Chapter 794: The Tang Army Does Not Fight Well on Horseback — Warriors, Follow Me and Attack!

Chi Tian and the others disguised as common soldiers were actually quite convincing.

Or rather, they were common soldiers to begin with — that panicked, fleeing appearance nearly made even Hu Guang unable to tell whether they were faking it or had genuinely been routed back.

Such a wretched rout naturally excited the cavalry under Hulunjian enormously.

According to the excellent matching mechanics of the Hezhong Grand Region, the moment the enemy made such a blunder, they could immediately tail this cavalry and smash straight through the enemy's infantry formation.

Masud spurred his horse forward in the front ranks. He came from Basra, under the control of the Buyid dynasty.

This was a Cao Mengde-style dynasty that had seized Baghdad just four years earlier, with Iraq and southwestern Persia as its territory.

The Emperor Xian of Han held in their hands was the Black-Robed Caliphate — that is, the Abbasid Caliph al-Muti.

At this time, the Buyid dynasty under the rule of the three Ahmad brothers was in its ascendancy, so holy warriors (mercenaries) from Baghdad and elsewhere were very much in demand, because most of them were brave and skilled in battle.

For a better view, Masud simply removed the face guard from his helmet, because he felt this battle was about to end — once the cavalry charged into the infantry formation, they could slaughter at will.

"Twang! Wooooosh!" A burst of mechanism-vibration and arrow-flight sounds came that made one's heart seize.

Though Masud was somewhat alarmed, he quickly calmed down. The source of this confidence was the sturdy Arab-style lamellar armor he wore.

This iron armor, made of iron plates linked together, was in some structural respects a variant of Chinese lamellar armor — or one might call it an invented-style Chinese lamellar armor.

Its origin was the craft brought over by captured Great Tang artisans after the Battle of Talas, but whether deliberately or through lack of skill, this plate armor somehow always looked a bit off.

In this era, the Arabs stood at the center of East-West exchange. The mail armor favored by Europeans and the Chinese lamellar armor of the Great Tang both exerted tremendous influence on Arab armor.

The collision produced this freakish hybrid of mail and iron-plate lamellar armor, which in another one or two hundred years would evolve into the distinctive West Asian crafts of the Turkish large-plate armor and Persian mirror armor.

But for now, it was still quite crude — roughly mail covering the surrounding areas, with a dense iron-plate lamellar section linked in the middle.

Its protective power was decent enough, but it could not match Chinese lamellar armor, and it had certainly never undergone the "test" of crossbow bolts.

Thud, thud — as the sound of crossbows firing rang out, the riders in front of Masud fell from their horses one after another.

Masud even saw several of the fallen companions who, like him, had fine plate armor for protection.

Masud immediately grew more cautious. He pretended to be blocked by a fallen warhorse nearby, then carefully tugged the reins to the left — and it was this small move that saved their lives.

For what they faced was a du of the Palace Front Tabai Battalion, all armed with crossbows and equipped with modao glaive glaive glaives, every man tall and brawny — iron-armored infantry that were extremely hard to deal with.

Three volleys done, the enemy cavalry had charged to within a little over forty paces. The Chief Commander in charge was utterly unruffled. With a wave of his command flag, several dozen infantrymen who had not taken part in the crossbow volley stepped forward bearing pear-blossom guns.

In Zhang Zhou's army now, the pear-blossom gun had finally been developed into something fancy. This infantry pear-blossom gun was quite long, operated by one man firing and another lighting, making loading much more convenient.

Moreover, since the infantry did not rely on the pear-blossom gun to kill the enemy, they had abandoned loading iron shavings, arsenic, and other such items, instead adding large amounts of gunpowder that produced brilliant fireworks.

Its features were a tremendous noise and bright sparks — designed purely to frighten the enemy cavalry's warhorses.

Sure enough, when the violent explosions and dazzling flames shot out, sweeping over like a fire dragon, they scared these bumpkin Hezhong horses out of their wits. Every one of them screamed in terror and stopped in their tracks, and some even turned and bolted.

