Chapter 517: New Orders

"Why was the whole camp shaved bald, but only Tan Ye wasn't? That's because Tan Ye here is brimming with righteous energy — the barber's pole backed off ten feet the moment it saw him, didn't dare come near to shave Tan Ye's head. Turn around and look, look at the soldier-lords who killed Tartars last night — they're all from Tan Ye's own Anqing Battalion. Go ask around all of Anqing: at the Sheng-Tang Ferry, who dares mess with Tan Ye."

Beside the valley road leading to Santun Camp, over a hundred common folk in tattered clothes sat crouched on the ground, looking up in terror at the scab-headed man spraying spit before them.

These commoners had all fled the Qing camp the night before. Hundreds had crossed the river, but many dared not seek out the government troops afterward, and with no dry clothes to change into, they froze to death in the dark on the escape route.

Tang Ershuan recognized the sound as Anqing's cannons. The shelling had stopped after they crossed the river. The two dared not keep wearing wet clothes through the freezing night, so they stripped off their garments and chased toward the cannon fire. Along the way they shouted in the Anqing accent and soon encountered several Anqing Scout Cavalry. After confirming their identities, they received aid. The scout cavalry wouldn't share their trousers, so Tan Laizi survived the night wrapped in a single piece of cotton armor.

Throughout the night they kept retreating westward. Behind them, the camp blazed with raging fire that only died out near daybreak. During the retreat they met many commoners who had fled other camps. Most of these people had crossed at the shallows and still had clothes to keep warm. Mingled among the army, they marched on until they had gone about twenty li before stopping to rest for the first time.

Now with daylight, the commoners could finally see the troops around them clearly. There were cannons, infantry, and some cavalry — everyone who had taken part in the night raid was mixed together. The commoners were still in shock. They had all been shaved bald by the Tartars and repeatedly terrorized by those estate stewards, who told them that if they escaped, the Ming Army would behead them anyway. Sure enough, the moment they got out of the Tartar den they ran into government troops. Terrified that these soldier-lords might borrow their heads for merit, they were in a state of panic when the short-jacketed soldiers began handing out food — mostly flatbread and the like, already far better than what the Tartars gave them, but there was even a small portion of fried sugar cakes, a delicacy many of the commoners had never tasted in their lives.

The commoners who received the delicacies didn't know if this was their last meal before execution. Just as they were wavering over whether to eat, a scab-headed man suddenly sprang forward. No one knew what this scabby fellow was about, and his accent was a bit strange; everyone listened in a fog.

The scabby man had no trousers, but bondservants lived like beasts of burden in the enemy camp and paid no mind to such things. What mattered was that the clothes on this scabby man were the same as those the soldier-lords wore. Though the lack of trousers was a bit odd, he was surely one of the soldier-lords' lot — otherwise he couldn't possibly have those clothes — and that status made him nobler than the commoners.

The commoners were especially afraid of this group of soldiers. The cannons the night before had raged on like thunder and lightning for ages; no one wasn't terrified. Today they saw those very cannons parked on the official road, while the soldiers and officers of Anqing Battalion were on the other side. Anqing Battalion's marching column was not permitted to mingle with commoners. Tang Ershuan had been called away by a clerk officer and the Pacification Commissioner for questioning, leaving only Tan Laizi in this area. With a few loud shouts, he had abruptly become the pillar everyone looked to.

Wearing only the cotton armor draped over his body, Tan Laizi stood amid the crowd and shouted at the people on the ground, "Know who set that fire last night?"

No one dared answer. Some of the bolder ones began biting into the food in their hands. This scabby man strode through the crowd. "Tan Ye here lit it. Look at you all, only caring about running for your lives — who still thought to burn the Tartar camp? Tan Ye here wasn't afraid. Took a torch right up to it, and seven or eight masters came at me... seven or eight Tartar soldiers with swords trying to stop me. Tan Ye didn't waste words on them — one slash, one down; two slashes, a pair..."

As Tan Laizi walked along, he casually snatched the hat off an old man's head, put it on his own, and kept going.

"Know what happened to those seven or eight Tartar soldiers?" Tan Laizi came before a young boy gnawing on a sugar cake, pointed a finger at him. "You tell me."

The boy jumped in fright and stammered, "They were all killed by the lord."

"Well, not all killed. This lord killed five. As the saying goes, don't chase a beaten foe — the few that ran, I let them go." Tan Laizi reached out, took the sugar cake from the boy's hand, and stuffed his own flatbread into the boy's grasp.

"Tan Ye risked heaven-scaled danger to burn the Tartar camp so you could all escape. So Tan Ye is your savior — shouldn't such a great kindness be repaid?"

