Chapter 361: Zhangde

The two refugees both had Shanxi accents; they had clearly just joined the band in Shanxi. One of them was picking wild fruit from the bushes as he walked, delighted with every find. The one in front kept scanning the ground, looking for rat holes or snake holes — both were edible.

When they reached the foot of the hill, the one in front shouted twice. He had spotted a rat hole and called the other over to help. Both crouched down and dug at the hole with intense concentration. After they had dug for a while, a dark shape suddenly shot out from inside. One refugee lunged nimbly, pinning the dark shape firmly beneath him, then reached his right hand in and groped around. When he pulled it out, he was holding a field rat that was baring its teeth, clawing wildly, and squeaking shrilly.

The refugee held the field rat up before his eyes, his face beaming. "Hahaha, try to run now! Got you, didn't I, you little bastard! Go on, squeal — begging's no use, aiyah..."

"My lord, spare my life!"

In a patch of scrub, the cloth gags had just been pulled from the two refugees' mouths, and they immediately began pleading in unison before the two fierce strangers who had come from nowhere. Just moments ago, at the height of their delight, they had been suddenly tackled to the ground, their mouths stuffed with cloth, their hands bound with a kind of slipknot rope, and then dragged all the way into this thicket. The rat-catching bandit still clutched the field rat tightly in his hand, but the fright he had just suffered had made him grip it too hard in his panic, and the rat was already dead.

Zhang Wei toyed with his dagger. He had expected to need some intimidation, but these two showed not the slightest stubbornness.

Bucktooth shot Zhang Wei a look. Zhang Wei grabbed the fruit-picker and dragged him off to the other side. Then Bucktooth switched to a Shanxi accent and said to the rat-catching refugee, "If you don't want to die, talk fast. What's your bandit chief called?"

"Our king is called Scorpion Block. He came from Shaanxi. We were all captured by him — we never did any evil! We're both just coerced followers. Those Shaanxi bandits forced us to go with them..."

Bucktooth slapped the bandit across the face. A tooth flew out, and the man's mouth filled with blood. He stared at Bucktooth with a weeping, stricken face.

Bucktooth said coldly, "When your grandpa asks you something, you answer just that. How many mounted troops do you have?"

"Three to five hundred. Maybe seven or eight hundred, could be."

Smack — another slap. The refugee wept noisily as he watched Bucktooth pull a pair of pliers from his bag.

"Think it through before you speak. Any more nonsense, and I'll pull every tooth out of your mouth. How many mounted troops? How many able-bodied men? Where are you coming from? Where are you heading to attack?"

"My lord, spare me, I'll talk! Our king is called Scorpion Block. Mounted troops, less than five hundred. We just came from Licheng. Able-bodied men... there are so many more behind, I never counted the able-bodied ones, and I don't know where we're going either. My lord, spare me..."

"How much grain do you carry with you?"

"I... I truly don't know." The bandit finished speaking and stared at Bucktooth in terror.

"Why are you running toward Henan?"

"Big Cao and Little Cao are closing in. Everyone's scared. Licheng's been stripped clean too — there's nothing to eat anywhere. So the king brought us here."

Bucktooth looked the bandit before him up and down. This man was the lowest tier of roving bandit; it was normal for him not to know such things. For all he knew, Scorpion Block himself didn't know either — otherwise they wouldn't be called roving bandits.

Seeing he could get nothing more out of him, Bucktooth stopped the interrogation. When Zhang Wei returned, the two compared notes in low voices. The answers were more or less the same. Bucktooth turned to the bandit and said, "You've been honest. I'll let you go now, but you are not to go back to the roving bandits. Go back to Shanxi on your own."

The bandit was overjoyed. He had never imagined he could just leave like this. By now he had guessed that these two were night scouts or the like from the government army, and he was already thinking of going back to report them. If the big chief was pleased, he might even get into the infantry unit. He immediately kowtowed to Bucktooth and promised repeatedly, "Thank you, my lord! This humble one will never go back. I'll return to my home village right now, and even if they beat me to death, I'll never come out again."

Bucktooth pointed behind him. "Take your companion with you."

"Aye." The bandit turned his head to look back. Before he could see anything, Bucktooth suddenly shot out both hands, seized his head in the direction he was turning, and wrenched it hard. There was a crack of neck bone, and the bandit died instantly, pitching forward onto the ground with a thud.

Zhang Wei sighed and said to the corpse, "Brother, go clean and quick — better than living neither man nor ghost. When you cross over, don't hold a grudge against Brother Bucktooth. Brother Bucktooth spared you the suffering. Who told you to be a bandit and us to be soldiers?"

