Chapter 118: Momentum Like a Rainbow

"Loose!" Zhang Zhao roared.

"Loose!" several hundred armored soldiers raising bows and crossbows bellowed in unison.

Arrows flew like locusts! Bearing fury, bearing contempt, bearing even the light of civilization, they shot violently toward the holy warriors on the opposite side.

As Zhang Zhao's side drew and loosed, the holy warriors opposite were also drawing and shooting, but their movements were nowhere near as coordinated — among three or four thousand men there were only a few hundred bows, and the arrows came out thin and scattered.

Amid the sky-filling rain of arrows, the screams of the holy warriors rose one after another. Those in the front ranks were struck by Divine Arm crossbow bolts, chests and bellies pierced through, shrieking horribly as they writhed on the ground; those in the rear were hit by arcing arrows and rolled left and right across the field, wailing pitifully.

It had to be said, in bow-and-crossbow exchanges, the Divine Arm crossbow — relied upon by the two Song dynasties in history as a state-defending weapon — was simply monstrous. Within a hundred paces, without two or more layers of iron lamellar armor, there was no defense against it at all.

On Zhang Zhao's side, however, the men universally wore two or even three layers of heavy armor, and the arrows loosed from a few dan draw-weight foot bows, almost none of them armor-piercing, inflicted very limited damage.

"Draw!"

"Draw!"

"Loose!"

"Loose!"

The second wave of arrows came down. Six hundred men against three or four thousand — yet the six hundred actually loosed a full six hundred arrows.

Among the three or four thousand holy warriors, whether even three hundred could still draw and return fire was doubtful.

Factoring in the armor on both sides and the number of great shields held, this did not resemble an exchange of fire so much as a slaughter.

Ma Yaozi roared with excitement. An excitement and fury he had never experienced before possessed him. In the past, what he relied on in battle was ferocity and cruelty, but today, within the ferocity, he seemed to feel something more — a sense of righteousness!

Right! Righteousness!

In a daze, Ma Yaozi felt as though he stood atop a mountain peak, while a swarm of loathsome ants crouched at his feet, making all manner of disgusting gestures at him!

Ptui! Ma Yaozi spat a thick wad of phlegm from his mouth. Things lower than pigs and dogs — let your old man teach you how to be a human being!

Qiong Reduojin felt this too. He had been a slave boy who had lost his stong-sde, and for a tanggu of coarse barley to keep himself alive, he had become Ge Duo's dog. From then on he had killed and plundered — even women and children he had not refrained from killing.

But at this moment, he suddenly felt a shame he had never known before.

And precisely because he had been Ge Duo's dog, although his martial skill ranked among the best in Hanshan Du, apart from the second young lord, few treated him as one of their own, and Qiong Reduojin had always felt he had never truly belonged.

Yet at this very moment, a sense of collective pride surged up into Qiong Reduojin's head.

He glanced at Yin Yaozi, who was equally stirred, and the other returned him a look of affirmation. In that one simple glance, Qiong Reduojin suddenly seemed to find a feeling called home.

A feeling he had not experienced in a very long time!

In the rush of powerful emotion, Qiong Reduojin drew and loosed faster and faster, not feeling the slightest ache in his arms, nor the slightest fatigue!

Big-bearded Abudu sat on a tall horse, dumbstruck, and then his face went deathly pale. He realized things had gone badly wrong — this was not what he had imagined!

In his imagination, three or four thousand holy warriors should have been able to exhaust the Khotan men opposite. Although these cannon fodder certainly could not shake the Khotan formation, they could greatly drain the Khotan men's energy.

But! In just this short while, he suddenly discovered — how much energy the Khotan men had expended he did not know; he only knew that if his holy warriors kept exchanging fire like this, they would likely collapse!

These fellows had come east to reap benefits in the first place. Suffering heavy casualties in such a short time, there was no way they could hold.

This... damn it all, if the center collapsed, what the hell was the point of the double envelopment on both flanks!

"Sound the horn! Sound the horn!" Send the holy warriors into close combat. Send two hundred-man units from each of the left and right wings to reinforce them. Once the holy warriors are locked in hand-to-hand with the Khotan men, the thousand-man commanders of the left and right wings will put armored troops in front and carve their way into the Khotan armored ranks!

Just as Abudu issued his orders, up on the city wall, General Adumu gloated and curled his lip.

