Chapter 143: You Must Stay Calm

The howling cold wind blew across Zhang Zhao's face. This spring wind of Anxi was not the least bit gentle, and the land beneath his feet had none of the spring feeling of the Khotan oasis. Instead it stretched out in a grayish yellow, utterly barren.

"General! I have scouted high and low. The main river of Lower Atush is the Boguz River, but the mountain meltwater has not yet arrived, so the water source is insufficient. Moreover, the Khara-Khanid ghulam light cavalry have been patrolling up and down the river channel. If we want water, we must first rout them."

The Tatar Hucile spurred his horse over to report to Zhang Zhao. Although he was said to be a Tatar, the Hucile family, after over a hundred years of living among the mixed Tibetan and Han people of Shazhou, were already no different from Han. His son Huwei had even begun using Hu as a surname.

"Rout the ghulam light cavalry, hmm..." Zhang Zhao shook his head. That was unrealistic. The ghulam guards were the trump card with which Satuq had risen to power. Back then, the reason he had been able to seize the throne and smoothly kill his uncle Oghulchak's entire family was precisely the ghulam guard troops under his command.

And after Satuq became the Boghra Khan of the Karakhanids, the ghulam guards became the most elite army in the entire Karakhanid state.

This elite cavalry force, composed of six hundred armored riders and fifteen hundred light cavalry, had only three years earlier, at the battles of White Water City and Talas City, crushed a Samanid cavalry force several times their number. Their combat strength was not to be underestimated.

Zhang Zhao had only three hundred Yue riders, and he still needed them to screen the flanks of his formation. Even if they could win, he could not afford to send them out for a dogfight.

"Then we strike camp and advance. I do not believe Satuq could have brought trebuchets with him crossing the snow mountains and the Naryn River from Balasagun. We will move directly up to Lower Atush and make camp. We will not draw water from anywhere else, but take it straight from the moat outside the walls of Lower Atush!"

Zhang Zhao's face was grim as he clenched his fist. He was still prepared to stake everything on a dangerous move.

The risk was great, but so was the reward. He was going to smash Satuq right here at Lower Atush, and win against superior numbers.

Only by hurting Satuq badly could Zhang Zhao win even greater prestige in Anxi, and only then would he have the leisure to scheme over the Fergana Valley, the Samanid dynasty, and even India.

Hucile was stunned. He had never imagined that the first time he followed Young Lord Zhang Erlang onto the battlefield, it would be something this thrilling.

Satuq could mobilize at least twenty thousand cavalry, while they, even counting the laborers, numbered barely over six thousand. Out in this open wilderness, two thousand infantry and a little over four hundred cavalry were going to take on at least ten thousand-plus cavalry. No matter how you looked at it, it had the flavor of courting death!

At Lower Atush, Satuq, who had already been packing up and preparing to fight a bit and then flee, was also stunned. What kind of play was the enemy making?

Two or three thousand men with a few laborers had actually come and formed up in battle array directly outside his city? He had looked very carefully, and those behind the Khotanese troops were indeed just laborers.

There was a plot! Satuq's first reaction was that something was wrong, but his scouts had been sent out as far as outside the walls of Shule, and they had found no trace of any other army at all.

In a place like Anxi, there was no need to search everywhere, because an army could only encamp along rivers and oases. There were only those few rivers, only those few patches of oasis. If the scouts had not found anything, then there truly was nothing.

"Anhel, you have fought the Khotanese the most. From Shule to here, what is the fastest they could arrive?" Satuq asked the ghulam tuman beside him, his trusted general Anhel.

The tuman was the military and political organizational unit of the Karakhanid army, meaning a division of ten thousand households. Below the tuman were the units of a thousand households and a hundred households.

This organizational structure based on the decimal system was later carried on by the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and others. It was the organizational model best suited to steppe peoples.

Of course, with Satuq's financial resources, he could only maintain a little over two thousand ghulam guards, but that did not prevent him from appointing the second-in-command of the ghulam guards as a tuman commander.

"In reply to the Great Khan, the Khotanese Golden Kingdom has many infantry and few cavalry. Their Divine Might Right Army has at most three thousand riders. The various local amirs can muster about five hundred armored riders, but their training and standard cannot compare with ours. Their ability to fight independently is mediocre, and they are normally used together with the infantry.

So although it is only ninety li from Shule to Lower Atush, they would still need three days to arrive. If all the cavalry came out, they could arrive in one day, but they would need half a day of rest before they had fighting strength.

Moreover, once the infantry and cavalry became separated, we could easily raid and slaughter their infantry. So I would guess that Yuchi Sengwubo would not dare split his forces!"

