Chapter 266: Slaves and Slaves

Plump Lord Su Mang sat on his horse in lamellar armor, the sturdy Hequ horse beneath him struggling under the weight.

He rode before the troops, turned to look at his nephew among the attendants, and frowned. "Danba, come to the front. You... do you think I'm going to swindle your gold or something?"

He didn't know what to say. His nephew Lord Danba wore a mail hauberk, his belly bulging — clearly he'd stuffed those jin of gold into his chest again.

"Uncle, do we really have to be at the very front of the battle line?"

Danba urged his horse forward while glancing back. "The Han have big guns. Even the Béri King's Depön lords are all in the rear."

"Ah, my sister, such a fine woman — how did she end up marrying your short-lived coward of a father and giving birth to you, a creature more timid than a rabbit!"

Su Mang shook his head, but the look he gave his nephew held no mockery, only heartache. He said, "Danba, your land has been dug up. Stand beside me — your uncle won't let any harm come to you."

He felt his nephew had absorbed all the useless trappings of nobility through daily exposure, yet had failed to learn the one thing that was a noble's foundation.

Danba said, "Uncle, it's not that I'm timid. You don't understand... they have big firelocks. At a hundred paces, one shot can pierce through several men. The front line is too dangerous."

Three thousand Béri troops were advancing.

Su Mang took off his peacock-feather-crested half-round steel helmet and placed it on his nephew's head, then grabbed his reins and rode laterally before the battle line.

He said, "Danba, do you know why we possess land and a family name?"

Danba did not know — or rather, he did not know what deeper meaning his uncle's question might hold, because the question itself was too simple.

They were nobles. On this land, only nobles possessed family names and land.

"A noble may be kind, diligent, and temperate, or cruel, lazy, and greedy — it doesn't matter."

Plump Lord Su Mang, his mount trembling under the load, pointed at Danba from horseback. "But for land and your family name, you must give everything. Without land, there is no family name. Without a family name, you are a slave."

"Your land has been dug up, crisscrossed with trenches. This is your war. You cannot hide behind other nobles. But don't be afraid."

"Never mind what they have." Su Mang had never seen it, and Su Mang did not care. "Your uncle stands with you. Su Mang's people — they are our armor of blood and shields of flesh."

When he waved his hand from horseback, over three hundred half-naked Su Mang conscripted slaves formed a square formation, each clutching a tool, heads bowed as they advanced.

Warhorses raced back and forth through the gaps between the three divisions, the dust they kicked up veiling the twilight glow.

Beside the trench at Danba's estate, Crooked Nose kept his head down working, his hands never stopping. "This doesn't count as violating orders, right? The Marshal only said not to tear down commoners' doors — noblemen's doors should be fine... hurry, hurry, get that plank wall up."

The materials had been ready since they dug the trenches; they just hadn't expected the enemy to cross the river right after Dai Daozi left.

Crooked Nose was excited. After months of drilling back and forth at the training camp, what he'd learned could finally be put to use.

A few Han soldiers demonstrated at the front while the tribal soldiers worked with heads down, and the Mongol soldiers carried gunpowder, firelocks, a wooden cannon, and feathered arrows.

Split door planks became natural low walls, pounded into the chiseled soft earth with wooden mallets, the space between two planks packed with soil.

Crooked Nose hopped and jumped on the earthen wall.

The wall the six of them had built had two layers of inch-thick planks, with the earthen core two chi thick at the base and one chi thick at the top.

Once the soldiers tamped the earthen wall firm through the planks, loaded ammunition for the firelocks, strung the horn bows, loaded the wooden cannon, and planted a row of feathered arrows at their feet —

Crooked Nose wiped the sweat from his forehead, fastened his helmet, poked his head out from behind the earthen wall, and gazed at the army drawing closer in the distance. Then he looked at the thickness of the wall and sank into thought.

This kind of earthen wall was taught in the infantry training camp for defense against cannon fire — it could stop Cao Yao's cannon battalion's lion cannons firing directly from a hundred paces.

But the enemy... the enemy didn't seem to have cannons.

Crooked Nose wiped the sweat from his chin again, cursed, and muttered to himself with a frown, "How come they don't have cannons?"

The words had barely left his mouth when the veteran beside him, who had just set down his axe, smacked him across the helmet. "No cannons is a good thing — you don't want to see your wife and sons anymore?"

At that, several Han soldiers burst out laughing.

In that instant, a flash of anger crossed Crooked Nose's face from the slap, but then, hearing "wife and sons," he broke into a squinty-eyed smirk and straightened his helmet.

He was a lucky unlucky man.

This spring, he'd only just earned the bandit name Crooked Nose.

Before that, he'd been a Ningxia scout. In the spring, he'd used his horse's hooves to measure Qinghai Lake for Grand Marshal Liu — unlucky as hell.

