Chapter 101: Winning a Place of Honor for the Brothers in the Shrine of Loyal Martyrs

The border fort settlements along the Nine Frontiers were products of the long-standing military farming system. These small strongholds, part soldier and part civilian, existed only in the major frontier garrisons, mostly led by Centurions, and were utterly unseen in the Central Plains.

This small fort they had chanced upon had been abandoned for who knows how long—when Gao Jie led his men inside, he didn't see a single soul.

Gao Jie knew full well that his reputation among the common folk was hardly sterling. Though not yet as foul as Zuo Liangyu's, he had still committed plenty of acts in the past—killing innocents to claim merit, plundering cities.

Brute though he was, Gao Jie could still feel the trust the Chongzhen Emperor placed in him. Whenever he recalled the grave sins of his former days, he still felt he had failed the court.

The Emperor was, after all, the Emperor—such a magnanimous heart that could embrace all under heaven was simply beyond the measure of a mere military man like himself.

Still, this was just as well. If there had been residents in the fort, Gao Jie would have had to guard against treacherous locals coordinating with the enemy from within while fighting the Tartars. At such a time, unable to manage both fronts, victory would have been hard to come by.

Gao Jie understood that to win renewed favor—to be enfeoffed as a marquis and appointed a general like Huang Degong or Tang Tong, to reach the pinnacle of officialdom—he would need to demonstrate to the Chongzhen Emperor his resolve to fight to the death.

Thus this battle was of utmost importance to him—one could even call it momentous.

These Jianzhou barbarians of the Plain Blue Banner didn't bother with any fancy tricks. They kept only the few hundred white-armored soldiers in the center to hold the line, while the rest of the armored cavalry dismounted to fight on foot—clearly determined to prevail.

Gao Jie had heard rumors of the Jianzhou barbarians' internal hierarchy. To become an armored cavalryman, one supposedly needed at least a sufficiently distinguished record among the armored infantry. Though dismounting put these cavalrymen at a disadvantage, their fighting power was still not to be underestimated.

As his most trusted subordinate, Assistant Regional Commander Li Chengdong was naturally placed at the very front to hold the city wall. Gao Jie himself also ascended the wall to oversee the battle. He climbed several steps to the fort's tallest corner tower, drew his blade, and bellowed fiercely:

"Listen up, you Jianzhou barbarians! Your grandfather Gao Jie is right here waiting for you! If you've got the guts, come take this head of mine! If you haven't, then I'll be taking your dog heads for military merit, hahaha!"

Abatai was just as much a brute as Gao Jie. Hearing these words, he was so enraged that smoke seemed to pour from his seven orifices, forgetting every word of Dorgon's nagging.

At this moment, with Gao Jie standing on the city wall, Abatai truly had no way to deal with him. He could only forcibly suppress the fury in his heart, continuously roaring, spurring the Eight Banners troops forward with promises of rewards.

The walls of this kind of fort weren't actually very tall. Taking it didn't even require siege equipment. The Qing army's tactics were simple and crude—just like charging formations in field battles, they lifted crudely made scaling ladders and slammed against a single point.

The Ming troops always struck them as timid and battle-shy. Even siege warfare was no different from field combat—one tactic worked everywhere. Just break through a single point, and even if you didn't attack the other sections, they would collapse on their own soon after. What remained was merely each banner pursuing the fleeing and scrambling for merit.

Moreover, this fort's defenses were truly feeble. Even the city gate had only been hastily patched up shortly before. Gao Jie had also only just moved in, having prepared no rolling logs or boiling filth. The Qing army easily smashed open the gate with wooden battering rams, suffering few casualties.

Within less than half an hour of the assault being ordered, the Ming defenses had completely collapsed. Whether the wall existed or not seemed to hold no meaning at all. Ming and Qing troops immediately plunged into a brutal melee.

Tang Tong's so-called minor victory had never dared to actually meet the Qing army in battle, but Gao Jie this time was a genuine head-on collision. Both sides traded blow for blow, each killing with great relish.

The Ming troops fought for survival, while the Qing troops fought for honor and rewards. Li Chengdong—who in later ages would be known as a man who served three surnames—had no thoughts of surrender now. Receiving Gao Jie's orders, he stood fixed at the front line like a nail, already having cut down three or five Jianzhou barbarians with his own blade.

