Chapter 877: Cold Wind, Bitter Rain, and the Yaxartes

The brutality of war was on full display in Bai Congxin's hands.

In order to spur Hu Guang and Zhang Zhong to come to his aid sooner, to keep his troops from falling into a passive position, and of course, more importantly, to draw the Samanid Persian army to the north bank of the Yaxartes River.

He actually opened up his own heartland, exposing the old and weak to the blades of the Persians.

Bai Congxin could in fact have held the Samanid Persian host at the south bank of the Yaxartes, forcing the two armies into a standoff across the river.

But that would have been meaningless, because Samanid Persia had over four million people, and behind it the entire Islamic world as a hinterland from which to summon holy warriors.

Meanwhile, Bai Congxin's Stone Kingdom City and the White Water City where Lu Sanlang was currently staying had only one hundred ten thousand Han people, ruling over four hundred seventy thousand subject barbarians.

That was nearly a tenfold disparity. The only thing he could rely on was that the Han fighting strength far surpassed that of Samanid Persia, and because they were armed settlers, the proportion of able-bodied men and soldiers was extremely high.

In this situation, a prolonged standoff would simply bleed Bai Congxin dry.

Only through a decisive battle that utterly shattered Samanid Persia could he avoid being crushed by the enemy's sheer size, and thereby achieve a complete reversal against the odds.

And after three medium-scale engagements, this battle — with over two hundred thousand soldiers and more than two hundred thousand laborers committed by both sides — would be the great decisive battle that determined the fate of both.

So Bai Congxin simply went all in. To lure the Samanid Persian army to the north bank and cut off their line of retreat, he opened his own front door.

In the ninth month, more and more small Persian units infiltrated through. The Han settlement forts on the north bank of the Yaxartes fell one after another. Wang Liu and Chen Sanlang were both forced to retreat to Wanli City, because Yingchun Fort could no longer be held.

And it was not just Yingchun Fort. Nearly all of the dozen or so forts under the Wanli Pacification Commissioner could no longer be held. People fled to Wanli City with their families, gathering all their strength to hold out.

Immediately after, the Han settlers north of Wanli City, in the Northern Qingzhou Pacification Commissioner's territory and elsewhere, also began to withdraw. Even beyond ten li from Stone Kingdom City was no longer safe ground.

Although the Han people spontaneously organized themselves, forming four or five self-defense cavalry units of over five hundred men each.

They were all old men and boys — under fifteen or over forty — and could only barely maintain basic early warning and rescue.

In the tenth month, war cries shook the ground outside Zhenhu Fort. The rebelling barbarians, taking advantage of the night, smashed through the small western gate of Zhenhu Fort. Nearly ten thousand barbarians, wielding curved blades, wooden spears, and wooden clubs, launched wave after wave of assaults. Had the Han defenders in the fort not resisted stubbornly, they would have broken in.

Thirty li north of Zhenhu Fort, Hu Guang had already arrived two days earlier with the Imperial Guard Divine Marksmen Battalion and seven thousand elite cavalry of the Western Three Tumen steppe riders.

Faced with this situation, even Hu Guang, renowned for his composure, could not sit still. After pacing back and forth a few steps, he muttered in a voice only he could hear:

"That bastard Bai Congxin is too ruthless. A single general's glory is built on ten thousand bones!

He's willing to sacrifice even Zhenhu Fort, even his own future, betting that the court's army will surely come to the rescue.

The timing is wrong! But I have no choice but to move. Bai Congxin's death would be no great loss, but if the thousands of Han in Zhenhu Fort are slaughtered, the Sage will never forgive me.

You ruthless wretch — you win!"

With that thought, Hu Guang — whom the soldiers called Great General Hu — whirled around abruptly and swept his hand out.

"Move out! Annihilate all the rebels, and hunt down every Persian who has infiltrated north of Heyang Town!"

The iron cavalry swept past Zhenhu Fort like a torrent. The Han on the walls, seeing the bright silver-white Three Stars banner, cheered and leaped for joy, then wept.

The rebels who had taken part screamed as they were killed without distinction. Those who had not participated wiped the cold sweat from their brows and pretended to cheer along with the Han.

These so-called rebels were nothing but farmers and herdsmen. They did not even have more than a few iron blades. Tens of thousands of them had besieged Zhenhu Fort, defended by just over three thousand, for two months without taking it — how much fighting strength could they possibly have?

Under the sweeping assault of Hu Guang's ten thousand infantry and cavalry, they collapsed swiftly. After Hu Guang captured and killed their leaders, the Han militia of Zhenhu Fort immediately sallied out and hunted down the rebels in great numbers.

