Chapter 392: Encounter

In the early hours of the sixth day of the sixth month, the State Preceptor Khan received a plea for aid from Hexi.

At that time, the main Oirat force was scattered across the southern bank of the Mangla River in camp. The State Preceptor Khan had barely slept all night. First, he sent scouts to gather intelligence on the Marshal's Office army, then dispatched men to alert the garrison at Yangqu City, ordering them to use every possible means to determine the number of Han troops besieging the Dörbet tribe.

After that, he spent the entire night planning the march routes, encampment sites, withdrawal routes, and water sources for the various allied divisions.

As the sky began to lighten, he issued orders to the Khoshut, Torgut, and Khoid tribes — over twenty thousand men in all. Apart from the Dzungar tribe, which was tasked with blocking the Han troops from the Guide direction at the rear and Ligdan Khan at Eight-Corner City, the entire Oirat coalition force sortied out in full strength, splitting into three columns and rushing toward the Yellow River crossing.

The camels' broad soles trod across the Gobi, kicking up rolling clouds of dust. The Oirat war drummers sat astride the camel humps, beating out impassioned, stirring rhythms for the warriors hastening to the battlefield.

However, the Oirat coalition's line of advance was not toward the Yangqu City crossing, but rather along the Yellow River's eastern bank, targeting the three crossings between Yangqu City and Longyang Gorge.

To rescue Dalai Taiji, the State Preceptor Khan had prepared a two-pronged approach; his actions would depend on accurate intelligence from the front lines.

If the force besieging Dalai Taiji numbered only four or five thousand, they would sortie in full strength and attack this Han army from Yangqu City. If the Han troops besieging Dalai Taiji were numerous and powerful, the State Preceptor Khan planned to exploit the emptiness of the sea region and strike directly at New City.

He did not understand the concept of "besieging Wei to rescue Zhao," but military texts merely record what has already happened. A veteran of a hundred battles knows the principle of attacking what the enemy must defend just as well.

The State Preceptor Khan was unwilling to let a decisive battle occur near the Yangqu crossing. Comparatively, fighting in the sea region was a better choice, because Haibei County connected to Subei. Even if the battle went unfavorably, they could withdraw to Subei, plunder the Gansu border, and return to the Tianshan Mountains.

At dusk on the sixth day of the sixth month, the Yangqu defenders who had risked their lives to gather intelligence rushed to the river's eastern bank and reported to the State Preceptor Khan: "The Han troops at the mountain's base are fiercely assaulting the stronghold. Firearm-armed scouts blocked us heavily and we could not get close. We could only hide in the mountains and observe from afar. Over a thousand enemy soldiers are encamped, and the gunfire is extremely dense."

Gunfire extremely dense?

The State Preceptor Khan narrowed his eyes and asked the scout, "On the mountain, are they firing guns or shooting arrows?"

"I truly could not see clearly... it seems they are also firing guns."

The State Preceptor Khan had no further questions. He waved for the scout to be taken away for a good meal and ordered the various divisions to prepare to cross the river the next morning.

"Gunfire extremely dense" was not good news for him.

Dalai Taiji's Dörbet tribe grazed their herds closest to the Russians. They had the most conflicts with the Russians over the tribute from forest tribes, and likewise possessed quite a few firearms.

But possessing firearms did not mean they used them well.

The Dzungar tribe was stronger and wealthier. Baatur Khong Tayiji was also willing to employ prisoners captured in battle and had hired a group of Muslims to teach his tribesmen how to use firearms. Therefore, among the Four Oirat Tribes, the Dzungars used firearms the best.

At this moment, Dalai Taiji was on high ground, where using bows and arrows was more advantageous. Thus, the State Preceptor Khan judged that in defending the high ground, they would certainly shoot arrows first before firing guns.

In fact, apart from the Dzungar tribe, which had a professional firearms unit, soldiers of the other three tribes carried firearms only to compensate for insufficient arrow reserves.

