Chapter 347: Rooting Out Spies

Mo Yujing did not sleep a wink all night.

The first half of the night he lay in bed, pondering how to defeat the enemy; the second half he stood atop the city wall, listening to the Mongols hurl abuse.

The defending troops' morale was at rock bottom — the battle had lasted barely two hours, yet the tribal soldiers had already lost over two thousand men, and of the frontline officers drawn from branch-family sons, barely one in ten remained.

Even the tribal soldiers who had fled back could not be reorganized in the short term.

The only officer to return alive from the front was Li Hua'ao, though he was carried back — struck by two musket balls and three arrows. The army surgeons in Machang City worked on him for half the night, but in the end they could not save him.

The entire force was wiped out.

Despair shrouded this small frontier town. At present, only three forts could offer Mo Yujing any support. Fortunately, none of the forts were large, and he still had a fair number of defending troops.

It was just that, in terms of morale, these otherwise outstanding tusi soldiers had been utterly terrified.

Because the troop numbers were large and they belonged to various tusi households, after the officers of every formation died, neither Mo Yujing nor Ye Guoqi was able to gather and supervise the routed troops in time.

As a result, those who had survived by luck spread tales of the enemy's might through the camp, further deepening the defenders' despair.

People said the Marshal's Manor muskets were longer and shot farther, able to pierce two men at a hundred paces; they said their cannons were immensely heavy, one shot killing eight men of Chief Ji's household; still others said that a long-barreled cannon mounted on a horse-drawn cart had blown off two arms and a head with a single shot, and driven one man mad with terror.

In truth, up to this point, things were not yet dire — these were basically all firsthand truths.

Mo Yujing realized too late that, as this situation developed, the worst turn of events occurred the moment he became aware of the problem.

By gathering the routed soldiers together, he instead allowed the unstoppable rumors to spread and distort through the ranks, growing even more absurd.

In just one night, the Marshal's Manor muskets had become weapons that could shoot through an entire square formation, and the cannons had turned into divine engines that could blast a hundred-man company flat in a single shot.

The Mongols outside the city were hurling abuse essentially because too many deserters were being lowered from the walls by rope at night, and their impotent fury came from being unable to catch them all.

The sky in the east was gradually brightening. Mo Yujing yawned. Below the wall, the Mongols were arraying hastily built long ladders before their lines, pushing lele carts outside the city to collect earth, and halting them five hundred paces from the wall.

On the western horizon, at the very limit of sight, a black line — hundreds of military formations, layer upon layer, were crossing the river and winding their way toward them.

A lone rider galloped up to the city wall, shouting as he shot a letter urging surrender up to the ramparts. Mo Yujing opened it and read it, then heaved a weary sigh.

That Grand Marshal in the west was urging surrender again.

The previous surrender appeal had been aimed mainly at Ye Guoqi; this one was specifically aimed at persuading Mo Yujing.

Liu Shizi wrote: I raised my army to bring peace to He-Huang. Your soldiers are all good men of the Central Plains. You have seen what northern Shaanxi is like. The court's blockade of the passes cannot starve me, but it starves the common people of He-Huang. A true man standing between heaven and earth — should he be loyal to a single family name, or loyal to the people?

You did not understand this principle before, so today I write this letter myself to tell you: if you come out of the city and surrender, I guarantee the safety of you and your subordinates' families. You, including Ye Guoqi and your other officers, will retain your official ranks and treatment exactly as before. Army rations will be issued in full, without fail.

Mo Yujing was tempted, and the subordinates gathered around him were tempted too.

But when he took this letter to find Ye Guoqi, Ye Guoqi did not look at Mo Yujing again. Ye Bingqian, released from house arrest, and the clan's sons and nephews tried to dissuade him, but he would not change his mind.

Ye Guoqi merely said to everyone, "We tusi have for generations received the imperial grace to guard this land. Today Liu Chengzong comes and I surrender; tomorrow Hudun Tu comes and I surrender again; the day after, Huang Taiji comes and I surrender yet again. If we surrender to them all, then the tusi who have received the court's favor for generations will be nothing but a joke."

