Chapter 889: The Long-Delayed Fated Showdown (Part 2)

The battle was far from over, for kneeling on the battlefield to beg for surrender was not a wise move.

Anyone who actually did so would either have his head lopped off by the charging enemy as a war trophy, or be bowled over and trampled to death by his own fleeing comrades.

Moreover, at such a moment of life and death, those who could keep their cool were very few.

A hundred thousand men! Once they began wailing and shrieking, the sound could shut out all outside noise and sever any thread of reason.

Anyone unfamiliar with such a scene can imagine it — imagine what a pet cat at home looks like when it is startled. A hundred thousand startled cats — even if they were only cats, what kind of scene would that be!

So although the Arab army lay strewn across the field with blood flowing like rivers, the fallen numbered only a few thousand to ten thousand or so.

The vast majority of the survivors, like night cats with their fur bristling, fled frantically toward the forts they believed were safe.

The ground was open, but there were only so many forts, so the pursuit front was relatively narrow. The warriors of the Zhuxia Alliance Army were indeed chasing and hammering them hard, yet not many could actually get close to the enemy.

Those lucky warriors in the front ranks snapped their bowstrings, notched their blades, even bent their iron maces double; great axes and bone-crushing clubs were so caked in flesh and bone that they lost their original shape.

But the Arabs still seemed boundless, impossible to kill off no matter how many were slain.

The sky gradually darkened. Arab forts were breached one after another, and countless Arabs were driven out and slaughtered alive, but casualties among the armored soldiers of the Zhuxia Alliance Army also began to mount.

Because by this point, it was not only the Arabs who were in a startled state, with no one organizing them and only instinctive resistance — the Zhuxia Alliance Army had also largely lost command and control.

Apart from the squad leaders and deputy officers at the lowest level, even the senior deputy officers could no longer fully gather their own units.

Seeing this, Cao Bin immediately came to warn Zhang Xianyu, and Zhang Xianyu also snapped back to his senses from his immense excitement.

He could not help being excited, for this operation had indeed been somewhat risky.

The Zhuxia Alliance Army's grain had truly been exhausted. If they could not break through the Arab blocking force and link up with Fort Jia-3 a dozen or so li away, they would probably have had to break out with elite troops alone, and the Battle of Talas would have repeated itself.

Now that they had succeeded in one blow, how could he not be so excited he could barely contain himself?

Once he came back to his senses, Zhang Xianyu personally took up a bronze bar and struck the great gong that signaled retreat.

The clear ringing spread across the battlefield. When they heard the commander-in-chief sounding the gong, the Commanders, senior deputy officers, deputy officers, and other mid-level officers also began striking the great gongs they carried, either personally or by ordering their guards to do so.

When the squad leaders at the lowest level heard the clanging of the gongs, they immediately gathered five nearby officers whose iron helmets or leather caps bore a silver-white sun.

Those who could adorn or embroider a silver sun on their helmets were either fire-team leaders or elite soldiers holding military rank.

And these fire-team leaders, once singled out by the squad leaders, would immediately begin calling out to ten soldiers each. Whether or not the soldiers around them were under their command, they had to be brought under control first.

And whenever a fire-team leader had control of ten soldiers, he would have them all shout together: "Yulin! Yulin!"

Once the whole battlefield was filled with the sound of gongs and the cry of "Yulin," everyone began to regain their composure and swiftly broke off contact.

At this point Zhang Xianyu quickly handed command over to Cao Bin, and Cao Bin immediately ordered Zhang Xiantai, Lu Ketu, Li Congde, Shi Shouxin, Cui Han, Li Jiwu, Liu Tingrang, and other generals to take control of the troops separately.

The first unit to receive its token immediately went upstream to the river to draw water and drink, and had the soldiers and officers wash and relieve themselves right there in the river.

The fighting had gone on intermittently for four double-hours, and everyone's throat was parched and smoking. Now that they had broken through the Arab blocking force, the main body of the Zhuxia Alliance Army could finally move safely and smoothly to the riverbank.

As for why they had to wash and relieve themselves in the river — ahem — it was because the Arab forts were almost all pitched downstream. The Alliance Army doing this upstream amounted to poisoning the water source.

At the same time, Cao Bin sent his trusted men with Zhang Xianyu's commander-in-chief banner to go immediately to Fort Jia-3, ordering the garrison troops and laborers left in the fort to cook food at top speed and report back to steady the whole army's morale.

After all this was done, Cao Bin ordered Zhang Xiantai and Lu Ketu, who had drunk water, to each lead seven thousand light-armored steppe lancers and unarmored horse archers and set up layered interception positions on the east and north sides of the Arab forts, planting many banners to make it look as though a great army was everywhere.