Gunpowder and lead balls together were much lighter than arrows, and their lethality was greater. They could carry only a cavalry bow without an infantry bow, allowing them to bring even more ammunition.

Once both sides entered the exchange-fire phase, the State Preceptor Khan believed Dalai Taiji was in danger. The Dörbet tribe likely could not hold out until he struck directly at New City. He therefore decided to move the entire army toward the opposite bank and first annihilate the Han troops besieging the mountain base.

But this order had just been issued and had not yet reached the various divisions under his command when news arrived from the front: Yangqu West City, which had held out against the Han army for a full day and night, had fallen. The Han troops were now seizing the pontoon bridge.

Not only had the State Preceptor Khan not expected this, but Liu Chengzong, who received the news at almost the same moment, had not expected it either.

The man responsible for Yangqu West City was Company Commander Bee Sting Zhang Zhen, a former bandit from northern Shaanxi. He had followed nearly every notable leader in northern Shaanxi, finally surrendered to Regional Commander Yang Qi, and switched sides on the battlefield.

The Central Army Field Headquarters had given him the order to feint.

Given his rich experience in losing battles and his outstanding surrender record, Liu the Lion had little expectation of him.

Last night, the Bee Unit had attacked all night. Two hundred guns fired only sixty jin of gunpowder — barely enough to make a sound. During the day, Ma Ke's four hundred men surrounded the place, letting the Bee Unit rest a day. They were only relieved at dusk.

He never expected that just half a shichen after they went back up, Liu the Lion received a victory report saying Bee Sting had taken the west city. He even suspected he had misheard.

Taking Yangqu West City was neither difficult nor simple. After all, it lacked proper city defense fortifications — just three rings of low walls. But without artillery, truly trying to force it was still a life-or-death endeavor.

Liu Chengzong did not feel he had shown Bee Sting any kindness worthy of such a desperate effort, nor did he believe Bee Sting was the type of man to stake his life on a feint mission.

Han Shipan, standing sideways beside him, said, "That Zhao Kebian — does the Grand Marshal remember him?"

"Zhao Kebian... first, go summon Ma Xiang."

Liu Chengzong silently recited the name in his mind and slowly nodded. "What did he do?"

Zhao Kebian was Bee Sting's old subordinate, formerly a squad leader from Willow Tree Gully in Yansui Garrison. In the battle at Pox Village South Bridge, he had been concentrated on by cannon fire. His hand was blown off, yet he picked up the severed hand and ordered his men to advance.

Unfortunately, none of the soldiers under him had his iron will; they would rather jump into the river than carry out the order.

Liu Chengzong was deeply impressed by this man — a ruthless character with an extraordinarily hard fate. After crude battlefield bandaging, he had waged a tenacious struggle against wound infection and smallpox, teetering on the line between life and death for over a month, and had actually survived.

However, missing a hand, he was now the order officer of Bee Sting's company command.

"From the moment he received the order, he and Zhang Zhen made a plan. Last night, Zhang Zhen led men to harass the enemy while he stayed behind and nailed two war wagons into shielded assault carts."

Liu Chengzong laughed as soon as he heard "shielded assault carts" and asked, puzzled, "Those Mongol carts of ours — the panels are terribly thin. A lead ball would punch right through."

"They left a cavity, filled it with a layer of sand, and poured water in. It should be quite effective at stopping lead balls." Han Shipan raised his eyebrows as he spoke. "At dusk today, during the rotation, each of them led fifty dare-to-die soldiers, pushed the shielded assault carts straight at the low walls, and engaged in close combat. Over three hundred men followed behind to press the attack. The defenders promptly collapsed in a rout, and the west city at the crossing was seized within a quarter of an hour."

However, after Han Shipan finished his report, Yang Qi, standing to the side, had a somewhat complicated expression. "But this way, the plan will have to change."

This was also an unprecedented experience for Yang Qi. Bee Sting and Zhao Kebian had once been his subordinates. When they served in the Guyuan army, they had never exceeded their assigned tasks like this.

