Chapter 265: Reinforcements

On the eastern bank of the Zhaqu River, Liu Chengzong was on the march.

Master Basang's offensive had been remarkably effective — within a single month, he had swept through the old lands of Nangqian like dry twigs and rotten wood, crushing every noble who had surrendered to the Béri King.

Listening to the frontline scouts' report from horseback, Liu Chengzong revealed a satisfied smile.

Basang's army was temporarily under the command of Dai Daozi, head of the scouts, with sixteen hundred-man squads under his banner and a total strength approaching three thousand.

After reorganization, each hundred-man squad consisted of fifteen Han soldiers, fifty Mongol soldiers, and one hundred Tibetan soldiers, giving them an absolute advantage over the temporary levies of the minor local nobles.

The true advantage lay neither with the Mongol soldiers nor with the Han soldiers whose main task was learning the Tibetan language, but with the Lion Army scouts ranging beyond the lines.

They enabled local superiority in numbers, spreading like wildfire across every inch of Nangqian and pushing the battle line to the banks of the Gai River.

Slaves who had lost their masters picked up their masters' weapons and transformed at once into new soldiers, plunging into the next battle.

The monk Gama, following the march, wanted to weep but had no tears. He finally understood why, when Liu Chengzong had agreed to send troops to aid him, the price he demanded was artisans, children, and women for intermarriage... After fighting like this, the lands he gained would be countless, but they would all be empty wastelands once the war was over.

The monk Gama calculated within the army: if the war went on like this, even if he wanted to avoid having children he could not — and not just him; the whole of Nangqian would have to breed furiously.

Without question, from Gama's perspective, Liu Chengzong was making his rule more difficult.

Every place had nobles, manors, and serfs, forming a complete system of enslavement, but now the nobles and manors were gone, so something had to replace them.

This was Liu Chengzong's deliberate doing, only it was awkward to explain to Gama.

More than how Nangqian was to be governed, Liu Chengzong cared about the Béri troops deployed defensively east and west along the Chamdo line.

He had seen too often how the nobles here shifted with the wind and pushed with the current, and he had no time to build good relations with every noble and make them all submit to him.

So using Basang's slave army to bulldoze every noble outright — even if it left a mess behind — was, for him, more beneficial than harmful.

The remaining slaves needed only a bare minimum of living supplies, and Gama could hardly starve them. For a short time, he could demand nothing from this place except one thing... road-building.

From Qinghai Lake to Nangqian, repair the old official post road from the early Ming, build a dirt road passable for travel, and establish his own post stations.

When the Lion Army's officers first heard this news, they all burst into wild laughter.

They had made their start by tearing down post stations and express relay posts, and now here they were, about to build post stations again.

The Ming dynasty had post stations in the Qinghai-Tibet region, but the main route ran from Sichuan to Lóngdá Guard, from Lóngdá Guard to Riwoqê, and from Riwoqê into Tibet. Most of this route still existed, but it meant nothing to Liu the Lion.

He had in mind a system to replace the noble manors, and it required his own post stations.

With roads and post stations, news could travel swiftly; then he could use Lion Army soldiers to set up county offices, and Basang's slave soldiers to form villages.

In this way, his soldiers could gain experience in establishing grassroots governance and administering territory.

Even if it later proved that this system did not work on this land, the soldiers would still gain some experience in local governance, and reverting to the feudal manor system would do no harm.

This was more important than governing the territory itself. These men could, to the greatest extent, ensure that when they attacked the Great Ming again in the future, the land they seized could be governed directly.

Skipping the nobles in Qinghai was meant to make it possible to skip the gentry in the Great Ming as well.

The core was the same: using the army as backing, learning to mobilize the common people directly, prevent noble rebellions, collect taxes, and govern the territory.

Once the nobles who had surrendered to the Béri King in the old lands of Nangqian were purged, and only women, children, and disabled people incapable of fighting remained, Liu Chengzong's rear was secure.

But on the front line along the banks of the Gai River, things were far from secure.

Outside a cave near the riverbank, Basang's slave soldiers kept whispering to one another. Dai Daozi arrived with several scouts and halted outside; he parted the crowd and went in. A moment later, he came out frowning, exhaled a breath of stale air, and clenched his jaw.

Inside the cave, a soldier from the Tibetan camp had been killed by brutal means, and a stone cap still lay beside him.

It was clearly not the work of anyone from the Nangqian domain. Those stone caps used for the eye-gouging punishment — they had seen plenty of them in the noble manors.

Besides such things, there were also many bone ritual implements and all manner of bizarre, cruel objects. Every time they stormed a manor, they would display the several sacks of collected items to the slaves, then either burn or smash them, destroying them all.

