Chapter 63: Twenty-Eight (Part One)

On the twenty-eighth of the first month, the weather had already turned quite warm. Even in the war-torn regions north and south of the Great River, commoners were beginning to risk tilling their fields.

What else could they do? With the current state of all-out warfare across the north and south, even wealthy households with some savings couldn't hold out, let alone the poor.

If rice from the south couldn't come in come spring, wouldn't their whole families starve to death?

However, for the five thousand Jin troops in Jizhou City, the sudden dense appearance of Han commoners in the fields outside the city had undoubtedly become a new form of amusement in their utter boredom here... Perhaps it was because the Jin state, leaping from tribal confederation to empire, still bore a strong slave-society character; or perhaps it was simply the natural, unbridled bestiality of an army in the field... In any case, over the previous ten-odd days, the Jin army's favorite pastime had been shooting Han commoners in the fields around Jizhou City for sport.

It was just like how, around the New Year, local Han people would go to the edge of Lake Shuipo to hunt wild ducks for food.

But unlike ducks, which could flee into the deep waters of the lake when startled, the commoners couldn't abandon their fields... The season was pressing. If Aunt Wang next door died on the ridge today, the whole village would be terrified and no one would plow; then the next day they'd have to try again, cautiously, only to have their own father die in the fields; the day after that, wiping away tears and going again, their wife might be seized. At that point, they'd have no choice but to go with a few companions to Lake Shuipo and beg Chief Zhang for a meal. And the villagers who stayed behind would still have to cautiously try to work the land.

The Jin men's amusement continued without end.

However, in the last two days, for the Jin in Jizhou City, this amusement had suddenly become extremely dangerous... The reason was simple and direct: starting from the twenty-sixth of the first month, multiple small Song cavalry units of indeterminate size had appeared around Jizhou City. They were exceptionally tough. Groups of three to five Jin soldiers were dealt with in a single encounter; even from a group of seven or eight, only one or two could escape, and those had to be the finest riders in the army.

By yesterday afternoon, a fifty-man half-mouke Jin patrol had been surrounded in broad daylight by two to three hundred Song cavalry... The Jin troops initially wanted to fight, but unexpectedly, the junior officers in this Song unit possessed martial skills far beyond imagination, and the role of a few exceptionally brave officers in small-unit combat was beyond doubt.

In the end, eighteen of the fifty returned, and all of them had their noses and ears cut off.

That night, according to Jin military law, the unit was paraded and executed, and twenty-two men were beheaded... Because the mouke of that mouke—that is, the centurion of the hundred-man unit—had his head hung from the neck of a warhorse that knew its way home and sent back into the city. So, according to Jin military law, the several decurions who hadn't gone out "hunting" were also summarily beheaded as a warning.

But compared to all this, the most crushing blow was that the leader of this five-thousand-man force, a young noble of the Wanyan tribe who had just been appointed a wanhu for this southern campaign, Wanyan Saili, had publicly ordered that, except for small scout patrols, no one was to venture more than three li outside Jizhou City to pick a fight, on pain of death!

It must be said that Jin military law was extremely severe, and Wanyan Saili, though somewhat young and fond of reading southern books, had served in the army since childhood. His experience in destroying Liao and Song was enough to command respect.

So, although the Jin army was restless, no one dared to openly question him.

But that was all it was... It must be understood that at this very moment, it hadn't even been a full year since the Jin destroyed the Northern Song. On the surface, this second southern campaign, whose fundamental purpose was to thoroughly digest and annex Hebei, showed no signs of setback:

Li Yanxian's restoration of Shanzhou was, after all, just a single prefecture's effort on a local battlefield. Moreover, the remnants of the hundred-thousand-strong Western Army were the main Song force, so the Jin Western Route Army couldn't be said to have exerted its full strength;

The Tokyo Logistics Office's resistance at Huazhou could only be considered a stalemate. The Third Prince, Eriduo, was sweeping through Hebei with the Yanjing central army, showing no intention of crossing the river to confront the Tokyo Logistics Office directly;

And the Fourth Prince, Wanyan Wushu's march south, didn't that further prove the Jin army's ferocity... He easily completed his assigned tasks, and with twenty thousand troops, chased the Song emperor north and south, easily pinning him down.

