Chapter 267: Contamination

The shinbone horns moaned low across the battlefield.

Danbei, the Depön of the Béri army, wore an unreadable expression as he stared at the battlefield, brows tightly knit.

The year he was born, in the Han lands they called it the eighteenth year of Wanli; by his reckoning he was now past forty, a seasoned veteran on this soil.

Twenty years ago, Danbei had started from the lowest officer rank of Dingpön, with only twenty-two nangsen household slaves under him, and now he had become a Depön commanding three Ru — he had fought in every war of the Béri King's campaigns east and west.

From the intelligence the shepherdess had sent back, he knew the greatest threat in this battle was eight hundred Mongols.

Mongols were common in Kham, especially the Holochi tribe of the Tümed; three years ago when the Mongols entered Tibet, Danbei had been ordered to conquer Riwoche and cut off the Mongol army's rear.

The ruler of Riwoche was a clan even feebler than the Zhu family of Nangchen, who after three months of mobilization had mustered only seventy warriors, but they relied on their enduring monastery.

What did monks have to count on? Nothing more than the Mongols, so Danbei had prepared that year to fight the Mongols, but in the end the Béri King ordered his army recalled, allowing Riwoche to survive to this day.

After that, Danbei's army was transferred to the northern mountains of Lithang, facing off across the ridges against the army of Mu Tianwang of Lijiang — an opponent ten times more formidable than the Mongols.

Reassigned north by Dönyö Dorje, Danbei was thoroughly delighted with this battle; Mongols were hard to catch when they raided, but in pitched battle they charged recklessly when winning and scattered in a rout when losing, making them look utterly fragile, no match for Do-Kham cavalry.

The shepherdess had also mentioned over three hundred Han soldiers, but Danbei did not take Han soldiers seriously.

He knew Han firearms were powerful, and he had heard the tale of Nangso Kyimong Palace falling in a single day.

But what did that prove? It proved nothing, because the commander of that army was Ngawang.

Ngawang was a mute, and a monk at that, who had gone and seized the place Danbei was supposed to garrison.

To Danbei, a strong fortress falling in a single day was perfectly reasonable — it could not serve as proof of the enemy's ferocious offensive; at most it proved two things.

First, Ngawang's spiritual cultivation was insufficient, and the Buddha did not stand with him; second, the besieging army had no martial honor, bullying a mute.

Over the years, the sporadic news Danbei had heard of the Central Plains dynasty contained not a single good thing.

When the troops crossed the river, Danbei had rallied the nobles beside him: "When I led the army north, Mu Tianwang in the south had just donated twelve thousand taels of silver to the Emperor — guess what for?"

Danbei's expression at the time was deeply inscrutable; he tapped his saddle with a raised hand: "Suppressing rebels. In a place as far away as the edge of the sky, there is a great bandit surnamed Liu, stirring up trouble so the Emperor has no peace. Their country is at war. If these Han soldiers were truly formidable heroes, they would have gone back to help the Emperor. Coming all the way here, they are nothing but stray dogs who have lost their homes."

Only now the battlefield situation was so delicate that Danbei no longer felt the ease he had when marching out.

The Han soldiers fired their guns from behind simple earthen walls — intimidating, but they actually killed very few; the Mongol troops scattered in twos and threes under the pursuit of the Do-Kham heavy cavalry, finding no chance to regroup.

He had considered the Mongol problem, and the Han problem as well; on those two fronts alone, he held absolute superiority in this battle.

Yet the most troublesome element on the battlefield was precisely the one he had overlooked — the tribal soldiers, those slave brats.

On a battlefield, even in a frontal clash between two armies, let alone an assault on a camp like this, no force collapses at the first charge unless the disparity in strength is overwhelming.

You charge once; if the charge fails, you leave some corpses behind, the main force pulls back and reforms ranks, and launching a second assault is the most normal thing in the world.

You could even treat this manor as a castle, surround it, and starve them out.

But his troops had charged and clashed once, and it was like throwing meat buns to a dog — more sent, few returned. The horns had blown three times, and those slave soldiers up front were still standing there, so close to the enemy, yet they would not come back.

Then there was only one possibility: they had surrendered. But for over a hundred men to surrender before the outcome was decided was very abnormal.

Besides, who ever heard of surrendering and still keeping their weapons?

This was not right.

Depön Danbei watched his army slowly withdraw back into formation. In twenty years of soldiering, he had never seen anything like this.

So much so that he even began to wonder: had those soldiers really been turned by the slave brats?

For twenty years, war had never ceased in the Béri domain. The general was a veteran, and the soldiers were veterans too; they ought to know the consequences of surrendering on the battlefield.

Their wives, daughters, and kin would be tortured; if they had sons, the sons would have to atone for the crime.

Danbei did not understand.

While the heavy cavalry drove the Mongol horse troops away from the camp, Danbei pulled his forces back to a safe distance and set up camp.

