. Against Lü Bu, there was nothing to do but wrap him thicker, and thicker still.

A whistling signal-arrow split the sky from our own lines. Hozheng had been watching the battle unfold ever since Huchuquan announced Lü Bu's arrival. Seeing Lü Bu drive a spear-straight path toward Tanshihuai, he judged the moment ripe for a pincer and ordered the entire army forward.

It rankled, given how he had kept the Right Wise King's line — myself included — on a short leash. But for the sake of victory, I had to hope Hozheng's command succeeded. Encircling the Xianbei from front and rear was the right call. An enemy you think you might break only actually breaks when you hit them all at once.

"Liao! We're going too!"

"Senior brother?"

"This is the battle that brings Tanshihuai down. My banner can't be the only one left sitting in the rear!"

He was slow. He did not stop. Lü Bu punched through the Xianbei net with a cruelty that was almost honest, grinding their ranks under the combined weight of his own body and Red Hare's. Beneath the barding, the great horse's red coat rippled — and it came on like death itself.

While Helian and Kuitou stood stunned with swords in their hands, the Han advisors were faster.

"Get the Khagan into a wagon!"

Those same advisors had been urging him for some time: if he insisted on commanding in person, at least do it reclining in a wagon. Tanshihuai had rejected every such petition and insisted on directing the battle from horseback. That time was over. The Han advisors were now prepared to force him into a wagon even if it killed them.

Helian called his nephew.

"Kuitou! You take the Khagan and the eastern Da-ren and get out! The enemy came from the east — head north for now!"

The western line was still holding. Lü Bu had not yet arrived. A sliver of time — the last chance to extract Tanshihuai. Against his own stubbornness, or his own hopes, the illness had only grown worse. There was no expecting a tactic from him that would slip this crisis. All they could do was hold, buy time, while Tanshihuai escaped.

"Yilü Chuyan! Chijianluola! Yanluyu! Jiazui! Queju!"

The first three were western Da-ren; the last two, central. With the eastern Da-ren already gone with his nephew Kuitou, Helian meant to hold with the western and central chieftains.

Pull the western line back and reinforce the main camp?

He couldn't. The way the Xiongnu were coming, even what they were holding now would collapse. And even if they managed to withdraw as far as the main camp, the left arm of the western line — the southernmost of their own — would never make it in time. The road would be cut.

"Hold the main camp and shift it west!"

He left his father's banner, the Xianbei Khagan, standing where it was. The enemy seemed to be charging the flag. He would use it to draw their eyes while his father's wagon escaped.

Fortunately, the central and western Da-ren followed Helian's orders without argument. Betraying Tanshihuai and Helian here was no guarantee the Xiongnu or the Han would spare them. Betrayal was something you committed carefully, once you were out of danger and had room to breathe. Besides, even if they lost this war, no one could say how the Xianbei's internal politics would run afterward. Had they never lost a battle in all the years they followed Tanshihuai? This defeat would be the same. It was a small thing. The real question was elsewhere.

When Tanshihuai left this world, they would have to decide whether to follow Helian — or seize the hegemony of the Xianbei for themselves. So first they had to get out of here alive. That was how the Da-ren judged it.

The Xianbei main body slid slowly west. Lü Bu's charge, aimed at the Xianbei Khagan banner, veered a fraction off its line. The main camp and the western defensive line came together, back to back. The plan was to roll the line up from the south like drawing in a net, fold everyone into the main camp, then ease north. The moment Tanshihuai's safety was confirmed, they would run without looking back and make for Mobei. That was how nomad cavalry usually withdrew.

But just as Helian and the Da-ren had failed to grasp the value of stirrups, they had also underestimated what Lü Bu could do as a cataphract.

Call it bad luck. Call it fortune that held.

As the main camp shifted, the line of Lü Bu's charge and Helian's position as commander twisted slightly out of alignment. A scream of sheer astonishment — and then a colossal rider of the Iron Shock Cavalry smashed through the last screen around the Xianbei Khagan.

Lü Bu's glittering eyes hunted for prey. Tanshihuai was not here. And Helian and the remaining Da-ren were dressed at roughly the same level — which was its own problem.

"You!"

Lü Bu's Madao punched through the body of the western Da-ren Chijianluola. The lance, damaged by the long charge, finally snapped. The shock of the charge was spent. From here on, it was Lü Bu's horsemanship as it had always been.

