Chapter 128: Merging Battalions

The fighting has come to a temporary halt.

These days, Sky-Monkey has been stationed at Wang Village on Apricot Creek, hardly idle — relying on the maps Liu the Lion provided, he has visited several prominent households in Ansai and Fushi counties one after another.

But on these outings, Sky-Monkey always moved in coordination with the Lion Battalion.

Once a target was chosen, the Lion Battalion would dispatch a company commander, leading his own company plus four or five hundred-man squads from the Sky-Monkey contingent, setting out in a grand, sweeping column.

Sky-Monkey didn't trust his own men, so he went along every time — but after seeing enough on these trips, he found something quite puzzling.

Liu Chengzong sent a different company commander each time, rotating through them on these outings, and Sky-Monkey not only got to know every company commander in the Lion Battalion, but also figured out its entire organizational structure.

Aside from Liu Chengyun of the battalion's attached supply company, even Wei Qian'er of the scout cavalry squad and Han Shipan of the household guard squad all went out once.

Cao Yao of the battalion artillery company in particular — lining up twenty small cannons outside an earthen fort — left a deep impression on Sky-Monkey.

The operations went very smoothly, but Sky-Monkey just couldn't figure out what Liu Chengzong's intentions were.

The best thing about this fort was that it wasn't finished yet, which let Liu Chengzong keep building it according to his own ideas.

Outside the fort, they'd flattened out an eighty-pace archery range, and now they'd had stonemasons make some stone locks for strength training — but the mountain really lacked level ground, so for drilling troops in the future they couldn't count on this fort; they'd still have to find a way to use the flat land in the river valley.

Unable to contain his doubts any longer, Sky-Monkey came looking for Liu Chengzong, and found him outside the fort, working with the stone locks.

Chengyun stood nearby, shooting arrows with a light thirty-catty bow at a target set thirty paces away — his archery was divinely inspired, always managing to miss the target with perfect precision.

Watching this, Director Mei lost all interest, and lay back with her head pillowed on Little Zuanfeng's belly, sunbathing.

Not having bathed in over half a month and running around outside all day, Monkey was filthy again.

Not one for pleasantries, he came bounding up with dice tucked in his shirt and a wine jug in hand: "Hey, General, working out?"

Liu Chengzong was stripped to the waist, his sinewy muscles slick with sweat and gleaming in the sunlight, as he heaved a two-hundred-catty block of bluestone up to his chest.

He flipped it first to the left, then to the right — but halfway through the right flip his grip slipped, and as the stone plummeted toward his feet, he sprang backward a step to dodge clear.

Once the great stone crashed to the ground, Liu Chengzong shook out his hands and dropped onto the bluestone, asking, "What brings you up the mountain?"

Sky-Monkey stared at that huge rock and swallowed hard, then waggled the wine jug in his hand: "General, a drink?"

Drink my ass — what if it summons Big Brother out?

Liu Chengzong waved him off, so exhausted he yawned, and untied the plain cloth at his waist to wipe away sweat: "You go ahead. What did you want?"

Eh — so direct. Sky-Monkey was a bit thrown off; he'd already spun out a whole elaborate scenario in his head, a leisurely little drinking session and all.

He scratched his messy head and simply sat down on a slightly smaller stone lock nearby: "General, I wanted to ask what the plan is for all my brothers down below. We can't all stay here through the winter, can we?"

After saying this, Sky-Monkey pursed his lips and added: "You've had your company commanders take my men out in rotation — is it because you want... me to trim down my numbers and become a company commander myself?"

Truth be told, Sky-Monkey had a vague premonition about this, but he couldn't be sure.

He understood the Lion Battalion's troop composition: post-station runners, relay soldiers, guard-post soldiers, deserters, surrendered troops — hardly any famine refugees.

They were practically another band of government troops, every man broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, fully equipped with armor and mules, just one horse short per man.

Even if he trimmed his two-thousand-plus men, he might not be able to pick out three hundred soldiers who met Liu Chengzong's standards.

In fact, even now, Sky-Monkey was still fretting over the two-hundred-odd sets of assorted armor they'd split from Liu Guozhen's stock.

