Chapter 613

A fine book...

In the age of cold weapons — or rather, for any army without mechanization — forced marching is a highly difficult business.

One might even say that since ancient times, there have never been many armies capable of forced-marching several hundred li over a few days and nights.

By the time such an army had force-marched that distance, the outcome of the battle was essentially already decided, because an army like that was invincible.

Especially in the cold-weapon age, it represented good nutrition, resolute will, a fierce desire to fight, unity of purpose from top to bottom, post-battle compensation and rewards that satisfied the soldiers, and absolute confidence in themselves.

The Biographies of Sunzi and Wu Qi says that one who races a hundred li for gain will trip up his general, and one who races fifty li for gain will arrive with only half his army — which actually illustrates the point very well.

It is not that a hundred-li surprise attack is certain to fail, but that armies capable of force-marching a hundred li and then going straight into a fight are simply too rare.

For most armies of the feudal era, it was the norm that after a fifty-li forced march, the soldiers had basically all run off.

But Zhang Zhao's army could certainly produce the effect of a thousand-li surprise attack.

Because this could be said to be the finest cavalry Zhang Zhou possessed, and moreover, concerning long-distance raids, they had already accumulated rich experience and summarized their lessons.

Zhang Zhao divided the twenty-three thousand men into a vanguard, a main force, and a rearguard. The vanguard was three thousand picked troops, with Murong Xinzhang as vanguard commander and Zhao Kuangyin, Zhang Xibao, Feng Jiye, and others as deputy commanders.

These three thousand men were all light cavalry with two horses per man. The horses wore no armor, and the men wore only light armor without shoulder guards, with leather helmets on their heads.

The horses chosen were third-generation mixed-blood Ferghana horses best suited to long-distance galloping. For weapons they carried no cavalry lances, only two horse bows, one hard bow, sixty feathered arrows, one hengdao saber for mounted combat, and a day's worth of water and dry rations.

As mounted skirmishers, their role was to scout the road ahead for the main army and scatter any small enemy forces they encountered.

Upon finding the target, they would first entangle it and wait for the main army to arrive before launching a surprise attack.

Of course, if the moment was right, they could also directly charge and break the enemy, then drive them in the direction the main army was coming from, sending the enemy to their own deaths.

Therefore Murong Xinzhang and his men moved very fast. The minimum requirement Zhang Zhao gave Murong Xinzhang was to cover the five hundred fifty li from Xiangzhou to Jizhou in three and a half days, then locate the main Khitan army and entangle it.

This requirement was no small thing. Historically, those said to have run three or four hundred li in a day were either fleeing for their lives, with no concern for whether they retained any fighting strength, or the accounts were vague and exaggerated.

The rest were like Zhang Zhao's case: the vanguard galloped without sparing the horses, found and entangled the enemy, and waited for the main force to arrive.

Then the record would become "covered five hundred li in a day and a night and smashed the enemy."

It was just that for Zhang Zhao, he could not bear to waste his precious Hexi Ferghana horses and Hexi folded-ear horses that way.

So the requirement he gave Murong Xinzhang was to cover about one hundred fifty li per day and night.

The main force in the center numbered eighteen thousand men, with three horses per man: one horse carried the heavy armor and weapons, while the other two were ridden in rotation.

They adopted the method of having one horse run thirty li first, then the cavalryman dismounting and walking fifteen li, then another horse running thirty li, and so on in successive relays.

The main force was the core of the fighting, divided into fifteen thousand half-armored elite cavalry.

The horses wore only simple face guards and chest armor, while the men wore cloth-faced iron armor. They were equipped with one horse bow, one hard bow, one extra-long long-tipped bow for lobbing shots, one horn crossbow, one iron whip or beak hammer, one hengdao saber for mounted combat, and one pear-blossom spear.

A few picked elites also carried one divine-arm bow, to be used as dismounted heavy infantry at critical moments.

The remaining three thousand riders were fifteen hundred fully armored cataphracts, each bringing along a brother, son, or nephew as a sworn follower, with both man and horse fully armored.

They were equipped with one cavalry lance, one horn crossbow, and one iron whip or beak hammer. Their way of fighting was the simplest of all: to charge the place where the enemy was most stubborn.

The two thousand men of the rearguard basically did logistical work: first, galloping supplies to the main force; second, gathering up straggling warhorses and cavalrymen and sending reserve horses and riders forward to the main force. Grain, fodder, and other baggage were also all with the rearguard.

