Chapter Nine: Bloody Battle at Fucheng

The snow beneath the ice wall had long since been stained a dark, bruised brown by blood; frozen gore glistened with an eerie luster under the sunlight. Dark red ice crystals clung to Liu Chen’s silver armor, and the blood dripping from the tip of his spear froze into tiny, crimson beads the moment it struck the bricks.

He whipped his arm, sending shards of broken Wei armor flying from his spear shaft, cutting a sharp, mournful arc through the biting wind.

"My Lord, the oil jars are nearly exhausted!" Yan Ming’s great axe was notched and chipped, and blood from a shoulder wound had soaked through his armor. He roared, cleaving the head of a Wei soldier who had scaled the ramparts; the steaming brains splattered against the ice wall, instantly freezing into red and white slush.

Liu Chen caught a glimpse of the western wall, where the Wei had pried open a fissure in the ice. Several spears were thrusting up through the gap. Without hesitation, he kicked over a barrel of oil nearby.

Turbid rapeseed oil cascaded down the ice wall. He snatched a torch from a guard and hurled it; the tongue of flame snaked downward like a crimson whip, instantly turning that section of the wall into a sea of fire. Amidst the screams, several Wei soldiers fell from the ramparts, engulfed in flames, crashing into the human ladder below and throwing the ranks into chaos.

"Deng Ai is determined to pave this city with corpses!"

Meng Qi’s twin blades were already jagged. Gritting his teeth, he kicked a Wei corpse off the wall; it struck the climbing ladder below with a sound of snapping bones as crisp as cracking ice.

"My Lord, the able-bodied men can barely hold on!"

Inside the wall, a white-haired elder stumbled while clutching a stone, only to be struck in the chest by an arrow. The stone slipped from his hands and slammed into the ice wall. Coughing blood, he muttered, "Hold… we must hold…" A young woman poured boiling rice gruel onto the scaling Wei soldiers, only to be run through the abdomen by a short blade. Even as she collapsed, she held tight to the pottery bowl. Children darted between the corpses to retrieve arrows, their frost-cracked hands raw and blistered, yet they cared only for thrusting the arrowheads into the soldiers' hands.

Liu Chen tilted his head back, draining the strong spirits handed to him by a guard. The liquor burned down his throat, transforming into a raging flame in his chest. He lunged onto the watchtower, his spear pointing directly at the army below: "Men of Han, listen! Deng Ai is at his wit's end, and reinforcements from General Wei will arrive soon! As long as we hold today, you shall all be heroes of the Han. Fight to the death!"

"Fight to the death!"

"Fight to the death!"

The roar from the walls shook loose a flurry of ice dust. The defenders stepped over the corpses of their comrades to reform their lines, using broken arrows as spears and shattered shields as weapons. Even the wounded gritted their teeth, plugging the gaps in the ice wall with their own bodies.

Below the wall, Deng Ai leaned on his long sword, gasping for breath. A thigh wound had soaked his trousers in blood, leaving a long, crimson trail in the snow.

He stared at the flickering lights atop the wall, then suddenly tore off his helmet, his graying hair dancing wildly in the gale: "Men of Wei! Our supplies are gone, our reinforcements cut off—we have only death! The first to scale these walls shall be rewarded with a thousand bolts of Shu silk and ten beauties!"

A bestial roar erupted from the Wei ranks. Hundreds of soldiers, wrapped in rags, charged the city gate behind their shields. They piled frozen corpses into a rampart of flesh, climbing upward over the bones of their own kin.

A Wei soldier, his left arm severed, held a short blade between his teeth and actually crawled to the base of the parapet through a crack in the ice. Even as Liu Chen ran him through the throat with his spear, the man still clawed at the ice fissure with his mangled limb, buying a fleeting moment for his comrades behind him.

"Loose arrows!"

Liu Chen roared, grabbing a Zhuge repeating crossbow. Amidst the crisp clatter of the mechanism, twenty iron bolts poured down like a torrential rain. The soldiers beside Deng Ai fell in swathes. One bolt whistled past his ear, pinning itself to the banner behind him; the flag shuddered violently, and a jagged tear appeared in the great "Wei" standard.

