Chapter 114: A Bald Head More Precious Than a Ferghana Horse

In just two days, under Zhang Zhao's intense pressure, the miners from the East Hezhou coal works, his own carpenters, and the large number of Buddhists and monks who had followed him worked at a pace far beyond the labor rhythm of this era.

On the southern side of Shule, relying on an earthen mound the Karakhanids had not had time to completely level, they built an extremely crude military stockade.

At the front of the stockade was a trench more than a meter wide and seventy to eighty centimeters deep; behind the trench were chevaux-de-frise built from all kinds of timber, and only behind the chevaux-de-frise was the stockade itself.

The stockade wall was made by constructing extremely crude wooden frames from jumbled timber scraps, filling them with stones, and then stacking a ring of stones on the outside.

And even this extremely crude stockade wall existed only on the front-facing side.

Zhang Zhao, however, was quite satisfied. Once this thing was built, Ithihad in Shule would not dare come out to face him head-on without dragging out three to five thousand men.

Zhang Zhao now had in hand one hundred armored riders from his own Hanshan Unit and the Youyi Army, plus the five hundred palace guards Li Shengtian had allocated to him, and from the more than two thousand "dead weight" he had also selected over three hundred with passable fighting ability and armed them. Altogether he could scrape together a little over a thousand men. Holding the stockade, no one could take it without three to five times his strength.

Moreover, in just these two short days — or to be precise, after that battle two days ago in which eighty-some men routed four or five hundred Karakhanid cavalry —

the Yarkand Buddhists, who the whole way had been seething with resentment, cursing and grumbling, refusing discipline, and stirring up trouble at every turn, were completely won over by Zhang Zhao.

No words could ever be as persuasive as this!

A short-haired horse of dark gold suddenly appeared outside Shule. Bai Congxin and the handsome palace guard commander immediately spurred their horses and charged toward it.

Behind that dark-gold short-haired horse followed two cursing Youyi Army riders. Judging from the horses' speed, these two men's mounts had been left so far behind by the dark-gold horse that they could not even see its tail.

"A heavenly horse! It's actually a heavenly horse!" A bald man stepped forward and cried out in astonishment beside Zhang Zhao.

This fellow had originally been a dharma master at Kaiyuan Monastery in Shule. After Kaiyuan Monastery was burned down by the Muslim followers supported by Satuq Bughra Khan, he had drifted to the Yarkand area, and had gone from being a dharma master with considerable skill in expounding sutras to a warrior monk wielding a wooden staff.

A wooden staff (bang, fourth tone) is in fact just a wooden club; the character is a variant form of "club."

This thing was a weapon popular in the pre-Qin period: a big club with ridges at both ends, used for striking unarmored enemies — cheap, convenient, and with decent killing power. One blow to the head and the enemy was basically done for.

In the Tang army this thing was quite common, because the Tang army's enemies, whether Turks or Tibetans, mostly lacked armor in the early period.

This crude, savage wooden club had smashed open who knows how many enemy heads and broken who knows how many legs, and only after the Tang army's enemies all began to have the means to wear armor did its use in the army decline.

But the wooden staff in this dharma master's hands should properly be called a shu-staff, because the ridges at both ends were sheathed in iron, making it do more damage than an ordinary wooden staff, and judging from the rust all over that iron, it could probably also add a bit of tetanus damage.

"General! Please give this humble monk a good horse, and this humble monk will bring that heavenly horse back for you!"

The bald dharma master handed his shu-staff to a disciple beside him, then clasped his hands and volunteered.

"Good! Duojin, give this master a good horse!" Zhang Zhao immediately called for Qiong-re Duojin to give the dharma master a good horse.

He had just been captivated by the weapon in the man's hand and had not remembered the matter of the horse that had charged up to the city.

"Heavenly horse" was what people of this time called these supreme horses that grew in the Fergana Basin region.

In Chinese history it has a famous name: the Ferghana horse, the "blood-sweating treasure horse"!

Abroad it is also called the Akhal-Teke horse, the Ahalteke horse, and so on — a treasure precious in any era!

"Whizz!" An arrow shot up onto the walls of Shule, and then this heavenly horse, which had already run who knew how far, was driven into a dead corner by a group of Zhang Zhao's men.

But a Ferghana horse was a Ferghana horse. Even after being driven into a dead corner, under the control of the rider on its back, it actually let out a neigh, then leaped into the air and easily cleared the trench Zhang Zhao had ordered dug, escaping the encirclement!