Tan Laizi wolfed down the sugar cake in a few bites and stopped before a middle-aged farmer. His mouth was too full of sugar cake to speak, so he simply pointed at the farmer's trousers. This farmer, somehow having crossed the river with dry trousers, was perhaps shrewder than the others and hadn't waded through the water wearing them.

But under the banner of repaying kindness, no matter how shrewd he was, he dared not argue with Tan Ye. He obediently took off his trousers and handed them over. Tan Laizi accepted them, put them on, and tore a headscarf off a nearby commoner to use as a belt.

Just as he had tidied himself up and was about to go grab a few more sugar cakes, a sudden clamor rose from across the road. Tan Laizi turned his head to look — the Anqing soldiers were already rising to their feet.

Tang Ershuan had also come running back. That clerk officer was shouting toward them, "Tartar cavalry are in pursuit! Everyone move! Those who can't outrun them, head for the mountains!"

The commoners on the ground scattered in a frenzy, shrieking as they fled along the main road. Tan Laizi grabbed the sleeve of the young boy beside him. The boy, desperate to escape, could only shed his coat and run. Tan Laizi wrapped the coat over his cotton armor and ran westward after Tang Ershuan.

Thirty li east of Santun Camp, through Pang Yu's telescope, smoke wreathed the distant river valley. The great fire the night before had burned down a camp, spreading along the valley's wind currents, and only died out at daybreak.

Beside him, Tu Dianli's voice reported, "Last night our battalion conducted a night raid, engaging the enemy across the river. We shelled two enemy camp locations, firing a total of two hundred and thirteen rounds. Two men died from arrow wounds, five were injured. The engagement ignited a major fire in one enemy position, which then triggered a night panic in the camp. On the return march we traveled alongside the household retainers of Xuanfu Main Battalion. We were later pursued by several hundred enemy cavalry. Fighting while retreating, seven men went missing. One cannon, its wheel carriage damaged, was pushed into the river channel. Our battalion gathered several hundred commoners who had fled across the river. After the Tartar pursuit, most of the commoners fled into the mountains. Those who followed us here number over seventy, along with twelve head of livestock."

Pang Yu was somewhat surprised to hear there were livestock, but he did not press further, guessing they were mules or the like.

"Among those who escaped, three belong to our battalion: one distant scout captured by the Jurchen Slaves near Linqing, one scout cavalryman, and one Fort Chief Tan Erlin."

"Tan Laizi?" Pang Yu looked at Tu Dianli oddly. Ever since his conspicuous grain-buying in Xuzhou, Tan Laizi had been put in charge of grain supply. Nearly every officer in the battalion knew him. When he suddenly went missing at Linqing, everyone assumed he was dead. The Logistics Division had already struck his name from the register. No one expected him to return.

"He crossed the river together with Tang Ershuan of the Scout Squad."

"The Tang Ershuan who captured Sweeping King alive?"

"The very same."

A wave of relief washed through Pang Yu. He knew both of these men. To find they were still alive was truly an unexpected joy.

"Those who escaped from the enemy camp after capture — the Pacification office had no prior regulation for this. Official Jiang said they must be treated as captives for now and thoroughly interrogated. A rough questioning was conducted en route. Tang Ershuan had his head shaved; Tan Laizi did not. Both testified that they set fires during the night raid. Cross-checking with the fire locations confirms their account. Moreover, at the ignition point there was a Tartar plague, which the Tartar army also calls Big Head Plague."

Pang Yu frowned. "Bold and fierce, but to go set fires with plague there... The Tartars have widespread plague outbreaks. The escaped commoners are to be quartered in separate camps. Soldiers who had contact with them must also camp separately."

"The officers and men who had direct contact with those two total twenty-three. Those who had contact with the other commoners who crossed the river number over a hundred. Everyone who took part in the night raid is implicated — all must be quartered separately." Tu Dianli looked up at Pang Yu. "The Tartars have seized the mountain pass leading to Qingshan Pass, and we've lost another two squads here. This battle is impossible to fight."

Pang Yu was not disappointed. Given the Anqing Battalion's current state, they were incapable of effective combat to begin with. Yesterday they had scouted the river section with manageable depth in daylight, then crossed at night to shell from the far bank — precisely to avoid direct engagement, merely exploiting the weakness of the Tartars' enormous and chaotic population to sow panic and disorder. Now with two fewer squads for combat, Pang Yu was actually less troubled, because he had at most two hundred men left who could fight — utterly insignificant to the battle situation.

"Anqing Battalion has already given its all. We will not fight our men to the last."

Pang Yu turned to look back. A large body of troops was approaching from the direction of Santun Camp — all units of the King-Rallying Army. It seemed Sun Chuanting had not yet fully given up. Pang Yu sighed. "Let them go fight."