"What's there to say to a dead man? The day you joined the squad, the squad leader told you: captives taken behind enemy lines are interrogated on the spot and must be killed afterward. If they go back and report us, we might end up dead at their hands. And if by some chance they figure out our army's intentions, then we'd really be guilty." Bucktooth clapped his hands. "Let's go. Back to Linzhang first to report."

With that, Bucktooth hunched over and headed back. Zhang Wei crouched down to look at the bandit. His eyes were still open, rolled upward, and his hand still clutched that dead field rat.

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"Brother, dying here, no one will eat you. Keep your whole corpse and be reborn into a good family next life."

Linzhang County — this was where Zhangde Prefecture bordered Great Ming Prefecture. The county seat lay right on the boundary. The Dengzhou Garrison army had marched here from Great Ming Prefecture and set up camp outside the town.

The trading company had purchased a batch of grain from Linqing, processed it into dried rice, and shipped it via the Wei River to Great Ming Prefecture, replenishing the Dengzhou Garrison's marching supplies. During this long-distance march through interior lines, food procurement had been very convenient and nutritional supplementation comprehensive. There had been no epidemic zones along the route. The Dengzhou Garrison's non-combat losses amounted to only some fifty men, with the sick and wounded all left at trading company posts along the way, greatly reducing the army's marching strain.

By comparison, the cavalry was in far worse shape. Because of the long distance and the lack of a dense network of trading company outposts in Henan, Chen Xin had brought very few cavalry to reduce the logistical burden — just over a hundred men drawn from two cavalry bureaus and the cavalry section's accelerated course, plus the special duty company, headquarters scouts, and the various units' picket riders, totaling over two hundred men. Warhorses numbered just over five hundred in all. The miscellaneous horses for the artillery, officers' mounts, baggage train, and heavy weapons banner units added up to several hundred more.

Although they had been fed refined fodder like black beans the whole way, after this journey of over a thousand li, both warhorses and miscellaneous horses had lost a layer of fat. More than a hundred had fallen ill or become too weak to go on, and Chen Xin had no choice but to buy somewhat better miscellaneous horses along the way to replace them.

After spending quite a lot of silver, this five-thousand-man army had finally reached its destination. After entering Great Ming Prefecture, the abandonment of farmland was extremely severe. Fields that were hard to irrigate were covered with cracks. The number of refugees fleeing along the official road had surged dramatically, most heading in the direction of Linqing. The army's accompanying propaganda officers seized the chance to spread the word, telling them to go to Dengzhou and Laizhou and join the garrison farms.

Linzhang County was the assembly point for the vanguard. After arriving here, the scouts and special duty teams that had entered Henan earlier sent back a steady stream of intelligence. Chen Xin and the others were holding a council in the main tent, deciding which band to strike first.

"According to intelligence obtained by the special duty teams from captives, there are currently three large roving bandit groups within Wu'an: Little Wench, Scorpion Block, and Crossing Star. There must be dozens of smaller bands. The Sichuan troops and Lu Xiangsheng are mainly defending the northeast side of Wu'an, preventing them from entering the Beizhili prefectures of Zhending, Guangping, and Great Ming."

Wang Mafu said, "The three border commands of Shaanxi and the various units from Xuanfu and Datong are closing in from three sides in Shanxi. The Viceroy of Xuan-Da, Zhang Zongheng, has moved his headquarters from Yanghe to Pingyang to directly coordinate all forces in Shanxi, with Taiyuan as the center. They are gradually tightening the area where the roving bandits operate. The Shanxi Provincial Governor has reached the vicinity of Yangcheng and is responsible for blocking the routes by which the bandits might flee west back into Shaanxi. Among the northern-route Qin armies, Cao Wenzhao's division is advancing the fastest. They have currently pressed on from Pingdingzhou all the way to the border of Lu'an Prefecture, smashing several large and small roving bandit groups along the way. Cao Wenzhao and Ai Wannian's units are the most valiant in battle among the Qin armies, and all the roving bandit bands greatly fear them. This has forced the bandits in Licheng, Shexian, and other places to flee into Henan at an accelerated pace. On the bandit side, the largest groups at present — Purple-Gold Beam, Dashing King, Dashing General, and Sky-Collapsing King — are all in Zezhou. Eight Great Kings and Sweeping King are in Pingshun. The various bands that sacked Pingshun are now scattering toward Shexian, Linxian, Zezhou, and other places. Zuo Liangyu has led the Changping troops south into Linxian, but Zuo's division has suffered repeated setbacks and seems to have taken heavy losses. Our special duty teams and scouts twice took captives they thought were roving bandits, but they turned out to be deserters from the Changping army."

