Chapter 317: Intimidation and Coercion

Thud! Thud! Round stones the size of a man's head, polished smooth, came howling down on Yuanzhou's walls from the catapults.

Before long, the only surviving corner tower atop Yuanzhou's wall — likely built back in the Great Tang years — was utterly destroyed.

On the walls of Yuanzhou, men with swords and spears scurried back and forth like panicked ants, their cries and wails audible even to the Guiyi Army outside the city.

Northwest of Yuanzhou, four thousand East Mountain Tangut cavalry — invited by the Yuanzhou Tangut chieftain Li Zhongchao to join him against the "Tibetan bandits" — huddled beneath a hill.

These Tangut horsemen wore leather robes of ochre and gray-brown, a few hundred of them with bits of mismatched armor thrown on haphazardly.

Though every man had a bow, fine swords and spears were scarce; some of the bolder ones, in groups of twenty or thirty, spurred their horses outward in all directions.

This was defensive scouting for fear that Zhang Zhao might outflank and encircle them — though it seemed a little late for that.

Facing them were over two hundred Basmyl light cavalry from the Hanshan Corps and Jingjiao knights recruited at Suyab.

Seen from a distance, the two sides were already separated by an enormous gap in equipment.

These Hanshan Corps cavalrymen wore padded coats beneath gleaming mail, compound helmets fitted with face-guards on their heads, fine steel longswords flashing in their hands, and beneath them warhorses that were mighty and imposing.

The two sides faced off for about two quarters of an hour, and the Hanshan Corps' four hundred-odd knights kept the East Mountain tribe's four thousand from daring to advance — not even to provoke.

A gust of yellow sand blew in on the northwest wind, and the East Mountain Tangut, already dusty and bedraggled, felt even more abashed.

They felt like wild dogs by the roadside, while the others were immortals from the heavens.

Of course, the more important reason was that these East Mountain Tangut simply did not dare come forward, because they had mistaken Zhang Zhao's fully armored Guiyi Army for the Central Plains court's troops.

Although four years earlier, in 933, the Military Governor of Dingnan, Li Yichao, had stripped the land bare and outlasted the Later Tang court's great army, leading the various Tangut tribes to begin slighting the court,

the East Mountain tribe of Qingzhou was not as powerful as the Pingxia tribe of the Dingnan Military Governor, nor as united, so to the East Mountain tribe, the Central Plains court remained a colossus not to be offended.

The moment they saw the Guiyi Army's abundance of armor, the tribal leaders and chieftains, great and small, began cursing outright. In their view, the Yuanzhou Tangut must have provoked the court, bringing a great army down on them, and had tricked them into coming by saying they would fight Tibetans.

Amid the cursing and grumbling, once they saw catapults appear, the East Mountain Tangut immediately lost their nerve.

A young officer rode out from the formation with a dozen-odd attendants, bearing a gray-white banner, and galloped toward the Guiyi Army.

"May I ask which Military Governor is here? Li Yanli of the East Mountain tribe has come to pay his respects!"

Zhang Zhao looked over the young officer before him — tall, well-featured, clearly not one of those lowly Tangut who slept in sheep pens day after day, and whether in hairstyle, dress, or accent, he was indistinguishable from a Han.

The Tangut hairstyle that later generations remember most vividly is that bizarre array of shaved-pate styles.

That was actually Li Yuanhao's doing. After he rebelled, he discovered that after centuries of intermingling with the Han, the Tangut were already barely distinguishable from them.

So, to make his rebellion seem justified, he tried every means to shave the Tangut bald, precisely to make them different from the Han.

But at present, Li Yuanhao's great-grandfather Li Guangyan had not even appeared yet. The East Mountain tribe might be called Tangut, but apart from being desperately poor, they were not much different from the Han.

"Where does this madman come from, daring to lead a host to spy on a great army? Do you not know the severity of the law of the land? Before you stands the Acting Minister of Works, Military Governor of Hexi and concurrently Military Governor of the Four Prefectures of Shan, Lan, He, and Kuo — Minister Zhang! Kowtow at once!"

Li Yanli froze. Was Hexi not beyond the realm? And what in the world was a "Military Governor of the Four Prefectures of Shan, Lan, He, and Kuo"? Besides, these iron-armored troops did not look like anything Hexi could afford to maintain!

But Zhang Zhao could not be bothered to explain. Had he not needed the East Mountain Tangut — who had not submitted to the Pingxia Tangut — for his future campaign against the Dingnan Military Governor Li Yiyin, he would have driven them off or killed them long ago.

"The Prefect of Qingzhou — what is he to you?" Zhang Zhao asked unhurriedly.

"He is my father!" Li Yanli looked at this man of roughly his own age but of uncommon bearing, and somehow felt an overwhelming pressure bearing down on him.

"So you are the son of a court-appointed official. I have raised troops under imperial decree to put down the mutiny in Weizhou. Have you come to aid me in suppressing the rebels?"

Zhang Zhao opened his mouth and, just like that, turned these East Mountain Tangut — invited by the Tangut in Yuanzhou to lend a fist — into men who had come to aid him.

Li Yanli was about to nod when Zhang Zhao's face darkened. "If you have not come to serve the court and assist in suppressing the rebels, then do you intend to go to Weizhou and join the traitors?