They had already had a large swath shot down by crossbow bolts during the charge, the ground covered with corpses of men and horses. Now, frightened again by the pear-blossom guns, the scene grew even more chaotic.

Those in front were fleeing in panic while those behind were still accelerating their charge, so much so that a wall formed in front of the Tabai Battalion — a human wall made of their own men crashing into one another.

The Chief Commander seized the moment and bellowed. The several dozen armored soldiers who had finished firing the pear-blossom guns stepped out bearing great axes and hacked wildly at the horses' legs, while the remaining troops set down their crossbows, drew stiff bows, and delivered precise aimed shots.

As for the modao glaive glaive glaives — well! Those were for when the enemy cavalry, having been beaten to this extent, still dared to press forward wave after wave and close in. For now, there was no need.

Blood flowed like a river, corpses of men and horses piled up like mountains, and screams shook heaven and earth.

At first contact, the battle had unexpectedly become completely one-sided. The charging cavalry was met by a counter-charge from the infantry and sent tumbling, men and horses overturned.

Hulunjian saw this from afar, so frantic that white foam sprayed from the corners of his mouth. He hurriedly ordered men to blow the shrill Hezhong vertical flute, summoning the attacking cavalry back.

But although he was one of the few capable commanders on Guo Guangyi's side, compared with a master-class general like Hu Guang, he fell far short.

Hu Guang in the distance saw that these bandit horsemen could not even break through the first line of defense, and immediately ordered the Divine Marksman Battalions on both flanks to change formation.

Because although the current situation looked highly lethal, since contact was only along a single front, the efficiency of killing the enemy was still too slow.

Thus, under Hu Guang's command, the advantaged Divine Marksman Battalion's Tabai Battalion and Divine Crossbow Battalion immediately changed formation. They formed small squads based on two huo — that is, units of twenty men.

Each small squad had two rattan-shield bearers, two great-club wielders, four hook-sickle or modao glaive glaive glaive wielders, six long-spearmen, and six crossbowmen.

Among them, the rattan-shield bearers defended against the enemy's horse-lance thrusts and slashes, while the long-spearmen guarded against direct charges by enemy cavalry.

The hook-sickle and modao glaive glaive glaive wielders were responsible for hooking down riders who dared not charge directly, or simply chopping off the warhorses' legs.

The great-club wielders were responsible for finishing off riders who had fallen to the ground, and the crossbowmen provided ranged output.

Moreover, these small squads were not far apart from one another and could support each other, and the strongest fighters could even adjust their positions.

This was something the yabing guards of the Central Plains had refined over several centuries, specifically for dealing with nomadic light cavalry that lacked armored lancers.

As long as they were not broken through in a single charge — that is, as long as the first eight or ten small squads held their ground — no matter how many steppe cavalry came, it was all in vain.

Even the Khitan cavalry of Abaoji's era could not withstand this formation. As long as they did not run into monstrous armored lancers like the Hanshan Du Beiwei Iron Cavalry Battalion, which could match the Iron Pagodas of the Jin at its height, they would usually win a complete victory.

At the same time, this formation had another advantage: it could hide strength and feign weakness.

For example, right now, the charging enemy cavalry had been dealt a stunning blow and left dazed. But when the Tabai Battalion suddenly changed formation like this, they suddenly felt the field open up before them.

Eh! The enemy seemed to have become fewer, and they were scattered all over the place in isolation — wasn't this just waiting for us to trample them?

In many people's tiny brains, they could quickly conjure up the illusion that we had already routed the enemy — an illusion that could send them plunging into the abyss.

And so, Hulunjian, who was ordering the retreat flute to be blown, suddenly discovered that his retreat order was utterly useless. The cavalry in front, like male dogs in heat, charged forward howling.

Luo Yanhui stood at the very front of the formation, modao glaive glaive glaive in hand, wearing two layers of heavy armor.

