Chapter 311: River Valley

In the evening at Five Rivers, the night wind swept up the scent of green grass mingled with wildflowers, brushing across the Lion Army encampment in the river valley.

Fan Sanlang had tied a short jacket around her waist over her half-sleeve mail, and as she walked through the Left Battalion camp with her hand on her saber, her gaze passed over one resting soldier after another, searching for Buchi's figure.

As the Marshal's headquarters' sole female chiliarch, Buchi was easy to find, because Basang's battalion was very unusual.

In a normal army, when there were no combat duties, officers would orderly assign tasks to each unit, and even without tasks the soldiers would busy themselves with their own affairs — almost no one was idle.

But in Basang's Left Battalion, most soldiers had extremely low initiative; they did whatever their officers told them to do, and when the officers assigned nothing, they did nothing at all, just squatting there.

They might chat in low voices, a few familiar soldiers gathering together, furtively, talking about the wives and children they'd left behind in Nangqên, talking about the cattle, sheep, and land bestowed by the great Marshal, discussing ways to earn some merit on the battlefield.

They had only just gotten used to being farmers after a long time, and hadn't even learned to recognize all those many and varied iron farm tools yet, when a single conscription notice from the Kangning Prefecture office made them leave their wives and land to become soldiers — but they did so willingly.

In the past they'd had homes too — whether it was under a staircase, a dark little shared room, or a sheep pen, they'd had homes, and some even had wives and children, only those things hadn't belonged to them.

The greatest change the Marshal's headquarters brought to Kangning, and its most stabilizing measure, was not actually the confiscation of noble lands, but the establishment of government offices and the promulgation of laws.

Liu Chengzong allowed people to lawfully possess property that belonged to themselves.

Soon, Fan Sanlang found Buchi's position — that madwoman of the army was giving a lesson to the soldiers.

In the eyes of the Lion Army's commanders, Buchi was a crazed woman half-maddened by torture, but in the eyes of most soldiers in the Left Battalion, Buchi was a shamaness who could communicate with ghosts.

Buchi was telling the soldiers, in a wild, rambling manner, about the experiences of slaves tortured to death by nobles, occasionally mixing in a few Chinese words and teaching them to the soldiers around her.

Fan Sanlang stood in the distance with her arms crossed, watching everything, her expression neither as earnest as those listening, nor showing the slightest trace of mockery.

Because she knew this was part of Chiliarch Buchi's work.

When Liu Chengzong assigned Buchi this task in Nangqên, Fan Sanlang had been right there in the tent.

Communicating with ghosts was both a lingering effect of her fright and Buchi's protective coloring in the army — it was already extremely difficult for a woman to protect herself in the military, let alone control a large group of men.

Liu Chengzong himself was someone who detested charlatanry, but under circumstances where large numbers of soldiers lacked military discipline and communication difficulties still existed between Han officers and Tibetan soldiers, he adapted to the situation — he needed a shaman to help guide the soldiers.

In truth, after Buchi killed the officer who had led them, the incessant phantom voices in her ears had stopped, and the things she spoke of afterward were basically all atrocities other slaves had personally experienced.

People listened to this madwoman partly because Buchi had the deep trust of the Marshal's headquarters, and partly because she had the ability to summon wind and rain.

This professional skill of hers came from Liu Chengzong — how many generals who lead troops into battle don't know something of astronomy and geography? But in the eyes of the slaves, this was an ability only a shaman who could commune with the spirits of heaven and earth would possess.

Seeing Fan Sanlang standing in the distance, Buchi ended today's superstition session early and walked quickly over to ask Fan Sanlang her purpose in coming.

Buchi possessed nearly all the virtues of a Western Tibetan woman — hardworking and uncomplaining, diligent and earnest, and she studied Chinese with great dedication; now she could not only manage simple communication but also serve as half a teacher in the army.

Fan Sanlang took out a pair of iron claws meant to be tied to the soles of shoes and handed them to Buchi: "You have a husband who's a blacksmith — the camp has no iron, so make many from horse bone; they're needed for climbing mountains."

Buchi took the iron claws, lowered her head to study them carefully, then asked: "The Marshal... has decided on an attack?"

These mountain-climbing iron claws had been born in the Battle of Yellow Dragon Mountain in northern Shaanxi, but after that the Lion Army had never fought on a mountain again, so finding this item in the army was actually a bit difficult.

Fan Sanlang had grown used to Buchi's speech lacking words; after a moment's effort to understand, she smiled and shook her head: "Still under discussion, but it's already decided — the Marshal says there will be rain soon, or perhaps snow."

In the central army command tent, the officers were deliberating; by rank, Buchi should also have been in the tent for the council, but Liu Chengzong believed Buchi was doing something more important than the military council, so she didn't need to attend.