Although Liu Chengzong had said to preserve these things, to display them in the future for later generations to see, to prove that these cruel punishments had existed and to prevent the nobles who used them from ever returning.

But for Dai Daozi, out of the twenty-odd noble manors they had stormed, only two — where the nobles had fled in advance — yielded somewhat fewer items.

In every other manor, they could find dozens of such torture devices and their byproducts; in some, they could find as many as two or three hundred.

Dai Daozi had guarded the border in Ningxia for many years, slept pillowed on the dead, and even attempted to assassinate an imperial clansman. He had always thought there was nothing he feared.

Yet the first time he saw these things, they still made his hair stand on end.

He did not fear the objects themselves. He held a human-skull bowl inlaid with gemstones in his hands and examined it closely — it was exquisitely crafted and very cleanly processed.

But the evil lurking behind these objects, the icy touch, made even his stout heart tremble.

He knew that Wang Mang's skull was probably much the same, but that brought him no empathy whatsoever. The matter of Wang Mang would probably make his Grand Marshal feel empathy instead.

When Dai Daozi looked at these things, he could only think of his daughter.

His daughter had been murdered years ago by a Bulwark Lieutenant of the Qing princely fief. That lieutenant had fallen ill and died before Dai Daozi could take his revenge — the greatest regret of his life.

Seeing these things, Dai Daozi dared not dwell on them, so except for a few particularly distinctive items that were sent to Nangqian, he ordered everything else burned.

He even sent a verbal message to Liu Chengzong, suggesting that cremation and burial should be promoted here, that the most honored people here could receive cremation and stupa burial, and that everyone should be entitled to such treatment.

Not long after, the corpse laid outside the cave was identified. He belonged to the Ninth Hundred-Man Squad under Basang's command. According to the soldier roster, he had once been a slave on the Danba estate.

Dai Daozi turned his gaze toward the opposite bank of the Gai River, his expression dark. "It seems someone wants to come back."

Hampered by the language barrier, the scouts knew very little about the land on the opposite bank. They only knew that the land was called Sumang, and that the noble who ruled there also used the land as his surname — it was not traditional territory of the Nangqian King.

After questioning all the slave soldiers who had once belonged to the Danba estate, someone said that Master Danba was on the opposite bank.

A few days earlier, a nangzan of Master Sumang had crossed the river and brought this news, but how the dead Tibetan soldier had been taken away, no one knew.

Dai Daozi was furious. He cursed the fifteen Han soldiers of the Ninth Squad over and over.

They did nothing all day. The whole way here, aside from firing their guns from a distance, they hardly even needed to join battle. Their job was simply to learn the Tibetan language — the easiest work imaginable — yet they could not even keep watch over the soldiers under them!

However, Liu Chengzong's earlier orders had not permitted them to cross the river and attack, so they merely strengthened their defenses and did not launch an assault on the opposite bank.

As Dai Daozi shifted his attention to the opposite bank, he discovered that the other side was not only setting up defenses but also gradually reinforcing their troops.

In the early morning, squads of infantry trudged lazily along the river shoals. On the mountain, armored cavalrymen appeared singly from time to time, and sometimes one could even see the cold vapor of their breath.

At night, his scouts risked crossing the river. Standing on the mountain, they could see the far side of the ridge, where firelight made black and red overlap, and within the blur, tents packed densely together.

And the military banners on the opposite bank were growing more and more numerous.

Ordinary nobles did not use military banners. They had only seen the banners of Awang Depa at the Nangqian King's palace. Now that military banners had appeared on the opposite bank, to Dai Daozi, the most likely possibility was that the Béri King's army had arrived.

He first sent word of this news to Liu Chengzong, then dispatched a messenger to Sumang, ordering them to hand over the murderer who had crossed the river.

He needed to confirm whether the killer had come from the opposite bank.

Meanwhile, Dai Daozi prepared to muster troops for the coming clash.

His forces were not few.

One hundred scout riders, two hundred and forty Han soldiers, eight hundred Mongol troops, and over fifteen hundred Western Barbarian soldiers.

But this mixed Han-Mongol-Tibetan battalion had not been formed to fight regular wars. Those Western Barbarian soldiers had been recruited to a very low standard — they did not need to be strong, did not need to know how to use weapons, and even… having only one hand or one eye did not count as disabled in this mixed battalion.

Nearly three thousand men, but by Dai Daozi's reckoning, they could only be counted as a thousand.

"General, they say they did not kill our slaves."

Dai Daozi frowned. "How exactly did they say it?"

