Chapter 456: Unexpected

Guan Dadi roared as he charged to the bridgehead, where a groundful of bondservants knelt, along with a few spare males. A Later Jin soldier wielding a two-handed broadsword saw no way to flee and came rushing over, brandishing his blade.

A neat row of bayonets met him. Guan Dadi, rich in experience with cold steel, lunged forward a step to the front, and sure enough the Later Jin soldier was drawn his way. Guan Dadi then suddenly slowed half a step, while comrades on both flanks thrust forward. The bayonet soldiers charged with extreme speed; before the armored soldier could adjust, four or five bayonets were already at his face. The armored soldier got off only half a swing, parrying two, before three bayonets stabbed him from three different directions.

A swarm of bayonet soldiers pounced and stabbed wildly at the armored soldier. He was struck in many places all over his body. The triangular-iron bayonets were devastatingly powerful; he held on for only a few breaths before collapsing limp. Guan Dadi had avoided the soldier's scale armor and stabbed him in the neck. The helmet's neck guard could only stop arrows and was basically useless against a thrust.

The six-chi-plus firelocks with bayonets were very nimble. Multi-man bayonet tactics were something Chen Xin had long been familiar with; he had taught them to Hai Gouzi and others back in Tianjin. It was just that in later formation battles, the fiercer Mandarin Duck formation tactics were used, and the long-spear formation's pikes were not nimble enough for these tactics. They were only practiced among guards and detachments, and now at last they were being applied on a large scale among the dragoons.

Over two hundred dragoons swarmed forward, bayonets stabbing and retracting in clusters. Amid a din of harrowing shrieks, the remaining Later Jin soldiers at the bridgehead were killed one by one. Of those awe-inspiring Later Jin soldiers, only a handful resisted; most howled in despair, waiting for death to descend.

A few armored soldiers who could not flee came charging with blades swinging and were mostly shot dead by squad leaders and company commanders armed with short muskets. Once an army loses its will to fight, no matter how fierce the individual, it is of no avail. Apart from a few pikemen who inflicted losses on the Dengzhou troops, the rest practically stretched out their necks to be slaughtered.

Across the river was also chaos. The lead elements of the Third Company were already nearing the Guangchang road junction, and the armored soldiers fleeing back from the west bank were running for their lives, trying to get through the junction before the Third Company sealed it off.

Later Jin soldiers from both directions were fleeing toward the junction in the direction of Guangchang. The Third Company soon reached the junction and only then fired their first volley. A swath of Later Jin soldiers instantly collapsed at the junction. The Third Company made one charge and sealed the junction. The Later Jin soldiers behind who had not yet escaped were trapped on this short stretch of road.

Those Later Jin soldiers on foot had nowhere to run. Firelocks were shooting from three sides. Volley after volley, the riverbank was strewn with corpses lying every which way. One banner company commander led the pursuit across the river, with about thirty to fifty soldiers following behind. Other soldiers were still locked in melee with the remaining Later Jin soldiers at the bridgehead, amid scattered gunfire.

Dengzhou troops from front and rear closed in with battle cries. Over two hundred genuine Jurchen and bondservants howled as they leaped into the riverbed, scattering aimlessly across it. Part of the First Company's force on the west bank and the Second Company also closed in along the riverbank, firing volleys across the river into the riverbed. Ming troops on the Dong'an road sealed the junction and fired from the roadbed onto the riverbank. Throughout the river valley, gunfire rolled, smoke billowed, and battle cries shook the heavens.

On the riverbank across the stream, over a hundred Later Jin soldiers were still fleeing south along the river course. As he ran, the armored soldier in the lead tore the mail armor from his head and tossed it aside by the river. Scarlet figures closed in along the main road, blocking the way ahead. The armored soldier had nowhere to flee. He had already thrown away every weapon on him and simply waded splashing into the river water. All the Later Jin soldiers behind him followed, plunging into the river. At first they still ran in the shallows. The Dengzhou troops pressed closer and closer. Firelocks on the bank fired wildly, kicking up small columns of water around the armored soldiers. One after another, armored soldiers trailed red as they struggled and vanished into the water. The river water was soon dyed red with blood.