Of the hundred-odd scouts on that mission, when they skirmished with a Western Tibetan tribe at Haixi, no one else lost so much as a hair. Only he got hit in the nose by a slingstone and earned that bandit name.

He'd fled for two days with blood gushing from his nose, originally hoping to trade for grain with the Western Tibetan tribe. Instead, he found a Mongol tribe in Hainan — all the men had gone to war, leaving only women and children too young to ride.

There was just one old cripple who knew Chinese and medicine. When the old man heard they hadn't come to fight and wanted to trade for grain, he bought two saddles, three wool blankets, and a wrist-cutting knife from them.

He also treated Crooked Nose's nose on the side. Deeply grateful, Crooked Nose took off his waist saber and gave it to the old man.

Now it was the old man's turn to be puzzled. Treating a nose and getting a steel saber in return — what kind of rich young master was this?

As it happened, the old man's son-in-law had died the year before. The more he looked at that crooked nose, the more he liked it, so he simply offered to introduce his daughter to him.

The young woman was three years older than Crooked Nose. She could ride and shoot, raise sheep, feed horses, cut people down, and set bones. And she'd throw in two Mongol sons for free — one ten, one twelve.

Crooked Nose was dumbstruck. What the hell — this kind of good fortune actually existed?

Back in Ningxia, he'd wanted to get married for ages. From sixteen to twenty-six, he'd thought about it, but it never worked out.

Truth be told, in these times, getting married wasn't hard — it depended on the price.

In Grand Marshal Liu's hometown, whether you liked them old or young, tall or short, fat or thin, they were all there at the city gate with straw tags stuck in their collars — free for the taking. As long as you had the guts to pull the straw tag, you could take a young woman or a young wife home.

Of course, once a woman followed you, you had to feed her.

But in Crooked Nose's hometown, you needed grain upfront — two hundred jin wouldn't even cover it.

Crooked Nose might have had martial skills that kept three or five ordinary men at bay, but it was useless. Finding a match didn't depend on that. The moment a matchmaker heard he was a soldier, she'd turn and leave.

For every brick in the Great Wall along Shaanxi's three frontiers, there was a penniless short-lived wretch with martial skills who wouldn't live to thirty.

By giving away a steel saber, Crooked Nose not only got a wife but sons to boot — instantly setting him apart from Liu Shizi's army of bachelors.

When he reported this back in Haibei, Liu Shizi was overjoyed. He specially pulled him from the scout cavalry, gave him a month's leave, prepared betrothal gifts, and even visited his father-in-law on the way south.

Now Crooked Nose's father-in-law and wife had both been brought to Juerwan.

His wife was assigned to raise sheep at the market — the cattle and sheep Bäyan Tayiji sold all depended on her care. His father-in-law had joined the Chengyun medical corps, specializing in setting bones for men who fell in the cavalry training camp.

His two Mongol sons were still young — first learning the language and feeding horses at the training camp, and when older, they'd join the cavalry training camp as regular soldiers. Father and sons would fight side by side.

So that slap — he'd more than earned it.

Crooked Nose drove the heavy musket's wooden pole into the earth, rested its barrel on the earthen wall, leaned forward in a bow stance, braced the stock firmly against his shoulder, and tilted his head to aim forward.

The newly made heavy muskets were simply too satisfying to use in positional warfare.

The big-bearded veteran set up his heavy musket beside him, aimed into the distance, and said, "Anyway, they're not paying bounty for heads. In a bit, let's let all the heavy muskets draw them in close, take aim, then fire. Best if we can take out their noble, the one with the same office as that mute — what's it called?"

"Dai Ben."

"Right, let's try to kill their Dai Ben in one go. These palanquin-borne high officials and nobles are all the same — they start wars lightly, but the ones fighting and dying on the battlefield are all poor folks' kids."

Crooked Beam agreed deeply. They were men who had seen the world now.

When a person lives in one place too long, they start to think the world is only that big.

But there are places in this world whose wealth defies imagination, and places whose poverty also defies imagination.

Marching south from Haibei, there was no shortage of subject nobles sending corvée laborers to haul supplies for them. Some nobles demanded over two hundred days of corvée labor from their subjects each year.

Over two hundred days — that practically makes them slaves, because the mountains here are sealed by heavy snow for several months.

"I reckon when we get back this time, the Grand Marshal will be issuing paper notes for monthly pay."

Crooked Beam was very much looking forward to receiving pay again. Before he married, if he ate his fill, the whole household was fed. As long as Grand Marshal Liu issued full rations, he could follow him and ride across the land.

But now that he had a wife, and suddenly had elders to support and children to raise, like a proper man, grain wasn't worth as much as it used to be either.

He felt he still needed a bit of money. Even if it was just one tael of Lion Note a month, he still needed something for daily necessities.

The several Han soldiers all sank into daydreams. Though the last time they received pay was already a distant memory, people truly all yearned to pursue a better life.