Blood dyed the ground outside Zhenhu Fort red, and for a time the fort's name seemed truly earned.

Almost at the same moment, Abu Yusuf was also preparing to launch a general assault on the Han army at Heyang Town.

This famous Samanid Persian general had originally hoped to infiltrate with a small force of elite cavalry, thoroughly ravage the Han army's heartland, cut off the Heyang Town Han army's rear, force them to retreat, and then pursue.

To this end, he had selected over five thousand horsemen in total, including more than a hundred Iqta noble knights, to carry out the mission.

But the situation did not meet Abu Yusuf's expectations. The cavalry had taken many Han settlement forts, but the vast majority had been abandoned voluntarily by the Han. Of the five thousand elite cavalry that infiltrated through, the Han they killed numbered fewer than a hundred.

Most of the rest had gathered in fairly large fortified towns, which a few thousand cavalry could not possibly break.

Moreover, the Han had also formed a very powerful cavalry force that had been protecting the Han army's supply lines the entire time. Abu Yusuf had tried repeatedly to cut them, but had never succeeded.

As for the people in the Han heartland who had formerly belonged to the Samanid Emirate, Abu Yusuf no longer held any hope for them.

Because those among them who dared resist had long since been killed or carried off as slaves when Stone Kingdom City fell.

Those who remained were all cowards. They were terrified even to act as guides, let alone rise up together in revolt.

Hmm. After the noble officer Salar from Damascus was ambushed and killed by Song Heishan and his men, Abu Yusuf had no idea at all that Zhenhu Fort had already erupted in rebellion.

Otherwise he would certainly have sent all the infiltrating cavalry to Zhenhu Fort, and in that case, this game of chess might well have come alive.

But Abu Yusuf did not know this now. So, faced with the fact that infiltration warfare was not producing good results, Abu Yusuf decided to open the decisive battle directly.

From the current situation, in small-unit engagements — even battles of a few thousand men — the fighting strength of the Samanid Persian army simply could not compare with the Han army.

Then the only option was a large-scale decisive battle, using numerical superiority to make up for the deficiency in quality.

Boom! Boom-boom! Over a hundred war drums thundered without pause, shaking the very earth as if it trembled along with them.

Fifty-two thousand Han troops, with the thirty thousand Han troops at Heyang Town as the main force, and over ten thousand men each at Wild Millet Ridge and Two Rivers Mouth on the flanks guarding the army's vulnerable sides.

The entire force had been compressed by the Persians into this area of seven or eight li in circumference.

Abu Yusuf wore iron armor gleaming with a dark silver light, a helmet with a nose guard on his head, its cheek guards forged as one piece with the helmet, clattering as they hung down on either side — handsome to look at and offering good protection.

Strictly speaking, Abu Yusuf was not a Persian, nor of course a Sogdian. He was an Arab.

His family was an Arab clan that had intermarried deeply with the Persian nobility of Khorasan.

It was said that Abu Yusuf's mother's ancestor was none other than Abu Muslim, the founding hero of the Abbasid dynasty — the man who had sent troops to defeat Gao Xianzhi at Talas and was called the Han Xin of the Arabs.

Therefore, in all of Samanid Persia, Abu Yusuf had always had an intense interest in blocking the infidels coming from the east, and he was also one of the men in Samanid Persia most familiar with the Taohuashi Empire.

He deeply understood the strength of the revived Taohuashi Empire, and knew even more clearly that the Samanid royal house could only hope to preserve the state by raising the banner of holy war, packaging itself as the standard-bearer against the eastern infidels, and thereby winning the support of the entire Islamic world.

And to show the Islamic world Samanid Persia's resolve and capability, they absolutely had to retake Stone Kingdom City, drive out Bai Congxin — who was not, at present, backed by the full strength of the Taohuashi Empire — and then fight another Talas to prove it to everyone!

On the broad river-bend plain, the breeze carried the rank smell of the Yaxartes. Abu Yusuf spurred his horse forward and shouted before tens of thousands of elite soldiers:

"My brothers, two hundred years ago, not far from here, our ancestors, led by the incarnation of Allah, blocked the invasion of the Taohuashi infidels and preserved our homeland.

And now, when the infidels have once more reached this land where their ancestors' corpses lay strewn across the field — my brothers, are these Taohuashi people any luckier than their ancestors?"

"No, never! Because the descendants of heroes will defeat them once again!"

A bit of obscure knowledge: a few decades ago, there was still an Islamic Khurramite sect active in Transoxiana.