Only after saying this did he turn to Mo Yujing and say, "Marshal Mo, if you wish to surrender, I will not stop you — nor any of the clan's sons. Go ahead and open the gates and leave. Let those willing to stay with me and hold this city to the death while awaiting reinforcements remain. Even if no reinforcements come, even if the enemy is many and we are few, then we shall perish together with this city. We will never surrender."

Mo Yujing tried to persuade him again, still to no effect. Even he himself was nearly swayed by Ye Guoqi's resolve, but his own soldiers would not have it — they clamored and demanded to leave the city.

Ye Guoqi shook his head, clasped his hands and bowed to Mo Yujing with a smile. "Then Marshal Mo, go on out. Once you are gone, there will be more provisions in this city, and we can hold out longer."

Though Ye Guoqi wore a smile on his face, his heart was utterly cold.

He had once been appointed as a circulating official to garrison Changping, and he understood the offensive and defensive situation in Liaodong very clearly. By his judgment, holding all three cities would be very difficult, but holding just Machang City alone was not impossible.

Because Liu Chengzong had come out in full force for a sudden attack, aiming for a quick victory.

As long as they could withstand the fierce assault of the first two days and blunt the western bandits' momentum, driving a nail into the river valley might not be out of the question.

From the previous battle, he had already realized that Liu Chengzong's army excelled in field combat, so they must not go out to fight in the open again, lest they be ambushed and annihilated. At the same time, they had to firm up the defenders' resolve within the city, to prevent spies from opening the gates.

Therefore, letting people leave the city was Ye Guoqi's own choice. Not only would those who wanted to leave be let out — some who did not want to leave would also be sent out.

Anyone who had served in the Zhenhai Camp, anyone with a northern Shaanxi, Yulin, or Ningxia accent, any Mongols who had fled from the west, any tribal soldiers whose will to fight was unsteady, and any direct-line members of the various tusi households — all were to be sent out.

In short, there was one principle: not a single person who might be turned would remain inside the city.

Because of Ye Guoqi's decision, nearly half of the defenders in the crowded Machang City were immediately selected for expulsion. In the blink of an eye, the defending force shrank from close to seven thousand down to four thousand.

The distant rumble of cannon fire sounded. Outside the city, cavalry units began to bypass the city and move eastward. The falconet cannons at the Baan Sanchuan Fort opened fire on them, but more and more cavalry squadrons, galloping in scattered small groups from the edges, charged through the cannon's range and continued racing eastward.

Those cavalry units, spreading out and galloping in small squads, still wore frontier army armor. Swaggering and flaunting their strength, they cut off the escape routes east from the three small cities.

At least, that was how it looked in Mo Yujing's eyes.

In Liu Chengzong's eyes, however, the Marshal's Manor horse camp under Yang Yao's command had thrust eastward to intercept any Gansu reinforcements that might appear, and to seal off any news of their arrival.

The western gate of Binggou Machang City swung open. Seven hundred frontier troops filed out in formation, along with a great number of tribal soldiers unwilling to fight and women and children, who also ran out of the city after them.

Mo Yujing stepped out of the shadow cast by the gate tower, watching the veterans who had campaigned across Shaanxi march out of the shadows in formation. His heart could not tell whether it felt joy or sorrow, but in the end, there was a measure of relief he could not speak aloud.

He could not expect Liu Chengzong to keep his word — official rank and treatment for a defeated general were out of the question, and full army rations in a year of famine were also nonsense. At the very least, he had not buried his entire army here; letting them lay down their arms and return to the fields was enough.

Just then, he heard Ye Bingqian calling him. He turned and saw Ye Bingqian approaching with several dozen clan women and children and his nephew Ye Ding. "What is it?"

Ye Bingqian clasped his hands, bowed, and smiled at him. "Marshal, you advance and retreat with measure, tolerant and principled. When you go over, you will surely be given important duties in the days to come. I have discussed it with my elder brother, and we wish to entrust our clansmen to you, Marshal. We hope you will recognize our nephew here as your adopted son and look after him from now on, to leave an heir for the Ye clan. My brother and I are not leaving."

