Chapter 715: Draw the Bow, Draw the Strongest

The Yedugua tribe was also one of the Nine Clans of Tatars in Uyghur parlance; historically it was later absorbed by the Kereyid clan of the Zubu people and became part of the Mongol nation.

At this time the Yedugua tribe nomadized southeast of the Yanran Mountains, the steppe tribe closest to Han territory, and for that reason the Kereyid clan occupying Woluduo treated them as a southern outpost.

The Yedugua chieftain Buniegu and Duosage were old acquaintances, and the two were also related by marriage, so the Yedugua could be counted as a tribe quite close to the Northern Zubu.

But after Duosage raised the banner of opposing the spread of the Six Dharma Sect, Buniegu still fell into hesitation and wavering.

Because their grazing lands lay farther south, the Yedugua tribe had no small amount of contact with the Hexi Tatar people attached to the Central Plains Zhou court and with the Tangut tribes of Shuofang (Lingzhou).

So compared with Duosage, Buniegu knew better what sort of existence they were now going up against.

Though the Yedugua tribe could field over ten thousand cavalry, Buniegu knew that steppe cavalry like this simply could not stand against the iron cavalry of the Central Plains.

Back when the Shuofang Tangut Yuan Yanchao tribe still nomadized around the Hetao region, every autumn when the air turned crisp and the warhorses grew fat, the Yedugua's southern clansmen were plundered by the Yuan Yanchao tribe no small number of times.

Yes, you read that right. It was not the Yedugua riding south to plunder the Shuofang Tangut, but the Shuofang Tangut riding north to plunder the Yedugua, seizing their women and cattle and sheep.

This plundering lasted a full thirty-some years, and only recently, when those Tangut cavalry who came to raid them suddenly vanished, did the Yedugua tribe gain a rare peace.

Buniegu sent men south to inquire and only then learned that those fierce Tangut had followed some Great King Murong eastward to live a better life, and this Great King Murong was said to be the eldest son of the Central Plains Son of Heaven.

So ever since learning of this, Buniegu's heart had grown even more worried.

In his eyes, although the Shuofang Tangut could only rob him and not destroy him, they were still a very powerful existence!

These Tangut could field at least five or six thousand riders; though fewer in number than the Yedugua, they were superbly equipped, with at least two or three hundred sets of iron armor and over a thousand sets of leather armor.

Once they appeared, the Yedugua tribe dared not face them in battle without a numerical advantage of five to one or more.

And if so powerful a tribe had obediently migrated eastward within a single year, forty to fifty thousand people in all, then how powerful must the Central Plains court be that could compel them to migrate east willingly?

At the same time, because the Yedugua tribe lived farther south, many herders in the tribe — at least thirty or forty percent — had converted to the Six Dharma Sect, and only Buniegu's suppression kept them from showing it openly.

After all, compared with the doctrines of other religions, the Six Dharma Sect's teachings were simply too easy to understand.

Yesterday, two of Buniegu's six sons had come to urge him: better not to keep following Duosage; the Tang people were not to be trifled with. But Buniegu still could not make up his mind for the moment.

At dawn, faint light began to shine into the mountain hollow where the Yedugua tribe was gathered. Over ten thousand tents sounded like a great many people, but in Han territory that was not a large scale at all — only sixty or seventy thousand people.

The Yedugua tribe's pastures lay beneath the Yanran Mountains, stretching from northwest to southeast in a long strip following the mountain's course.

Because on this semi-arid steppe, the tribe's survival depended on the snowmelt water from the Yanran Mountains.

The notion that steppe tribes simply cannot be tracked and can move anywhere at any time is wrong; if they could live by grazing just anywhere, the steppe would be paradise everywhere.

In reality, production and life on the steppe depend utterly on water sources, and places where people can gather in large numbers must follow the rivers.

That is to say, on the steppe, if one can find a great river, one can certainly catch a great tribe; suddenly they cannot flee, and fleeing elsewhere is death as well.

Only when staying means the whole tribe will die out do they cast everything aside and run first.

For example, the final Battle of Mobei under Wei Qing and Huo Qubing, and the Yongle Emperor's five sweeps of Mobei — then there truly was no choice; no matter how many died, they could only run first and preserve the spark.

Historically, although Zhu Di's five sweeps of Mobei several times did not even catch sight of a single soul, the Mongols who died in secret from the brutal environment and lack of supplies while fleeing the Ming army's blades were beyond counting.

Compared with that, Kim the Second's Arduous March was mere child's play.

Yang Jiye slowly draped a short cloak with a silver-white base embroidered with golden swastika patterns over his upper-body armor.

