Chapter 140: Checking for Gaps and Making Up Shortfalls

"Elder Brother, your eyes are truly keen as a torch — you spotted the problem at once!" Zhang Zhao habitually raised a thumb in praise of Li Ruotai.

Li Ruotai couldn't help his cheek twitching. What "Elder Brother"? You and my little sister got up to that business, and you still think it's something to be proud of? And this is a military camp — going around calling me "Elder Brother" here isn't exactly proper, is it?

Still, even as Li Ruotai grumbled inwardly, he found it rather gratifying. Even a fierce man like Zhang Erlang politely called him Elder Brother — didn't that show he had some standing?

Having finished praising Li Ruotai, Zhang Zhao returned to the matter of the battle formation. Pointing at the cheval-de-frise markers on the rice paper, he said, "The reason this formation can use infantry to defeat cavalry lies precisely in the chevaux-de-frise, which pen the soldiers in like a city wall.

The greater part of the Karakhanid army is cavalry, and their iqta armored riders and ghulam armored riders are the finest of all — man and horse both armored, with only the eyes exposed. Ordinary spears and blades cannot harm them, and when they charge, the sheer momentum is terrifying.

Our infantry, apart from my Hanshan Company and Commandant Liu's Palace Guard Army, are all sworn-follower stalwarts called up by levy. Thrown suddenly onto the battlefield, facing a charge of Karakhanid iron cavalry, they are bound to panic — so we need the chevaux-de-frise to pin them in place and keep them from scattering."

Master Zhitong rubbed his great bald head and nodded thoughtfully, but then shook it again.

"Lord of the Commandery, there are few trees hereabouts, and the timber we brought is not much either. The chevaux-de-frise we make will surely not be very tall. If the iron cavalry charges, those who are going to panic will still panic. I fear the effect will be poor."

"Master Zhitong is indeed a virtuous dharma master, kind of heart. But on the battlefield there is no room for any softness of heart. These chevaux-de-frise are not meant to keep the soldiers from leaving — they mean that no matter who it is, if any man dares to step one pace beyond the chevaux-de-frise, he is to be executed on the spot without pardon!"

Zhang Zhao's face turned cold, and his hand slashed downward. The command tent instantly fell dead silent. Only after a long while did Master Zhitong press his palms together.

"Namo Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva. To kill one man is to save the many. Military law is harsh, and its harshness has its own reason."

Compared to Zhitong's unfamiliarity with the harsh punishments of military life, Li Ruotai and Liu Zaisheng understood at once.

This was actually a good method. With the chevaux-de-frise as the boundary, whoever broke out in flight would be killed — far better than soldiers fleeing every which way with no one knowing whom to kill to restore authority.

"As for arrows, you need not worry either. When I came, I already obtained ninety thousand birch-shaft arrows from the Great Sage Son of Heaven.

And even if Bughra Khan Satuq withdrew every last soldier besieging Balasagun, that would only be a little over twenty thousand. He would still have to split his forces to garrison and to requisition grain, so at most half could be used for battle. The arrows are more than enough!"

Li Ruotai and Liu Zaisheng exchanged a glance, gaining once again a vivid sense of Zhang Zhao's standing with Li Shengtian.

Li Ruotai in particular had rarely been in the royal city before, so he had not been clear on the degree of favor Zhang Zhao enjoyed with Li Shengtian. He had only received his elder brother Li Ruoyu's instruction to be sure to treat Zhang Zhao with great respect, and so had behaved so deferentially.

Now he realized that his elder brother Li Ruoyu had actually understated it. What nephew of the Great Sage Son of Heaven? This was treatment that even the Great Sage Son of Heaven's own son might not necessarily receive!

The total number of arrows the Khotan army now possessed — who knew whether it even reached five hundred thousand. Yet for Zhang Zhao's two thousand-odd men, they had given ninety thousand in one go. Absolutely beyond-spec treatment.

Ma Yaozi scratched the back of his head, looking as though he wanted to speak but held back. In the past, though he had been a squad leader in the Guiyi Army, the Shouchang Army had not counted as a main-force unit of the Guiyi Army, and because his old superior Luo Xianda ran things as a one-man patriarchal autocracy, he had never spoken up in a formal setting like the present one. Thus, thick-skinned as he ordinarily was, he now felt rather embarrassed.

Zhang Zhao had also noticed Ma Yaozi. Rare for this dog of a fellow to have a bashful side. Zhang Zhao waved a hand, motioning him forward.

"This is a council of war — it exists precisely so everyone can voice their views. If you have something to say, say it plainly!"

"Sec— General, this humble officer thinks that if this formation is to stand against iron cavalry, the Divine Arm crossbow should be the most critical point. Because the enemy's iron cavalry has both man and horse armored, apart from strong bows of one dan or more, ordinary longbows will find it hard to pierce armor. We must still rely on the Divine Arm crossbow.

You, General, have placed the Divine Arm crossbows with the longest range to shoot last — surely that is the consideration.

But in our army at present, there are fewer than fifty Divine Arm crossbows. If the enemy's armored riders are numerous and we cannot shoot them down in time, then if the fighting drags on even a little, the great formation is certain to be broken."

Zhang Zhao looked at Ma Yaozi with a mix of surprise and appreciation. The fellow did have some ability after all.

Indeed, experience gained through practice is the most precious thing. Ma Yaozi had been on many battlefields, and though he had never studied books, he could always keenly spot problems. This thinking trait of his also meant he would never remain merely a brave general.

And Ma Yaozi had seen it very accurately. The layered formation — the thing it relied on most was the Divine Arm crossbow, because it could bring down an armored horse with a single shot, the rider falling as the string released.

