Chapter 170: The Persian Emperor Xuanzong of Tang

Talas City — as a column of elite cavalry wrapped in black war-cloaks and bearing pure-black banners thundered into the city, Ali Dulaf, the Tashkent governor of Samanid Persia, had finally arrived at this famed Transoxiana city already entirely shrouded in the atmosphere of war.

Endless supplies had been continuously transported from Tashkent City to the southwest. Ever since the humiliating defeat at the hands of the Kara-Khanid Khanate four years earlier, the Samanid dynasty had been ceaselessly stockpiling supplies in Tashkent.

At first it was to guard against Satuq launching an attack from Talas into the Samanid heartland — that is, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya river basins of later Central Asia.

This region was the old homeland of the Nine Zhaowu Clans. Bukhara, Samarkand, and the other traditionally wealthy cities of the Samanid state all lay in this area. If the Kara-Khanids broke in and plundered it, that would be disastrous.

But as they kept guarding, the Kara-Khanids they were guarding against showed no sign of moving south.

Only later did they learn that although Satuq, the Bughra Khan of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, had recovered all the territory west of Talas, the old Kara-Khanid nobles of Balasagun refused to acclaim Satuq as Arslan Khan because of religion.

With Balasagun, a city that did not submit to him, stuck in the middle, Satuq had no way to move his armies south to invade.

Although afterwards Satuq transferred a large army from the direction of Shule and seized more than half of the Fergana Valley, the Samanid court and its officials breathed an enormous sigh of relief.

Because the Samanid dynasty's core wealthy region was not in the Fergana Valley, which they called Mar'inan.

Their core was the three cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent.

Moreover, the Kara-Khanid army had failed to take the city of Khujand at the mouth of the valley, which meant they could not easily enter and leave the basin to harass Transoxiana.

At the same time, the battle of Khujand had made the Samanid court clearly see how weak the Kara-Khanids were at storming fortified positions.

Therefore, in the years that followed, the longer they defended, the more adept they became. Instead, they used the valley mouth to bottle up the Kara-Khanid army inside the basin.

Ali Dulaf looked at the mountain-like piles of supplies inside Talas City and could not help nodding with satisfaction.

Yet who could have imagined that a few years earlier, he had been one of those opposed to stockpiling supplies in Tashkent.

Because he felt that doing so was practically giving the Kara-Khanids directions — clearly telling those bandits:

"Come quickly! We've got lots of good stuff here. One raid and you'll eat for years!"

This was simply child's play. With so many supplies stockpiled, if the Kara-Khanids really did capture them, it would be a fine sight — they could use those supplies to make Tashkent a base and ceaselessly harass the kingdom's heartland.

But fortunately, what Dulaf had feared never came to pass. Instead, today it had helped him enormously.

Because without the supplies stockpiled over these years, he would have had no way to gain a firm foothold in Talas. This famed Transoxiana city, having endured two massive wars within five years, had become extremely impoverished and could hardly support the provisioning of a large army.

"Your Excellency Governor, word has come from Bukhara — the rebellion stirred up by the Kharijites has been suppressed!"

A postal officer hurried over and said to Dulaf, who had just entered the city.

Postal officer — this strange and curious office was roughly equivalent to a combination of China's investigating censors and the Embroidered Uniform Guard's agents posted outside the capital.

Originally it was the eyes and ears of the Samanid central court, used to keep watch over the governors of the various regions and the hakims (roughly equivalent to grand coordinators) and other such high-ranking local officials.

But in recent years, under the ceaseless mismanagement and indulgence of Emir Nasr II in his late years, the postal officers' original duties had been gradually stripped away, and their status had quickly declined.

They had gone from being the court's eyes and ears, most feared by local officials, to becoming subordinate officials of the governors and hakims. That was exactly the case here with Dulaf, governor of the Tashkent province.

"How so fast? Could it be...?" Ali Dulaf's heart jolted. Rumor had it that Emir Nasr II intended to convert from the Sunni school to the Shia school — had it really happened?

The postal officer nodded. Although he had become a subordinate of Governor Ali Dulaf, the postal officer's channels still remained. He had even learned of the upheaval in the Bukhara court one step earlier than this governor of Tashkent province.

Throughout the entire period of the Persian Samanid state, the sectarian distribution within its territory was split along an east-west divide.

Taking the capital Bukhara as the dividing line, the east was Sunni territory and the west was Shia territory.

The Kharijites were a primitive sect of Islam outside these two major schools. Their core believers were entrenched in the west of the Samanid state. Though their numbers were not large, they were tightly organized and stirred up trouble from time to time.

