Chapter 385: Stir-Fried Rabbit

The first day of the fifth month, the sixth year of the Chongzhen reign.

Above the walls of Eight-Corner City, Colonel Chao Tu Taiji, clad in Marshal's Mansion locking armor, stood on the unprotected parapet and looked out at the Khalkha Battalion soldiers clearing the city moat.

Any army could dig trenches, but the practiced earthwork skills of Liu Chengzong's Khalkha Battalion drew Chao Tu Taiji's admiration; even the Xuanfu border troops might not match the Khalkha Battalion in digging trenches and raising ramparts.

Everything came from training — Liu Chengzong's use of the surrendered Khalkha troops was practically intensive earthwork conditioning.

In the nearly one year since Ahaidaiching's Khalkha people surrendered to Liu Chengzong, they had not taken part in a single battle as the main force, yet they had shouldered almost every earthwork task.

When there was no fighting, they dug irrigation canals at the new city; when battle came, they dug trenches.

Before surrendering to Liu Chengzong, they had still belonged to Choktu Taiji last summer, and the moat outside Eight-Corner City was one they had cleared themselves.

Coming back this year was merely revisiting old haunts — digging trenches was second nature to them, and they could even find time to visit the grave of Choktu Taiji, buried south of the city.

One could truly say the time was right, the place favorable, and the people united — everything had come together.

Chao Tu Taiji noticed that Bald Qiang's unit slipped into form with remarkable speed.

Though his battalion was called the Chahar Battalion, in reality the thousand soldiers Liu Chengzong had assigned him were all formerly men of Guru Taiji of the Tumed Khulochi tribe.

The men of the Chahar Battalion were still inside the city clicking their tongues in wonder, marveling that a city with eight corners could even be built, while the Khalkha Battalion soldiers were already bustling inside and outside the city.

Those who needed to fell trees felled trees, those who needed to dig earth dug earth — every man a living map; once inside Eight-Corner City, they all turned into tour guides.

"Taiji, look west — that mountain is called Princess Tomb, where a Western Xia princess is buried; it's well suited for placing artillery. Look south — that mountain is called Taiji Tomb, the eternal resting place of the Khalkha Chokhur Choktu Taiji."

"Choktu Taiji?"

Chao Tu Taiji remembered this man; the impression was very deep.

Because the Chahar Great Khan had come to Qinghai precisely at this man's invitation, yet before the Khan even arrived, the man was gone — and as it turned out, buried right here.

"We came at his invitation yet never met face to face; I ought to pay my respects." Chao Tu Taiji called for his personal attendants to fetch wine and meat for the offering, but Ahaidaiching stopped him.

"I think Taiji would do better to concentrate on military affairs."

Ahaidaiching's face was expressionless. "There's no hurry to meet Choktu Taiji. Lose to the Oirats, and the two of you will keep each other company for ten thousand years — you'll have plenty of time to meet then."

Chao Tu Taiji paused a moment before catching on. He was not angered by Baldy's sarcasm, merely laughed. "Hey, you talk as if you won't die yourself."

Ahaidaiching ignored him.

Everyone died, but rank made distinctions, and after death there were naturally different places to go.

If the Chahar Great Khan died, he would at least manage to be buried in the west, with a Western Xia princess for company — even as a ghost, a romantic.

If Chao Tu Taiji died, he would surely be buried in the south to keep Choktu Taiji company; in life they were well-matched in status, in death their homes would face each other, convenient for pouring out their hearts.

As for Ahaidaiching — Ahaidaiching dared not die, at least not in Eight-Corner City.

He did not have the standing to be buried in the south; the burial ground reserved for him was east of the city, where several Khalkha Noyan whose heads he had struck off in internal strife were buried. If he went down there so utterly alone, he feared he would be no match for that gang of headless ghosts.

"Last year you had so many cannon — how did you lose?" Chao Tu Taiji looked at the bare western wall. "Look at this wall — it's been battered so badly no one can stand on it. Is the Grand Marshal really that formidable at defending a city?"

Ahaidaiching ignored the chatterbox Chahar Taiji for a long while.

