Chapter 346: Noble and Base

The winter sun peeked out, shining upon the foot of Mount Qi. Looking back at the Longyou army, the light made their banners and armor gleam against heaven and earth — their edge was terribly sharp.

But if you simply raised a hand to your brow to block the dazzling reflected sunlight, you would discover that the armor of the good-family riders was a motley of colors — some lacquered black, some dyed red, and some even painted yellow. The styles too ranged from new to old: lamellar armor, fish-scale armor, short-coated armor. Here, you could find every type of armor from the Qin dynasty to the present.

It was simply because these were passed down through the generations of each clan. What was handed down was not merely arms and armor — war was a craft, something that flowed in the blood of the sons of the Six Commanderies. When he closed his eyes, amid the howling winter wind by his ears, Wei Cui could almost hear the pounding hooves and piercing whistles of his forefathers as they followed generals like Wei Qing, Huo Qubing, and Zhao Chongguo, rampaging across the deserts north of the loop and into foreign lands.

In his youth, Wei Cui had also been to the Western Regions. His nephew, who had studied the classics far too much, probably could not grasp this sentiment, could he?

"May the ancestors shelter us."

The White Tiger Grand General opened his eyes. And today, he would lead the sons of the Six Commanderies to fight for the status and glory that the warriors of the Six Commanderies had been losing, bit by bit, over the past sixty years!

Wei Cui deployed his troops with practiced ease: "The sixteen clans of Longyou, with over ten thousand soldiers in total, shall form a square formation in the center. The local magnates of Right Fufeng, with several thousand retainers and dependents, shall form the rear formation."

"Detach three thousand shock cavalry to guard the army's left and right flanks. Use two thousand good-family riders as the central hard core, also divided into two regiments — the left firing to the right, the right firing to the left."

In total, roughly twenty thousand men — only half the Wei army's strength. But those five thousand cavalry alone, on this flat Zhouyuan plain, could fully exploit their advantage!

Yet when General Niu Han reported the results of the probing attack, Wei Cui was greatly disappointed.

"What? We lost over ten men, and over a hundred horses?"

Wei Cui felt his heart bleeding. He pointed his horsewhip at the enemy formation several li away, which had already restored order: "Diwu Lun's forces are all peasants and bondservants, a mob of exiles. Tens of thousands of base-born sons of earthen windows and rope hinges, rounded up by Wang Mang to be sent to their deaths — and now they have stolen their way into Guanzhong and seized the lands of the official clans and great surnames."

Apart from those, the rest were tenant farmers and Chang'an townsfolk. Such soldiers were the ones the good-family sons had always most despised and looked down upon. This exchange ratio left Wei Cui deeply dissatisfied.

The horses of the good-family riders were all one-in-ten picks, fine steeds with a shoulder height of over six and a half chi — otherwise they could not bear the heavy barding. A single armored warhorse was worth more than the lives of ten, even twenty men!

And most lamentable of all were those dozen-plus fallen sons of the Six Commanderies. Did you know how many years it took to train a single good-family rider? They had to study the five weapons from childhood, learn the arts of mounted archery. All the time the low-born spent on farm work, all the time the Confucian scholars east of the passes spent poring over classics until their hair turned white — all of it was devoted to martial training. Only thus, after ten or twenty years, could you obtain a single high-quality "knight of martial skill."

Capable of leaping trenches and moats, scaling hills and mounds, braving peril and obstacles, crossing vast marshes, charging fierce foes, and throwing great hosts into chaos. Physically robust, nearly every man stood over seven chi five cun tall — a fellow like Diwu Lun, a mere seven chi three cun, was utterly unqualified!

Warriors like these — a hundred of the peasant-soldiers opposite could not match a single one!

So what kind of battle would it take to satisfy Wei Cui?

"Infantry and cavalry will work together. First strike the enemy's right formation. The foot soldiers will advance in front to pin them down, while the martial knights strike their flank."

"Wei Yi, you go!"

Wei Cui appointed another nephew.

"Ten riders rout a hundred men; a hundred riders scatter a thousand. Only thus can we be worthy of the sons and fine horses we have lost!"

……

That probing assault had been but a small appetizer before the main course. Only when both armies had finished forming their battle lines did the real clash begin, blow for blow, rivet for rivet.

