Chapter 366: Night Assault

On the banks of the Huangshui River beneath the night sky, strings of gunfire briefly lit the outline of the military formation. The three-eyed blunderbusses roared one after another, making the Mongol horse bands circling and prowling beyond the formation appear all the more terrifying.

But in the darkness, the most dreadful opponent was that ghost-like horse band armed with hand cannons.

This guard unit was supposed to be watching over tens of thousands of civilians on the southern hills, but Liu Chengzong's withdrawal had exposed the southern hills to the enemy's scouting range, and also let Zhong Bao sense both danger and opportunity.

The dark night made Zhong Bao itch to try his luck, so when he saw He Huchen and Yang Qi leading their massive army westward with torches lit, Zhong Bao immediately mustered two hundred forty guards and tailed them.

The guard horse band was not a normal army.

Though in the early days of Liu the Lion's uprising, they had borne crucial combat duties, once serving as the Lion Army's elite corps that swept the battlefield and delivered the final decisive blow.

But with the establishment of the Marshal's headquarters' three great training camps, the army gained formal channels for training and selection, and the all-elite guard unit — as batches of household retainers moved into the army as officers — fell into the predicament of a gap in all-around warriors, with the new not yet ready to replace the old.

The guard unit of today could no longer level lances, form ranks, and charge for four bouts, then draw bows and shoot left and right at the gallop, nor could they dismount after losing their horses, form ranks, and fight like the finest infantry.

They were merely a group of guard cavalry specializing in melee, focused on mobility, with the protection of the Grand Marshal as their foremost mission.

Although they rode the tallest, strongest Hequ warhorses in Liu Chengzong's possession, fully capable of bearing the weight of heavy horse armor, their mounts wore only a small iron chest plate.

The armor on the men was light as well — just ordinary padded cotton coats with mail and helmets; iron arm guards and iron boots, needless to say, were absent entirely.

No long spears — they carried only goose-quill sabers, bone maces, and a round shield with a notch; no bow case or arrow case, only a single Frankish hand cannon hanging from the horse.

This made them swifter and more dangerous — for both enemy and friend alike.

After a successful strike, Zhong Bao's horse band withdrew back into the darkness. The men reformed ranks without any light, and after a brief confusion of identifying one another by voice, they reassembled into a dense formation and launched a charge at another corner of He Huchen's formation.

For cavalry wielding lances, standing in staggered front-and-rear files, a four-pace interval was not considered loose.

But for Zhong Bao's hand-cannon horse band, which had no lances, if advancing in the same staggered front-and-rear formation in daylight, they could even shrink the interval between soldiers to a single pace.

Carrying hand cannons, they formed twenty squads of twelve riders each, every squad standing six in front and six behind in staggered files. When ready, they paced their horses forward, one squad after another, each separated by a dozen or so paces, forming a long column.

But this column was not a straight line — at the very front, it bent inward toward the government army's flank. This was Zhong Bao's personally led twelve-rider squad, advancing parallel to the column, separated by twenty-some paces.

When a whistle sounded from the Mongol horse bands to the left and right, Zhong Bao's guards raised their shields and launched a slow charge at one corner of the square formation.

In the darkness, their vision was clearer than the government troops', because the government troops carried torches, their eyes adjusted to the torchlight, and they could not see farther out.

His target this time was the northeast corner of the government army's square formation.

While the government gunners were still frantically searching the darkness for their silhouettes, Zhong Bao had already led his guards to fire their hand cannons first from forty paces out in the darkness.

A row of hand cannons erupted with a flash of light that vanished in an instant; a row of lead balls crossed the boundary between darkness and light, striking the shield wall propped up at the government formation's flank or the helmets of the soldiers behind it.

Nothing but noise.

Whether three-eyed blunderbuss or hand cannon, neither could penetrate armor at this distance — at most, they plastered a thin lead skin onto shields and helmets.

But it earned them a furious counterattack from the government troops.

Gunners braced their three-eyed blunderbusses atop large shields and long plaques, clamping the gunstock under their armpits, left hands gripping the match cord to expertly ignite the guns. Bang, bang, bang — three explosive reports, and seven or eight lead balls burst from the short barrels amid flame and smoke.

