Chapter 207: You Think You're the Only One with a Trump Card

The formation had completely broken down. The Persians fought while retreating, and the Khotan army grew bolder the more it pursued.

From the initial grand square of over a thousand men fighting in formation, it gradually turned into a dogfight of a few hundred men at a time, you inside me and me inside you.

Zhang Zhao hesitated for a moment, but still did not sound the horn, because in formation fighting the Khotan army had the advantage, and in the chaotic small-group dogfight, the Khotan army's advantage was even greater.

In particular, Zhang Zhao's own Hanshan Company, well equipped and strong in combat, quickly came to play a leading role on the battlefield.

For example, the three men Man Xiong, Dunzhu, and Wang Tongxin — though Zhang Zhao was absent, so they could not unleash the tremendous power of their old four-man group, the three of them forming a formation was still more than enough to deal with the Persian troops.

Song Zhongyi had been stabbed in the leg. Shouting loudly, he put his padded armor onto Man Xiong.

Then Man Xiong, now wearing two layers of padded armor and one layer of ring-mail, picked up an iron-faced round shield, let out a howl, and slammed into a Persian formation of several hundred men.

The panicked Persians flailed at Man Xiong, but having lost their coordination, with only the thick-backed long sabers and maces in their hands, they could hardly break through the three layers of armor on him.

They surrounded him and beat at him for a long while, only to be sent sprawling by Man Xiong's meteor hammer in one hand and round shield in the other.

And behind them, Dunzhu and Wang Tongxin had been waiting for exactly this opportunity. Once Man Xiong had smashed a gap in the tightly ordered Persian formation, the two of them charged in after him like galloping horses.

Dunzhu with his two short spears, Wang Tongxin with his two bronze maces — the three of them fought faster and faster, and behind them the Amozhi infantry and some Khotan palace guards seized the chance to follow up.

After a minute or two of tearing at it, this Persian square that had still been holding on scattered in all directions under the immense threat of death. Behind them, more Khotan soldiers arrived and chased after them, beating the drowning dogs.

This kind of pursuit was what soldiers loved most, and what most boosted morale. For a time, the battlefield was full of running and chasing shadows.

And the collapse of one small Persian square often set off a huge chain reaction, very often frightening the squares to its left and right that were still holding into scattering as well.

Man Xiong and the other two did not pursue. Their task was to break formations. The three of them looked left and right across the battlefield, where screams rose one after another, and fixed their eyes on the next target!

"Clop-clop! Clop-clop!" The neat sound of hoofbeats rang out. Just as the two sides were locked in fierce combat, a force burst out like a whirlwind from where the Persian commander-in-chief was positioned, charging straight for the hill where Zhang Zhao stood. By the look of it, there were at least four hundred riders.

Heh! Zhang Zhao sneered. So this was what that dog of a Hu, Adular, was scheming.

No wonder he had not hurried to gather his troops even as the Persians neared collapse, insisting on letting the two armies fight into such a melee. So he had hidden a force of half-armored cavalry, wanting to use the chaos to kill Zhang Zhao directly.

A beautiful idea, but reality is cruel! It seems Adular still does not know the fame of me, Ju'er Khan, Great King Zhang!

"Signal! Let Bai Congxin and Li Ruotai sortie — target the Persian commander-in-chief, Adular!"

Zhang Zhao roared. On the hill where he stood, a huge red flag rose slowly. Along with the rising of the red flag came a thunderous explosion from below the hill.

The raising of the red flag and the gunpowder explosion were the signal for the Youyi Company and the Baoda Camp Iron Horse Company to attack.

"Clang!" Guo Tiance drew his hengdao saber as well, and the personal guards around Zhang Zhao drew their weapons one after another.

They had never even considered moving the commander-in-chief, because they did not think four or five hundred riders on the other side could break them.

Below the hill, with Zhang Zhao at the rear, his two hundred personal guards formed a layered formation, with chevaux-de-frise fully in place.

In fact, he had long been on guard against cavalry charging at him, so the formation his handpicked personal guards drilled most often was precisely the layered formation.