This fellow was rather unlucky. He had already distinguished himself in the great battle at Qicheng, a fierce young warrior of the younger generation, and later rendered great merit by defecting at the critical moment during the great Zhou-Liao battle at Luoyang.

But not long after, he believed Murong Yanchao's nonsense and went with Yan Kunlun to Taiyuan to join Liu Zhiyuan, and later was defeated and captured at Jize County.

By law he should have been tattooed and exiled three thousand li, but Luo Yanhui's father Luo Huan emptied the family fortune to pay his exemption money, and because he had also rendered merit at Luoyang, he was shown leniency.

The absurd thing was that now Luo Yanhui had been recruited by Li Jixun and had come to Talas again.

This was far more than three thousand li — five thousand would be enough!

Therefore, whenever he thought of the five hundred strings of exemption money his father had paid by bankrupting the family, Luo Yanhui's heart bled.

He had only one thought in his mind now: kill more enemies, earn more rewards and rank — otherwise it would be too damn great a loss.

The chaotic sound of hoofbeats rang out. Although Luo Yanhui was also a squad leader, he had been sent to the front holding a modao glaive glaive glaive, because the other squad leader held the rank of Wuyi Lang, a status just a tiny bit higher than his.

The surging bandit horsemen were not moving fast. They had just recovered from the chaos, with only thirty or forty paces of distance, and could not build up speed at all.

The chaotic arrows fell from the sky like rain, and before long they had studded Luo Yanhuan's body and the ground with arrow shafts, until the man looked like a hedgehog.

The sword-and-shield men would not shield a modao glaive glaive glaive wielder like him, who wore two layers of armor — they were there to protect the crossbowmen behind.

With the sound of "thwip! thwip!" the crossbowmen in the formation began returning fire, and the bandit horsemen began dropping one after another, their speed slowing further.

Luo Yanhuan peered through the narrow slits of his face guard: the enemy cavalry were at most ten paces from crashing into him. He could already smell the earthy reek of churned dust and the rank stench of the warhorses.

"Brace!" the squad leader in command bellowed. The spearmen fanned out in a semicircle, their gleaming spearheads telling the oncoming horses plainly:

"Don't charge this way, unless you want to be gutted."

At the same time, the crossbowmen who had been firing slowly and precisely suddenly sped up, many of them even loosing linked arrows in rapid succession.

At ten paces there was no need for accuracy. Every extra arrow loosed now meant extra killing power, and they aimed mainly at the warhorses.

Sure enough, at the sight of the glittering spearheads, and with arrows biting into their bodies, the horses, in their agony, cared nothing for any command. They only wanted to get away from these ferocious, terrifying upright apes.

The charging cavalry split like a river parting around rocks. At least two or three hundred riders bore down on them head-on, yet without any prior agreement they divided into two streams around the little twenty-man formation.

Luo Yanhuan was overjoyed. He knew at once that these fellows, for all their fierce approach, were nothing but a rabble.

Because the finest armored cavalry — the Beiwei Iron Cavalry Battalion, for instance — could draw their stiff bows at twenty or thirty paces from infantry, loose two or three arrows in succession, shoot the spear formation to pieces, and then smash straight in.

The next tier, the Khitan iron-armored riders, could slow their pace and then, relying on the protection of armor on both man and horse, force their mounts to squeeze into the formation.

They themselves, holding long lances and stiff bows from their elevated position, would strike down hard. Once the front ranks collapsed, the rest could be easily ridden down.

The tier below that — the half-armored cavalry of the Dingnan Army of Xiazhou, for example — could circle the formation at leisure, pour in a volley of arrows, then regroup at a distance and repeat, loosing four or five volleys until the spearmen could hold no longer, and only then break the formation.

But the enemy cavalry before him belonged to the lowest tier of all. Though some riders wore heavy armor, they dared not charge the formation, could not maneuver, and had not built up speed, so they were simply split apart by the heavy infantry in formation.

To refuse such easy military merit would be an insult to Heaven's kindness.