Of course, if the main force could not break the situation open, the rearguard would immediately join the battle as well.

At the end of the fourth month, Zhang Zhao's entire army moved north from Weizhou (Daming) at extreme speed, passed through Beizhou, and entered Jizhou.

Just after passing Wuyi County in Jizhou, Liu Zhiyuan personally led forty thousand Hedong troops through Shenzhou (Shen County) and reached Hengshui County, a key town of Jizhou.

Hengshui County and Wuyi County were less than sixty li apart. Zhang Zhao, by the narrowest of margins, slipped past right under the nose of Liu Zhiyuan's great army and emerged behind them.

This was not to say that Zhang Zhao's twenty-three thousand men could not defeat Liu Zhiyuan's forty thousand, but that the Khitan's forty thousand cavalry were clearly a target more worth striking than Liu Zhiyuan's Hedong army.

When Zhang Zhao received definite word that Yelu Ruan had drawn all the forces of the Khitan Eastern Capital, Central Capital, Upper Capital, and Youzhou, scraped together forty thousand men, and was heading south, his face nearly split from grinning.

This was not them coming to pincer him — this was clearly heaven lending a hand!

Because even though the Khitan had strong hunting-and-fishing traits, their tactics were still mostly of the steppe style.

That joke about Khitan infantry actually outnumbering the Song dynasty's only came about around the time of Liao Daozong Yelu Hongji. For now, the Khitan's absolute main force was still cavalry.

With steppe empires like this, the difficulty has never been defeating them; the difficulty is finding them and forcing them into a decisive battle.

The difficulty is, after the decisive battle, how to inflict casualties on a large scale and deal a heavy blow to their effective strength.

Now the Khitan had suffered the disastrous defeat at Yanshi City, and one could say their elite troops were basically wiped out. What Zhang Zhao feared most was actually Yelu Ruan leading the Khitan back to Liaoxi.

And then steeling himself to withdraw to the old forests of the northeast and the later Inner Mongolia east — Tongliao, Hinggan League, and Hulunbuir.

If that happened, finishing them off would become very difficult.

This was a bitterness Zhu Di had tasted in history: he mobilized a great army only to find no one, and could do nothing but stage an armed parade across the great desert.

After all, super-heroes like Huo Qubing, who came with his own radar, had appeared only a handful of times in thousands of years of Chinese history.

Therefore, when Zhang Zhao learned that Yelu Ruan had settled down in Youzhou and was even building the Jiqing Palace, he directly issued the order to lift the trade embargo on goods to Youzhou.

He even sold the Khitan a batch of rice, flour, sugar, and tea at low prices — precisely because he feared Yelu Ruan would run back to the grasslands.

And this sugar-coated cannonball indeed produced an enormous effect. Not only did Yelu Ruan not want to leave Youzhou, but the Khitan nobles were also laid low by Youzhou's prosperity and such high-grade enjoyments as fine white rice, white flour, sugar, and tea.

Even a great talent like Yelu Wuzhi never once proposed leaving Youzhou.

After passing Wuyi, they entered the territory of Cangzhou and Yingzhou. Although this was the rear area, Zhang Zhao was actually freer here than in Weizhou and Beizhou.

Because before the great army set out, Zhang Zhao had sent Gao Xingzhou to Cangzhou to win over the Cangzhou Henghai Army and the former Beishan heroes scattered across Cang, Ying, and Mo.

At the same time, on the Brocade Guard side, they also went north together with Huangfu Chong, Du Zhimin, and others, and obtained the cooperation of a large number of Hebei local strongmen.

Throughout the four prefectures of Cang, Ying, Mo, and Yi, local strongmen were everywhere passing intelligence to the Zhou army.

They even organized mounted teams to relay information for the great army, as well as to attack traitors loyal to the Khitan and small Khitan grain-requisitioning detachments.

Thus, once he reached Cangzhou, Zhang Zhao's information about the Khitan became even clearer.

Yelu Ruan still did not know that Zhang Zhao had already come, but Zhang Zhao not only knew that Yelu Ruan had come — he knew exactly where he was and how many li he marched each day, down to the finest detail.

But Zhang Zhao's time was running short, because just now a rearguard scout rider had come to report that Tuyuhun mounted scouts from Hedong, under Liu Zhiyuan's command, had already probed north of Wuyi County and clashed on a small scale with the rearguard bringing up the rear.

