Chapter 793: The Noob Squad Gets Wiped (Here Come the Lion and Leopard)

(The date in the previous chapter was wrong — Guo Guangyi besieged Hushui City on the twenty-fifth of the seventh month, not the twenty-fifth of the ninth.)

The battle at Wuzonggachi Mountain was over. How could over a hundred thousand Oghuz herders, chased with no road to heaven and no door into the earth, possibly stand against Bai Congxin's forty thousand elite cavalry?

Even setting aside the gap in equipment between the two sides, these steppe cavalrymen — brainwashed for years and trained up through lavish rewards and a merit-rank system modeled on military nobility — truly regarded death as a homecoming once battle was joined.

The Great Inal of the Nine Clans of the Oghuz formed up below the hill with a thousand personal guards bearing long spears, and several thousand archers behind them in support.

In the end, a hundred warriors from the Kirghiz ten-thousand household simply donned two layers of armor and charged in without regard for their lives. In less than a quarter hour, the Great Inal's head had been cut off and presented to Bai Congxin.

Bai Congxin had deliberately not restrained military discipline. He needed a savagery full of raw animal nature like this to smooth away the pent-up violence these terrifying upright apes under his command had accumulated over more than two thousand li of marching.

There was another purpose as well: to set a standard for today's operations.

If the Nine Clans of the Oghuz had simply refused to surrender this time, he would never have issued such brutal orders. But they had to go and say that Tengri would never incarnate as the Supreme Heaven.

The former was a matter of interests; the latter was a matter of principle — and principle demanded a heavy fist.

"Let the lads enjoy themselves for two days. After two days, leave two thousand men to hold this place. The rest take two horses per man and must reach Talas within ten days!"

Bai Congxin barked out the order. Talas was still seven hundred li away — over seventy li a day was no small pace, but not excessive either.

Naturally, this was also the reason Bai Congxin had nearly wiped out close to forty thousand adult males among the Nine Clans of the Oghuz.

The army was about to make a surprise attack on Guo Guangyi at Talas — how could he leave tens of thousands of able-bodied men behind him!

At Three Mountain Pass, Hu Guang was leisurely gnawing on a leg of mutton. The rest of the officers and men, apart from those standing watch, were also seizing the time to eat, drink, rest, or sort out their armor and weapons — even Chi Tian of the Gray Wolf Tribe was doing the same.

Everyone understood in their hearts: never mind whether going to the rescue was dangerous, with a rebellion this large breaking out at Suyab, those who truly remained unswervingly sons of Tang had already been rescued. As for those farther off who did not want to become barbarians but also did not want to resist — whether to save them or not was entirely a matter of mood.

Moreover, everyone was very clear in their hearts: if they did save those people, how would they explain it to His Majesty? After doing such a thing, did they expect to walk away unscathed?

And so everyone enjoyed, with a clear conscience, this final peace before the great battle.

"Dong-dong! Dong-dong!" The war drums sounded now loud, now faint, but the boiling din of shouting men and neighing horses grew ever clearer. In the end, the distant battle cries shook the heavens and drowned out the drums entirely — Guo Guangyi must be urging his army to assault Hushui City once more.

Guo Tianfang was crouched beside Hu Guang. He hated the people in Hushui City. Had it not been for their shrinking back, Guo Guangyi could never have launched his mutiny so easily at the funeral of his grandfather, Guo Xuancheng.

His father, his uncle, and two other uncles had all been killed in that mutiny. After fleeing to the Gray Wolf Tribe, it had also cost the lives of his ninth grand-uncle Guo Xuanchao and Chi Tian's father.

"How many days has it been?" Hu Guang finished gnawing the honey-roasted leg of mutton in his hand, down to the last careful bite, and asked slowly.

Guo Tianfang hurriedly answered, "Lord Hu, it has been a full ten days!"

"Heh!" Hu Guang grabbed a handful of sand and scrubbed the grease from his hands, raising his head in surprise.

"They really are stubborn! Of their forty thousand people, only a few thousand are able-bodied men, and with so many crammed into the city on little food and water, they've actually held out against Guo Guangyi's fifty thousand men and ten days of fierce assault. Interesting."

