Chapter 176: Who Deploys Armored Cavalry

"Wazir, run! Run!" When his personal guard officer Amira shouted frantically, telling Ali Dula to flee, Dula had already clamped his legs to his horse's flanks and was galloping at full speed, but his mind was still in complete chaos.

Why?

Why are there armored cavalry here?

Why would there be armored cavalry beneath the walls of Balasagun?

Though there were only about a hundred and fifty riders, it fully proved one thing: what he faced was by no means some backwater Balasagun tribal chief and a muttering religious leader, but a great power with a complete array of military branches.

"Ah!" A scream came from far to near, piercingly clear in Ali Dula's ears.

Because the one screaming was his most loyal personal guard, Amira — a follower who had been at his side for over ten years, and just like that, he was gone.

"Quick! Adjust formation, change horses — everyone change horses, and charge again!"

Li Ruotai ran the Persian who had been desperately blocking him through with one thrust of his lance, then immediately began loudly directing the riders to change horses.

Khotan, in truth, could not raise any particularly fine horses. Never mind Ferghana horses — even second- and third-generation horses with Ferghana bloodlines were strategic materials that the Samanid Persians and the Karakhanids forbade from leaving their borders.

So much so that the not particularly sturdy Ferghana-blood horse Zhang Zhao had captured outside Shule was treated as a treasure by Li Shengtian.

Not only was it sent at once to the Khotan royal pastures to be raised, but the sturdy young mares were surely matched with it by the dozens.

Therefore Khotan's heavy cavalry could only fight in a reduced configuration: armored riders but unarmored horses. Generally one heavy cavalryman was assigned three good horses and one mounted attendant, using numbers to make up for the lack of quality.

Now, under Li Ruotai's orders, the attendants hurriedly helped the riders dismount, then led over the horses to be switched to, and helped them mount again.

And just as they began changing horses, Bai Congxin with a hundred riders had already locked onto Ali Dula.

These hundred-odd riders were mostly light cavalry, but Bai Congxin and the Yue riders under his command had all abandoned the tactic of shooting from a distance with horse bows.

Because everyone could see that the officer in the dark silver armor had to be a person of importance. To quickly scatter the cavalry protecting him, they could not rely on mounted archery — they had to fight in close quarters.

Wielding long spears and hengdao sabers, they relentlessly struck at the two hundred fleeing Persian cavalrymen.

Ali Dula did not dare look back. He could only judge from his steadily dwindling guards and the screams that the enemy was still in pursuit.

Boom-boom-boom!

The drums finally sounded. The Samanid Persian army still besieging the city finally realized their commander was being hunted down.

Amid the drumbeats, a force of about five hundred Persian heavy infantry began moving toward Ali Dula, while several hundred riders of the God Warriors came shouting and yelling to relieve him.

Bai Congxin hastily reined in his troops. They were light cavalry wearing only simple leather armor, and the enemy God Warrior riders were clearly horse archers. There was no need to go in and add to their own casualties.

At that moment, Li Ruotai arrived with a hundred and fifty armored cavalry.

The warhorses of armored cavalry and those of light cavalry were two complete extremes.

What mattered most in a light cavalry horse was endurance, because they often needed to make long-distance raids and gallop back and forth across the battlefield to achieve sustained harassment and flanking maneuvers.

What an armored cavalry horse needed most, however, was short-burst load-bearing power and explosive force, so they could deliver the decisive blow at the critical moment.

Thus in a short burst, the explosive power of an armored cavalry warhorse far surpassed that of a light cavalry mount.

As for why light cavalry were not also given horses with strong explosive power — it was because such horses were essentially a rare breed, and with the extremely high cost of raising them, no one was willing to assign them to light cavalry.

The four or five hundred God Warrior riders charging toward them had originally come to drive off Bai Congxin's men and rescue their commander.

But suddenly, the enemy light cavalry that had been tangling with their commander on both sides parted, and what appeared before them was a solid wall of armored cavalry in black lamellar armor, their long cavalry lances held crosswise, slowly trotting toward them.

Instantly, these God Warriors simply collapsed.

Fight, my ass!

With their light cavalry — not even rotten leather armor, just a thickened wool blanket tied across their chests as a breastplate — what were they supposed to use against armored cavalry?

But it was too late! Just as they prepared to wheel their horses around, the armored cavalry opposite had already taken their lances in hand — the sign that a charge was about to begin.

The armored cavalry charge of this era was not the knee-to-knee charge of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cuirassiers, because the quality of the cavalrymen and the warhorses of the present day fell far short of that standard.

Therefore the standard armored cavalry assault of this age was a dispersed formation, with each rider separated by more than half a lance's length.

This was also why the lances were held crosswise at the start of a charge: it allowed the riders to control the spacing between one another during the charge, and ensured that they stayed roughly in a straight line with their comrades to left and right.

Moreover, the two methods of charging aimed at different objectives. The knee-to-knee charge was meant to break the enemy formation at maximum speed, then wheel around and charge again and again until the enemy completely collapsed.

And the cuirassiers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were equipped with pistols; once they had driven the enemy to either side, it was easier to blast them with pistol fire.

The dispersed charge of this era, by contrast, was meant to squeeze the enemy riders into the gaps in between.

Horses are highly intelligent animals. They are not machines, and avoiding harm and seeking advantage is instinct.

So when armored cavalry charged, the horses opposite would certainly not choose to meet them head-on, skull to skull.