Nasr II had always wanted to root them out completely, but several attempts had all ended in failure, because Nasr II himself was a Sunni, while the west was Shia territory.

For the people there, paying taxes to the kingdom — even bearing corvée labor — they would do. But sending them into battle against the Kharijites — absolutely not.

Therefore, the Kharijites' several disturbances had all gone unsuppressed by the Bukhara court because of the non-cooperation of the Shia faithful in the west.

And this time, with the disturbance put down in just over a month, there was only one possibility: Nasr II really had converted.

This was no small matter. Everyone knew Islam was harsh toward outsiders, but in truth it was even harsher toward its own.

For centuries, wars against heresy had been far bloodier than wars against infidels.

Ali Dulaf drew a deep breath. In his heart he knew the kingdom was in serious trouble, because compared to the rioting Kharijites, the fury of the Sunnis was far more dangerous.

Because the Kharijites were a primitive sect that stressed asceticism.

In worship they had to knock their heads until they bled, and took pride in the sores and festering wounds left after the skin was broken.

When reciting the Quran they also demanded dramatic flair — now weeping bitterly, now sighing with emotion — and they forbade all entertainment, even forbade mourning the dead.

Who could endure that sort of thing for long?

A broken, festering, ulcerated head would become inflamed at the slightest negligence, and in this age, inflammation could easily get you killed.

And forbidding all entertainment, especially forbidding the mourning of the dead, was nearly enough to be called anti-human.

So although this sect initially had many followers, later everyone found it unbearable, and by now it had declined.

Drag on for some years and it might well die out on its own. It was simply not worth such a massive campaign to suppress — and certainly not by such drastic means as converting to Shia Islam.

Ali Dulaf could actually vaguely guess what Nasr II was thinking. Converting to Shia Islam would not only quickly settle the Kharijite problem, but would also win the hearts of the Shia faithful in the kingdom's west, stabilizing the western border.

Because in recent years, Ali Buyeh, the chieftain of the Daylamite mountain people west of the kingdom, had been exploiting this very issue, trying to incite the Shia in the kingdom's west to break away. So Nasr II wanted to use his own conversion to steady the west.

But he had forgotten one thing: the east, represented by the Transoxiana region, was the kingdom's foundation.

At the same time, the Sunni faithful of Transoxiana were extremely radical and fierce.

Especially the Turkic peoples, who had converted only a few decades to less than a century ago — they were in the fanatical stage of a rising faith. Nasr II's conversion would very likely be seen by them as a betrayal.

Dulaf felt that Nasr II had ruled the Samanid dynasty too long and too smoothly. Under his hand, it was only in the last few years that the Samanid kingdom's territory had shrunk even slightly.

These successes were glory, but they had also quickly made Nasr II swell with arrogance.

He perhaps thought that his personal conversion did not represent the royal house, and would not enrage the Sunnis in the east — or that the Sunnis would not dare resist and could only accept it.

But Ali Dulaf knew it would not be so. These people would certainly rise up and make trouble, and once they did, it would probably not be so easy to suppress.

But that was fine too. It only further steeled Ali Dulaf's resolve. Had he not fled from the political whirlpool of Bukhara to Talas precisely to avoid this coming political storm?

And he had already made thorough inquiries. Satuq, the Bughra Khan of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, had been defeated and driven off by his own subjects — those stubbornly faithful infidels.

At the same time, those infidels had just been defeated by the local faithful at Kulan City, a few dozen li away, suffering heavy losses. They were clearly a spent force at the end of their strength.

This was a once-in-a-thousand-years opportunity! As long as he led his great army eastward, he should be able to seize Balasagun while it was undefended.

With the vast territories of Balasagun and Talas, he could enfeoff hundreds of dehqans (lords) and thousands of mulks (small and medium landowners capable of fielding troops).

With these dehqans and mulks, he could in turn firmly control the lands between Balasagun and Talas.

Perhaps... Ali Duraf's forehead throbbed several times. Perhaps when the unrest in Bukhara spiraled out of control, he might still find a chance to march south and make a name for himself.

"Nonsense!" In Hele City, Guo Xuanli slammed the table heavily, cutting off the words of his clansman brother Guo Xuansu.

"Since we've pledged to follow Lord Zhang and hold Balasagun, then we should do it decisively, without hiding anything back.

What's the point of holding something in reserve at a time like this? If we win, keeping this little bit is meaningless. If we lose, the men and supplies we held back won't be enough to protect ourselves anyway."