The Western Barbarian interpreter repeated it — the same reply.

Dai Daozi burst out cursing. "Damn it all, the men I sent never said a word about whether the dead were slaves!"

It was the people on the opposite bank who did it, and very likely it was the Danba nobles who had fled there. Otherwise, using force, it would be very hard to abduct a grown person by force without the Han troops noticing.

Only a former master could trick a slave into crossing over.

Soldiers scattered across the various manors were mustered to the Danba territory. The Han troops led Basang's Western Barbarian camp in setting up defenses — establishing camps outside the manors, digging trenches, and laying out defensive works to guard against a counterattack.

After that, the hundred scout riders were mustered by Dai Daozi. Looking at those familiar faces, he could not help but smile.

His scout riders were all brave men skilled at observing battlefields in the most dangerous places. Even with an enemy army bearing down, his scout riders — even if only a single man — would dare stand watching from over a li away.

Only today, he might have to use them as his main cavalry force.

Dai Daozi entrusted the mission of guarding the camp to the two hundred and forty Han soldiers in Basang's army, then led the scout riders in a loop around Danba, crossing the river through a western mountain pass into Sumang's territory. He meant to have a good look at just how many troops Sumang had mustered.

On the boundless hillside, Dai Daozi saw dust kicked up by hooves at the very limit of vision — dust rising into the sky, all heading toward a valley near the riverbank, churning the sky into a vast white haze.

Then they saw herds of livestock, very far off, a dark mass to the eye.

This further confirmed Dai Daozi's suspicion. A muster of this scale was not something a single Sumang territory could assemble; most likely the Bili King was moving troops here.

He wanted to seize a prisoner for interrogation, but they shared no common tongue. The Danba territory did have a Western Barbarian interpreter, but only one, and he was indispensable for controlling the army.

This made Dai Daozi so furious his gums itched.

He was utterly sick of fighting here — so many tactics were unusable.

The only option left to them was to get close and count the army banners.

The Bili King's army organization was unlike that of Nangqian or most other places.

In Nangqian, one daiben commanded two hundred and fifty soldiers, but in Bili, one daiben commanded seven to nine hundred soldiers.

Each daiben had three ruben under him, and each ruben had a banner the same color as his helmet tassel.

So by counting how many banners of one color there were, one could roughly estimate how many Bili troops had mustered in Sumang territory.

But before Dai Daozi could get close enough to count banners, he heard his subordinates calling him to hurry up the mountain.

On the mountain, he saw someone crossing the river from the Danba territory on the opposite bank, riding a horse toward the valley where Sumang's forces were mustering.

Dai Daozi slammed his fist hard against a tree trunk on the mountain. It was a woman.

The nobles of Sumang territory were using women as scouts. Their army could pay attention to men, but never considered that those simple, honest women might be scouts.

Not long after, the distant dust-churning column was still far from the Sumang valley when men inside the valley raised great banners high and marched out their battle formations.

Dai Daozi and his men drew closer still, and only then could they clearly see a mandala altar set up outside the valley. Someone seemed to be performing a ritual. Now there was no need to count banners.

Over two thousand men, formed into three orderly battle arrays outside the valley. Large numbers of cavalry in iron helmets were deployed to the rear and on both wings. Besides the Fierce Tiger Heroes they had seen before in Nangqian, many men had bird feathers stuck in their helmets.

Dai Daozi did not know what unit that signified, only that whether infantry or cavalry, there were soldiers with feathers in their helmets, and their equipment looked somewhat finer than that of ordinary soldiers.

The sounds of tibia horns and long trumpets rose and fell in waves.

Right after, this army, with banners as their guide and drumbeats as their signal, split into several columns and advanced toward the opposite bank. Cavalry rode back and forth through the formations relaying messages and dressing ranks — their movements were extremely swift.

This was indeed an army, and not the sort of rabble that nobles temporarily conscript.

Dai Daozi carefully observed the enemy's organization. Only after a while did it hit him, and he slapped his thigh. "They mean to attack Danba!"

Yet he was not overly worried. The enemy had mustered fewer troops than he had imagined. Though more troops still seemed to be converging here, word had already been sent out, and presumably the Grand Commander would dispatch reinforcements.

Watching those well-equipped, arrogant Western Barbarian cavalry, the hairs on Dai Daozi's body stood on end. He waved an order for his men to rest a moment, then follow the enemy's line of march and cross the river in their wake. The battlefield would be their camp at the Danba manor.

Night was drawing near. Nine hundred years.

The descendants of Great Tang and Tibetan cavalry, riding the battlefield together.