Chapter 139

In the royal city of Shule, Li Shengtian was holding a great banquet for his generals. For the Golden Kingdom of Khotan, this was an unprecedented victory.

The Golden Kingdom's great army had not only stormed the city of Shule, but had also taken alive the queen of Bughra Khan Saktu and the governor of Shule, Itihad.

At the same time, of the seven thousand askars Saktu had left in Shule, more than half were killed or wounded, and the rest either fled or were captured. In particular, those eight or nine thousand holy warriors, who had tormented the Golden Kingdom of Khotan so bitterly these past years, had conveniently been wiped out in one stroke as well.

The revenge killings in Shule these past days had mostly fallen upon the converted believers and the holy warriors. Everyone, including the followers of the three faiths in Shule, hated these holy warriors to the bone.

An askar who was captured might still have a way to live, but these holy warriors who had come from Baghdad, Isfahan, Samarkand, and other places — once captured, they were almost certainly dead, ten deaths and no life.

After more than ten days of revenge killings, however, plus the western city having been blown apart by Zhang Zhao, the whole of Shule would probably need a year or more to recover.

The only parts still relatively intact were the eastern city, with its commercial functions, and the western city, where the followers of the three faiths lived. The northern city had been killed off until not a soul was to be seen.

After three rounds of wine and five courses of food, the atmosphere in the great hall had reached a fever pitch. Li Shengtian walked to the center and raised a jade bowl filled with the finest grape wine, its color like blood, rich and fragrant.

"My loyal amozhi! Descendants of the Great King of Nanta! Brave generals! Today we have stormed Shule and lifted the great stone the Karakhanid state had pressed upon our heads.

But that Bughra Khan Saktu, who betrayed us and threw in his lot with the Persians, has not been utterly crushed. He has now led a great army north to Lower Atush. Tell me — what should we do?"

The word amozhi originally meant chief minister, and it was also the original surname of the Pei family, the kings of Shule. But after the Pei family's kingdom of Shule fell, amozhi gradually evolved into a term for a feudal lord who held sway over one region.

No sooner had Li Shengtian's words fallen than the officers and civil officials attending the banquet knelt with a clatter. That Prefect Pei, who carried the Pei family bloodline, cupped his hands.

"Son of Heaven, since the battle of Eskesa Fort, your servants have yet to render even an inch of merit. The city of Shule was also taken through the bloody fighting of the Duke of Fengtian Commandery. Now that Bughra Khan Saktu still dares to mass troops at Lower Atush, let us go forth! Your servant is willing to slay this wretch in battle before the Son of Heaven!"

"Prefect Pei speaks true. Your servant has long harbored the desire to sweep the Karakhanids away for the Son of Heaven. We have now rested and reorganized for more than ten days, and morale is high. This is the perfect moment to march north and settle the matter in one decisive battle!" Another Khotanese general stepped forward to request the task.

Li Shengtian nodded with satisfaction. He had deliberately held this banquet after Zhang Zhao's departure, precisely to spur on the generals from the west.

The Duke of Fengtian Commandery had rendered such great merit, yet had not shirked the toil and had already marched north first. Did they still have the face to linger in Shule?

And it was indeed effective, because with this battle the Golden Kingdom of Khotan clearly had the upper hand. If Saktu were crushed, then the fertile lands around Shule would all belong to Khotan.

The Khotanese army's fighting strength had always been above that of the Karakhanids. With the strong city of Shule gone, everyone felt the chances of victory were great, and so their will to fight was high.

Zhang Zhao was long gone from Shule. The day after finishing his talk with Li Shengtian, Zhang Zhao did not even have time to go find the eminent monk Daozhen to inquire about the descendants of the Anxi army. He left the city directly, because according to reports from the scouts Li Shengtian had sent out, Bughra Khan Saktu had already led his army back overnight and was encamped at Lower Atush.

Although Zhang Zhao very much doubted how Saktu could have brought a large force of armored soldiers across the Naryn River in April and returned to Lower Atush, he still keenly sensed that something was wrong.

