Chapter 333: Better You Than Me

The rumbling of hooves scattered the early-morning fog. On the north bank of the Wei River, in a small village called Mapao Spring.

This place was only a little over twenty li from the West Wei Bridge. The village's inhabitants had either fled into the mountains or been dragged off by the marauding troops — the women taken as objects of lust and reserve rations, the men left dead in the ravines.

Zhang Xiaoguo plunged into Mapao Spring Village in a state of utter disarray. The thatch, branches, and door planks that had covered the village houses had long since been stripped clean.

But the half-collapsed earthen walls of the houses gave Zhang Xiaoguo some measure of relief. At least the Hexi cavalry's advantage in swift horses could not be brought to bear here.

The cavalry under Zhang Xiaoguo's command also crashed into the village like starving dogs diving at food, every man covered in dust and grime. Even Zhang Xiaoguo's town-commander banner had been torn to shreds, and the flags and drums of the various companies and officers were almost all lost.

The terrain of Mapao Spring Village was somewhat higher than the surrounding area, and in the village there was a spring whose water was not particularly sweet.

In the days of the Great Tang, the nobles of Chang'an liked to race horses or ride out on excursions around Mapao Spring Village — perhaps that was how it got its name.

Once Zhang Xiaoguo's mind had settled a little, he climbed the tallest earthen tower in the village to observe.

All around Mapao Spring Village, fierce cavalry pursuits were still going on, though far fewer than a few days before, and the results had begun to show a one-sided trend.

The Hexi men had fast horses and good armor, and their horsemanship was superior to these rebel troops. In the thirty-plus li of running skirmishes from Xingping County to Mapao Spring Village, they had made the rebel cavalry suffer badly.

Fortunately, when Sun Xiaoguo had set out, he had deliberately requisitioned a large batch of horn crossbows, which was why they had not been routed outright.

As standard-issue equipment once used specifically by the cavalry of the Great Tang army, the horn crossbow was powerful, long-ranged, and excellent at piercing armor.

In years past, when Zhang Zhao was in the Western Regions, he had issued these to infantry. It was only by relying on the deadliness of the horn crossbows that these rebels had barely managed to hold off the repeated charges of the Guiyi Army cavalry.

And the reason they were gradually losing strength was that the crossbow strings, made of sinew and horn, had begun to loosen, and their arrows were exhausted.

Small-unit cavalry skirmishing was called dogfighting — a very apt metaphor.

In this kind of pursuit battle fought by groups of ten or twenty riders, the two sides were like two mastiffs locked in combat, jaws wide, now one lunging at the other, now the other lunging back, now grappling together, until one side could fight no more and fled with its tail between its legs.

Li Cunhui rode a yellow horse, a sword in his left hand and a pecking hammer in his right.

The so-called pecking hammer was also standard cavalry equipment from the mid-Tang onward: a hammer on one end and a beak-like spike on the other — a fine weapon for dealing with heavy armor.

At this moment, Li Cunhui and the dozen or so riders under his command had locked up more than twenty rebel riders. The rebel cavalry pressed their bodies low over their horses' backs, drew their riding bows, and kept loosing arrows slantwise to the rear.

The arrows shot out with soft whistling sounds, flying past Li Cunhui's head, and some struck his helmet and shoulder armor, but Li Cunhui paid them no mind at all.

Because without horn crossbows, ordinary horse bows would not easily pierce the padded armor he wore.

Moreover, he had a small round shield on his right arm. Li Cunhui raised his right hand slightly, and the round shield could provide a measure of protection.

As the sound of arrows tearing through the air grew denser, Li Cunhui, lying low over his horse's back, risked raising his body a little.

The distance was closing, and he needed to draw some fire away from his warhorse. A man wore armor, but a warhorse had only a single iron plate guarding its forehead and a small strip of lamellar hanging down to protect its chest. With bad luck, one arrow could do the horse serious harm.

Closer and closer. The cavalry behind Li Cunhui also drew their bows and shot at the rebel riders.

One unlucky, small-statured rebel rider had at least ten arrows stuck in his back, and the pain made him howl, but he had probably worn ring-mail underneath, so the wounds were not serious.

But he could not get away, because several arrows were also lodged in his warhorse's rump. Blood soaked the horse's entire hindquarters, and the animal's galloping gait had begun to twist and lurch.

Li Cunhui's horse was fast, and he soon caught up to this rider's side. The "hedgehog" rider, seeing he could not escape, could only turn his head and look at Li Cunhui with despairing, terrified eyes.

But Li Cunhui, who had witnessed the horrors of Jingzhou and Binzhou and other places, would not soften his heart toward these beasts.

Yet just as these thoughts flashed through his mind like lightning, the "hedgehog" rider suddenly gave a cold, sinister smile. The despair in his eyes was instantly replaced by triumph, and he drew from his bosom an already-loaded horn crossbow.

