Chapter 208: Switching Sides

From where Diwu Lun stood by the drum cart, looking past his own ranks arrayed like fish scales, the entire riverbank was packed solid with the Red Eyebrow Army — like a vast herd of migrating wildebeest.

Unlike the Wulou bandits they had encountered earlier, these men were not in rags. They were dressed rather well, actually — when fleeing disaster, people grab the best clothes their household owns. Though the long trek had left their garments stained and filthy, they had also looted plenty from wealthy estates. Their chieftains were easy to spot: the ones in sable furs and pelts. Against the cold, many had wrapped cloth around their heads, in every color imaginable.

If you wiped the blood-red paint from their eyebrows, washed their faces, and combed their hair, they would look no different from ordinary folk walking the market wards and village lanes — except for the ones wearing women's clothes.

The only things that set them apart were the weapons in their hands, and the look in their eyes.

Peasants who once cowered in their home villages, too timid to offend even a tax clerk, now had the nerve to fight government troops. What gave them courage was not King Jing of Chengyang, not Chiyou, not any god or spirit — it was the gnawing emptiness in their bellies.

These tens of thousands of Red Eyebrows had already eaten the far bank bare. Their grain was nearly gone — otherwise Chi Zhaoping could never have goaded them into a pitched battle against Wei troops. That morning they had only a thin gruel. A bowl of it could keep a man going for half a day, but it left no sense of fullness at all. Their stomachs churned greedily, craving more — craving something with substance.

That was the driving force that sent them risking their lives across the frozen river.

"Take Liaocheng and we eat rice!"

"Take Yuancheng and we eat meat!"

At Chi Zhaoping's prior instruction, the chieftains' shouts rose one after another. These days the Red Eyebrow Army, along with the refugees who kept joining them, had been fed daily on tales of Hebei's abundance — endless millet and meat, a place where they could settle and start anew.

They had been on the run since last summer and autumn, never knowing where the next meal would come from, living each day in hunger and dread. Kin had drifted apart and died; the neighbors who fled famine together had fallen one by one. They had grown numb, close to despair — yet now Chi Zhaoping had given them a sliver of hope.

If a decent life were possible, who would choose to be a Red Eyebrow!

A hundred voices shouted, a thousand shouted, and at last ten thousand roared as one. The Red Eyebrow Army boiled over. They had been shivering with cold moments before, but now a surge of heat seemed to rise in their chests. Every man was shouting, faces contorted, eyes blazing with madness.

Then, driven forward by their lesser chieftains, they began to walk, then to run. The first ten thousand who had made it ashore came charging in a single swarm — no tactical probing, no preliminaries whatsoever.

"Win the battle, fill our bellies!"

What drove the Red Eyebrows to throw away their lives was hunger and the desperate longing for a place to settle. And what suddenly united the selfish, fractious powerful families of Wei — normally a plate of loose sand — was sheer terror of this swarm of locusts.

Last time at Yuancheng, Chai Rong, the Military Section Clerk, had to be held at knifepoint by Diwu Lun before he would commit his commandery troops to the fight. Today, no blade was needed. Chai Rong was more anxious than Diwu Lun himself, drilling his men with urgent instructions: "If those Red Eyebrow bandits break through, it won't just be the grain — they'll devour us and our entire families, young and old! Steel yourselves — this battle cannot be avoided!"

The same was true of the various powerful-family militias on the left and right flanks. Gazing at the terrifying numbers across from them, they knew a single fortified manor could never withstand a month-long siege. That many mouths would strip them to the bone. Diwu Lun only wanted men and grain — but the Red Eyebrow bandits wanted their lives!

The local militia were even more resolute. Most were natives of Shouliang, and the scars left by the Wulou bandits' rampage had not yet healed. They had no wish to suffer the Red Eyebrows' ravages and surrender the homeland they had only just reclaimed. They understood that this battle was, as Diwu Lun had said, a matter of life and death. After Lu Zhongkang rallied his men, he proclaimed loudly to the crowd that the Red Eyebrows had already taken heavy losses at their hands — they were nothing special.

Among these ten-thousand-plus "Yellow Turban troops," the ones with the lowest morale, the ones who felt this battle had the least to do with them, were the two thousand Gengshi remnant soldiers Geng Chun had rescued and brought to Hebei. Most were not locals, and the shadow of the Chengchang defeat still loomed over them — they were deeply reluctant to fight this battle.