After arranging simple defenses, he summoned the nobles and found a few slaves who had fought to question them: "What happened at the front? How could so many men not come back?"

The slaves dared not speak, until Danbei's face showed displeasure, and at last one of them mustered his courage and said: "They were shouting in front of the lines, telling us to be our own masters..."

Before the words were finished, they were cut off by the nobles' rebukes.

"Outrageous!"

The nobles accompanying the army erupted in an uproar.

People vied to condemn the slaves who had defected before the lines: "Since when is it their turn to be masters?"

The portly Master Sumang stood behind the crowd, watching the lords under the Béri King curse furiously, and sighed silently in his heart.

He had long guessed that the Béri King's generals, upon seeing slaves incited to revolt by the Han, would behave exactly like this.

It was all within his expectations. He had told his nephew that by doing this, Gama was placing himself opposite all the nobles, courting his own destruction.

People were baffled, and the nobles were furious, but the fury did not stem from betrayal; to a great extent, the fury came from a sense of grievance.

This grievance was just like that of Sumang's nephew, Danba.

No slave master in the world considers himself evil; on the contrary, they all see themselves as reasonable and compassionate.

Because they possess the land, the force of arms, the knowledge, and the grain; they are clean and dignified, while the slaves are filthy and ignorant.

A slave who runs away cannot survive; on this land, anyone not tethered to the land has a life worth only a single rope — any person may kill them at will.

Keeping slaves and giving them a mouthful of food is, in itself, an immense mercy.

And now a bunch of slaves have appeared, relying on nobles and outsiders, and actually want to repay kindness with enmity?

Social environments are all about adapting to local conditions and varying from person to person; when a minority does something, it is a trend; when everyone does it, it becomes the rule.

They were born into this set of rules, benefited from this set of rules, and naturally must defend this set of rules.

Everyone reached a consensus: this slave army must be crushed as quickly as possible, or else this current would spread like smallpox running rampant across the grasslands, contaminating the slaves of the surrounding domains.

Danba was deeply aggrieved. He shouted loudly before the crowd: "Every blade of grass and every tree on the Danba domain has belonged to the Danba family for generations, until my father passed it to me. These slave brats, relying on Monk Gama to invade, say they will take my land — on what grounds!"

"Yes, on what grounds!"

The noble officers seethed with righteous fury, until every face turned murderous, and bewilderment and grievance finally transformed into towering hatred.

No one knew on what grounds the slaves did this; they only felt the injustice.

Before setting out, the Béri nobles had assumed this war would be like all the wars before — for more land and profit, they could exert themselves, or they could not.

Only then did the indignant nobles understand what they were fighting for.

Dan Pei swept an icy gaze over the assembled nobles: "One step back, and your family names are forfeit… these slave whelps want to overturn heaven."

Finding a problem is always easier than solving one. The greatest problem now facing Dan Pei was that many of the slaves under his command were no longer fit to continue fighting.

He could accept a reduction in troop numbers, but he could not accept soldiers defecting en masse before the battle lines.

Fighting this kind of enemy tormented him. Fortunately, he had ample experience and quickly found a solution.

Taking advantage of the deepening dusk, Deputy Commander Dan Pei reorganized his three ru. He made the nobles and the trusted lang-sheng the First Ru, the duiqiong and chaba with families in Baili the Second Ru, and the destitute, bachelor slaves the Third Ru.

His tactics also shifted with the reorganization. Whether he could retake Danba Manor no longer mattered to him: "Use the Second Ru as the main force to pin down the enemy at the manor. The First Ru will seize the moment to charge straight into the enemy lines and must kill that slave whelp called Basang."

As for the Third Ru, Dan Pei assigned them no task.

Their greatest task tonight was to return the way they came. If they could avoid being subverted by the enemy, that would count as a victory.

Dan Pei believed all of this was because of that slave whelp called Basang. He was the one who had brought these changes. As long as he was killed, those slaves would be scattered sand, incapable of achieving anything.

Just as Dan Pei was deploying officers and reorganizing troops at the temporary camp, Dai Daozi was observing the battlefield from a hillside a li away.

He was mainly observing the fight between the Xifan cavalry and the Mongol horse troops. Xie Erhu's forces held no advantage; his four hundred horse troops tried several times to close ranks and mass together, but were driven off again and again.

As for the changes inside the Baili Army camp, Dai Daozi had little interest, because he could not understand them.

He had originally planned to lead his troops to rest their horses on the mountain, then join the battle with his horse troops. Who knew that just as they reached the hilltop, the Baili Army's battle formation receded like the tide.

And they were even deploying officers and troops within the formation, throwing an originally quite organized army into complete disarray. It was rather strange.

Dai Daozi did not understand leading troops into battle. Judging by the standards of Lion Army officers, he was at best a Horse Troop Centurion, but in the domain of reconnaissance cavalry, he was a true expert.

