Chapter 55: The Struggle for the Road to Wealth

Aluoduochuo was running! In moments he would reach the warhorses. If he could just mount one, those armored sons of Tang would never catch him.

He even had the leisure to glance around. Sure enough, all those running beside him were his own clansmen. The Chiyi tribe was a branch of the Three-Clan Karluks — when it came to fleeing, selling out their comrades, and backstabbing, they were professionals!

*Whiz! * An arrow grazed past Aluoduochuo's left ear. He could even feel the scorching heat as the shaft cut through the air.

Thank heaven it missed!

But the moment he breathed that inward sigh of relief, a shriek of "Ah!" sounded by his ear — a clansman running behind and to his right had been hit.

The long fletching was buried in the clansman's cheek. The man kept running despite the pain, but every stride dealt him fresh agony, and his pace soon slowed.

Aluoduochuo felt no grief. Instead, his heart lightened. A clansman falling behind meant a few more pursuers would be held up for him!

"Twang!" Another bowstring sounded, and another clansman beside him went down.

Only then did Aluoduochuo realize the archer was that son of Tang on the sand dune. The man stood about twenty paces from him, a long-tipped bow in hand, firing in rapid succession.

Courting death!

Aluoduochuo felt for the short blade still at his waist. The remaining clansmen exchanged glances, ready to combine their strength and kill this archer first — otherwise, once he pinned them down, they would never escape.

But at that very moment, yellow sand swirled up across the sky, and from the distance came the urgent thunder of hooves. Not far ahead of them, a cavalry force had arrived!

Could it be that Diluo Tagan had sent men from Loulan City? Aluoduochuo's heart leaped with joy, for they were men Diluo Tagan had recruited.

"Aluoduochuo! Look!" Before the joy in his heart could even reach his face, Aluoduochuo heard a clansman's startled cry beside him.

He looked up. The opposing cavalry had already spread into a crescent formation, sweeping in from both flanks to encircle them. At their head, a rider held aloft a tall banner — a blue field bearing the three celestial bodies of sun, moon, and stars.

"The Three Luminaries Banner! It's the Three Luminaries Banner! That's the Great Tang's war flag! How can Tang troops appear here?"

Aluoduochuo roared inwardly, then his eyes darted about, and with great wisdom he promptly threw himself to the ground. No more running! There was no escaping anyway!

The battle was over! Bai Congxin and the others had circled into position, signaling the doom of this band of horsemen. Even their leader Mahashide knelt on the ground, silent and still.

As for Zhang Zhao's first battle since crossing over, he felt full of energy but with nowhere to spend it.

He had expected cold-weapon combat to be extraordinarily brutal, but in truth it was rather anticlimactic. He had made his arrangements, even planned the flanking maneuver and the surprise attack, yet the fighting had barely lasted a few minutes before the enemy laid down their arms and surrendered.

"You Canwei people have some nerve! Setting aside your seizure of our Shazhou lands, you actually dared to try to intercept the envoys of the Guiyi Army! I will go to King Sanboba of Zhongyun and demand an accounting — this is lawlessness!"

Seeing that his side had won, Fan Runing, who moments ago had been uneasy, now swaggered forward. He strode up to the battered Mahashide, pointed at his face, and unleashed a torrent of abuse.

The so-called Zhongyun state and Zhongyun people were in fact the remnants of Loulan who had migrated to what later generations called Ruoqiang; they could also be called the Shanshan people.

In the Tang era, the ancient city of Loulan, the city of Wuni (Ruoqiang), and the cities of Datun and Shicheng within the Zhongyun state all fell under Shazhou's jurisdiction.

But after the Great Tang fell, the Guiyi Army of Shazhou truly lacked the strength to administer this region seven or eight hundred li away, and the Loulan people established themselves there as the state of Zhongyun.

Mahashide shut his eyes and simply lay flat, but Aluoduochuo, who had barely been injured, was quick to seize the opportunity.

"We are not Zhongyun people. I have urgent matters to report, so long as this general spares our lives!"

Aluoduochuo did not even glance at the fox-borrowing-the-tiger's-might Fan Runing, but aimed his plea at Zhang Zhao. He could see that among this group, Zhang Zhao was the one whose word counted.

"Not Zhongyun people? Then where are you from? Speak honestly!"

The questioning naturally did not require Zhang Zhao to ask it himself. Ma Yaozi, who loved nothing more than throwing his weight around, stepped in on Zhang Zhao's behalf.

"We were recruited by Diluo Tagan!" Aluoduochuo knelt on the ground, hung his head, and said softly.

"Diluo Tagan?" Zhang Zhao was taken aback. The word "Tagan" stirred up a very unpleasant memory.

"Diluo Tagan? Is he a Gaochang Uyghur? He recruited you to come to Puchang Lake, where even the water is nearly dried up, to do... hmm?

Damn it! You dog slaves — were you sent to intercept us?"

Before Zhang Zhao finished speaking, he had already begun to catch on. The ancient city of Loulan by Puchang Lake could barely support a hundred or so nomads; it held essentially no value.

That was why neither the Gaochang Uyghurs to the north nor the Guiyi Army to the east had any interest in occupying the place. What roamed there was a tiny Canwei tribe.

Then why would this Tagan of the Gaochang Uyghurs recruit so many men? Who were they targeting? A possibility suddenly flashed into Zhang Zhao's mind!

This time, the Guiyi Army's mission to Khotan was, apart from further discussing a marriage alliance, also aimed at an important plan: improving the transportation conditions between the two sides.

This was no small matter, because at this time the main source of income for the various governments along the Hexi Corridor was still the already-shrinking Silk Road. This long commercial route, in existence since the Han dynasty, still played a vital role in linking east and west.

Take Dunhuang, for example: every year, tens of thousands of merchants of various peoples passed through, making it a crucial source of tax revenue for the Guiyi Army. The Guiyi Army even did some middleman trading of its own to fill its coffers.

And now, after leaving Dunhuang, the Silk Road split into two routes.

One was the southern route: out of Dunhuang, past Puchang Lake, then on to Datun City, Wuni City (Ruoqiang), Yuechang City (Qiemo), and then to Khotan, after which one went through Shule (near Kashgar) and finally entered Marghinan (the Fergana Valley) on the way to Persia and India.

The second was the northern route: through Yizhou (Hami), Gaochang (Turpan), Kucha, and other places, then into Balasagun and Talas before continuing on to Persia and elsewhere.

Judging by current travel safety and the convenience of resupply along the way, far more travelers took the northern route — that is, through Gaochang Uyghur territory — than the southern route through Zhongyun and Khotan.

This was advantageous to the Gaochang Uyghurs, but not necessarily to the Guiyi Army.

Goods coming from the Central Plains in the east were first squeezed by the throat by the Ganzhou Uyghurs, and after passing through their hands, were then harassed by the Gaochang Uyghurs to the west. That was why successive Military Governors of the Guiyi Army all hoped to shift the Silk Road to the southern route.

Because the relationship between the Guiyi Army and Khotan was extraordinary, Khotan would naturally agree. The two sides had already made contact many times, but this would cut off a vital source of wealth for the Gaochang Uyghurs! They would never sit idly by.

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