Diwu Lun had shown them considerable care. During the encampment, he had personally inspected their camp several times, bestowing clothing, food, wine, and meat, and promised them land and homes after the battle. That had steadied their hearts — most had been of poor origin before becoming soldiers, after all. But now, seeing the enemy's numbers, their resolve was wavering again.

"Geng Chun isn't even here — why should we throw our lives away?" Some began to harbor thoughts of retreat.

"You didn't seem to hold back on the wine and meat Diwu Lun gave you!" someone shot back at once. Diwu Lun had indeed won the respect of many among them.

"At Chengchang, the General of Renewal and the Grand Preceptor had fine armor and sharp blades aplenty, yet tens of thousands against tens of thousands, they still lost. Now the enemy outnumbers us — can we even win?"

"Before Chengchang, we drank watery gruel every day. Since coming to Hebei, we eat dry rice, and Diwu Lun eats the same as us. You think that makes no difference!"

"Anyone who dares praise the enemy and spread fear among the troops — executed!" The voice of Peng Chong, Peng Botong, rang out. Geng Chun had recommended him as Major, and he stood right behind the men.

Peng Botong's hand rested on his sword, his eyes fixed on their backs. He cursed: "We are defeated soldiers, battered remnants who fled in panic with nowhere to go. By good fortune, Geng Chun led the way and Diwu Lun took us in. These two months we have wanted for neither food nor clothing, and order has been restored."

"This is a debt of life-saving grace. Any man who does not seek to repay it but instead thinks of running away is worse than a dog or a swine. I, Peng Botong, will be the first to kill him! What's more, if the Red Eyebrows break into Hebei, we lose the last patch of ground we can call home. Where would we go then? Join the bandits, or trek a thousand li back to our old villages?"

His words steadied the men's hearts. At that moment, from beneath the main command banner where Diwu Lun stood, clerks and aides came riding with orders.

"Diwu Lun decrees: Those who defeat the enemy — powerful families shall be granted captive able-bodied men as slaves; soldiers shall be allotted unclaimed land in Shouliang; commoner militia shall receive grain and cloth!"

Each was what their station craved. The powerful families of the two commanderies forever hungered for more slaves and laborers. Soldiers of poor origin dreamed of land and a settled home, like Diwu Lun's veteran Boar-Rush Braves. And the local militia, fretting over how to survive until the summer and autumn harvests, desperately needed grain and cloth.

This battle was unavoidable, and now rewards were promised. In Wei, Diwu Lun's word carried far more weight than an imperial edict!

The chaos of the hasty muster had barely settled, but the enemy gave them no time. With a howl of "Win and eat your fill!", the Red Eyebrow Army began its assault.

No drumbeats, no horns, no banners — pure instinct. Those in front began to run, those behind pressed close after them. The whole riverbank was a surging tide of heads, tens of thousands of Red Eyebrows like a rolling flood, as if they would smash through Diwu Lun's "dike" and sweep across all of Hebei!

Diwu Lun watched as that first wave came crashing straight at him, slamming into the "Zang Camp" he had placed at the very front.

Because the Red Eyebrows' main thrust was impossible to predict, Ma Yuan was a hundred li to the south with two thousand refugee soldiers. The two thousand Diwu Lun kept with him were his only true core force in this battle. He had split them in two and placed them at the center of the formation.

The Seventh Biao, with the short-weapon camp, served as Diwu Lun's personal guard, stationed in the rear.

Further forward was Zang Nu's unit. Diwu Lun had equipped them with every piece of old lamellar armor from the commandery armory, plus new sets that the Wu'an ironworks had been frantically producing for two months using the old methods. Zang Nu's men had an exceptionally high armor rate. In their hands were nine-chi long spears, their tips ground to a gleaming shine. They formed the very front of the great formation.

This deployment was the result of Diwu Lun's bitter fighting against the Wulou bandits — he had figured out the bandits' combat patterns — and his subsequent war games with Ma Yuan and the others. On a battlefield, the most prominent part of a formation always meets the enemy first; that is common knowledge. An army like the Red Eyebrows, with no command structure and acting on pure instinct, would especially surge toward the forward position.

The front ranks were loose sand, shoved forward by the men behind them. The rear ranks were a blind current, instinctively following the front. Unsurprisingly, they all surged toward where Zang Nu stood.

Zang Nu glanced back instinctively at Diwu Lun's banner. This was the first time he had commanded a thousand men. This unit had been training for nearly a year. They had fought under Ma Yuan at the Battle of Wu'an and hunted down the Wulou bandits — veterans, at the very least. They could hold a spear steady, and they still had spit in their mouths.