The charging Persian cavalry were dumbfounded. They had never imagined that on such a battlefield, the enemy commander's personal guards could form up so quickly, and with so many chevaux-de-frise already set around them — they had been prepared all along!

But they had no choice. The distance between the two commanders was over six hundred meters. To achieve surprise, these cavalry had begun accelerating at three hundred meters, and within a hundred meters they had broken into a full gallop.

Moreover, both men and horses wore a layer of armor. Though it was not heavy, it was still armor, and it cost a great deal of stamina.

They could only choose to charge straight in. The moment they slowed even slightly, it would be very difficult to speed up again, because the horses' strength had already reached its limit after the violent dash.

"Twang! Whiz!" But before they could crash in, the bows and crossbows on Zhang Zhao's side began shooting first.

Fan Quan and Fan Shun were both master archers, and the personal guards they had trained were also quite skilled at shooting. Zhang Zhao himself was an expert too.

Ten divine-arm crossbows, one hundred and fifty strong bows, and the soldiers loosing the arrows were all master archers — one could imagine the power.

The Persian light-armored cavalry, coming in groups of five one after another, toppled to the ground one after another amid the twanging of bowstrings.

A mere sixty paces of distance — by the time they got close, nearly fifty or sixty men were already gone, and the charging ranks looked sparse and ragged.

Ugh! The light-armored cavalry charged furiously at the chevaux-de-frise. Zhang Zhao had to admire their courage.

Because those sharpened wooden stakes, thick as a grown man's arm, were extremely intimidating to warhorses.

And the horses themselves, after running all that way, were already exhausted. Seeing the sharp chevaux-de-frise and hearing the wild shouts from the enemy ahead, they refused to advance no matter what.

In the end, these Persian cavalry did not manage to crash straight in. Instead, at a low-speed trot, like long-separated lovers rushing to meet, they came clip-clopping over.

But the lovers they were meeting were not so gentle. Based on Song dynasty military manuals, Zhang Zhao had forged several hundred hook-scythe spears, and had equipped his personal guards with them.

These hook-scythe spears were exquisitely made, and it happened that the Persians loved to wear mail. Thus, the soldiers wielding hook-scythe spears could hook upward onto the mail on a rider's body and drag him off his horse, or hook downward and catch the horse's legs directly.

The four or five hundred Persian cavalry failed to break through the chevaux-de-frise, and then were hooked down and stabbed to death by the personal guards reaching across the chevaux-de-frise with their hook-scythe spears. At the same time, the archers in the rear kept shooting, and the casualties grew heavier and heavier.

The captain of Adular's personal guards, who was leading this raid, roared anxiously, wanting to take the lead and force a breakthrough of the chevaux-de-frise.

They had no way back. If they could not kill or at least drive back the enemy commander, the defeat that would decide the survival of thirty thousand troops would arrive at once.

But just as he was gathering his riders, wanting to launch a desperate charge, the sound of hoofbeats surged in from all directions amid the beating of drums.

It turned out that on the outer perimeter, the light cavalry dogfight between the two sides had also been decided. The Khotan cavalry had defeated the Persian cavalry, who were far fewer in number and far more exhausted than they were.

Hu Cile led three hundred riders in a diagonal thrust straight into this Persian cavalry. Without the slightest hesitation, they loosed a shower of arrows, then immediately closed to hand-to-hand combat.

Ever since that time at Suyab when his idiot eldest son had screwed him over, Hu Cile had found that his standing with Zhang Zhao had dropped.

Originally he had been the Cavalry Commandant of the Youyi Company, the number one cavalryman under Zhang Zhao. But now, his standing had fallen behind Bai Congxin and Li Ruotai, and even that Guo Guangcheng of the Baoda Camp Iron Horse Company was about to climb over his head.

Furious, he had stripped his eldest son Hu Wei of his inheritance, personally flogged him thirty lashes, and sent him off to herd sheep.

But that could not restore his standing with Zhang Zhao the fastest way. Merit was the only way out. So the moment he saw the commander-in-chief in danger, he came the fastest and fought the most resolutely.

