Chapter 15: Sweeping Through

Liu Chengzong waved the great banner atop the loess hill. Behind him, the bald Little Sixteen put all his strength into the drumsticks, pounding a frantic rhythm on the waist drum.

The border army families — grown girls and young wives in printed-calico jackets — beat their small drums in a chaotic clatter, with no rhythm to speak of, a sound that set one's nerves on edge.

And Sister-in-law Cao, a Japanese-style waist sword slung at her hip and a small short bow in hand, stood at the very end of the line.

This was no battle drum. The drumming was not meant to be listened to, nor could anyone glean any information from it. It was meant only to frighten — first, to make the bandits think they were government troops; second, to make them think those government troops had other units closing in from the flanks.

It was hard to say whether the drumming did the trick, or whether the bandits were spooked the moment they saw the border army's cloth-faced armor. Liu Chengzong, waving the banner, saw it clearly: the instant his elder brother and Cao Yao's two squads of foot soldiers charged into the village, the bandits were already collapsing like a receding tide.

Though there was no lack of brave men among them, the handfuls who charged forward in twos and threes were no more than trying to stop a cauldron from boiling by ladling out the water. Before they even touched the formation, the blade-and-shield men hurled javelins and skewered them one by one.

Once they drew near, a single finishing stroke was all it took. They retrieved the javelins, and the entire formation stepped over the corpses and pressed on. A mere thirty-odd men had routed over a hundred bandits, driving them eastward.

The two squads of foot soldiers were in no hurry. Their formation was held steady by the two squad leaders at all times. Only when they closed in on the earthen enclosure did they merge into a three-rank horizontal line stretching out like a long snake, with both wings thrust forward and the center held back, forming a shallow crescent and pressing forward.

With a bang, a puff of gunpowder smoke rose from the formation — it was Cao Yao, firing his three-eyed gun into the sky.

The three-eyed gun was a short-barreled matchlock with three barrels, each about a foot long, connected to a long wooden pole. To fire it, one had to cradle the gun in one hand while clamping the pole between the elbow and ribs, and use the other hand to touch a burning match to the touchhole. Because the barrels were so short, accurate shooting was difficult.

In this era, the three-eyed gun was an old weapon by age. Under Qi Jiguang's influence, southern gun troops mostly used bird guns, but in the northern border armies, Marshal Qi's push to adopt bird guns had not gone smoothly.

The bird gun had a priming pan. First, powder was poured into the barrel, then the ball. The priming pan on the outside of the barrel, ignited by the match, still required a sprinkling of priming powder connected to the main charge. The northern winds were strong, and the priming powder of a bird gun was always at risk of being blown away.

Thus, the three-eyed gun was still fielded in large numbers in the northern border armies. The best border army cavalrymen could use this hard-to-ignite firearm to shoot while riding at a gallop. In terms of usage, it was essentially a completely different weapon from the Chinese-matchlock-style bird gun.

The bird gun could shoot far and shoot accurately. The three-eyed gun sought breadth of fire. For example, the border troops of Yansui Garrison, whose defensive front faced the Mongols of the Ordos Loop, typically faced battles on the scale of hundred-rider or thousand-rider border skirmishes. They treated the three-eyed gun as a disposable little blunderbuss.

They would stuff two or three lead balls into each of the three barrels, fire at close range, and blast a face full of blood onto the unarmored horse bandits opposite them. Right after that, they would use it as a cudgel and close in for hand-to-hand combat.

It was neither a repeating machine gun nor a toy that merely made a loud noise. It was simply a weapon of this era — cheap to make and adept at dealing with unarmored enemies.

For ranged weapons, the border troops still mostly used bows. The small short bow was for rapid fire and long-range shooting; the long-tip bow, which fired heavy arrows with great power, was a supplementary force for close combat.

When the Yuhe Fort border troops left the fort, they had turned in all their firearms. Only Cao Yao kept a single three-eyed gun — for no other reason than that if their luck truly ran out and they had to return to banditry, it could serve as a signal cannon.

A signal cannon conveys information. The three-eyed gun's short barrels made for fast loading, the quickest way to relay information on a battlefield.

Liu Chengzong knew full well that this signal shot from Cao Yao carried two meanings.

First, the bandits were routed, and the cavalry could be brought in for a charge. Second, it was telling him: kill the cripple.

The bandits had no chance to calmly assess the situation. As the saying goes, a man without a backbone cannot stand firm. The bandit chief White Hawk was the backbone of this gang of mountain bandits. In the sudden attack, everyone was searching their field of vision for White Hawk's figure.

