Chapter 147: Armored Cavalry That Do Not Charge Formations

The dense twanging of bowstrings seemed to carry a strange rhythm, driving countless arrows that shrieked with an eerie sound.

The sky-filling rain of arrows poured down ceaselessly upon both sides. The Karakhanid light cavalry fell in wave after wave, while the spearmen of the Fengtian Army's layered formation also toppled to the ground one after another.

Zhang Zhao shot down a distant light cavalryman in chainmail who was shouting and yelling, and in this brief moment of respite, he glanced toward the front of the layered formation.

Of the four hundred spearmen, some twenty or thirty had fallen. The casualties were actually not severe, for even among those who fell, very few lost their lives outright.

But the terror of standing and taking fire was not something ordinary men could endure, and the spear square already had a tottering, about-to-collapse feel to it.

Zhang Zhao, however, felt somewhat reassured, for the Karakhanid light cavalry that had ridden around the formation were in far worse shape — they had lost at least several hundred riders. Foot bows firing at leather armor were naturally far more lethal than horse bows firing at lamellar armor.

"Yin Yaozi, I leave this place to you. I'm going to the front!"

Zhang Zhao put away his longbow and patted Yin Yaozi on the shoulder as he spoke.

The Hanshan troops had now been fully tempered. Even without him present, these armored soldiers could still bring out tremendous combat power. What needed him now were the spearmen at the front of the layered formation.

"No raising the pengpai shields! The enemy still has armored cavalry behind them. The moment shields go up, the enemy riders will swarm in!"

Shan Zhu'er, hengdao saber in hand, punched and kicked ferociously amid the arrow rain, knocking the pengpai shields from the hands of several spearmen who wanted to raise them.

The spear square's greatest reliance against armored cavalry was using its forest of spear points to frighten the enemy armored cavalry's warhorses. But if the pengpai shields were raised, there would be no way to frighten the opposing horses.

Of course, this was also because Zhang Zhao's layered-formation cheval-de-frise was not quite up to standard. A proper cheval-de-frise would have kept the enemy armored cavalry from charging in all at once even if the spearmen used shields.

"Stand firm! The enemy armored cavalry is coming!" Zhang Zhao dashed to Shan Zhu'er's side. His golden armor was extremely conspicuous, and the moment he appeared, the spearmen standing and taking fire around him seemed to find their backbone. The spear square, which had been tottering on the verge of collapse, steadied at once.

"Shan Zhu'er, you brat, not bad at all!" Zhang Zhao praised him loudly. He had not expected this simple-looking fool Shan Zhu'er to actually possess some talent for command.

Shan Zhu'er grinned, but his face immediately darkened. "Lord of the Commandery, the enemy armored cavalry doesn't look like they're coming to charge. Look at their horses — they haven't even broken into a run, and their formation is drifting left. That's not a charge formation. It looks more like they want to trade shots with us!"

"Hmph!" Zhang Zhao also snorted coldly. "They don't want to trade shots with us. They want to shoot our spear square to pieces and then cause panic.

Once the spearmen rout, the front formation will crash into the rear formation, and then they'll swarm in. That would make things much simpler."

The armored cavalry of this era fought differently from the cuirassiers of later ages. The greatest use of later cuirassiers was charging formations.

In this era, although armored cavalry would also couch their lances and charge, that was only a small part of their role on the battlefield. The armored cavalry of this era had another, most important function: mounted archery.

But this mounted archery was still different from that of horse archers, because men and horses both fully armored while shooting from high-speed gallop — not one man in a hundred could do it.

So the armored cavalry's mounted archery involved changing the formation from a head-on galloping charge to angling the horses' heads left or right, then shooting while trotting at a steady pace.

During this shooting process, because the armored cavalry did not use soft horse bows but likewise used stiff bows, their massed volleys could potentially shoot the enemy's defensive troops into collapse.

Only after the enemy front formation collapsed would they turn their horses' heads and launch a wave of couched-lance charges. If their horses lacked stamina, they would even dismount first and shoot on foot, and after shooting the enemy into collapse, remount with the help of auxiliary troops to charge.

"Spread out the formation! Half-crouch and shrink your defensive area! No movement without orders!" Zhang Zhao bellowed, and the officers around him also roared to relay his command.

Since he now knew the enemy intended to shoot at the spear square, there was no need to huddle together. Spreading out would reduce the chance of collapsing under concentrated volleys.

The words had barely left his mouth when the moving Karakhanid armored cavalry reached about seventy paces. Sure enough, they did not speed up but slowed their horses.