This was because Zhang Xiantai had under him a large number of light steppe cavalry newly conscripted from the twelve myriarchies of the grasslands, while Lu Ketu had the Dinghai light cavalry built around the former Western Zubu people as its core.

These steppe cavalrymen had long since, in accordance with the will of the Boundless Heaven, begun training in the art of hard fighting on mare's milk wine, air-dried meat, and vegetable leaves.

With three horses per man, their carrying capacity was strong, and they alone in the army were permitted to carry mare's milk wine on the eve of the decisive battle.

Therefore, their endurance for bitter fighting was extremely high. While everyone else was now parched and starving, they had replenished themselves along the way with dried meat and mare's milk wine, and were still brimming with energy.

Now these light cavalry blocked the east and north, and the main army was on the west, so the Arabs had only one direction left to flee: the south.

But this was precisely the death trap Cao Bin had laid. The Arab army still had at least sixty or seventy thousand men. After a night of steadying morale, they would probably still retain some fighting strength, and continuing to assault their forts would still carry some danger.

But if they could be made to flee on their own, it would be simple. The Zhuxia Alliance Army's cavalry was numerous and elite; pursuing and harrying them all the way, they would hardly need to inflict much harm — sheer exhaustion would kill them all.

No wonder Cao Bin became a famous general of his generation in history — his mind was truly meticulous, and in an instant he had considered everything that could and should be considered.

On the fourteenth of the third month, the well-fed and well-watered Zhuxia Alliance Army began its attack on the Arab army. The method was not close combat, but using strong bows to keep shooting fire arrows into the Arab forts.

Whenever a fire broke out somewhere, the startled Arabs who left the fort would be surrounded and wiped out.

The effect was slow, but Cao Bin was not seeking to crush the Arabs quickly at all. It was already a certain victory, so there was no need to make his own men risk their lives.

At the same time, Cao Bin also conscripted all the laborers and, led by small numbers of combat troops, had them keep raising a din and harassing the Arab army in the middle of the night and before dawn.

After three days of this, the Arabs could no longer hold out. Fire arrows rained from the sky by day, and they could not sleep at night. Although they had no shortage of grain, their drinking water was almost entirely muddy, foul water, and besides being hard to swallow, many men had already begun suffering from diarrhea.

On the eighteenth of the third month, the Buyid Shah Adud al-Dawla sent his trusted court minister Hasan Shihna out with a wagonload of gold and silver to ask for surrender.

Well, it was not exactly asking for surrender — rather, he hoped to ransom himself with gold and silver, declaring that if they were willing to let Adud al-Dawla leave, he would cede Ray and send ten times this amount in gold, silver, and treasures.

A greedy look appeared in Cao Bin's eyes. He neither said yes nor said no, and in the end, with an expression of tremendous willpower, refused Hasan Shihna.

Hasan Shihna was overjoyed at this. The moment he left the tent, he grabbed Cao Bin's personal guard by the hand and promised that what had just been said was only for show; in secret, Adud al-Dawla was willing to give Cao Bin five more carts of gold and silver and thirty Baghdad court beauties.

Inside the tent, Cao Bin sneered in the direction Hasan Shihna had left, then turned and said to Zhang Xiantai, who had been disguised as an attendant in the tent the whole time:

"Your Highness the Prince of Shu, have your iron cavalry ready. The Arabs are about to break out in full force!"

Sure enough, over the next two days the Arabs repeatedly sent men to contact Cao Bin in secret, and even delivered a cart of gold and silver.

And in this chest of gold and silver there was a jumble of all sorts of things, looking as though they had been stripped from the nobles and officers in the army.

Cao Bin was delighted, and immediately hinted in secret that he could soon open an important gap in the southeast, reducing the garrison there from six thousand men to two thousand.

This so delighted Adud al-Dawla, who saw the Zhuxia Alliance Army's movements from the watchtower, that his brows danced and his eyes smiled.

On the twenty-first of the third month, before dawn, just as Cao Bin had predicted, the Arabs suddenly sent several thousand elite cavalry as the vanguard, followed by nearly ten thousand holy warriors. In the faint light of dawn, they moved silently toward the weakened southeast gate, where only two thousand men remained.

But... this was in fact a huge trap.

Little Black Bear Zhang Liechao took a breath. He wore cloth-faced iron armor over a suit of ring mail, and in his hand was the modao glaive glaive glaive his father, the Savage Bear Zhang Zhaozhong, had once used, named Moon-Severing.

For the past half year and more, Little Black Bear had not appeared on the battlefield, because he had been busy coordinating military grain and supplies and the dispatch of laborers between Ningyuan and Anxi, and had also punished a number of corrupt officials while promoting dozens of diligent, capable civil and military men.

