Chapter 12: Shame

On the ninth day of the second month, the troops passed Qingjian County town before noon and entered the borders of Yanchuan by afternoon, soon reaching the mountainous region where the four counties of Qingjian, Yanchuan, Anding, and Fushi meet.

Liu Chengzong and his companions already had one foot in their homeland. Of the two squads of border troops, Liu's squad were all homeless refugees who had enlisted, and Cao's squad were all Cao Yao's old bandit brothers — not a single man among them had a clear goal.

For now, they all followed Liu Chengzu wherever he went.

At most, they would rest one more night in the mountains. At their pace of sixty li a day, they could reach Xingping Village beneath Dragon King Temple Mountain in Fushi County, Yan'an Prefecture, by tomorrow.

Their first destination was Xingping Village — the hometown of the Liu brothers.

Right now, no one had any plan. All they thought was to first see if the family home or clan could arrange lodging for a few men — those who could work would work, those who could eat would eat. If the clan couldn't manage it, they'd have to ask their father, Old Man Liu the Provincial Graduate, to go inquire in Yan'an Prefecture city.

Best case, they could form a small local militia with support from Fushi County and Yan'an Prefecture. If not, they could try doing corvée labor as substitutes for others — grooms, patrolmen, or postal relay soldiers.

They could also look into the civilian levy, which was the Great Ming's official militia organization — or, failing that, a landlord's private militia on a wealthy estate.

If none of those worked, Liu Chengzu and Cao Yao, the two squad leaders, would have to split up and cooperate: one squad scouting for information in the area, the other conserving strength in the mountains, either seeking out rich households to seize grain or hunting bandits to suppress.

If they fell to that step, they would be completely cut off from normal people.

The column marched through the valleys of northern Shaanxi. Liu Chengzong, riding at the rear, flicked his horsewhip absently, thinking about how to settle Cao Yao and the others once they got home.

Suddenly, the front ranks fell into chaos.

People stretched out their arms, pointing into the distance, which made Liu Chengzong involuntarily lift the brow visor of his helmet that had drooped down nearly covering his eyes.

On the other side of the undulating mountain ridges, several columns of black smoke shot up into the sky.

The moment he saw the black smoke, Liu Chengzong instinctively thought a village was being burned.

It made the back of his head go numb with agitation. His whole body shuddered as if electrified, the fine hairs on both arms stood on end, and he involuntarily clenched his fists, tying the lanyard of his goose-quill saber into a knot and hanging it from his leather belt.

Liu Chengzong was no greenhorn who had never seen blood, but right now he was acting very strangely — he should have been afraid, yet he wasn't, and that was strange.

In cold-weapon combat, even if you've gone into battle a hundred times, you'll still feel fear the hundred-and-first time.

Fear is not strange, nor is it shameful. The purpose of military drill is to overcome the fear in human nature, using discipline, formations, equipment, skill, and collective strength to bolster confidence and conquer fear.

But seeing black smoke made him think of a burning village; thinking of the village made him think of tall granaries; thinking of granaries bred the illicit desire to seize them for himself.

It was this agitation, therefore, that was shameful.

That single column of black smoke effortlessly shattered the ritualistic illusion Liu Chengzong had held in his heart of burning firewood and returning meat.

His way of thinking had changed.

The lanyard is also called a sword strap or wrist cord. Whether attached to a ring pommel, through a hole left in the hilt, or by leaving a section of the hilt-wrapping cord free, it serves the same purpose: to prevent a cavalryman's saber from flying out of his hand during a clash. So in normal times, both ends are tied, and in battle, it is looped over the wrist.

Hanging it on the left side of the waist leather belt counted as a pre-battle readying action. When drawing the saber, the right hand first passed through the left-side lanyard before pulling the waist saber free, so the strap looped around the wrist. Even if the saber flew from the hand in a clash, it would not be lost.

After Liberation, the cavalry of New China also used saber wrist cords, calling them safety straps, for a period. In the peacetime era, concerns about injuring people or falling from horses, along with the adoption of hot weapons on horseback to replace the saber, ultimately consigned the safety strap to the dust of history's long river.

Having secured the wrist cord, Liu Chengzong took his small-tip bow in hand, squeezed his horse's flanks, and rode from the roadside through the column. He came up to his elder brother Liu Chengzu, raised his bow to point, and said, "They're burning a village."

But before he could get the words out, squad leader Liu Chengzu had already raised his hand. "Lion, take the scouts over the hill to observe. Report what you see first — don't act rashly."

"Pass the word: full column, don armor!"

Liu Chengzong said no more. He immediately untied the cat cage and had Little Sixteen find a place to tie up Cang Biao as well. He rode ahead with two scouts, glancing back once as he left.

On the official road, beneath a sky full of yellow dust, the border troops were dismounting and helping each other don armor and organize their weapons and gear.

Their faces held no fear and very little agitation — only eager excitement brimming with desire and a readiness to try. This scene diluted the shame in Liu Chengzong's heart.

So they're all the same as me.

Yansui Garrison border troops lacked horses, and these two small squads dismissed from Fish River Fort were even worse off. Whether under Liu Chengzu or Cao Yao, their men were three mounted to seven on foot.

A dozen or so warhorses — once they reached Fushi County, they might even have to sell them or slaughter them for food just to make a living.