This was a highly unorthodox Islamic sect, formed after the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur unjustly executed Abu Muslim.

This sect had absorbed certain Manichaean ideas, believing that light and darkness were two opposing forces, advocating for the equalization of wealth, opposing social oppression, and being quite fond of playing the divine revelation game.

They held that Musa, Isa, Muhammad, and the prophets of the Khurramites were all messengers of God in the human world.

They regarded the wrongfully executed Abu Muslim as the incarnation of the True Lord in the human world, believing that he would one day return to the mortal realm, slay the wicked, and uphold justice.

What a coincidence — other things I, Sage Zhang, am not very keen on exploiting, but arranging a prophet for the Khurramites.

One from the East, a prophet sent by the Supreme Heaven, who would then lead them to demand fairness and justice from the Arabs — that is quite doable.

After two hundred years of suppression by the Abbasid dynasty, the Khurramites now appeared to have declined on the surface, but a sect like this naturally has a large following among the common people.

Now, in order to use the prestige of his half-ancestor Abu Muslim to bolster his own morale, and to dupe the lower classes of Samanid Persia into fighting for free on behalf of the upper classes, Abu Yusuf had "released" the Khurramites.

The cheers of the Samanid Persians spread across every part of the battlefield, but the cost behind them was multiplying.

"Fall back, another three li. Lu Zhen, Bai Congyu, and Chen Tingxiao will each lead their troops to hold firm outside Heyang Town. Let the Persians come and attack the town first!"

As for Bai Congxin, he had no grand speeches to make, because there was simply no need.

Those who could follow him, Bai Congxin, to this point were either Kucha people from the former Bai clan domain who had once been called the Yellow-Head Uyghurs, or armed settlers who had come from the Han lands.

Everyone knew that victory meant boundless wealth and honor, and defeat meant dying without a burial place, so there was no need for any verbal mobilization at all.

On the seventh day of the tenth month, Abu Yusuf's great army formally arrived west of Heyang Town and immediately began its attack.

But Abu Yusuf was very clever. He did not directly attack Heyang Town, which had two large military camps outside its walls, but first moved to cut off Heyang Town's two flanks — namely the garrisons at Wild Millet Ridge and Two Rivers Mouth.

Wild Millet Ridge was not actually a mountain ridge, but a low-lying stretch of hilly terrain, while Two Rivers Mouth was the confluence of two tributaries on the northern bank of the Yaxartes River.

Abu Yusuf's great army numbered a full one hundred twenty thousand, of whom at least forty thousand were armored, while Bai Congxin's actual armored troops consisted only of the seven thousand under his direct control plus Lu Sanlang's one thousand two hundred.

This was also an important reason Bai Congxin had consistently maintained a defensive posture — although the Han army's fighting strength was formidable, against Samanid Persia it was still far too few in number.

So they had to be used with caution. If they capsized in a ditch, it was very possible they would lose all their capital in one go.

Between Wild Millet Ridge and Two Rivers Mouth, the Persian army chose Wild Millet Ridge first, because the terrain there was relatively complex and could conceal ten or twenty thousand men.

Abu Yusuf feared that Bai Congxin had laid an ambush there, so he first sent his great general Ziyad with thirty thousand infantry and cavalry to attack.

As soon as the battle at Wild Millet Ridge began, Bai Congxin in Heyang Town began shifting troops in an attempt to strike at the Persian army's rear.

But the great Persian camp outside the town still held tens of thousands of troops, and with tens of thousands of Samanid Persian laborers who could also be mobilized, their numbers reached nearly one hundred thousand.

Their morale was high, and Bai Congxin sent troops out three times in succession, at most committing as many as twenty thousand men at once, but still could not completely drive back the Persian forces outside the town, nor safely reach Wild Millet Ridge.

On the nineteenth of the tenth month, the Han army at Wild Millet Ridge was forced to retreat, because the ridge was too low and had no large walled city to hold, and of the nine thousand troops on the ridge, only a little over two thousand were regular armored soldiers. They truly could not withstand the assault of thirty thousand Persian troops and could only withdraw northward.

With this victory, Persian morale soared, and Abu Yusuf immediately sent Ziyad another fifteen thousand reinforcements, ordering him to go attack the Han army at Two Rivers Mouth.

But this time it would not be so easy, because the Han troops at Two Rivers Mouth were entirely cavalry, with three horses per man.

Although Two Rivers Mouth had only a small ferry crossing to rely on, they could leave at any time if they could not hold.