Having said this, Guo Xuanli sighed heavily again. He had calculated every possibility, but never expected this Lord Zhang to be so skilled at stirring men's hearts.

That very day, several hundred young men of the Guo clan feasted and drank wildly with him, chanting poems and essays through the night until dawn. Not to mention the young men, even Guo Xuanli himself was deeply stirred.

Most of these young men had been trained by Guo Xuanli, and nearly all of them could recognize eighty to a hundred characters. A full thirty percent of them had quite a decent level of learning.

They had originally been talents reserved for the Church of the East, but once Zhang Zhao stirred them up, the sense of glory as sons of Tang and the pride of being descendants of the Iron-Blood Commandery Prince burst forth in every man's heart.

"Sharpen our spears and lances, drive the barbarian hordes north, and make Anxi tremble at our might.

Gather in righteousness and return east, break through Ganzhou and Liangzhou, and return to our homeland."

This was the promise Young Lord Zhang Erlang made to them all: first they would beat back the attack of the Persian Samanid state, overawe the barbarian hordes, and make Anxi once more a land of the Huaxia. Then they would gather in righteousness and return east, back to their homeland, winning merit and fame, and enjoying all the wealth and honor of the mortal world.

Compared to such a grand goal, going off to become a monk who could only wear coarse hempen robes, or fleeing into the Jiedan Mountains to take refuge — such things were simply too pitiful to contemplate.

Moreover, Young Lord Zhang Erlang was not just boasting wildly, for he had a battle record of defeating twenty thousand with two thousand — and those had been the elite ghulam guards of Bughra Khan Satuq, far beyond anything the Persian army could match.

Now Young Lord Zhang Erlang had three hundred iron-armored soldiers, eight hundred armored troops, and six hundred elite cavalry. If the Guo family gave their full support, and with Master Titersi of Balasagun and the various yabghus added in, it was not impossible to put up a fight — indeed, the odds of victory were not small.

So Guo Xuanli could only grit his teeth and take the gamble. He had no choice but to gamble — Zhang Zhao had already stolen away the souls of the Guo family's young men.

Die, and you have not shamed your ancestors. Survive, and you enjoy all the wealth and honor of the mortal world. For the young men of the Guo family, already so poor they could not even eat their fill of two meals of coarse grain a day, there was no future more alluring than this.

Perhaps, Guo Xuanli felt, the greatest reason he was willing to cooperate with Young Lord Zhang Erlang was that these slogans and this future that Young Lord Zhang Erlang had put forward were exactly the dream he himself had once held.

"Father, must we really send the map of the Loyalty Storehouse to Lord Zhang?"

Guo Guangsheng was somewhat torn. After all, he was a man in his forties. When his younger brother Guo Guangcheng abandoned even his pregnant new bride to follow Young Lord Zhang Erlang and gamble on a future of wealth and honor without shaming their ancestors, he had long since awakened from the fervor.

The burial site of the Loyalty Storehouse was said to have its map divided into five parts, jointly held by the four great clans besides the Lu family and the Kaiyuan Temple of Shule.

But the Guo family, after all, had been the leading family of the Anxi Army for over a hundred years, so in addition to the detailed map divided into five parts, they actually also held a rough sketch.

It had been copied by their ancestors, and although somewhat blurred, Zhang Zhao already held the Kaiyuan Temple and Li family portions of the map. If the Guo family's portion and the complete rough sketch were added, the treasure could already be excavated. That was why Guo Guangsheng was somewhat reluctant.

"Give it! Why wouldn't we? And give it early. This will be a great merit for our Guo family. Besides, if we don't give it to Lord Zhang, would you dare go excavate the Loyalty Storehouse yourself?

We didn't dare go dig up the treasure forty years ago, and we dare even less now!

Several hundred sets of iron armor, tens of thousands of jin of iron — if we brought those into the clan, extermination would be upon us at once!" Guo Xuanli said loudly.

"Go to Balasagun again and tell your third uncle that he must give Lord Zhang his full support.

Then go tell Lord Zhang that in ten days, this old man will personally lead eight hundred light cavalry from the various tribes to Balasagun to join him!"

In the city of Balasagun, Zhang Zhao had just held a great assembly with all the yabghus great and small, as well as the religious leaders, to unify their thinking — for the news that the Persian Samanid state was coming to attack Balasagun had already been confirmed.

After the meeting, the others had returned. Zhang Zhao kept behind only the Buddhist Master Titersi, and the Church of the East's Grand Dignitary of Solemn Virtue Xuanqing — who was Guo Xuanli's clansman brother Guo Xuanqing.