Before, without such things, he'd only seen Liu Chengzong's men all wearing armor and thought they looked mighty impressive.

Now that he actually had them in his hands, apart from a few dozen chest-and-back protective vests and battle coats missing armor plates, the rest of the armor was simply too heavy for his men.

They could wear it, but once they put it on, they could forget about fighting — they'd be dead tired after walking two li.

"Company commander? No need to trim your numbers."

Liu Chengzong wiped the sweat from his body, stood and threw on his clothes, then sat back down: "Over these past ten-odd days, you've seen my men, and my company commanders have seen yours. I'm thinking of merging battalions with you — what do you think?"

Merging battalions — just as he'd suspected.

Sky-Monkey nodded, showing no obvious refusal, but he was still puzzled: "No trimming? Then if we merge, that's over four thousand men."

"Let me get you... never mind."

Liu Chengzong nodded, intending to go into the fort and fetch his organizational plan for the Lion Battalion, but then remembered Sky-Monkey couldn't read, so he simply explained: "You'll serve as my deputy commander. The frontier troops will be combat soldiers; your men will be support troops, supply troops, and engineering troops."

"In terms of organization, the Center Company will be five hundred men, with the company commander appointed by you. The rest will be broken up and distributed among the other companies. That way, all five companies can go out and find places to station troops. Here at Wang Village, I'll keep my two household guard squads, the scout cavalry, and the battalion's engineering and artillery companies — all easy to sustain."

Liu Chengzong had it all thought out: even if they merged battalions, they'd still need to split the forces.

Wang Village on Apricot Creek already had plenty of tenant farmers; if all four-thousand-plus of them were stationed here, even with the grain they'd recently looted, it would be hard to get through the winter well — not to mention that transporting grain from farther away would be difficult.

On the other hand, if the five companies were spread out and stationed on several surrounding hilltops, setting up stockades ten or twenty li apart on the mountainsides, it would be much easier to graze livestock, raise horses, and gather dry fodder.

Sky-Monkey thought it over briefly, still deeply puzzled.

He wasn't opposed to merging battalions; he still thought Liu Chengzong was a stand-up man — even more so now.

To put it plainly, merged or not, ever since they'd fought that battle together in the mountains, Sky-Monkey knew very well that on this matter, his say no longer counted.

Just in this half-month of going out in batches to strike earthen forts, if the Lion Battalion's company commanders had started recruiting, a single rallying cry would have taken half his men.

Sky-Monkey had a very clear understanding of himself: people followed him because he treated his subordinates well.

Among the chieftains who'd merged with the Dashing King in the past, the Dashing King treated his men as soldiers, No-Stick-Mud and Mud-Sky-Monkey treated their men as bandits — only he treated his men as human beings.

When those people died, he could dig them a relatively decent grave.

But if you compared Liu Chengzong to him... Sky-Monkey wasn't too keen on making that comparison. The choice was simple: forget his subordinates — even he himself wanted to be one of Liu Chengzong's subordinates.

Following Liu Chengzong, you didn't have to think much about digging graves.

Whether you died with dignity didn't matter; in the Lion Battalion, you ate your fill and dressed warmly — just being alive was dignity enough.

Puzzled, he came right out and asked: "General, why are you doing this?"

"Why am I doing this?"

Sky-Monkey's question caught Liu Chengzong off guard. He thought for a moment, then said: "You mean, what's in it for me, merging battalions?"

Sky-Monkey nodded; he couldn't find a single reason for Liu Chengzong to absorb him.

When people do things, they always have something to gain.

Merging battalions was a small matter; even without merging, if he wanted to survive from now on, he'd still have to cling to Liu Chengzong's thigh.

But he needed to know why they were merging — otherwise, he couldn't rest easy.

"Of course this benefits me. Your men are all fine soldiers."

Liu Chengzong wore a faint, ambiguous smile. Shangtian Hou thought he had misheard. He looked left, looked right, then pointed at his own nose and asked, "Fine soldiers?"

In his mind, the term "fine soldiers" felt rather distant from his own men.

You could call anyone's men fine soldiers, but not his — those weren't soldiers at all.

