Chapter 274: One Mistake Becomes Eternal Regret

Yeheluo can also be called Yageluo; the two terms differ only slightly in spelling.

The Yeheluo tribe was, in fact, the imperial tent tribe formed from the descendants of the personal guards of successive Ganzhou Uyghur Khagans.

This was the most favored tribe among the Ganzhou Uyghurs, and it also occupied a great deal of fertile farmland and pastureland inside and outside Ganzhou. Their loyalty to the Khagan's family was beyond question.

So at this critical moment, even though they had already charged into battle several times and were nearly exhausted,

upon receiving the order from Khagan Renyu, the five hundred riders of the Yeheluo tribe still assembled in an extremely short time, then rode out to intercept the onrushing Guiyi Army cavalry.

They were not going out to defeat the Guiyi Army cavalry, but to intercept the charging Guiyi Army cavalry, so as to win precious time for the main force to withdraw to the walls of Suzhou.

Zhang Zhao naturally understood this as well. Whether he could smash the five hundred Yeheluo riders coming to intercept them in the shortest possible time became the crucial key to whether this battle could be settled cleanly and decisively.

Murong Xinzhang charged at the very front. Beside him was a youth with the features of a barbarian.

The two were about the same age and of similar build, but this barbarian youth Zhang Liecheng, who at a glance was clearly of poor origins, always made Murong Xinzhang feel a faint, elusive hostility.

Well, calling it hostility might be too strong. It should be said he was somewhat antagonistic toward him, as if he was very afraid Murong Xinzhang would steal away Zhang Zhao's favor.

This left Murong Xinzhang not knowing whether to laugh or cry, but it also stirred up a young man's competitive spirit.

Thus, according to Zhang Zhao's original plan, when the enemy riders came to intercept them, the three hundred cavalry led by the three of them were supposed to wheel away to the two flanks.

Because Zhang Zhao had a thousand pear-blossom lance cavalry under his command. In this era when gunpowder was still regarded as a divine thing and many people had never even heard of it, Zhang Zhao did not believe any cavalry could withstand the blast of the pear-blossom lances. Even if the damage was not high, the fright alone would scare you half to death.

But once a young man's will to win was roused, Murong Xinzhang and Zhang Liecheng paid no heed to any plan or military discipline. The two of them, heads thoroughly heated, took the lead and charged straight at the five hundred Yeheluo riders intercepting them.

Li Cunhui, riding a little behind the two, could only sigh and charge after them.

Murong Xinzhang in his white robe was the best target. Although the Murong family cavalry under his command almost all wore white outer robes, who told him to be so conspicuous with his tall frame and long legs!

Thus the Yeheluo cavalry also took them for the finest elite of the Guiyi Army cavalry.

Closer and closer. The intercepting Yeheluo cavalry charged forward in a wedge formation, while the three hundred riders of Murong Xinzhang and the other two formed a blade-point formation for a reckless boar's charge.

As the saying goes, a newborn calf does not fear the tiger. Young men on the battlefield do not regard life as all that important, so at certain times they can produce quite unexpectedly effective results.

Twang! Twang! Twang! Murong Xinzhang let out a great shout from horseback and swiftly loosed three arrows in rapid succession.

A bearded Yeheluo rider shuddered repeatedly as if struck by lightning, then toppled stiffly from his horse.

Following Murong Xinzhang's three-shot volley, hundreds of arrows whistled through the air toward both sides.

Men kept screaming and falling from their horses. Murong Xinzhang was also struck by several arrows in succession, but he only felt as if someone had punched him a few times, and felt no pain at all.

Because beneath his white outer robe, he wore the refined-iron cotton armor that Zhang Zhao had given him.

Of the two sides charging at each other, one was in a wedge formation suited to loosing arrows, while the other was a blade-point formation that simply charged straight in.

During the exchange of arrows, the Yeheluo cavalry clearly held the upper hand, but after only a dozen or so breaths, once Murong Xinzhang and the others closed in, the situation began to turn.

Murong Xinzhang, serving as the blade's point, led the riders around him in a single fierce strike and pierced straight through the Yeheluo cavalry's formation.

Wielding his cavalry lance, he struck left and battered right, quickly knocking two Yeheluo cavalry officers to the ground.

The power of a high-grade weapon like the cavalry lance in mounted combat was far beyond what the long sabers in the hands of the Ganzhou Uyghurs could match.

The moment the two sides closed, the power of the cavalry lances in the hands of Murong Xinzhang, Li Cunhui, and the several dozen riders behind them was fully unleashed.

Often, before a Yeheluo rider's saber could even be swung, he was already stabbed to death or knocked to the ground by a cavalry lance.

When Zhang Zhao saw that Murong Xinzhang and the other two had used a mere three hundred riders to punch through the five hundred Uyghur riders sent to intercept them, he immediately changed his strategy.

He turned his horse's head slightly aside and charged directly toward the main Uyghur force, which was rapidly withdrawing toward the walls of Suzhou.

Seeing the red banner symbolizing the commander veer off course, the cavalry following Zhang Zhao could only grit their teeth and, howling wildly, turn with him.

Although doing this allowed them to reach the enemy more quickly, they could not avoid taking a volley of arrows from the Yeheluo cavalry.

Sure enough, when Zhang Zhao led his troops around the Yeheluo cavalry, although Murong Xinzhang had thrown their formation into disarray, they still had not forgotten their mission. Their somewhat ragged arrow volleys still came wave after wave, shooting at the Guiyi Army cavalry charging furiously forward.