The remaining Later Jin stragglers thrashed their way to the middle of the river. Some who could swim swam downstream in the freezing river. Most of the armored soldiers had no time to shed their padded jackets; soaked through, the jackets clung to their bodies, and they soon sank into the water.

Guan Dadi and a group of comrades from some unknown banner company ran along the riverbank, shooting as they went. The usual devilish training had paid off; he loaded almost by subconscious reflex and had already fired three shots in succession, though because of the smoke he never knew whether he had actually hit anything.

After loading once more, Guan Dadi aimed at the lead armored soldier bobbing in the water not far away. He pressed the stock to his shoulder and aimed along the three-point line. In Dengzhou they used the bayonet lug as a front sight; after the flintlock was fitted with a bayonet, the lug remained exposed. Guan Dadi aimed for a moment. The armored soldier was getting closer and closer, probably only twenty paces away.

Guan Dadi jerked the trigger. The gun body jolted, and a sheet of white smoke filled his vision. When Guan Dadi tilted his head to look again, the armored soldier was still perfectly alive. Bullets kicked up columns of water all around him, yet he still swam with all his might. That intense will to survive made Guan Dadi stare wide-eyed.

The armored soldiers in the river grew fewer and fewer, and soon it became a matter of picking off individual targets. Those armored soldiers who could swim thrashed in the water, heading downstream all the way. Against such individual targets, the hit rate of the crude flintlocks was a pitiful sight.

Guan Dadi missed yet another shot and had to hurriedly reload. Just then he heard a non-commissioned officer downstream organizing nearby musketeers into volley fire, five men at a time. Sure enough, it was far better than firing singly. Several armored soldiers were hit in succession. Order began to be restored elsewhere as well; soldiers automatically obeyed the commands of nearby officers and NCOs, running downstream in batches to fire volleys at the Later Jin soldiers in the middle of the river.

The last few Later Jin soldiers in the river were hit, rolled over a few times, and then floated on the water, or were carried to the bank by the gentle current.

That lead armored soldier, the best swimmer of them all, was finally hit in a volley that Guan Dadi took part in. Guan Dadi watched as the armored soldier drifted downstream in the bloody water. Before rounding the bend to the south, he was pushed to the bank by the current. The armored soldier ran a few limping steps before two pursuing Dengzhou soldiers caught up, pinned him to the ground, and lopped off his head with a broadsword.

"Your mother, the Tatars are this fragile now?" Zhong Lao Si rode up to the bridgehead.

The training officer beside him could not help chiming in: "Perhaps they were scared out of their wits at Lushun."

Zhong Lao Si privately thought that made sense, but he did not endorse the training officer. The man usually put on airs and liked to mouth off about everything, far less agreeable than Zhao Xuan. Zhong Lao Si turned to survey the bridgehead; this bottleneck was also limiting the Dengzhou garrison's speed of pursuit.

The Later Jin soldiers, split in two by the river and facing superior Dengzhou troops, rapidly lost their will to fight. The formation of the Bordered Yellow Banner's troops on the west bank had originally been fairly orderly, but the moment everyone saw Abatai flee, all anyone wanted was to save their own skin. Had it not been for Abatai's allied force, these two or three hundred men fighting with their backs to the river would not have been beaten so badly.

Watching those Later Jin soldiers just now, who would rather jump into the river and drown than fight the Dengzhou troops, Zhong Lao Si found the Later Jin soldiers before him somewhat unfamiliar. He strongly doubted whether they were genuine Later Jin armored soldiers or perhaps bondservants in disguise.

At this moment the First Company's formation was in complete disarray: some had crossed the river, some were bayoneting the wounded where they stood, and some were chasing along the river. The Second Company's battle line was the same as the First's. Zhong Lao Si's original intent was for them to serve as a reserve, but after the First Company scattered, the river valley rang with battle cries, and the Second Company's various banner teams threw themselves into the fight on their own, also losing all unit cohesion.