The Khotanese army, including Li Shengtian, all believed that Saktu, having lost Shule, was no longer worth worrying about.

But Zhang Zhao did not think so. This man was a ruthless figure who had single-handedly brought the Islamic faith into the Western Regions and built it up into a great force.

In the end, had the Liao state not tacitly allowed several nomadic Khitan tribes to cooperate with the Gaochang Uyghurs in battle, Saktu and his descendants might well have swallowed even the Gaochang Uyghurs in one gulp.

A man who could be called the Green Grand Progenitor — how could he possibly lack real skill?

Saktu was probably far more formidable than Li Shengtian and the others believed!

"Duke! Fifteen li ahead is Lower Atush. On the city wall we have spotted the great banner of the bandit chieftain Saktu. There are heavily armored soldiers patrolling the wall, bearing an extreme resemblance to Saktu's Ghulam Guard!"

Lower Atush was the later city of Atush, no more than about ninety kilometers from Shule. This Saktu was indeed outrageously bold — Shule had already fallen, yet he still dared to come to Lower Atush.

Zhang Zhao laughed coldly. Sometimes boldness and surprise could make one famous through the ages, like Li Su's night raid on Caizhou in the snow. But it could also mean crashing headlong into an iron plate and getting one's legs broken.

Clearly this Saktu still did not quite take the Khotanese army seriously. Of course, it might also be that with his capital breached, his treasury lost, and his queen taken captive, he was somewhat frantic with rage.

Of course, Zhang Zhao was in fact also making a surprise move. Saktu wanted to defeat Khotan quickly and retake Shule, while Zhang Zhao feared that Saktu, after sizing up the situation, would gather his troops and run.

One must know that in the Seven Rivers region and the Ili basin there were still several hundred thousand Karluk tribesmen subject to Saktu. If Saktu were allowed to take his Ghulam Guard and Iqta cavalry and flee to the Seven Rivers region, then Shule would have its hands full from then on.

"It is late today. We will make camp here. Notify all officers of the rank of squad leader and above to come to my tent at once!" Zhang Zhao immediately issued the order to Wu Yuan'er.

Before long, dozens of officers crowded into the hastily erected tent. Zhang Zhao was now well supplied — this was the support he had received after baring his heart to Li Shengtian in a long, intimate talk.

At present Zhang Zhao had under his command a cumulative total of fifty-two armored soldiers of the Hanshan Unit. The casualties from the storming of Shule more than ten days ago had been far smaller than Zhang Zhao had imagined. Not only had Wang Tongxin survived, but only seven men had been killed in battle. The heaviest losses had been among Li Shengtian's palace guards, who had lost a full forty or fifty men.

After all, these were armored soldiers wearing two or three layers of heavy armor. In an age without firearms, it was not so easy to lose one's life. Compared to the Karakhanid askars and holy warriors, who had lost several hundred killed, the difference was clear at a glance. However, the wounded could not recover in a short time, so Zhang Zhao had brought only fifty-two men.

Apart from that, his small Youyi Army cavalry had suffered almost no casualties. All ten armored riders and twelve elite light cavalrymen were present.

The second part of the reinforcement came from the Guiyi Army's Yueqi cavalry given to him by Cao Yuanxin. This Yueqi unit had been part of Cao Yuanxin's dowry when she married into Khotan twenty-one years ago.

At that time, to display the strength of the Cao family's Guiyi Army, these one hundred Yueqi cavalrymen had been carefully selected from the Guiyi Army — especially that one unit of fifty Tatar cavalrymen.

These Zubu Tatar tribes, who submitted to the Guiyi Army, were the predecessors of the Mongol Tatars. They had originally lived in the Bingzhou region south of the desert.

Twenty or thirty years ago, Li Keyong and his son had gathered tens of thousands of them into the Central Plains. The famous the the Shatuo Crow Army had contained no small number of Tatar cavalrymen.

The Guiyi Army's unit, however, came from a tribe that had been unwilling to follow Li Keyong into the Central Plains and had instead chosen to migrate west.

After migrating to the grasslands north of Guazhou and Shazhou and converting to Han-transmitted Esoteric Buddhism, they had accepted the rule of the Guiyi Army's military governor.