With Zhang Xianyu having no time to handle such matters, only he — a famed general of the Zhang Zhou middle generation, long-serving Commander of the Imperial Guard Cavalry and Infantry, and a scion of the Zhang Zhou imperial clan who had grown up beside the Emperor — was qualified to arrange them.

Beside Little Black Bear, the big man on his left, fair-skinned and plump, was Zhou Quanjie, a lord of the Song fief with seven thousand households, nicknamed White Piglet.

In the old days, when Yao Yuanfu retook Suyab, White Piglet had single-handedly fought several hundred White Wolf Army soldiers, hammer in his left hand and axe in his right, killing more than sixty men on the spot and winning a fearsome reputation in that one battle. Now nearly forty, he was still a peerless warrior who made men tremble.

On the right stood a mighty man with ape-long arms and thighs as thick as pillars, as immovable as a mountain, of the Tangut Luoli clan, named Luo Yechuan.

Not only could he draw a one-dan hard bow and loose eight arrows in a single breath, he was equally skilled with the modao glaive glaive glaive, with courage enough to stand against ten thousand. When Suyab was retaken, he and Bai Zhu'er together seized Suyab's main gate.

And behind Zhang Liechao's back stood two more mighty men, modao glaive glaive glaives in hand and divine-arm crossbows on their backs, the sort who left a deep impression at a single glance.

These two were the sons of Wang Tongxin, Duke of Wucheng — on the left the elder brother Wang Yaorong, on the right the younger brother Wang Yaowu.

These two fellows had nothing but muscle in their heads from childhood. From their earliest schooling all the way to the Longtao Academy, as long as the two of them were there, no one else could take last place even by writing blind.

But apart from their studies, the two young lords had been unbeatable in the circle of meritorious families since they were boys.

At twenty, their martial prowess among the sons of meritorious families already equaled the standing Zhang Liechao and Zhang Deqing had held around age thirty among those same sons — the sort who were the ceiling itself.

And among these two thousand men, it was not only such death-gods who were present. All the remaining officers and soldiers had retired — some even deliberately retired — from the Hanshan Capital, from the Left and Right Yulin Guards and Left and Right Jinwu Guards of the Upper Four Guards, and from the Hanhai, Wuwei, and Yingyang Garrisons of the Upper Three Garrisons: the absolute elite of Zhang Zhou.

The Great Food army was about to slam into an iron plate.

The rising sun was about to appear, and golden light already rimmed the horizon. When the Great Food army had poured out of the stockade, it had been no more than dawn, but now it was fully light.

The famed Buyid general, likewise of Daylamite stock, Muhammad Fakhir, placed his finest iron cavalry at the very front.

Every one of these horsemen wore iron armor, their warhorses were hand-picked, and they numbered a full three thousand riders.

Muhammad Fakhir believed that with three thousand such riders charging two thousand unprepared infantry, no matter how formidable the Taohuashi men were, they could not possibly hold.

Then his eyes went wide, because in the distance, with their backs to the mountain pass where the sun was about to rise, the armored soldiers of the Zhuxia allied army had long since stood ready in strict formation. Two thousand modao glaive glaive glaives, blade-tips pointed at the sky, glittered as the golden light of the rising sun reflected off them.

Muhammad Fakhir was horrified. From where he stood, the opposite side was no unprepared Taohuashi armored force at all, but a host of invincible war-gods bathed in golden light.

But he had no choice left. The moment had come to this; even if the enemy were war-gods, he had to charge. He drew his saber, looked at the officers and soldiers around him whose faces all showed fear, and shouted:

"Whether you become slaves of the infidels or warriors of the True God depends on your own choice."

With that, Muhammad Fakhir spurred his horse and charged first toward the invincible Taohuashi army opposite.

The roused holy warriors also burst into clamor. Urged on by the army akhunds, they began loudly chanting the Quran.

The cavalry too raised their voices in song, then followed Muhammad Fakhir and began their charge at a measured pace.

On Zhang Liechao's side, there was dead silence.

What a joke — if elite troops like these still needed a pre-battle speech to fire them up, then they would not deserve to be called the invincible elite of Zhang Zhou.

Pride, honor, combat ability that pierced the heavens, and a perfect one-stop package of pay and pensions meant they were never afraid of anything.

The drums and horns sounded in rapid urgency. This was not the call to advance or retreat; rather, the moment these drums and horns stopped would be the moment ten thousand arrows flew at once.

The armored soldiers drove their modao glaive glaive glaives hard into the earth, then unhurriedly and in perfect rhythm took up their crossbows.

