Chapter 444: Triangle

The bondservants who had once again changed masters wept bitterly and vowed to turn over a new leaf, after which they received rather decent treatment.

Some of them had their wounds debrided and stitched by the army medic, and then everyone got to eat fragrant horse-meat soup with flatbread.

In the seventeenth century, so-called "fragrant" horse-meat soup did not exist. When dead horses were eaten in the ranks, conditions were never that good — you simply tossed a handful of salt into the pot, boiled the horse meat until cooked, and that was it.

That flavor was, of course, perfectly fine to the Mongols and Banner Troops who ate their meat half-raw and half-bloody, but if anyone dared serve this stuff — reeking of gamy stench and streaked with blood — to a Transmigrator... his stern would be in serious trouble.

Seasonings are hardly high technology. You simply grind southern-produced star anise, cassia bark, and the like into powder, then mix them together in proportion. Not just Five-Spice Powder — everyday seasonings including Thirteen Spices, Fried Chicken Powder, and so on had long been concocted by the Transmigrators and sold everywhere for money.

Among the military supplies that arrived in Tianjin with the northbound fleet, there was also "Standard Seasoning." These oilpaper-sealed packs all had standard gram weights. As long as the cook, based on the weight of water in the pot, opened the prescribed number of packs in proportion, the soldiers could enjoy Five-Spice Horse-Meat Soup, Thirteen-Spice Horse-Meat Soup, Cumin Horse-Meat Soup... In short, the taste was not bad, absolutely swallowable.

And so the surrendered bondservants got to eat big chunks of horse meat and flatbread.

After eating, still somewhat shaken, they met a Ming official dressed in a full set of bright-red official robes. The familiar style of official robe put the bondservants much more at ease — these soldiers in their bizarre green jackets had left them completely at a loss.

Zhang Zhongqi, in theory, was not permitted to wear a red robe. His actual rank was nowhere near sufficient, but at the moment no one cared about that issue.

After the "high official" in the red robe made his entrance, he first introduced himself: a general who had rushed from the Great Ming's south for the King's Rescue.

Next, Lord Zhang made his stance clear to these bondservants: so long as they cooperated properly, obeyed orders, and followed commands, then not only would all previous matters be wiped clean, but they would also receive reward silver.

Furthermore, once this business was concluded, Lord Wang also promised that in the future, everyone would be allotted land and assigned bondservants of their own at an estate in the south called "Philippines."

After this whole set of soft-and-hard pacification measures, regardless of what these bondservants truly thought, at least on the surface they all displayed a sufficient willingness to cooperate.

That was enough. Willingness to cooperate was all that mattered; next, some people could take up their posts.

The two Intelligence Department bosses, who had been observing this group from the side for half a day, each picked out one bondservant and brought them up onto the city wall.

Based on the Transmigrators' extensive workplace experience, both of these bondservants belonged to the timid, trouble-avoiding type. So after these two were selected, they were fitted with armor again and assigned to the southwest and southeast corner towers.

These two corner towers faced exactly the corridor-like mountain path running west to east at the foot of Santun Camp.

According to the bondservants' testimony, during these days, every other day, or at most every two days, a messenger from the Zunhua direction — the front line in contact with the Ming Army — would pass through, reporting all-clear along the way, with the final stop being Yongping City, where the Second Beile Amin was stationed.

Normally, the messenger would set out eastward from Zunhua at first light. The distance between Zunhua and Santun Camp was exactly forty li, so the messenger would pass through around nine in the morning.

This was precisely the Transmigrators' purpose in urgently recruiting the bondservants: to fool the messenger.

This time, the timing for taking up the post was just right. Less than an hour after the two bondservants went to the corner towers, a Special Operations Team member serving as an observation post three li to the west sent a message: three Tartar cavalrymen were approaching along the mountain path.

"Clop-clop-clop" — the sound of hooves rang out. When the riders reached the base of Santunying Fortress, a familiar head immediately popped out from the western corner tower: "Lin Bao, how's the situation up ahead?"

Those who could be sent out to toil on the road at a time like this were, naturally, bondservants of the banners. Zunhua was currently under military pressure, and the regular Tartar soldiers were all inside the city preparing for battle, so these three riders and the man on the wall happened to know each other.

The rider, looking up across the moat, discovered that the one asking the question was the familiar Lan Na. He cupped both hands around his mouth and shouted: "Zunhua is quiet. The Ming dogs dare not approach."

The bondservant in the corner tower beamed: "Good, good. Looks like the brothers can enjoy a stretch of peace."

"You bet." The rider named Lin Bao hollered back: "Rest easy gnawing your bones."

After shouting, the three riders resumed their journey and swaggered off, even waving at the last moment toward the other bondservant who had poked his head out from the southwest corner.

What the three riders failed to observe was that the bondservant named Lan Na, in the brief span of those few sentences, had broken out in a dense layer of fine sweat across his forehead — having a dagger pressed against his lower back was truly an unpleasant sensation.

Fortunately, everything passed without alarm or danger, and in the end the messenger continued on his way without any suspicion. This harmonious scene also indirectly saved the messenger's life: had anything gone wrong just then, those three riders would certainly have been shot dead at the first moment by the Special Operations Team members lying in ambush behind the city wall.

In that case, the troops would have been forced to launch the next stage of the offensive prematurely, and that was not what Qian Tieshan and the others wanted.