These Tatars were the finest light cavalry. Equipped with the Guiyi Army's excellent armor and weapons, they became a cavalry force the Guiyi Army relied on heavily. In the Guiyi Army's several great battles with the Ganzhou Uyghurs, it had relied on the Tatar Yueqi cavalry to carry out scouting and screening duties.

After this one hundred-man Yueqi unit followed Cao Yuanxin and settled in Khotan, twenty years of propagation had brought their number to four hundred thirty-three.

The fact that Cao Yuanxin knew this number so well showed how important they were. She had always regarded them with special favor.

Zhang Zhao selected three hundred of their finest to form a new Youyi Army, with Bai Congxin as Commandant of Zhechong and the Tatar Hulaile as Commandant of Guoyi.

From this point on, Zhang Zhao's cavalry force had finally taken shape. Three hundred elite light cavalrymen, equipped with qiapan-style ring-mail armor, carrying long spears and fine horn bows, with war hammers for close combat, were fully capable of undertaking screening and scouting duties.

In addition to these three hundred twenty-two riders, Zhang Zhao had gained yet another cavalry force — and an armored one at that, numbering about one hundred fifty riders, with Li Ruotai as its Commandant.

That was right — this Li Ruotai was the second elder brother of Li Ruoliu, the little aunt who had rolled into bed with Zhang Zhao.

This was also the secret by which the descendants of Yuchi Sheng, led by Li Ruoyu, had been able to maintain their position in Khotan all along.

From Li Ruoyu to Li Ruotai and Li Ruohai, these three brothers were among the few fierce generals in the Golden Kingdom of Khotan capable of wielding heavy armored cavalry.

One must not underestimate this skill. Armor for both man and horse weighed at least a hundred jin, and adding the rider's own weight made it even more fearsome.

Under such a heavy load, one still had to shoot from horseback at range, thrust in close combat, and charge when the moment came — this was absolutely no easy matter.

Beyond the rider's own martial skill, it required an extreme rapport between rider and warhorse. The horse had to understand the meaning of the rider's every movement, and the rider had to know how to spare the horse's strength.

After Li Ruotai arrived, Zhang Zhao handed over his own ten armored riders to him as well, to be used as the final decisive force that would settle matters with one hammer blow for Zhang Zhao's little army.

Liu Zaisheng wiped the sweat from his face. He had just personally gone to scout the enemy situation outside Lower Atush.

Liu Zaisheng had now been promoted to Colonel. The Khotanese palace guards had suffered no small losses in the battle for Shule, losing over a hundred men, but Li Shengtian had quickly replenished their ranks.

Moreover, the replacements were a hundred Tibetans who had come down from the Qiangtang plateau, and their fighting strength was even somewhat greater than the original palace guards.

The current composition of Khotan's army, apart from the more than six thousand men gathered by the various amozhi, governors, and other petty feudal lords, consisted mainly of the Divine Might Left Army, the Divine Might Right Army, and the Palace Guard Army.

Among them, the Divine Might Left Army numbered about eleven thousand men, almost entirely heavy infantry, and was one of the core forces of the Khotan infantry.

The Divine Might Right Army was mostly cavalry, made up of the various tribes that had submitted to Khotan and the kingdom's best mounted archers, numbering around thirty-five hundred men.

Finally, there were the ten thousand palace guards. These palace guards were Khotan's only standing army, normally dispersed among the cities and key passes of the realm.

Of these, as many as five thousand were stationed in the city of Khotan itself, and of those, two thousand were permanently garrisoned in the royal city centered on the Taihe Palace.

The personnel were not fixed, however, but rotated on duty among these ten thousand men. Yet there were exceptions. Liu Zaisheng, for instance, was a palace guard who never had to serve away from the capital and always guarded the Taihua Palace. Men like him, about two hundred in all, were chosen from the noble and meritorious families of Khotan.

Zhang Zhao gestured for Liu Zaisheng to sit down at once, and handed him a water flask.