Seeing the small signal flag at the main position wave, Zang Nu's heart steadied. He shouted: "Spears down!"

In stark contrast to the Red Eyebrows swarming toward them, they upheld the fine tradition of Diwu Lun's troops: "unshakable in a standing formation." Their ranks, though small, were solid. The leveled spears bristled like a dense thicket of blades, and even the maddened Red Eyebrow vanguard instinctively slowed their charge.

Seizing the interval while a hundred-plus paces still separated them, the crossbowmen Diwu Lun had concentrated in the gaps of the spear formation loosed their bolts. Over a hundred quarrels shrieked through the air. Though the Red Eyebrows had looted armor for protection, quite a few toppled, and the forward momentum stalled for a moment.

Zang Nu himself had started as a crossbowman in the Boar-Rush Braves and knew well how to seize the moment and judge distance. He directed the crossbowmen to crank their weapons and loose two more volleys, beating down the enemy's initial surge of momentum.

But there were simply too many of them, wave after wave. They were at the front in no time. They did not know how to use overly long spears, however; after looting them, they had deliberately chopped them down to five or six chi. Now, faced with this iron hedgehog, they were dumbstruck. A few, clinging to hope, tried to rush through the gaps, only to be skewered and fall dead.

A handful of casualties could not stop the Red Eyebrows. They had grown inured to death. Dying was far simpler than living — best to be killed in one blow, without too much pain. Day after day, nothing but hunger upon hunger. The people around them no longer seemed human; they had all become wild beasts.

"What of death?"

"What of moths flying into the flame?"

They fought on pure instinct, with no method to counter this — they could only pile up their lives!

As more and more men surged in from the rear, the scattered, disordered Red Eyebrows were passively compressed into a "dense mass" of jostling heads. Those in front, shoved from behind, had no choice but to lurch forward. Some were driven bodily onto the spears yet still could not stop, watching helplessly as the spearhead pierced their belly and burst through their back, their screams piercing and wretched.

In mere moments, every spear had two or three men skewered upon it, yet the Red Eyebrows kept pressing forward. The soldiers felt like reefs battered and engulfed by waves. Behind the spear line, dagger-axes and halberds flailed, ring-pommel blades rose and fell in a steady rhythm, cutting down and stabbing each oncoming foe like chopping melons and vegetables. But the speed of the slaughter could not match the speed of the Red Eyebrows' advance. The forward position was plunged into bitter fighting.

Yet they had held back an assault of at least five thousand men and kept their formation steady, standing immovable under the impact of an enemy several times their number. That bought time for the left and right flanks to meet the enemy.

Behind Zang Nu, guarding his rear and flanks, were the troops of Peng Chong and Chai Rong. Though their order and equipment were far inferior to Diwu Lun's core force, they were at least "government troops." If taken alone and compared to the Red Eyebrows, they were still far superior. The only problem was morale.

One unit was defeated soldiers who had once been routed by the Red Eyebrows; the other was a bunch of old campaigners, commandery garrison troops who had long drawn empty pay. Both had to be driven onto the battlefield with a mix of kicks and rewards. When they first clashed with the Red Eyebrows, there was still some panic. Fortunately, Zang Nu ahead of them had drawn most of the enemy, so they only had to face twice their own number.

Amid the thrust and slash of dagger-axe and spear, Peng Chong and his men realized something: these Red Eyebrows before them were not quite the same as the ones they remembered — the ones who had descended like divine soldiers at Chengchang. They were human too; they could die. Though many fought with reckless abandon, seeking mutual destruction, others panicked at the sight of blood and fled in all directions.

The wretchedness of their rout was exactly the same as Peng Chong and his men retreating from Chengchang months ago!

Once their mindset was set right, their hands stopped trembling and their movements steadied. The left and right flanks also held their ground and were not broken by the Red Eyebrows.

But the battle was far from that simple. Men kept pouring across from the far bank, driven into the attack by Chi Zhaoping. Twenty thousand held off? Then send ten thousand more! Some joined the frontal melee; others charged toward the mixed units at the ends of the left and right formations. The Wei Commandery powerful families and local militia units ordered to form ranks there now faced Red Eyebrows equal to their own numbers.

Although the magnate forces and militia were a motley mix, lacking unified command, and their armor and weapons were a grade below the standing army, they held their own against an equal number of Red Eyebrow bandits. Since mustering, Diwu Lun had not let them go hungry. In peacetime they had all practiced the five weapons to some degree, grown familiar with flags, drums, and formations. Most now carried iron weapons, and even the worst-equipped had wooden spears, organized by village ward and squad.