So at this moment, almost every Jin soldier felt that five thousand troops were enough to rampage through the Central Plains. So how could the Jizhou garrison, never having suffered a setback and at the height of its arrogance, endure such provocation?

It was just a matter of military law!

"Grand General, there are Song troops provoking us north of the city!"

On the morning of the twenty-eighth of the first month, the meng'an stationed at Jizhou City's north wall, a Bohai native named Datanbuye, was in his occupied compound, bare-chested and wiping down his warhorse, when he suddenly received this absurd news.

In fact, this meng'an was stunned for a full three to five breaths before silently leading his horse out the door. Then, still bare-chested, he mounted at the gate and rode toward the north wall. When Datanbuye got up on the wall and looked down, the absurdity was even harder to describe.

Because there were only seven riders below the wall!

Two riders in front, one left and one right, each holding a vertical banner. On the banners, paper with ink writing had been hastily pasted with glue. The right one read: BREAK JIZHOU CITY;

The left one read: CAPTURE WANYAN LI ALIVE.

Behind them was another rider holding a proper vertical banner, which read: GENERAL YUE OF THE SONG TOKYO LOGISTICS OFFICE. Further back were three riders as rearguard, needless to say.

Besides these, there was one general in the center, in front of the proper banner. He was fully armored, with a helmet, a bow on his back, and a horizontal spear in hand, sitting motionless atop a large horse!

Datanbuye was an experienced soldier. After asking about the meaning of the writing, though he laughed in anger, he didn't rush down from the wall. Instead, he had someone help him put on his armor while he gazed into the distance... He first instinctively looked at the vast lake just over ten li to the north, where the shore was a mix of green and yellow, thick with reeds. But he quickly shook his head. Finally, he fixed his gaze on a grove of trees between the lake and Jizhou City, but again shook his head repeatedly.

On the plain, there weren't many places to hide troops. That grove wasn't large—it could hide at most a thousand men. Considering the reports and discussions from the Jin cavalry, this Song force probably didn't even have seven or eight hundred riders, which was even more laughable. If that were the case, it could only mean the enemy had gotten carried away from their gains over the past two days, thinking they could still prevail in a battle of a thousand riders.

But a serious problem was that the grove was a full five or six li away. Even if Datanbuye wanted to annihilate this Song force, he didn't dare to do it.

With this thought, after donning his armor, this Bohai meng'an could only gather his troops at the north wall while sending someone into the city to report, requesting that Wanyan Saili revoke his previous order and allow him to march out far from the city to wipe out this pest.

However, after waiting for a good while, Datanbuye only received the word: "Not permitted."

With things as they were, Datanbuye became even more determined not to let these seven men below the wall get away!

"You all know the situation. Now look carefully with me!"

This Jin meng'an, though of Bohai origin, was famous for being the first to scale walls and cross rivers. In a fit of anger, he sat down on the city wall and called over his dozens of officers—a motley crew of Jurchen, Xi, Bohai, Korean, Han, and Khitan men—pointing at the unremarkable Song officer below. "Normally, according to our unit-execution rules, I shouldn't let you officers go down. But this man is a Song Vice Prefect, a high-ranking officer. From his actions the past two days, he's also capable. Coming here today shows he's got guts... Such a man isn't beneath you, is he? I'll say it once: whoever can take this man down below the wall, I'll stake my military merits from this southern campaign to recommend you! How about it? Since he's come to challenge us, who dares to go down and take on this bastard?"

Hearing this, the officers were mostly delighted, because they knew Datanbuye wasn't bluffing.

What did that mean?