The black smoke looked close, but riding toward it proved far. Liu Chengzong led the two scouts through the hills, yet the black smoke remained distant. Only when they climbed a second loess hillock did the view suddenly open wide before them.

Crouched on the hillock, Liu Chengzong clenched his fists tightly. They had indeed run into bandits.

This was a village nestled beside a gully on the hillock. Both the north and south sides of the gully were small loess knolls. Far from any river in this time of drought, the surrounding reclaimed farmland was a mass of wide cracks. Several dozen dwellings were scattered from west to east, and at the village's heart was a walled earthen compound.

From the hillock, he could see clearly: inside the earthen walls, a zhang high, stood a large residence three bays wide and three bays deep, with stables and a granary all complete.

The fighting outside the earthen walls was already drawing to a close.

Thick black smoke rose from both ends of the village. The village lanes were strewn with corpses. Everywhere, roving bandits brandished weapons and held torches high, spreading the flames into the village.

In the chaotic crowd, it was impossible to tell who was a villager and who was a bandit — only that there were those fleeing, those chasing, those blocking, those besieging, a clamor of shouts.

Everyone had fought until their eyes were red with killing.

An old man, near a farmyard at the village's edge, had tried to hang himself from a beam but hadn't managed to die before two bandits who had leaped over the fence dragged him down. One slashed a blade across his neck, splashing red all over the ground.

Inside the walled compound, the wealthy household had thirty or forty people. The men gripped spears and lances atop the walls, while the women and children in the courtyard hurriedly carried bricks, tiles, wood, and stones.

The bandits had the upper hand. Dozens surrounded the earthen walls with blades, clubs, and torches, shouting curses and calling for surrender, while over a hundred more were scattered through the village, going door to door in search of valuables, raping and pillaging.

"Good household" referred not to moral character but to family circumstances — it meant a wealthy family with money, land, and grain. In Shaanxi in these years, only landlords counted as good families.

Outside the earthen walls, the bandits shouted curses at the top of their lungs. From the hillock over three hundred paces away, Liu Chengzong could barely make out the gist. These men were indeed bandits with a stronghold in the mountains, and they were even distantly related to the village landlord — they were calling him "Second Uncle." The reason for the bloodbath in the village was nothing else.

They wanted grain, and were refused.

Where the crowd was thickest, a white banner had been planted, with the character "Eagle" scrawled crookedly on it — likely the nickname of the bandit chief.

Kinship terms aside, the blood covering the village showed not a shred of mercy had been spared.

Those inside would never open the gates until every last one of them was dead. Those outside were even more ruthless, clearly well-prepared. While the leader shouted and cursed up front, men gathered behind him. Several deserters in tattered armor set down the sacks on their shoulders and poured out a heap of stone pellets onto the ground, loading them into a tree trunk.

He recognized it — that large contraption, four chi long and thick as a man's embrace, surrounded by men, was a wooden-barrel cannon.

Fish River Fort had cast-iron cannons and cast-bronze cannons, and the fort's military artisans also made wooden cannons for their own amusement, so he knew very well how deadly this thing was.

A wooden cannon's bore couldn't be made large — if it was, it would burst. So compared to a bowl-mouth cannon, a Frankish breech-loader, or even the red-barbarian cannons of the Liao Garrison, it was like a big toy.

But as long as you didn't treat it as a cannon, it was still an extremely threatening large weapon — like a single-shot giant blunderbuss that could reach sixty or seventy meters.

"Quickly, tell my brother: over a hundred bandits, at least six deserters, one wooden cannon. The wealthy household's earthen walls inside the village won't hold."

Liu Chengzong looked at the wooden cannon's bore, roughly the size of a fist, then at the two rather thick-looking wooden gates of the walled compound, and could already guess what would happen next.

Lying on the hillock, his mind was completely blank. He just watched quietly — quietly watched that single wall of yellow earth separate two worlds of different colors.

Outside the earthen walls, the gathered crowd wore tattered clothes whose original color could no longer be discerned — only the gray of dust and the red of blood.

Inside the earthen wall, the anxious people were a riot of bright fabric colors, their clothes even bearing patterns of alternating light and dark.

Just as the scout was mounting his horse to deliver the message, a man with a flower pinned in his hair on the earthen wall lifted his bow and circled to one side. This man drew the bow and nocked an arrow with practiced ease, took aim, and let fly — the man shouting in front of the enclosure was shot down at the sound.

Then he loosed three more arrows in quick succession, shooting down two more men and even wounding the armored deserter who was directing the loading of the wooden cannon.

The people on the earthen wall erupted in cheers, while the bandits below scattered in a sudden panic.

The bandits were nothing but a rabble; a mere three arrows were enough to throw the hundred-odd brigands outside the earthen wall into disarray.

Witnessing this scene, Liu Chengzong involuntarily clenched his fists, his eyes locked dead on the outside of the earthen enclosure. He saw that the wounded deserter did not flee. As if the arrow wound had roused his ferocity, though he could not fight while clutching his belly, he raised an arm to push away the comrade who had stepped forward to help, pointed at the wooden cannon, and cursed.

That wooden cannon was lifted up after all. The dark mass of men surged toward the gate of the walled fort. With a thunderous boom, smoke filled the sky.

Liu Chengzong's long-furrowed brow relaxed.