The steppe tribes of this time had neither the bloody lessons of the Han-era Xiongnu nor the shrewdness of later Mongols; they could not yet make so resolute a decision to flee.

As Yang Jiye put on the short cloak, the soldiers and officers around him were likewise donning cloaks or tying silk scarves with golden swastika patterns around their arms.

This was the idea of the ever-crafty Yang Guizhong. He had once served as County Magistrate of Taozhou in Shuofang — the area of later Shizuishan City — where he had specifically administered the Shuofang Tangut herders, so he knew something of the Yedugua tribe's situation.

He knew that many in this tribe had converted to the Six Dharma Sect, and that if they now entered under the Six Dharma Sect's banner, they could greatly reduce the herders' resistance.

Riluge had risen very early. As he lifted the tent flap and stepped out, he held in his hands a Buddha statue whose colors had nearly all faded away.

The statue was carved of wood. When it was bought, the robes on the Buddha had been brilliantly multicolored; an eminent monk from Juyan Lake had consecrated the statue and left behind several packets of herbal medicine, which cured the pain in Riluge's mother's legs.

From that time on, Riluge rose very early every day, and just as the sun was rising, he would pray to this Buddha statue and chant scriptures whose meaning he did not understand but whose rhythm was very pleasing.

"At that time, the Supreme Heaven was in the Treasure Sea..."

But he had only chanted the opening of the scripture when Riluge saw distant birds startle into flight, and then the earth began to tremble, as if a thousand horses and ten thousand soldiers were charging toward them.

'Boom!' A tremendous sound rang out, and Riluge looked up.

Disaster! The place where the great sound came from was one of the tribe's main resting grounds for their warhorses.

Brilliant fire streaked across the dim dawn sky, and countless startled warhorses neighed in panic and began to run wildly.

Soon, these intelligent horses quickly found their leaders: some exceptionally tall 'foreign handsome fellows,' with legs so long they put these steppe horses to shame, were galloping forward.

After a moment of panic, the mares and foals in the lightly startled herd, with their strong herd instinct, followed these powerful 'handsome fellows' and ran.

They pursued behind the Zhou army's warhorses, creating the appearance of a vast host of thousands of horses and men.

Yang Jiye charged at the very front, one man leading the way. Although he was already a Commander leading a thousand elite troops, that did not change the fact that he was still a youth just eighteen years old.

At this moment Yang Jiye had forgotten any thought of commanding his subordinates; in his mind there surfaced only one image — a man and horse like a dragon, as if wrapped in a blaze of dazzling sunlight.

The great Han Champion Marquis Huo Qubing!

This idol of all warriors for a thousand years had, at the age of eighteen, led the elite cavalry of the Yulin Guard out beyond the frontier with his uncle, the Grand General Wei Qing, and made his name shake the world in his very first campaign.

Today he, Yang Jiye, as the Sage's adopted son, at eighteen years of age, led the Yulin elite cavalry out beyond the frontier — how could his heart not surge with emotion?

Fueled by this extreme excitement, Yang Jiye's already peerless mounted archery was pushed to its absolute limit. Holding his strong bow with both hands spread like an eagle's wings, he shot left and then right, and on both sides of his horse men fell to his bowstring beyond counting.

In truth, Yang Jiye did not need to command at all now, because the men he had brought were the elite of the elite of the entire Zhang-Zhou army; even the youngest had six or seven years of battlefield experience, and the lowest-ranked among them at least held the military rank of Chengxin Lang.

Elites like these needed no commanding; even three or five of them could display the ferocity and initiative of dozens or even a hundred men.

Seeing their commander charging alone at the very front and fighting so valiantly, the soldiers and officers could not help but feel their blood boil even hotter.

The seven hundred-odd riders were divided into ten waves, seventy riders to each wave; those in front were responsible for killing, those behind for sowing chaos and mopping up stragglers.

Another seventy riders roamed the outer perimeter, preventing the Yedugua tribe's warriors from breaking out and organizing resistance outside.

One jar of fire oil, one fire lance, and a tent erupted in despairing screams.

Countless people, cattle, and sheep were mixed together; far from resisting, many had not even put on clothes, and truly like beasts frightened witless they ran wildly about with the livestock.

In a single charge, Yang Jiye and his men broke through the outermost Yedugua tents, and with one heart and one mind they charged toward the ordu of the Yedugua chieftain Buniegu.

Blood made the color of the flames seem even more brutal, and the firelight shining on the blood that covered the ground made it seem as if the liquid itself were burning too!

At around six in the morning they were suddenly attacked, and the Yedugu tribe, which was really just some armed herders, immediately fell into panic and chaos.

Riluge was on the first line of defense outside the chieftain Bunigu's great tent. As a famous warrior of the tribe, he naturally received such treatment.

