Chapter 314: Feigned Retreat

A rout and a feigned retreat — on the surface, a difference of a single word, and in reality, also only a difference of a single word.

Watching the thousand-man catapult crew get smashed and their stampede to the rear become unstoppable, Gu Yang flew from the moving felt-cart, unfurling the great banner.

To prevent the main force from being scattered by the routed troops, he led his soldiers to join the rout first.

The feigned retreat has always been the hardest of all battle tactics, because in this era there is no instant transmission of information; once out of the commander's line of sight, the army is essentially fighting on its own. If communication fails, men cannot trust their allies, and every junior officer in the entire army must possess extremely high initiative.

And the Mongols' tribal structure happens to satisfy both conditions — trusting allies and junior-officer initiative — giving them a unique, heaven-sent advantage in feigned retreats.

At first, it was a genuine rout.

They abandoned their baggage and yak-carts and fled northwest. Midway, several small squads turned back to try to fight the pursuing nobles, only to be smashed again and again by the nobles leveling their long spears.

The noble cavalry had gone berserk; as if blessed by gods, they were unstoppable, as though the ones they were chasing were nothing but a pack of pitiful herders.

They chased until they ran beyond Liu Chengzong's range of vision. Even A Liu, Basang, and Gao Yingdeng's second echelon slowly pushed forward nearly ten li.

The western Tibetan nobles grew tired, but the Mongols got their second wind.

The Mongol cavalry spontaneously regrouped in the midst of scattering, coalescing from twos and threes into hundred-man companies, and several hundred-man companies into thousand-man battalions. In one unit, a rider stood on his saddle, brandished his saber, and let out a high, overtone-laden cry.

One after another, from every direction across the river valley, the Mongols' overtone calls echoed back, making the scalp crawl.

The rout became a feigned retreat.

Thousands upon thousands of warhorses were reined in; the riders wheeled their mounts around. The herdsman's air vanished without a trace, replaced by the ferocity of prairie bandits who lick blood from their blades — the warriors of Genghis Khan had returned.

Units from all sides answered the calls in waves, launching successive surprise assaults against the exhausted western Tibetan nobles.

Squad after squad after squad: forming ring formations to loose arrows, crashing into flanks in line formation, charging through with blades drawn in column formation.

The scattered, pursuing noble cavalry were cut off and surrounded. Those wearing chainmail were knocked from their horses; even those clad in heavy armor could not stand alone. In the blink of an eye, attacker and defender traded places.

Many nobles had not yet come to their senses amid the shift in circumstances — or perhaps they sensed the situation had changed but their minds could not keep up. With blood running hot, they spurred their horses to fight, but their mounts' stamina was spent too. Almost in single file, they were dispatched to the Pure Land.

At last, one clear-headed noble galloped through the chaos, shouting in Tibetan for them to dismount and form ranks. Only then did they barely manage to form a battle line, drawing bows to trade shots with the Mongol soldiers.

Foot archers against horse archers — on the purely tactical level, dismounted bowmen never get the worse of it.

Even with the same bow, a man on horseback who can draw it to seventy or eighty percent of full strength is already an excellent rider, but standing on the ground, he can use a full hundred percent of his strength, steadier and more accurate. Some riders with superb horse-handling could even use their mounts as cover to block a few arrows.

But on the operational level, every man in that dismounted cavalry formation knew that forming ranks was only stalling for time. The hinge on which their lives turned was whether the follow-up reinforcements could arrive in time.

The western Tibetan nobles had never missed Liu Chengzong so badly. If they were abandoned now, with fewer than two thousand men in the formation, surrounded by the Khalkha's host of ten thousand, death or surrender was only a matter of time.

Meanwhile, at the rear of the battlefield, from Liu Chengzong's perspective as he led the cavalry escorting the infantry steadily forward, the western Tibetan nobles were running back again.

Only three or four hundred came running back, fleeing in panic with two Khalkha thousand-man battalions in pursuit.

Hearing the intermittent, chaotic shouts from the river valley in the distance, Liu Chengzong clapped his hands on horseback and said to Zhang Tianlin, "Oh-ho, a feigned retreat!"

In that instant, a flurry of conjectures flashed through his mind. The enemy appeared to have sent back only two thousand-man battalions.

He did not believe for a second that the western Tibetan nobles could have slaughtered over ten thousand Mongols down to a mere two thousand and then fled back; the enemy's main force must be throwing everything into an all-out assault on the right camp.

Although the Mongols' feigned retreat showed he had underestimated the enemy's quality, it also confirmed the foresight of his steady advance and holding a hand in reserve.

Zhang Tianlin stood on his horse to scan the distance, then crouched back down into the saddle and asked, "Commander, two thousand — shall I go smash them?"

"Hold for now." Liu Chengzong glanced back and shook his head. "The Mongols still have strength to spare. Deploy the cavalry in the river valley; just don't let them get past us to strike the rear. Since they want to fight, let A Liu and Gao Yingdeng deal with them first. Wait for the right moment, then one strike to shatter them."

