Chapter 239: The Cycle of History

What Zhang Zhao did not know was that he had brought a military reshuffle to the whole of India.

Before his entry into India, the pillar of India's armed force was the Kshatriya class. Although these people were not India's natives either, they had arrived in India very early, so early that they could practically be treated as natives.

The Kshatriyas monopolized military and administrative power on the Indian subcontinent, and for over a thousand years, fighting had mostly unfolded within this class.

Those who came through the Khyber Pass and succeeded would quickly merge into this inheritance; with the Brahmins' certification, they became a new Kshatriya class. As for the failures — well, naturally, not even their bones could be found.

But after the shock delivered by Zhang Zhao, it would probably not be long before every power-holder on the Indian subcontinent realized that strongmen coming down from the Khyber Pass would become their greatest threat.

And north of the Khyber Pass, the ambitious men of Transoxiana would also realize that the Indian subcontinent was a treasure land — rich yet weak, with natives easy to rule. In the future, there would likely be no shortage of people coming here to seek "career" advancement.

Historically, this military reshuffle of the Indian subcontinent was brought about by the Turkic Ghaznavid dynasty thirty years later.

They ignited the craze of moving south from Transoxiana into India, and from then on, nearly all of India's dominant powers were Turkic and Mongol-lineage peoples from Transoxiana.

But in this time and space, Zhang Zhao had probably already beaten to death the father of Alp Tegin, founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty, outside the city of Suyab. So the turning of this wheel of history would, in some unseen way, be pushed forward by him.

To put it simply, before Zhang Zhao's invasion — er, no — before Great Khagan Zhang's entry into India to protect the Dharma.

There had not been many strongman invaders coming down from the Khyber Pass, and most of them had come to India passively; they were mostly losers of political struggles in Transoxiana, Persia, and other places.

Because the strongmen who came to India for this reason were few and not very powerful, the earlier arrivals who had already eaten their fill in India could still resist these southward-moving strongmen fairly easily.

For those they truly could not resist, they could also find spare territory to settle them, turning them into Kshatriyas like themselves.

But what Zhang Zhao brought this time was no loser of some political struggle, nor a force of three or five hundred men, but one numbering in the tens of thousands.

Against a strongman invasion of this scale, the local Kshatriyas could not hold out, nor could they produce spare territory to settle them.

However rich the Indian subcontinent was, it could not suddenly produce enough land to settle tens of thousands of Kshatriya households!

And the Shahi crown prince, who still did not understand that a great military reshuffle had already arrived, along with the scheming Shivana and the others, were still equating the fighting strength of Zhang Zhao's forces with that of the strongmen who had come down before. They had no idea at all that a nightmare was about to descend.

Shivana in particular — since he had already made up his mind not to exert himself to the death, he had led his trusted cavalry a little to the left, so that when the fighting started, it would be easier for them to break away from the battlefield quickly.

"Father, it's almost noon. Why hasn't that Juer Khan made a move yet? He has only four or five thousand troops, with barely over a thousand cavalry. They've come from afar, their supplies are inconvenient, and if this drags on, his soldiers will only grow more and more exhausted.

We're near the river, so water is convenient, and the royal city is right behind us, so supplies are easy — we can even eat hot food. Even if we stand off like this for a day, two days, three days, we won't be afraid. Could this Juer Khan really be all empty reputation?"

With the sun already three poles high, Shivana's son stared dumbfounded at the army of Juer Khan across from them. Not only had they still not donned armor, they had actually started gnawing on dry rations.

This kind of divine maneuver — even someone who knew nothing about warfare couldn't pull it off, right?

Shivana was also stroking his beard, his face full of puzzlement. Could it be that this Juer Khan really was nothing but empty reputation?

Then how did King Madanapala fail? He had a full thirty thousand troops!

Impossible! If Juer Khan didn't have some real skill, he certainly couldn't have swallowed the king's thirty thousand troops in such a short time.

