Chapter 5
Zhao Yun awoke and found himself in an unfamiliar chamber. After gaining his bearings, he attempted to get up, but a wave of sharp pain shot all the way through him and he fell back upon the mattress he was on.
Sunlight poured through the window of the room, but he couldn't manage to see out of it from his vantage point upon the bed. After a while he attempted to get up again, slower this time, but the familiar pain returned and he was forced to remain still. How long had be been asleep?
The young warrior tried to remember how he got there, but found that his memory was hazy. There had been some sort of battle. Had he been wounded? He tried as hard as he could to remember, but it was too difficult. His head hurt.
He closed his eyes and allowed his fatigue to carry him back off to sleep. It was all he could do to avoid the pain that grew stronger as the minutes passed. Possibly because of medication, he quickly faded back into slumber. As he did, he began to see things… lines of enemy soldiers coming toward him and loud yelling in a foreign tongue. These things pulled upon his memory as if trying to tell him something, but what was it?
The visions became more vivid. He couldn't just see these things now, but he could feel them, and smell them. The enemy soldiers, there was something wrong with them. They were…. Roman soldiers!
"No!" he screamed, sitting up completely in his bed. The pain was overwhelmingly strong, but this time he ignored it. He got to his feet and wrapped the silk sheets around his naked body and made his way, with some difficulty, to the door of the chamber. His lord needed him!
When he got out into the hallway he realized that he was in the Imperial Palace of Cheng Du, Shu's capital city. He had only gotten a short ways down the hall when a servant girl stopped him. "My lord, you must return to your chamber," she pleaded.
"No," Zilong muttered through clenched teeth as he made his way along the wall. "The Romans are coming." She continued pleading with him as handmaidens poured out into the hallway. They were all pleading with him to stop. "Please," Zhao Yun said. "I must find my lord."
He pushed past them as they did their best to stop him, grabbing him by his powerful arms and pulling helplessly. Suddenly, he spotted a large group running down the hallway toward them. Liu Bei was among them! "My lord," Zhao Yun exclaimed, and then promptly fell to the ground exhausted.
With difficulty, the men who accompanied the Emperor of Shu carried Zhao Yun back to his chamber and left him there alone with Liu Bei. "My lord… I couldn't stop them," Zilong said.
"Don't worry about that now," the Emperor said kindly, taking the warriors hand in his own. "As long as you are safe, that is all that matters."
"Please…" Zhao Yun said with difficulty. "I must know what happened. Have the Romans been stopped?" Liu Bei looked away without answering. "I must know my lord. My honor is at stake."
"We have slowed their advance considerably," the Emperor said reluctantly, still not looking at Zhao Yun. "Zhuge Liang's tactics have forced them to remain in combat formations on their long march here from Jian Wei…"
"Where are they now?" the young warrior asked, sitting up once more. Liu Bei knew that there would be no way to stop him once he knew.
He let go of Zilong's hand and said softy, "We're holding them off at the River Min, but Zhuge Liang says it's only a matter of time before they must fall back to Cheng Du for our last stand."
Zhao Yun knew that that was only a few miles away. He jumped from the bed instantly. "I must go my lord. We cannot let them cross that river!"
"You must stay here Zilong," the Emperor said without much conviction. "You have not yet fully recovered." To the warrior, Liu Bei looked like one who had lost all hope of victory and it pained Zhao Yun more than any physical wound to see him like this.
He dropped to one knee. "By the will of heaven," he said fiercely, "I will drown them in the River." He looked up and locked eyes with the Emperor. "I swear to you I will stop them once and for all."
Zilong got to the Shu camp just as dark, ominous clouds began spilling over the Qing Cheng mountain range and into the valley. After asking around, he found Zhuge Liang who was greatly surprised to see him. "Zhao Yun," he said in amazement in the confines of the command tent. "You have recovered this quickly?"
"Protection of my lord comes before my own security Prime Minister."