Zhang Zhao knew this surely meant the Hedong army had seen the traces left by his twenty thousand cavalry on the march.

Liu Zhiyuan had now sent Hedong Tuyuhun mounted scouts to investigate. Once he figured out that Zhang Zhao had already slipped past to his oblique rear, it was highly likely he would stop attacking Beizhou and send out the Hedong elite cavalry to pincer Zhang Zhao together with the Khitan.

And just as Zhang Zhao led his army to Cangzhou and began searching for the Khitan force's exact position, the great battle at the mouth of Hezhang Valley had reached its most ferocious point.

After two days and nights of releasing water, the water at the mouth of Hezhang Valley had returned to its normal level.

But the entire valley mouth had become a marsh. One step in and the mud reached the ankles. For the heavier warhorses, galloping while carrying a rider was utterly impossible.

Guo Wei personally led seventeen thousand men and surrounded Zhang Zhaojun and Huang Yingda's thirty-five hundred men on a small hill.

To the north were Bai Wenke's five thousand men from Hezhang; to the northwest were Shi Hongzhao's thirty-five hundred; the frontal assault was carried out by five thousand Hedong elite troops under the control of Li Chongjin, Bai Zairong, and others.

The remaining five thousand men were held personally by Guo Wei and deployed to the south.

Nearly twenty thousand men surrounding three sides and leaving one open — from the very start, the fighting reached white-hot intensity.

The water-soaked earth restricted both armies' mobility, so much so that even forming ranks and stabbing at each other became difficult. Both sides, by unspoken agreement, abandoned lower-body armor such as thigh guards and switched to crossbow and bow fire.

Zhang Zhaojun's troops had a certain stockade to defend, but the ground was too small to hold thirty-five hundred men, so they had no choice but to come out of the stockade and fight.

Guo Wei's army, meanwhile, used large shields as walls and the mud as chevaux-de-frise, attacking fiercely from three sides.

Infantry that had lost its speed of movement was simply the best target for bows and crossbows. Both sides poured wave after wave of arrows at each other — it was purely trading life for life.

Close-quarters valor had become completely useless. The only things one could rely on were the sturdiness of one's armor, the accuracy of one's archery, and luck.

However, Zhang Zhaojun's force was small while Guo Wei's was large and could rotate troops in shifts, so the scales of victory began to tilt toward the Hedong army.

But Zhang Zhaojun was not panicked, because he had already made preparations to fight the Hedong army to the death inside the stockade.

In the waterlogged ground, the Hedong army could rely on numerical superiority in bow and crossbow fire, but once on the hard ground inside the stockade, the Zhou army's close-combat advantage could be brought into play.

While the fighting below raged, up in the hilltop fort, Li Rong walked with a face full of smiles toward the camp where Shi Wen of the Hedong army was stationed.

Behind him followed only a few dozen personal attendants, along with several dozen soldiers disguised as imperial guardsmen under escort.

At the same time, there were also several large carts, and on top of the carts were laid out several sets of cloth-faced iron armor.

This armor, unique to the Zhou state, was prized by warriors throughout the realm for its ease of carrying and wearing, its considerable defensive power, and its extremely light weight compared to lamellar armor.

The Hedong soldiers were no exception. At the very least, Shi Wen's eyes never left those cloth-faced iron armors that were said to be gifts for him.

But under the long influence of his elder brother Shi Hongzhao, Shi Wen, at the moment he could not resist opening the gate, retained a sliver of reason. He would only allow Li Rong to enter with no more than five personal attendants.

A wary look immediately appeared on Li Rong's face. He called out to Shi Wen from outside the stockade gate, and once Shi Wen arrived, he questioned him without any courtesy.

"Does the Chief Supervisor wish to kill me? I have come all the way to your stockade gate, and you will not even let a few dozen attendants enter?"

Shi Wen actually felt in his heart that this was indeed somewhat improper. The other party had come so enthusiastically to offer surrender, yet his own side was guarding against them in every way, and such a cautious manner did not suit the aesthetic of warriors of this age.

But since the words had already been spoken, Shi Wen could only evade vaguely: "This is the Commander's military order."

Li Rong's trusted followers immediately began clamoring, and Li Shousi stepped forward and roared.

"I have long heard that Shi Hongzhao of Zhengzhou is a hero, but I did not expect such pettiness. Our Troop Commander has come wholeheartedly to join you — is this the spirit of the Hedong commanders?"