Even if the king commanded poorly, Garmaha wouldn't — that old fellow was battle-hardened.

Just as he was about to turn back and warn his son not to be so careless, Shivana suddenly heard the sound of hoofbeats, wave after wave.

It seemed... it seemed to be coming from behind.

Greatly alarmed, Shivana hastily wheeled his horse around and galloped toward the place where the crown prince was, off to the side. There was a fairly tall hillock there with a wide view.

"So many cavalry! At least eight or nine thousand! Juer Khan has surrounded us!"

Shivana, who had just arrived, twitched the corner of his mouth at these words. It was a royal Kshatriya shouting.

Even if it looked like the truth, could you shout that? Do you feel some regret, or what, that our own army hasn't collapsed yet?

Sure enough, after this royal Kshatriya shouted a few times, the Kshatriyas around the crown prince all looked at one another with panic on their faces. One said this, another said that — a complete mess.

Shivana hastily dismounted and climbed the hill in three quick strides. The sight before him made him suck in a sharp breath.

Not far behind them, there weren't eight or nine thousand, but there were six or seven thousand riders. They had formed a crescent-moon formation and were pressing in from three directions, though they had not yet launched an attack.

"They seem to be all light cavalry!" Shivana watched for a while. These cavalrymen's warhorses wore no armor, and judging by the speed of their back-and-forth movement, the riders wore no armor either.

"Not good!" Shivana suddenly shouted, pointing into the distance.

There was another hillock over there, and on it had been built a military stockade with a wooden palisade. That was the supply transfer point for their own forty thousand troops, and also the vital road to the royal city.

Their current position was actually at the port outside the royal city of Uddandapura, about five li from the royal city.

Not far, but if their rear route were cut off, it would still be very dangerous.

Because of these forty thousand troops, apart from over a thousand Kshatriyas and more than ten thousand royal city garrison troops, the rest were all newly conscripted Shudra spearmen and archers.

If their supplies were cut off — even if they were merely surrounded — it would deal a huge blow to the morale of these battlefield rookies, and they very likely would not hold out long before collapsing.

At this thought, the frantic Shivana was just about to propose pulling a unit back to defend the stockade two li away, when those encircling Juer Khan light cavalry moved.

First they shot fiercely with their archers, then the light cavalry charged once and drove the garrison troops outside the stockade up onto the hillock.

Immediately after, these light cavalry dismounted one after another, took out slings, and hurled jars of various sizes at the stockade.

Boom! A violent explosion rang out, and the wooden palisade of the stockade suddenly burst into raging flames.

"Fire oil! They brought fire oil!" The kingdom's chief minister beside the crown prince turned pale. The stockade was enclosed by a wooden palisade and packed with grain and hay for the animals. Once lit by fire oil, it simply could not be extinguished.

Too fast! The action was too fast! Shivana left the hillock where the crown prince was without looking back.

His heart was pounding. The speed of those Juer Khan light cavalry and the practiced coordination of their movements completely exceeded his imagination.

Their own side had not even had time to send reinforcements, and the stockade had already been set ablaze.

There were seven or eight hundred soldiers there, and they hadn't even had a chance to resist.

This battle cannot be fought. Leave now — leave right now!

Seeing his old-fox father's ashen face, Shivana's son opened his mouth to ask, but Shivana waved a hand and pressed the words on his son's lips back into his belly.

"Get ready to leave! Be sharp about it. Juer Khan isn't standing off against us — he's waiting for his light cavalry to circle around. He never intended to let any of us go, which is why he made arrangements like this."

The son's face instantly went white. For his father, an old fox so familiar with the battlefield, to be frightened like this, the enemy must have made complete preparations.

"Father, Juer Khan has already sent light cavalry around behind us. Can we still get away?"

"That's why we leave now. Not a single infantryman — we abandon our weapons too, take only water and dry rations, one man with two horses, and run. Now it all depends on luck!"