Luo Yanhuan roared, and the modao glaive glaive glaive in his hands flashed a streak of white. A warhorse passing beside him let out an agonized neigh as its foreleg was hewn clean off.

Rider and horse cried out together. The great-club wielder beside Luo Yanhuan gave a tiger's roar, and the moment the rider hit the ground, the iron-shod, edged great club smashed down onto his head.

Blood instantly gushed from the leather helmet, and the man was dead beyond any doubt.

Clang! Luo Yanhuan swayed — a rider had thrust a spear into him.

But Luo Yanhuan wore two layers of heavy armor, and even a spear thrust did not wound him in the slightest.

It only roused his ferocity. With a great roar he whirled his modao glaive glaive glaive like a bolt of white silk falling from the highest heavens.

One after another, warhorses had their fore or hind legs hewn off or gashed, and the riders tumbled from their saddles like dumplings into a pot. The great-club wielder grinned from ear to ear, and as if playing whack-a-mole, he smashed in head after head.

Seeing how savage Luo Yanhuan was, the horsemen all began swerving around this giant, who stood as tall on foot as they did on horseback, and galloped on ahead.

Then those fools were immediately dumbstruck, for behind Luo Yanhuan stood countless other terrifying giants, six feet tall, clad in two layers of heavy armor, wearing iron helmets, their faces shielded by face guards.

Tears were nearly falling from Hulun Jian's eyes. From his high vantage point he could clearly see how badly his cavalry had suffered after passing through those small formations scattered like plum blossoms.

A cavalry force of five hundred that made one pass through came out with only a little over two hundred left.

The retreat flute blew with ever greater urgency. The enemy riders, cut down in droves, now seemed at last to hear the signal to withdraw, and frantically tried to turn back.

But they had just been slaughtered so terribly that many had lost all heart. To withdraw now from these formations of heavy infantry, large and small, was easier said than done.

Countless enemy riders collided with their own comrades. Others, panicked and dazed like headless flies, blundered about blindly and died all the more miserably.

They had utterly abandoned any thought of fighting; only the desire to escape remained. As a result, most were cut down with appalling ease inside the formations.

Yao Yuanfu watched Hu Guang with admiration. This time the enemy cavalry had charged this flank of the Dianqian Tabai Battalion with six thousand riders.

To resist a charge of six thousand cavalry with one thousand infantry, with at most his Left Huben Guard's thousand-odd men in support, looked like an extremely difficult fight. Yet Hu Guang had dared to open up the square formation and use the plum-blossom formation to "skim the fat."

That kind of boldness was beyond the sky itself. If it had been him, Yao Yuanfu, in command, he would never have dared.

Hu Guang did not explain. He merely ordered the units to rest and reorganize for half an hour, then continue advancing in battle formation.

Li Jixun and Yao Yuanfu naturally knew the fighting strength of the Divine Shot Garrison, but they were not yet clear on what the men from Hezhong were capable of.

"They're trash! Even the yabing guards of the old Nanping Kingdom's Gao family in the Central Plains could beat them."

Hu Guang, born in Anxi and raised in Anxi, who had only returned east with Zhang Zhao at the age of seventeen, knew these men's fighting strength very well.

In less than an hour, Hulun Jian had lost three thousand riders, including more than two hundred heavy-armored cavalry, yet he could not even break through an infantry formation of a few thousand on the opposite side. What was the point of fighting on?

Hulun Jian hastily called together the several thousand riders who could still hear orders, and fled at full speed.

Even as he fled, he congratulated himself: these sons of Tang had such weak cavalry. Though they sent a few hundred riders in pursuit, their horsemanship was too poor — otherwise he would never have escaped so easily.

But after fleeing only seven or eight li, rounding a hill, Hulun Jian ran straight into Guo Guangyi, who had personally led the main army forward.

Guo Guangyi's face was iron-gray. In the past, he would have summoned Hulun Jian to question him carefully, ascertain the true situation, and only then decide what to do next.