He was somewhat tempted to go advise Governor Itihad to withdraw the army at once — the force opposite was simply not one they could defeat.

But then! Recalling Abudu's arrogant, smug face, Adumu decided to say nothing at all.

A piping, trilling sort of tubular instrument sounded — very loud, with strong carrying power.

This thing was the forerunner of an instrument later known as the shawm, used in the Ottoman army, its sound somewhat similar to the Chinese suona.

"Charge! Charge! The infidels can only shoot — they're useless in close combat!"

"Allah protects us! The infidels are doomed!"

"This is a holy battle! We must carry the voice of Allah to all of Taugast!"

As the shawm's shrill notes rang out, the junior officers among the holy warriors raised their voices in shouts.

In truth, their losses in the exchanges of fire just now had not been all that great — at most one or two hundred men.

But most of them had been cowed by the momentum of Zhang Zhao's side. Now, under the officers' roars, fanatical religious fervor began to spread through them once more.

To the sound of the shawm, the holy warriors gradually massed together, shoulder to shoulder, leaning on one another, and began to run.

But the formation they had just held — armored men and shield-bearers in front — had already fallen into disorder. Many holy warriors in rotten leather armor or no armor at all had run to the front.

"Draw blades! Divine Arm crossbowmen, loose one final volley!" Zhang Zhao drew his infantry lance and issued his last command.

Thrum! The final volley of Divine Arm crossbows loosed. The tremendous thrust of two dan and one dou produced devastating lethality at sixty or seventy paces — some bolts even passed through one man's body and buried themselves in the chest of the man behind.

Such terrifying killing power sent another swath of the tightly packed advancing holy warriors to the ground, and the morale that had just been roused began plummeting again.

Zhang Zhao raised his infantry lance high, then abruptly leveled it, waiting for the holy warriors to arrive.

The holy warriors howled, a stream of obscenities and vicious curses rising unceasingly.

Boom! The two sides crashed together — more precisely, the two sides' long spears crashed together. The two opposing forests of pikes, like two rows of teeth suddenly sprouting from the earth, stretched for hundreds of meters.

Zhang Zhao roared and pierced a holy warrior through the neck. The holy warrior had tried to pierce his neck too, but his spear was a little shorter and failed.

Qiong Reduojin also howled as he stabbed a holy warrior. The fellow opposite was like a sack filled with blood — torrents of blood gushed from the dark wound.

"Forward! Forward! Forward!" After killing this enemy, the frenzied Qiong Reduojin howled, calling his comrades beside him to advance.

Zhang Zhao glanced at Qiong Reduojin in surprise. He saw that this Tibetan slave boy was radiating an excitement he had never shown before.

Spear-forest against spear-forest stabbing! The further one stepped forward, the danger multiplied. But whoever dared step forward — and could endure the heavy casualties that came with it — would utterly crush the enemy's morale.

The two sides had never been on the same level in equipment or training to begin with, and spurred by Zhang Zhao's four arrows and four kills, the armored men of Hanshan Du fought ever more fiercely. With just eighty-odd men, they drove back several hundred of the enemy step by step.

At some point, a fine drizzle began drifting from the sky. The ground was soon soaked through by rain and blood, and underfoot it made a sickening squelch-squelch sound.

"Wind!" The armored men of Hanshan Du roared with Zhang Zhao and lunged forward a step in unison, their spears thrusting out sharply with the motion. They moved as one, as if a single man were doing the stabbing.

And answering the great shout of "Wind! Wind!" came the screams and wails of the holy warriors opposite as they collapsed.

Man Xiong held a sesame flatbread in one hand as he ate, while a thin, small man fed him chicken soup. Several others around him were putting on his armor, and his great axe lay right at his feet.

On the other side of the formation, Dunzhu received the same treatment, though he did not drink chicken soup. Instead, he drank the little remaining black millet wine that Zhang Zhao had brewed, and his food was a whole roast chicken.

Whish, whish, whish! A command flag waved ceaselessly. On the hillside, the monk Zhitong began chanting a Buddhist invocation.

Through his narrowed eyes, heaven and earth seemed a gray blur. He seemed to see his master, burned alive in the main hall of Kaiyuan Temple, and his fellow disciples, hacked to death at the entrance!

"Divine Crossbow Unit! Release the trebuchets!" the monk forced into becoming a warrior-priest roared in anguish.

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