Hearing the opposing soldiers making such a racket, Shi Wen became even more certain that the other side had truly come to surrender. Otherwise, they would not be making such an angry fuss.

One had to remember that at this moment the two armies were not yet one family, yet their Troop Commander had come over directly.

Li Rong's face was also full of anger. He waved a hand to stop the soldiers' clamor.

"Since there is a Commander's military order, then I shall return to my camp and await the Commander's summons.

But these ten sets of cloth-faced iron armor — since I said they would be given to the Chief Supervisor, there is no reason to take them back. I, Li Rong, keep my word."

With that, Li Rong personally stepped forward and pushed the cart loaded with the cloth-faced iron armor right up to the stockade gate with his own hands.

Ten sets of cloth-faced iron armor were not light — over three hundred jin. Without opening the stockade gate, they naturally could not be brought inside.

Shi Wen hesitated briefly, then waved a hand and had his soldiers open the small gate in front of him.

First, Li Rong's expression was utterly normal and did not give Shi Wen the slightest sense that anything was wrong.

Second, Shi Wen had dozens of men standing around him, all wearing leather armor, and not far from the stockade gate there were at least a hundred more.

Li Rong's side, by contrast, wore no armor, only long robes. Even counting the prisoners, their total number did not reach a hundred. Shi Wen was confident he could completely overpower them.

Of course, there was also the exchange just now — his own side had indeed seemed somewhat lacking in forthrightness. Shi Wen could not save face and was unwilling to keep fussing over whether to open the gate.

What if they turned around and left? Wouldn't the ten precious sets of cloth-faced iron armor be lost for nothing?

Shi Wen felt this way, and the soldiers around him felt the same. In particular, Shi Wen's trusted men, thinking that one of those sets of cloth-faced iron armor would be theirs, were even more eager.

With a creak, the stockade gate was opened. Immediately, one of Shi Wen's attendants sensed something was wrong.

Because at that moment Li Rong suddenly let out a low shout, his hands suddenly exerting force, the veins bulging on his forehead. He shoved the cart and slammed it violently through the gate.

The attendant was caught off guard and was instantly knocked to the ground. The surrounding Hedong soldiers all collectively froze for a moment, their minds still in a state of shock.

Seizing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Li Rong swiftly pulled a bound hard bow from under the cart, and the attendants behind him handed him arrows hidden in their clothes.

One must know that this fierce general of Bingzhou, who had once served as an attendant of Li Congrong, was proudest not of his thousand-jin strength in both arms, but of his archery.

In that instant, Li Rong brought his lifetime of archery to its peak. He stood on the cart while one attendant steadied it from behind.

The bowstring rose and fell like the tides; his arms spread like an eagle's wings.

Amid the rapid twang-twang-twang of shooting, the arrows seemed to have grown eyes, shooting down the surrounding Hedong soldiers one after another.

A Hedong soldier bellowed and, trusting in his armor, charged forward to fight to the death. Li Rong shouted and loosed an arrow that struck the soldier squarely in the face.

The soldier howled like a wounded beast and collapsed to the ground, writhing like an earthworm.

Soon two more came up. Li Rong loosed another arrow and struck one of them in the neck. The soldier, who had not lowered his neck guard, went weak at the knees and clutched his neck, not daring to charge further for fear of bleeding to death.

The other had already reached Li Rong. Li Rong set down his bow, picked up a meteor hammer from the cart, and swung it at the man's head.

The spiked meteor hammer, its force amplified by the pull of its iron chain, caved the soldier's cheek right in.

In an instant, Li Rong had killed seven or eight men, and the Hedong soldiers were all terrified.

Just then, several arrows came from a distance. One struck Li Rong square in the chest but did not penetrate — it hung there crookedly. It turned out that beneath his robes he was wearing a suit of ring-mail armor.

The one shooting at Li Rong was also a skilled archer under Shi Wen. Unfortunately, due to extreme tension, of three rapid shots only one hit, and it was blocked by Li Rong's inner armor.

Li Rong roared in pain, drew his bow, and with a single arrow shot the man down.

At this moment, Zhang Quan, Li Shousi, and the others roared and charged in through the stockade gate. It turned out they, like Li Rong, were all wearing inner armor.

And the several dozen "escorted" Wuwei Garrison imperial guardsmen also suddenly erupted. They had not been tightly bound, and under the guise of prisoners, they were openly wearing their gray, dusty armor.

