Chapter 344: The Cruelty of War

In the past, Zhang Zhao had heard people say that war was an art, and he had basically nodded in agreement like a chick pecking at rice.

But after five or six years since transmigrating, Zhang Zhao felt that statement was not quite so accurate.

At least when it came to the actual battlefield, it had little to do with art.

What it had was only cruelty.

The Guiyi Army and the Fengxiang Army fought with the same tactics and were similarly equipped.

The only difference was that the Guiyi Army's left and right wings were highly mobile cavalry, while the Fengxiang Army, short on cavalry, could only place its precious crossbowmen on the wings for passive defense.

So the situation across the entire battlefield was this: the two armies shot at each other with bows and crossbows in the center, then closed in heavy armor to stab and kill one another.

On the wings, the Guiyi Army's cavalry kept circling, probing, or dismounting to shoot on foot, giving the Fengxiang Army's wing crossbowmen no chance to rest, and the moment they found an opening, they would charge in and strike.

But the Fengxiang Army had more men after all; when the wing crossbowmen took losses, Lu Duan in the center would immediately dispatch reserves to fill the gap and drive off the Guiyi cavalry, and the two sides kept repeating this whack-a-mole game on the wings.

In the center, the brutal exchange of bow and crossbow fire had also basically come to an end, with each side having loosed tens of thousands of arrows at the other.

After that, the archers' arm strength reached its limit, and the crossbows became unusable because of loosened strings and broken triggers.

By this point, both sides had a clear understanding of the other's strength, and the outcome of the battle below would depend on close combat in heavy armor.

And this kind of close combat could hardly inflict mass casualties in a short time the way bows and crossbows could, so it was even harder to break the other side.

The war would shift from seeing who could kill fastest in the bow and crossbow exchange to a contest of stamina and willpower.

The cruelest moment had arrived.

Amid the booming war drums, the two sides formed long ranks and stabbed at each other four times within two double-hours.

The fighting was so fierce that even fierce warriors like Qiongre Duojin and Cui Huxin were stabbed and wounded and could no longer continue fighting.

Cui Huxin in particular — if he had not bound a heart-protecting mirror to his own chest, he would likely have died on the spot.

From the Fengxiang Army's side came wave after wave of "Wansheng!" cheers; this was Li Congyan, already red-eyed with killing, putting up a reward of fifty thousand strings of cash.

Zhang Zhao's style was a bit more elevated; he offered the reward of counting this battle as a shangzhen engagement.

According to the Great Tang military merit system, fighting against greater numbers and battling to the death counted as shangzhen.

After such a battle, even a soldier of the lowest rank, so long as he had committed no major fault and could take one enemy head, would be considered meritorious and could at least receive two ranks of honor promotion.

Two ranks of honor promotion corresponded to the rank of Cloud Cavalry Commandant, a principal seventh-rank official.

In Zhang Zhao's Hexi, the honor rank of Cloud Cavalry Commandant could reduce land tax by twenty percent or offset ten strings of commercial tax.

It also came with an annual grant of three hundred jin of coarse grain such as millet, fifty jin of polished rice, fifty jin of white flour, ten jin of tea, ten jin of salt, five jin of sugar, and two sheep; exemption from kneeling before officials; and the right to meet Zhang Zhao in person and submit suggestions in writing.

It could be said that after two ranks of honor promotion, a soldier left the category of ordinary people.

As long as he survived, even if he did nothing for the following year, four hundred jin of grain plus salt, tea, and sugar would guarantee that a man would not starve to death, and his status would rise enormously.

Compared with simply handing out rewards, the Guiyi Army's military merit rank system was undoubtedly far more attractive.

Moreover, Zhang Zhao was still considering borrowing from the Song dynasty's military officer system and merging the two titles of Guiyi Gentleman and Loyal and Steadfast Commandant into the honor rank system, to make it better fit the soldiers' needs.

"Wind! Wind! Wind!" The moment Zhang Zhao's two-rank honor promotion reward was announced, the Guiyi Army roared with joy, and even the drummers responsible for beating the drums struck with more vigor.

Only, Zhang Zhao's expression was somewhat gloomy. Damn it, this meant two or three thousand Cloud Cavalry Commandants at once! Just supporting them would cost seventy or eighty thousand strings a year, not counting ordinary expenses.

At the same time, Li Congyan's face was also green. Adding this fifty thousand strings of reward money, he had invested over a hundred thousand strings in total.

Besides, if they won, there would be another round of rewards, and if they lost, there would be compensation for the bereaved; all told it would probably come to more than two hundred thousand strings.

Yet the entire Fengxiang Military Governor's annual income was only a bit over a hundred thousand strings, so he would inevitably have to dig into his own private treasury.

If Zhang Zhao and Li Congyan had known the other would be so troublesome, they might not have fought this battle at all, but now that it had reached this point, they had to grit their teeth and press on.

After the rewards came the meal, usually some high-calorie food, such as glutinous rice drizzled with honey or syrup, and meat broth with plenty of salt.