Li Shengtian had certainly come through as an uncle. The five hundred palace guards under Liu Zaisheng had almost all been picked from the finest of the Khotan palace guards.

Apart from the four hundred flying cavalry of the palace guard that Li Shengtian kept for his own protection, these men were the most battle-worthy.

Besides them, Master Zhitong brought three hundred men of the Divine Mechanism Unit, Shi Chongmin brought over three hundred men of the Gold-Splitting Unit, and Li Qilang's senior fellow disciple, the monk Huitong, brought more than five hundred sworn followers. All of them followed Zhang Zhao to the front.

So the force Zhang Zhao could now command was long past the hundred-odd men of his early days. It had grown to roughly twenty-two hundred.

Of these, over seventy percent were armored, and the core thousand men were formidable fighters. If one counted the several thousand laborers and over a thousand mules and horses managed by Zhang Zhong and Wu Yuan'er, he could already claim to lead ten thousand.

Thump-thump-thump! Urgent drumbeats sounded from outside the command tent. This was what they called "beating the drums to summon the officers." If an officer failed to arrive before the third roll of drums, the commander could have him beheaded to assert his authority.

Of course, when Zhang Zhao swept his gaze around the tent, no one dared challenge his authority. From the low-ranking squad leaders to the mid-ranking colonels, everyone had long since arrived, all of them meek and obedient. No one dared put on a show of defiance for his lordship the Grand Commandery Duke.

It was no joke. Zhang Zhao's battle record was solid, and he was also the nephew whom Li Shengtian trusted and favored most. The kingdom of Khotan was only so large. Anyone so blind as to misread the situation would never have risen to the rank of officer in the first place.

Seeing that even his nominal second brother-in-law Li Ruotai wore a grave and proper expression, Zhang Zhao nodded with satisfaction. On the low table he spread out a sheet of white paper produced in Xuancheng Commandery — the famous Xuan paper of later ages — densely covered with writing and diagrams.

Unfortunately, Zhang Zhao's careful preparation did not do much good, because of the forty-some officers of squad-leader rank and above in the room, only a dozen or so could read, and read Chinese characters at that. The rest were all working hard to put on expressions of "I can't understand a word, but I am deeply impressed."

"General, is this a battle formation diagram?" The speaker was Li Ruotai. As a descendant of Yuchi Sheng, the Prince of Wudu Commandery, he could of course read. Not only could he read, his learning was quite good.

"Correct! This formation is called the Stacked Formation. It was designed by me specifically to counter the Qarakhanid army's trait of having many cavalry and few infantry — a formation for defeating cavalry with infantry."

Battle formations were not as mystical as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms made them out to be, but they were indeed a vital component of warfare in the age of cold weapons, and even in the transitional age of cold and hot weapons. To some extent, even the later Republic's three-man assault team tactics could be called a battle formation.

The creator of the Stacked Formation was Wu Lin, the famous general and military theorist of the early Southern Song. Faced with the ferocious cavalry of the Jurchen Jin, Wu Lin innovated upon the tactical system of using wagons against cavalry from the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and devised this Stacked Formation.

This formation deserves to be called a major invention in Chinese military history. Relying on it, Wu Lin held most of Shaanxi for the Southern Song, thereby safeguarding the wealthy lands of Sichuan and preventing the Jurchen Jin from expanding further.

Historically, the Stacked Formation remained in use throughout the Southern Song, and was still being used into the Ming dynasty. The Nine-Advance Ten-Linked Grand Formation used by the Green Standard Army in the mid-Qing was also an improved variant of this Stacked Formation.

Li Ruotai narrowed his eyes and studied it for a long while, then looked at this man — who was either his nephew or his nominal brother-in-law, he could not quite say — with newfound respect.

Whatever the merits of the formation itself, a man who could design a battle formation had already risen from the ranks of mere brave or fierce generals to the level of a true commander.

But the longer he looked, the more alarmed Li Ruotai became. As Zhang Zhao explained, he began to see how this Stacked Formation actually worked.