Only after a considerable time, when the earthwork and timber needed for one section of wall had all been calculated, did Bald Qiang suddenly realize what he meant. He sought out Chao Tu Taiji and asked, "Taiji, do you think we lost because our assault on the city failed?"

Chao Tu Taiji nodded as if it were obvious, and immediately heard Ahaidaiching say, "We lost defending the city. The one assaulting it was the Grand Marshal."

Chao Tu Taiji's eyes went wide as bronze bells. So this city had been breached by Liu Chengzong?

"No wonder the Khalkha Battalion knows this strange city so well. How many months did you hold it?"

Ahaidaiching spread the five fingers of his left hand, then raised four fingers of his right. Delighted surprise lit Chao Tu Taiji's face. "Holding it for nine months is still…"

Mid-sentence, the delighted surprise on his face froze. In his recollection, the Khalkha had only entered Qinghai a few months ago. He frowned. "But the Khalkha haven't even been here nine months!"

"It was nine days." Ahaidaiching said, "Surrounded on the third day of the ninth month, breached on the twelfth — nine days at the very most, and Taiji was buried south of the city."

At these words, Chao Tu Taiji turned and headed straight down from the wall without looking back.

No wonder this city looked so bizarre. Damn it, Liu the Lion had never meant well.

This city was far too ill-omened. He had to send word to his elder brother at once — they had to find a way to let the Oirats in.

Even as Ahaidaiching dragged him back, he was still shouting, "Only nine days holding the city — then what's the point of defending it? My brother could run for nine days straight!"

Ahaidaiching's face turned bitter. He clicked his tongue and said, "You don't understand. This is a fine city — unbreachable from the outside. It was really just the Grand Marshal…"

Baldy shook his head, nearly letting phrases like "full of schemes" and "old fox" roll off his tongue, but in the end he shook off those thoughts. Not without worry, he said, "Defending a city depends on everyone sharing one heart. Whether we live or die all rests with the Great Khan."

Just what sort of characters were about to garrison this city?

Never mind Chao Tu Taiji — nominally called the Chahar Battalion, in reality he led a bunch of Tumed, and the Tumed main force at Hohhot had already been annihilated by Ligdan Khan.

The Khalkha Battalion under Ahaidaiching — every last man an expert in internal strife. The headless Noyan and Taiji buried south and east of Eight-Corner City had all had their skulls lopped off by these very men.

Mo Yujing, the former Ming Vice Commander of Xining who led the artillerymen, had surrendered to Liu Chengzong at Nianbo with his four hundred veterans less than three months ago; in their eyes, a Mongol's braided head was at best a unit of common exchange.

To the east there was also Chen Shiwen, who relied on his status as a Tusi and the two or three hundred native soldiers under him to harvest all the grain the Grand Marshal had planted during last year's siege, and was recruiting tribal soldiers everywhere.

That one was a true bastard — recruiting soldiers not for battle.

Ahaidaiching had been under the Marshal's Mansion for nearly a year now and understood perfectly well why Tusi Chen Shiwen was recruiting tribal soldiers.

Chen Shiwen had no intention of meddling in this war at all. He simply planned to wait until the fighting here was over, then turn around and come back to pick up some spoils of war, upgrading his tribal soldiers into the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion's signature troop type: Mongol-armed tribal warriors.

And then add the imminent arrival of Hudun Tu Great Khan to garrison Eight-Corner City… every last one of these people, everything they had done their entire lives, ran utterly counter to the single word this city now needed: unity.

When Liu Chengzong had first selected him to reinforce Eight-Corner City, Ahaidaiching had been more worried about the Oirat coalition. Now that they had entered Eight-Corner City, Ahaidaiching no longer worried about the Oirat coalition; instead he began to worry whether they could even hold out until the Oirat coalition attacked.

Such worries were merely borrowing trouble. The Hudun Tu Great Khan, racing across Qinghai, harbored no such concerns.

On the first day of the fifth month, the Great Khan was still four hundred li from Eight-Corner City. By dusk on the third, the travel-worn Chahar main force had already entered Ganjia Grassland.

The advance skirmishers had even reached the very walls of Eight-Corner City. The Khan's court Grand Preceptor Ashitu clamored noisily, demanding that Chao Tu Taiji send reinforcements at once to meet them.

