Chapter 148: Giving You a Reason You Can't Refuse to Fight

Another few hundred cavalry lost, but this actually cooled the head of Bulaq Khan Saktu. Five times he had sent more than three thousand riders to carry out intimidation tactics, yet the opposing square formation never wavered.

The second wave sent over four hundred riders forward to probe, and in less than two quarters of an hour nearly a hundred were gone.

The third wave committed two thousand five hundred light cavalry and five hundred armored riders, yet they never even got to charge the formation — they were shattered by the enemy in the exchange of arrows alone.

In a single hour more than three hundred cavalry were lost; counting all casualties, at least seven or eight hundred men had been put out of action, while the enemy had perhaps not even fifty.

This ratio, and the combat power the enemy had displayed, told Saktu one fact very clearly.

These several thousand men across from him could no longer be described as merely a tough bone to gnaw. This was no bone — this was a wolf-tooth club forged of pure iron. Keep fighting, and the losses would only grow heavier.

Anhel, a commander of the ghulam guards beside him, glanced at Saktu. He could see that Bulaq Khan was already inclined to withdraw, and in truth he thought the same.

Their own advantage lay in mobility. The original plan had been to draw the army of the Khotan Golden Kingdom to the area from Mayidan Pass to Arhu and wear them down, then pursue and snap at their heels as they retreated. That strategy was unquestionably the correct one.

But using cavalry to gnaw at a fully deployed enemy formation, as they were doing now, was extremely unwise.

"No way! They're giving up the attack just like that?" Zhang Zhao had just finished bandaging a spearman who had taken an arrow in the arm when he noticed the Karakhanids across from him had gone still.

Although they still covered the entire bank of the Boguz River, they showed no intention of continuing the assault.

"Duke, we can't let them just leave. Saktu's army is still in perfect order — losses like this mean nothing to him. If we let them withdraw, we won't dare pursue, and we won't even dare move to take Lower Artush.

Because the moment we move, the layered formation becomes hard to maintain, and they might just wheel around and strike us — that would be a disaster. I say we need to find a way to make them keep attacking!"

Liu Zaisheng rode up from the rear. He was actually quite familiar with this layered formation, because Zhang Zhao had drilled it with him back at Yaotougang, and they had tried it once more beneath the walls of Shule — though at that time Zhang Zhao had still called it the great crossbow-and-cavalry-breaking formation, and they had not set up chevaux-de-frise and the like around it.

Back then he had not seen how well this formation countered cavalry, but now he saw it clearly. The two thousand-plus men here were all hand-picked elites; if they fought steadily, the enemy very likely could not break them. If they did not seize this chance to pile up merit, when would they?

Zhang Zhao nodded. The layered formation's greatest weakness was that it could not move. Zhang Zhao was certain that if he so much as shifted, the Karakhanid cavalry across from him would immediately wheel back and pin him down.

In other words, if Saktu chose to withdraw now, there was nothing he could do. He could only watch — and even then, he could only keep holding this hilltop and wait for the Khotan army to arrive.

"Ma Yaozi, this time it's on you again. Execute Plan Yi!" Zhang Zhao called Ma Yaozi over once more.

When it came to clowning, cursing, and infuriating people, it had to be this big brother. No one else could produce that particular flavor of rage.

"No way! Duke, do we really have to do that? If word of this gets out, how will I, Yaozi, ever show my face again?"

Ma Yaozi wore a pained expression. He had been unwilling from the moment Zhang Zhao first told him about it. Where did this young lord get such wicked ideas? It was nothing but humiliation.

"Get moving! What are you dawdling for? You got Anhel's wife and two concubines all to yourself — I never even touched them. That's the lawful wife of a great general of a whole kingdom. You think that comes cheap?"

Zhang Zhao kicked Ma Yaozi in the thigh with disdain. He knew exactly what kind of scoundrels served under him — not a single good man among them, and the decent ones could be counted on the fingers of one hand. A fellow like Ma Yaozi, embarrassed? Please.

"Fourteen! Go pile up a little mound of earth in front of the formation and give our Great Khan of Bulaq something to look at. Let's see if he can still bear to leave!"

After giving Ma Yaozi his orders, Zhang Zhao also summoned Cao Yanming, preparing to add a second layer of insurance against Saktu, who was already inclined to retreat.

"Great Khan, look!" Duomishi, a centurion of the ghulam heavy cavalry guards, spurred his horse over to Saktu. His lamellar armor was full of gashes, and his forehead was wrapped in white cloth — had his helmet not been superbly made, it seemed his skull would have been split open.

Saktu reached out and took the object Duomishi handed him. It was an arrow. He raised it before his eyes, squinting his right eye, and examined it carefully for a moment.

