Chapter 786: Troops March Out from Duotan Ridge

The western steppe of the desert, Xuanchi — what later ages would call Lake Zaysan.

Tens of thousands of steppe cavalry, driving hundreds of thousands of livestock, were slowly advancing.

The men treated this as a grand archery gathering to show off their strength, galloping back and forth, flaunting their horsemanship and winning cheers from the few women in the ranks.

These women had come along to wash clothes and cook for the men on campaign, milk the mares, work hides, and pass the tedious hours of the road.

But with them along, the column simply could not move quickly — at most thirty or forty li a day.

The dense thunder of hoofbeats sounded, and a cavalry unit with colored bells hanging from their warhorses' necks and rainbow silk ribbons streaming from the horses' bodies swept swiftly past the left side of the column.

The men who had just been showing off their skills hastily shrank back into the ranks, while the women's eyes sparkled and they sang out loudly; some of the bolder ones even swayed their bodies in a seductive manner.

For this cavalry was the regular troop of the Zubu myriarchy — not something these herders, who did not even have any standing, could compare to.

On the steppe now, after Zhang Zhao established the twelve myriarchies, the organizational structure and even the old tribal system had, to a certain degree, been broken apart.

On the surface, below the myriarchy came the chiliarchy, below the chiliarchy the century, and then banners, squads, and so on — but at the same time, herders could also obtain another layer of status.

The most valiant could win the two titles of Guiyi Gentleman and Punishing Knight.

The former required only that one's martial strength be high enough, and that one be enfeoffed by the Heavenly Khagan at the grand archery ceremony.

The latter required studying the scriptures and related knowledge of the Six Dharma School and passing an examination similar to the civil examinations of the Han lands before the title of Punishing Knight would be conferred — and this was not an enfeoffment by the Heavenly Khagan, but a selection by the Supreme Heaven.

Below the Guiyi Gentlemen and Punishing Knights, there were further distinctions of armored soldiers, regular troop, rotated troop, and sworn followers.

Armored soldiers, as the name suggests, were also warriors of considerable valor who could receive armor and horses bestowed by the Heavenly Khagan; of course, if you already had your own armor, you would be given other rewards such as horses, blades, or bows and arrows.

Of course, whether Guiyi Gentlemen, Punishing Knights, or armored soldiers, none were numerous — in a single century there might be two or three; the largest in scale were still the regular troop.

Regular troop generally served as unarmored horse archers or light-armored hussars, but could accumulate merit and rise to become armored soldiers.

Below the regular troop were the rotated troop, who were auxiliary soldiers, providing their own horses and weapons; tents and provisions were supplied by the Heavenly Khagan.

They were a vast mass of unarmored light cavalry who did every kind of work — luring the enemy, feigned attacks, pretended routs, and serving as cannon fodder was a common occurrence.

As for the sworn followers at the very bottom, they brought their own rations, scrambled to do every task, and did not even count as auxiliaries — no! They were armed herders who did not even count as cannon fodder. But they too could accumulate merit and rise, and receive a small share of the spoils.

The hierarchy among them was strict, designed by Zhang Zhao with slight modifications from the Qin dynasty's ranks of military merit.

Each level had its own privileges, with strict differences in equipment, pay, distribution of spoils, and even clothing and food — the goal being to forge the herders of these twelve myriarchies into a war machine that pressed ever westward.

Bai Congxin's great tent stood by the shore of Xuanchi; further west lay the territory of the Nine Clans of the Oghuz.

Back when they had destroyed the Gaochang Uyghurs and routed Satuq's great army, Zhang Zhao had chosen not to continue the pursuit, and so had not launched punitive campaigns against the four Karluk tribes and the Nine Clans of the Oghuz who had supported Satuq.

And although a small number of Karluks and Oghuz later took part in the assembly that acclaimed Zhang Zhao as the Nijue Yili Khagan,

this time, when Zhang Zhao was acclaimed as Heavenly Khagan, the four Karluk tribes and the Nine Clans of the Oghuz sent no one to participate.