Li Jiwu heard this and snorted contemptuously. "A bunch of worthless wretches. If they'd fought this desperately back at Suyab, even if they couldn't have held the city, they could at least have escorted Ninth Uncle Guo to safety in Khotan. Why wait until now to fight for their lives!"

Hu Guang wiped his hands clean — well, as for the degree of cleanliness, that was by his personal standards, of course.

Seeing that Li Jiwu was holding a bowl of honeyed rice, Hu Guang unceremoniously and very smoothly snatched it away. "Go ask Lord Yao how many people are left in the city."

Li Jiwu cast Hu Guang a resentful look, then huffily scampered off.

Yao Yuanfu had ordered men to build three watchtowers on the mountain near Hushui City, where sharp-eyed soldiers kept uninterrupted watch.

Li Jiwu had not even reached the watchtowers when he saw Yao Yuanfu's personal officer riding hard toward the main camp. The man spotted Li Jiwu and immediately shouted, "Captain, hurry and report to the Commander-in-Chief — Hushui City has suffered terrible casualties and cannot hold out much longer."

In truth, Hushui City could still hold for a while, but things were already dire.

Luo Dingzhong's arm hung at an unnatural angle, though fortunately it was dislocated rather than broken, and a physician soon set the bone for him.

Pugu Quan lay slumped among a pile of corpses, his face deathly pale, his eyes wide open staring at the sky. Several flies crawled back and forth across his face, yet he did not stir — clearly he had been dead for some time.

Guo Guangbi was laboring to repair his iron stomach, which had been smashed flat, his legs a sheet of blood.

Before this, he had tried several times to lift his legs, but his right leg seemed to have lost all feeling; only his left leg still sent waves of stabbing pain.

Hushui City was not large. In ordinary times it could hold only a few thousand people, but now forty thousand were crammed inside. Since three days ago, apart from the able-bodied men fighting on the walls, everyone else had been limited to one wild-vegetable cake a day. As for water, they could only drink the urine of the fighting men.

And even urine was in short supply, because the men on the walls had their water rationed too, and with the fierce fighting making them sweat heavily, there was hardly any urine at all.

Although the mercenaries under Guo Guangyi's command had receded like the tide, no one on the walls of Hushui City cheered, because a huge breach had been smashed into the left section of the wall.

Luo Dingzhong himself had rushed up to plug the breach just now — that was how his arm had been dislocated in the fighting. Now, if the enemy outside made just one more charge, they would likely be unable to hold.

"Enough, surely it's enough. If they don't come soon, we'll all be dead!" A militiaman beside Luo Dingzhong muttered over and over.

Of the more than six thousand able-bodied men in Hushui City, it was unclear whether even three thousand remained — the casualty rate had far exceeded half.

A pained smile appeared at the corner of Luo Dingzhong's mouth. He knew Commander-in-Chief Hu would be coming soon.

Because they had not only paid the price — after these ten days of bloody battle, men who had originally been no more than armed herders and auxiliary troops had been tempered in this brutal slaughter. From now on, with a little training in formation tactics, they would be elite soldiers.

Judging from Commander-in-Chief Hu's unhurried, deliberate manner, the Sage's objective was not simply to put down Guo Guangyi's rebellion, nor was it solely about the matter of Guo Zhou'er. Everything the Sage did was aimed at the Samanid Persians.

That was a powerful, flourishing great state occupying half of Transoxiana and half of Persia. A comparison made it clear: the Golden Kingdom of Khotan was called a flourishing state of Anxi, yet its population was under nine hundred thousand. Add the six hundred thousand or so in Beiting, and the total was only one and a half million.

The Samanid Persians, by contrast, had a full four million people. Unless it was thoroughly defeated and dismembered, all talk of occupying Transoxiana and of Xia lords over Yi subjects was empty words.

But the Samanid Persians had never fallen within the scope of Chinese civilization. They differed from China not only in race, but entirely in language, customs, and faith.

Defeating such a great state was not difficult; ruling it was extremely hard — unless the court maintained a garrison of eighty to a hundred thousand troops in Samanid Persia for the long term.