Not long after the messenger left, the lookout post positioned to the east sent word: the Tartar cavalry had left the city three li behind and were continuing eastward.

After waiting a while longer, once the lookout posts positioned at both ends of Santun Camp reported that all was normal, the south gate's drawbridge was lowered. At the same moment, from Jingzhong Mountain Pass across the mountain path, a long column of pack horses burst out, crossed the valley of just a few hundred meters, and charged straight into the city.

The pack-horse column had been waiting behind the mountain for a long time. Now, because of the war, the mountain path was utterly devoid of Ming people, so as long as they waited for the messenger to pass, they could transfer the supplies.

It is worth mentioning that early this morning, Daoist Xuanchengzi from Jingzhong Mountain had come down the mountain with several peers of the Three Realms (an Abbot, a Buddhist Abbess) intending to pay a visit to the troops... Last night, standing on the mountaintop, they had sipped tea while clearly watching the meteor shower traced by the bullets below.

In the end, this group was chased back — no one was permitted to descend the mountain for the next half month. One person descends, the whole village gets sterilized — no, wrong, the whole village gets slaughtered!

After the pack-horse column entered the city, they quickly unloaded the supplies stockpiled in the valley. Then, on each horse, two bamboo baskets were hung, one on the left and one on the right, containing a few human heads and covered with a cloth on top — anyone who didn't know would think they were selling melons.

Having changed out their "cargo," the pack-horse column soon left the city again, returning to the valley to continue reloading supplies.

Back and forth like this several times, all the supplies were transported into Santun Camp.

On the pack-horse column's final trip out of the city, an extra one hundred Flying Tiger Battalion soldiers appeared.

There was a reason this unit showed up: apart from those bondservants who had voluntarily abandoned darkness for the light, the remaining captives — genuine Tartars and loyalist diehards — would be escorted all the way to Tianjin.

These hardcore elements had had neither food nor water since the previous night, and many had also suffered minor wounds and lost blood, so they were now all listless and dispirited, their hands bound to the saddles, unable to muster any will to resist under the gleaming saber blades.

Driving all destabilizing factors out of Santun Camp was essential. Since the battle had progressed rather smoothly and achieved the optimal outcome of the pre-battle plan, early that morning, two hundred men of the Guard Battalion reserve had already set out on horseback from Tianjin, heading this way.

In the next step, once these two hundred soldiers reached Santun Camp, they would take responsibility for defending the city; all remaining mobile forces would then set out eastward to attack the three remaining cities.

These mere two hundred men would not only have to defend the city but also prevent any army (including the Ming Army) from the Zunhua direction to the west from passing through the Santun Camp junction. This meant the defending soldiers, whose numbers could not even fill half the city wall, would be under enormous pressure, so the city could harbor no hidden dangers — these captives had to be sent off.

Three days later, on April 1, 1629, the two hundred garrison soldiers urgently dispatched from Tianjin arrived at Santun Camp.

This unit, part of the Guard Battalion transferred from Shanghai, had been drilling hard in horsemanship ever since arriving in Tianjin, and now it was finally put to use.

After the two-hundred-man force reached Santun Camp, non-combat casualties from riding through the mountainous terrain amounted to only a dozen or so, the majority of whom were lightly wounded and still capable of fighting — a rather impressive figure.

And using these three days, the troops were reorganized and rested, the soldiers full and the horses spirited. The King's Rescue Intervention Army, dispatched by the Empire's central authority far in the south, had at last completed all preparations and was about to launch the second half of this campaign.

Santun Camp's geographical position was superb: forty li to the western mouth of the corridor, and forty li to the eastern mouth of the corridor.

After exiting the corridor's eastern mouth, following the Luan River Plain all the way south for another forty li would bring one to the first county seat the Transmigrators planned to "recover": Qian'an.

The second half of this campaign was completely different in method from the earlier sneak attack on Santun Camp.

Qian'an County, Luanzhou County, and Yongping Prefecture City — these three cities formed an almost perfect equilateral triangle, each side measuring forty to fifty li.

Unlike the Santunying Fortress garrison city, the three cities above were all ordinary cities with large civilian populations. These cities, with their low defensive capabilities, had opened their gates and surrendered the very moment the Eight Banners troops attacked, and so had not suffered much damage.

To this day, after the Eight Banners Army had withdrawn beyond the passes, many Ming people still lived in the three cities — only the defending troops inside the cities had been replaced by Banner Troops.

This being the case, there was absolutely no way to launch a sneak attack on these three cities situated on the plain.

Because residents and Tartar soldiers lived intermingled inside and outside the cities, the Transmigrators' army could neither conceal itself on the plain nor infiltrate Special Operations Team members inside.

Even if the troops did infiltrate, once fighting broke out on both sides, at any moment wolf-smoke signals could rise from civilian houses inside and outside the city, and at any moment horses could gallop out to deliver the news — many bondservants lived scattered about, making it impossible to wrap them all in one dumpling.

Under these conditions, a sneak attack was unworkable. No matter how the Intervention Army attacked, the other two cities, which were not far away, would certainly get word.

Thus, the Transmigrators had no choice but to fight a direct, open assault — and to do so in continuous operations.

This style of fighting placed high demands on the unit's soft elements — reconnaissance, communications, and command — so over these three days, Qian Tieshan and the others had done considerable preparatory work and had also formulated the optimal campaign plan: city assault plus interdiction.