It seemed that Zhang Zhao's move to strengthen the four western myriarchies had already made these fellows feel threatened — and of course, they had never truly intended to submit to Zhang Zhao, or to the dynasty of the Central Plains.

Bai Congxin was now surrounded by a group of staff officers, the great majority of whom came from the Zhaowu Academy of the Luantai in the Secretariat.

In the present Zhang Zhou, the Zhangtai Hanlin Academy under the Secretariat trained administrative officials — that is, those who handled administration in the central government.

The Qionglin Academy of the Department of State Affairs trained functional officials for concrete local administration.

The Zhaowu Academy of the Luantai was specifically for training staff officers.

All three drew mostly from the civil examinations, and the subjects tested naturally differed accordingly.

At present, the Zhaowu Academy was the most sought after, because its graduates had the brightest prospects.

Civil officials nowadays were actually mostly clean-handed. Corruption? That was the monopoly of military men. If a brush-pusher like you dared to play both ends, you must not want to live.

Moreover, in these chaotic times, civil officials rose slowly by seniority, while a military officer needed only one great victory to immediately reach the peak of life.

For example, Zhang Mei of Qinghe in Hebei, now busily calculating, had passed the Classics examination two years before; because he was skilled at calculation, well-read in military texts, and possessed valor, the Emperor had taken him into the Zhaowu Academy. Before that, Zhang Mei had been nothing more than a petty clerk in the left storehouse of the county office.

The situation of Li Chongju of Shangdang in Hedong, beside Zhang Mei, was much the same: because he was well-versed in military treatises, had valor, and passed the Classics examination, he had been selected for the Zhaowu Academy.

For this western campaign of Bai Congxin, Zhang Zhao had not been idle — he had released nearly half of the Zhaowu scholars in his hands to accompany Bai Congxin.

All along the way they calculated provisions and supply, observed the conditions of warhorses on long-distance migration, and discussed the military preparations for the western campaign; this precious data would all become first-hand material for the great western campaign to come.

After Li Chongju compiled all the data, he wrote out the pros and cons point by point and presented them to Bai Congxin.

"Lord Bai, judging from the current situation, having women with the army still greatly affects marching speed and army morale — especially by easily provoking jealous quarrels. Although they can take on the tedious work of washing and cooking, the losses outweigh the gains."

Bai Congxin stroked his chin. Through these centuries of chaos, even in the Central Plains armies before the Great Zhou, there had been no shortage of women accompanying the troops.

Washing clothes, cooking, serving as camp prostitutes — and as in the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties, women could even be "brought to the table."

In steppe tribal campaigns it was all the more common, especially after the Sage proposed the great western campaign strategy of driving herds and living on horse meat and mare's milk.

Because the journey was so long, Bai Congxin had added women to the army to do the work the men were unwilling to do — but now it seemed the results were poor.

"But the number of men we send out at one time is never very large. If we don't let women do that work, then over a march of thousands or tens of thousands of li, our warriors will all become menial laborers — and then there'll be no fighting at all."

Lu Sanlang thought it made no difference. Let them quarrel over women if they wanted — these steppe fellows fought over women as a daily routine even when they were not on the march.

In the tent, Dang Jin, the chiliarch of the Upper Khitan, raised his head in surprise. This fellow had originally been a household slave of Du Chongwei; after Du Chongwei was executed, because he had no record of wrongdoing he was not pursued, and later, relying on arms with the strength of a thousand jin, he entered the Hanhai Garrison of the imperial guard and became a squad general.

Recently, no one knew where the Emperor had heard his name, and learning that he was originally of Xi descent, had sent him to the Lower Khitan myriarchy as a chiliarch, with the additional office of Fengzhou Troop and Horse Commissioner.

Dang Jin looked at Lu Sanlang in surprise. "Lord Lu, how could there be no women to do these things? Take a single tribe, and you can surely seize two or three hundred."

Lu Sanlang rubbed his chin somewhat awkwardly, inwardly grumbling to himself.

"Damn it, these fellows have only been on the steppe a few months, and they're already more like steppe men than I am.