"Great King, Bai Congxin and Hu Cile have finished circling around to the rear!" Fan Quan said, pointing at the Youyi Army messenger in the distance with three red flags stuck in his back.

"Then begin! They're a bit too weak, though." Zhang Zhao rubbed his chin and muttered.

He had no interest even in riding out to kill the enemy himself, and gave those fellows a full five days — and this was the best mob of tens of thousands they could organize.

Forty thousand men, yet hardly any qualified light-cavalry scouts among them. Bai Congxin and his men completed their flanking maneuver almost without meeting any resistance.

Moreover, judging by the enemy's formation, their motley assortment of weapons, and their extremely low rate of armor, these were purely citizen soldiers conscripted on the spot.

Apart from that thousand-odd force that looked like heavy cavalry and actually seemed presentable, the rest had less fighting strength than the Samanid Emirate's Mustafa conscript army.

'Dong! Dong! Dong!' The war drums thundered. Ma Shacai led the Youyi Company's light cavalry out first.

Their task was first to screen the movement of the main infantry formation, and second to harass the Shahi infantry's lines, using arrows and repeated charges to rattle those greenhorns.

If the Shahi dynasty's heavy cavalry came out, they would fight and fall back, drawing the heavy cavalry toward their own heavy infantry.

The light cavalry, charging in wedge formation, quickly reached the Shahi side, continually spurring their horses around the right flank of the Shahi infantry.

With the combined force of arrows loosed at full gallop, even a six-dou cavalry bow did no small damage — to say nothing of the Shahi infantry's pitifully low armor rate.

The right-flank soldiers were being mercilessly shot down by the Youyi Company's light cavalry, yet the Shahi crown prince and the kingdom's chief minister in the center still had not agreed on a battle plan.

Some said they should immediately send out the Kshatriya heavy cavalry; others thought the heavy cavalry were still donning armor, and they should send out the Shudra archers to trade shots with the enemy.

There were also suggestions to contract the formation and fight a defensive battle around the central hill, and some panicked idiots even tremblingly suggested withdrawing to the royal city to fight a siege defense.

The Shahi crown prince had already plummeted from his initial excitement at commanding forty thousand troops on campaign into a bottomless abyss.

He could not make any judgment, because he felt everyone's arguments made sense. The terror of war bearing down like black clouds pressing on a city about to collapse had already frightened him so badly that his hands and feet had gone ice-cold.

After waiting a long while without receiving any order from the central command, the Shahi infantry arrayed on the right could only begin trying to save themselves.

Five hundred-man companies of Shudra archers in short tunics moved out, forming ranks in front of the battle line to trade shots with the charging and wheeling Youyi cavalry.

India is hot and humid, and bows are very difficult to preserve, so even infantry bows had low draw weights. Moreover, they were shooting in ranks, while the cavalry were moving back and forth.

One side could move, the other could not; one side stood in dense ranks, the other galloped loose and free. From the very start, they were not on the same plane.

When the Shudra archers shot at the Youyi cavalry, eight or nine arrows out of ten missed; when the Youyi cavalry shot at the Shudra archers, eight or nine out of ten hit.

In the end, five hundred-man companies of Shudra archers against three hundred-odd Youyi cavalry lasted less than a quarter hour before those unlucky archers fled back, wailing.

Ma Shacai stretched out his ape-like arms; the bowstring snapped with a sharp twang, and an arrow flew out. A low-ranking Shudra archer officer fell at the sound. He nocked another arrow, and in an instant another man went down.

"Captain, let's charge them once with the pear-blossom lances! The enemy's too weak — shooting like this isn't satisfying!"

A squad leader under Ma Shacai rode up beside him and shouted excitedly.

"Fine! Then let's charge once!" Ma Shacai looked back at his own infantry, still several hundred paces away and not yet close, and he too could no longer restrain his urge to kill.

With an enemy of this fighting strength, you had to crush the weaklings fast — go slow and someone else would get there first.

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