All the armored cavalry drew their bows, and at the shouted command of an enemy armored cavalry officer, the sky-filling arrow rain came swarming over like locusts.

And before them, the hard-bow archers at the front of the layered formation had also collectively aimed at the enemy armored cavalry's direction. The two sides' arrow rains arrived almost simultaneously.

Screams of agony rose one after another around Zhang Zhao. Arrows piercing armor were, in fact, an important method of armor penetration in the cold-weapons era — it was just that this method was expensive, and ordinary armies simply could not afford it.

The armored cavalry the enemy had sent out, however, were clearly Satuq's ghulam guard armored cavalry. With the Karakhanid state's resources, supplying armor-piercing arrows for a few hundred men was still possible.

Large numbers of arrows were lofted down around Zhang Zhao, and one of them even struck directly on his vajra face mask.

Clang! Zhang Zhao's nose stung, and tears streamed down his face. His nasal bone was nearly broken outright. Who told him to dress so flashily? A full suit of golden armor was simply the best target there was.

Having taken a hard hit, this Lord of the Commandery Zhang hurriedly lowered his head, not daring to look around anymore.

Before long, Zhang Zhao felt waves of sharp pain spreading across his body, as if countless burly men were pounding him with their fists. He could even feel quite a few arrows slipping in through the damaged lamellae of his armor, and the cold sensation of the arrowheads made his heart flutter with alarm.

Now he finally understood why so many armies collapsed under this kind of concentrated volley fire — because this terror of waiting for death was simply beyond human strength to resist.

Wailing rose along with the sound of chaotic footsteps. Quite a few more spearmen broke from the ranks and ran toward the rear.

"Kill without mercy! Kill without mercy!" The ordinary archers behind the hard-bow archers and the yueqi cavalry on both flanks roared out loudly, following the arrangements Zhang Zhao had made in advance.

Liu Zaisheng personally hefted his modao glaive glaive glaive and cut down a fleeing man. On the other side, the monk Huitong was even more ruthless — although these spearmen were all Three Teachings sworn followers he had personally selected, he showed not the slightest hesitation in killing them.

Three fleeing spearmen were deliberately kicked to the ground by him, then pinned to the earth with spears, because this way they would not die immediately, and their shrill screams would serve to terrify the other would-be deserters.

"Everyone back to formation! Within ten breaths, past offenses will not be pursued!"

Zhang Zhao bellowed. At that moment, the pressure on his body suddenly lightened, for the enemy armored cavalry, under the fire of his own strong archers, had already suffered heavy casualties.

Mounted archery while moving was inherently harder than shooting on foot, and slower too. Add to that the great disparity in bows and arrows between the two sides, and the enemy armored cavalry soon could not hold on.

This was inevitable. One had to know that Khotan had flourished by absorbing the essence of the Great Tang's Western Regions. At this time, the Khotan oasis could raise silkworms and weave cloth, and its textile and iron-smelting industries were utterly beyond anything the Karakhanid state could match.

If they swarmed in all at once and fought hand-to-hand using numerical superiority, that would be another matter. But standing and trading shots, competing on the quality of bows, crossbows, and arrows — the Karakhanids were absolutely no match.

The arrows coming from the enemy armored cavalry grew sparser and sparser. Zhang Zhao even had the leisure to begin pulling arrows out of his mingguang armor. Right now, this Lord of the Commandery Zhang looked like a hedgehog, and his body was probably covered in bruises from head to toe.

While inwardly lamenting that his armor would need repairs again, Zhang Zhao curled his lip in contempt. What damned "ghulam guard" — it sounded impressive enough, but in actual combat they turned out to be this worthless. Over three thousand riders sortied, and they had not even made a single frontal charge.

"Kukukuku!" The sound of orderly footsteps came — the hornbow crossbowmen from the rear formation were advancing.

"Bang!" More than three hundred hornbow crossbows fired as one. These were not eight-dou strong bows; these were strong crossbows approaching three dan in draw weight.

Instantly, those several hundred armored cavalry and the light cavalry that had wheeled back began toppling over in droves, men and horses alike. At seventy paces, under the fire of three-dan crossbow bolts, no armor of any kind could withstand it — even a warhorse could be killed with a single shot.

Amid the panicked shouts of men and neighing of horses, the Karakhanid cavalry, already unnerved by the shooting, scattered and fled in all directions under a single volley from the three hundred hornbow crossbowmen, like termites from an overturned nest.

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