Shielded by the curtain of rain, Zhang Tianlin's own cavalry silently fanned out in the river valley one li behind A Liu's battle formation, arranging themselves into small wedge formations.

The two thousand Khalkha cavalry chased the routed nobles all the way into A Liu's firing range. Seeing A Liu holding formation firmly, they sent several hundred-man companies to probe with successive frontal charges.

The first company charged and could not break through; the second charged and could not break through; the third charged and could not break through. They could not break through.

Charging and colliding are two different concepts. Charging means rushing close, emphasizing momentum, with the aim of throwing the enemy formation into disorder; colliding is heavy cavalry impact.

And A Liu's unit — two hundred veterans on each face — were all old rebels from the Tianqi era. In single combat, their stamina admittedly lagged a bit, but their nerve and experience were formidable. Ten years ago, they had fought dozens of battles under artillery fire outside Chengdu against Qin Liangyu, Zhang Yanfang, Xu Chengming, Huang Yunqing, and other government troops. Afraid of this drizzle?

One and all, they braced behind great shields and long spears, urging the light troops beside them to shoot at the Mongol soldiers.

The tribal soldiers' tactics were utterly one-dimensional: either skirmishing in loose order, or forming up into a great long-spear formation. It had been this way for centuries. Without friendly forces, they were easily surrounded and forced to break formation to move.

But if the Mongols hoped to break the formation — without firearms, only infantry could break an infantry formation.

A Liu was dead certain that the Mongols, lacking the heavy cavalry of their ancestors' day, would not dare to collide. But Basang's men were already scared schizophrenic.

Although their assigned role in this battle was auxiliary troops, most of the soldiers' morale was extremely low and their will to fight exceptionally brittle — for no other reason... than that it was raining, and in the rain they could not see the Grand Marshal's musket and cannon troops.

With the Grand Marshal's firearms at their side, even the nobles who had bullied them all their lives would be beaten until they pissed themselves. But now, without the firearms, only Gao Yingdeng's six hundred cavalry screening both flanks, their fighting spirit could not be roused.

Although Basang told the soldiers they had cannons — right there in the tents propped up at the formation's corners — the soldiers did not believe him: it's raining, it defies common sense, liars!

But there were two exceptions. One group, because Buchi was shouting at the top of her lungs inside the formation, layering on positive buffs, were now as if pumped full of chicken blood, forming up outside the square to shoot on foot.

The other group, roughly two or three hundred men, were mixed into the formation, holding up eight small rain shelters covered with tent cloth for the artillerymen. They enjoyed Buchi's mystical encouragement and also the physical faith bonus that came from carrying the Grand Marshal's cannons — they were extremely calm.

A Liu's central camp bore the brunt of two frontal charges by the Khalkha cavalry. During this, Gao Yingdeng received the routed troops, drove the warhorses into A Liu's formation, and then dismounted on the perimeter to form ranks and shoot on foot.

Although Gao Yingdeng was an ardent enthusiast of plunging headlong into enemy formations, in the current situation — with only two enemy thousand-man battalions here and the main force clearly tied up by the western Tibetan nobles behind — his six hundred cavalry charging in would be like skipping a stone on water. Better to dismount and shoot on foot.

The other Khalkha units used the two frontal charges as cover to nearly complete their ring-shooting formation of a hundred riders enveloping a host of thousands, hemming A Liu's central camp in a crescent shape. Except for the rear, protected by Zhang Tianlin's cavalry, they were surrounded on three sides by roving horsemen.

Then several whistling arrows shot into the sky, and they charged from all three sides at once.

The plan was three sides, but in reality only the left and right wings — the flanking horsemen — attacked on two sides, because the cavalry attacking the front ran toward the formation's right wing. This terrified A Liu, who nearly shouted for the artillery to fire. He wondered, what kind of tactical maneuver was this?

In truth, there was no tactic.

It was simply that the Mongol captain responsible for charging the front, after two successive charges, had run out of luck. At full gallop, his face collided with a stray crossbow bolt.

No one knows how, but this captain's boot was jammed exceptionally tight in the stirrup. After falling from his horse, he was dragged through the mud, swinging this way and that, as the horse kept running toward A Liu's right wing. Three men with hook-scythe spears could not pull him free.

Just then, out of nowhere, a genius wielding a hook-scythe spear — superb horsemanship, really — stepped onto his saddle, tossed his hook-scythe spear aside, leaped onto the captain's horse, and rode off.

The other entrepreneurs from the northern desert saw this — could they tolerate it?

They leveled their spears and gave chase. The cavalry behind them thought something had happened up ahead and, with no time to think during the charge, the entire unit was led astray.

The charges on the remaining two sides, however, were quite commendable. The right wing loosed a volley of arrows at twenty paces and wheeled away. The Mongol cavalry on the left wing spotted the formation's true weak point, used arrow fire to stir up the light troops inside, and in the few steps after wheeling their horses, veered in diagonally and slammed into them headlong.

Their angle of impact was from the formation's left wing, slanting toward the front — because everyone assumed the cavalry at the front had also collided. But the entrepreneurs at the front had all run off. For a moment, it was close-quarters combat, and both sides suffered grievous casualties.