The court has not treated your East Mountain tribe poorly. I detest the disloyal and unrighteous above all. Wherever I hear of such men, I will travel a thousand leagues to strike them down!"

"Ah! Uh! This..." Li Yanli gaped speechless for a dozen seconds, when suddenly he heard waves of startled cries.

It turned out another force of at least five hundred well-equipped light cavalry had ridden up from the distance. This thousand alone would be enough to make their four thousand suffer badly.

"Indeed! My father is also a loyal servant of the court. Hearing of the unrest in Weizhou, he specially sent my elder brother Yanli and me to assist in wiping out the rebels!"

Li Yanli wiped away a cold sweat. Though everything reeked of strangeness, he had best placate this Military Governor before him first.

"Since you have come to aid in suppressing the rebels, then the tribes in Yuanzhou are insolent and lawless, blocking the passage of the rebel-suppressing army. I ask this young lord Li to lead his troops as the army's vanguard! Once the city is broken, I will certainly petition the Sage for rewards on your behalf!"

Damn! Li Yanli froze. He had been invited by Li Zhongchao in the city to lend a fist, and they were kin by marriage besides. If he turned around and attacked Yuanzhou, the tribal chieftains great and small would tear him apart and eat him when he returned.

Wiping away the dripping sweat once more, Li Yanli finally understood to drop to both knees.

"Reporting to the Minister, Li Zhongchao of Yuanzhou and his family have served the court loyally for generations. Today there must be some misunderstanding. I am willing to enter the city and persuade Li Zhongchao to come out and explain."

Boom! Even as the two spoke, a great stretch of Yuanzhou's west gate finally collapsed under the bombardment.

Zhang Zhao smiled faintly and seized Li Yanli's arm. Li Yanli, startled, tried to pull free, but could not budge it no matter how he struggled, his face drained of all color.

"Explain? I see no need. Come into the city with me, and let Li Zhongchao explain to my longsword!"

Li Yanli, unable to pull his arm free, was after all a clever man. Seeing that the Hexi troops had not charged in while the wall lay breached, he immediately understood something.

"I beg the Military Governor to be magnanimous. We East Mountain Tangut of Qingzhou and the Yuanzhou Tangut are both loyal to the court."

"Within a quarter hour, if Li Zhongchao binds himself and comes to surrender, I will spare his life — and yours as well, of course!"

Zhang Zhao grinned, looking somewhat roguish, but the look in his eyes was ferocious.

For Bai Congxin's force, which had made a wide detour, had finally crossed the Qingshui River and suddenly appeared behind the East Mountain Tangut.

These Tangut had sent scouts to left and right, but had not expected that Zhang Zhao had long since arranged for men to come around from the upper reaches of the Qingshui River.

The gap in equipment between the two sides was too great, and with the Tangut believing the Guiyi Army to be court troops, they were already at a psychological disadvantage. The moment Bai Congxin rounded their rear, the East Mountain tribe's four thousand-odd horsemen began fleeing westward.

"I beg the Minister for mercy! I am willing to enter the city!" Li Yanli finally dropped to both knees. The enemy's horses were better than theirs, their bows better than theirs, and they clearly knew this kind of light-cavalry pursuit battle inside out.

These four thousand horsemen were a full three-tenths of the East Mountain Tangut's able-bodied men. Even losing one or two in ten would be more than they could bear.

Gray-haired and gray-bearded, Li Zhongchao wailed and threw himself into the dust, kowtowing to Zhang Zhao without pause. Before him, the head of the Li clan chief of the Lanzhou the the Shatuo tribe, caked with dust, still dripped blood.

"Were it not for the court's urgent summons, I would kill your entire family today!" Zhang Zhao snorted coldly. But of course he would not kill Li Zhongchao's family — he intended to make Yuanzhou his logistics center, so that he could enter Weizhou to put down the rebellion with confidence.

"Li Yanli, have your elder brother send a thousand horsemen. Li Zhongchao, the Yuanzhou Tangut will contribute at least two thousand horsemen. You yourself, your sons and grandsons, will all follow me south to suppress the rebellion. Serve well, and there will be rewards."

The lives of these two Tangut chieftains of the Tuoba Li clan were both in Zhang Zhao's hands — how could they dare resist!

Li Yanli of the East Mountain tribe especially was sick with regret. He had thought it was court troops here, and had naively believed he could use his four thousand horsemen as capital to come and mediate.

But as it turned out, what he faced was not one or two thousand elite cavalry, but more than five thousand fully armored elite troops.

Zhang Zhao let out a soft breath. Having entered Yuanzhou without incident, he stored the plunder he had gathered along the way there on the spot.

In addition, he had extorted a large amount of millet and cattle and sheep from Li Zhongchao. Since the situation in Guanzhong was critical, Zhang Zhao could not afford to advance slowly, plundering step by step.

He decided to turn Yuanzhou into a logistics base, sweeping up the local Tangut to march south with him to quell the rebellion, then leaving Liu Zaisheng with one thousand troops and over two thousand volunteer cavalry to hold Yuanzhou, while he himself would press south day and night.

Zhang Zhao felt that this mutiny in Weizhou was probably not small in scale, otherwise Shi Jingtang would not be so anxious.

——————Off-topic——————

Writing and posting as I go, what a mess! I expect to be back on schedule the day after tomorrow.

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