Chapter 230: Finally Waiting for You

Zhang Zhao arrived at Huwen City in early July, then stayed there for a full two months. It was not until early September that word finally came: the king of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, Modapala, had led his army north on campaign.

If he had not even sent Lu Sanlang out to gather intelligence and confirm that Modapala was certain to come with a large army, he would hardly have been able to keep waiting.

Because unlike the weather of the Indus River basin, in this Little Ice Age period, the snow and ice cover around Huwen City in eastern Afghanistan lasted for a very long time.

If the Shahi dynasty's great army did not come in September, then it would not come at all, and would at least have to wait until June or July of the next year.

Zhang Zhao could not wait that long. If the Shahi dynasty's army did not come soon, he would have to attack them instead.

The road from Peshawar to Huwen City was not long, only less than five hundred li.

If one counted only the distance of the Khyber Pass valley road, it was even shorter. Reckoning from the later Afghan city of Jalalabad, it was only about one hundred thirty li to Peshawar.

In order to ambush the Hindu Shahi dynasty's army successfully, from mid-August onward, Zhang Zhao had drawn off two thousand elite troops and, working in rotating shifts, kept moving them into the vicinity of the Khyber Pass, and had also built dozens of bunkers for concealment and for storing supplies.

And within this short stretch of the Khyber Pass, only about one hundred thirty li, it would be wrong to say there were no supply points and fortress mouths.

On the side near Pakistan, at a small mountain pass called Nalande, the Hindu Shahi dynasty had built a small fort there as an outpost, the predecessor of the later famous Landi Kotal Fort.

Modapala was a typical Hindu raja. At all times his head was wrapped in a turban, and the Western Turkic features on his body had basically disappeared through several generations of mixed blood, replaced by the typical Indo-Aryan look of a high nose bridge, large eyes, and somewhat dark skin.

His grandfather was the famous Kallar, that ruthless man of his generation who ended the Kabul Shahi dynasty and established the Hindu Shahi dynasty.

But unfortunately, this ruthless man should not have been a man of India. Had he been anywhere else, Kallar might well have made himself a great khan, an emir, or something of the sort.

But in India, where the local natives were extremely poor fighters and could only rely on strongmen from the northwest as pillars of military force, Kallar had been at a strategic disadvantage ever since he established the Hindu Shahi dynasty.

Yet although his martial strength was a little lacking, Kallar's vision was by no means poor.

He knew that if the Hindu Shahi dynasty was to hold the crown on its head in peace and stability, Huwen City absolutely had to be retaken.

Therefore the successive kings of the Hindu Shahi dynasty had all made control of Huwen City their foremost task.

"My honored king, Prince Sadid of Huwen City has not directly responded to our demands. It seems he still harbors strong wariness toward us.

If we go over just like this, would it not be somewhat unsafe? Why not let Your Majesty wait here, while I, your general, lead the army to Huwen City first?"

Modapala had just taken off the heavy robe on his body and drunk a cup of sugarcane spice water when Garmah, the kingdom's great general, who likewise wore a flax-colored turban, came over.

Garmah was not very much in favor of this trip to Huwen City, because years of failed experience had made this Shahi dynasty general realize that with their current strength, they could not hold Huwen City.

In his view, to control Huwen City over the long term, they would have to train and equip an infantry force with at least one thousand sets of iron armor.

But at present, all of the Shahi dynasty's iron armor was equipped to the cavalry.

The Shahi dynasty had an iron-armored cavalry that looked decent in both equipment and fighting strength, but the infantry basically had no iron armor.

In fact, apart from heavy cavalry and war elephants, the Shahi dynasty did not pay much attention to infantry protection.

This was actually determined by the climate of India. In this place, if infantry were equipped with iron armor, they would very easily collapse from heat stroke in minutes. Even in winter, the temperature was not low.

And compared with the long drawn-out battles required of infantry, a charge by heavy-armored cavalry would often decide victory or defeat in a very short time.

And when facing infantry who wore almost no armor, or whose armor made them look like Spartans from a movie, the power of heavy-armored cavalry was magnified to the maximum.

In addition, India was dominated by Hinduism and the caste system. The Kshatriyas were all members of the ruling class and not numerous. No one wanted to become an infantryman like an ordinary person; they basically served as cavalry for generations.

This therefore led to a strange phenomenon: in India, a place not very suited to heavy-armored cavalry, the best-equipped troops and the ones kings relied on most were instead heavy-armored cavalry.

Modapala considered Garmah's opinion very seriously, then slowly shook his head.

In Modapala's view, Prince Sadid of the Samanid dynasty showing no interest in his offer to bring fifty thousand troops (a boast) to help him, and being vague and evasive about it, was an entirely normal reaction.

As long as Prince Sadid was not a fool, he would certainly know Modapala's true intentions.

That was why Modapala insisted on leading the army to attack Huwen City. Because if it were a trap, Prince Sadid would surely be eager for him to go.