"I now have over fifteen hundred combat and support troops, fewer than two hundred post-station soldiers and couriers, another three hundred able-bodied young men picked from this manor, and aside from those, all the rest are deserters and surrendered troops. The force has grown larger."

Liu Chengzong had nearly recovered his strength. He stood up and said, "Half are surrendered troops. They can fight, but their minds are divided. Even with centurions and squad leaders kept separate from the rank and file, if they're quartered together, they'll run into each other eventually — trouble. Separate them, and every outpost is short-handed."

Finishing, he looked at Shangtian Hou. "Your men are different. They all listen to you. They can charge an official army camp in a hundred-man company, and when wounded, they retreat without panic — withdrawing without scattering. That already shows real ability."

This didn't necessarily mean Shangtian Hou's men were truly any better than the troops of Li Wanqing or Liu Guoneng. If cannonballs came tearing in at close range, they might even fare worse than Liu Guoneng's soldiers.

What made them different was that they were less trouble.

If Liu Chengzong wanted to expand his strength by absorbing the soldiers of Liu Guoneng and the others, he'd have to absorb five or six chieftains. Just figuring out what all those chieftains wanted would be exhausting enough.

Shangtian Hou was simple — just take care of this one man's wishes, and the matter was settled.

"Before the battle with Li Bei, what we lacked most was time. Elite troops mattered then. Now Li Bei is captured, and Wu Weifan has withdrawn with his troops. Once he gets word of Li Bei's total annihilation, he may not dare come looking for me. I think the next battle might not come until next spring. We may have four months to catch our breath."

Spring and autumn are the best seasons for campaigning. Summer is too hot, winter too cold — in one, wearing armor risks heatstroke; in the other, marching risks frostbite.

So apart from surprise raids or wars that drag into winter, the north rarely sees fighting in the winter months.

Four months — enough to remedy the famine victims' malnutrition, and enough to turn them into ordinary support troops with some discipline, able to understand commands and grasp basic weapon skills.

"It doesn't matter if your unit can't fight — that can be trained. Besides, your unit has women, and we need winter combat clothing made."

"Leave it to me."

Shangtian Hou turned bold and hearty, slapping his chest as he took the task upon himself. "The fort has cotton and cotton cloth — this is no problem. But for outpost commanders, the General should still appoint them. My people don't know how to lead troops. All joint-camp arrangements, I'll follow the General's orders entirely."

Liu Chengzong could sense that Shangtian Hou was actually quite insecure. He said, "It's fine. After the merger, I plan to pick eighty men who can read and send them to Zuantianmao to study. You can go study too when you're free. My family once compiled a troop-training manual — we didn't get to use it then."

"Once you've learned some characters, I'll teach you that manual. Those who go there for basic literacy will come back at roughly the same level, then be assigned to every outpost in the whole camp. They'll study one two-hour period each day."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong patted Shangtian Hou on the shoulder. "By next spring, the men of Lion Camp won't be the same."

What worried him most, in truth, was still winter clothing — gloves, hats, bedding, and other cold-weather gear.

Liu Chengyun, who had spent an entire afternoon shooting arrows and been hit by three in total, was Lion Camp's Prodigal Son of Scattered Wealth.

Liu Chengzong carried a huge fortune; Lion Camp had no shortage of gold and silver whatsoever. But gold and silver in his hands were like the chili pepper growing in the flowerpot at the back of the county office — aside from looking at it for amusement, it had no other meaning.

Chengyun could make gold and silver meaningful.

Chengyun came to shoot arrows purely for fun. Normally he ran back and forth between the outlying villages, even more diligently than Shangtian Hou.

He had already placed orders with twenty-three villages still inhabited by common folk, along both banks of the Yan River and its various tributaries.

Where they could make them, he bought bedding directly; where they couldn't, he bought cloth. Where they couldn't even weave cloth, he simply bought cotton and cotton thread.

In short, whatever they had, he wanted.

Even so, it was still not enough.

Although Gao Yingxiang had returned to Yanchang County after the battle, the various forces were now more closely linked through this fight. Liu Chengzu, Li Wanqing, Liu Guoneng, and the other divisions were all actively preparing for winter.