"Ha! You cur, you dare!" Li Cunhui roared fiercely, the shout bursting beside the "hedgehog" rider's ear like a thunderclap.

At the same moment as the roar, the long sword in Li Cunhui's hand slashed across like lightning.

The "hedgehog" rider was also nervous, because the horn crossbow in his hand had only this one arrow left. If he missed Li Cunhui, he would die.

In that moment of extreme tension between life and death, the "hedgehog" rider was so terrified by Li Cunhui's shout that his heart and gall shuddered violently. His hand tightened reflexively, and the arrow shot wide, flying off to who knows where.

Done for!

He had no time even for regret before searing pain shot up from his hand.

It turned out that almost at the same instant, Li Cunhui's long sword had already arrived. This heavy sword, weighing five or six jin and honed razor-sharp, cut through the "hedgehog" rider's horn crossbow along with his fingers like slicing a cucumber, reducing the whole thing to fragments.

"My hand! Ah! My hand!" the "hedgehog" rider screamed, clutching his mangled right hand with his left, but the screams stopped just as abruptly.

Because Li Cunhui twisted his body beautifully in the saddle, and the beak-spike end of his pecking hammer smashed into the "hedgehog" rider's helmet, punching a bloody hole straight through his forehead.

As the "hedgehog" rider fell, Li Cunhui and his dozen or so men caught up with the twenty-odd rebel riders.

They galloped side by side, hacking savagely at each other with their weapons.

Li Cunhui's two hands whirled like flying, using the heavy sword against lightly armored foes and the pecking hammer against heavily armored ones, and in an instant he knocked three or four enemy riders from their saddles.

On the other side, Murong Xinzhang, leading Zhang Xibao and others, had also wiped out the rebel cavalry who had not made it into the village in time.

The most important things for cavalry were nothing more than equipment, warhorses, and horsemanship. Once the rebel cavalry lost the advantage of their crossbows, they were completely reduced to a passive state of taking a beating.

Sun Xiaoguo watched all this clearly from within Mapao Spring Village, his face deathly pale.

Thirteen hundred cavalry had ridden out of the city, advancing cautiously the whole way, yet in less than two days only a little over nine hundred remained, and now they had been driven into the village.

Once cavalry lost its mobility, death was not far away.

"Boom! Boom!" Violent explosions rang out, and brilliant fireworks appeared at the east end of the village.

Before long, an officer with half his hair burned off and several blisters scorched onto his swarthy face ran up to Sun Xiaoguo and threw himself headlong into the dust.

"Town Commander! A band of sorcerer riders has come to the east end of the village! Their long spears breathe fire! My men holding the high ground were all burned down by their fire-breathing spears, and I could not hold the east exit!"

"They mean to surround us, use us as bait, and draw out the great army at West Wei Bridge!"

Sun Xiaoguo sighed deeply. These Guiyi Army men from Hexi had surrounded them, and now they had come to take the east exit of the village.

And having taken it, they were in no hurry to attack — clearly they meant to bottle them up so they could not escape. What they had in mind behind it all must be to besiege the point and strike the reinforcements.

"Lei Bao'er! I'm giving you fifty men and a hundred good horses. Later today, you fight your way out at all costs and carry word to West Wei Bridge!" Zhang Xiaoguo said, pointing at Lei Bao'er, whose burned face was blooming with wounds.

"Is it to tell Military Commissioner He not to fall for the trap?" Lei Bao'er asked hesitantly.

"Fuck your mother! Have the Hexi men beaten you stupid, you dog-slave?" Zhang Xiaoguo laughed in fury.

"I never wanted to come out in the first place. It was that wretch He Chuan being too clever for his own good, insisting on some lure-the-enemy scheme. I swore an oath with him that we would share hardship and good fortune alike. Now that I'm surrounded, if he doesn't come, who will? Forget it — a muddle-head like you might as well not go!"

With that, Sun Xiaoguo pulled over the personal guard beside him — a clansman of his, far more reliable than someone like Lei Bao'er.

"Jiu Lang, you go this time. Tell He Chuan this: around Mapao Spring there are eight thousand Hexi troops — two thousand cavalry and six thousand infantry. Come quickly for a field battle. Kill them off, and no one will ever dare come to subdue us again."

Better a fellow Daoist dies than this poor Daoist himself. Sun Xiaoguo pondered for a moment: if He Chuan did not come, he was certain to die; if He Chuan did come, it would be a decisive battle between tens of thousands of troops.

His command consisted entirely of cavalry. If they could win, they would stay; if not, they could still withdraw. The odds of survival were at least far higher than now.

——————Off-topic——————

Writing and posting as I go — I'm really something else. I went out carrying two bags and came back with nothing but the clothes on my back... I spent the whole day on the road today, so tomorrow's update can only come a bit later. Off to sleep now.

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