If the battle at the center was a boulder resisting the sea tide, and on the flanks a wild bull against a wolf pack, then here it was purely chicks pecking at each other. The Red Eyebrows fought in chaos, and the militia fought in chaos too — no order, formations shattered, degenerating into a village brawl.

For the Red Eyebrows, every day meant enduring hunger, an endless march. They were told that once they reached Hebei they would live, but what stood before them were ceaselessly loosed crossbow bolts, dense forests of iron spears, and hostile locals.

Why must you block us? We only want to survive! The Red Eyebrow Army was filled with bitter indignation.

The militia were furious too: There are so many places in this world to go — east to Qing Province, south down to Xu Province — why must you head north, to seize the very food and clothing that keep us alive?

Class brothers turned blades on one another, slaughtering each other.

Diwu Lun's position was slightly elevated, allowing him to survey the whole field. Aside from the thousand personal guards beside him, every formation had already joined the battle. Had the opposing side possessed a skilled commander who sent five thousand men on a long detour to strike his rear, Diwu Lun would have been in grave peril.

The Seventh Biao Commander pleaded for battle: "Sect Leader, let me go aid Zang Nu! The Red Eyebrows can no longer push forward — they are utterly spent. If we strike their flank, they will surely collapse!"

But Diwu Lun looked toward the distant riverbank, at the several thousand Red Eyebrows still clustered around Chi Zhaoping, with more still crossing from the opposite shore.

Suppressing the impulse to commit his last unit and win a local victory, Diwu Lun shook his head.

"Wait a little longer. The time to counterattack has not yet come."

Diwu Lun's patience was rewarded. When the battle had lasted nearly half a watch, the Red Eyebrows, despite their several-fold numerical advantage, had failed to advance a single step, and despair filled their hearts. They had gone hungry for many days and eaten only a little thin gruel that morning. Now, fighting with all their might, their stomachs gnawed with hunger, faint from starvation, they had not even the strength to lift their heavy weapons. On the main front, the unbelievable happened: Zang Nu's force of just over a thousand men was pushing five or six thousand Red Eyebrows backward!

More and more Red Eyebrows broke and fled in rout. Just as they were about to become the wedge tip of a counterattack, Chi Zhaoping, who had been waiting all along for the Wei troops to exhaust themselves, finally committed her fresh forces.

"Enemy to the west!"

Five thousand of Chi Zhaoping's old followers, having made a long detour of unknown distance, finally appeared on the flank and rear of Diwu Lun's main force. They did not go to reinforce the steadily collapsing front line but drove straight for Diwu Lun's banner!

There were no extra troops left to block those five thousand Red Eyebrow soldiers. They began to accelerate into a run, and their armor-wearing ratio was not low — they truly seemed to be the elite force Chi Zhaoping had kept hidden.

The enemy drew closer and closer. The true test had come. Diwu Lun looked at the thousand-odd men beside him and laughed: "It seems we too must fight to the death!"

"We are willing to die for Lord Diwu!"

The personal guards roared in unison with the Seventh Biao Commander, every man rolling up his sleeves and cracking his knuckles. Having fought this long, they had discovered the Red Eyebrows were no stronger than the Five Towers bandits — they simply had numbers. If Zang Nu could hold off five times his number, why couldn't they?

But just as Diwu Lun fell into danger, on the great riverbank, the Red Eyebrows' main camp suddenly erupted in chaos!

It was a force of "Red Eyebrow Army" that had stumbled across from the opposite shore. After climbing the northern bank, these two thousand men pulled from their bosoms strips of yellow cloth and tied them around their foreheads, then charged at Chi Zhaoping with a great war cry!

Although Chi Zhaoping still had five thousand men around her, she was caught completely off guard.

What a spectacle — a grand battle, and in the end it had turned into a base race.

This sudden variable abruptly reversed the entire battlefield situation. Diwu Lun, noticing the turn of events there, was himself quite astonished. Ma Yuan was a hundred li away — at the earliest, he could not arrive until dusk!

But to boost morale, Diwu Lun resolutely feigned that this had been his plan all along, that his stratagem had succeeded, and he let out a great laugh.

"Look! It is our house's 'Thousand-Li Horse' — he has arrived!"

…

PS: Sorry it's a bit late. Chapter 2 at 18:00.