The Longyou troops feared that Diwu Lun would build a wagon fort on the spot or dig trenches to neutralize the cavalry's advantage. So once the horses had rested sufficiently, at a single command from Wei Cui, they decisively launched their attack. Several thousand foot soldiers, in orderly ranks, stepped forward.

As the private troops of powerful magnates, their training far exceeded that of the Wei army's main force, which had been formed barely half a year. Moreover, the men of Longyou were brimming with martial vigor. The manner in which they advanced, spears leveled, faintly recalled the bearing of the Qin men of old when they marched east from Mount Qi to sweep through the feudal lords.

Jing Dan stood upon his command chariot and perceived the Longyou army's intent — they were clearly staking everything on an assault against his right wing. He could not help but laugh in anger.

"These Longyou men truly take my right wing for a soft persimmon!"

True, his command had been stuffed by Diwu Lun with a great many newly recruited tenant farmers and townsfolk. His elite troops were not many — merely five or six thousand. Every battalion he had, he had pushed to the front lines, leaving only a handful of guards and battle supervisors in the rear.

Earlier, when the good-family riders had swept past the formation, the front ranks had steadied themselves after the initial panic. But the new recruits in the rear, not knowing what had happened, were still somewhat disordered. Only when Diwu Lun's false report — "Several thousand enemy cavalry repelled, gold as reward!" — reached them did they settle down slightly. Yet they still could not stop glancing left and right, making Jing Dan feel that perhaps it would have been more advantageous for their side had he not brought them to Zhouyuan at all.

The officers of Longyou had all fought countless battles against the Qiang and Hu on the frontiers; such stirrings could hardly escape their notice. But still, did they have to look down on him so? He, Jing Sunqing, was, after all, the man in the Wei army who best knew how to deal with cavalry.

It was a pity that Jing Dan's reputation still fell short of Wan Xiu's, who had greater seniority and had seen far more battles. Longyou only knew him as Diwu Lun's old friend, promoted beyond the norm and entrusted with heavy responsibility, who had fought the battle of Tongyuan and taken advantage of the terrain. Now, on flat ground, he was perhaps just a mediocre general.

Fighting in deep winter, it was not only the cavalry who had to be wary of snow under hoof — the crossbowmen and archers suffered too. Some had bowstrings frozen stiff and had to warm them against their chests before they could be used. Others shivered so badly from the bitter cold that even gloves were useless; when drawing a bow, a single tremble meant missing by several paces.

The wind direction was also unfavorable to them. The northwest wind howled and blew, and arrows shot out could even be blown backward…

The Longyou troops, however, exploited this heaven-sent advantage. They dashed across the Zhouyuan plain. They were nothing like the Xiajiang troops of Greenwood, who shivered helplessly at a bit of snow — the winters in Longyou and Hexi were only colder than in Guanzhong.

Faintly, the sound of drums and pipes could be heard. The Longyou troops closed in with proud strides and clashed with the Wei soldiers, who had stowed their crossbows and now held spears and dagger-axes. Both sides fought in disciplined Han-style infantry formations. The long weapons of both sides strained forward, each trying to stab the other. Although the Wei side had played a trick by using extra-long barbarian spears, they had not been able to gather enough of them in time, and the weapons were somewhat unwieldy. After skewering two Longyou soldiers, they were hacked apart by ring-pommel sabers.

The entire front line of the Wei army's right wing was now engaged. As Jing Dan's banners waved, three battalions — three thousand men — in the rear began to advance in an outflanking maneuver. Their advantage lay in numbers; they could overwhelm the few with the many.

But at that very moment, with a burst of drums and horns, the Longyou good-family riders, who had been watching and waiting half a li away, moved again!

The warhorses, having just finished an entire bag of wheat and beans, were spurred into motion, kicking aside the remaining snow. Guided by their martial knights, they advanced, swinging in a wider arc than the Wei army's reserves.

Upon reaching the proper position, a full two thousand riders began to wheel in response to the banners. Their target was the flank of the Wei army's right formation!

Wei Cui's gaze, Jing Dan's gaze, Diwu Lun's gaze — all were fixed rigidly upon that spot. The flank of the right formation had clearly become the focal point of the battlefield. And the three battalions that Jing Dan had maneuvered had already moved to shield this most vulnerable position, hastily digging in their heels.

All three battalions were elite troops specially trained to counter cavalry. They pushed forward several armored war wagons as obstacles, clustered long spears in three dense ranks facing outward, and backed them with cocked heavy crossbows, their barbed arrowheads glinting.