Conversely, Ziyad had only a few thousand cavalry under his command, with infantry making up the vast majority. The two sides probed each other for several days. The Han army could not hold the small ferry crossing at Two Rivers Mouth, nor could they break the nearly fifty thousand Persian troops, but the Persians also could not catch this cavalry force.

The standoff continued until the twenty-second of the tenth month, when Bai Congxin sent orders to An Cunzhong, who came from the Basmyl ten-thousand household and was a commander of An Qi's personal guard thousand-household, ordering him to lead his troops around Ziyad's Persian force and go reinforce Chen Tingxiao's unit.

It turned out Bai Congxin had already received word that Hu Guang had lifted the siege of Zhenhu Fort.

The Samanid Persian cavalry was already inferior in numbers to the Han army's, and now that a decisive battle was coming, they naturally had to recall the elite cavalry they had earlier sent out.

But as soon as they withdrew, Bai Congxin's communications with the rear were immediately restored.

Bai Congxin was overjoyed to learn that Hu Guang had marched out, and he immediately formulated an even bolder battle plan.

Let Chen Tingxiao, garrisoned on Heyang Town's left flank, break out, and pull Bai Congyu, garrisoned on the right flank, back into the town.

Chen Tingxiao's unit had many cavalry, so breaking out would give them mobility, while Bai Congyu had mostly infantry and archers conscripted from Beiting, who were just right for defending the town.

And the greatest advantage of doing this was that it would make the Persians come and attack Heyang Town directly, which had relatively sturdy walls, and would also create the illusion for the Persians that they had routed the Han forces outside the town.

Once they had battered themselves against Heyang Town until their troops were exhausted and their horses spent, Hu Guang and the forces outside — Chen Tingxiao, An Cunzhong, and the rest — would all sweep back together, and the Persian army would be finished.

However, this was not without risk. Heyang Town was not large; housing twenty thousand people already made it somewhat crowded, and now with Bai Congyu's six thousand men squeezed in as well, plus a large number of livestock, both the living conditions and the supply of water and grain would become extremely strained.

The great Persian army outside the town, counting the peasants who could be used as cannon fodder, numbered roughly one hundred fifty or sixty thousand, with tens of thousands of armored troops. If anything went wrong, it was not impossible that Heyang Town would fall.

This was a huge gamble. Bai Congxin was betting that he could hold Heyang Town, and betting that Hu Guang would suddenly appear when the Persian troops were weary and their horses spent.

On the twenty-seventh of the tenth month, the Persian army began attacking Chen Tingxiao's unit on Heyang Town's left flank, and Bai Congxin again sent out a large force to pin them down.

After three days of fierce fighting, the Persians, their morale high and attacking with reckless abandon, finally "captured" the left-flank camp after suffering over a thousand casualties.

The five thousand-odd infantry and cavalry on the left flank broke out under An Cunzhong's cover.

Without pause, all the Persian troops immediately attacked the right flank. Bai Congyu's unit on the right flank also had ten thousand infantry and cavalry.

But most of them were Han settlers who had come to Transoxiana after the great battle at Shiguo City. Their fighting ability might be acceptable, but their level of organization was not high.

Bai Congxin's gamble indeed hit a snag. On the battlefield, men shouted and horses screamed, blades clashed, arrows fell like rain, and the panic brought by the stench of blood filled every direction.

When the right flank was withdrawing into the town, it was struck by the Persian cavalry and broke into a rout, nearly causing a total collapse of the entire right-flank army. Only after losing seven or eight hundred men did they barely stabilize the situation.

Abu Yusuf saw this from the hillside and was overjoyed. He had originally suspected that Bai Congxin was deliberately luring him into attacking a strong position, but now he was "convinced" that the Han army truly could not withstand the pressure and had been forced to retreat.

Outside Tianmen Pass, old Zhang Zhong had already assembled his forces. The young lord's army and the Ningyuan Army had dispatched three thousand elite troops, commanded by the fierce general Dang Jin.

The Jin Kingdom vassal army sent fifteen thousand men, with Li Congde personally donning helmet and armor, leading Ma Jirong, Xue Shouli, and a host of golden-haired Khotan generals standing to Zhang Zhong's left.

But they would not move out immediately. They would wait until Bai Congxin sent the signal from Heyang Town, then sail down the Yaxartes River, smash the Persian water fort in Transoxiana, and cut off the Persians' line of retreat.

At Heyang Town, the siege had reached its most brutal stage. Abu Yusuf cruelly drove vast numbers of laborers forward, nearly filling in the moat outside the walls with their very lives, and also exhausting the defenders' supply of arrows. Then the great army launched wave after wave of fierce assaults.