Anhel's face was dark as water. He had already learned the situation in Shule from the Askar troops who had fled back in defeat. The Khotanese Golden Kingdom's men had carried out massive reprisal massacres in the northern part of Shule. His family was gone — the men had been killed, the women carried off.

Yuchi Sengwubo was Li Shengtian. As an enemy state of Khotan, the Karakhanids would certainly never call him Li Shengtian.

And Anhel's analysis was also correct. In ancient times, armies that could march several dozen li a day were not entirely nonexistent, but they were absolutely a tiny minority — the sort of thing like the Wei Wuzu elite troops.

That was why Sima Yi's forced march to capture Meng Da could be praised for thousands of years. An ordinary army that marched twenty or thirty li a day was already giving its commander plenty of face.

Satuq nodded coldly, agreeing with Anhel's assessment. If this Khotanese force below the walls had come to lure him out to fight, then they were simply too stupid.

Because if Yuchi Sengwubo split his forces to come to their aid, he could abandon the men below the walls and strike at the Khotanese infantry coming out from Shule. And if they did not split their forces, then in three days, could his fifteen thousand elite cavalry not swallow up a mere two thousand men?

Still, Satuq, cautious by nature, decided to probe first. He would send a few men out to harass them and see what these Khotanese troops below the walls were made of. Could it be that those laborers were fake, and this was actually six thousand elite soldiers?

"Anhel, do you recognize this thing? Take a look — doesn't it look like your wife's colored robe? Let me tell you, those three wives of yours are truly first-rate in bed!

Especially your first wife. I heard you neglected her for many years. Well, let me tell you, you have missed out badly. I tried all three of them, and your first wife was the most intoxicating. Those long legs — haha! What power!"

Satuq and Anhel were in the middle of discussing matters on the wall when, without warning, shrill mockery rose from below.

A burly man wearing only a simple robe and a tattered net cap on his head had propped his leg up on a large rock. With the long spear in his hand he held aloft a colorful Uyghur women's robe, shouting and jeering as he laughed.

Ma Yaozi was not lying. Anhel's first wife really was quite something. He smacked his lips twice, recalling that pale, slender body that had wept even as she went at it more frantically than he did, and felt a stirring of desire again.

Anhel's eyes instantly went red. All the blood in his body seemed to rush straight to his head. Not only were his eyes bloodshot, his entire face flushed crimson.

Although he was not certain whether the colored robe the burly man below was holding up belonged to his first wife, it was indeed the sort of garment commonly worn by Uyghur noblewomen.

Moreover, the fact that he had deliberately neglected his first wife was a secret of their household, something ordinary people did not know. The burly man below not only knew of it, he also knew that his first wife truly did have a rare pair of long legs. In that case...!

Anhel suddenly felt a greenish glow above his head.

"Duomishi, I never expected that someone who looks so mighty and imposing would turn out to be a soft good-for-nothing! Such a pretty little woman, left empty for five or six years — why bother? If you can't do it yourself, let her out early. Better to snatch a bit of wild game than starve to death, eh!"

Just as Anhel's blood truly rushed into his pupils, the face of another armored hundred-household commander beside him turned so black it seemed it could drip water.

"Zhilishisi, you slave-born wretch, you ought to thank me. I have already investigated it for you — those two brats of yours are not your seed. They belong to your steward.

I despise nothing more than faithless, unchaste women and dog-slaves who dare to dishonor their masters. So I took it upon myself to clean them up for you. It is just that I did not quite control my strength, and with one careless slip — heh heh! I cleaned out your entire household for you!"

"Aiya! I will kill you, you Tang dog! Aiya! Great Khan, please let your servant go down and slaughter all those Tang dogs!"

Zhilishisi was a light-cavalry commander of a thousand households, wearing a four-panel helmet. With a thud he dropped to his knees before Satuq and let out a piercing howl.

How could he not have known that his two children were problematic? But he himself could not father children, and his rank and lands needed an heir, so he had had no choice but to come up with this method.

And now, in one stroke, the children were gone and the matter had been exposed. The fury in his heart was imaginable. That he had not lost control on the spot was already quite impressive.

"My loyal generals, warriors of the Khara Khan, stay calm! Calm!"

Satuq's eyelids twitched ceaselessly. Although he did not know what the Khotanese troops below the walls were relying on to deliberately provoke them, he clearly sensed that something was wrong.

The scent of a plot lingered at the tip of this Khara Khan's nose. He kept telling himself that he absolutely had to make the officers and soldiers under his command calm down.

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