Chapter 130: Fierce Battle

"Brothers, hold on, hold on!"

"We can't retreat, we absolutely can't retreat — even if we die, we have to hold the Tartars back!"

"For your wives and children, for your fathers and mothers — fight the Tartars to the death, fight the Tartars to the death!"

"The Tartars don't have many men — hold on, brothers! Once it's light, the Battalion Commander's relief troops will come to save us!"

"......."

Although Song Xianggong had spent so many years in a bandit's den, he was, when it came down to it, still a xiucai who couldn't truss a chicken. So even with a blade in his hand, he never once charged to the front to fight the Qing soldiers.

But neither was he afraid, nor did he flee. Instead he stood atop a raised platform where everyone could see him, ceaselessly waving his blade at the Taiping Army men below who were resisting to the death, shouting to rouse their courage, to bring them hope.

The Qing army spotted Song Xianggong on the platform too. Some bannermen fired their muskets at the platform, but the range was too great and the balls did not hit him. After a brief crouch, he rose again and continued directing the battle. Seeing this, the entire rear camp was heartened.

It had to be said that Song Xianggong's presence at this moment was like a sea-anchoring needle. Though he did not personally join the fray against the Qing soldiers, his presence was visible to all, and his voice audible to all.

For the old and young of the rear camp, who had fallen into extreme panic yet were unwilling to submit to slaughter, he was the greatest dose of calming medicine. From ancient times to the present, a commander's courage is the soul of an army, the gall of an army.

Where the general stands, the soldiers stand!

"Brothers, fight the Tartars to the death, fight the Tartars to the death!"

"Kill the Tartars!"

More than three hundred men of the Taiping Camp, gathered from all quarters, desperately resisted the Qing assault before them. One after another they fell bravely into pools of blood, yet one after another more surged forward to take their place.

Their courage and their sacrifice succeeded in halting the Qing advance, bought breathing room for the Taiping Army elsewhere, and won a sliver of survival for the old, weak, women, and children fleeing the rear mountain.

In front of the mountain, the Qing army had already launched its assault up the slope. While Zhao Sihai led his men in a desperate defense, he still detached a hundred-man force to reinforce the rear mountain.

The squad commander leading it was Zhao Hu, a former bandit of Daqiao Mountain. By now he too was wounded in several places, yet he gritted his teeth and hurried toward the rear mountain at full speed.

More than two hundred women hid among the stone steles, some climbing atop the tall monuments, some concealing themselves in the shadows, hurling rocks at the Qing soldiers.

The women's strength was not great, and the stones they threw could not inflict fatal wounds on the Qing troops, but the flying stones, coming like hidden arrows, still caused the Qing army enormous trouble.

In the chaotic melee, the bannermen's muskets could not play to their advantage, and they could only fall to hacking with long sabers like the Green Standard troops.

Apart from the thirty-odd men earlier killed or wounded by the Taiping Army's thunderclap bombs, in the confusion more than ten Qing soldiers were struck down by the desperately resisting Taiping troops.

But as time passed and the Qing soldiers gradually concentrated, the Taiping Army's numerical advantage was steadily canceled out.

After all, their weapons were no match for the Qing army's, and their fighting skill was even less a match for these beasts who had spent years upon years killing people.

More and more men fell. The Taiping troops gathered around Song Xianggong now numbered fewer than a hundred, but including Song Xianggong himself, they still did not retreat.

They held their ground as if nailed there. The men no longer had any hope of survival; they only prayed that their fighting could hold these beasts back a little longer, could last until dawn.

Many, on the verge of death, were thinking the same question: when exactly would the Battalion Commander's relief troops arrive, and could their wives and children hold out until that moment?

"Fuck your ancestors! If you want this young master's life, wait for your next life!"

In the throng of fighters, a youth clutching a woodcutter's cleaver stood out with striking brilliance. This youth was Pan Mengzi, who had been thrown into prison to await death for accidentally injuring his master's son.

After he had been exchanged out of the Deqing jail that day, because he was young and his body too frail, Zhou Shixiang had not placed him in Chen Mo's death-squad unit, but had sent him to the rear camp for Song Xianggong to settle.

In the Taiping Army's rear camp, Pan Mengzi ate his fill until his belly was round and taut for the first time in his life, and for that reason he was willing to follow the Taiping Army with all his heart.

On the rear camp's march south, Pan Mengzi signed up for the security squad. He did not do it to rise in the world, but to repay a debt — to repay the Taiping Army for the gift of a full belly.

The wooden spear originally issued to Pan Mengzi had snapped days earlier in the breakout battle. This cleaver he had found in the woodshed of Yutai Temple.

To make the rusted blade sharper, Pan Mengzi had spent a full half-day grinding it against a stone, until the blade gleamed.

Now the cleaver was covered in blood, and its wooden handle had loosened from several over-forceful blows; the blade seemed ready to fly off the handle at any moment.

Pan Mengzi had never killed anyone before. In the breakout battle days earlier he had seen dead men, but he had not killed. His wooden spear had snapped only because he fell and struck the ground. Tonight was his first true battle, and his first kill.

What killing felt like, Pan Mengzi had already forgotten. He only knew that he had truly, surely cleaved a Qing soldier across the jaw, and had clearly heard that Qing soldier's scream.

Yet now, no matter how he searched his feelings, he could not say what killing tasted like. Nor did the situation allow him to calm his mind and savor the taste of killing, still less give him time to remember.

Qing soldiers were swarming in from every direction; he had to keep raising the cleaver and bringing it down. Though this motion did not let him kill a second Qing soldier, it gave him enough of a sense of safety.

Raise the blade, chop down, raise the blade, chop down...

The repeated motion, over and over, made Pan Mengzi's arms sore and numb, and numbed his mind as well. It was only when he brought the blade down once more and felt his arm suddenly jar, the web of his hand stung raw, that light appeared in his eyes.

I killed two Tartars, I killed two Tartars!

Pan Mengzi could not contain the excitement in his heart, and from his throat came an incoherent wild cry. His face and body were drenched in spattered blood; he looked as though he had crawled out of a pool of gore.

In front of him, a burly Qing soldier was clutching his head and howling in agony. In the firelight, everyone could see clearly that the Qing soldier's skull had been split open, blood and milky brain matter streaming down his face.

The battle went on, the slaughter went on. The death of one Qing soldier would not slow the advance of the rest. The horn calls from below the mountain drew nearer and nearer, and the war cries rising from the foot of the mountain grew louder and louder.