Forty paces!

Thirty paces!

Closer and closer, so close the dust rushed into the armored soldiers' mouths and noses. At that moment, the drums and horns stopped abruptly. The front rank half-knelt, forming a triple line, and fine steel crossbow bolts shot forth.

Only a chorus of screams was heard, countless warhorses crashing to the ground with a clatter, countless Great Food knights shuddering as if electrocuted, like ripe fruit dropping naturally from a tree — splat — smashed into pulp.

A cavalry charge is not some thunderbolt that smashes everything before it, because such cavalry scarcely exists.

If it did exist, then apart from machine guns and cannon, no enemy could ever defeat them.

But clearly, the Great Food cavalry was still far, far from such an elite. Their seemingly ferocious charge, once it met powerful ranged fire, immediately turned into a slow and crowded press forward.

And this was exactly the enemy the modao glaive glaive army loved best: poorly armored, not fast, yet still squeezed forward.

"Cut!" Zhang Liechao roared. Bai Zhu'er, Luo Yechuan, the brothers Wang Yaorong and Wang Yaowu, and over a thousand armored soldiers immediately cast aside their crossbows, drew their blades, and advanced.

Blade-light carrying the sun's golden glow hacked down from above, wave after wave without pause. One stroke split chainmail into flesh; the next cut a warhorse's neck to bone and hanging skin.

As for the holy warriors, they fared even worse — they had no armor at all, and could hardly even nick the Han army's modao glaive glaive blades!

Bai Zhu'er had already fought his way into the enemy's center, surrounded by holy warriors who only reached his shoulders.

For a better view, Bai Zhu'er removed his faceguard. Blood sprayed onto his face, and the stench of blood stirred his ferocity further. Every stroke he made sent severed limbs flying into the sky.

Yet here, two thousand men routing thirteen or fourteen thousand Great Food troops was no longer the main event on the battlefield.

For after Muhammad Fakhir launched his attack, more than forty thousand Great Food troops and holy warriors, contrary to all expectation, also launched a counterattack.

They poured out in full force, wildly agitated, like a death-throe struggle.

And amid this chaos, a cavalry force of six or seven hundred men, three horses to a rider, dressed in unusually low-key black robes, ran steadily southward through the melee.

Cao Bin stood on high ground and at once swept the command flag. Wolf-smoke shot into the sky.

In the distance, Zhang Xiantai, holding three thousand picked cavalry, had long been waiting.

In the fourth year of Qianyuan, 963 by the common calendar, this great battle lasting over a month finally drew to a close. The hundred thousand troops personally led by Adud al-Dawla, king of the Buyid dynasty, were almost entirely annihilated.

First, more than twenty thousand were cut down in the decisive battle; then, during the breakout, more than thirty thousand were captured and killed. The remaining forty to fifty thousand mostly died in the Zhuxia allied army's pursuit.

So much so that along the road from Semnan to Isfahan, the Great Food dead who had collapsed by the roadside lined both sides of the way.

Adud al-Dawla, lord of the Buyid dynasty, along with court minister Hasan Shahna and dozens of high officials and meritorious nobles, were taken captive.

The great general Fakhr al-Dawla was slain by Zhang Xiantai's own hand; Muhammad Fakhir and others died in the chaos of battle.

In early April, the Zhuxia allied army stormed Isfahan. Almost simultaneously, Zhang Xianyu sent men to bring Adud al-Dawla before the walls of Rayy. The defending Great Food army at once collapsed, and the city was easily taken by Hu Guang.

On the third day of the fifth month, Zhang Xianyu led twenty thousand troops to the walls of Shiraz, where the Buyid court was seated, after receiving a promise of no indiscriminate killing and no violation of Adud al-Dawla's consorts by the troops.

The Buyid Empress Dowager Afaf surrendered to Zhang Xianyu, offering three thousand maidens and the entire treasure of the Buyid dynasty — gold, silver, and other goods worth more than three million strings of cash.

This haul was simply enormous. Zhang Xianyu looked upon the Buyid Empress Dowager, this year only forty-two or forty-three and still retaining her charms, along with several dozen of Adud al-Dawla's consorts, sisters, and grand-nieces, and burst out laughing.

These women alone could pull in who knew how much investment for him!

Especially Adud al-Dawla's queen, the stunningly beautiful nineteen-year-old Fatima, daughter of Caliph Muti — she truly had both the looks and the status.

Of course, of the same caliber as Queen Fatima was Adud al-Dawla's fourteen-year-old daughter Maymuna, whom he had already decided to marry to Caliph Muti's son, the historical al-Ta'i I.

These two were spoils of war with supreme significance.

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