Zhong Lao Si looked around for the two company commanders, ready to have them quickly reform the ranks. In the current chaotic state, if the Plain Blue Banner suddenly turned back, the Dengzhou garrison would fare no better.

Before he could find anyone, a group of soldiers at the bridgehead burst into loud cheers. "A gūsa ejen is dead!"

Zhong Lao Si ran over to take a look. He saw a group of soldiers carrying an intact corpse. The helmet had already been knocked off. The armor on the body gleamed silver, and the heart-protecting mirror in the center was glittering gold — not something an ordinary armored soldier could afford.

Zhong Lao Si dismounted, parted the crowd of onlookers, and went up to lift the gūsa ejen's eyelids. He was dead indeed.

He looked up and asked the nearest banner company commander: "Have you found out clearly? Which banner's gūsa ejen?"

Zhou Shao'er emerged at this point. "We questioned a few who surrendered. They came over and identified him. They all say it's Darhan, the gūsa ejen of the Bordered Yellow Banner."

Zhong Lao Si looked the corpse up and down. There was not even a wound. He shook his head and said, "Couldn't have been trampled to death. How come there's not even a knife cut? Think about the last time we captured that gūsa of the Bordered White Banner, called Kakduli — how many men died then."

Zhou Shao'er could not figure it out either. This gūsa ejen had died under mysterious circumstances, and no one knew how he had ended up laid out at the bridgehead.

"Cut off this Darhan's head first. The rest of you, form up for me." Zhong Lao Si mounted his horse and rode across the east bank, all the way to that junction at Guangchang.

Abatai's group had fled in utter disarray. The road was strewn with the corpses of commoners, and some carts had been overturned on the ground to block the Dengzhou pursuers. On both sides of the mountain path there were still large crowds of commoners, many of them gathered around the bodies on the ground, wailing.

The Third Company's commander ran over and said, "Vice Battalion Commander, the ones who fled that way are Abatai of the Bordered Yellow Banner. He's heading back to Guangchang. Why don't we go straight to Lingqiu and bag these Jianzhou bandits in one sweep?"

"Bag your mother. You run out onto that flat ground at Lingqiu and you think the Tatars will be that easy to handle? How many men do we even have here?" Zhong Lao Si wheeled his horse around and said to the Third Company commander, "All of you, stop fucking cutting off heads. The Third Company's Second Platoon will pursue Abatai for five li to make sure they scatter, then return to catch up with the main force. Everyone else, follow me to go capture Manggūltai."

"Does there seem to be some sort of noise?" Manggūltai turned his head and stared at the gūsa ejen Tohoi.

He had only a little over seven hundred armored soldiers here, yet they were escorting more than four thousand commoners. The column was far longer than Abatai's, and most of the captives were able-bodied adults; the old and weak had been weeded out early on.

The gūsa ejen cocked his head and listened, then shook his head. "I don't hear anything. Maybe the wind's just a bit stronger in this mountain hollow."

Manggūltai emerged from the beacon tower by the roadside. Outside lay several Ming soldiers' corpses. On the stone tablet beside them were carved the five characters "Ci Zi No. 3 Tower."

Many of the junctions along the route had such hollow watchtowers, but few were garrisoned, and even fewer were willing to resist to the death.

The route Manggūltai had chosen was an area with relatively dense villages, and there were also many commoners among them who had fled from Lingqiu into the mountains.

Manggūltai summoned the guide and asked him, "If we go forward, can we reach Lingqiu?"

The guide nodded and bowed. "Replying to my master, we can reach Lingqiu. Taking the route through Langya Pass, Wuwang Pass, Cigouying, and Zhong'ersi will do. After passing through Zhubokou, we'll probably be out of the great mountains. The whole way is nothing more than these fire-road beacon towers. It's just, it's just..."

Manggūltai's eyes swept coldly over him, and the guide hurriedly said, "It's just this Zhubokou. There's a Company Commander there leading troops and holding it. Their numbers are not small. I'm just afraid..."

Manggūltai burst out laughing. "Not small numbers? That's perfect. We can capture even more bondservants. Hmph, Zhubokou." (To be continued...)