Chapter 87: Rapid Advance

On the small slope, Gongsun Xun halted his horse beneath a large banner bearing the character ‘Han’; his personal command flag, embroidered with the two characters ‘Gongsun’, fluttered in the wind beside him in the hands of a guard, while a cluster of civil officers and military officials surrounded him.

Below the slope, several hundred paces away, four or five hundred Xianbei skirmish riders were locked in a desperate melee with a roughly equal number of Wuhuan skirmish riders; the two sides surged back and forth, men constantly struck by arrows and falling from their horses, and even those who survived the fall immediately became the target of the other side’s concentrated volleys.

Just as the fighting grew most intense, suddenly a full half of those four or five hundred Xianbei split off and charged straight toward the slope — there was no need to guess; this large body of Xianbei must have had a commander of sufficient rank among them, one capable of making the unit execute such a clean and decisive formation change, and one who could also leave the remaining smaller half of the Xianbei behind to fight a desperate holding action.

However, the Wuhuan skirmish riders below showed no intention of moving to block them either; they merely gathered their forces, sheathed their bows and switched to spears, preparing to swallow up these abandoned pawns in one swift stroke.

But that did not matter, because without Gongsun Xun even needing to give the order, the Han cavalry on both flanks of the slope had already moved.

Han cavalry and Wuhuan shock cavalry had a marked difference — not only in tactics and weaponry, but more importantly in the fact that Han cavalry troopers wore armor. In this era, soldiers clad in iron armor, whether cavalry or infantry, could all be called the highest-grade troops.

Think about it: you shoot an arrow and it sticks in the other man’s iron armor; he shoots an arrow back and your arm can no longer lift. You thrust with your spear and merely scratch his skin; he thrusts back and your wound is deep enough to show bone. In the most extreme case, you swing your blade and strike a trail of sparks; he swings his blade back and your head is gone!

Lady Gongsun stayed at home in Liaoxi all day bragging to her son about technological supremacy, but what is true technological supremacy? The iron armor on these Han soldiers is the most outstanding and most efficient technological supremacy of this age!

But once you don iron armor, don’t expect to hold any advantage in speed over these Xianbei who wear leather robes and have been active on horseback since childhood. And so, yet another wave of suicidal force-splitting occurred — visible to the naked eye, this group of Xianbei practically peeled off more than half their number to crash directly into the Han cavalry… inferior in quality, inferior in numbers, purely a suicide charge.

Yet at the same time, this bought space and time for the several dozen elite Xianbei riders in the center; without even glancing to either side, and led by an iron-armored bald warrior, they charged straight for the banner on the slope. And in an instant they were already within a few dozen paces of Gongsun Xun and the men beneath that banner.

A volley of arrows came flying in; the personal guards on both flanks hurriedly raised their shields, and behind the shields Gongsun Xun, though his expression was troubled, did not move a muscle — which made the bald man below break into a look of wild delight.

Yet the very next moment, from behind the slope suddenly emerged several hundred crossbowmen and archers who had long been ready — unmistakably the Han army’s formal elite crossbowmen and the two companies of auxiliary conscripts, the former bearing crossbows and the latter bearing bows. One concentrated volley and those several dozen riders, men and horses alike, crashed to the ground on the spot… without a single exception.

Someone went down to take the head of that Xianbei leader; Gongsun Xun could not even be bothered to look. “I used to think Xianbei warriors shaved their heads to show valor. Only now do I understand — it’s to keep lice from breeding.”

Probably still unaccustomed to such grand-scale carnage, Lu Fan beside him still had to cover his nose when he spoke: “Wenqi, the enemy is so frenzied they must be under death orders. In this single day we have already encountered this kind of suicidal entanglement twice…”

“Then we must advance even faster!” Gongsun Xun said with a stern expression. “Only by quickening our pace can we keep these originally scattered Xianbei from having time to rally and obstruct us!”

The men around him all nodded in agreement.

“Pass the word — finish the fight quickly. No taking heads, no clearing the battlefield. The moment it’s over, mount up immediately, reform ranks, and head for Danhan Mountain!” As Gongsun Xun spoke, he glanced toward a short and stocky officer beside him. “Gao Heng, you are the General’s personal guard captain. Take men and go restrain those Wuhuan!”

“Aye!” Gao Heng offered no extra words and rode straight down.

Watching the man’s retreating back, Gongsun Xun’s mood grew even more sour.

The thing was, the previous night he had clearly asked Xia Yu to send Gongsun Zan to command the reinforcements… on one hand, of course, it was to give Gongsun Zan a chance to earn merit; on the other hand, he truly felt that at such a life-or-death juncture, his clansman was reliable — whether by blood ties, ability, or even the legendary luck, he was reliable. Yet such a matter that benefited both public and private interests was vetoed by Xia Yu, who instead sent Gao Heng, Gao Xuanqing, a man with obvious conflicts with the two brothers. No one knew whether it was meant as a check and balance, or because Xia Yu did not trust him and simply dispatched a battle-supervision squad outright.