Chen Xin rubbed his nose at this. Wasn't Zuo Liangyu supposed to be formidable at fighting roving bandits? How had he been repeatedly thrashed by them? He wondered if it was because he had lost many of his elite troops at the Battle of Changshan.

"The difficulty lies in the fact that Shexian, Pingshun, Linxian, and Wu'an are all linked by mountains and rivers. There are mountain paths connecting every place, but a critical lack of defensible choke points. The roving bandits move back and forth unpredictably. Often by the time their traces are discovered, they have already run off somewhere else. Their mounted troops move swiftly. Scorpion Block and Crossing Star, spotted in Wu'an, have been soundly defeated by government troops many times, but their elite mounted troops escape every time, and before long they have coerced and rounded up tens of thousands more refugees."

The officers present were all somewhat worried — not that they feared they couldn't win, but with so few cavalry in the Dengzhou force this time, they might not be able to catch those mounted troops.

Chen Xin tapped the table lightly. "Has the man sent to contact Xuan Mo returned?"

Xuan Mo was the current Provincial Governor of Henan. The previous Henan governor had been Fan Shang, who had been dismissed not long ago for failing to hold the Shanxi border. Xuan Mo had just been appointed as his replacement.

"Not yet. We've made contact with Circuit Intendant Lu of Great Ming Prefecture. Three days ago, they were west of Wu'an blocking Crossing Star."

Under the current circumstances, the roving bandits' range was confined to Shaanxi and Shanxi; there was no multi-province viceroy like there would be later. The only cross-province commander was Cao Wenzhao, whom the Chongzhen Emperor had authorized to coordinate the troops of Shaanxi and Shanxi, but in reality that was just a title — he controlled neither funds and grain nor personnel. Operationally, this coordinating authority had no practical meaning whatsoever. Cao Wenzhao was chasing the enemy every day, his headquarters constantly shifting. Friendly forces could not find him, and he could not find friendly forces. There was simply no way to command such a vast battlefield, so command remained with the local civil officials everywhere.

When auxiliary guest troops arrived in a certain area, they were to follow the orders of the local civil official in command. Wu'an belonged to Henan, so Chen Xin should first report to the Henan Provincial Governor. By rights, the governor should be directing operations from near Kaifeng, but Linxian and Zhangde in between were overrun with roving bandits. Relay riders would have to take a long detour, and there was no telling when any reply would come back. Right now, the provincial border region was a chaotic free-for-all, and the governor might not even still be in Kaifeng.

There was a civil official nearby, Lu Xiangsheng, but he was the Military Defense Circuit Intendant of Great Ming, which made him a guest commander in Wu'an as well. Taking orders from him did not conform to military regulations, and Chen Xin had no intention of placing himself under someone else's command anyway. That was why he had not halted in Great Ming Prefecture but had pressed on past the border of Zhangde Prefecture before stopping — to avoid being counted as a guest army in Great Ming Prefecture.

"Keep trying to contact the Henan Provincial Governor. Until we receive orders, we'll fight on our own. Which of the Thirty-Six Camps have the biggest names right now?"

"They are, respectively: Purple-Gold Beam, Dashing King, Dashing General, Old Hui Hui, Eight Great Kings, Sky-Collapsing King, and Sweeping King. Ten days ago, Purple-Gold Beam, Dashing King, and Old Hui Hui were still near Zezhou in Shanxi. Their current locations are unknown."

Zhu Daichun interjected, "Then who's closest to us?"

Wang Mafu, whose memory was exceptionally good, answered without consulting his intelligence notes: "Eight Great Kings and Sweeping King. Eight Great Kings' whereabouts are unknown after he sacked Pingshun. There are reports, however, that Sweeping King may be heading for Linxian. Neither of these two large roving bandit groups is within the direct scouting range of our picket riders. All this is information obtained from interrogations and is hard to verify. For now, we probably can't track them. Among the smaller roving bandit groups, the closest are Scorpion Block and Little Wench. Little Wench was just defeated by Lu Xiangsheng. Yesterday our scouts spotted them moving south, apparently preparing to flee to Cixian or Linxian. They are only about a hundred li from Linzhang, with roughly four thousand people."

Chen Xin smiled and slapped the table. "Then it's Little Wench. We've marched over a thousand li — let's fight a battle first and see just what these roving bandits are made of."