Chapter 513

By the Yellow River, Yan Jin in the stockade also saw Zhang Zhao's great banner. He said to Huang Yingda beside him, "The Khitans surround us but do not attack; what they are after is the Great King.

We were rash and overreached, and should have died here anyway — but how can we bring harm upon the Great King?

I will lead the army out of the stockade and fight the Khitans to the death. You take a hundred riders, break through, and report to the Great King. Ask him to withdraw to Jinyong City. Once the Khitans see their ambush has failed, they will pull back."

Huang Yingda nodded, then hurriedly shook his head. To be precise, he and Yan Jin had not been rash — their appetite had simply been too big.

Yan Jin had wanted to use this key stockade as a millstone, drawing the Khitans out of Mount Mang, then killing them with strong bows and hard crossbows.

So when the Khitans had only a few thousand troops, he had paid them no mind at all. But who could have known that the Khitans would keep growing in number, and with so many armored infantry and armored cavalry besides.

Though not enough to take the stockade, they had still trapped Yan Jin inside it.

In truth, this was what Yan Jin had wanted — but once he could no longer send out scouts to pass word, he had ended up drawing Zhang Zhao over, and that was a grave offense.

Huang Yingda clasped his hands. "Left Commissioner, since your original intent was to lure the main Khitan army down from Mount Mang, then speak no words of despair.

Once the Great King has withdrawn, I will surely request a great army to return. With your six thousand men as the chain, we will kill every Khitan who dares to fight."

And so Yan Jin threw open the stockade gates. With the two thousand five hundred iron-armored troops of the Wuwei and Xiongwu garrisons as the center, two thousand five hundred archers arrayed on the left and right wings to cover with bows and crossbows, and six hundred sworn-follower elite riders hidden within the formation, ready to strike.

And when they saw Zhang Zhao's great banner, Yelu Wuzhi was so overjoyed he could barely keep from dancing.

This fierce Khitan general fought down the wild delight in his heart and urgently ordered Geng Chongmei to lead a thousand cavalry to harass and block Yan Jin's infantry. He himself led more than three thousand iron cavalry, racing toward Zhang Zhao's position.

At the same time, Yelu Pode and Li Shouzhen, setting out from Yanshi, brought twenty thousand men and reached the battlefield from the right. The Dragon Army and Phoenix Army — more than two thousand men whom Gao Song had desperately ferried ashore — also circled in from the left.

The Khitans' total strength immediately reached thirty-two thousand men. Zhang Zhao's side, even counting Yan Jin's six thousand, had only eighty-five hundred. The Liao army outnumbered the Yong-Liang army by more than three to one.

I've been a bit careless, Zhang Zhao thought, a few beads of cold sweat rising in his palms.

Before this, he had never encountered an army that could arrive so quickly and so resolutely. In speed of maneuver alone, the Khitan cavalry far surpassed the Li clan of the Dingnan Army and the Gaochang Uyghurs.

All around was utterly flat open ground, without a single hill to hold.

But when Zhang Zhao looked back, behind the army there happened to be the Yang Canal, linking the Chan River and the Luo River — it could provide a measure of defense.

Zhang Zhao therefore immediately led his twenty-five hundred men to set their backs against the Yang Canal, keeping only five hundred riders in reserve. He had the rest of the cavalry dismount and, together with the thousand heavy infantry of the Hanshan Unit, form a crescent-moon formation, defending with their backs to the water.

When Yelu Pode saw that Yan Jin had actually abandoned the stockade and come out in infantry formation, he gave a cold laugh and said to those around him,

"The bandit army, like us, excels in iron cavalry. Now they cast aside their strength and play to their weakness, moving out with foot soldiers — is that not seeking their own death?"

Yelu Wuzhi did not answer. He looked around and saw that Geng Chongmei's thousand cavalry had already charged up to Yan Jin's infantry, but probing left and right, they could find no weak point to break through, and their delaying had accomplished little. He waved a hand and said,

"The infantry in the stockade has come out because they wish to use themselves as bait, luring our iron cavalry to attack.

Zhang Zhao, seeing our great army about to close the encirclement, neither mounted and fled with his close followers nor abandoned his troops. Truly a benevolent lord and loyal ministers — admirable! Lamentable!"

At this, a flicker of regret passed through Yelu Wuzhi's eyes. "A pity — for the sake of our Great Liao, we absolutely cannot let the bandit Zhang leave alive.

Right Xiangwen, take your two thousand riders and go tie down the Yong army's stockade force once more. All other columns, follow me in a fierce assault on the bandit Zhang by the Yang Canal.