But that cost was too great. Whatever benefits could be extracted from Samanid Persia would probably all be fed to those hundred thousand garrison troops, leaving the court with little — so such a model was doomed not to last long.

Then was there a way to save money and effort?

Luo Dingzhong slowly knelt toward the east. The way to save money and effort was to use them — these people of Suyab.

They called themselves sons of Tang, but they knew Transoxiana far better. What the common people of Samanid Persia thought, what they needed, what they feared, how to make them more obedient —

even how to introduce the Six Laws Sect into Samanid Persian territory to replace the Heavenly Square faith — no one understood these things better than the sons of Tang who had lived in Suyab for several hundred years.

Only with the help of locals like them would it be possible, within twenty or thirty years, to fundamentally sinicize Transoxiana.

The Sage was a sagely and enlightened sovereign; he would surely understand their value.

"Raise the silver-white banner! Bring everyone up to the walls to plead! Tell Commander-in-Chief Hu that we know we were wrong, and beg him to send his heavenly troops to save us!"

Luo Dingzhong shouted. At this point, pleading was more reliable than continuing to resist.

Guo Guangbi gritted his teeth and dragged his broken leg with difficulty to a wooden chest nearby, from which he took out the silver-white banner of the golden sun and moon that he had always treasured.

This had been made on Guo Xuancheng's orders while he was still alive. Although this sixth grand-uncle of the Guo family had also "heard the court's orders but not its summons" at Suyab, his purpose was fundamentally different from Guo Guangyi's.

Guo Xuancheng had only wanted to pass the seat beneath him to his sons and grandsons, letting the Guo family serve as Princes of Suyab Commandery for generations and remain vassals of the court. He still held the court and the Great Tang in high regard.

A silver-white banner with a golden sun and moon rose over the walls of Hushui City. The old, the weak, women and children crowded the ramparts, and countless people bowed eastward like waves rising and falling.

"Sage, we were wrong. Please show great mercy!"

"We deserve death, but what crime have the women and children committed? Please, Sage, take pity."

"Let the heavenly troops come quickly! Quickly!"

Guo Guangbi braced both hands on the ground and crawled to Luo Dingzhong's side, straining to lift his head and look at him. "In the old days at Suyab, among our six clans and forty thousand people, you, Pugu Quan, and I were the leaders.

When the Guo traitor entered Suyab, you, Luo Dingzhong, were the one most eager to resist. It was only because I and Pugu Quan stopped you. So today you can survive, while I and Pugu Quan are certain to die.

Now Pugu Quan has fallen in battle, and my legs are crippled. There is little point in living. Better to leave some legacy for our people. Luo Erlang, I entrust my wife, children, and elders to you."

Luo Dingzhong let out a long sigh. If only he had known then what he knew now!

"Huaige'er is clever and quick-witted, and I have always been fond of him. He grew up with Erniang, childhood sweethearts. In the future, let Huaige'er be my son-in-law.

If the Sage shows mercy and permits us to redeem ourselves through service, I have heard that below the ranks of duke, marquis, and earl for outer vassals, there are also the two offices of Pacification Commissioner and Garrison Commissioner.

Among them, a Garrison Commissioner governs a small city of a thousand men and administers ten thousand subjects. As long as I, Luo Dingzhong, have breath left in me, I will win Huaige'er a hereditary Garrison Commission."

Hearing Luo Dingzhong speak thus, Guo Guangbi's face showed a faint smile. He struggled to lean against the city wall and managed a deep bow to Luo Dingzhong. "For your great kindness, I, Guo Guangbi, will repay you by knotting grass and holding a ring in the next life."

Then Guo Guangbi let out a great shout, pressed both hands against the wall and stood up. Facing east, he cried out: "The sinner Guo Guangbi is beyond forgiveness, and death is not enough for his crimes. I only pray that Lord Hu, for the sake of our old ties, will grant the tens of thousands in this city of Hushui a path to live!"

Having spoken, without the slightest hesitation, he pushed off with both hands and hurled himself over the city wall.

Hu Guang had by now reached the watchtower. From a few hundred paces away, he watched Guo Guangbi leap from the wall, and let out a long sigh.