Two hundred paces — in the space of a few breaths, the cavalry would be upon them. In a moment, it would surely be a collision of heaven and earth!

"Will the spear prove sharper, or the shield harder?"

……

"Here they come, here they come!"

"Brothers of the Third Platoon, C Battalion — stay sharp, all of you!"

The low moan of horns echoed across the northern face of the Wei army. That was the direction of Mount Qi, and also the high ground occupied by the Longyou cavalry. The terrain had a slight downward slope, which would give the attackers an even greater advantage — this was also a key reason Wei Cui had chosen the right wing as his breakthrough point.

Qin He noticed that the sergeant, who had been boasting so boldly moments before, had suddenly fallen silent. After a while, the man abruptly lowered his head, grabbed a handful of filthy, slushy snow, and stuffed it into his mouth.

"Have you gone mad? Isn't there a gourd at your belt? Drank it all already?" Qin He was badly startled, thinking the man was thirsty.

"I'm not afraid of you laughing at me." The sergeant chewed the dirty snow and struggled to swallow. "When I'm bragging, the spittle flies. But right now, my mouth has suddenly gone dry as a field back home that hasn't seen irrigation in ten years."

Qin He understood. He also grabbed a handful of snow, rubbed it over his own face, and then smeared it across the faces of the soldiers, whose complexions were ashen and lips cracked. "Wake up, all of you!"

Then he turned back to his old comrade and said: "Don't you always boast about how fierce you were when you followed the King across the river to strike the Hu? We may have missed that battle, but if we win this one today, we'll be able to boast about it for many years too!"

Woooo-woooo! Their conversation was cut short. In the distance, the Longyou troops' horns suddenly blared at their loudest, momentarily drowning out even the sounds of slaughter on the front line. Right after, the thunder of pounding hooves came rolling toward them!

The general assault of the Longyou cavalry had begun! Qin He raised his head to look and saw the command banner of the Wei clan surging forward at the very front, moving rapidly. Behind it, one thousand good-family riders and one thousand retainer cavalry had formed two formations and were beginning to advance toward them at a steady pace. Then, as was their custom, a hundred paces out, they suddenly accelerated!

During the earlier raid, Qin He and his men had at least been standing in the rear formation, watching from a distance. Even then, they had felt the shock cavalry's imposing momentum. But now, they had been pushed to the very front line, guarding the main formation behind them. Even soldiers who had fought for half a year still trembled when faced with such a sight. It was only because they were packed shoulder to shoulder that their fear was diluted, and their courage shared.

The Wei army had been ordered not to shoot until the enemy was fifty paces away. After half a year of drilling, the Wei archers were now highly proficient. With each volley, the arrows flew thick as locusts, always managing to send several dozen men tumbling from their horses — but rarely did a single shot kill outright.

The good-family riders in the front ranks wore thick armor. Qin He had earlier peeled back the armor of a dead man and found several layers of thick silk clothing underneath! And with the wind also favoring the enemy, even a six-dan crossbow might not pierce that armor within fifty paces.

"They're all sons of great houses!" Qin He had sighed at the time. A mass-produced Wei soldier, taken individually, could not compare to a good-family son backed by the resources of an entire clan and estate.

Qin He realized he had let his mind wander. He quickly shook his head and bellowed: "Spears up!"

The three front ranks of long spears were already angled toward the sky — this was training the King and General Jing Dan had specifically demanded for dealing with Longxi cavalry. The only pity was that the armed wagons were too few to form a sufficient barrier; they could only defend one stretch at a time, but the Longxi riders would simply charge where no wagons blocked the way!

The enemy drew closer and closer, countless round iron helmets bobbing and surging, merging with the fine horses of every color beneath them into a mighty torrent. Hooves trampled the snowy mud, sending up a rumbling roar, as if about to split the very earth.

The soldiers' faces turned even paler. The assault was fiercer than during the probing attacks. Would they become bloody pulp beneath those hooves?

Qin He's pupils contracted sharply too, his heart suddenly racing! But he still fulfilled his duty, gripping the hooked spear in his hands.

They had to withstand the charge, or else the various battalions locked in bitter combat with the Longxi infantry to the rear would surely be caught in a pincer attack!

