Chapter 277: Three Wings

On the night of the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the fourth year of the Chongzhen reign.

Amid the ruins of the river-valley estate, a bard sang loudly of King Gesar, while young nobles sat around a campfire, drinking barley wine and laughing boisterously.

The young nobles gathered together without restraint, loudly mocking their colleague, the Dorje Gyapon.

They said the slave brat who ran away from his house had become a master.

The Dorje Gyapon cracked his whip in anger and no longer sat with them; he was furious, blaming Basang in his heart.

Amid the singing, the Lingka Depön set down a letter that had come from afar. His king, Dönyö Dorje, commanded the left-wing army to reach the banks of the Jinsha River in two days to complete the encirclement.

He looked at the young nobles still laughing loudly by the campfire, revealed a smile, rose and circled the fire, walking into the shadows where the Dorje Gyapon hid.

No one in the Béri domain knew that the Lingka Depön, the bandit chief who had surrendered to the Béri King, came from a nangzan household.

For someone of his birth, the highest official rank attainable by law was the Dingpön, leading just over twenty men.

But nothing in this world is absolute. Over twenty years of war in Kham, he had been a chieftain's Dingpön, a bandit leader in the mountains, had been granted an estate, and had also killed his own lord.

His identity shifted so constantly that even the Lingka Depön himself had nearly forgotten he was born a nangzan slave.

Lingka had served many leaders. Once, he believed that war was the chance to shatter everything.

But now, he no longer needed to shatter anything.

The Béri King had recruited him in the bandit-ridden region of Margang, granting him that land as his fief. He absorbed all the bandits and horse thieves, ordering them to stop robbing monasteries, estates, and passing travelers.

He was content with all this, yet the war would never cease.

Only strength could protect everything he possessed, so he was happy to see someone being isolated.

An isolated man is the easiest to win over.

Hearing footsteps behind him, Dorje turned to make out the approaching figure and hastily rose. "Depön."

Lingka waved his hand and sat down with him, saying, "Pay no mind to their mockery. That brat of your household was captured and became a master — it is his good fortune."

"Does the Depön truly think so?"

A faint smile finally appeared on Dorje's embarrassed face. "He was my favorite nangzan, but he is a nangzan after all — very stupid."

Lingka frowned slightly at these words and asked, "If you capture him, what do you intend to do?"

Dorje shook his head. "I don't know."

He was not a stern father, nor did he consider Basang becoming a noble of the Nangchen King a disgrace to the Dorje family.

He blamed Basang's stupidity, because this fool had failed to hide his own identity.

It was like a little dog running off — fine, let it run. But why, after biting up someone else's property, let everyone know you're the Dorje family's brat!

If not for this matter, young master Dorje would never have been sent to the battlefield by his father. This was the family's disgrace; they had to atone, lest the Béri King hold a grudge in the future.

"He fled toward Nangchen Sumdo. The Great King commands our left wing to encircle toward the Jinsha River banks — it's not the same route."

After the Lingka Depön finished speaking, he saw the relieved look on Dorje's face and smiled. "But once this battle is over, we will eventually go to Nangchen. I hope you can persuade him to surrender. I will protect his life and his men."

Dorje was overjoyed and rose to give thanks. "If the Depön can protect him, that would be wonderful! I will send someone to deliver a message to him at once — we will surely find him!"

The Lingka Depön wore an easy smile, patted Dorje on the shoulder, and rose to walk toward the command tent. Halfway there, he looked back and saw Dorje in the shadows, clenching his fists in excitement.

He shook his head.

This foolish child had no idea how much power that slave brat who ran away from his house truly possessed.

Nobles are all fools, and these fools make the common people under their rule even more foolish.

Several thousand slaves — enough to plant the mountain forests full of grain and make him the most powerful noble under the Béri King.

That would be the finest reward he gained from this war. When the next war arose, he could kick aside the Béri King and swing to the other side.

The Lingka Depön had his nangzan heat up butter tea. Before the sky turned fully dark, he inspected the camp, instructing his subordinate Rupöns to make proper defensive preparations for the night. Before long, the left-wing army could sleep.

They were still forty li from the banks of the Jinsha River. The Béri King said four thousand enemy troops were trapped there on the west bank of the Jinsha by a chain bridge — strong in combat, but unlikely to be carrying much provisions. They could be eliminated by siege, then the army could return to Chamdo to deal with the Mongols.

But just as the sky was about to go fully dark, the hollow echo of firelocks rang out from the distant river valley.

The firelock shots were like a signal. Immediately after, gunfire erupted from every direction. The roaring volley dwindled in an instant to scattered, isolated cracks — like a sun shower that comes fast and leaves just as quickly.