Right after, light artillerymen angled their flying-rocket gun rods toward the sky. The powder ignited, and with a few soft pops, several small cylindrical explosive shells pierced the gun smoke, flying toward the direction of the shots.

Moments later, the explosive shells burst, blasting a patch of smoke and dust there.

Then infantrymen in succession drew bows and nocked arrows, loosing volley after volley into the smoke.

The Mongol soldiers did not receive such lavish treatment — the government troops only grew somewhat tense when they spotted firearms; at those stone arrowheads, they did not even spare the effort to open their eyes wide.

But this entire series of attacks was like stones sinking into the sea, drawing no response from the darkness — not even the cry of a single man or horse could be heard.

Zhong Bao had merely come to fire one shot; once he fired, he wheeled his twelve-man squad southward. The government troops' stress reaction struck nothing but empty air, utterly useless.

Yet immediately after, twenty-some paces due north of the explosive shells' smoke, the true hand-cannon column burst forth from the shadows in formation, cloaked in hazy moonlight.

Their left hands, slipped through round shields, gripped the reins, the shield base hooked onto the saddle. Heads slightly lowered, they left only a narrow line of sight between shield and brow guard. Their right hands held the hand cannons, the muzzles resting squarely in the notches of their round shields.

Man, horse, shield, and cannon merged into one seamless whole, gently jolting as they advanced, riding into the arrows loosed by bows and crossbows, pressing to within seventeen or eighteen paces of the government army's line.

At a single command from the sergeant of the first wave, the twelve-rider band in staggered front and rear files pulled their triggers in unison. The warhorses took one more step forward, the powder ignited, and twelve rounds from the front six and rear six were blasted into the enemy formation.

This was not their drill manual — the hand-cannon guard unit had never learned deception in training; this was Zhong Bao's own idea. Moreover, in training, their requirement was to withstand arrows and lead balls and press to within ten paces of the enemy line before firing their cannons.

But the dark night brought not only fear to the enemy — they themselves were tense as well, so much so that the first wave fired their hand cannons at nearly twenty paces' distance. This made Zhong Bao, not far away, furrow his brow — it was utterly foolish.

In a new recruit's mind, firing at twenty paces from the enemy seemed far safer than firing at ten paces; in reality, it was more dangerous.

Because all the firepower that had to be endured on the approach from a hundred paces to twenty paces had already been endured. Even if the enemy had sufficient nerve to hold their fire until they came within twenty paces, the result of firing early and wheeling early would be the same — merely a difference of whether they were hit in the face or in the back.

But closing to ten paces was different. Though it was only advancing ten paces more, the oppressive pressure the cavalry brought upon the enemy by pressing close was entirely unlike the preceding hundred paces.

And within ten paces, at this distance, one could fire level without aiming. No matter what armor the enemy wore, a hit meant death or injury.

Especially at this very moment, watching the front squad fire too early, Zhong Bao clenched his fists, his face full of the frustration of seeing iron fail to become steel. He had already tricked the enemy into expending a great deal of firepower — an opportunity that came only once, and it had been missed just like that.

The first sergeant's squad posed little real threat to the government formation's flank. They shot down two men; more of the lead balls punched through the long plaques and struck the soldiers behind, to little effect.

But they dealt a massive morale shock to the enemy. The gunners at the front of the formation, holding their three-eyed blunderbusses, could not even spare the time to reload. Holding their still-smoking muzzles skyward, some hurriedly ducked down to hide behind the long plaques, while others even thought of raising their iron guns to give the approaching warhorses a good hammer blow.

Behind them, the pikemen also lowered their pikes, the formation crowding even tighter.

At that moment, the second guard squad advanced. This sergeant was bolder — or perhaps merely mechanically executing the drill manual. In any case, he led his squad to within ten paces of the enemy front, and without even bracing his cannon on his shield, he stretched out his arm and fired straight at a shield-bearer holding a torch.

With a bang, the lead ball punched straight through that vermilion-lacquered "Courage"-inscribed helmet. The shield-bearer heard a clink above his head, and the torch fell to the ground.