He did not know whether the enemy's reconnaissance awareness was simply too backward, or whether they were recklessly relying on being on their home ground. Their screening of the battlefield was limited to posted sentries and sending troops to scout the path, to the point that the camp they had pitched was nearly transparent in Dai Daozi's eyes.

"Uncle Blade, they've split into three columns and sent one column out of camp heading south." A young reconnaissance rider of courier-station origin walked up to Dai Daozi and said quietly: "Seven or eight hundred men, terribly equipped, all infantry. They look like… logistics troops?"

"Logistics troops?"

Dai Daozi spoke while letting out a yawn. He still was not quite used to how it got dark an hour later here than back home. Looking at the sky just now dimming, yet anywhere else people would already be deep in dreams.

He shook his head and said: "When we came, we tailed them and saw no logistics troops. Perhaps the attack is too hard to press, and they plan to go back and haul supplies, to besiege the manor?"

As soon as Dai Daozi finished speaking, he shook his head and dismissed the idea.

This place was not far from the valley where the Baili Army had previously been stationed. There was no need for so many logistics troops. Besides, who hauls supplies without even riding horses?

Something was definitely up, but Dai Daozi did not know what. He only said: "Send one tang of brothers to follow them. Send another tang to return to the manor under cover of night and tell Wailiangzi and the others that we're going to take a look at their main camp."

"Look at their main camp?"

Dai Daozi nodded.

Earlier, he had been treating the Baili Army as an opponent on par with the Lion Army, but now it seemed their officers had many innate deficiencies in commanding troops.

This was a very novel discovery for Dai Daozi.

What an army is like depends, to a great extent, on the enemies it has long fought.

At Qinghai Lake, Dai Daozi had realized that the Mongol army had an enormous gap in equipment compared to the Lion Army.

And here, the Baili King's army was not poorly equipped, but constrained by the source of its troops, the quality of its soldiers was extremely low and professional soldiers were extremely few — this would bring unavoidable drawbacks.

In truth, whether one was a slave or a free man had very little effect on courage. Dai Daozi even felt that every last one of the Baili King's slaves was braver than him.

Dai Daozi was still waiting for Liu Shizi to achieve great things — whether he proclaimed himself king or emperor, Dai Daozi would count as having rendered service to the rising dragon. He had to earn the old Dai family of Pingqiang at least a countship. He could not afford to die.

The Baili King's slave soldiers were different. They had neither hope nor joy in this life anyway. The noble masters said that after this life came the next, so they might as well gamble on the luck of reincarnation and a fresh start.

No loss.

But this had an enormous impact on tactics.

Apart from those Dokang heavy cavalry of professional soldier origin, the Baili King's army had a rigid structure and could not conduct independent operations in small-unit formations.

Who could entrust the critical mission of penetrating deep behind enemy lines to a bunch of slaves?

The Baili King's enemies all lacked such capability, and naturally had no need to guard against such an enemy.

An army must have supplies, and supplies fear fire, and for setting fires, one squad is enough.

That ru headquarters army marched across its own territory without the slightest fear, holding torches high and forming blurry, winding serpents of fire through the wilds as it snaked toward the valley in the Sumang area — like the most heart-warming guiding light in the dark night.

Dai Daozi, cautious and prudent, led his ninety-five reconnaissance riders as they mounted their horses and silently tailed this ru headquarters army, watching the firelight and walking the path they had walked.

The march went very smoothly. Dai Daozi merely dozed off in the saddle, and by the time a reconnaissance rider woke him, they were already at the valley mouth.

The reconnaissance riders had scouted it out: there were two hundred garrison troops in the valley. Grain and livestock were visible at a glance. The defenses were extremely lax.

But with the seven or eight hundred exhausted men who had marched back, holding this grain was now impossible. Taking advantage of the night to slip a few men in to cause chaos, then charging in to set fires, had a very high chance of success.

Dai Daozi immediately gave the order. Ten reconnaissance riders donned shoulder-baring jackets and infiltrated. Not long after, chaos erupted inside the valley.

Outside the valley, Dai Daozi was still thinking to himself how efficient his brothers were. In that moment, the eighty-some remaining reconnaissance riders, each resolved to fight to the death, drew blades and raised firearms as they charged in to kill.

The moment they entered, they were dumbstruck.

They had never imagined that the sounds of chaos coming from the valley were nothing like what they had pictured.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the reconnaissance riders' sabotage. It was those seven or eight hundred slave soldiers — they had surrounded the garrison troops' tents, beating and killing the Baili native soldiers on night watch, and were right then breaking open the granary to take grain.

Suddenly hearing the explosion of hoofbeats behind them, they thought it was the Baili King's army. The crowd fell like collapsing ocean waves, setting down their weapons under the moonlight in droves and kneeling in prostration.

They did not even dare raise their heads.