The Chahar Great Khan's marching speed far exceeded Mo Yujing's expectations, and what was more terrifying was that the Oirat coalition, maintaining the same marching speed, was biting hard at the Khan's heels.

After a brief discussion, the two battalion colonels immediately decided that Ahaidaiching would lead two thousand cavalry to meet them, while Mo Yujing would hold the walls with his artillery.

Before leaving the city, Bald Qiang kept a wary eye out and handed the thousand-odd infantry left to garrison the camp over to Mo Yujing, telling him to guard against Ligdan Khan killing the donkey once the millstone was done — to prevent him from slipping into the city and bolting the gates.

Then the two thousand cavalry of the Khalkha Battalion churned up sand and dust and galloped southwest.

Not long after, inside the battle shelter atop Eight-Corner City's western wall, Mo Yujing received word that the vanguard of the Chahar army was already nearing Eight-Corner City.

Battle sheds were city-defense works popular in the Song dynasty — wooden sheds built atop city walls to defend against arrows. By the era of the counterweight trebuchet, however, wooden battle sheds had evolved into hard sheds of brick and stone; later, once cannons appeared, this structure became impractical.

Mo Yujing chose to build such a thing on the west side of the city mainly because the parapet walls atop the western wall had all been smashed by Liu Chengzong, and the tusi Chen Shiwen, who had taken over Eight-Pointed City, was too busy breaking ground and planting crops to bother with repairs.

There was no time now to fire bricks and repair the wall, so they could only build wooden battle sheds on the western wall and reinforce it with earth and stone, to serve the purpose of defending against arrows and lead shot.

Upon hearing this, Mo Yujing climbed onto the roof of a battle shed and gazed west. He was very curious to see what a Mongol army that had fought day after day while covering a hundred li a day looked like.

His telescope, however, had been confiscated by Liu Chengzong after his surrender, so now he had to rely on his naked eyes alone. From this distance he could not see clearly; he only felt that it did not look like the Mongol army in his memory, but rather like… rather like the old camp of a Shaanxi peasant army.

Seven or eight hundred people, thirty-some horses and donkeys, a scant few camels pulling small carts, the carts carrying a small amount of weapons, armor, and banners. The people walked with heads bowed through the sky-filling gale.

Mo Yujing's heart lurched at the sight. Oh no, he thought — Ligdan Khan has been beaten down to just a few hundred men.

He was an old officer after all; his first thought was not to mock Ligdan Khan for losing the battle, but that this matter must be reported to the Marshal's Manor as quickly as possible. He immediately called over his nephew Mo Fuli and said to him, "Take a hundred-man relay squad. From Eight-Pointed City to Juer Bay, swiftly lay a five-hundred-li courier relay and deliver word of this place to the Marshal."

Mo Fuli was Mo Yujing's nephew, but he was a direct subordinate of Liu Chengzong who had come from a licentiate background — he had come on his own to offer his service when Liu Chengzong was campaigning in Nangqên, and had now been assigned to Mo Yujing's side as an army overseer.

Mo Fuli understood the priorities perfectly. The Marshal's Manor's battle plan was built on the premise that Ligdan Khan still had a certain number of troops. If Ligdan Khan had been beaten down to a mere few hundred riders, the Oirat army would have swollen to at least fifty thousand strong, and the entire shape of the war would be completely different.

Mo Fuli raced out of the city to lay the courier relay. Those seven or eight hundred men were already nearing the fortress. At their head was one of the Four Ministers of the Chahar, Doutumen Gushan, Dorji Darkhan, escorting Ligdan Khan's son Ejei as they came forward.

The Chahar had eight tribes; their main division was further divided into the ordo managed by eight empresses and consorts and the Eight Ministers, plus six tümen on each of the left and right wings, known as the Six Tümen. "Tümen" meant an entire tribe; the word "tümen" was borrowed by the Jin state and called gushan.

Because the Ming–Jin war was frequent, much of the Great Ming's knowledge of the Chahar tribe came from Jin state correspondence, so the Chahar main division was also called the Six Tümen Gushan.

Because they had a central army tümen, in the Jin state they were called Bayara Gushan.