Qin He was clumsy with words and did not know how to rally morale. Fortunately, their Major did.

"Gentlemen, retreat this one step, and you will retreat all the way back to the fields the King allotted us, back to being slaves and tenant farmers, flogged and humiliated by others!"

If they had shouted "Fight for the King of Wei," it would have rung somewhat hollow.

But at the thought of the gold cakes and title deeds tucked against their chests, many soldiers forcibly steadied legs that had wanted to turn and run. Spears that had gone a little limp suddenly straightened, shaking off the mud and snow clinging to them. The three battalions condensed into a solid formation like a forest of steel!

"No wonder he gets to be Major, and I can only be a Centurion."

Qin He had no time left for wild thoughts. Those horse-shaped monsters draped in scale armor had already charged right up to them. The well-born riders atop them, fully armed, thrust with lances and halberds or raised ring-pommel sabers, their eyes fierce. Accompanied by wave after wave of hoarse, straining shouts, the two sides collided with tremendous force!

Crash after crash of impact rang out without cease. The immense force of the collision sent over a dozen well-born riders flying from their saddles, landing heavily among the dense mass of Wei troops. The unlucky ones were impaled on spears; the lucky ones managed a roll and could even stand up and swing their sabers.

Countless spear shafts snapped. The armored warhorses slammed into the flesh-and-blood bodies of the Wei soldiers, then trampled them beneath their hooves.

It was accompanied, too, by the sound of sharp blades sinking into flesh — thwack, thwack, thwack — as some Wei spears and halberds pierced the horses or the unprotected flesh of their masters, thrusting clean through!

In that instant of impact, the Wei army's casualties were inevitably heavier, but no matter what, the three battalions did not collapse in rout under the charge of a thousand shock cavalry!

"They held!"

Qin He felt as if his own hands would snap right along with the weapon he held. The men in the front ranks had taken the brunt of that violent collision with their own flesh and blood. His comrade, the one who loved to boast, had been commanding right there — whether he was dead or alive now, Qin He did not know.

He could not afford to worry about anything else. All he could do now was not let the space and time bought with blood and lives go to waste. Qin He and the others raised their long hooked spears, pinning down that well-born cavalry officer slashing left and right from horseback, preventing him from advancing further.

And behind them, the crossbowmen of the elite archer corps raised their crossbows, took aim, and at this extremely close range, loosed several deadly bolts!

That well-born rider also raised a hand crossbow to return fire, but a bolt pierced his armor. He looked down, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and tumbled from his horse with a crash!

Some soldiers used specially made hooking spears, similar to the bu-shaped halberd, catching the armor plates or weapons of the well-born riders. Several men would give a fierce yank and drag the rider off his horse!

And in the chaos of melee, men with saber and shield would step forward, hacking down with wild blades to end their lives.

These short-statured saber-and-shield men had one more task: specifically cutting the horses' legs.

In short, to achieve infantry overcoming cavalry, Diwu Lun and Jing Dan had pooled their ideas and resorted to every dirty trick available.

Similar scenes played out continuously across the three battalions ordered to withstand the charge with their very lives. It was just as Jing Dan had told his Colonels and Majors: "Withstand one round of their shock charge. As long as you don't turn and flee, the ones who'll have to flee are the shock cavalry!"

As the gongs sounded the withdrawal, the well-born riders, unable to break through in one charge, began to pull back. Qin He's hooked spear had broken, so he grabbed an iron dung fork — a tool the army had pressed into service to make up for the shortage of hooked spears — and chased after them.

This scene felt familiar. As he ran, Qin He felt dazed for a moment. Yes, it must have been several years ago, when he was still a retainer and tenant farmer for some powerful family in the Guanzhong region.

He had been toiling in the fields, painfully straightening his aching back, when he looked toward the road and saw the master's sons out riding and hunting. Their hounds chased a hare into the fields they leased, trampling at will, yet the tenant farmers could only swallow their anger. After all, the powerful family's sons could claim they were practicing horsemanship to serve the nation, to slay the enemy and earn merit.

Only people like them — lowly peasants, transported convicts — were fit only to be summoned as retainers, following close behind. And if they were unfortunate enough to become the enemy, they would not even have the chance to face them in direct battle.

Among the retreating well-born riders, many faces showed bewilderment. These peasant soldiers, whom Wei Cui had dismissed as third-rate, had faces tanned dark by years of farm labor, no different from the tenant farmers back home.