To be honest, it was a good thing that ever since the man arrived he had stayed perfectly obedient; moreover, with a bitter fight imminent it was no time to stir trouble — otherwise Gongsun Xun would certainly have found a chance to cut the bastard down and take those five hundred soldiers into his own hands!

“Wenqi.” Watching Gao Heng ride off into the distance and seeing that officers of every rank were mostly busy with their own deployments, Lu Fan seized the moment to draw close again. “Xia Yu assigning us such a mission — his intentions are hardly good, are they? It’s still manageable now, but once we reach the Chuoqiu River and face the Xianbei’s tens of thousands of royal court elite troops, even at night, even with a river between us, can we really hold? It’s too dangerous!”

“There’s nothing good or bad about it.” Gongsun Xun’s expression grew even grimmer. “If I had refused yesterday, he could have executed me on the spot… who made him a two-thousand-dan bearing the imperial tally, while I am merely a Major of the thousand-dan rank? A single general’s fame is built on ten thousand bones; right now we are meant to be the stepping stones for others, and we have no choice but to fight with everything we have.”

“A true man’s life must not be held in another’s hands!” Lu Fan murmured something in seeming agreement, then said no more.

The two-thousand-strong force set out once more. Though their speed was already extremely fast, they still encountered several more such blocking attacks. Although the size of each blocking force varied, this reckless, life-throwing style of fighting still caused enormous trouble for Gongsun Xun’s vanguard unit.

Losses of military supplies like arrows and horses could be set aside; the critical thing was that starting from the second day, casualties began to mount rapidly in a way that could not be controlled.

In the several engagements of the first day — including that battle where they encountered a full five hundred-plus riders — the Han army’s casualty count had been kept firmly below the safety line… this was because the Han troops had rested very thoroughly the day before; they had ample spirit and stamina to cope, and could even complete one clever tactical coordination after another without showing any sign of strain.

But starting from the second day, these responsive maneuvers became laborious; small problems that seemed like nothing, yet were extremely deadly, began to appear with increasing frequency… and on the battlefield, any problem large or small would be converted into casualties and made manifest.

The heaviest casualties naturally fell on the Wuhuan shock cavalry on the outer perimeter. Although Gongsun Xun beheaded a minor Wuhuan leader who dared to stir trouble, there was simply no way to stop the Wuhuan shock cavalry’s exhaustion and disorder. After four meeting engagements on the second day, out of five or six hundred Wuhuan shock cavalry, a full hundred and more were lost… in Lou Gui’s words, they were lucky these Wuhuan all lived inside the Great Wall; otherwise they would have long since scattered and fled, or simply mutinied.

Next were those two companies of auxiliary conscripts. The conscripts were the only unit in the Han army without universally issued iron armor, and they also had to handle the basic tasks of pitching camp and burying pots to cook — which made them especially worn out. As a result, after one delayed withdrawal, they were directly hit by a Xianbei close-quarters charge; several dozen became casualties on the spot, and several dozen more were cut down right afterward.

Finally, even the most central, most elite Han armored soldiers suffered a casualty incident in the afternoon of the second day that made Gongsun Xun’s heart ache… at that moment they had just finished the third meeting engagement of the day, and with Danhan Mountain already appearing within sight, the Han armored soldiers could not help relaxing a little. Gongsun Xun also made an exception and allowed them to temporarily remove their armor, drink water, eat, and rest a while before making one final push. Who could have guessed that right at that moment, two or three hundred Eastern Xianbei cavalry would come pursuing from the rear? The Han army met the attack in haste and suffered extremely heavy losses.

In summary, by that evening, when Gongsun Xun led this detached force to the banks of the Chuoqiu River at the foot of Danhan Mountain, of the two thousand fighting strength barely fourteen or fifteen hundred remained… over three hundred dead, and more than two hundred wounded draped over their horses, not certain to survive.

Of course, Gongsun Xun before the Chuoqiu River no longer had the mind to dwell on the question of casualties, because a huge perplexity now lay before him… yes, perplexity, not a challenge! For on the opposite bank of this river — the river that Tanshihuai had taken a fancy to and beside which, nestled against the mountain, he had built his royal court — no matter how one looked, it did not seem like a place where a great army was encamped!

There were certainly troops, but absolutely not the tens of thousands of royal court elite imagined before! Four or five thousand at most! By the faint light of the setting sun, any officer who had been on a battlefield could reach that conclusion!

So… where had Tanshihuai’s main force gone?

And what should he himself do?

“Tanshihuai then established his court at the foot of Danhan Mountain on the Chuoqiu River, over three hundred li north of Gaoliu, his troops and horses extremely numerous.” — Book of the Later Han, Volume 90, Biographies of the Wuhuan and Xianbei, Part 80

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(End of Chapter)