The fighting continued from the twenty-ninth of the tenth month all the way to the beginning of the twelfth month, with both sides suffering heavy casualties.

The area around Shiguo City has a typical temperate continental climate. Each year, June to September is the dry hot season, and December through April of the following year is the rainy season with lower temperatures.

By the beginning of the twelfth month, the temperature, which should have been around freezing, suddenly rose to six or seven degrees. In the rainy season, December precipitation should have been relatively light, but instead there were suddenly several consecutive days of drizzling rain.

This brought great misery to both sides. Normally, if the temperature were too low, the rain would turn to heavy snow, which would not actually have much impact on people — at worst they could simply call a temporary truce.

But with the temperature suddenly rising a few degrees and then a bout of sleet coming down, the icy cold seeped into the very marrow of the bones. Especially in ancient times, when there were few means of keeping warm, to say it was a living death would be no exaggeration at all.

Abu Yusuf looked at the battered walls of Heyang Town. Though deeply reluctant, the thought of retreat had begun to form in his heart.

Bai Congxin also saw Abu Yusuf's hesitation, and so he directly raised the stakes.

Although the Han army was likewise suffering from the bitter wind and cold rain, this was when the advantage of giving real benefits — land, grain, money, and women — became apparent.

Compared with Abu Yusuf's Persian soldiers, who were strung along by the Khurramite preaching, the Han soldiers knew exactly whom they were fighting for. They knew clearly that whether they died in battle or retired wounded, there were reliable guarantee regulations they could trust, and so they were better able to fight bitterly against the enemy in this cruel weather.

Abu Yusuf by now had begun to understand that Bai Congxin intended to pin him down here.

But the victories of "sweeping through the Han army" all along the way, and his longing for fame and success, suppressed his reason. Seeing the Han army come out of the city and form ranks, Abu Yusuf likewise ordered his great army forward to fight a decisive battle with the Han army.

Just as Abu Yusuf was commanding a hundred thousand troops to besiege Bai Congxin's twenty thousand men, Lu Ktu—son of Lu Zhen, Lu Sanlang—broke out of the city northward and found the twelve thousand cavalry of Chen Tingxiao and An Cunzhong, who had been lying in ambush there all along.

Lu Ktu had by now become a famed fierce general throughout Hezhong. He was a Western Zubu man, and he had an even stronger influence over this cavalry force, most of whom came from the grasslands and followed the Six Dharma Sect.

In the cold wind, the drizzling rain had briefly stopped. Compared with the rainy days before, the ground had dried considerably, just right for cavalry to strike.

Lu Ktu ordered his men to light more than ten great bonfires. Those managing all this were all monks of the Six Dharma Sect.

Lu Ktu gave a great shout and drew his sword, taking the lead in thrusting the blade into the fire, letting the flames lick it for a while before withdrawing it.

This ritual had a special term in the Six Dharma Sect: "quenching and forging." Any weapon that underwent this ritual would be imbued with the divine power granted by the Supreme Heaven, and enemies killed by such weapons would fall into the eighteen levels of hell.

Ten thousand cavalrymen began quenching and forging one after another, a magnificent sight. Then before them appeared enormous wine basins.

Over a hundred Six Dharma Sect monks, like drawing ghostly talismans, painted countless charms in cinnabar on yellow paper, then threw them into the wine basins, where they dissolved into charm water.

Whoever drank this charm water could receive the Supreme Heaven's blessing and be ever-victorious in battle.

Make no mistake—this was exactly the trick of spirit possession and summoning divine soldiers, and even these fellows who looked like monks had all simply transferred over from the Daoist school.

Having quenched and forged their weapons and drunk the charm water, all the grassland cavalrymen believed themselves invincible.

Lu Ktu led them in devoutly chanting the Supreme Heaven's Scripture for Dispelling Disaster and Escaping Calamity, then raised his arm and shouted:

"Punishing knights of the Supreme Heaven, the heretics are at Heyang Town. They do not know the True Lord; they are stubborn and savage.

Let us go forth, and with the swords in our hands and the longbows on our backs, teach them what truth is!

Savages who cannot feel the radiance of the Supreme Heaven are fit only to be slain by noble punishing knights, their souls wailing forever in the eighteen levels of hell.

Strike forth, punishing knights!"

The words had barely fallen when over a hundred silver-white banners bearing golden swastikas were raised, and twelve thousand elite cavalry began slowly advancing toward the battlefield at Heyang Town!

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