The Guiyi Army also supplied both salty and sweet milk tea (butter tea), but not too much, since eating too much was actually bad for fighting.

Half a double-hour of bow and crossbow exchange, more than three double-hours and six rounds of stabbing, fighting and pausing by turns; the two sides fought from mid-morning until the sun slanted westward.

Both sides understood very well that, given the resilience of the two armies, the next and final round of close combat would basically be the last.

More than two thousand captured rebel soldiers also sat on the ground eating and drinking heartily; fragrant sweet syrup glutinous rice paired with salty milk tea, and every man wolfed it down.

These captured rebels sat together in a circle, and around them, the armored soldiers of the Hanshan Unit had already donned their armor and were watching and intimidating them.

Zhang Zhao also came over wearing golden armor so bright it dazzled the eyes. This battle allowed no mistakes, so he still had to go himself, but the first batch of cannon fodder sent to die would be these captured rebels.

"I won't say much. Once this battle is over, those willing to follow me, so long as you are willing to turn over a new leaf, will not lack for wealth and honor. Those unwilling to follow will get thirty strings each and can take the money and go home.

But I will also tell you this: once on the battlefield, if any of you dare to hesitate and hold back, my Hanshan Unit will chop you into mincemeat with modao glaive glaive glaives.

Of you two thousand men, half will die, and half may live!"

Defense Commissioner Wu had not died, because he had released several thousand laborers and women as promised, but Zhang Zhao had not spared him either.

Apart from not having him and his personal followers publicly tried by the Wei River, there was no preferential treatment whatsoever; now they would still have to take a walk before the Hall of King Yama.

"All of you, count yourselves as dead men! One man dying means one man living.

Our homeland has already been sold off by that the the Shatuo slave-traitor Shi Jingtang. Those who live, just remember to bring the ashes of the dead back home!"

Defense Commissioner Wu stood up and shouted to the rebel soldiers behind him.

Most of these yabing guards of the Jingnan Army were men of the Sixteen Prefectures of You-Yun, because they were fellow provincials recruited by the previous Military Governor of the Jingnan Army, Zhang Xichong, and Zhang Xichong was a man of Youzhou.

The greatest reason they had chosen to follow He Chuan in rebellion this time, and had even seized Military Governor An Shuqian, was that Shi Jingtang had sold the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun, selling their fathers, mothers, wives, and children to the Khitan.

Defense Commissioner Wu's few words left the captured rebel soldiers silent, and from time to time a few low sobs could be heard.

Once one stripped away their identity as rebel soldiers who had committed every kind of evil, these men were also pitiful people without homes, their homeland fallen to the Khitan, and the Later Jin court would not allow them to return to their homeland.

"Issue them weapons!" Zhang Zhao said to Guo Tiance beside him, then looked back at Defense Commissioner Wu.

"Blood sins must be washed clean with blood. Fight to the death!"

Boom, boom, boom! The war drums sounded again, and even the sun in the sky hid itself among dark clouds, as if heaven and earth had suddenly dimmed.

Guided by banner after banner, over ten thousand men shouted "Heave! Heave!" as they slowly closed in.

The few sharpshooters still able to shoot loosed arrows at the other side from time to time; a few unlucky men screamed and fell, and it did not even affect the people around them in the slightest.

The men walked forward mechanically, beads of sweat sliding down their faces one by one, their fingers gripping their weapons turned gray-white from the sheer force of their grip.

Twenty paces, ten paces — slowly, the two sides drew closer amid the drumbeats.

Then a sudden great roar, and everyone seemed to come alive at once, the long spears beginning to knock toward the enemy's heads with a certain rhythm.

But for the front-rank elites, all clad in iron armor, such blows were not fatal. What was fatal lay at the very bottom.

Beneath the clashing long spears crouched row upon row of spearmen, holding hook-scythe spears that could snag a man.

One heavily armored soldier of the Fengxiang Army let his guard slip for an instant, and his thigh was hooked by a hook-scythe spear.

The armored soldier howled in terror, hurled away his long spear, drew his zhangdao blade from his waist, and hacked frantically at the shaft of the hook-scythe spear.

Two men beside him tried to help pry open the curved hook that had caught his thigh, but they were still a step too slow.

Amid the armored soldier's despairing screams, he was dragged across the ground into the Guiyi Army's formation.

Several Guiyi Army shock troops, wielding the sharpest zhangdao blades, pounced on him, throwing all their strength into pinning the Fengxiang armored soldier down. One man lifted his neck-guard, while two others stabbed wildly at his eyes.

The armored soldier thrashed in agony, his wails making all who heard them shudder — but they soon ceased.

Because even as he struggled desperately, the shock troops drove a zhangdao blade into his throat, and in the process sliced open his carotid artery.

The armored soldier finally went still, his eyes wide as he stared at the sky, his face quickly turning ashen.

After he was stabbed to death, more and more men kept being dragged away by both sides — some from the Guiyi Army, some from the Fengxiang Army.