The left and right wings, having just wheeled around, saw the rear collision, and their captains immediately ordered them to reform and prepare to collide. Even the front cavalry, having run far off, after a brief hesitation elected a new captain and, under his leadership, joined the right wing's collision force.

At that very moment, the roar of cannon fire erupted in rapid succession from the perimeter of A Liu's formation.

Liu Chengzong watched with a deepening frown. Without Cao Yao and Huang Shengxiao directing them, this volley had been fired entirely on the gunners' own initiative — from the first cannon's report, at least fourteen of the twenty-four Sheli Sun guns on the flank had gone off in short order.

Some fired early, some fired late, and some had likely gotten damp and failed to ignite, or the gunners simply weren't ready — so the killing effect was sorely lacking.

These guns were small to begin with, and they were firing canister, so their range was very short; they couldn't touch the horsemen circling far out at all. Only those Mongol riders who had nearly charged into point-blank range would be struck down by the gunners.

Gunpowder smoke billowed from the little sheds arrayed on all sides of the formation. Flames flashed and iron pellets flew, felling several enemy riders on the left flank.

Apart from making a lot of noise, there was almost nothing to recommend it.

Watching from behind the lines, Liu Chengzong saw it with perfect clarity. The instant the smoke burst forth, he even wondered whether the men firing those guns were really his soldiers... Is this really all my artillery can do?

When I get back to Juer Bay, he thought, I'm drilling the artillery for another half-year without fail. They haven't learned a shred of Cao Yao's skill!

But the next moment, the Lion Army's gunners, leading Kang Ning's light troops, came bounding out of the smoke in column formation. Some loosed powerful shots head-on with large-tipped bows, some thrust with long spears, and some, shields in hand and blades rolling, hacked away at the cavalry — those struck by cannon fire, those scrambling for corpses, and those whose charge had been checked by the shells.

They did not cling to the fight, nor were they fixated on killing. They killed those they could kill, wounded those they could wound, and after pressing forward three or five paces, swiftly withdrew back into the formation.

Liu Chengzong's brow smoothed. They were his Lion soldiers after all. In close-quarters combat leading small squads of a few men, these fellows were far more dashing than that utterly incoherent cannonade just now.

That brief flurry of close combat stunned the Mongol cavalry, whose charge had been blunted.

They had never imagined there would be cannons here. Those little sheds draped with tent cloth — the Mongols had seen something similar up north among the lamas. A few slaves carrying a small palanquin, a monk from Ü-Tsang sitting up on the mountain, observing the grassland tribes' feuds below.

They had assumed those were Western Tibetan nobles inside, sheltering from the wind and rain.

What a way to die — who could have guessed that crammed inside that contraption were a cannon and two tall, brawny, barrel-chested men!

Across the entire tributary sphere, there were indeed some regional height differences, but the disparities brought by geography were small; the differences brought by nutrition, however, were enormous.

The Mobei Mongols had not had an easy time of it these past few decades. Relatively speaking, most of them were built like Mongol horses — short and stocky.

Northern Shaanxi had also seen hard years recently, but the Lion soldiers had done their growing up largely during the Wanli era, when supplies were plentiful, so none of them were short. They had indeed been rather thin before, but in these last few years, when times were hardest, everyone's life had hung on the horseflesh sponsored by the government troops — they'd grown sturdy as bull calves.

And that was after the south-to-north march had shaved seven or eight jin off each of them on average.

From the perspective of the various Mongol companies, what burst out of the smoke were tall helmet-plumes one after another, killing with even greater efficiency than the cannonballs. In the blink of an eye, seven or eight of their tribesmen were gone, and then the attackers slipped back into the tents — like a pack of man-eating monsters.

What was more, on the flanks there were A Liu's veterans and Gao Yingdeng's mounted infantry, who also seized the chance to launch intercepting strikes against the Mongol cavalry. Watching this, Liu Chengzong's palms itched unbearably; he was dying to draw his own blade, take up his bow, and join the fight.

But he restrained himself. He looked toward Zhang Tianlin, who stood ready and waiting in the distance, and pushed his hand forward. The cavalry, long poised for this moment, surged forth with a roar, sounding the death knell that would once again shatter the enemy.

The horsemen pursued past the battle line for over a hundred paces, then regrouped. The central battalion advanced steadily once more, driving toward the river valley where chaotic slaughter raged.

Liu Chengzong had already anticipated this — the battle would cycle back and forth between rout and feigned retreat. But by now he had completely shed his worries about the situation. He was certain that even without firearms, he could win.

Because the rain had not only weakened him; it had also hampered the Mongol army's ability to transmit orders during their attack. Whether they retreated or advanced, it all turned into a collapse.

On his own side, by contrast, precisely because Basang's men were cowardly enough, the veterans were able to keep control of the situation even with communications disrupted.

This kind of fighting would repeat a few more times. But that was just as well — it would give Lao Qijia enough time to seize the mountain pass and complete the encirclement, forging a brilliant, resounding victory!