Chapter 112: Beneath the Walls of Shule (III)

"Change formation, protect the flanks, concentrate the divine-arm crossbow fire. Yin Yaozi takes command. Dunzhu, Man Xiong, Wang Tongxin — the three of you follow me!"

Zhang Zhao had also seen the Karakhanid cavalry scattering toward them. Whether the stockade could be set up, whether this nail could be driven in, all depended on this one moment.

If he could take down five hundred Karakhanid cavalry with a hundred men, who would dare say he was not the elite of the Khotan Golden Kingdom?

At Zhang Zhao's shout, the square formation split into two columns. The heavily armored modao glaive glaive glaive wielders and infantry spear wielders in their three layers of armor pressed forward, while the saber-and-shield men covered the divine-arm crossbowmen and archers as they fired.

Yan Jin was one of the modao glaive glaive glaive wielders in heavy armor. Clad in his heavy armor, he walked straight toward the onrushing Karakhanid cavalry.

A Karakhanid light cavalryman happened to circle around beside him and had just raised the horse bow in his hand when Yan Jin bellowed and swept his modao glaive glaive glaive across.

In an instant, from the horse's haunch to its neck, and along with it the leg of the rider on its side, a deep bloody gash was carved open.

The horse let out a mournful cry. In its agony it sprang high into the air, instinctively wanting to get far away from Yan Jin — this human was too terrifying!

But the horse's flight immediately brought disaster on the men around it. The charge, which had still had some speed, slowed to a crawl at once.

With his first strike complete, Yan Jin used the momentum of his modao glaive glaive glaive's swing to pivot halfway on the spot, then exhaled and shouted, bringing the glaive chopping down from upper right to lower left.

Blood sprayed in a wave, and an even more terrified shriek burst out. The warhorse had been slashed so deep that white bone was visible.

A heavily armored warrior following beside Yan Jin thrust his infantry spear violently forward. There were too many galloping warhorses — he could hit one without even trying.

But just as he wounded a horse's thigh, several Karakhanid cavalrymen closed in, their curved blades slashing hard at his outstretched hand.

A dull impact rang out. An ordinary curved blade, even with the horse's speed behind it, could not pierce the armor.

Twang! Twang! The divine-arm crossbows and long-tipped bows loosed. The men under Zhang Zhao were all battle-hardened warriors, and they were firing from a standing position, and the Karakhanid cavalry were numerous, so nearly every shot brought down a man or a horse.

Either a man was shot off his horse, or a wounded horse bolted and ran wild, causing even greater chaos.

Yan Jin was still hacking away with relish. To his eyes, these Karakhanid cavalrymen had pitifully low fighting ability.

The five of them had broken away from the main formation to serve as a nail. Though they wore three layers of armor, there were, after all, only a handful of them.

The enemy had one or two hundred cavalry. If a few brave men had led the way, they would not even have needed to ram them with horses — they could have dismounted, formed up, and advanced, and with spears alone they could have surrounded them and brought them down.

But these Karakhanid cavalrymen, apart from a few making useless slashes with their curved blades from horseback, all kept their distance and shot with horse bows.

It looked lively enough, but in truth it was utterly useless. He had been shot full of arrows like a hedgehog, yet he still had not suffered any serious injury.

The Karakhanid cavalry, by contrast, under the concentrated fire of the divine-arm crossbows and long-tipped bows, fell in droves almost every time a bowstring sounded.

Zhang Zhao glanced back and was immediately reassured. These Karakhanid cavalry had not charged in at the first opportunity, but instead pinned their hopes on horse bows — there was absolutely no way they could take his square formation.

Against other Tang troops, they might have been able to keep provoking the archers in the formation into firing, thereby exhausting arrows and stamina to achieve their goal.

But with Zhang Zhao, arrows were beyond counting, and the divine-arm crossbow was far less draining on stamina than a traditional heavy bow.

If the fighting went on like this, the divine-arm crossbowmen would not be the ones collapsing from exhaustion — rather, the Karakhanids would be unable to bear the casualties and would break on their own.

"Dunzhu, you stay in the rear and throw javelins. The rest of us charge together — get in close and fight a melee. We can't let their heavy arrows start flying!"

Zhang Zhao had long since seen the arrangement made by Adumu on the other side. The greatest threat now was the fifty archers in the rear who had switched to heavy arrows. Those were far harder to withstand than the arrows from horse bows.

"Rest easy, my lord. Dunzhu will charge with you!" Dunzhu nodded heavily. In his eyes there was no unease at the prospect of four men against fifty — instead he was already licking his lips in excitement.

The heavy-arrow archers on the other side had already begun forming ranks. Heavy arrows were powerful, but they were costly to make, hard to practice with, and poor in accuracy. They had to be fired in formation to be effective; fired one by one, who knew where the arrows would land?

It was somewhat like the smoothbore muskets of later ages: when firing, you aimed a large number of arrows at the same area, using quantity to make up for the lack of precision.

So they had to slowly line up, then loose a round of light arrows to test bow strength and range, and only then could they begin shooting.

Lining up seemed like a very easy thing. In later ages, elementary school students — no, kindergarten toddlers! — could all line up.

To put it jokingly, if you took middle school students from the Republic and taught them to use smoothbore muskets, they could display fighting ability no worse than a second-rate, or even first-rate, nineteenth-century European army.

Because in later ages, although it looked like they were just going to school, in reality, apart from learning knowledge, they were entirely carrying out the military's whole system.

The teacher of a class was the supreme commander. Below the teacher there was a class monitor, a study committee member, a sports committee member, and a whole pile of minor officials.

Whatever students did, outside of recess, they had to obey the teacher and also listen to the class officers. On ordinary days they also had to do group exercises, with great emphasis on discipline and obedience.

Do you see it now? This thing was actually much the same as in the army. Though simplified who knows how many times over, the principle was the same. So in later ages, lining up and following orders were just a person's basic operations.

But in this era it was different. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people were illiterate, understood nothing of discipline, and many did not even understand the word "principle."

Between superior and subordinate there was basically no feeling beyond the relationship of subordination. Personal survival and winning wealth and rank far outweighed any concept of family, country, and the realm. Even in Anxi now, few people had any concept of a state.

So even something as simple as lining up — the heavy-arrow archers on the other side shoved and jostled and muttered for ages without finishing.

By the time they finally finished, Zhang Zhao, Dunzhu, Man Xiong, and Wang Tongxin had already charged to within thirty or forty paces of them.

But these men were not nervous. They even laughed and chuckled. Four men charging fifty who had already formed ranks — what a joke! One mouthful of spit from each of them would drown you!

Whump! A javelin flew in from the distance. A Karakhanid whose face was flushed red from the cold and who kept sniffling looked as if someone had punched him from across empty air.

He staggered backward more than a dozen steps, then sat down hard on the ground. A javelin stood impaled in his chest, its head piercing through his torso and pinning him to the earth.

Whump! Whump! Two more javelins arrived, and a trace of disorder appeared in the crowd. The formation they had just finished arranging loosened again.

A heavy-arrow archer heard the terrifying whistle. Instinctively he raised the small round shield on his right arm to protect his head.

But then he was jolted violently. A white-lacquered javelin, gleaming silver, instantly pierced through his chest, lifting him into the air as it impaled him, and then drove through the calf of the man behind him, pinning both of them to the ground.

"Shoot! Shoot! Don't let them get close!" Only now did the squad commander in charge react. These were not four men coming to die — these were four fiends!

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