Chapter 272: Zhu Quanzhong's Old Dirty Trick

Layer upon layer of corpses covered the entire bend of the North Great River. The greatest number were not the armored Guiyi Army soldiers or Uyghur warriors, but the Long family men of Suzhou, clad only in cloth robes.

As the main local ethnic group after the Han people withdrew from Suzhou, the Long family suffered catastrophic losses in this battle.

Once upon a time, they had been the masters of both Gansu prefectures, but after the Uyghurs came down from the steppe to Ganzhou, the good days of the Long family began to be steadily destroyed — until today, when they were used as cannon fodder to fill the ditches.

More than half of the stone-built breastwork had been torn down. On the battlefield paved with the flesh and blood of the Long family, the decisive battle between the Guiyi Army and the Ganzhou Uyghurs officially began.

The armies of the Tang dynasty, and even those of the late Tang and Five Dynasties, had one very distinct characteristic: they did not place much importance on the use of shields.

This was because the fighting strength of Tang and Five Dynasties armies was explosive. It was the last era in Chinese history when long-range missile troops and close-combat melee troops were not separated.

Archers of this period were all fierce men who could shoot at long range and dare to fight at close quarters. If you saw a soldier in the army whose bow was not strong, or who carried no bow at all, then he was definitely a weakling.

Many people complain that the Song armies had too many crossbowmen and archers who could not fight in melee, and that the army would collapse as soon as the enemy charged close. This was actually not an equipment problem, but a problem of troop quality.

In the Tang and Five Dynasties, if you encountered an army fully equipped with strong bows and hard crossbows, you had best not touch them — because not only did they shoot fast and accurately, they were also excessively fierce in melee.

In this era when every soldier was an archer, the shield — still called a pengpai at this time — was greatly weakened as a result.

When the steppe peoples came, you first drew your bow and shot the bastards. When the enemy army formed up and came at you, you first drew your bow and shot the bastards. Raise a shield? That was something only cowards did.

Moreover, shields were of little use in decisive battles involving ten thousand or more men. They could hardly block the flat trajectory of crossbow bolts, nor could they defend against volleys of arrows arcing down from the sky. They were only used in small-unit operations and in street fighting within the confined spaces of a city.

Although the Uyghurs outnumbered the Guiyi Army by several thousand, Luo Tongda and Yan Jin exchanged a glance, and their hearts actually settled.

What they had feared most was the Uyghurs relying on Suzhou City to wear them down in a war of attrition. If that happened, all of Zhang Zhao's previous designs would have come to nothing.

"Troop Commander, it seems your deliberate act of playing a battlefield novice has worked. These Uyghurs, even though they sense something is off, still can't bear to let us go!"

Yan Jin put on his helmet and spoke to Luo Tongda, who was also donning armor beside him.

"Of course they can't bear to. Without the army commander returning from Anxi, these five thousand men are all the fighting sons the Guiyi Army has left. If they devour us, Dunhuang City will have no choice but to open its gates and surrender."

Luo Tongda chuckled, pointed at the great banner of Khagan Renyu in the distance, and said, "Truth be told, I can't bear to let them go either. If we can keep half of them here, the Ganzhou Uyghurs will surely be badly weakened, and we can at least take back Suzhou."

While the decisive battle raged outside Suzhou City, Zhang Zhao was still waiting. Eighty li — if one drove the horses hard without regard for their strength, it could be covered in a single day. But that would only mean arriving, with little fighting capacity left.

So the key to this battle was that Luo Tongda and his men would have to hold on through the hardest stretch for more than a day and a half.

Because Zhang Zhao needed one day to cover the first sixty li, and then on the second day, from a position twenty li away, launch a sudden attack.

"Army Commander, the Ganzhou Uyghurs' roving cavalry has withdrawn from Jinta Mountain!"

Murong Xinzhang, leading a dozen or so knights of the Murong family, had galloped more than forty li back. Before he had even dismounted, he was shouting from horseback.

The suspended heart in Zhang Zhao's chest finally settled. Jinta Mountain was a small hill north of Suzhou City. Crossing this mountain, one reached the White Pavilion Lake where Zhang Zhao's two thousand men were resting and regrouping.