But these gunshots set the entire camp on edge.

The Lingka Depön was doubly vigilant, for the directions from which the gunfire sounded were all where he had posted his sentries.

In the blink of an eye, on every hilltop, at every mountain's foot, and at the valley's end in all directions, the figures of flag-bearing Han soldiers appeared.

The entire camp instantly fell into chaos. The Lingka Depön's slave spilled the butter tea. Men grabbed their weapons and formed ranks in the camp, but those enemy riders were in no hurry to attack; they simply stood a li away, watching from a distance.

No matter which direction one looked, at a distance neither far nor near — three hundred paces out — there were surely Han cavalrymen waving banners, as if using the camp as a mandala to perform a ritual.

Panic spread through the army. Men said the Han army had great curse-masters.

The Lingka Depön scoffed at this. He had seen plenty of Han people and had never heard of any great curse-masters.

But this spectacle still made his spine tingle, because he had seen it before.

Long ago, when he was still a horse bandit, he had once led his men to plunder the tribal chieftains near Songpan. Those chieftains called in the Han army from Songpan City, and this very scene had appeared then.

The only difference was that the soldiers who appeared at Songpan were infantry, while here they were cavalry.

Back then, merely the sight of Han soldiers on all sides had frightened his bandit gang into collapse.

He had to stop this sentiment. He immediately dispatched Do Kham cavalry in every direction to drive off these enemy riders.

But when his cavalry advanced, the enemy cavalry retreated. One advance, one retreat — soon both mounted forces vanished from sight.

It was not until the distant, empty valley erupted again with the sound of firelocks, urgent as a sudden downpour, that a single Do Kham rider came galloping back from afar with several horses. A hundred-odd paces from camp, he toppled heavily, his foot still caught in the stirrup, dragged several steps, his body leaving a stark trail of blood on the grass.

The Han soldiers returned. Still a lone rider, who put away his three-barreled iron mace, then raised a five-colored banner and slowly waved it three hundred paces away.

The Lingka Depön knew — he was surrounded.

Dai Daozi gazed at his handiwork from afar and said to the pond scout beside him, "Tell the Grand Marshal — the enemy's left wing dares not move."

The pond scout took the order and went to report. Dai Daozi rubbed his hands together in excitement. What a thrill.

This army had made direct contact with the pond scouts as early as when it was still twenty li away, but at that time Dai Daozi dared not approach, for Liu Chengzong's main force was still sixty li distant.

He could only let the enemy's hunters press deeper northeastward, until they found this ruined estate.

Only when the enemy troops reached the manor and began making camp, setting sentries around the perimeter, did Dai Daozi still dare not make a move.

Not until the sky began to darken did Liu Chengzong's order arrive from the camp ten li away, telling him to eliminate all the sentries to facilitate tomorrow's attack.

The hardest part of this matter was how to prevent the enemy from breaking out.

Dai Daozi had no solution at all. The scout cavalry's density was four men per square li — they lacked the ability to restrict the enemy's movement. They could only make the enemy too afraid to move on their own, and only by missing the best window for a breakout could it succeed.

Fortunately, the enemy commander sent only thirty-odd riders from the north and south to drive off the scout cavalry, which created an opportunity for the scouts to use depth to encircle the enemy riders.

Driving off a single scout was easy, but behind and to the left and right of every scout were three more scouts. The deeper they drove in, the more scouts surrounded them.

After breaking out three to five li, the surging scout cavalry already held the advantage in numbers. In a chaotic melee, who could defeat a cavalryman carrying a powder tube?

Let alone the fact that they carried three powder tubes.

With the enemy ten li away tied down, the crisis for Liu Chengzong's camp was lifted. They could get a good night's sleep and conserve their strength for tomorrow's battle.

Liu Chengzong drank a cup of hot milk and gave the map hanging in the command tent one last look. The situation was perfect.

Within a forty-li radius around him, there were two enemy forces — the left wing and the right wing. The left wing was already trapped by layer upon layer of scout cavalry, while the right wing was still thirty li away and unable to receive word. The scouts watching them reported back that those enemy troops had already made camp and were resting.

Both enemy forces numbered over two thousand men each; combined with the central army, the total was seven thousand.

The central army… the central army had temporarily vanished from his field of vision.

This, however, was not a mistake in his tactical deployment, but stemmed from the enemy's uncontrollable nature.

That afternoon, Zhang Tianlin, who was roaming the outer line, had intended to slip through the gap between the central army and the right wing, but a positioning error got him spotted by the enemy central army. The enemy's reaction was half a beat too slow, however, so that the two forces brushed past each other before they finally stirred into motion.