"Villain, meet your death!" At that moment, the dharma master of Kaiyuan Monastery who had cast aside the sutras for the martial path arrived.

He rapidly closed in on the golden horse on horseback, and as he shouted, his right hand spun a knotted rope at high speed; at the knot of the rope was wrapped a cobblestone neither too big nor too small.

"Woooo-woooo!" The rapidly spinning rope gave off a strange sound that made one's scalp crawl, and the rider who had just steered the Ferghana horse out of the encirclement instantly felt his rear tighten.

He clamped his legs to the horse's belly, about to urge it faster, when — thud — the cobblestone at the end of the rope flew out at the sound.

"Crack!" An extremely chilling impact sounded, and the rider was struck squarely on the back of the head.

Zhang Zhao even saw a jet of blood shoot out. The rider on the horse convulsed once as if in a rigid spasm, and his body tumbled straight off the horse.

The Ferghana horse he had been riding kept running forward, while the rider's foot was caught in the stirrup, his head scraping along the ground, leaving a trail of blood on the black-yellow earth that was horrifyingly vivid.

This was a sling! While everyone else was cheering and praising the Kaiyuan Monastery dharma master's superb skill — killing the man without harming the horse — Zhang Zhao was instead very interested in this master's craft.

The sling was a thing played with more abroad, especially in ancient Greece, where it was extremely popular.

There was an ancient Greek proverb that said a fully equipped heavy infantryman feared not an equally powerful opponent, but a ragged slinger.

In China it was used by the Ming dynasty divine general Qi Jiguang, Grandpa Qi, who innovated by adding a wooden stick at the grip end to increase range and lethality.

The peasant rebel armies of the late Ming often used this cheap and practical throwing weapon to attack the better-equipped government troops.

A good thing! The men around him were exactly a motley crew — this would be perfectly useful! And from this sling, Zhang Zhao suddenly thought of a golden finger he could activate: the famous Po Xi Army of the Western Xia state more than a hundred years later.

Small stone-throwing engines mounted on the backs of Bactrian camels; fist-sized stones hurled out did more damage than any bow or crossbow, and damn it, they were highly mobile too. For smashing infantry formations, they were practically divine weapons.

And this golden finger was quite easy to activate. Stone-throwing engines and catapults had long been mature technology in the Tang dynasty; the only improvement was making them a bit smaller so they could be mounted on the backs of Bactrian camels.

Even better, no one else could copy this thing — not because catapults were hard to build, but because the Bactrian camels that carried them were mostly produced in the five prefectures of Gua, Sha, Su, Gan, and Liang. No other place had them. This truly was a perfect golden finger.

"General Zhang! This humble monk Zhitong has fortunately not failed his mission. This heavenly horse, I have brought to you!" The bald dharma master laughed heartily as he led the Ferghana horse up to Zhang Zhao.

Zhang Zhao did not even glance at the treasure horse. What use was a treasure horse to him right now? It could not immediately breed him a herd of Ferghana horses, and how would he dare keep such a thing anyway — would it not just end up benefiting Li Shengtian again?

But this dharma master was different. Very likely he could immediately turn this motley crew of his into a fighting force.

"This horse may be precious, but it is merely a mundane creature. I value the master's superb skill far more! May I ask the master, where did you learn this art?"

The monk Zhitong was suddenly startled, and then his face lit up.

"The young lord also believes this skill can be used on the battlefield? This was originally a secret art of the Tibetan herding slaves on the Kunlun Mountains. Then I heard from a Nestorian foreign monk that in his homeland of Daqin, many in the army were also skilled in this art.

I combined the strengths of both and made this thing, thinking it could be put to use. But this poor monk repeatedly petitioned the Amozhi of Yarkand, yet he did not believe me, and even said this humble monk was indulging in wild fantasies!"

Done deal!

In Zhang Zhao's impression, peoples like the Tibetans who lived high in the mountains did have this thing.

And the Nestorian faith was the Nestorian branch of Christianity, which had split off from Greek Orthodoxy — was that not the very homeland of the sling!

"He does not believe, but I do!" Zhang Zhao patted his chest. "May I ask how many disciples under the master know how to use this thing, and is it troublesome to teach?"

"Nothing troublesome about it. It is only that the stones thrown need to be carefully polished, and there is not much rope!" The great monk Zhitong, hearing Zhang Zhao recognize talent so keenly, immediately grew excited as well.

"That is easy. Leave the matter of the rope to me. As for the stones, I will have men go to the banks of the Chi River to gather materials on the spot and give them a light polishing!"

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