Chapter 749: Legacies of the Old Days and a New Era

Zhao Zaili was truly unlucky. Who could have imagined that in this tiny fort along the river, there would be an old Weibo yabing guard?

To be precise, the old blind man and Zhao Zaili had once had a history between them.

Back when the Weibo yabing guards rebelled against Li Cunxu, Zhao Zaili had wanted to flee over the wall, but he was spotted by the yabing officer Huangfu Hui, who grabbed him by the heel and dragged him down from the wall, forcing him to join the rebellion. The old blind man had been standing right beside Huangfu Hui at that moment.

The old blind man not only knew Zhao Zaili, he also knew this batch of Weibo yabing guards whom Zhao Zaili had taken as his trusted confidants.

These remnants of the Weibo Silver Spear Capital who had come to seize the pass and then burn the pontoon bridge at Baima Ford, no matter how much they tried to conceal themselves, were recognized by the old blind man in an instant.

As the beacon smoke rose from Yanhe Fort, the several dozen Huazhou Central Guard soldiers defending the Baima Ford pontoon bridge immediately, under the command of their squad leader, dragged over the various chevaux-de-frise they had prepared, lit their own beacon smoke, and at the same time evacuated the large number of traveling merchants and travelers at the ford.

Beacon smoke traveled very fast. In at most a quarter of an hour, the great bell on the muster platform in the Huazhou Central Guard camp east of Huazhou city began to ring out, clang, clang.

Kangjia Fort, this was the village closest to Yanhe Fort, and also the most bullied village in the vicinity.

Because this was not a village where the Han Kang clan lived together, but a village where the Sogdian Kang clan lived together, and they had some kinship ties to Kang Fu, the man who had once shown kindness to Zhang Zhao.

If a modern person were to see this village, they would certainly be stunned speechless.

Because the women coming and going in this village were, for the most part, blonde-haired, blue-eyed foreign beauties, yet they wore very Chinese-style padded jackets and skirts, and spoke fluent Hua County dialect.

How to put it, this manner of dress would look quite strange in later ages, but in the Great Tang and even the Five Dynasties, it seemed perfectly fitting.

At this moment, upon seeing the beacon smoke from Yanhe Fort, the village elder of Kangjia Fort, who was also the head of the Kang clan, immediately picked up a brass gong and began beating it, clang, clang, clang, all the while shouting at the top of his lungs, "Kill the bandits! Kill the bandits!"

Hearing the gong and the shouting, the able-bodied men of the Kang clan burst out of their little huts like wild boars, many of them clutching crude spears and all manner of farming tools.

Before long, the thudding of horse hooves sounded, and several blonde-haired, high-nosed stalwart men of the Kang clan came running over, leading warhorses, and in their hands they carried high-quality spears and bows.

The clan head, trembling all over, grabbed the hands of the strongest of the stalwart men.

"My son, there is beacon smoke at Yanhe Fort. There must be bandits attacking Yanhe Fort. Our chance has come."

Do not misunderstand. This elder with the appearance of a barbarian was not planning to rebel. Rather, he had keenly realized that the Kang clan's opportunity had arrived.

Before this, Kangjia Fort had been quite badly bullied among the several villages administered by the Yanhe Fort inspection office.

Not only had their Kangjia Fort never produced a single long-service elite soldier, but when it came to rotating turns of service as sworn followers, they were always squeezed out of their rotation slots by the other villages.

Often, when the farming was slack, it was never their turn, and when the farming was busy, it was always the Kang clan whose able-bodied men were conscripted away.

And the major reason they were bullied like this lay in their appearance.

After our Sage Zhang returned to the nation in righteousness, he raised high the banner of the nation, and the status of Han people rose sharply. Inevitably, the status of barbarians, or rather of people with barbarian features, began to decline, and it declined very quickly.

This was inevitable, because under our Sage Zhang there were a great many Han people whose ethnic background was highly suspect, and in order to counter others questioning their ethnic background, the best method was to raise the status of Han people high once again.