This arrow was quite excellent! The shaft was perfectly straight, with almost no visible bend. It was made of fine birch, and it even seemed to carry a faint scent of lacquer. Carved at the tail of the shaft were the characters: "Anjunzhou Armory, Jia Workshop, Song, Wuchen."

This was no casually made arrow. It was a finely crafted shaft from the Jia Workshop of the Anjunzhou Armory, where the Khotan Golden Kingdom's royal city lay, made by a craftsman surnamed Song, number Wuchen. The name was carved so that if any quality problem appeared, the mark could be used to assign responsibility.

Saktu had tried to implement this same production system in the Karakhanid state, but it had quickly collapsed.

Because while the method improved quality, it reduced output. In a handcraft era, striving for perfection inevitably meant slow work and fine goods.

The Karakhanids had been fighting on all fronts for years and needed arrows in vast quantities; they had no time to do such fine work as the Khotan Golden Kingdom.

"Great Khan, according to this officer's investigations, not many units in the Khotan Golden Kingdom are equipped with arrows of this quality. Even the palace guards of Yuchi Sengwubo are not all issued them. This officer believes that the force arrayed against us must be the elite of the Khotan palace guards!"

Saktu nodded. Duomishi's judgment was likely accurate, and he also understood the unspoken meaning behind this ghulam heavy cavalry centurion's words: if the Khotanese had sent such elite troops, then if they could devour the force across from them, it would deal a massive blow to the fighting strength of the Khotan army.

Still, Saktu was somewhat reluctant to fight, because it was not worth it. He had never seen the enemy's formation before, but Saktu could tell that it essentially used chevaux-de-frise and long spears as walls, with crossbows as the primary means of attack.

If these were all elite troops, assaulting this formation would be no different from storming a city. It could be taken, but the losses would absolutely not be small.

These officers had been deeply provoked by the destruction of their homes and families. Saktu, now calm again, narrowed his eyes and thought for a moment. They would fight a little more shortly, let the men vent their fury, and then proceed according to the original plan.

"Great Khan, look! Those heaven-cursed Tang dogs! What are they doing? Ah! I'll slaughter them all!"

Duomishi, who had been waiting for Saktu's instructions, suddenly howled in fury. Saktu looked in the direction he was pointing. A dozen or so Tang dogs had come out of the great formation and were striking various poses in front of it.

Ma Yaozi, wearing the headdress of Saktu's queen, Lady Cao, and clad in a purple Karakhanid noblewoman's robe, was striking pose after pose.

At one moment he knelt on the ground, tilting his head up slightly as if licking and gulping something.

The next he dropped to all fours, stuck up his rear, and shrieked and wailed.

Then he...!

And it must be said, once this wretch had broken through his inhibitions, his performance was utterly lifelike. The soldiers around the layered formation were laughing so hard they rolled on the ground, while from the Karakhanid ranks erupted wave after wave of barely suppressed roars.

They were all men; both sides understood perfectly well what Ma Yaozi was imitating.

"Spare me! Spare me! Father, save me! Father, save me!" Shrill children's voices rang out. After Ma Yaozi and his group finished, it was Huang Yang, Hua Bu, and Hei Gou'er's turn.

And their performance was even more readily understood: row after row of children dressed in Karakhanid noble clothing were hacked down in swathes amid screams of agony.

Anhel drew a deep breath. Those cries seemed to explode inside his skull. He had three children — three children he treasured like jewels — and now they were all gone.

"Great Khan! Let us go! Stick to the original plan. These people are provoking us like this for a reason. We must not fall for it!"

Tears streamed from Anhel's eyes, and the hand gripping his saber hilt trembled, but he still kept his head.

Saktu looked at Anhel with equal parts pain and admiration. He was proud to have such a general!

"Boom!" At that moment, a tremendous explosion rang out. In front of the Khotan army's formation, seven or eight hundred paces away, a brilliant flash of fire appeared with the blast.

Moments later, after the dust cleared, the little mound of earth the Khotanese had piled in front of their formation had vanished completely.

"That's it! That's it! Great Khan! The west wall of Shule was brought down by this thing!" Adumu, who had just won his freedom and was preparing to serve as a death soldier, screamed wildly.

Saktu, who had been on the verge of issuing the retreat order, suddenly drew a sharp breath, and then an unprecedented greed appeared on his face.

If that device of the Khotanese could bring down the walls of Shule, then it could certainly breach Samarkand's, and Bukhara's too.

"Pass my orders! The entire army is to armor up. The ghulam light cavalry will be the vanguard; the Moul'a and Tashili tribes will form the left wing; the Chiyi tribe the right wing; the Huduoge tribe the reserve. All the armored riders of the ghulam guards and the Iqta heavy cavalry will be the hammer — when the enemy formation breaks, they will charge! I want not a single one of them to escape!"

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