If those Ganzhou Uyghur roving cavalrymen had crossed Jinta Mountain, they would certainly have discovered the tracks of a large number of livestock.

That would inevitably have given the game away, and Zhang Zhao would have had no choice but to quickly seize and kill them, then rush to the battlefield regardless of everything.

Fortunately, they had only searched along the southern foothills of Jinta Mountain for a while before turning back.

"We set out in two days. Before nightfall, we must reach a point twenty li upstream of the North Great River. Change horses, not men!"

Zhang Zhao swung into the saddle and pointed at Li Cunhui, saying, "Each of you takes three horses. Ride at top speed to Jinta Mountain and scatter the Uyghur roving cavalry patrolling there."

An arrow struck Dunzhu square in the chest. Even though he wore three layers of armor, the impact still made his body lurch.

Intense pain instantly spread through his whole body, so much so that Dunzhu failed to hurl the javelin in his hand. Without even looking, he knew his chest must be one great black-and-blue bruise.

"Crossbowmen! The Uyghurs' Left Camp crossbowmen are here! Bring the Divine Arm bowmen over to this side!" Behind the great formation, Luo Tongda on horseback quickly made the adjustment.

The Left Camp crossbowmen were the elite troops of the Ganzhou Uyghurs, numbering around four hundred men, often used to deal with heavily armored targets that were hard to handle.

Luo Tongda's eyes went red, because the founders of this unit, the horn-backed crossbows they used, and the related techniques, were a chapter of the past that made every man of the Guiyi Army gnash his teeth whenever it was mentioned.

In 907, Zhu Wen usurped the Tang and established the Later Liang. The great banner that had held the Guiyi Army together came crashing down. The Great Tang was gone — what allegiance was there left to return to?

In view of this situation, Zhang Zhao's father, Zhang Chengfeng, chose not to recognize the Zhu Liang as the legitimate dynasty. He established the Western Han Jinshan Kingdom and proclaimed himself the White-Clad Son of Heaven.

No one expected that this move would thoroughly enrage Zhu Wen — in the eyes of this "loyal subject of our Great Tang."

Li Keyong in Hedong, Yang Xingmi in Huainan, and Wang Jian in Jiannan refusing to submit — those he could endure for the time being. But your Guiyi Army hangs alone in Hexi, with a population of barely a hundred thousand, and your trade routes depend on the Central Plains even more. You dare give me attitude?

So with Zhu Wen's support and instigation, the Ganzhou Uyghurs, who had long intended to swallow the Guiyi Army, began to clash with them frequently.

The Bianqiao Battle of Dunhuang, which led to Zhang Chengfeng's downfall, took place during this period.

To support the Ganzhou Uyghurs in striking the Guiyi Army, Zhu Wen not only forbade the Guiyi Army's people from doing business in the Central Plains, but most importantly, sent officers to provide the Ganzhou Uyghurs with crossbow instructors and the methods for making horn-backed crossbows and the like, in order to counter the heavy infantry the Guiyi Army excelled at.

The Left Camp crossbowmen trained by these Later Liang officers of Jianghuai crossbowman background not only successfully gave the Ganzhou Uyghurs a sharp weapon to counter the Guiyi Army's heavy infantry, but also dealt a massive blow to the hearts of the Guiyi Army's men.

Luo Tongda still remembered the scene of first encountering the Uyghur Left Camp crossbowmen on the battlefield. Those crossbowmen, wielding Central Plains horn-backed crossbows and forming up in Chinese commands, made the blood surge into his pupils and his eyes nearly split with rage.

That pain and fury, that utter desolation in which everything lost its meaning — it was still carved clearly into Luo Tongda's mind.

"Left Camp crossbowmen! It's the Left Camp crossbowmen!" The shouts and roars rose from the mouth of every Guiyi Army soldier. Even Yan Jin, a former petty officer of Shouchang Garrison, was shouting.

In battles between the Guiyi Army and the Ganzhou Uyghurs, if other captured Uyghurs had wealthy families to pay ransom, they might be released. But if Left Camp crossbowmen were captured, they were absolutely tortured to death on the spot.