They were supposed to be timid and fragile, meant to collapse when the iron cavalry charged with a crash, to raise hands accustomed to farm tools, not weapons, in surrender, or to turn and flee for their lives like panicked hares, letting the riders shoot and slash at will.

So why, under Diwu Lun's command, had they suddenly found such steadfast courage, standing immovable against the shock cavalry's charge, and even able to launch a counterattack?

This well-born rider could not figure it out for the moment, and perhaps he never would.

Because with a cry of alarm, his horse crashed down — a junior officer, not quite dead from the trampling charge, had suddenly flipped himself up and hacked at the horse's leg!

The well-born rider only had time to thrust out the spear in his hand before, amid the spinning of sky and earth, he was pinned beneath his own warhorse. The horse's body plus its armor was far too heavy; he could no longer move.

The junior officer who had attacked him had taken a spear thrust too and could not hold on, slumping to the ground. Eyes wide, in a blur, he saw a pair of cloth shoes, covered in snow, mud, and blood, approach and squat down.

What met his eyes was Qin He's face, made even uglier by exhaustion and slaughter, blood and sweat plastered across it.

Qin He saw that this talkative junior officer under his command — the comrade who had been taken in together with him by the King of Wei back in New Qinzhong — had a broken spear driven through his chest. It was clear he would not live, yet he was still smiling, his lips pursed as he murmured:

"Qin He, in my mouth now... cough, there's spit. Listen to it slurp, sss, sss..."

"More than the Yellow River's waters, isn't it."

That was no spit — it was clearly the unstoppable froth of blood!

Qin He's lips trembled. When he had not been drinking, his tongue was clumsy; he did not know what to say to his dying comrade. He could only watch helplessly as the man breathed his last and his convulsions ceased.

Qin He rose in silence, turning to see the well-born rider struggling, pinned beneath his horse.

He must have come from some formidable fortified manor in Longxi, perhaps even a scion of one of the Sixteen Powerful Families.

The armor on his body was quite exquisite, the fish-scale plates woven like real fish scales. His helmet had flown off somewhere. His face was wrapped in a silk lining, protection against both frostbite and arrows piercing armor to wound the skin. And that armored fine steed was probably worth a hundred gold. The horse's chest-guard alone could be traded for a dozen or more of the lamellar armor coats Qin He wore.

The well-born rider now raised his head too, looking up at this Wei soldier who was staring at him — a former farmer. This was a rare angle, an angle that should never have been possible.

Between the son of a wealthy, powerful house and a lowly peasant tenant, who was high and who was low — did that even need to be said?

Yet now, Qin He could look down upon his enemy. Strip away the gear on their bodies, and they had contended on the battlefield as equals. And the result was that the peasant soldiers had won this bout! On the battlefield, there was only victory and defeat — no noble or base!

His chest filled with rage at his old comrade's death in battle, Qin He said not a word. He raised the dung fork in his hand against this young well-born rider!

The well-born rider was not afraid, did not tremble. Instead, he bravely thrust out his chest. He must have recalled the glory of his forefathers, or the stories this armor carried. Some ancestor of his might have followed Wei and Huo on their campaigns against the Xiongnu, or might have stood proudly, halberd in hand, beside Emperor Xiaowu or Emperor Xiaoxuan, a wing of the state, a forest in its prime.

He raised his head proudly, chest out, and declared: "I am a descendant of Lord Xin of Didao in Longxi, Former General of the Left of Han. My name is..."

But Qin He did not wait for him to finish. He frowned and stabbed down fiercely. The dung fork pierced the well-born rider's throat, ending his life and choking his unfinished last words in blood.

The tool he was most skilled with, after all, was still this thing!

Another well-born rider killed. In Wei Cui's eyes, a hundred peasant soldiers put together were not worth trading for the life of a single Longxi armored knight.

But Qin He did not feel the slightest bit better for it. He even forgot his duties, just slumped down amid the corpses of his comrade and his enemy. He neither directed the troops nor went to take heads, only letting the Wei soldiers pass by him. Clutching the bloodstained dung fork, thinking of the boasts his comrade had always made in life, he could not help but weep.

"You bastard. From now on, to everyone I meet, I'll do the bragging about this battle for you!"

PS: Accidentally wrote a bit more, so it's a little late. There'll be an extra update tomorrow.