"Spread out! Spread out!" A great shout rang out. The horizontal rank of armored soldiers at the very center of the Guiyi Army, after disengaging just a little, suddenly split apart.

And once they had spread apart, a dark mass of soldiers in motley, mismatched armor came screaming as they charged forward — they were the captured rebel troops.

These captives had no long weapons; uniformly armed with short hengdao sabers and round shields, they howled and hurled themselves straight into the forest of Fengxiang Army long spears.

Many of them were quickly skewered by the enemy spears, but their fearlessness in the face of death still drove the Fengxiang Army's formation to cave inward in the middle.

"Strike!" Zhang Zhao roared. Behind the captured rebel troops, the warriors of the Hanshan Unit immediately began swinging their modao glaive glaive glaives.

But they were not killing the Fengxiang Army — at this distance, they could not reach them anyway. What they were killing were the rebel troops lagging at the rear, cutting them down directly with their modao glaive glaive glaives!

In an instant, fifty or sixty of the rebel troops were hacked to death from behind!

Seeing this, the rebel troops who had still harbored thoughts of slacking off knew there was no escape. Death lay before and behind them alike, and they let out even louder screams, hurling themselves in wave after wave of desperate charges at the caved-in section of the Fengxiang line.

Lu Duan, commanding from within the great Fengxiang formation, felt his face darken. He sensed the danger and saw that the point of these men's desperate charges was precisely the Guiyi Army's main axis of attack. He hurriedly sent runners to order the reserve yabing guards of the prince's household to fill the gap.

Zhang Zhao watched cold-bloodedly as the rebel soldiers were killed off from both front and rear, and only when the Fengxiang yabing guards came charging up in support, bearing several red-bannered phoenix war flags, did he wave his hand.

The modao glaive glaive wielders of the Hanshan Unit stopped their chopping, and the captured rebel soldiers who saw Zhang Zhao's wave collapsed in spirit at once. Wailing and crying, they fell back in a great clattering rout.

But their task was complete! They had smashed a great breach in the Fengxiang Army's formation, and forced Lu Duan to commit his final reserves.

The yabing guards of Prince Qi's household, clad in red war robes, came swaggering up from the rear, fully armored and in high spirits.

"Hahaha!" Zhang Zhao burst into loud laughter, and the armored soldiers of the Hanshan Unit around him laughed aloud as well.

This display left the Prince Qi household yabing guards, who had come to plug the breach, somewhat bewildered.

But their bewilderment did not last. A sky full of flying stones came howling down upon them with a mournful shriek, falling like stars.

Zhang Zhao had held back from using the whirlwind catapults all this time, precisely to wait for this moment.

More than sixty catapults (some damaged and unusable) hurled over a thousand stones in the space of half a cup of tea — two or three minutes — and of the thousand-odd Prince Qi household yabing guards, more than three hundred were wiped out at once.

Li Congyan's heart ached so badly that tears came to his eyes. These were elite soldiers his Li family had raised over two generations at incalculable cost! And just like that, several hundred were gone.

"Song Zhong! You dog-spawned peasant slave, you really have come to send me to my grave!"

Li Congyan stared to his right and could not help wailing aloud. The battle had reached this point, and yet the three thousand men of Song Zhong, Chief Commander of the Xiongwu Army's young lord's troops, still had not moved.

"Great King! We cannot keep fighting! Any more and the two generations of Prince Qi's household legacy will be finished!"

Lu Duan, who was directing the battle, pointed into the distance at Zhang Zhao, who was personally wielding a blade and cutting men down. The Guiyi Army's commander had taken the field himself, and morale instantly soared like a rainbow, driving the Fengxiang Army back step by step.

Li Congyan's face was streaked with tears, utterly devoid of the expression he had worn not long before — the fierce tiger pouncing on a rabbit, victory assured. He asked Lu Duan in a mournful voice.

"Silang, what is to be done?"

"Abandon the four thousand who cannot break away, and we go east. There is a stretch of mountain forest there. Night is falling now, and with darkness as cover, we can still hold out.

This battle was stirred up by An Shenqi. He wanted two tigers to fight, and he will never sit by and watch one side swallow the other. Send out all our fast riders to notify Third Brother, and have him raise his troops and come together with An Shenqi."

Li Congyan asked hesitantly, "Will An Shenqi be willing to come help us fight and destroy the Hexi Army?"

Lu Duan shook his head bitterly. "How could he? We should not even think of destroying the Hexi Army. We are asking An Shenqi to come mediate. Give money, give grain, give silk and women! We admit defeat! As long as the Great King can return safely to Fengxiang."

Hearing this, Li Congyan covered his face and wept aloud. Over ten thousand several hundred men had marched out of the city, and in one stroke nearly four thousand were gone — and the most elite four thousand at that.

This was not merely a heavy loss; it was half a step from the grave! Yet he no longer had the courage to keep fighting.

"Then it shall be as Silang says!"

—————— Author's note ——————

Another eleven thousand characters updated today, and tomorrow's chapter hasn't even been started yet. What a tragedy!

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