They needed money.

Suddenly, the big-bearded veteran narrowed his eyes and said, "They're here!"

In the distance, drums, music, gongs, and bells sounded. The mournful long horns and tibia trumpets blew rough, powerful, droning wails that seized the heart.

The army formation slowly pressed forward. The slave army formation at the front halted. The three Ru Ben units halted behind them, long banners fluttering, cavalry units massing on all flanks to guard the formation's footing. Each Ru Ben sent forward serf soldiers armed with every kind of firearm — bird muskets, fire lances, Indian matchlocks — to take their positions before the formation.

The Han soldiers behind the trench looked toward the army formation, their faces all gaining a few traces of caution. This army actually looked quite proper — worthy of being the force that had swept through Nangqên.

Row after row of infantry split into three columns, advancing under shields toward the fortified camps at the two corners of the manor. Basang's army also sounded its horns, and dense volleys of feathered arrows flew toward the distance.

Behind the manor, the four hundred herder-soldiers under Xie Erhu mounted their horses, bows and arrows in hand, pacing slowly on both wings, applying pressure to the enemy from the outer flanks.

The slave infantry advanced through the rain of arrows to fifty paces out, planted their shields, and then one to two hundred musketeers from each of the three columns stepped forward.

The pace of battle suddenly accelerated at this moment. The musketeers each began firing from behind the cover of shields. The Han soldiers using heavy muskets relied on the fortifications for cover and did not return fire.

Baili's three Ru Ben units each detached over a hundred highland heavy cavalry, with the left and right wings as the main force and the center as reserve, charging straight for the Mongol troops on the two wings behind the manor.

At the same time, the three columns of slave infantry, carrying bundles of branches on their backs and each holding their weapons, used the suppressing fire of the muskets to launch an assault from the flanks against the fortified camps at the manor's two corners.

They were battle-hardened slaves, already extremely practiced in this simple but effective sequence of attack.

Before Baili's highland cavalry could even reach the Mongol herder-soldiers, their opponents scattered at the first charge, drawing them away from the battlefield at the manor's edge, circling in small groups of three to five and shooting with bows.

Their bows could hardly harm heavy cavalry clad in chainmail. The real killing still depended on thrusting with spears, seizing the right moment to stab — but this was extremely dangerous for the Mongol herder-soldiers… the enemy's arrows could kill them.

Basang remained silent before the formation, rallying his soldiers to hold the trench, shooting arrows at the troops charging toward them.

Wooden spikes were planted in the trench, but the intimidating effect of the firearms on them was extremely obvious — few of the slave soldiers dared to stand up and loose arrows.

To Baili's slaves, this battle was like splitting bamboo. They charged to the edge of the trench, threw down the bundles of branches they carried on their backs, and in the blink of an eye filled in a passable path before the formation.

Men trod over the branch bundles, struggling across the trench.

Slaves about to clash in close combat stared eye to eye with slaves.

Basang suddenly raised his arm and shouted. His slave soldiers shouted the same cry. Men yelled in the same tongue: "We are all slaves — surrender, be your own masters!"

This shout made the charging formation of the opposing slave soldiers falter for a moment. But only for a moment — men looked left and right, then charged forward again.

No one wanted to fight. For these slaves, nangsen, duiqiong, and chagba before the formation, war held no meaning for them beyond death.

But they had no choice. For those who owned nothing, their master was everything to them. And for those who had families — their wives, children, maternal uncles, nephews, brothers and sisters — all were in their master's hands.

Even seeing iron spears before them, they could only charge.

All the more so, swept up in the tide of men, there was no other way.

The Han soldiers' heavy muskets roared.

The trench's earthen wall before the manor's main gate formed an excellent firing angle on the camps at both flanks. Crooked Beam and the big-beard aimed their two heavy muskets in the same direction and fired at once.

A great cloud of gunpowder smoke burst before the formation. The musket butts slammed hard into their shoulders. The tremendous report shook the dust from their bodies into the air, as if their very souls had been jolted loose.

Two heavy bullets streaked across the fifty-pace distance one after the other. One went wide, flying off to who knows where.

The other lead ball tore diagonally through two bellies, three arms, and one leg, spending all its force on a single spine, blasting the muscle and shattered bone behind that backbone, wrapped in a strip of tattered cloth, several paces away.

In that instant, it plowed a bloody path through the formation.

Amid the wails of their comrades, the slaves on the left wing instantly scattered their formation, scrambling to take cover.

But death terrified them, and the slave masters terrified them just as much. The vast majority of them chose to charge forward in a desperate rush toward Basang's position.

Many died on that path, until the scattered slaves could no longer break through the massed slaves. Only then did they split into three large clumps — some fleeing back beyond the trench, some crouching on the ground in surrender.

And some lay forever on Master Danba's land.