And Li Rong's attendants, who wore no armor, quickly pulled cloth-faced iron armor from the pushcarts and threw it on, and over a hundred men surged like a flood into the Hedong army's stockade.

The heavily armored Hedong soldiers were quickly shoved to the ground, pinned by several men working together, their neck-guards flipped open and blades stabbed into their throats; those without armor were chased down and cut apart by the Zhou troops in light armor.

Striking with forethought against the unprepared, Li Rong's assault immediately achieved excellent results.

And while Li Rong and his men were at work, the soldiers on the mountain finished donning their armor and came charging down with a great clamor.

And once they arrived, the Hedong army's defeat was already sealed.

For even when encamped in the open, apart from the soldiers on duty, the rest could not possibly remain armored at all times.

Therefore the main force on duty for the Hedong army was only the hundred-odd men before Li Rong, while the Zhou troops were mostly armored, so their fighting strength was naturally beyond comparison.

At the foot of the mountain, Zhang Zhaojun saw that the exchange of crossbow fire was extremely exhausting, so he took the initiative to contract his forces, drawing everyone back around the hill.

He had the Left Jinwu Guard soldiers outside wear two layers of cloth-faced iron armor and ring the camp, forming a wall of steel, while the Uyghur sworn followers, unarmored and bearing strong bows, traded shots with the Hedong army from the high ground.

Guo Wei likewise used heavily armored troops with large shields as cover, attacking in successive waves and steadily wearing down the stamina of the Zhou armored soldiers.

It could be said that Guo Wei's plan had achieved at least sixty or seventy percent of its objective.

More than three thousand Zhou troops were pinned down and unable to move, forced to fight to the death in the mud against a Hedong force more than six times their number.

The silt was treacherously slippery; to say nothing of cavalry, even an armored soldier who lost his footing for a moment would fall to the ground, and then it was very hard to get back up.

The two sides fought from the beginning of the si hour — nine in the morning — until the middle of the wei hour, past one in the afternoon.

Two double-hours of bloody fighting left the Zhou armored soldiers utterly exhausted, and the crowded, chaotic camp could not properly arrange rest or rotation.

Zhang Zhaojun, with extreme reluctance, hardened his heart and picked death-sworn soldiers. Taking advantage of a lull in the fighting, he ordered them to mount warhorses as a vanguard and released all of the more than three thousand warhorses in the camp.

The warhorses that could be selected by a main guard unit like the Left Jinwu Guard, part of the imperial personal army, were without exception fine horses.

So when several thousand fine horses were released at once, the Hedong army's formation outside instantly fell into chaos.

The men pressing the attack grew fewer, and the men grabbing horses immediately grew more numerous.

Even many officers of the Chief Supervisor rank were directing their personal attendants to seize horses, and not even Guo Wei's killing of several men could stop it.

A fine horse, a heavenly horse from Hexi — its pull on the soldiers and officers was something the Hedong army's military law simply could not restrain.

Any one of the Left Jinwu Guard's Hexi heavenly horses was worth sixty or seventy strings of cash in Hedong, and most would fetch even more.

These were not warhorses — they were silver and coin on the move! Only a fool would keep discipline and not grab them.

Zhang Zhaojun immediately seized the chance and ordered Huang Yingda to lead a fierce countercharge, driving back the Hedong troops who had already gained the upper hand. Then he at once adjusted his deployment, using the space freed up by the horses to pull all his soldiers back into the camp.

Guo Wei was so furious his ghost-fire blazed three zhang high, and when he saw his own nephew Li Chongjin directing men to seize Hexi horses, he was left utterly speechless.

And before long, Bai Zairong's attendants and Guo Congyi's attendants even came to blows, because both sides believed that the heavenly horse gleaming with golden light was one they had caught first.

Of course they had to fight over it — this was the mount of Ma Shacai Zhang Zhaojun, named Shalijin, a half-brother by the same mother to Murong Xinzhang's second-generation Xue Li Yanchen. Even in Hexi, it was a divine steed rarely seen.

Guo Wei looked painfully at Guo Jin beside him and said, "Once we break the Zhou army across from us, what heavenly horse could we not have?

Yet now they scramble and loot. When the Zhou main force arrives and we still have not taken this camp, all this painstaking design will be for nothing.