When the Southern Song armies used the layered formation, they relied on the Divine Arm crossbow to hold the Jin armored riders in check.

The Song armies had many Divine Arm crossbows, and often the Jin armored riders would be piled in heaps of dead and wounded before they could break the formation. Thus no matter how they attacked, they could never break through. If Zhang Zhao wanted to copy the layered formation wholesale, he would need Divine Arm crossbows in large numbers.

But the Divine Arm crossbow was extremely difficult to make. The main problem was that no one knew what the historical Divine Arm crossbow actually looked like — there was only a rough guess that it used something like pulleys.

The Divine Arm crossbow Zhang Zhao had now produced was something he had worked out in his later life with a group of cold-weapons fanatics, borrowing ideas from many bow-making experts.

So what he had produced was a thing that could only be mass-produced under modern industry. Move it back to the Tang dynasty, and the trouble immediately became enormous.

When he left Dunhuang, he had still said with full confidence that if Cao Yuande had three hundred Divine Arm crossbowmen at his side, the smooth transfer of power in the Guiyi Army could be guaranteed. But by now, Cao Yuande had probably cursed him to hell and back.

Because even after Zhang Zhao, with his production experience, arrived in Khotan, and even with the craftsmen Li Shengtian had transferred to him being worked until their backsides were nearly beaten raw, and even with enormous rewards offered as incentive, only a hundred and sixty-odd had been made so far. Fifty were up to standard, and thirty or forty were barely usable.

And the price had simply flown to the heavens. The cost of one Divine Arm crossbow could make twenty or more longbows — strong bows of eight dou or more at that. It pained Li Shengtian so much he could hardly bear to watch. Poor Cao Yuande — who knew whether he had managed to make even five?

So Zhang Zhao's difficulty lay in this: the golden finger had been produced, and it worked extremely well, but it could not be mass-produced.

"Then, Squad Leader Ma, since you have identified this problem, do you have a solution?"

Zhang Zhao thought for a while but came up with no good method, so he simply asked Ma Yaozi offhandedly.

He had not expected Ma Yaozi to come up with any good idea, but to his surprise, Ma Yaozi very excitedly declared that he had long had a countermeasure.

"General, this humble officer has heard that the Inner Storehouse Bureau had a batch of horn-bow crossbows custom-made for the Divine Might Left Army. But the soldiers of the Divine Might Left Army do not like to use them, because the horn-bow crossbows are rather heavy and inconvenient to move.

But since we are going to fight in a fixed layered formation, we no longer have the concern of movement. Could we urgently have this batch of horn-bow crossbows transferred for our use first? Though not as powerful as the Divine Arm crossbow, they should be enough to shoot down the Karakhanid armored riders."

Zhang Zhao thought it over and agreed. The horn-bow crossbow was standard-issue equipment in the Tang-dynasty army, and the Jianghuai strong crossbows of those days had been famous far and wide.

But Tang-dynasty crossbows, like Han crossbows, had high accuracy and great killing power, yet were heavy and hard to draw. Gradually the soldiers came to dislike them, and crossbowmen's battle records fell far behind those of other arms, so they were issued in small numbers.

But for Zhang Zhao's purposes, they were just right. Why did the Southern Song use so many Divine Arm crossbows? Against whom? Against the true Jurchen of the Jin state — not the fake Jurchen of the later Manchu Qing.

Those true Jurchen, led by the Wanyan clan, were freaks who could pull off heavy-cavalry wall charges in the eleventh century. Their fighting power ranked among the very finest of all the northern peoples in the entire history of China.

Had they not corrupted so quickly after entering the Central Plains, and had the Southern Song not produced a batch of peerless divine generals including Grandfather Yue, the territory of this Jurchen Jin state would absolutely not have been smaller than the territory of the historical Yuan dynasty.

One must understand that to resist the Jin state, the Southern Song had brought forth Yue Wumu, Han Zhongwu, the brothers Wu Jie and Wu Lin, and Yu Yunwen — men of such caliber that even across five thousand years of history, later generations still yearn after them.

As for the Karakhanids Zhang Zhao now faced — never mind how impressive-sounding their iqta armored riders or ghulam armored riders were — could they compare with the Jurchen of the Jin state? Did they deserve the treatment of several hundred Divine Arm crossbows aimed at them?

Never mind comparing them to the Jin-state Jurchen — even the Later Jin Manchu Jurchen, with that level of fighting power, could beat them until their own mothers wouldn't recognize them.

If Satuq Bughra Khan had in his hands a thousand — no, if he had even three hundred fierce men like the Jin-state Jurchen, Zhang Zhao would simply kneel. No matter how much he cheated, it would be useless; the enemy could absolutely hang him up and pound him.

"Squad Leader Ma's suggestion is very important. Record one merit, and reward one jar of fine wine, one sheep, and ten strings of cash!" Zhang Zhao patted Ma Yaozi on the shoulder, with a look that said "I have high hopes for you."

The several dozen officers in the command tent all looked at Ma Yaozi with envy. Ten strings of cash was a fair sum, but nothing special; a sheep was also quite nice, but not enough to make everyone envious. What truly made them jealous was that jar of fine wine.

This was the battlefield. The entire army, Zhang Zhao included, was forbidden to drink without orders.

Man Xiong swallowed hard. In this bitter cold, a roast sheep plus a jar of fine wine — the taste, tsk tsk! Don't even mention how wonderful!

He too wanted a fine hearty drink, but even after racking that huge head of his, he could not think of any other suggestion. He could only watch in frustration as Zhang Zhao brought the council of war to an end.

"Old Bear, call Dron and the others — come to my tent in a bit!" Ma Yaozi's eyes blinked rapidly.

Man Xiong was instantly delighted. He wagged his big head, his face full of excitement.

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