With battle imminent, having Buchi quickly tell ghost stories to her subordinates to boost morale was far more important than the military council.

The Khalkha Mongol nobles were nobles too — the class hatred was the same.

Liu Chengzong liked hearing his subordinates' opinions, but only liked hearing them, because listening to their opinions could broaden his thinking, but whether he adopted them was another matter entirely.

The officers of the Marshal's headquarters were gathered in Liu Chengzong's command tent, discussing the location for constructing the encampment.

Their current position consisted of two parallel north-south river valleys, each fifty li long and two li wide, separated in the middle by a mountain ridge; the two valleys were connected by a treacherous thirty-li mountain path through a northern pass.

They were west of the mountain, and the Khalkha army was east of it.

Because the thirty-li mountain path had dangerous terrain, making it difficult to deploy troops, and they feared Liu Chengzong's artillery would set an ambush in the mountain path, the Khalkha scouts had already been blocked by the outpost riders for a full day and night, unable to advance an inch.

With the scouts unable to ascertain the situation, the main force dared not rashly enter the river valley.

News sent back by Dai Daozi said the Mongol troops seemed shaken by the previous fierce cannon fire and were extremely cautious in their reconnaissance; the outpost riders could hold them off for at least three more days.

Although Dai Daozi was at the northern mountain pass, his opinion had been clearly conveyed to Liu Chengzong: he believed the Marshal should seize the pass first to gain the advantage in the standoff.

Gao Yingdeng, on the other hand, advocated charging straight through the pass, using his six hundred mounted troops in a light-equipment surprise assault to launch a raid on the enemy commander's tent on the other side of the mountain and rout the enemy in one blow.

A ferociously aggressive ancient tactic — treating the enemy as nothing, and treating oneself as nothing either.

Huang Shengxiao's plan was far more prudent: construct fortifications in the river valley and wait at ease for the exhausted enemy. In truth, he rather leaned toward Dai Daozi's plan, but the pass was too narrow — two small cannons and four or five heavy muskets could seal off the entire road, killing few people and failing to exploit their firepower advantage.

Zhang Tianlin himself summarized these proposals; he thought none of them were bad.

Because in this battle, Zhang Tianlin's own force of over a thousand mounted troops was the elite power Liu Chengzong held to suppress the nobles; as long as the nobles under A'liu in the Right Battalion hadn't moved, his mounted troops couldn't move, so he didn't say much about tactical choices.

A'liu rather supported striking out, and could accept a standoff as well, but opposed building a camp — this was not out of tactical considerations, but to avoid intensifying conflicts.

Because the Right Battalion's situation was rather complicated, unlike the others.

On one hand, the Right Battalion had many men, among them A'liu's own force of about a thousand, all former rebels of She Chongming's Great Liang Kingdom, who had surrendered by defecting on the battlefield and entered Liu the Lion's service; they received decent treatment and were all quite hardworking and uncomplaining.

But of the remainder, half were former nobles of the seven counties, and the other half were veteran retainers of those former nobles.

They were freaks.

In the military systems of ancient China, you cannot apply European classical, feudal, or early modern military structures as a template — though it makes for easy understanding, there are major problems with it, because the social structures were different.

Social structure and governance structure are the most critical factors influencing military systems, while weapons, equipment, and supplies are all external things.

For example, what qualitative changes were there between the Qi Family Army and other Ming armies in terms of system, tactics, military law, or weapons and equipment? None. Qi Shaobao merely summarized the experience of his predecessors' regulations and ensured they were thoroughly implemented.

If one must speak of any great advancement, it was Qi Jiguang's personal spiritual progress in adapting tactical thinking to local conditions and seeking truth from facts in weapons and equipment.

The most critical factor was still the favorable social environment of the time, strong national power, and the powerful support in authority and finances provided by those who held the reins of the state.

In the environment and under the ruler of the Chongzhen reign, what could even Qi Jiguang do? He would have only had Tan Lun help him fight Japanese pirates for two years, and before he could even test the character of the Yiwu soldiers, he might well have ended up with his head sent around the Nine Garrisons.

Apart from Huo Guang, no light could save the Great Ming.

The Right Battalion's problem lay precisely in this: its social structure neither served the Qinghai Marshal's headquarters, which had emerged from the Central Plains dynasties, nor did it have the system of Kangning's traditional feudal noble army.

A complete feudal noble army of Kangning Prefecture's seven counties was an army composed of noble officers, Tiger Hero non-commissioned officers, and a large number of conscripted soldiers.

Because in a state ruled by feudal nobles, no matter how brilliantly one fought in war, a commoner's son had no path to promotion... so the Tiger Heroes were essentially a way to grant some benefits to outstanding commoner sons or even slaves, so they could better exercise their talents as commoners.