If heaven's timing, earth's advantage, and men's unity are all in place and we still cannot deal the Zhou army a heavy blow, then the realm will be surnamed Zhang!"

Guo Jin had been attacked by Yin Yaozi, sent by Zhang Zhao, while serving as Military Governor of the Baoda Army in Fuzhou, and had only escaped back to Hedong after great hardship. Naturally he bore no goodwill toward Zhang and Zhou, and on hearing this he forced himself to rally and console Guo Wei.

"The officers have gained so many fine horses. Hereafter the prestige of our Hedong elite cavalry should recover a measure or two.

The Chief Commander should quickly issue word to the officers that there are still several thousand sets of cloth-faced iron armor across the way, and that after the camp is broken they will all be granted to the officers. Perhaps that can recover some fighting spirit."

Guo Wei drew a deep breath and said in a low voice, "It can only be so. I only hope the Zhou main force arrives a little later."

But Guo Wei was clearly thinking too much. An hour later, Guo Wei urged the Hedong army into two fierce assaults on Zhang Zhaojun's camp, but the Zhou troops, no longer having to roll in the mud, shared a common hatred and were united as one, and several thousand of them beat back the attacking ten-thousand-strong Hedong force in disarray.

In two assaults, far from taking the camp, they could not even suppress it.

Just then, on the other side of the Zhang River, flames rose everywhere. Guo Wei looked over in horror — it turned out that after Li Rong took the stockade, he had not chosen to come and clash head-on with Guo Wei's main force, but instead fiercely attacked the camp Guo Wei had left on the other side of the Zhang River.

In this battle, Li Rong fully displayed his natural talent.

After taking the Hedong army camp, Li Rong at once trumpeted his praises throughout the Hedong force, declaring that the Great Zhou Emperor had already appointed him Military Governor of Zhaoyi in Luzhou, and that as long as Shi Wen's thousand-odd Wujie Army soldiers followed him, they would share the wealth of Zhaoyi's three prefectures and nineteen counties.

The Wujie Army, seeing Shi Wen killed and reckoning that with Shi Hongzhao's harsh discipline there would likely be no way out alive, and further enticed by Li Rong's promise of twenty strings per man, immediately turned coat on the spot with the agreement of several Chief Supervisors.

Li Rong understood the minds of these yabing guards at this moment; had Zhang Zhaojun come, he certainly could not have achieved this effect.

After winning over the thousand-odd Wujie Army soldiers, Li Rong had more than two thousand men in hand. They used the Wujie Army's hide rafts to cross the river and went straight to raid the camp where Guo Wei had stockpiled grain, setting fires as they fought, and even nearly broke into Guo Wei's main stockade.

On this side of the river, Guo Wei was greatly alarmed and was just about to arrange for Li Chongjin to lead troops across the pontoon bridge to relieve them, when suddenly beacon smoke rose thickly in the east.

This was sent by the scouts Guo Wei had posted, signaling that another large Zhou force had arrived.

Two quarters of an hour later, Yan Jin ordered Zhang Zhaojiu (Dunzhu) to lead a thousand vanguard troops onto the battlefield.

Zhang Zhao then raised the white sun flag with gold edging that symbolized the Zhang Zhou imperial house, the yellow silk canopy that symbolized the Emperor's personal presence, the silver-white gold-edged Three Stars banner that symbolized the army's supreme commander, and the great silver-white banner with golden tassels.

When the Zhou troops in the camp saw the Emperor had come in person, a great cheer erupted at once. They who had been utterly exhausted were suddenly full of life and vigor, and beat the attacking Hedong army even more savagely.

When the Hedong army saw the Son of Heaven of Zhou arrive, and the great camp across the Zhang River catch fire, they were terrified. Bai Zairong's and other units broke away from the battle first, scrambling for the pontoon bridge, and the battlefield fell into chaos.

Guo Wei was furious. He ordered Guo Jin to take his banner of office and kill several dozen men before the rout was finally halted.

But the army's morale was already lost, and with the Zhou troops pressing from both sides, Guo Wei had no choice but to abandon the siege, leave behind the baggage, burn the pontoon bridge, and cross the river in retreat.

Zhang Zhaojiu at once joined forces with Zhang Zhaojun and Huang Yingda and gave fierce chase through the wet, slippery mud.

The Hedong troops who had not managed to cross the river trampled one another, and those who threw themselves into the Zhang River and drowned were beyond counting; the warhorses they had seized were almost all lost again.

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