Very quickly, one hundred and fifty Divine Arm bowmen were redeployed. This was the moment Luo Tongda had been waiting for.

Zhang Zhao had brought back more than a hundred from Anxi, and Cao Yijin had made close to fifty copies, so Zhang Zhao now had one hundred and fifty Divine Arm bowmen.

Khagan Renyu smiled smugly. Of course he knew what the Left Camp crossbowmen had inflicted on the Guiyi Army — that sense of despair at being abandoned and betrayed by their own people.

He could not help but admire his father Khagan Renmei's cleverness. By borrowing the hand of a Central Plains dynasty, he had in one stroke beaten the ambitious Guiyi Army, whose goal was to once again possess all of Hexi, into a dog guarding its own house.

Whose fault is it that you were so foolish? The Great Tang fell, so it fell. Instead of quickly clinging to the thigh of the Former Liang emperor, you dared to put on airs and curse others as usurping traitors. If you don't get beaten, who does?

And now you want to use one hundred and fifty crossbowmen to face my four hundred crossbowmen? You're simply courting death.

Amid the furious roars of the soldiers on both sides, the sounds of slaughter elsewhere on the battlefield seemed to vanish. Only the footsteps of the Uyghurs' four hundred Left Camp crossbowmen and the Guiyi Army's one hundred and fifty Divine Arm bowmen approaching each other remained.

Luo Yide stood in the first row. He was a squad leader of the Yumen Garrison, and Luo Tongda was his own grand-uncle.

The Luo family of Shazhou, as a clan that had built itself on martial prowess in the Guiyi Army from the time of Zhang Yichao down to the present, had to maintain abundant martial virtue.

In the past, Luo Yide had no choice; he could only idle away his days at Yumen Garrison. But now things were different. His younger cousin Luo Yu'er had returned from Anxi with Young Lord Zhang Erlang, and the shock of it nearly broke him.

Over a thousand strings of cash in goods and wealth, fine horses, fine armor, fine bows and crossbows. Upon returning, he had arranged a marriage for his younger brother and prepared a rich dowry for his little sister. And Luo Yu'er himself was going to follow Young Lord Zhang Erlang to have his portrait placed in Lingyan Pavilion or some such thing.

It was at that moment that Luo Yide suddenly realized there was another way to live one's life. So he begged his grand-uncle Luo Tongda — he wanted to follow Young Lord Zhang Erlang to Anxi.

Twang! A long arrow, its entire shaft painted white, flew from Luo Yide's hand.

"One hundred paces! String your bows! First rank kneels, second rank stands, advance in succession! Anyone who breaks formation will go to the rear and take a blade himself — don't get everyone else killed!"

As Luo Yide was ranging the distance, an arrow came whistling back from the opposite side and planted itself in front of their formation.

It had been shot by the Uyghur officer in charge of ranging — the one in a leather cap with a coat of mail over it — and he even waved provocatively at Luo Yide.

"Fuck your mother!" Luo Yide cursed savagely, all the blood in his body seeming to rush to his head.

Kill them — he had to kill every last one of them! There was nothing else in his mind, only that sentence repeating itself over and over.

The most tense moment had arrived. Adrenaline was flooding out in great quantities, leaving everyone's head swimming, plunged into a state beyond words. It blunted the fear of death and even dulled the pain of wounds.

Luo Yide was the first to cross the Uyghurs' ranging arrow, and the Divine Arm crossbowmen behind him strode over it as well.

From the opposite side came a great bellowing shout, and thick, powerful legs also crossed the ranging arrow Luo Yide had just shot.

"Bang! Wooo!" A sound like a swarm of bees taking flight rose up, and a sky full of arrows shot forth as if without the slightest warning. Luo Yide released his right hand, and the Divine Arm crossbow in his grip hurled its cocked bolt forward in fury.

And in the very instant the bolt left the crossbow, Luo Yide was struck as well. A tremendous force slammed him to the ground.

It was as if he had taken a fist full in the chest. Luo Yide felt only an emptiness in his chest, and warm blood at once spilled across his breast.

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