He seized the twin ji hooked at his back and drove straight at another western Da-ren, Yanluyu. Yanluyu's neck and waist split at the same instant.

The last western Da-ren, Yilü Chuyan, was quicker.

I am a Da-ren of the Xianbei — and a royal grandson of the Xiongnu besides. I will not die here.

His house were descendants of the Donghu who had fled to Mount Xianbei, people who had come out with the Xianbei when they struck the Northern Xiongnu and settled the Mobei Steppe. But at some point a legend had begun to circulate in Yilü Chuyan's family: that a princess named Tuoba was their ancestor.

When Li Ling, a general of Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, surrendered to the Xiongnu, Liu Che slaughtered Li Ling's entire clan. Pitying him, the Xiongnu Grand Chanyu gave Li Ling a daughter and made him a king — and that daughter, the legend said, was the Tuoba princess. It was probably a story that attached itself while they were absorbing and ruling the Northern Xiongnu. Yilü Chuyan believed it. More precisely, believing it was useful in every direction. Before the Northern Xiongnu he could throw out his chest and say, "I am the descendant of your princess!" Before Han advisors he could claim kinship: "My ancestor Li Ling was driven from the Han unjustly too."

And here, of all places, the absurd thought that the line of the Tuoba princess and Li Ling could not be allowed to end on this field was what moved him. He was faster than Lü Bu's ji. How quick he was needs no further comment. He had no pretext for fleeing alone like a coward, so he grabbed Helian's reins as well.

That was how Yilü Chuyan and Helian saved their lives.

Liu Bei approached the field from a slightly different direction.

"We've done well enough so far. No need for us ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to step in."

He did not follow Luanti Bao. He drove his own men south — toward the Xianbei who were about to be cut off on the southern end as their western line collapsed.

No one would feel the fact of this defeat more viscerally than they would. Victory and defeat are the daily bread of the military arts, the saying ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠went — but only generals could murmur that with any composure. For soldiers, defeat was terror. Defeat was the dark that did not end. Defeat was death. Or despair.

Liu Bei looked at those soldiers and spun the swords in both hands, as if he might burst forward at any moment and butcher them. Instead, he shouted — in the Wuhuan tongue he had grown used to in Youzhou, drinking with them and trading blows with them alike.

The western line finally gave way under the Xiongnu, who had been fighting with poison in their teeth. The force I led — heavy with Wuhuan — mixed into Qiangqu and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Yufuluo's columns and drove into the breach. Zhang Liao stayed at my side, watching for any stray arrow. Fortunately none came. Amusingly, Huchuquan was doing the same thing. Whether I had won him over, whether he was running his own calculation, or whether he simply felt competitive with Zhang Liao — I couldn't tell.

Unlike infantry, who give ground a little at a time, the Xianbei wheeled at once and bolted for their own main camp. The result was a dense, hopelessly tangled cavalry mass. I could see Lü Bu in front of it.

Even Lü Bu. Even a cataphract. There is a culminating point to every offensive. A charge has a limit.

But then a strange thing happened.

The moment I rode toward Lü Bu to discuss how we should take Tanshihuai, Red Hare — who had seemed to hesitate against the wall of Xianbei cavalry — suddenly kicked the earth and sprang forward. It was not only Lü Bu. Hou Cheng, Song Xian, and Wei Xu — three more cataphracts — smashed the last screen around the Xianbei main camp together. And inside that screen, beneath the banner that read Xianbei Khagan, a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠terrible scream went up.

Was this the effect? Just being nearby was enough to give the cataphracts the strength for one more charge?

I still didn't really understand how a numerically expressed ability bonus actually worked, but I hoped it was something like this. Or that later, when I commanded heavy cavalry myself, my mind would start firing and creative tactics would keep coming.

Anyway.

The Xianbei, their main camp being overrun, were coming completely apart. We had not managed a perfect encirclement, though, and a considerable number were fleeing north. We did not have the strength to stop them as well. Momentum and capacity are not the same thing.

Then, far to the east — the direction Lü Bu had come from — another army appeared.

For an instant I thought they were Xianbei reinforcements, and a chill ran through me. They were not. They were ours.

The infantry were clearly Han. The cavalry, though… neither Han, nor Wuhuan, nor Xianbei, nor Xiongnu. A force of strangers. I felt less welcome than a peculiar unease.

Perhaps that unease came from the banner marked Dong.