The formation placed several rows of long-spearmen and chevaux-de-frise at the front to serve as a wall. Behind them, in order, were strong bowmen who could draw bows of eight dou or more, then ordinary bowmen drawing under eight dou, and at the very back, divine-arm crossbowmen.

At the same time, square formations on the left and right flanks guarded the main formation. The main formation was ringed with chevaux-de-frise — essentially using chevaux-de-frise to form the concept of a city wall, boxing all the soldiers of the main formation inside.

And behind the left and right flank squares, at the two ribs of the main formation, two cavalry units were also positioned.

"The essence of this formation lies in defense and counterattack!" Zhang Zhao used a term that did not exist in this era, and pointed at the formation drawn on the paper as he spoke with assurance.

"When engaging the enemy, first place chevaux-de-frise in front of the main formation. The front-row long-spearmen crouch low to the ground. When the enemy is at seventy paces, the strong bowmen drawing eight dou or more loose one volley. At sixty paces, the bowmen drawing under eight dou loose one volley. After that, they kneel on one knee and keep shooting in succession. When the enemy closes to fifty paces, the divine-arm crossbowmen open fire!

Under this continuous hammering from bows and crossbows, the Qarakhanid army — as we have seen — will suffer a rapid collapse of formation and morale.

If they still force a charge, the long-spearmen rise to meet them, and the bows and crossbows loose another storm of arrows. If they still do not break, the bowmen switch to modao glaive glaive glaives and great clubs to strike them, while the divine-arm crossbowmen shoot with precision.

Repeating this cycle, when the enemy's morale shatters and they are utterly exhausted, the light cavalry on the left and right wings sally out to drive and herd the enemy together, and finally the armored cavalry charge out and settle the battle in one blow!"

This thing was, in essence, a Nassau-style grand square from the cold-weapon age: elite crossbowmen and bowmen playing the role of musketeers, long-spearmen protecting the formation, with a dash of cavalry mixed in to reap the enemy after they broke.

However, because the sustained firepower and destructive power of bows and crossbows could not compare with muskets and cannon, the bowmen and crossbowmen in the formation also had to be capable of hand-to-hand combat — or, as in the Southern Song period, several Stacked Formations had to be deployed to cover one another.

But by coincidence, Tang-dynasty soldiers had not yet developed the later Song-dynasty problem of crossbowmen who could not fight in close combat and melee troops who could not shoot. They happened to fit the requirements perfectly.

"But General, forgive my bluntness. Clever as this formation is, the placement of the chevaux-de-frise is unsuitable.

Our entire army is sealed inside the formation by the chevaux-de-frise. If the situation turns against us, we would be like turtles in a jar, with no way to flee. Secondly, this formation relies heavily on bows and crossbows. I fear we do not have that many arrows to spend!"

Zhang Zhao looked at the frowning Li Ruotai. The man truly did have some ability. The two problems he had pointed out were exactly the aspects of the Stacked Formation that had initially puzzled people.

Ah — no, wait. The Southern Song did not have the latter problem, because the Southern Song economy was highly developed, and the Song army had a tradition of relying on bows and crossbows, so the consumption of bolts and arrows was no great matter.

But in Khotan it was indeed a problem, because at this time arrows — and arrow shafts in particular — were extremely expensive to produce.

In ancient times there were no machine tools. A round arrow shaft had to be whittled entirely by hand, then heated over a fire, straightened, lacquered, and finally sorted together with others of the same material and length.

The cost of a single arrow shaft in Khotan was roughly equal to two days' living expenses for two grown men. It could truly be called astronomical.

So Li Ruotai's question was very practical. In a battle like this, arrows would fall like rain. If they lost, then to say nothing of casualties, the financial loss alone would be enough to ruin a man.

But this also happened to show that now, in Anxi, with the formidable Tang army and the Tibetan army gone, even though the Qarakhanid Khanate seemed mighty as it campaigned east and west, it was in truth merely the more capable fighter among a flock of weaklings. At the end of the day, it was still a weakling. It could not even afford to use proper bows and arrows freely in a major battle, and relied on close-quarters brawling most of the time.

Thinking of this, Zhang Zhao felt a few more degrees of confidence in his coming plan.

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