After that, the entire central army chased Zhang Tianlin westward. Liu Chengzong had no way to explain this behavior; he could only say that the enemy probably thought Zhang Tianlin was easier to bully.

For Liu Chengzong, this accident was neither good nor bad. He had temporarily lost an outer-line cavalry force of twelve hundred men, but the upside was that three enemy forces were now reduced to two, with a gap as wide as thirty li between them.

After reviewing the situation one last time, Liu Chengzong burrowed under his blanket, shut his eyes comfortably — the battle to annihilate the enemy's main force would be tomorrow, and King Baili's territory would soon fall under his control.

Linka Daiben could not fall asleep at all.

The situation that was so exceptionally clear to Liu Chengzong was a dense fog to him.

In the deep black night, countless enemy troops lay hidden, surrounding him completely. He did not know from which direction the enemy would attack, nor how many enemy troops were around him in total.

The darkness made him dare not act rashly. He could only send out a second wave of five hunters to search for traces of the central army and the right wing.

The reason it was a second wave was that the first wave of hunters had died.

They had lit torches, practically delivering themselves in plain sight to the scouts, and were then shot dead by a blunderbuss.

But the second wave of hunters fared no better, because they were all hunters whose homeland was Baili, equally unfamiliar with the terrain of Nangqian. Without torches, none of them knew the way, and their outcomes were all rather poor.

Two men fell off a cliff. One died in utter silence; the other cried out loudly for help, was rescued by the scouts, received good medical treatment, and was bound up tightly as a captive.

Two others traveled together, overcoming hardship and danger to climb a high mountain. They saw a camp in the distance glowing faintly in the darkness and resolutely walked down toward it.

They walked all the way to Liu Chengzong's camp and very obediently became captives.

The last hunter knew a great deal. He knew the central army had pursued an enemy force of over a thousand riders westward, so he evaded one scout after another, walking farther and farther.

He fulfilled the mission Linka Daiben had entrusted to him and saw the central army that even Liu Chengzong had not found.

Unfortunately, there were two armies in that vicinity — one with tight defenses, the other with its guard down.

He reasoned that the central army was larger in scale than the enemy force and should not be so tense dealing with that enemy of a thousand-odd riders, so he walked into the camp with its guard down.

And then he met the master of that camp — Zhang Tianlin.

Of course, he met him while tied up. Zhang Tianlin fiercely gave this hunter who had woken him from sleep two punches and had him chained up.

In the boundless darkness, Linka Daiben never received a response from the two allied camps. His army dared not sleep all night, constantly on guard against a night raid by the enemy.

But no one raided him.

By the third watch of the night, Linka Daiben finally realized that the enemy intended to wait until daylight to attack him. But his army had been awake all night and lacked the strength to resist an attack in daylight, so he decided to break out.

After the breakout force assembled, having learned the lesson of the first team of hunters, they advanced a hundred paces beyond the camp without torches — only to find the sky too dark, and then gave up.

Later, they tried lighting torches, and a scout hidden in the shadows fired three shots in succession. The others then came splashing back into the camp in a rush.

Not long after, the shouts of a wounded soldier came from outside the camp.

Someone wanted to go back and rescue him, but a shot fired from afar put a stop to that idea.

The wounded soldier shouted for a long while, realized no one was coming to save him, and had just begun crawling back when a scout who had rushed over kicked him senseless, tossed him onto a horse's back, and carried him off.

The scouts took turns using their warhorses to deliver him to the rear where Dai Daozi was. Under the glow of the campfire, Dai Daozi discovered that this man bore no wounds from a three-eyed blunderbuss, but had quite a few large boot prints on him. His leg had been trampled and broken, which was why he could not move.

Dai Daozi narrowed his eyes, huffily pulled out his officer's notebook, and graded the scout who had fired the blunderbuss as having marksmanship of the lowest rank.

The scout was quite wronged. He had fired three shots, sending nine lead pellets from a distance, and had actually hit six enemies.

It was just that none of the six enemies knew they had been hit. The lead pellets were either plastered onto armor or embedded in fur coats. Only one man had the skin of his hand broken, and he ran back to camp thinking he had scraped against someone else's weapon.

The listless Linka Daiben might never know that on this chaotic night, he had been locked in a standoff with an imaginary great army.

For as daylight shone from the east, a fluttering great banner bearing the character Liu rose on the horizon. Rows of raised helmet plumes rose and fell with the motion of the horses' backs. Liu Chengzong rode his warhorse, leading his army into his sight.