On the twenty-third day of the third month, cannon fire shook the heavens across several hilltops south of Taiping Fortress in Qian'an.

This was a critical passage from Ji Garrison to beyond the border. Roads ran along both sides of the river channel, leading all the way to Qingshan Pass.

From the third day of the third month, the Qing army had occupied the mountain pass south of Taiping Fortress, confirming their exit route via Qingshan Pass and Qingshan Gate. Starting from the fifth day of the third month, the Qing Left Wing moved first, and the column began streaming endlessly out through the main road toward the border.

The Qing army numbered over three hundred thousand, with countless livestock and carriages. Their camps stretched from Qian'an all the way to Qingshan Pass, the total column length exceeding a hundred li. There was nothing secret about their direction of movement.

The Supervisor Battalion and the two Shanxi Garrison units under Chen Xinjia's command were transferred to Sun Chuanting, but the King-Rallying Army still had few usable troops. Due to poor logistics, each unit had suffered severe attrition during successive maneuvers from desertion, injury, and disease. The remaining forces were exhausted men and spent horses, incapable of large-scale operations.

Sun Chuanting could only stick to the original pattern: avoid a major pitched battle with the Qing army, dispatch units for harassment raids, and exploit the weakness of the Qing army's overextended camps to try to gain some battle achievements.

Last time at the Yongding River, neither Yang Guozhu nor Wang Pu had gained any battle achievements, putting them at a disadvantage in the post-battle accountability reviews. This time they fought several engagements in earnest. Both men's household retainers were relatively elite. Striking through the mountain region from the Fengrun direction to harass, they successfully raided two Qing camps, taking over ten Qing heads each and reportedly liberating more than seven thousand commoners. Cao Bianjiao and Zhou Yuji also won a victory in the Santun Camp direction, liberating over a thousand commoners.

Most of the Liao Garrison remained in Ji Garrison, claiming they would attack from Yutian and not taking the same route as the King-Rallying Army. Pang Yu naturally did not believe they would exert themselves in battle.

Overall, the Ming Army was still a heap of loose sand. The various garrisons together had a paper strength of sixty to seventy thousand men, but the actual usable force was perhaps around ten thousand, with even fewer elite household retainers. Facing the sprawling, chaotic Qing camps, the Ming Army could not organize an effective attack, much less mount a coordinated assault. They could only fight in isolated harassment actions. Though they scored minor gains, against the Qing army's vast numbers it was barely a scratch. Under the Qing cavalry's proactive attacks, the Ming Army was unable to sever any single point along the road from Qian'an to Qingshan Pass.

During these ten-plus days in between, Sun Chuanting came under immense pressure from the Emperor and the Ministry of War, but the army in his hands could not fulfill the Ministry's tasks. He could only maneuver in his memorials, repeatedly reporting shifts in the Qing army's movements — that they might change direction from Jianchang Camp toward Lengkou to exit the border, that he had led troops there but the Tartars had changed direction again, resulting in no battle achievements. In reality, given the Qing army's scale, their direction was very easy to judge. So Yang Sichang did not trust Sun Chuanting at all, believing he was fooling the court. Their relationship deteriorated sharply. In the imperial approvals returned from the Capital, the Emperor's reprimands of Sun Chuanting grew harsher each time.

Anqing Battalion remained in the Santun Camp direction. In Pang Yu's view, the situation here was simple: if they had sufficient troops, concentrating an attack on the two mountain passes leading into the hills could cut the Qing column in two. But the Ming Army simply lacked that capability and was instead beaten all the way back to Santun Camp.

By the twenty-first, the Qing Right Wing's main column had also passed through the mountain pass. The Qing rear guard began to withdraw, and only then did the King-Rallying Army follow in pursuit to Taiping Fortress.

Pang Yu did not participate in the fighting, merely observing from the rear with his telescope. Now that they were no longer intercepting the Qing army's vanguard, every garrison surged with momentum during the pursuit, repeatedly contesting several hilltops at Taiping Fortress against the Tartars in fierce combat.

But with the King-Rallying Army's strength, it was impossible to crush the Qing rear guard, and the Qing rear guard was even less likely to turn back and maul the Ming Army. No matter how fierce the fighting, it was just garbage time. Once the Qing army's tail passed through Qingshan Pass, this round of king-rallying operations would be over.

At that moment, Pang Ding came to his side. Pang Yu lowered the telescope, and Pang Ding immediately leaned in and said, "Official Shen from the Ministry of War has sent word: Supreme Commander Xiong has sent an urgent report to the Ministry — the Western Camp shows signs of rebellion. He requests Lord Pang to discuss in person." (Note 1: Historically, Xiong Wencan's urgent report reached the Ministry of War before the sixth day of the fourth month.)