Chapter 129: Section Thirteen: After the Battle

Wu Mu looked over at Huang Shi hesitantly, his face full of caution: "This servant was thinking, perhaps we should select the able-bodied among them for the army." Seeing Huang Shi's earnest expression and attentive look as he listened, his tone rose again with some vigor: "This servant thinks that doing so might encourage more to surrender before battle in the future. What does General Huang think?"

"Lord Wu has keen insight, but this humble officer has a consideration. The Jianzhou slaves gave these Han soldiers land, women, and gold and silver, while Changsheng Island can give them nothing. Those who surrendered today were merely hoping to escape death by luck. Such men cannot be used with confidence, still less be incorporated into our army." Huang Shi spoke with courtesy. Changsheng Island had a hundred tasks to undertake; putting these men on coarse grain and pickled vegetables like monks would likely do nothing to pacify their wolfish ambitions.

"As for the future, so long as our army is strong, those traitorous Han troops will surrender of their own accord. If our army cannot defeat the Jianzhou slaves, those wretches will certainly never part with the women and children they have plundered." Huang Shi felt these Han soldiers were all fence-sitters. If the Ming army grew strong, they would naturally bend with the wind, but if the Ming army could do nothing to the Later Jin, they would absolutely show no sense of national righteousness or shame.

Wu Mu's face took on an expression of sudden enlightenment. Whatever Huang Shi said now, he regarded as supreme wisdom, and the more he pondered it, the more flawlessly correct it seemed: "General Huang's lofty insight, lofty insight!"

The four hundred combat soldiers rested in clusters, some to the left, some to the right. The pursuing cavalry had not yet returned. Three hundred auxiliaries were severing heads and bridling warhorses. This feudal system of rewarding merit by the severed head, Huang Shi felt, harbored enormous hidden dangers. For instance, he remembered that in history, when the Qin army clashed with the Chuang army, Sun Chuanting had initially won a small victory, but the combat soldiers all busied themselves with severing heads, and Li Zicheng's routed troops had abandoned a great deal of baggage and equipment, so the Qin army thereupon scattered into disarray and collapsed utterly when the Chuang army's rear echelon counterattacked.

Another example: during the previous operation at Lüshun, Huang Shi had constantly feared an enemy counterattack, so the Firefighting Battalion strictly forbade combat soldiers from taking heads themselves, and military merit on Changsheng Island was also tallied collectively. If combat soldiers did not join in scrambling for spoils, the army would naturally not collapse in an instant from a surprise raid.

Wu Mu muttered with the two Embroidered Uniform Guard men for a while. Huang Shi watched as Chen Ruike nodded and ran over to the battlefield to turn over corpses, and after a moment even tore off a piece of clothing and brought it back. Wu Mu took it, examined it for a while, then tucked it into his bosom. Though Huang Shi did not know what mischief they were up to, he figured it had nothing to do with him, so he did not ask.

After waiting bitterly for nearly two shichen, Huang Shi finally saw the horse troop slowly returning. He Baodao and the Ming soldiers under him were all utterly exhausted, and their mounts were likewise listless, each horse looking on the verge of collapse. Over two hundred men of the Later Jin army had seized horses and fled, but He Baodao and his men, following Huang Shi's orders, had pursued them relentlessly. The Later Jin army's horseflesh naturally could not compare with the Ming army's long-nurtured steeds, so He Baodao's horse troop had cut down countless more in the chase.

He Baodao performed a salute with what little strength he had left, and the moment he dismounted, he collapsed seated on the ground: "My lord, that was truly exhilarating." The other cavalrymen also lay sprawled in disarray all around, clamoring for water.

When He Baodao returned, he also brought several young women and seven or eight boys. These were the family dependents of Later Jin officers, evidently spoils that He Baodao had deliberately spared. Each of them was bound sideways across a saddle, and the soldiers led them over for Huang Shi to inspect.

The disposal of these boys was simple. By regulation, they would be presented as captives in the capital. Such barbarian boys would all be castrated to become the lowest-ranking eunuchs. The Son of Heaven of Huaxia had always favored humiliating foreign enemies in this manner, and these little eunuchs would also become targets for venting anger within the palace.

Huang Shi scrutinized the captured Manchu women for a moment. When his gaze swept over a particular woman, the cavalryman behind her would yank her hair and tilt her face up for Huang Shi to see. One of them, a girl who looked only fifteen or sixteen, still bore a childish air that had not yet faded, her frightened lips trembling. The other few were women in their twenties. They remained silent, not uttering a word, which made them appear rather brave.

"My lord, how shall we deal with them?" The several soldiers who had brought them looked already consumed by lust, staring over like ravenous wolves and fierce tigers, each pair of eyes glinting with a green light.

Had they been women he had never met face to face, Huang Shi would have satisfied his subordinates' desires with a clear conscience. But these women were right before his horse at this moment. Watching their expressions of resignation to fate, though Huang Shi's face remained a block of iron, his heart felt a faint twinge of pity.

Zhao Manxiong said from the side: "In any case, they are going to die." Changsheng Island dared not keep these women. If they leaked intelligence or whispered into someone's ear at the pillow, that could not be endured, and no one dared risk taking an enemy's kinswoman home as a wife. "Let the soldiers deal with them." Zhao Manxiong worried that if the officers once tasted such sweetness, some might foolishly want to keep them.

"This is still dangerous ground." Huang Shi hesitated. Letting the soldiers vent themselves might affect the march: "Taking them back, I fear trouble on the road." He could not help wanting to grant these women a swift death.

"The Jianzhou slaves from Fuzhou cannot arrive for a while. My lord, be at ease." Zhao Manxiong thought for a moment and felt Huang Shi was perhaps overthinking it: "If anything happens, one slash each and they won't get away."

Hearing this, the several cavalrymen all nodded repeatedly, clamoring that they would absolutely not be tender toward fair faces at the critical moment, and absolutely would not lose control of themselves before returning to Changsheng Island. Even as they spoke, their hands roamed ceaselessly over the captives, kneading and squeezing as if cursing their parents for giving them only two arms.

Huang Shi thus laid down three rules with them: if anything happened, they must not show mercy; they must not touch them until reaching Changsheng Island; and after giving the soldiers three days, they must not keep them without authorization. They all agreed excitedly. One of them, in his elation, gave his captive a fierce pinch on the buttocks.

Heads were being bound up in strings. The soldiers' gazes drifted one after another over the several female captives. Huang Shi turned his head and barked: "Hurry and collect all the heads, then form up and return to Changsheng Island." — Countless families, the lifelong hopes, ideals, and happiness of so many people, all would be destroyed in an instant by war... But this war was not started by me, Huang Shi. For this, my conscience is clear.

Wu Mu also nodded his head like a chicken pecking at grain: "Yes, yes, form up at once. General Huang's lofty insight!"