Several Ming soldiers summoned their courage and charged together at a blue-armored Jianzhou barbarian who had just climbed onto the wall. This barbarian looked large, but his reactions were astonishingly fast. The very first thing he did upon reaching the top was draw the tiger spear from his back and thrust it clean through the Ming soldier before him.

Seizing the moment before the other Ming soldiers could react, this barbarian let out a great roar without hesitation, spun around, and drove his elbow back with tremendous force. A comparatively frail Ming soldier took a heavy blow to the head, staggered, and flew straight off the wall—his skull smashing apart on the ground below with a 'Peng!'

"Hahaha, you Han dogs! Is this really all you've got!?"

This barbarian, drenched in blood from head to toe, had found no match since climbing the wall. He grew somewhat arrogant, and his shout carried a thick contempt. The surrounding Ming soldiers, hearing this, were both shocked and enraged.

"You dog Tartar! I'll fight you to the death!"

Suddenly, a Company Commander cast aside his steel blade, leaped forward, and grappled the barbarian, both of them tumbling headfirst off the wall. With a 'Puji' sound, it was clear neither could survive.

"Master Ma!"

"Brothers, kill these dog Tartars!!"

After this Company Commander fell in battle, the remaining Ming soldiers were as if injected with stimulant. Even many who had been cowed by the Qing assault turned back to fight.

For a moment, the cries of battle atop the wall reached a new height, and Qing losses began to mount. A niru, drenched in blood, didn't even bother to right his crooked helmet, clutching his lower abdomen as he hurried back and knelt on the ground, bellowing:

"Rao Yu Prince! The Ming resistance is fierce—our warriors have suffered heavy losses!"

"Useless! All of you are useless!"

Abatai hadn't expected that over a thousand armored cavalry couldn't even take this tiny fort. If word of this reached the main camp, wouldn't he become a laughingstock?

Consumed by rage, Abatai threw caution to the wind and resolved to lead the Bayara soldiers up the wall himself to join the fight.

This group of white-armored soldiers drew the attention of everyone on the battlefield. After Abatai personally led them up, the previously deadlocked battle immediately reversed.

If before the casualty ratio on the battlefield had been one Ming soldier killed for three of the enemy, then after this group of white-armored soldiers personally led by Abatai appeared, it became one for ten—one could even call it the prelude to a massacre.

Gao Jie watched the unstoppable white-armored soldiers below the wall, slapping the brickwork in fury, and immediately wanted to go down and meet them. But after a few steps, Li Chengdong ran up and blocked his path.

"Great Commander, the brothers can only rest easy if you stay here. What are these few Tartars worth? This subordinate will take the household retainers down and settle it!"

As he spoke, Li Chengdong glanced at Abatai, whose eyes had already turned bloodshot with killing frenzy. He still had some misgivings in his heart, but at a time like this there was no room for retreat. After a moment's hesitation, he clenched his fist and shouted:

"Great Commander, if this subordinate should unfortunately fall in battle, I beg you to win a place of honor for me and the brothers under my command in the Shrine of Loyal Martyrs, so that later generations may know of our valor!"

"Good!" Gao Jie's expression moved with emotion, then he shouted in a momentary daze, patting Li Chengdong's shoulder and saying: "Tingzhen, go quickly and return quickly. This commander awaits to hold a victory feast for you!"

Li Chengdong nodded heavily, turned with his three hundred-plus household retainers, and charged down with a clatter, meeting Abatai and his men head-on as they surged up. In an instant, they were locked in slaughter.

Of the so-called Bayara soldiers of the Tartar Qing, this surviving batch possessed the strongest fighting power among all the banners—most were veterans who had fought alongside the old Jianzhou chieftain. Yet they had one fatal weakness.

The Bayara's stringent selection system ensured their numbers were few. Combined with the Qing army's clearly declining combat effectiveness across all banners in recent years, each banner had only a few hundred of these old stalwarts left. One could say each death was an irreplaceable loss.

Even the several Princes of the Tartar Qing normally kept these Bayara soldiers as prized treasures, rarely willing to commit them to battle.

This time, Abatai had truly been blinded by rage—he had thrown the Plain Blue Banner's entire Bayara force into the fray at once. If Dorgon back at the main camp heard of this, he would surely fly into a fury yet again.