Guo Guangbi could be said to have some history with him. In the great battle at Suyab long ago, when the Hu family knights were wounded, it was mostly Guo Guangbi who organized men to carry them back for treatment.

Ah, people! One simply cannot take a wrong step. He was once a fine son of the Hezhong frontier, yet today he could only throw away his life bearing a disgraceful name.

"Beat the drums! Muster the troops!" Hu Guang roared, swung himself onto his horse, and led the way galloping toward the camp.

In Guo Guangyi's camp, the long-faced "hero" was lashing his whip so fast it left afterimages. Inside the tent, several officers who had fought poorly were being beaten until their backs ran with blood.

"Fifty thousand troops, attacking a small city defended by a few thousand men, and in ten days we've lost over a thousand with not an inch gained. What use are you?"

Guo Guangyi's impatience was understandable. The situation he now faced had been bought by steeling his heart to kill his own wife and children.

Such a thing, even in Hezhong, even on the steppe, was despised.

But fortunately, those two places revered power. If you killed your wife and children but your power was strong, others at most despised you inwardly and dared not show it.

But if you killed your wife and children and failed to build up your power, then it was dangerous. The revenge and backlash would truly come surging in like the tide.

Moreover, at Three Passes, just over twenty li from Hushui City, there were still ten thousand Zhou troops. They were what Guo Guangyi truly worried about.

"Are those sons of Tang still at Three Passes?"

His trusted general Hulunjian hastily placed a hand on his chest and answered: "Those sons of Tang fear the Khan's divine might. For ten full days they have not dared to leave their stockade.

They number barely over ten thousand, with fewer than two thousand cavalry. Once Hushui City falls, we need only pin them down with five thousand elite riders. When their provisions run out, we can pursue and snap at their heels."

Only now did a trace of a smile appear on Guo Guangyi's face. Indeed, these sons of Tang were far too incompetent. Ten full days without daring to sally forth. Had they attacked from both sides with the people of Hushui City these past days, it would have been somewhat troublesome.

As it now appeared, the so-called fierce warriors of Han and Tang were nothing but boasts, and the "heavenly troops" in the tales of their ancestors were mere exaggerations passed down.

Perhaps two or three hundred years ago they truly were brave, but now they were nothing but a pack of cowards with empty reputations.

Guo Guangyi raised a hand, about to instruct the cavalry force watching the Tang army to stay alert, when the tent flap was suddenly thrown open and an officer covered in blood stumbled headlong inside.

"Khan, the Tang army has left camp! The Left Protector-General cannot hold them off. I beg the Khan to send reinforcements!"

Guo Guangyi felt his mind explode. The Left Protector-General had four thousand cavalry. How could he be unable to hold so quickly?

"Dunhuang of old sent forth divine generals, making all the barbarians gaze up in reverence from afar. They served with devotion, gazing toward the dragon court; their names were long since recorded on the Unicorn Terrace. Only regret that barbarian tribes cut us off, our heartfelt pleas hard to express. Sooner or later we shall destroy the wolf barbarians, and together bow before the Sage's countenance."

Amid the rumbling of drums, the eight thousand men of the Western Expedition Army marched out of the stockade, singing "Dunhuang of Old Sent Forth Divine Generals" as they advanced.

Three Passes was barely twenty-odd li from the battlefield, so Hu Guang simply had his troops advance in battle formation.

The army's center was the three thousand Tiger Guard troops led by Yao Yuanfu — authority Zhang Zhao had granted Hu Guang before their departure.

If Yao Yuanfu could retake Suyab by surprise, then Hu Guang could immediately establish the Left Tiger Guard of the personal army and appoint Yao Yuanfu as General of the Household of the Left Tiger Guard.

On either side of the center were part of the Divine Marksmen Regiment of the imperial guard, commanded by Li Jixun.

The Divine Marksmen Regiment had been upgraded from Zhang Zhao's original Divine Machine Battalion. The Divine Machine Battalion had initially used camel-mounted whirlwind catapults, but over the past dozen years, Zhang Zhou had encountered almost no heavy infantry requiring the Zhou army to use camel whirlwind catapults against, so it gradually became useless.