Seeing enemies coming from who knew how many directions, with chaos everywhere, Riluge did not run.

Because his family and property were all here, and winter was almost upon them. If he ran, he would die in the wilderness anyway. The best course was to resist.

The herders closer to Bunigu's ordu were more elite, and as a warrior of the tribe, many people instinctively gathered toward Riluge at the first moment.

Before long, more than a hundred warriors had gathered around him. His wife and eight-year-old son, faces flushed, carried over his leather armor, bow and arrows, and long spear.

Though the women and children were afraid, they did not flee in disorder. Instead they roared and prayed loudly, cheering on their fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands.

These herders close to Bunigu's ordu great tent were the most elite of the entire Yedugu tribe, and also the sharers of the Yedugu tribe's privileges. They would not be as lacking in fighting spirit as the herders on the periphery.

Riluge was just about to mount his horse when suddenly a flash of gold entered his eyes.

It was a great banner so familiar to him — silver-white as its base, a golden swastika facing the rising sun, as if radiating boundless light!

This was a slope that was not very steep. Not only Riluge saw it; many of the Yedugu warriors around him saw it too.

Riluge's younger brother Asige suddenly turned his head to look at his elder brother, and cried out with a mixture of surprise and fear.

"Elder Brother, it is the swastika dharma banner of the Supreme Heaven! They must be the chastising knights sent by the Great Wisdom Dharma King to punish the faithless!"

A burly man with a fierce face, holding a great club, also said with some fear: "No. My son's life was saved by a swastika dharma practitioner of the Supreme Heaven. Mortals cannot contend against the knights of the Supreme Heaven."

The shouting women and children stopped shouting. The half-grown youths holding small short bows and small wooden spears stopped stirring. It was as if that spirit of resistance to the death had been pressed on pause in an instant.

It looked far, but in truth it was only a few hundred paces. Yang Jiye and the others would soon charge up to this stretch of slope. He too saw that group of herders who had already organized themselves — these men were surely the elite of the Yedugu tribe.

Riluge wrestled with himself for a long while. He looked toward the white yak-tail great banner that symbolized the Yedugu chieftain, then looked again at the silver-white banner with the golden swastika in the distance.

After taking a deep breath, he suddenly raised high the Buddha statue the size of a human head that he held in his hand.

With him taking the lead, the herders from various households who had gathered around also brought out the hidden Buddha statues and scriptures symbolizing the Six Dharma Sect.

Riluge's younger brother Asige, supporting their mother, whose legs had already recovered well, even directly raised a large swastika banner.

Very tacitly, they opened a passage leading to Bunigu's ordu.

"They're believers of the Six Dharma Sect! Charge through from their side!"

Pan Mei had the sharpest eyes. Just as Yang Jiye was about to prepare to detour, he keenly spotted Riluge and the others.

Yang Jiye was overjoyed. He immediately turned his horse's head slightly, and with more than a hundred riders, charged through here with a roar!

Bunigu rushed out of his tent wearing only a leather robe and holding a short knife.

From his higher vantage point he saw Riluge and the others open a passage, and his eyes nearly split with fury. He roared orders for the guards who had rushed to his side to shoot!

But it was too late! A distance of no more than thirty paces — Yang Jiye's Hexi dragon horse, worth more than a thousand pieces of gold, needed only a few breaths to charge across.

Arrows flew at Yang Jiye and three struck him, but all three were blocked by the gold-thread ringmail armor he wore, hanging limply from his chest.

Almost at the same moment, while his warhorse galloped at high speed, Yang Jiye picked up two arrows with three fingers and shot them out in rapid succession. Two of Bunigu's guards standing in front of him were shot dead on the spot.

Then Yang Jiye threw away his bow, took up his cavalry lance, and with a thunderous shout, the guards gathered in front of Bunigu did not dare block him at all, scattering in a swarm.

Bunigu was struck directly on the forehead by the lance. His head snapped back and he was dead.

Wails rose. A group of guards already in armor surged forward, and among them, the ones howling most bitterly looked to be Bunigu's sons.

Yang Jiye grew even more excited. He spurred his warhorse hard and charged alone at the dozens of men.

As expected, he broke straight through in one blow, the enemy's blood splashing all over Yang Jiye's battle robe. Infantry not in formation were simply no match for Yang the Invincible.

Yang Jiye was already slaughtering in all directions, and Li Cunhui was almost there too!

Ever since receiving Yang Jiye's message, Li Cunhui had immediately realized this was a once-in-a-thousand-years opportunity.

Moreover, this fierce general who had followed Zhang Zhao for thirteen years and fought in over a hundred battles, large and small, was far bolder than Yang Jiye.