Mo Yujing frowned. "This city cannot be held..."

He looked at the resigned expression on Ye Bingqian's face and said no more. Ye Bingqian smiled. "General, say no more. If you don't defend it, you'll never know whether it can be held. I'm not afraid of you laughing at me — when we went to Ju'erwan, my brother had me wear a sword, I suppose so I could decide my own fate if things went wrong. In the camp, I thought about it, but I lacked the courage and was unwilling to accept it."

"But now, since my brother is determined to defend to the death and has no intention of clinging to life in disgrace, I too am willing to follow him in life and death. Please tell the Grand Marshal for me — I am very grateful that he released me. Being his enemy is not what I wished; it is only that each of us serves his own lord and has a duty to defend his land. Though I, Ye Bingqian, lack the courage to take my own life, I still have some skill in being killed by others."

With that, Ye Bingqian, standing in the shadows, raised his hand and patted his nephew Ye Ding on the shoulder. He clasped his hands in farewell to Mo Yujing, then slowly retreated into the deep darkness of the gate tunnel.

The two leaves of the city gate slowly closed. A thousand-jin iron portcullis slammed down with a boom, sealing off two separate worlds.

The military discipline of the Fish-Catching Camp Mongol soldiers was nothing to speak of. Mo Yujing had not gone far before he nearly ordered his soldiers to fight the Mongols who swarmed over to seize valuables and abduct people.

Fortunately, Xie Erhu deliberately restrained them and sent patrol riders to deliver intelligence to the Grand Marshal, which prevented the surrendered army from being pushed into revolt in the shortest possible time.

Almost at the same moment Mo Yujing surrendered, Basang had already stepped onto the walls of Baan Sanchuan Fort.

The fort had fallen quite smoothly. None of these cities were nearly as well-constructed as Bajiao City. The garrison inside was sizable — over seven hundred camp soldiers and more than a thousand tribal soldiers under a chiliarch — and though the defenders had falconet cannons, they were suppressed by the thousand-jin heavy cannons and could hardly play their proper role.

The chiliarch was killed by an exploding shell fired from a mortar, and the fort's surrender was declared right on its heels.

The soldiers on the wall collected the chiliarch's body and sent it down. Liu Chengzong could only sigh at the unpredictability of fate. By his thinking, the mortar should have lobbed the shell over to explode in the gate tower, killing everyone around it.

As it turned out, the shell's fuse was probably snuffed out on impact, turning it into a huge dud. Instead, relying on its arcing trajectory, it fell from the sky and smashed the chiliarch, who was directing the battle under the eaves of the gate tower, to death.

Hearing the news that Mo Yujing had come out of the city and surrendered, Liu Chengzong was very pleased. He sent his bodyguards to clear a path for the surrendering troops, but at the same time, he was acutely aware in his heart that the situation he least wanted to see had come to pass.

Ye Guoqi was very shrewd. The soldiers driven out included men from the Garrison Naval Camp. In truth, for Liu Chengzong, the Marshal's headquarters' spy war was a complete failure, because he was not a local.

His main forces came from northern Shaanxi, and their accent differed from the He-Huang troops. He could only use Garrison Naval Camp soldiers as spies, but many of those camp soldiers had fought under the Marshal's headquarters only because life left them no choice.

Once sent out as spies, some would promptly switch banners on the spot, transforming back into government troops in the blink of an eye. The spy identity was often just a fallback for those soldiers; no one served him with genuine dedication.

And the spies he could trust were all too easily exposed by their northern Shaanxi accent, making the danger extremely high.

Now Ye Guoqi had thoroughly purged the soldiers likely to surrender or defect. Although the garrison's troop strength dropped, its cohesion rose, and its resolve to fight to the death grew firmer.

This defensive measure alone turned Ice Valley Horse Farm City, which was similar in size, and the already-fallen Warm Sichuan Three Camps Fort into two entirely different levels of siege difficulty.