The most carefree, by contrast, was Wang Ziyong, who had obtained an official post at Yan'an Garrison. His bunch were no good at fighting, but they were very good at everything besides fighting.

Once the battle ended, they all dispersed back to their villages. One word from Assistant Battalion Commander Wang, and they started making clothes and bedding — no money required, but don't count on the quantities either; it all depended on karmic affinity.

This was, perhaps, Monk Wang's way of begging for alms.

When the karmic affinity arrived, clothes and bedding would come running to Yan'an Garrison on their own.

Liu Chengzong didn't have that kind of ability, and the responsibility he bore was far greater than Wang Ziyong's. He was considering making the soldiers' clothing and armor plates himself.

The victory over Li Bei, and the coming winter, brought him a rare stretch of calm. Lion Camp had also used the troop merger to reach full strength — many matters could now be put on the agenda.

For the camp merger, he summoned Song Shouzhen from Zuantianmao, and the craftsmen Shi Chengwo and He Xin from Liu Family Village.

Cannon-founder Shi Chengwo became the outpost commander of the camp's attached Works Outpost.

They built kilns at Apricot River Manor, gathered over a hundred craftsmen from the ranks, and combined them with support-troop apprentices to establish the Manor Armory Bureau, responsible for repairing weapons and armor plates, and incidentally forging Liu Chengzong's heart-protecting mirror.

For the last unfilled post, the Center Outpost, Liu Chengzong wanted Han Shiyou as its commander. The Han brothers had experience training household retainers.

But when Liu Chengzong discussed this with Cao Yao, the old bandit thought it unwise.

"Look at the outpost commanders and squad captains. Left Outpost and Right Outpost — Feng Rang and Gao Xian, old brothers from Yuhe Fort. Front Outpost and Rear Outpost — Yang Yao and Wang Wenxiu. Add the retainer squad captains, the Han brothers — they're Guyuan soldiers who came to join you."

Cao Yao analyzed, "If the Left and Right Outposts want to rebel, there are the Front and Rear Outposts to check them, and vice versa. But if you give the Center Outpost to Han Shiyou, he and Yang Yao and Wang Wenxiu are old acquaintances, and the retainer squad captain is his own brother... They're all fine now, but you can never be too cautious."

Liu Chengzong had previously only been wary of individuals; he had never, like Cao Yao, divided people into factions based on their acquaintances. It was only after the two battles with Liu Guozhen and Li Bei, with so many surrendered troops, that he began to take the faction issue seriously.

But Cao Yao's words had indeed alerted him.

When things go smoothly, it's all fine. But if adversity struck and others turned disloyal, with Han Shiyou as Center Outpost commander, if Yang Yao and the other Guyuan soldiers rebelled, he wouldn't be able to suppress them.

With this in mind, Liu Chengzong decided to appoint Zhong Hu as Center Outpost commander.

Zhong Hu was still lying in bed. In the battle with Liu Guozhen, four lead balls had pierced his shield — three struck his padded armor, one struck his iron vambrace. His life was saved, but he could barely move.

He needed at least three more months of recovery.

But the Zhong brothers had no such complications. They had previously been soldiers under Lu Cheng and had no ties to any of the other outpost commanders. What's more, he had been wounded protecting Liu Chengzong — making him an outpost commander would also serve as a "thousand-li horse bone" to inspire others.

As for making their own soldiers' clothing, that was a new idea that came while inspecting the merged troops with Shangtian Hou.

Uniform dress could boost a sense of belonging and help distinguish friend from foe. But that was only a secondary reason. The main reason was that after the merger, Lion Camp was simply too ugly.

Those with armor put it on and looked the part well enough. But take the armor off and look again — they wore absolutely everything. Rags went without saying; some were even wearing women's clothing.

For soldiers to be dressed like this was the responsibility of him, their commander.

More importantly, deep in his heart, Liu Chengzong was unwilling to let his soldiers fight wearing the Great Ming mandarin-duck combat jackets.

He wanted his own army, his own soldiers' clothing.