Because people from the Helong region had one enormous advantage, which was that the Tibetans, the various Qiang, the Tangut, and others looked very similar to Han people.

So after raising the status of Han people, they then spared no effort in promoting Han facial features, seeking to create a climate where one's ethnicity was determined by appearance alone.

But in doing so, these yellow-haired Sogdians, who had long since been sinicized and spoke Chinese even more fluently than the people of the Helong region, suffered a great misfortune.

And if one looked into it deeply, this trend had actually begun after the rise of Li Keyong's line.

Because the the the Shatuo Zhuye clan were also black-haired and fair-skinned, and the difference between them and Han people in appearance was not great. They too had the same need as the people of the Helong region today.

So in the Later Tang, there came to be a distinction between true the the Shatuo, meaning the the Shatuo people with Han appearance, and false the the Shatuo, meaning the yellow-haired Sogdians and other peoples who had come from the Western Regions.

Under such a climate, if this branch of people in Kangjia Fort wanted to turn their fortunes around, there was only one path to take, and that was for the fort to produce several long-service elite soldiers, or even to be selected for the imperial guards or the personal army, and when their turn came for service as sworn followers, to no longer be squeezed out by others.

Because the only thing that could erase the disadvantage of appearance in the Zhang and Zhou dynasty was military merit. With military merit came status.

Once their status rose, the surrounding families with Han appearance would no longer resist intermarrying with the Kang clan, and after a few generations, they would no longer stand out so much.

Now that Yanhe Fort was being attacked by bandits, this was precisely their best opportunity. The clan head, gripping the hand of his son Kang Sanlang, immediately began giving instructions.

"Wulang, Liulang, Jiulang, and Shisilang, stay close to Sanlang. The five of you have horses, so you must strike hard and kill the bandits."

"The rest of you, each take up weapons and clubs, and drive the bandits toward Sanlang and his group. Even if you beat a bandit to death, you must give the head to Sanlang."

"As long as Sanlang becomes a long-service elite soldier, or even accumulates merit and becomes an officer in the Huazhou Central Guard, our Kang clan will have turned our fortunes around."

Kang Sanlang also bowed deeply to the hundred or so members of his clan gathered around. "Fellow clansmen, Kang Sanlang will not say much. As long as I rise through accumulated merit, if any family produces a promising young soldier in the future, I will push him up just as you are doing for me today, and strengthen our Kang clan."

Hearing the clan head and Kang Sanlang, father and son, both make such declarations, the clansmen all nodded in assent, and with one accord they clasped their hands in salute. Old and young, able-bodied men and sturdy women all looked at Kang Sanlang.

"We are willing to follow Sanlang to kill the enemy. The future of the Kang clan, we entrust to Sanlang!"

Amid the shouting, the clan head led the old, weak, women, and children and began running toward the temple on the mountain, where they could barely hold out and hide from the bandits.

The rest followed behind Kang Sanlang's horse in a mighty procession, all heading toward Yanhe Fort to kill.

And it was not only Kangjia Fort. Throughout all the villages under Yanhe Fort's jurisdiction, able-bodied men were constantly gathering.

This was the benefit of the equal-field system. Everyone had permanent property, and everyone had the will to rise through merit.

Besides them, every inspection office that saw the beacon smoke also immediately began mustering able-bodied men and soldiers.

Yanhe Fort, blood stained the fort walls red. The attackers were precisely the three or four hundred men recruited by Zhao Zaili and Liu Jixun, these two former Later Jin Military Governors of Hebei.

Half of them were retainers controlled by the two men, and the other half were remnants of the Silver Spear Effective Capital that they had recruited from all over.

Back before the decisive battle between Zhang Zhao and Liu Zhiyuan in Hebei, a large number of Weizhou yabing guards, that is, the remnants of the Silver Spear Effective Capital, had chosen to follow Liu Zhiyuan.

At the time, although Liu Zhiyuan seemed to be the weaker side, Liu Zhiyuan was following the established rules of play that had been in place for two hundred years, while Zhang Zhao had openly declared his intention to put an end to the situation of military men carving up the realm.