What had our Sage Zhang relied on to rise in the old days? He had relied on winning by surprise, using elite troops against the mediocre. How many times had extreme maneuvers and using the small to overcome the great won him the realm he now held?

As for Lu Sanlang's analysis that Duosage could gather thirty or forty thousand cavalry within five days, Li Cunhui was utterly dismissive.

If Duosage had such ability, he would have unified the steppe tribes long ago. How would he have let the Khitan dominate the grasslands?

"Xiao Xian! You tell us — if we're going to strike Duosage, what should we watch out for?"

Li Cunhui roared, and a bald, tall, burly man galloped over.

The reason he was bald was that he had originally been a Xi person, and had only recently won Li Cunhui's trust and been promoted into the Right Yulin Guard. He had shaved his head to conceal his original shaved-pate Khitan-style haircut.

"Answering Lord Li: even if Duosage had a hundred thousand riders, they would still be nothing but clay chickens and pottery dogs.

But the steppe puts great stock in bloodline and lineage, so the most critical thing is to capture or kill Duosage. Otherwise, if he flees to the Northern Sea, next year he will come back like a rat and cause trouble again!"

"Hahaha!" Li Cunhui laughed three times, his old habit of mocking and belittling others surfacing again.

"Look at that! Your old man always said this Xiao Xian, though he's a Xi, must have the seed of a Han who went beyond the frontier in his ancestry. He has the heroic spirit of our Han folk.

That fool Lu Sanlang doesn't know a damn thing. He's been in Ningyuan too long and gone soft in the head. Even if there were a hundred thousand riders, what of it!

We just need to do the job cleanly and not let Duosage escape."

The generals and guards around Li Cunhui burst into laughter, howling like ghosts and wolves: "Old Man Li is right! We are the Sage's invincible bears and tigers!"

"Pass on my order: each squad leader personally selects men. First pick one thousand riders, each with three horses, carrying only one day's rations and one suit of half-armor. Follow the messenger back to link up with Lu Sanlang first, and have him organize the Western Zubu herders to join us, then immediately launch a surprise attack."

After Li Cunhui finished speaking, he looked around. The crowd of officers immediately puffed out their chests and stuck out their bellies, striking invincible poses and looking at Li Cunhui expectantly.

"Qu Yanqing, Pei Tongyuan, Cao Bin, Murong Yanzhao — you four are the vanguard officers. Depart immediately!"

"Orders received!" The four were overjoyed, and amid the envious gazes of countless comrades, began preparing to depart.

Li Cunhui raised his hand again. "The second selection of two thousand riders will be led by me personally.

Wang Shenqi, Yao Kechou — you two go pick men now. One man, three horses, carry full provisions. After two quarters of an hour's rest and preparation, depart immediately."

Wang Shenqi and Yao Kechou were overjoyed to receive the order and hurried off to prepare.

Only now did Li Cunhui ride up to the twenty-odd cavalry officers, and looking at the five in the front row, he snorted.

"Li Zun, Fan Changgong, Li Wanshan, Zhang Boqucha, Zhao Jingangnu.

The Sage placed you at my side, saying you are invincible mounted elites, fine sons of our Hexi and Longyou. Today, can you charge at the very front of the whole army and let me, Li Cunhui, see it with my own eyes?"

These five men were all champions of ten thousand picked by Zhang Zhao in Tianshui Prefecture and Liangzhou Prefecture this time — Li Zun and Fan Changgong need no introduction.

Zhangbo Qucha, nicknamed Blind Yak, had brute strength enough to seize a galloping horse by the neck and hurl it to the ground.

Zhao Jingangnu was the legitimate son of the Zhao family of West Camp River in the Liugu Tribe, named Jingangnu because his mother was a devout believer in the Buddha.

His skill with lance and bow ranked first among the younger generation of military families; he styled himself "Sai Zilong of Helong," riding a white horse, bearing a silver lance, and draped in a white robe, aspiring to become a second Murong Xinzhang.

"Duke of Su, just you watch! Jingangnu will never disgrace you."

Zhao Jingangnu was of the second generation of a military family, and however proud he might be, he could not put on airs before Li Cunhui, so he even showed a measure of courtesy.

The other four were deeply provoked by Li Cunhui's look of looking down his nose at them, and they howled that they would make Li Cunhui see their valor, wishing they could charge before Duosage right now and shoot him dead with a single arrow.

Everyone was excited; only Zhang Yuanhui and Li Zhaoyuan, eldest son of Li Ruotai and first cousin of Zhang Xiancun, Duke of Dian, were downcast.

Because the two of them trained in armored cavalry, and now that they had to fight speed with speed, they were sure to be assigned to lead the rear army.

(End of Chapter)

Related