Zhuge Liang smiled and put his brilliant white fan down as he took a seat. The look of defeat the Liu Bei had worn was upon the Prime Minister's face as well, but not nearly as noticeable. Only one who knew the man as well as Zilong did would have recognized it. "They are far stronger than I had imagined," the prime minister said, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he relaxed for what must have been the first time since the campaign had begun.
"What has happened in my absence?" Zilong asked, sitting down across from him. As he did, the familiar sharp pain came back. It was only when he remained still that the pain became almost unbearable.
"We've been able to lure them into several ambushes and have conducted several successful hit and fade attacks. For the most part, it has kept them in combat formation the whole way here. That in turn bought us just enough time to call for the other generals and have them come so we could make our stand here on the river. The Romans receive almost a constant stream of reinforcements though."
"Who's here?" Zhao Yun shifted in his seat and tried to hide the fact that he was in pain.
"Everyone except Guan Yu and Guan Ping. They remained in Hanzhong to protect against Cao Cao should he decide to attack again."
"Have you learned anything about their leadership?"
"They are led by a man known as Vinicus, a young general about your age. He was wounded in one of our ambushes…" The minister paused. "You may remember meeting him in the pass at Jian Wei." Zhuge Liang was watching Zilong closely for a reaction and he certainly got one.
Zhao Yun's face turned red as he thought of the man. I should have killed him when I had the chance, he thought to himself.
Zilong stood up quickly. "Point me toward the shallowest part of the river. I will bring you his head!"
The Minister looked up at him and sighed when he recognized the same look of possession that Zhao Yun had worn the last time he saw him. "Didn't you learn anything in your last encounter?"
"I must have my revenge," Zilong shouted angrily.
Zhuge Liang could tell that nothing would stop him.
The thunderstorm had let loose a torrent of rain upon the land. The river was rising slowly and Zhao Yun knew that he might not be able to get back across, but still he pressed his horse forward through the rushing waters. The idea of not being able to return was not foremost in his mind though. That spot was reserved for Vinicus, the enemy general that he had come so close to killing in that encounter that had started it all.
His horse finally got to the west bank of the river and pulled them out of the rushing water. Zhao Yun pushed his long black hair out of his face and shouted at the enemy camp. "Come out here and face me Vinicus. I know you're in there!"
The archers upon the walls had their bowstrings pulled back and seemed to be waiting for some sort of signal to fire. It never came though. Instead, the gates of the camp opened and a procession of soldiers on horseback came out to meet him. Through the downpour, Zhao Yun couldn't tell if the General he sought was among them.
When they were about twenty yards off, they all stopped in their tracks except one lone rider who continued trotting forward toward Zilong. There seemed to be someone standing next to the horse escorting it.
As they approached, Zhao Yun lifted his spear to be ready for any surprise attack. The man was unlike any opponent he had ever encounted the way he rode out so slowly and confidently. With his men behind him, perhaps he felt safer, Zilong thought.
The man slowly became visible as though materializing out of the falling rain. When he came into focus Zilong gasped at the site before him. Never, in his entire life, had he seen such a shocking site.
The man's face was horribly disfigured as thought he had been burned alive and had, by some perverse mistake of heaven, survived the ordeal. Somehow though, Zilong knew that it was the same man. The person who Zhao Yun at first thought was leading the horse was actually the Chinese slave-child he had seen with the Roman general on their first encounter. At the time, the boy seemed to be serving the Romans out of his own free will. Now though, he was strapped to the saddle of the horse by a leather strap around his neck that bound him tightly to the animal. His face was swollen and bruised as though he had been beaten extensively.
The man began speaking in Latin, carefully articulating his words through the charred portions of his lips that hadn't been completely burned off. Zilong could hardly look at the man without feeling sick, but he maintained eye contact nonetheless.
"You are not the only one who has survived death," the boy translated, his voice quivering in fear. Hearing the boy was too much for Zhao Yun. He lunged forward, with his spear raised, ready to slay the creature before him.