By now, however, the Great Khan's forces had been reduced again and again, and the main division had been reorganized into the Four Tümen and Four Ministers. These four ministers held the office title jaisang, which was in fact simply "chancellor."

Dorji Darkhan was one of the four chancellors. He rushed into the city, and the several hundred people, once inside, collapsed on the ground, some sitting, some lying down — none had the strength to stand again.

Shaktu Taiji was frantic with worry, sending water and sending grain, and only then did he get the utterly farcical news from Dorji Darkhan: the tribesmen had scattered in flight, and the Great Khan, bringing up the rear to rally the troops, had ended up with no choice but to cover their retreat.

Among the troops that fled into the city were men of Shaktu Taiji, and they brought him a bolt from the blue — his six hundred heavy cavalry, of which he had boasted so proudly before Liu Chengzong, had been thrown away in a single wave when they dismounted to fight as heavy infantry and charged headlong into the camel fortress, all to buy the main force a chance to escape.

Shaktu Taiji's mouth twitched uncontrollably at the news.

Not because the heavy cavalry had been used as heavy infantry — after all, he knew his warhorses very well; these past six months they had done nothing but lose flesh, and mounted, they truly could not charge as fast as men fighting on foot.

Besides, the tactical intent could be considered worthwhile; at least it had protected the main force's successful retreat.

But his own main division had only that elite core of men. Had he not accepted an official post from the Marshal's Manor, he would now be a commander without a single soldier.

Shaktu Taiji lowered his head and spat. Raising his eyes to the Qinghai sunset, he cursed inwardly: What damn Shaktu Taiji is he anymore? Might as well settle in as Chootu, Regional Commander of the Marshal's Manor.

Mo Yujing, who had been gathering intelligence all along, meanwhile sent dispatch after dispatch via the courier relay to the northwest, across the Yellow River, each combining his own analysis with the latest news, and proposed to Liu Chengzong that after the battle they must do everything possible to recruit soldiers from among the Chahar tribesmen.

Mo Yujing was a Vice Commander-in-Chief of the imperial court; even after surrendering to the Marshal's Manor, he could not help but differ in essence from Mongol nobles like Chootu and Ahai. The key reason he valued these Chahar tribesmen was precisely that they were very familiar with Qinghai.

A month of frantic, ragged flight, averaging ninety li a day, practically making a great circle around Qinghai — how could they not be familiar.

As the sky gradually darkened, two more groups of Chahar riders approached the fortress outside Eight-Pointed City one after another. That very night, the main force of the Chahar main division arrived belatedly, finally entering Ganjia Grassland. Mo Yujing, holding the home-ground advantage, sent out Mongol soldiers from the Khalkha camp to guide them into the city through the night.

After entering the city, the Great Khan Ligdan looked utterly dejected. A headcount revealed that of over thirty thousand fighting men who had endured such intense, continuous forced marches, only a little over eight thousand had reached Eight-Pointed City. Warhorses and baggage were entirely lost, weapons and armor in short supply. To say nothing of field battle, they scarcely had the strength left to defend a city.

Fortunately, Ahai Daiching was still fairly brave. Relying on his familiarity with the terrain, he had fought rearguard for the Chahar tribe in the mountains, repeatedly blocking the pursuing Oirat forces, weary as they were, and capturing prisoners from whom they probed for intelligence.

But this intelligence would have been better left unprobed. Without probing, no one had the leisure to be afraid, and Ahai Daiching had still wanted to exploit his success and continue blocking the pursuit. But once they probed — well — the Oirat coalition, after accepting the surrender of Chahar tribesmen, had swollen to over fifty thousand strong. This so frightened Ahai Daiching that he led his troops straight back into the city.

The entire city now knew: their enemy numbered fifty thousand.

Most critically, many of the Chahar soldiers who had entered the city had also contracted smallpox.

Exhaustion, hunger, plague, and terror filled every inch of Eight-Pointed City.

Through the long, long night, Mo Yujing raised his head toward the twinkling stars and ordered the relay soldiers to deliver a courier dispatch at full gallop to Liu Chengzong — there was still time to withdraw to the north bank of the Yellow River.