His Majesty has decreed: whoever kills the bandit Zhang shall be granted five thousand households and enfeoffed as a prince!"

Zhang Zhao laughed loudly and said to the brave guards around him, "How stingy the Liao lord is. I, a great king of a whole realm, ruling five million people, am worth only five thousand households?

I am not like that. I hear my elder brother has a daughter named Lü Bugu, whom he treasures like a jewel. Whoever takes first merit today may marry this niece of mine tomorrow — and I grant five thousand and one households!"

Zhang Zhao had deliberately granted one extra household, drawing a roar of laughter from everyone.

Good heavens — Xiao Chuo's mother, just like that, given away by me, Great King Zhang, with a casual word.

Amid the laughter, Zhang Zhao suddenly grew much calmer. The Hanshan Unit warriors around him were, for the most part, his absolute confidants who had fought with him north and south.

For example, Man Xiong and Dunzhu, laughing the loudest, were the source of Zhang Zhao's confidence — the wellspring of his belief that he could dominate the realm.

In the distance, the Khitan cavalry had already broken into a run. The trembling of the earth heralded the bloody battle to come.

The drummer beside Zhang Zhao struck the war drum with a thud, and the whole army roared as one: "Wind!"

Then more than a thousand auxiliary soldiers in leather armor, with a few in mail, stepped forward at once, crouched at the very front of the formation, and angled their long spears up toward the sky.

The crescent-moon formation instantly became a hedgehog bristling with cold, glittering light.

In fact, Zhang Zhao had far more than twenty-five hundred men with him. That was because the Hanshan Unit, as the most elite heavy infantry around Zhang Zhao, was assigned auxiliary soldiers.

One must understand: a single ordinary heavy infantryman had to be equipped with one suit of cloth-faced iron armor, one suit of mail, one modao glaive glaive glaive, three hengdao sabers, one divine-arm crossbow, one long-limbed bow, one short-limbed bow, one quiver, fifty arrows, and a choice of one from iron whip / wrought-copper mace / mace-club / great axe — not to mention no small amount of miscellaneous daily gear.

This was plainly not something one man could manage. Carrying so much alone would inevitably waste precious strength on other things.

So from the very beginning, heavy infantrymen of the Hanshan Unit were assigned auxiliary soldiers.

Only at first, for cavalry the auxiliaries were drawn from the sworn-follower elite riders, and for infantry from the militia archers — but in practice, quite a few problems arose.

For instance, the auxiliaries and armored soldiers did not coordinate well; there were too few auxiliaries to provide one-on-one support; and the armored soldiers still had to do many things themselves.

And because the auxiliaries were of little use, the armored soldiers were unwilling to share their merit with them.

So later it evolved into a system where the armored soldiers recruited their own auxiliaries — fellow villagers, friends, even brothers, sons, and nephews. The two sides stayed together year-round, coordinated seamlessly, and did not quarrel over merit.

Moreover, apart from food, these auxiliaries' equipment and pay were all the armored soldiers' own responsibility, greatly lightening the army's burden. The practice immediately spread throughout Yong-Liang.

Thus, Zhang Zhao appeared to have brought only twenty-five hundred men, but in reality there were close to four thousand.

These four thousand gathered by the Yang Canal, clustered together like a hedgehog.

The first to appear before everyone's eyes were four thousand iron cavalry of the Khitan Left Pishi Army. Sixteen thousand hooves churned up sky-filling yellow dust along the dry riverbank.

Seen from afar, only rising dust was visible, and no one could tell how many cavalry there really were.

The iron cavalry marking the direction of the charge was veiled by the dust, so Zhang Zhao could not tell which direction the Khitan cavalry's main attack would come from.

Qiong Re Duojin set his helmet firmly, rode out alone beyond the formation, and drew an iron-ribbed bow. With a flex of his right arm, a great red fletched arrow flew out with a piercing shriek.

"Eighty paces!"

The front-rank auxiliaries heard Qiong Re Duojin's shout and cried out in unison, "Eighty paces!"

The Hanshan Unit and the Right Yulin Guard both used stiff bows, so within eighty paces their killing power was extremely strong. Even against iron cavalry, there was no need to wait until within sixty paces.

The shout had barely faded when the enemy riders closed to eighty paces. The unit leaders at once loosed white-fletched arrows to mark the covering direction.

With a sound of footfalls, the Hanshan Unit's formation shifted subtly. The auxiliary spearmen stepped forward a little, opening up firing space for the archers.

The archers also spread out slightly. They took up their stiff bows, opened the lids of their quivers, and slapped the waists of the quivers, letting out whooping calls like apes.

The thrill of war surged at once into every man's heart.