You see, the foundation of the Jin system was, at its core, the meng'an-mouke system, which integrated military and civil administration. In other words, meng'an and mouke were not just military chiliarchs and centurions; they were also political and economic nobles in every sense. These two strata were the core ruling class of the Jin state, and the most seriously appointed positions.

So, when a meng'an made a political promise to a group of men whose highest status was mouke, that promise was basically never empty.

After the briefing, probably thinking the man below was unimpressive, a dispute broke out. Finally, someone gained the upper hand and couldn't wait to go down the wall. He armed himself in the gate tunnel, donned his armor, took up his weapons, mounted his horse, and rode straight out of the city.

Datanbuye sat on the city wall, watching his man ride out alone, his warhorse kicking up a trail of dust. A surge of excitement rose in his heart. He turned to order the soldiers to beat the war drums to encourage him... But just as the drums sounded, this Bohai meng'an turned back and was suddenly stunned. Even the drummers stopped mid-motion.

It turned out that the man who had gone out had vanished in an instant!

"What happened?" Datanbuye was momentarily confused. "Didn't he put his armor on properly and go back to change?"

"Dead!" a mouke beside him said after a long pause, finally coming to his senses. "Just now, when the general turned his head, that bastard Xielu had drawn his bow and was about to shoot an arrow to win, but the enemy shot him from afar. Over a hundred paces, the arrow hit him right in the face. He didn't fall off his horse, though... The warhorse knew its way and brought his corpse back to the city."

Datanbuye was momentarily dazed, then completely enraged. "Who will go and take this man's life for me? Do I have to go into battle myself?"

Perhaps because the shot was so fast, there were naturally some among the crowd who didn't believe it. One man went down the wall on his own, but after just one round of drumming, he too was shot dead at the city gate.

The Jin generals looked at each other in dismay. They knew full well that the Song Vice Prefect below the wall, though plain-looking, possessed extraordinary skill. He had come to challenge the city with confidence. But as the saying goes, a man lives for pride. In an army at the peak of its morale, who could endure this?

So, in a moment, another man went out to fight. This time, he wore heavy armor, with a neck guard and a leather face mask, clearly intending to duel with spears.

This time, the drums sounded for a full round, but only one round. The man was stabbed to death outside the city by the Song general below the wall, who then cut off his head and placed it on the ground.

After this, no one dared to go out on their own for Datanbuye's mere promise... Rank was one thing, but life was one's own. Seeing that the man below was a first-rate warrior, who would willingly throw away their life?

Of course, though Datanbuye was furious, he wasn't a fool. Having seen the man's skill, he no longer demanded single combat from his subordinates. Instead, he simply called over a mouke and ordered him to lead thirty Jurchen light-armored riders into battle... "Light armor" meant they were determined to capture or kill the man, not letting him escape. Thirty riders was the maximum that could charge out of the city gate at once.

By noon, the drums sounded again. This time, it was quite spectacular. The seven Song riders outside the city abandoned their banners and engaged in a fierce chase with the thirty Jurchen light cavalry on the open ground north of the city.

However, the course of the battle still left Datanbuye and the others on the wall watching in stunned amazement... As mentioned before, the Jurchen cavalry's main tactic was mounted archery. But their arrows were strong in power and armor-piercing, far inferior in range to Song arrows. These seven Song riders were not only all excellent horsemen and archers, but the leading officer possessed rare, godlike archery skills. His range was extremely long, and his power and accuracy were far beyond imagination. Even at a gallop, he could easily dodge and turn to shoot.

The seven riders led the thirty Jurchen men back and forth. Every time the Song general turned, he easily shot down a Jurchen rider. In the time it took to burn one incense stick, the thirty Jurchen riders were reduced to twenty, their morale utterly shattered. Most of those lost were officers!

Datanbuye watched with eyes wide and bloodshot. He ordered the gongs to signal retreat, while also calling over a Jurchen mouke, ordering him to personally go see Wanyan Saili and request permission to send out a large force!