There was also Hudu Wuxi, descendant of Li Sizhong, who had already submitted to Zhang Zhao. He had now changed his name to Li Guoshou.

Finally there was one named Pugu Naluo, the greatest yabghu of Balasagun, capable of fielding two or three hundred cavalry in somewhat crude leather armor and over a thousand infantry who had received a modicum of training — a man of some strength.

Once everyone was in place, Zhang Zhao did not hesitate. He sat directly in the seat of honor. At the great assembly, with so many eyes and ears about, the specific battle plan could not be revealed — but now it could be spoken.

"According to intelligence, Ali Duraf, governor of the Samanid city of Tashkent, has already mobilized thirteen thousand troops from various regions. There are at least four or five thousand armored soldiers among them, though how many of those are elite iron-armored troops is not yet known.

The holy warriors serving as auxiliary troops are estimated to be no fewer than this number. In other words, the invading enemy will number no less than twenty-five thousand."

Master Titersi first reported to Zhang Zhao the intelligence he had obtained — this was also what the Buddhists west of Balasagun had managed to discover through their utmost efforts.

"How reliable is this information?" Zhang Zhao asked.

Twenty-five thousand men — estimating that even counting leather armor, the armor rate would be about one-third. Not too outrageous, but not easy to deal with either. It was within the range Zhang Zhao could bear.

"It should be very reliable. This came from the Zoroastrians of Bukhara. Many of them were conscripted to transport grain and supplies, so their knowledge is quite detailed."

Zoroastrianism had not yet completely died out in Samanid Persia at this time — it even still had quite a number of believers.

They were almost all concentrated in the cities, making them the best sheep to shear in the Samanid kingdom, and therefore they had not been exterminated.

In fact, for the sake of sustainable shearing, Nasr II had even appointed some Zoroastrian officials, letting their own people govern their own people.

"Good. Now I shall issue the orders!" Zhang Zhao nodded.

"Feng'en Battalion Commander, Acting Right Chief Military Inspector Ma Jirong!"

"Your subordinate is present!" Ma Jirong was the youngest brother of Khotan's Grand Commandant Ma Furong. He cut a rather heroic figure and was one of Li Shengtian's most trusted confidants, which was why he had been sent here at such a young age to command these one thousand Khotan palace guards.

"Transfer one hundred men from the Right Capital Right First Company of the Feng'en Battalion to me. The rest you will command yourself, assisting Master Titersi and Yabghu Pugu in defending the city.

This task is of great importance. Whether we can defeat the enemy depends on whether you can hold Balasagun."

"Yes!" Ma Jirong answered with a grave expression, saluting with clasped hands.

"Commandant Cao!" The second person Zhang Zhao called was Cao Yanming.

"Your subordinate is here!" Cao the Fourteenth stepped out of the ranks to answer, sporting a pair of panda-like dark circles under his eyes. He had been researching gunpowder until midnight the night before, then fooled around with his Hu concubine until dawn, and was thus exceptionally exhausted.

"I am giving you all the light cavalry under Commander Ashina. The Fenjin Capital is of the utmost importance — you must protect it well!" Zhang Zhao looked at Cao Yanming seriously.

Cao Yanming nodded. He understood what Zhang Zhao meant. The defense of the city was a heavy task this time, and the miners of the Fenjin Capital would likely follow Shi Chongmin to defend the city.

But at the same time, the gunpowder secret of the Fenjin Capital was of the gravest importance. Even if Balasagun were lost, Cao Yanming and the dozen or so apprentice workers he had trained must not be lost.

So Zhang Zhao had the light cavalry under Ashina Sili of the Basmyl tribe enter the city — not to help defend it, but so that if the situation turned bad and the city could not be held, they could escort Cao Yanming in flight.

"Master Titersi! The scorched-earth operation from the city of Asbulai to Balasagun will depend on you! Remember — not a single grain of rice, not a single person is to be left behind."

Asbulai would later become Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The roughly eighty kilometers from there to Balasagun was the corridor of death Zhang Zhao was preparing for the Persians.

"This humble monk understands!" Titersi nodded heavily.

"Yabghu Pugu and Grand Dignitary of Solemn Virtue — you two also bear the heavy responsibility of defending the city. Once Grand Dignitary Shenshun arrives, the two of you shall follow his arrangements!"

For the command of Balasagun's defense, Zhang Zhao decided that Guo Xuanli would serve as commander-in-chief, because he himself would certainly have to leave the city to fight a harassment campaign.

As for the specific battle plan of the Fengtian Camp, Zhang Zhao certainly wouldn't discuss it here — these were matters requiring strict secrecy.

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