They would choose the course most advantageous to themselves. With gaps that wide left open, they would surely plunge through without hesitation — only a fool would go head-to-head!

At that point, for the armored cavalry, the battle became simple.

They did not even need to use the somewhat dangerous thrusting attacks — they only needed to lash out left and right with their lances, exactly as in the battle now unfolding.

When Li Ruotai and his men were still twenty paces away, the God Warrior light cavalry opposite had already dwindled from four or five hundred riders to only about three hundred.

Then those three hundred, amid desperate wails, collapsed into utter chaos: some were frantically reining their horses to flee to either side, some were frozen in terror like wooden chickens, and some were howling as they launched a counter-charge.

Ten paces! The armored cavalry's charge reached its top speed. Amid the violent jolting, Li Ruotai could only feel the whistling wind rushing past his ears.

Under the surge of adrenaline, the faces of the enemy ahead seemed to blur.

Yet within that blur there was a peculiar precision — every blow he struck was exactly right.

A harrowing chorus of screams rose as the three hundred God Warriors were shattered in an instant!

The hundred and fifty armored cavalry tore through their formation like lightning, and great numbers of God Warriors were knocked to the ground, rider and horse together.

With lances of such fine quality and the speed of the charge, a blow to a man could snap his ribs, and a blow to a horse was more than the animal could bear.

They burst through the formation in an instant, but Li Ruotai did not order his men to slow. The standard-bearers to his left and right still held high the small red banners signaling the charge to continue.

Because by now, the five hundred Samanid Persian heavy infantry coming to Ali Dula's aid had arrived.

But they had not yet had time to form a defensive formation, nor had the forest of spears for resisting cavalry been raised.

Hussein ibn Hassan was a short, stocky warrior. He came from a great noble family of Samanid Persia, his ancestors traceable back to the Sassanid dynasty, where one had been a senior officer in the Sassanid Immortals.

Of course, he was only from a branch line — otherwise he would not have become a standard-bearer in an Ersariya heavy infantry unit.

Because the Sassanid Immortal Guard was mainly cavalry — when cataphracts were mixed into infantry, it naturally meant a drop in status.

A banner was a military unit in the Persian army, roughly a thousand men in size; its officer was sometimes called a banner chief, sometimes a chiliarch.

"Hold steady! Everyone close up together — they can't break through us!"

Hussein roared. There was no time to form a pike square, so having everyone huddle together was also a decent choice.

They had five hundred men, and the enemy had only a hundred and fifty riders — they might not even dare charge.

At the officer's call, the infantry began to assemble, though not very quickly. But by now Ali Dulaf's personal guard cavalry, already close to them, were scrambling to sweep around their flanks.

One side was desperate to flee, the other still hesitating over whether to really go and assemble — so the two sides collided slightly.

One horse, panicked and heedless of its path, ran straight through the crowd. Several infantrymen blocking its way were knocked to the ground. More and more men and horses poured through, and chaos spread everywhere.

Hussein was tense to the extreme. The charge of the opposing cataphracts was terrifying in its momentum — the whole earth seemed to tremble.

Those tall horses, and the armored riders on their backs with only a pair of eyes showing, looked like devils out of hell.

They were getting closer and closer. A violent, aching pressure seized Hussein's lower belly, and a fierce urge to urinate made him want to let go.

He also very much wanted to go to the rear. As an officer, he could have made that choice — but at this moment he could not move. The instant he moved, the formation would surely collapse.

"Bang!" A tremendous impact sounded. Hussein was almost the first to be sent flying. Yet in the instant he was hurled away, Hussein felt some comfort in his heart.

Because although he had been knocked flying, the formation had not collapsed before contact.

As long as it did not collapse, a hundred and fifty cataphracts could not punch through five hundred heavy infantry. The moment the cataphracts slowed, the heavy infantry's chance would come.

But...! The next scene made his eyes go wide. These cataphracts were like an extremely hard pebble slammed violently against the egg of the heavy infantry square — the eggshell shattered at once, and the yolk scattered everywhere.

Almost at the instant he was struck flying, the rear ranks of heavy infantry simply broke apart. The soldiers huddled together scattered in terror, fleeing blindly in every direction — pierced through in a single blow!

Li Ruotai still wanted to charge, because between them and the fleeing Persian general another square of infantry had appeared — but the warhorses had clearly reached their limit.

Unwilling to give up, Li Ruotai called the knights around him to make a probe. But the Samanid Persian square before him was clearly ready: gleaming pikes glittered, and behind the formation archers had already nocked their arrows.

"Fall back! We'll keep an eye on them. The longer we drag this out, the more of their grain burns!"

The heavy infantry square stood immovable. Even cataphracts had no reason to charge straight into it.

Li Ruotai instantly made the right choice — to stall for time. Because the Persians' granary was on fire; they were the ones in a hurry.

"Mas'udi! Gather the troops and retake the granary! Don't be afraid — the enemy has few heavy cavalry. Have Mustafa's archers form up to deal with them!"

The still-shaken Ali Dulaf forced himself to rally and began ordering Mas'udi to organize a relief force for the granary. Mas'udi, who had been about to resume the assault on the city, nodded — there was no other choice now.

On the walls of Balasagun, Guo Xuanli's old face was glowing with excitement.

"Give all the city's elite troops to Commander Ma, and ask Ashina Sili of the Basmyl tribe to assist from within as well. I want the Persians unable to attend to everything at once!"

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