The Kham-Tibetan nobles were actually very advanced in this regard compared to their fellow nobles around the world — to use a different term, the Tiger Heroes were NCOs.

From Lisbon to Nagasaki, as long as they were normal feudal lords, if you singled out a few noble masters, no matter how weak or incompetent they were, their bloodline status was there — you couldn't make them do earthwork labor; in their armies, that was work for lowly menial servants.

In a feudal army this was not a problem, because a feudal army had enough conscripts to ensure that low-skill work got done — but the Right Camp was different.

The nobles of the Right Camp had no fierce tiger heroes, no conscripts, and were not even officers themselves; building stockades and digging trenches therefore posed a very serious problem.

The only men in the Right Camp capable of this work were A Liu's own troops, but those former Great Liang soldiers who had taken part in She Chongming's rebellion could not be made to dig trenches themselves.

If A Liu dared make them dig trenches while the Kangning nobles in the same unit stood by watching, the moment the trench was half dug they would very likely climb out, pick up their heavy crossbows, and slaughter the nobles.

And forcing the nobles to dig trenches seemed to A Liu highly inadvisable: "Commander, they are well equipped, most of them are highly skilled, and having just defeated the enemy at Huangyuan Station, their morale is high and they are ready to don armor and mount up to die for the Marshal's Manor."

A Liu's unspoken point was that forcing them to dig trenches at a time like this would very likely backfire, alienating this elite force that could otherwise serve the Marshal's Manor.

Liu Chengzong frowned at these words, pondered a moment, then smoothed his brow — but a ruthless glint showed in his eyes as he said to A Liu: "You must make them understand that I can force them to do this. Those who refuse — a thousand, two thousand, three thousand — once the trench is dug, they will all be marched to its edge, shot, and stacked into the wall. Military law, military orders — once issued, they must be carried out… In this age, nothing is impossible."

There is no such thing as impossible in this world.

In truth, Han people had always been able to shave their heads — it was just that no one was willing to have their head held down and shaved by someone else.

Yet this was precisely an age when tens of millions of Han were having their heads held down and shaved, and so in this age, nothing was impossible.

"But I am willing to accept them, and this first time, I will not force them." Liu Chengzong waved his hand. "Tell them the Grand Marshal will dig trenches alongside the soldiers. This time they may choose not to come — next time, that will not do. And if anyone does come this time, I will remember them."

With that, Liu Chengzong turned to the officers of every rank in the tent: "Aside from those on camp defense duty, every one of us will go dig trenches and pile earth. When we are united as one, victory is certain!"

Zhang Tianlin was the first to cup his fist. "Yes!"

After that, the officers in the tent cupped their fists and accepted the order one by one — though afterward, Gao Yingdeng asked, "Commander, are we truly going to do as Huang Xiao said and build a fort in the river valley, leaving the natural strongpoint ahead to the enemy?"

When Liu Chengzong said this, it essentially settled the broad policy of the war council.

He nodded. "Correct. Holding the mountain pass ahead with its natural defenses would make repelling the enemy easy, but we could not destroy the bulk of their forces, which would do little to change the overall situation… The enemy numbers in the tens of thousands. Even if we routed a few thousand, that would be far from enough to make them surrender at the mere sight of us."

The Khalkha horse troops could flee if they lost, the enemy still had plenty of effective strength on the Heka Grasslands, and he had very few elite troops he could send in pursuit — it would be hard to widen his advantage.

"If we build a stockade in the river valley to draw the enemy into besieging us, and Lao Qijia leads a force over the mountains to circle behind the Mongol army and hold the mountain pass from that direction, then we will have a chance to destroy this Mongol force."

Destroy did not mean kill them all — whether they surrendered, were routed, or were even driven into the sprawling snowy mountains to the west to live as savages, it did not matter how they were destroyed. So long as they could no longer fight for Choktu Taiji, they were destroyed.

Zhang Tianlin did not press the matter further.

He had known since their time at Gürwan that the Lion Army's war councils were always like this — highly democratic on small matters, but on major matters, once Liu Chengzong had decided something, it was very hard to change.

Zhang Tianlin had long suspected that Liu Chengzong's habit of presiding over war councils before battle was not really about seeking advice from his officers, but rather an opportunity to observe their fighting spirit and the army's morale.

So he merely added, "Commander, holding off ten thousand Mongol troops in the river valley will not be easy. And even if the Left Camp crosses the snowy mountains, can they reach the pass on time, and can they hold the pass against the enemy once there?"

Liu Chengzong nodded. "I understand. The slightest misstep — being surrounded by the enemy in the Shandong river valley — and the Left Camp could be completely wiped out… But if they succeed in crossing and completing the encirclement, the advantage gained is too great. It is worth the risk."

Destroying a quarter or even a third of the enemy's forces would already mean Liu Chengzong had won more than half the war for control of Qinghai.