"It is impolite not to return what one receives! My lads, mount up with me — let us go meet the Persian commander-in-chief!"

Seeing Hu Cile's diagonal thrust scatter the enemy, Zhang Zhao let out a long cry and took the lead in mounting his warhorse. There was no need for him to command now, nor could he, and besides, he had been holding back for half the day and his hands were already itching.

A brightly colored Three Stars banner flew high, and the great Zhang-character standard symbolizing the commander-in-chief unfurled in the wind. Everyone on the battlefield saw it.

Beneath these two great banners, cavalry began to gather, while the Persian cavalry that had come to seize and kill Zhang Zhao had long since scattered.

Adular's face was pale, but he still decided to try to save himself. A few orders went out, and the officers around him gathered some troops and formed a six-rank grand formation of pikes and crossbows to resist the assault that could come from the other side at any moment.

"Hakim!" Suddenly, an officer pointed with trembling hands in another direction. "Hakim, l-look over there!"

Adular looked in the direction the officer was pointing, and his face instantly turned deathly white, unable to speak.

It turned out that at some unknown moment, a force of fully armored cavalry had already formed up in strict ranks in the distance and was slowly accelerating toward him.

"A move ahead! So the Juer Khan had long since laid an ambush of armored cavalry in the mountain forest, waiting to strike me a fatal blow. But how did he know I would certainly march my army north?"

Adhural roared twice into the cold wind. For the Juer Khan to intercept him so precisely on the road, he must absolutely have known his movements in advance.

"Hakim, mount up quickly! Downstream along the river our fleet is still there. Juzhanti still needs you. I beg to remain behind and hold off the enemy for the Hakim!"

At the critical moment, there were still some loyal and brave men on Adhural's side. He wanted to make a show of the noble sentiment that he could not abandon his soldiers, but the personal guards around him gave him no such chance. They swiftly helped Adhural onto his horse and hurriedly clustered around him as they began to withdraw.

At that very moment, Bai Congxin and Li Ruotai, each leading two detachments of armored cavalry, had already reached about a hundred paces away. The warhorses began a slow trot, and at sixty meters they opened fire directly from horseback with hard bows in a fierce volley.

The Persian army had not expected these armored cavalrymen to be able to draw bows. In an instant, a large swath of the spear formation was shot down, while the Persian bows, loosing at armored cavalry in motion, lost much of their killing power and accuracy.

With a large swath of the spear formation down, several gaps large and small immediately opened up. Li Ruotai was the first to spur his horse out with five men, and the fully armored cavalry behind him, spaced a horse's head apart from one another, suddenly accelerated!

The very earth began to tremble. Several hundred fully armored cavalry were on an entirely different level from the light cavalry the Persians had fielded just now. The Fengtian Army's armored cavalry charged like rolling thunder, without the slightest hesitation.

Twenty paces!

Fifteen paces!

Ten paces!

The Persian infantry hastily assembled to protect their commander were actually quite elite, but precisely because they were elite, they could also see that their side's defeat was already inevitable.

In the taut air, someone let out a howl. In an instant, the several hundred gathered infantry collapsed like termites from an overturned nest, just as the fully armored cavalry were about to crash into them!

This was the difference between veteran soldiers and raw recruits. In such a situation, recruits either stood dumbly and got killed, or lost their lives running about in blind panic.

Veterans, however, thought further: since the battle was already lost, they might as well save their own skins first!

A single charge scattered the infantry formation outright. This was something many had not expected, including Adhural, who was just about to flee to the riverbank and escape by boat.

Under the terrifying threat of death, this Persian commander, with his two hundred cavalry, veered away to the right to evade.

But he forgot that this spot happened to be directly toward Zhang Zhao's side. And so Adhural, like a woman throwing herself into a lover's arms, charged straight into Zhang Zhao's encirclement.

Amid excited, loud laughter, Zhang Zhao clamped his cavalry lance under his arm and, with the force of a thunderbolt, drove it straight through Adhural's chest.

This Samanid Persian general, who could have simply worn Zhang Zhao down by attrition until he had to withdraw, died in battle by the banks of the Yaxartes.

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