Thus part of the Divine Machine Battalion — mainly the men who worked the camel whirlwind catapults — was merged into the Bureau of Heavenly Works, where they worked on research into large counterweight trebuchets and preliminary testing of firearms.

The other part was expanded into the Divine Marksmen Regiment of the imperial guard and the Left and Right Marksmen Guards of the personal army.

As could be seen from the names, these three units specialized in bows and crossbows.

Li Jixun commanded only part of the Divine Marksmen Regiment: two thousand men.

The thousand men on the army's left liked to wear brocade robes with round floral patterns over their interlocked-ring armor. They were formed around the former left-wing crossbowmen of the Ganzhou Uyghurs, later gathering skilled archers of all peoples into a unit called the Left Wing Divine Crossbow Battalion.

The thousand men on the army's right habitually wore white boots and red headbands trimmed in silver-white. They were built around the Vast Sea Regiment's white-boot crossbowmen originally trained by Yan Jin, and were called the Palace Front White-Boot Battalion — among the imperial guard, an elite of elites rarely permitted to stand duty before the inner palace halls.

And one should not think that the Palace Front White-Boot Battalion, with only a thousand men, was anything less than the ceiling of the imperial guard: half carried modao glaive glaive glaives, and half could shoot from horseback.

Besides these five thousand, there were also fifteen hundred elite cavalry, formed around the finest riders of the Qiji Society of the four prefectures of Gua, Sha, Su, and Yin, commanded by Chen Tingxiao of the Chen family of Yinzhou.

Among the remaining fifteen hundred were Hu Guang's own two hundred personal retainers, with Li Jiwo serving as their commander and provost.

These two hundred men were all sons of meritorious Hexi and Longyou families, peerless in valor. Had Li Jiwo not been formidable in his own right — able to match the imperial champion Murong Xinchun of Guazhou blow for blow at the grand archery ceremony — he could never have commanded them.

The rest were Suyab locals like Chi Tian and Guo Tianfang, brought along to do odd jobs and incidentally to let them witness the valor of the court's heavenly troops.

The clatter of hooves sounded as Li Jiwo rode back, an enemy officer clamped under each arm. Seeing Hu Guang, he burst into loud laughter, then with a thud dumped the two enemy officers onto the dusty ground.

"Commander-in-Chief, these two bandit officers were harassing our front line. I personally rode after them and captured them alive. It's only a pity the enemy officer commanding them got away."

Guo Tianfang, seeing the two bandit officers lying motionless on the ground, curiously stepped forward for a look and immediately cried out in shock.

It turned out the two bandit officers' eyes bulged and their faces were purple-blue. They had been strangled to death.

He could not help looking at Li Jiwo in terror. To clamp two enemy officers under his arms until they suffocated — what monstrous strength!

"Dead?" Li Jiwo's eyes went wide too. Only then did he notice the two enemy officers had stopped breathing, and involuntarily raised his hands to look at his own armpits, muttering.

"How can they die so easily? That day I brawled with that scoundrel Murong Xinchun, I clamped his neck with far more force than this. Who knew Murong Xinchun wouldn't fear it at all, and even elbowed me in the left ribs — nearly killed me with the pain."

Just then his elder brother Li Jixun passed by and, hearing this, could not help rolling his eyes.

Who is Murong Xinchun? He's the cousin of Murong Xinzhang, Prince of Liaoyang Commandery. Born with the strength of ten thousand catties, he can swing a twenty-catty qi-training sledgehammer for a quarter hour without stopping, and his neck is thicker than these two fellows' thighs on the ground. No comparison!

Just then, urgent drumbeats sounded from ahead. Signal runners waved red triangular flags as they galloped back and forth — clearly the enemy's main force had arrived.

Hu Guang swept his hand, and Li Jiwò jumped onto the drum wagon and beat the great ox-drawn drum in three long and three short rolls.

Hearing the drums, every Chief Officer, Officer, and squad leader at once ordered the personal guards beside them to beat the small drums on their chests, also in three long and three short.

With the drumbeats, the soldiers under their command shouted in unison, "Yulin! Yulin! Yulin!" After three repetitions, they halted.