So many yabing guards whose fierce natures were hard to change chose to throw in their lot with Liu Zhiyuan.

When Liu Zhiyuan was defeated at Xingzhou, many of these men fled into the mountains to hide, and had already reached a dead end.

But later, in order to restore production and livelihood in Hebei as quickly as possible, Zhang Zhao chose to break open the fortified manors and release their populations, free the servants controlled by powerful clans, and summon the people hiding in the mountains and marshes to come out and farm under the equal-field system.

In this great liberation of hundreds of thousands of people, the court truly did not have enough qualified officials to investigate each and every one, so these men took the opportunity to hide themselves away, until now, when they were recruited by Zhao Zaili and the others.

The combat strength of these remnants of the former Hebei yabing guards was still very high. The Weibo yabing guards! For as many years as the Great Tang had been in chaos, they had been fierce, and they had even been able to decide the outcome of the great war between Liang and Jin.

Although they were now at their last gasp, they were still not something the hundred or so people of Yanhe Fort could withstand. The number of people in the fort who could fight did not exceed twenty, and especially in this kind of small-scale combat, the Silver Spear Capital was even more skilled.

But once the fighting began, the situation began to change, because Zhao Zaili and the others had failed to take Yanhe Fort smoothly, and in fact had already lost.

Their strategy was to take advantage of the chaos to cross the Yellow River, then burn the pontoon bridge at Baima Ford, and then head south to the Songzhou area to link up with the Xuzhou Wuning Army advancing north.

From Huazhou to Shangqiu Prefecture in Songzhou was a full thousand li, which meant that the commotion they raised could not be too great.

In particular, the matter of burning the pontoon bridge at Baima Ford was not something that could be completed in a short time. Once someone became alert, it would be difficult to burn.

Burning the pontoon bridge at Baima Crossing in particular was not something that could be finished in a short while; the moment anyone grew alert, it would be hard to burn.

Therefore the first step of this plan, and also its most crucial step, was to seize Yanhe Fort silently, and then use the name of the Yanhe Fort Patrol Office to deceive the squad of Huazhou Central Guard garrison troops at the Baima Ford pontoon bridgehead.

But now, the wolf-smoke had already been lit, and before long, troops from the Huazhou Central Guard and the nearby patrol offices would be rushing over.

So when these men attacked Yanhe Fort, they still had to keep watch on every movement around them at all times, and several of them had already been killed off in secret beforehand, leaving their morale at rock bottom.

And on the Yanhe Fort side, Patrol Officer Zhang was of the main Longshe Shazhou line — even if he were hacked into mincemeat, he would not flinch.

As for the rest of the Long March veterans, those open and hidden benefits alone were enough to buy their lives — no! One could say enough to buy the lives of their entire families.

Therefore, one side was half-hearted and terrified, while the other fought to the death — from the very start, the two sides' morale was not on the same level at all.

Patrol Officer Zhang's hengdao saber had become saw-toothed, both his arms ached so badly he could no longer draw his bow, and the lamellar armor on his body was stuck full of arrow shafts, making him look like a hedgehog.

Counting old Blind Man, of the nine Long March veterans, six had already fallen in battle, and every one of the survivors was wounded.

Of the hundred-odd rotational sworn followers, at least twenty or thirty were gone as well. No more than fifty remained at Patrol Officer Zhang's side; the rest had either fled or been pinned down elsewhere.

But though they were few, they held the wolf-smoke tower with firm resolve. Even if they fought on by instinct alone, not a single man shrank back.

Zhao Zaili was never a man of resolute temperament to begin with, and he was old besides — already sixty-eight. The longer the fight dragged on, the more panicked he became.

Seeing that his three or four hundred men had been assaulting a mere patrol-office fort like Yanhe Fort for half a watch without taking it, the thought of retreat immediately rose in his mind.

He even wanted to surrender and cut his losses by half.

(End of Chapter)

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