But in the end, it was all to no avail. The Guiyi Army cavalry, which had been conserving its strength for several days, quickly left the intercepting Yeheluo cavalry behind, and their blades pointed straight to the walls of Suzhou.

Khagan Renyu was directing his army in a rapid retreat, but the moment he saw that the Yeheluo cavalry's interception had failed, he could only have the war drums beaten, ordering his armored soldiers to quickly assemble at the head of the pontoon bridge.

This pontoon bridge was one of several pontoon bridges leading from the river-bend battlefield to Suzhou. Once across the bridge, one could reach the walls of Suzhou.

Of course, one could also avoid the pontoon bridge, because this was the dry season. The snowmelt from the high mountains had not yet begun, and the North Great River was wide and shallow, with its deepest point only a little over two meters.

The weather in early April was not very cold either, so one could certainly swim across. But the key was that there must be no pursuers.

More than eight thousand people crowded together still covered a very large area. There was shouting of men and neighing of horses and some chaos, but Khagan Renyu's great banner stood firm and unmoving the whole time.

After the booming drums sounded, the officers who had recovered from their panic began ordering their soldiers to form up.

By the time Zhang Zhao and the others charged up, the Ganzhou Uyghurs had miraculously completed a second assembly.

But it was too late. A skyful of fiery light blazed before the eyes of the Ganzhou Uyghur soldiers. For a moment, the spurting flames were louder than the sun in the sky, and the thunderous roar of explosions completely drowned out the drums.

The Guiyi Army cavalry that had charged to the front of the Ganzhou Uyghur formation first loosed three collective waves of arrows.

Then, when the Ganzhou Uyghur soldiers were somewhat panicked, in volleys of three hundred at a time, the pear-blossom lances in the hands of the Guiyi Army cavalry began spurting golden flames, along with iron sand and porcelain shards contained within the flames.

Not to mention the common soldiers below, even Khagan Renyu and the others had never seen such a sight. It was practically like sorcery. The Ganzhou Uyghur soldiers whose faces were burned shrieked horribly and fled in all directions.

Even if they were merely grazed by the flames, or nicked by a few porcelain shards, these injuries that they could originally have completely ignored were suddenly magnified countless times under the unknown terror, almost to the point of being unbearable.

But the first to collapse were not the wailing Uyghur soldiers, but the great mass of horses behind them.

Horses are timid and sensitive. Perhaps they had been trained to accept the slaughter and cries of the battlefield, but they had absolutely never been trained for spurting poison fire and iron sand and porcelain shards.

Very quickly, one unlucky horse had its tail and the mane on its neck set alight by the flames spurting from a pear-blossom lance.

This completely plunged it into immense terror, and the rider's best efforts to soothe it had no effect at all.

One horse's shrieking and panic quickly set off a collective reaction among the surrounding warhorses. They began running madly back and forth through the crowd, and some of the quicker-witted warhorses began jumping straight into the river.

The formation that had just been assembled shattered completely. Very soon the soldiers, like the warhorses, also lost all restraint, and the final chaos was about to arrive.

At that very moment, among the two thousand cavalry led by Zhang Zhao, more than three hundred armored riders had already finished donning their armor.

This was the advantage of cotton armor. It allowed armored riders to no longer need auxiliary troops; a single soldier could put on his armor by himself. Only the interlocked mail was a bit troublesome to put on, but it was still far easier to wear than the wrapped and tied lamellar armor.

With both men and horses fully armored and hoofbeats like thunder, Khagan Renyu in the crowd suddenly realized he had made another mistake.

The enemy riders who had come numbered only around two thousand. Even adding the Shazhou Han at the river bend, that was only about seven thousand men, while he himself had a full nine thousand.

If he did not withdraw from the river bend, the loose stones and sandy ground on the riverbank alone would render the opposing cavalry completely useless.

Once the armored cavalry charged in, the horses' hooves would likely sink straight into it. If they chose to force a head-on clash, it was not certain they would lose.

'Boom!' The crowd at the very front scattered in panic, but in fact the Guiyi Army's armored cavalry had not charged straight in at all.

The space was too small and the crowd too dense. If they did not frighten them into dispersing somewhat, they might well end up trapping the armored cavalry in the Uyghurs' chaotic ranks as well.

"Khagan! You must leave! Leave now!" The Left Grand Yabghu, brooking no argument, dragged the still-commanding Renshu Khagan backward.

As a man of a horse-borne people, the Left Grand Yabghu saw at a glance that the armored cavalry opposite was intimidating them while adjusting its formation.

He also knew that, given the current chaos, there was no chance left to turn the tide.

Renshu Khagan still could not accept this reality, and he could not help struggling a few times.

"I cannot leave! I cannot abandon my warriors and flee! These are the finest warriors of the Khaganate!"

"Prince Jingqiong, take three hundred riders and escort the Khagan away first. This old minister will hold the rear for you!"

The Left Grand Yabghu paid no heed to all that. Losing a few thousand cavalry would indeed wound them to the bone, but if even the Khagan were lost, everything would collapse outright.

"Flee! We're beaten! Beaten!"

"The Shazhou Han use sorcery! We cannot hold!"

Just as Prince Jingqiong was escorting Renshu Khagan away across the pontoon bridge, the Guiyi Army's three hundred armored cavalry, after several feints to drive and frighten the enemy, finally stormed in at full gallop.

Some Uyghur soldiers raised their long spears to resist, some wailed in utter collapse, and a great many more stripped off their armor and leaped straight into the North Great River, swimming toward Suzhou.

The moment of total collapse for thousands of troops had arrived. At the heads of the several pontoon bridges, everything descended into utter chaos almost simultaneously.

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