He, Guo Guangyi, had risen to power not by fighting and killing, but by his brains.

But at this moment, his brains had been scorched into confusion by the increasingly terrifying future.

A full fifty thousand riders, including more than three thousand heavy-armored cavalry — in all of Hezhong, even the Samanid Persians would count that as an extremely powerful force.

Guo Guangyi knew well that although twenty thousand of those were cavalry of the Kelik tribe, and he himself was about to become the Kelik tribe's son-in-law, these men could not yet be fully counted as his subordinates. In truth, they had come to profit by following him.

Guo Guangyi had to lead them to take Suyab, even to take the city of Shiguo, and let them earn a great fortune. Only then would he have the standing to command them.

But after ten days of campaigning, he still could not take one little Hushui City. If he were now defeated by an army of only a few thousand — men he himself scorned as cowardly sons of Tang —

then he, Guo Guangyi, could forget about staying alive. These defeated soldiers would take his life.

So Guo Guangyi had no intention of seeing Hulun Jian at all. He could not even allow him to describe the Tang army as powerful in front of the men, for that would deal a severe blow to morale.

Cornered, Guo Guangyi seized the collar of the personal guard Hulun Jian had sent to report, and growled in a low snarl: "I will give him another three thousand picked riders. He must pin down that sons-of-Tang army until I arrive in person!"

Between Three Mountain Pass and Hushui City lay a small river. It was neither wide nor deep, but crossing it directly in heavy armor would still be somewhat inconvenient.

This was why Guo Guangyi wanted Hulun Jian to pin down Hu Guang's Western Expedition Army — he too wanted to strike them mid-crossing.

When Hu Guang saw dust rising in the distance and the cavalry that had just fled in disarray come charging back, seemingly with reinforcements, he understood at once. Of course he had long since scouted the terrain and knew of this river.

"They fled and now return — it must be that villain Guo Guangyi personally bringing the main army. He probably wants to strike us mid-crossing.

Take the left and right cavalry now and charge those ten thousand enemy riders with full force. You must utterly rout them before Guo the villain's main army arrives!"

Hu Guang carefully instructed Chen Tingxiao. My Grand Steward Hu's command ability is indeed extraordinary — at the mere sight of the enemy riders returning, he immediately guessed seven or eight parts of Guo Guangyi's intent.

Chen Tingxiao, who had been frantic with impatience at seeing the infantry win merit, now heard Hu Guang tell him to hold nothing back, and with a howl he led a thousand picked riders out of the formation.

Li Jiwu waited half the day and still got no order from Hu Guang to go out and fight, but he didn't dare go up and ask. He just stood at the rear, scratching his ears and cheeks in agitation, yet Hu Guang acted as if he hadn't seen him.

Over on the other side, Hulunjian had fled and then returned. Remembering the fighting power of the Tang heavy-armored infantry, his heart kept pounding.

But then he discovered that the ones coming at him were cavalry. Recalling the pathetic look of the Tang cavalry just now, he felt a surge of delight.

Then Hulunjian saw a sky-filling rain of arrows. The cavalry under Chen Tingxiao's command did not belong to the personal army or the imperial guard, and their fighting ability was somewhat lower than theirs, but that lower part lay mainly in military discipline and formation.

And those two things matter more and more the stronger the opponent you face, but... when beating weaklings, they aren't actually all that important.

At sixty paces they fired three volleys in succession, all for the sake of momentum, and since the enemy was numerous and hadn't yet gotten moving, all bunched together, the damage wasn't low either.

By thirty paces, the front-rank cavalry under Hulunjian were preparing to charge. Chen Tingxiao kicked with his foot, and another wave of crossbow bolts shot out.

But this time the bolts did not fall from the sky; they were fired from the height of a warhorse's knees.

This thing was called a small tread crossbow. It was mounted on the side of a cavalryman's horse, and in battle one kick of the foot would fire it.