It does seem that the problem can be solved by plunder. As for one's own women and children, once you've gained a firm footing, you can go and fetch them."

A rapid clatter of abacus beads sounded. Zhang Mei finished his calculations and raised his head.

The abacus, like the method of tea-making, should be counted among the most notable changes Zhang Zhao had brought to this era.

Historically, the abacus only began to spread at the end of the Southern Song, and it was not the mature later two-tier calculation model, but something far more cumbersome.

But after Zhang Zhao arrived in this era, he not only "invented" the abacus, but also wrote out quick-operation formulas for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division on the abacus, giving an enormous boost to the development of mathematics in this time.

Zhang Zhao himself did not even know that the abacus he had "invented" would later enormously advance the development of mathematics throughout the history of China.

"Lord Bai, since we set out from the Yanran Mountains, we have marched a full two thousand li, yet our grain consumption has been only one-fifth of what a Han-land march would require. The Sage's strategy of drinking mare's milk and eating horse meat is extremely workable.

If we can also plunder some supplies along the way, then driving our herds, we can march tens of thousands of li westward at only one-eighth or even one-tenth of the consumption of the Han lands."

Zhang Mei was the best at arithmetic among them, and when he said this, everyone grew excited.

Although this way of marching on mare's milk and horse meat was not particularly novel, no one on the steppe had ever treated it as a matter worth summarizing, nor had anyone ever proposed it.

Now that Zhang Zhao had raised it, once everyone calculated and summed it up, they realized it was truly feasible!

With such a method, tens of thousands of li were no longer the edge of the sky, but a distant place that could be conquered; the distance of geography was suddenly drawn close.

"Report! A great victory!" The messenger's shout came from outside, and Bai Congxin hurriedly led everyone out of the tent to look.

In the distance, the courier with pheasant feathers stuck in his leather helmet did not wait for his horse to stop before tumbling and scrambling down from the saddle.

"Commander-in-Chief, the vanguard, Western Zubu personal guard chiliarch Luketu, at Duotan Ridge, the old territory of the Yinshan Protectorate, has routed a combined force of thirty thousand Oghuz and Karluks. He slew over a hundred nobles of the Oghuz, from the Awuzhe chieftain down, took six thousand prisoners, and seized over a hundred thousand cattle, sheep, and horses."

Duotan Ridge is what later generations call the Tarbagatai Mountains on the border between China and Kazakhstan, and the old territory of the Yinshan Protectorate is Tacheng in Xinjiang. Crossing this ridge, one enters the Land of Seven Rivers.

To the southwest of Duotan Ridge, nearly three hundred thousand Karluks nomadize, and further west are more than two hundred thousand Oghuz scattered across the vast region from Lake Balkhash to the Caspian Sea.

Only by beating them into fear will the road from western Mobei to Talas be opened.

"Hahaha!" Before Bai Congxin could speak, Lu Sanlang had already burst out laughing and rushed forward, questioning the messenger in detail about the battle report from the front, leaving the messenger thoroughly embarrassed.

But although Lu Sanlang himself was rather tactless, this son of his was truly a born commander.

With only about a hundred Guiyi lads, three or four hundred armored soldiers, over three thousand able-bodied men, and fewer than five thousand auxiliary men and sworn followers, he had shattered a combined Oghuz-Karluk force of thirty thousand in a single battle.

Judging from the spoils and prisoners, it was not merely a victory, but a rather splendid battle of annihilation.

Bai Congxin laughed heartily. "Excellent! Luketu has surpassed his father. As the vanguard general, he has already done the work of our whole army.

Notify the Naiman chiliarchy Grand Protector-General Aluozhe and the Kirghiz chiliarchy Grand Protector-General Li Guizhong to come to my tent at once."

In Old Turkic, "Oghuz" carries the meanings of tribe, confederation, and clan name. In the broad sense, the Nine Clans of Oghuz even include the Kirghiz and the Naiman; they are all relatives.

Now that the Oghuz tribes nomadizing in the Land of Seven Rivers—that is, the area from later Yili to Lake Balkhash—have been routed, the matter of absorbing them naturally must be put on the agenda.

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