"General! We must retreat!" Tian Xu’s left shoulder had been pierced by a bolt. Clutching his wound, he bellowed, "If we keep attacking, our brothers will freeze to death at the foot of these walls!"

Deng Ai whipped his head around, his bloodshot eyes fixed on him: "Freeze to death? Retreat, and we starve to death! If this city is not leveled today, thirty thousand men will become wandering ghosts of Fucheng!"

He suddenly grabbed a broken spear from the ground and charged toward the city gate.

"Follow me!"

The Wei army, like a swarm of enraged ants, surged upward over the mountain of corpses. The cracks in the ice wall grew more numerous. Liu Chen watched helplessly as a guard—a young soldier who had followed him from Chengdu—was impaled by several spears. Even as he breathed his last, the boy kept his teeth clamped firmly onto a Wei soldier’s ear.

"Yan Ming! Hold the left flank!"

Liu Chen parried a Wei squad leader who was scaling the wall, only to notice a fissure over ten feet long in the eastern ice wall. Several Wei soldiers were hacking at it frantically with axes.

"Meng Qi! Take the axemen and plug the gap!"

Just as Meng Qi led his men to the breach, the ice wall collapsed! Bricks and ice shards crashed down, burying a dozen Shu soldiers. Three Wei soldiers leapt onto the ramparts. The leading captain, with a thick beard, swung his blade at Liu Chen, but was cleaved in two by a great axe flying through the air—Yan Ming had thrown his own weapon and lunged at the breach with his bare hands.

"Use the corpses to fill it! Quickly!"

Liu Chen roared, kicking a pile of bodies into the breach.

The defenders frantically dragged corpses to seal the opening. Wei spears continued to thrust through the gaps, piercing two laborers mid-haul. An old woman, clutching her dead grandson, wailed as she threw herself at the breach, using her own body to block the spear points. Blood bubbled from her clothes, pooling into small, crimson puddles on the ice.

The Han had ruled Sichuan for decades, and thanks to the governance of Zhuge Liang, the hearts of the people were firmly with them.

By midday, the sun was obscured by smoke, and the world grew dim. The bodies on the wall were piled waist-high. The defenders fought atop the remains of their comrades, the blood-soaked ice beneath their feet crunching with every step.

Liu Chen’s spear had been bent into the shape of a crescent moon. Each thrust brought forth a spray of blood, but his arms grew heavier, and the figures of the Wei soldiers before him began to blur.

Below the wall, Deng Ai pushed away Tian Xu’s hand, standing with difficulty on his long sword, his gaze fixed on Liu Chen atop the wall. The young Prince of Beidi was using his spear tip to hoist a Wei flag, slowly tearing it to shreds in the biting wind.

"Rest for a moment," Deng Ai’s voice was as soft as a sigh, yet it sounded like a reprieve to the surrounding Wei soldiers.

The horn of retreat wailed, and the Wei forces receded like a tide. They trampled over the corpses of their own men as they fled; many slipped on the bloody ice, only to be crushed to death by the retreating soldiers behind them. Deng Ai was carried back by his guards, his thigh wound leaving a trail of blood with every step. He looked back at the ice city, soaked in blood, his face a mask of madness.

He knew that if he could not take Fucheng today, he would certainly be defeated, and the glory of his entire life would be reduced to nothing.

The cheers on the wall suddenly fell silent. Liu Chen looked at the mountain of corpses below and the frozen blood on the ice walls, then collapsed to his knees on the bricks. His silver armor made a harsh sound as it scraped against the frozen gore. He grabbed a handful of blood-streaked snow and shoved it into his mouth; the cold grains shattered between his teeth, mixed with the metallic tang of blood.

Yan Ming walked over, leaning on his broken axe, a piece of a Wei soldier’s shoulder blade still caught in the blade. He watched the backs of the retreating Wei soldiers, his voice as raspy as a broken gong: "My Lord… we have won."

Liu Chen did not look back, staring instead at the corpse of a Wei soldier below, who was clutching a scrap of Shu silk. It was a tribute from the weaving workshops of Chengdu, now soaked through with blood, yet the sun and moon totem embroidered upon it could still be seen.

"Won? No, this is but a temporary victory. Deng Ai will not give up." He watched as the enemy below did not depart, but instead began to reorganize their troops, knowing full well that they would not abandon the assault.