The cavalry under Hulunjian had never seen such a thing. Just as they were about to charge in, they were caught off guard and another great swath of them was shot down.

And the most vicious thing about the small tread crossbow was that its firing position was very low. Generally it couldn't hit a man, but it could accurately hit the enemy's warhorse.

At the very moment of a charge, one horse falling in front could force many behind it to detour around, so how could the charge still get going?

But in that instant, the Great Zhou iron cavalry had already arrived. Chen Tingxiao brandished his cavalry lance and with one thrust smashed the neck of a man in front of him who was still turning his horse around.

Like an iron hammer smashing into mud, the Great Zhou iron cavalry not only pierced through the enemy riders with a single blow, but slaughtered them until flesh and blood flew everywhere.

Hulunjian was at the very rear. He watched with his own eyes as the two or three thousand cavalry in front of him were easily pierced through, then chased down and killed. The order from Guo Guangyi came back to his mind, and gritting his teeth, he prepared to throw his entire army forward.

But suddenly, the hair on his body stood on end, because that cavalry force had split off only half its men to pursue and kill, while the rest were heading straight for him.

Hulunjian's heart was in turmoil, but on his face he had no choice but to force a falsely heroic laugh.

"Warriors of the Khagan! Those sons of Tang have delivered themselves to our door! Charge! Let them learn how formidable we are!"

The surrounding cavalry were infected by Hulunjian, let out a howling like ghosts and wolves, and actually began to charge.

But at that moment, the galloping Great Zhou iron cavalry, without prior agreement, each produced a hand crossbow. This was a small horn-bow crossbow that could be fired with one hand and strung in advance, likewise one of the Great Zhou army's great killing moves.

Six hundred hand crossbows with a draw force exceeding one dan fired simultaneously, and the damage they brought was enormous. Moreover, each man was equipped with two of them, which was equivalent to firing twelve hundred bolts in an instant.

This terrifying killing power poured in one direction. Never mind the trash cavalry of the river region, even the Khitan Pishi Army's iron cavalry could not have withstood it.

In an instant, a huge gap opened up in front of Hulunjian.

Chen Tingxiao gripped his lance with both hands. In his eyes there was no longer any other person, any other thing, including life and death. In his eyes there was no life or death, only Hulunjian draped in his magnificent battle robe.

"Purple Lightning, fight beside me!" Chen Tingxiao called out the name of his beloved companion.

"Neigh!" Purple Lightning answered Chen Tingxiao in a high voice. This third-generation Ferghana horse suddenly pushed its speed to the maximum. Man and horse became one, hurtling toward the target.

Hulunjian stared ahead in terror. That Tang general rode a purple-red warhorse, as if it had grown wings, and in an instant it had flown right up to him.

Then a violent pain shot through the top of Hulunjian's head. Everything went black before his eyes, and he tumbled straight off his horse.

Chen Tingxiao's blow had struck his head. The iron ridge below the lance blade caved Hulunjian's skull inward.

Following behind Chen Tingxiao was a fierce rider from the Murong family of Guazhou. With a great shout, at the moment Hulunjian's body had not yet hit the ground, he thrust his long spear and ran him clean through. Then he released his grip and let the spear pin the corpse to the earth.

More cavalry swarmed in. Countless hooves trampled back and forth over Hulunjian's corpse, until that splendid brocade robe merged completely with the earth.

These ten thousand-odd cavalry had just suffered enormous losses, and it was only Hulunjian's rallying that had gotten them to turn back. Now, in a single encounter, their commander had been cut down, and the vast majority scattered like birds and beasts.

Chen Tingxiao circled around and came back. After cutting down Hulunjian's wailing personal guards who had surged forward, he personally chopped down Hulunjian's great banner.

This was a signal. Seeing it, Hu Guang released the last five hundred elite cavalry along with Chi Tian and the others.

For a time, the battlefield was full of enemy riders fleeing like wolves and wild boars, while the Great Zhou army's thousand-odd cavalry chased and slaughtered them at will across the vast land.

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