"Dong!" The war drum beside Zhang Zhao suddenly boomed!

"Woo-ah!" The soldiers roared as one and abruptly loosed their bowstrings.

The arrows, carrying enormous kinetic energy, shuddered violently in the air, like a flying fish coming alive and leaping over the Dragon Gate, plunging straight toward the enemy.

The arrow volleys of the Mountain-Shaking Capital were not fired at random; they had been drilled countless times, and the firing directions were all controlled by the officers.

Each wave of coverage struck a different area, ensuring not a single arrow was wasted. Fifteen hundred bows produced the efficiency of at least three thousand.

They drew and loosed at eighty paces, and by the time the Khitan cavalry had charged to forty paces, the ground was already like hell itself.

Corpses of men and horses lay strewn everywhere in tangled heaps. The not-yet-dead wailed shrilly. Warhorses, hardier than men, had lost their riders' control and ran wildly in all directions, their bodies bristling with arrows.

Of the several hundred Khitan cavalry who had charged out front, almost none could still press forward under the arrow storm.

But that was exactly the effect Yelu Wuzhi wanted. Those several hundred riders were nothing but cannon fodder.

After a brief deathly silence, once the panicked warhorses had run off, three thousand five hundred fully armored cataphracts suddenly emerged from the yellow dust. They were the main force.

They did not even go through the customary routine of loosing a volley of arrows in a high arc; the Khitan iron cavalry simply charged.

Because they were attacking Zhang Zhao with several times his strength, they had no need for any extra maneuvers. They would just smash straight through.

"Switch to the divine-arm crossbows!" Zhang Zhao roared, and was the first to take up a divine-arm crossbow. As Great King Zhang's most successful golden finger, the divine-arm crossbow was hailed in Yongliang as a nation-guarding divine weapon.

Not only was its existence kept in the strictest secrecy, but even taking a single component of a divine-arm crossbow beyond the borders of Liangzhou without permission was a capital offense.

The divine-arm crossbows of each garrison were personally controlled by the Regional Commander and the Vice General, and were not to be seen on ordinary occasions.

Swish! In an instant, one thousand divine-arm crossbows were raised. All of Yongliang had only two thousand three hundred in total, and the Mountain-Shaking Capital alone was equipped with half of them.

Zhang Zhao almost felt like weeping for the Khitan cavalry across from him. One thousand divine-arm crossbows! At forty paces, their killing power was already not much different from that of firearms.

"Woo!" The distinctive horn call signaling the divine-arm crossbows to fire rang out, followed by the deep, archaic sound of crossbow bolts being released.

A Khitan cataphract charging at the very front paid it no mind, for he wore two layers of armor plus a helmet with cheek and neck guards. Unless he was especially unlucky, taking a few arrows was no great matter.

But then he suddenly felt as if something had passed through the neck guard on his left side, along with a strange numbing sensation.

The rider swayed twice. His chest was soaked through with a warm sensation, and those hands of his, capable of seizing leopards and killing wolves, suddenly could not even hold the reins of his warhorse.

As the world spun around him, the rider crashed to the ground. The last thought in his mind was still wondering: had he been hit by an arrow?

This rider was comparatively fortunate, because he wore two layers of armor and was heavy.

The rider behind him, wearing only one layer of armor, was struck directly by two crossbow bolts. Instantly he felt as though his chest had been smashed by an invisible giant hammer.

In the searing pain, he could even hear the squelching sound of the bolts piercing through his heart and lungs. Before his mind could even contemplate life or death, his eyes closed forever.

The iron cavalry charged on, wave after wave, but the divine-arm crossbows fired even faster.

The armored soldiers of the Mountain-Shaking Capital grew more and more excited as they fired, and the crossbow bolts swept at the enemy like a storm. A mere forty paces of distance, blocked by the corpses of men and horses, became like an impassable chasm.

The charging Khitan iron cavalry numbered only three thousand five hundred, but there were one thousand divine-arm crossbows.

Zhang Zhao, untrained as he was, had fired his divine-arm crossbow only once, and the cavalry to the front had nearly all been wiped out.

Of the three thousand five hundred riders, at least eight or nine hundred were gone. The survivors had already fled back in utter panic.

"Boring! I trained with the modao glaive glaive glaive for two and a half years, and it looks like I won't get to use it again."

Zhang Zhao only heard Man Xiong beside him mutter something that sounded unsatisfied. Then, all at once, the entire battlefield fell into deathly silence.

Even Yelu Pode, whose trash talk had shaken the heavens, was stunned. These were fully armored cataphracts, men and horses both!

How could they be like roe deer in the woods, losing nearly a thousand riders just like that?

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