A question was thrown squarely at Liu Chengzong's face. The moment had come to test his resolve to attack. Time would not allow him to prepare more thorough siege equipment. Given that, how heavy a cost in casualties could he bear to storm this city by force?

Two thousand?

Three thousand?

Or four thousand.

Beneath the earthen mound being built west of the city, Liu Chengzong gazed at the small, two-zhang-high square fortress and steeled his resolve. He sent another letter urging surrender into the city, granting the garrison a final half shichen to come out and yield, or else the city would be destroyed and its people killed.

Then he issued orders to his subordinate commanders.

"Xie Erhu, shift your forces north of the city. Ahai Daiqing, station your troops south of the city. Both sides are to dig deep trenches simultaneously. The trenches must be completed within two shichen. Not a single person inside the city is to escape."

"Huang Shengxiao, construct a heavy artillery position west of the city. How many paces do you need to knock down the battlements?"

Huang Shengxiao was already quite familiar with this work. He looked at the forest of banners lining the city walls and said to Liu Chengzong, "Commander, flat-trajectory fire at three hundred fifty paces is most accurate, but we'll have to take a slight risk."

"Then we'll take a slight risk. Build the position at three hundred fifty paces. In this battle we only have long ladders; we must use the artillery to cover the assault troops." After speaking, Liu Chengzong turned to Li Tianyu and said, "Go recruit tribal soldiers and fill in the city moat for me."

Li Tianyu's heart lurched at these words. Earlier he had spoken of recruiting tribal soldiers for battle, but yesterday he had heard that Gansu border army reinforcements had already entered the river mouth and that Li Hua'ao had died in battle, so his resolve was no longer so firm.

Now that Liu Chengzong had assigned him this task, he stammered for a moment, while the tribal chieftains behind him each gloated over his misfortune.

Just as he was stammering, two men stepped out from below the earthen mound. Before they could even approach, their voices had already rushed forward, vying for the task.

"Commander, let me do it."

"Commander, I'll go too!"

They were Chiliarch Wasi and A Liu, who served under Basang. The two exchanged a glance, and still seemed intent on competing. Wasi said, "Commander, just send me. If I fall in battle, I ask only that the Commander remember the merits of my master, the Muya Chieftain."

"The tribal soldiers of Changhexi have never fought worth a damn at any city. Commander, let them stay back and learn." A Liu glanced at Wasi, then swept his eyes over the assembly of northwestern chieftains, and finally cupped his fists. "We scaled the walls of Chengdu Prefecture City. Storming a small fortress is nothing to us."

Li Tianyu was dumbfounded. People were actually fighting over the mission to storm the city by force — had these fellows gone mad?

But then he heard Liu Chengzong say, "In that case, you two go together. Recruit tribal soldiers and fill the moat..."

"Commander, wait!"

Li Tianyu understood now. No matter who else begged to fight, Liu the Lion's intent to use tribal soldiers to fill the moat would not change. If this task were snatched away by others, whether he could still command the tribal soldiers in the future would be in question.

Thinking of this, Li Tianyu decided he might as well be bold and stake everything on one throw. He simply stiffened his neck and said, "I beg the Commander to allow me to lead all the tribal soldiers in the first wave of the assault. I will do it!"

Liu Chengzong nodded with great satisfaction. "Since Chieftain Li is willing, then it is settled. If you cannot do it, Wasi takes over. If Wasi cannot, A Liu takes over. In any case, before tonight, we must break—"

At that very moment, a bodyguard suddenly cut through the ranks of officers and whispered into Liu Chengzong's ear.

Liu the Lion first furrowed his brow, then his brow smoothed out. He said to the assembly, "It may be that the enemy reinforcements will not be coming after all. Nevertheless, we still break the city before tonight. I hope everyone will unite heart and mind. After we secure He-Huang, merits will be assessed and rewards bestowed; no one will be shortchanged."

With that, Liu Chengzong instructed the commanders to go make preparations. He stood beneath the earthen mound, gazing eastward, his expression complicated.

A guest had entered the river mouth alongside the Gansu border army. That uninvited guest's name was — smallpox.