Without White Hawk, the bandits fighting on their own were a sheet of loose sand. When they did spot White Hawk, they saw him leading a few squad leaders, hauling seven or eight grain carts in an eastward flight, nearly out of the village — and their will to fight vanished entirely.

The great banner toppled. Liu Chengzong turned and sprinted down the loess hill. On the official road beside Red Flag, twelve border army cavalrymen stood still, holding their horses.

Everything had been arranged before the battle. According to the plan, they would follow Liu Chengzong's lead and intercept the fleeing bandits from the east.

The whole familiar routine was like a carnival for these abandoned border army soldiers. The warriors mounted their freshly re-adjusted saddles. Even the warhorses, unaccustomed to bearing saddle and rider after so long, twisted their bodies awkwardly.

In the riders' eyes, it was as if the warhorses were excited too.

They guided their warhorses in silence. Hoof irons trod upon the yellow earth, ringing out with a deep, resolute, clanging sound.

To ensure the border army cavalry could carry out this intercept mission, Liu Chengzong raised his powerful bow high and issued several commands to the small unit. On the official road, they performed their final pre-battle drill — splitting, merging, changing formation — then, with uniform strides, trotted toward the wild fields east of the village.

The bandits in the village had already tried every trick they had. Some attempted to make a stand, only to be knocked down by the border army's javelins. Even if they were lucky enough to dodge, they could not escape the infantry closing in with their rolling blade strikes.

Those with the heart to resist were cut down in an instant, scattered and broken. The rest had even less idea how to cope. Some scattered silver coins, others shoved their comrades — such acts came one after another.

Seeing the government troops' infantry formation advancing methodically, unable to catch up to them, White Hawk, who had by now fled out the eastern village entrance, sensed something was wrong. He called a halt to his fleeing followers, clambered up a grain cart, stood on the shaft, and looked back westward.

"The government troops don't seem to have reinforcements. Just those thirty-odd men, and not a single big banner."

The combat effectiveness of the Ming border armies declined due to court corruption and dire finances, but in terms of morale, training, and discipline, they remained formidable — a unit three years in arrears of pay that could still march out to fight at the emperor's command was itself the embodiment of superb morale, training, and discipline.

With institutionalized troops, even if it was just a minor squad leader taking his men to do manual labor for a landlord, there would always be a helmet banner — let alone a large army on campaign. To White Hawk, who had years of guerrilla fighting against government troops, this was common sense.

Yet now, all he could see on these government troops were bare helmet spikes. The red banner that had first waved atop the loess hill was gone too. Thinking back, that banner did not look like a military banner at all — it had no four-colored flying tiger, no five-direction deity flags, not even the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions.

Shaking off the initial panic, White Hawk came to his senses. He smacked his head and cursed viciously: "Fell for these bastards' decoy troops! They're just a bunch of deserters. Without grain, they'll starve to death. Gather the men and fight them — forget it, get the team together, guard the grain carts, and move!"

Clear-headed as he now was, White Hawk had not let his blood boil over.

It was not that he did not want to fight. It was just that the bandits had been scared out of their wits. Even if he gave the order to counterattack, no one would go and throw their life away for him.

In that brief moment of hesitation, the sound of hoofbeats exploded from the south. A border army cavalry squad was bearing down on them.

At the head of the cavalry squad, a lone rider surged forward. Behind him, twelve riders were arrayed in three ranks. Every man held the reins in his left hand and a saber in his right, the back of each blade resting against the right shoulder. With an unstoppable momentum, they came galloping like rolling thunder.

Before they even drew near, the bandits clustered around the grain carts scattered like waves surging to either side. By the time Liu Chengzong spurred his horse to within five or six paces, only three or four men, frozen stiff as wooden chickens in terror, remained by the carts. No matter how White Hawk, standing atop a cart, shouted, he could not call his men back.

White Hawk had just drawn his bow from the bow case at his waist and raised it, not yet having had time to nock an arrow, when Liu Chengzong wheeled his horse to one side. In the instant he looked back, he drew his powerful bow to its limit and loosed a swift eagle-feathered arrow.

In that split second, Liu Chengzong heard a sharp cry from behind as the arrow struck home. His ears were then filled with the wails of the cavalry squad crashing into the crowd, colliding and slashing.

Note: The cavalry formations, saber-on-shoulder postures, and other actions are referenced from the "Pacifying the Barbarians Victory Scroll," which depicts the Guyuan Garrison border troops carrying out military missions during the Wanli reign of the Ming dynasty.