Then the whole army deployed on the spot. Squad leaders, deputy squad leaders, and fire leaders donned their armor. Light troops not assigned to fight in armor helped the officers arm themselves. At the same time, the spearmen of each squad stepped out, formed ranks, and then the sharpshooters stepped out, strung their bows, and took up a defensive posture.

The enemy had still not arrived. The drumbeats grew dense. The armored squad leaders, deputy squad leaders, and fire leaders stepped forward, and the soldiers of each squad returned to their ranks and began donning armor.

A blast of conch horns sounded. The lookout on the tower wagon waved a yellow flag from northeast to southwest, twice up and twice down.

The signal officer below, who had been watching all along, immediately reported to Hu Guang: "Enemy cavalry, roughly ten thousand, at a distance of over five hundred paces, attacking in two columns, stronger on the right and weaker on the left."

Li Jiwò was instantly eager to move, and even Chen Tingxiao licked his lips with some excitement, but Hu Guang shook his head.

"All left and right cavalry, dismount and conceal yourselves within the formation. Chitian, you go — take your men, mount up, and make it look a bit panicked."

Hu Guang was not about to send Chen Tingxiao and Li Jiwò out yet. The reason Guo Guangyi dared to attack Hushui City right in front of him was precisely because he thought Hu Guang was timid and short on cavalry.

If he released his elite cavalry now and let Guo Guangyi learn that though his cavalry was few, every man was an iron rider worth five barbarians, Guo Guangyi would immediately turn and run.

Hulun Jian, still on horseback, sensed something was wrong. Their twelve thousand riders came sweeping in like a tide covering the earth, yet the opposing force — only a few thousand men out of camp — showed not the slightest disorder. They had even very easily formed several large battle arrays with spears in front and bows and crossbows behind.

As the foremost general under Guo Guangyi, Hulun Jian had decent judgment. He instinctively felt that this opposing army would not be easy to fight.

Hulun Jian immediately waved an order for his cavalry to spread out and circle this Tang infantry force at a distance of two or three hundred paces, constantly wheeling back and forth, raising a great clamor, churning up dust that filled the sky, doing their utmost to intimidate — and also looking for a gap.

Cavalry never simply charge headlong into infantry. That would be seeking death.

Especially against a well-ordered infantry formation like this, one had to keep up the intimidation, find a gap, and only then drive into that gap and scatter the infantry.

But Hulun Jian's little tricks had no effect whatsoever on the Zhou army. What a joke — the Khitan iron cavalry back then had been ferocious enough, and even their threats and intimidation had accomplished little.

Seeing this, Hulun Jian grew even more uneasy. Laymen watch the spectacle; experts watch the craft. For these Tang infantry to remain so composed in the face of cavalry encirclement and intimidation, they were certainly no timid force.

He was about to send someone back to report to Guo Guangyi when he saw Guo Guangyi's personal guard arrive before the formation, holding the Khan's silver blade inlaid with gems, and shout: "The Khan asks you — why do you delay and not advance?"

Hearing this, Hulun Jian went numb all over.

What he did not know was that after he had led the twelve thousand cavalry out as the vanguard, Guo Guangyi had tried attacking Hushui City once more.

And the result — good heavens — was that when the people on the walls saw Hu Guang leading his army to their rescue, their morale soared even higher. Even women and children dared to tear down houses inside the city and hurl stones from the walls.

Guo Guangyi drove his troops in two fierce assaults, and both times they were beaten back. In his rage and humiliation, Guo Guangyi used what remained of his reason to abandon the idea of continuing the siege.

He prepared to turn around and first strike down these "timid Tang troops" who had come out of camp, and then starve everyone in Hushui City to death inside the walls. That was why he was so urgently pressing Hulun Jian forward.

Just as Hulun Jian was hesitating, he heard loud cheering erupt ahead. It turned out the skirmishers in front had caught a force of Tang cavalry fleeing in disarray and were now sending them scattering like wolves and fleeing boars.

Could the earlier composure have been an illusion? Perhaps he had been too far away to see clearly?

Hulun Jian gritted his teeth. "Send in the Left Protector-General. Tell him this is a good chance to redeem himself through merit. If he opens a breach, I will personally go before the Khan to seek reward for him."

Related