Twelve lead balls struck the front of a troop formation twenty men wide. At ten paces' distance, they mowed down a swath of gunners and infantry behind the formation's shield-bearers, causing wavering and turmoil across a width of nearly thirty paces.

Then they wheeled their horses and circled back from the left. Close behind came the third squad, the fourth squad, the fifth squad… Gun smoke blossomed one after another beneath the night sky. Each squad carried immense oppressive pressure, pressing closer than the last.

In this tiny corner of the vast military formation, the soldiers under mortal threat were at their wits' end. In the panic, there was no time to reload firearms; bows and arrows could scarcely pose a threat; and pikes and waist sabers could not even touch the enemy right before their eyes.

Under the shock, men fell back. Those in front pressed backward; soldiers in the distance, readying their firearms to shoot, also retreated without understanding why. Firearms discharged into the sky, further compounding the chaos. Behind them, soldiers who had no idea what was happening could only shove forward, until the northeast corner of the enormous formation began to lose control.

By the time He Huchen noticed the turmoil at his rear, it was already too late. His formation was far too vast. He had been single-mindedly guarding against the Mongol horse bands coming from the north and south, but no one had anticipated a cavalry unit carrying firearms charging in from behind.

Like a corner of a great pane of glass struck by a sharp awl and splintering into cracks, panic spread through the army in the blink of an eye like a spider's web.

In the distance, Liu Chengzong noticed the disturbance at the enemy formation's rear through his telescope. For an instant, he even thought Yang Yao had fought his way back, but then he noticed the flickering muzzle flashes and remembered the guard unit left on the southern hills.

This was an opportunity.

A horse band carrying hand cannons charging the enemy formation under the cover of night, throwing a great army into turmoil — this was a perfect opportunity.

Immediately, the lantern flags in the command compound's courtyard dropped. When they rose again, only a single lantern remained lit. Then, one by one, the lights in each courtyard went out — Basang's army was assembling.

On the front line, Xie Erhu also received the lantern-signal orders relayed from the rear. But his grasp of the battlefield situation was not as good as Liu Chengzong's. He knew a friendly cavalry force had joined the battle, but mounted on horseback as he was, he could not see the situation over there.

But the order from the rear could not be wrong. Xie Erhu immediately relayed the command to his own troops: coordinate with Zhong Bao and launch the charge.

The overtone calls of Mongol soldiers rang across both banks of the Huang River as they galloped. The conscript horse teams slowly assembled in the darkness, and beside Xie Erhu, a special unit of Mongol soldiers swung up into their saddles.

It was a mixed Mongol cavalry battalion of nine hundred total strength, comprising one heavy-cavalry hundred-man company, three light-cavalry hundred-man companies equipped with forged iron arrowheads, plus two herdsman-cavalry hundred-man companies with horse armor and three herdsman-cavalry hundred-man companies without horse armor.

All the heavy armor, horse armor, steel sabers, hook-scythe spears, and even forged arrowheads in Xie Erhu's possession were concentrated in this unit's hands — and this unit's officer was none other than Chaghan Taiji of the Chahar tribe.

In truth, this unit was built for Xie Erhu by Chaghan Taiji himself, which was also why the Mongol soldiers besieging the government army's square formation had only stone arrowheads.

Before this, the combat strength of Xie Erhu's Fishing Camp thousand-man battalions had been wildly uneven — neither that weak nor that strong — but Chaghan Taiji advised him to abandon the traditional steppe-raider mindset and organize a force on the model of a regular Mongol army. Even if it was only a hundred men, it could be thrown into the breach at the critical moment and play a decisive role.

Xie Erhu followed good counsel and indeed scraped together six thousand men from the Mongol horse teams, forming this mixed horse unit built around a core of one hundred heavy cavalry.

This force — a mixed horse unit of one hundred heavy cavalry, three hundred combat troopers, and five hundred horse handlers — still fell short of the equipment standards of Ligdan Khan's heyday, but compared to the Qinghai Mongol horse teams of the past, it represented a qualitative leap in organization and equipment.

As Zhong Bao's hand-cannon horse teams charged the northeast corner of the formation one team after another, He Huchen and Yang Qi responded swiftly. Their response was to cut loose: they detached the battalion commander's unit on the northeast corner, which was taking the brunt of the attack, from the main formation. The neighboring units pulled back to open distance, and then the battalion commander units on the left and right advanced, attempting to encircle this hand-cannon horse team.