But the evasiveness, the vagueness, precisely proved its authenticity.

But Garmah's worry was also normal, and was a manifestation of caution. Modapala felt he could not let his loyal minister's heart grow cold. He thought for a moment, then said to Garmah:

"Retaking Huwen City is the dying wish of our successive former kings. I must go. But your proposal is also an excellent idea.

How about this: let General Simha lead three thousand men as the vanguard and go first, then you lead the main force of fifteen thousand in the center, and I will bring up the rear. That way, even if there is a problem, we can respond."

"It seems one still cannot underestimate the heroes of the world!" As the three thousand Shahi vanguard troops passed through the Khyber Pass, Zhang Zhao turned and said to the officers behind him.

The imagined scene of the Shahi dynasty passing through the Khyber Pass in a chaotic, hurried mass of thirty thousand men did not happen.

Instead, in quite orderly fashion, they first sent out a vanguard of three thousand men, and only then came the main army with its colorful banners waving. The two forces were separated by only five or six li, and messengers galloped back and forth between them to communicate.

In this way, if the vanguard came under attack, the main army could quickly support it, and if the main army was ambushed, the vanguard could turn back to rescue it.

Moreover, these two forces together clearly did not amount to thirty thousand men. There should still be a portion of the rear army and baggage train behind.

"Execute Plan B! Leave only a few scouts to keep watch. All units withdraw into the mountain forest bunkers and await orders!" After considering for a moment, Zhang Zhao made his decision.

At the entrance of the Khyber Pass, that is, in the later Afghan city of Jalalabad, he had placed seven thousand elite troops, plus one thousand five hundred sons of local strongmen who had been conscripted, for a total of eight thousand five hundred men.

The Shahi dynasty's vanguard and main army together were only about twenty thousand men. Yin Yaozi could certainly hold them off.

The reason for using three thousand elite troops to ambush the Shahi dynasty's rear army was that Zhang Zhao had to capture the Shahi king Modapala in his own hands.

Although Nalande Fort looked crude and its garrison might be less than five hundred men, its terrain was truly extremely formidable.

On the left were steep mountain walls; on the right was a cliff of at least a dozen meters dropping straight to the Kabul River. The fort's pass was wedged right in the middle.

Although Zhang Zhao believed he could certainly take it by storm, there were exceptions to everything. If by chance he could not take it, then it would be a joke.

So Zhang Zhao prepared to seize Modapala and make him play the role of a gate-calling Son of Heaven, so that my classmate Zhu Qizhen would not be alone in the long river of history.

And since he had no inside agent and did not know whether Modapala was with the vanguard, the main army, or the rear army, he could only simply block all thirty thousand of the Shahi dynasty's troops inside the Khyber Pass.

Sure enough, half a shichen later, the Youyi Army scouts reported that the Shahi dynasty's rear army had entered the mountain valley. The soldiers plus the civilian laborers handling logistics and baggage numbered about twenty thousand.

Modapala rode a gray warhorse and had very carefully put on a suit of chain mail underneath his clothes. Since he did not need to go onto the battlefield to cut people down, he could not deliberately conserve his strength.

This king of the Hindu Shahi noticed ahead a small path overgrown with scattered rocks, and on both sides of the path were fallen stones large and small. His brow could not help but twitch slightly.

It would be wrong to say that Modapala had not considered that someone might ambush him here.

For example, just now, he had first sent the vanguard's scouts to search the area once, and had also divided the force into three parts with distance maintained between them, precisely to avoid being ambushed. In fact, he was extremely cautious.

But even so, Modapala's imagination was not so vast that he would think elite troops from Khotan would ambush him here. This was merely out of his usual caution.

Of course, the Shahi dynasty's scouts would not have thought of such things either, and they were even less diligent in carrying out their duties.

After all, they were feudal soldiers — and Indian soldiers of feeble martial virtue at that. To expect them, like a modern national army, to treat the king's and general's affairs as their own was utterly impossible.

Thus the scouts of the Shahi dynasty did not search every place thoroughly; their methods were the same old routine.

That is, they would make a simple sweep of an area in advance, then return a few days later to check whether the hidden markers they had left had been disturbed, and from that judge whether an ambush lay in wait.

Five days passed, and of course nothing was found. What these Shahi scouts could never have imagined was that in the harsh environment of the Khyber Pass, the five-day limit they assumed was only the bare minimum for the warriors of the Fengtian Army.

After receiving word that the Shahi dynasty's forces were drawing near, Zhang Zhao had brought the Fengtian Army's warriors here and remained for a full fifteen days.

They ate dry rations and dried meat, slept in earthen hollows, and replenished their water with millet wine mixed with a little water.

To conceal their traces as much as possible, they had not brought a single warhorse; they had carried in their own weapons and armor on their backs.

This surpassing excellence and endurance, beyond what the age could produce, was what made the Fengtian Army warriors under Zhang Zhao invincible wherever they went.

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