Zhong Bao's unit could not even sustain the charge for a full cycle. Of the twenty twelve-man horse teams, only fourteen had charged before the flanks were threatened by infantry advancing in formation. Left with no choice, Zhong Bao could only draw his bow and shoot a whistling arrow, signaling the end of the charge, and the horse teams wheeled around in response.

But shaking the great army's formation and tearing open a gap was already enough.

The surrounding Mongol conscript horse teams, after a brief regrouping, threw themselves back into harassment. Amid the deafening, sky-covering cacophony of overtone war cries, the scattered Mongol cavalry launched an assault even fiercer than before. Around the three battalion commander units whose formation Zhong Bao had pulled and shifted, Mongol soldiers even attempted close-quarters combat.

Because of the material problem with their arrowheads, Mongol horse soldiers wielding bronze and iron maces darted between the army formations, posing an even greater threat in close-quarters fighting.

Only, this was sheer misery for Zhong Hu. He watched helplessly as a brave Mongol cavalryman, mace raised, swept past the edge of the southern formation. Finding no opening to strike a man, the artillerymen inside the formation manning a Frankish swivel gun fired a shot straight at him.

The horse soldier flashed past the muzzle at speed, and then the cannon roared. A spray of grapeshot tore through the gun smoke. That Mongol soldier was charging and wheeling at the edge of the forest of spears, alive and kicking — but the cannon's muzzle swept past him, straight toward the direction where Zhong Hu's horse team was turning around.

The splashing grapeshot swept across the sixty-pace front line and, in a single neat volley from the flank, blasted half a squad of the hand-cannon horse team off their horses.

That one shot drove Zhong Hu, who was leading his troops in withdrawal from the field, into a fury. He thought to himself: I charged sixteen squads in a row and didn't lose six men — and you, you bastard, sweep six riders off their horses with one cannon shot?

Without a moment's hesitation, he furrowed his brow, drew his bow, and sent a whistling arrow screaming back. The entire hand-cannon horse team once again wheeled their horses around with him and charged toward the patch of gun smoke in front of the enemy line.

At the same moment, at the southwest corner of the formation on the other end of the battlefield, two of Xie Erhu's light-cavalry hundred-man companies also formed up into a single deep column. In small squads of ten or twenty riders, wave after wave, they used forged iron arrowheads to pour overlapping volleys of arrows onto one corner of the army formation, braving the gunfire and cannon blasts.

Those under the left centurion loosed their arrows and then wheeled left, returning to the rear of the column. Those under the right centurion loosed their arrows and wheeled right, returning to the rear. In an unbroken, continuous stream, they concentrated their volleys on that one corner of the formation.

The government troops at this corner had grown accustomed to being shot at by stone arrowheads. At first, they neither dodged nor flinched from the incoming arrows, never expecting that this time the bows were heavier than before and the arrowheads far more lethal. In a short span, over a dozen men were shot down one after another. They hastily shifted their focus and detached a flanking squad to advance from the side to deal with this wheeling light-cavalry unit.

At that very moment, the dull, resolute thunder of hooves rumbled up from behind this advancing infantry squad. Xie Erhu's heavy cavalry had reached the battlefield. Like a torrent, they smashed into and rolled over the infantry formation, then vanished back into the darkness like ghosts.

The scattered remnants of the shattered squad fled toward the center of the formation. He Huchen's central command finally realized that their greatest enemy was the opponent's mastery of the darkness — they could strike from any corner, while his own troops, trapped and not daring to disperse, could only be used as target practice.

If this continued, both corners of the formation would be thrown into chaos, and the great army would face the threat of disintegrating in the night.

Left with no choice, He Huchen gave the order for the army to move west, entering the bonfire square formation that Liu Chengzong had prepared for him.

On the rooftop, Liu Chengzong lowered his telescope. "You came in after all."

The next moment, a roar from a colossal flash echoed through the river valley. Twelve seven-catty cannonballs, shrieking as they flew from different positions, plunged into He Huchen's formation, carving out trails of shattered limbs and broken bodies.