"Ha! Then let it change."

Liu Chengzong let out a carefree laugh and waved his hand. "They did well. Isn't this exactly a feint? Now the Oirat will certainly believe our main force is on the west bank of Yangqu. If there's any problem, the problem lies with my ignorance of military affairs."

Originally, his plan for Yangqu West City had been to confront and exchange fire without taking it, making the enemy believe his forces were limited and his combat strength insufficient. When their main army came to reinforce, he would have Zhang Zhen and Ma Ke feign defeat and retreat, luring the enemy into an encirclement.

In his heart, he had indeed thought this way. The heavy cannons of each battalion were just forty li away, and he had not even transferred them to Bee Sting. He had not mentally prepared himself at all for Bee Sting to capture Yangqu City.

So the change in plans was his own doing.

But these words sounded different to Yang Qi's ears. This regional commander, who had come from the Supreme Commander's own Guard Battalion, was still in the phase of understanding the Marshal's Office, and this made him feel that the Marshal's Office had ample command but insufficient control.

It was laughable to say — in the past, when Yang Qi was a regional commander, he had never had the opportunity to observe the grand strategy of an entire theater of war like this. That was essentially the Supreme Commander's business and had nothing to do with a regional commander. Tactical problems alone were enough to worry a regional commander to death.

Liu Chengzong's magnanimity as commander-in-chief in proactively taking the blame made him very comfortable. However, regarding the matter of army mission execution, he had his own thoughts. But he did not voice them at this moment; he simply turned, fetched a small notebook, and jotted down the issue.

He believed that militarily, exceeding orders should not be encouraged or indulged. After all, war is an organized, joint action. Relying on a single army that can fight cannot win a war — he had suffered enough of that bitter lesson back in the imperial court.

Every army should act according to orders — doing no more and no less, executing the command with perfect precision, neither too much nor too little. Only then could a grand strategy be formed.

Every man must stay in his proper place, not each acting on his own.

"Grand Marshal, Company Commander Ma has arrived."

Scout Cavalry Company Commander Ma Xiang was travel-worn and dusty. His red cloth-faced armor bore several gashes cut open by weapons, revealing the unpolished armor plates beneath, dotted with specks of rust. He entered the tent and prostrated himself. "Your humble subordinate Ma Xiang kowtows before the Grand Marshal."

"We don't do that in this army." Seeing Ma Xiang, Liu Chengzong waved him to his feet and asked directly, "Scout cavalry — how many are fit to move?"

Ma Xiang had just risen, and upon hearing this nearly prostrated himself again in a military salute. He steadied himself with effort and replied, "Answering the Marshal, your humble subordinate oversees two commands. Under my banner are twelve scout cavalry routes. Only one route is needed to encircle Green Mountain, and another is guiding Brigade Commander Yang. Ten routes remain available."

"Spread them out along the Yellow River, light in the north and heavy in the south. At every place where a river crossing is possible, if you spot enemy troops, keep eyes on them... but do not engage them."

Liu Chengzong finished speaking. He steadied himself on He Huchen's small folding stool with a backrest and armrests, leaned back slightly and pondered a moment, then raised a hand and drew a circle before him. "Lure them here."

"Yes, sir!"

Ma Xiang acknowledged the order, saluted, and left the tent. Yang Qi asked, "The Grand Marshal still intends to fight here?"

"The Oirat will inevitably cross the river. Now that they've seized the western city, his forty thousand troops can't all squeeze across this one pontoon bridge — they'll have to cross from the north along the river. Unless he abandons this army, the battlefield won't change. We need only guard against being encircled."

Yang Qi asked, "And if they break into the sea?"

"Then let them break in."

Liu Chengzong let out a short laugh. He would be more than happy if the State Preceptor Khan led his army charging into the sea.

The Qinghai Marshal's Command had a fully established naval force in its regular order of battle. Anyone entering the lake region could forget about surpassing him in mobility.

He raised a finger and wagged it at Yang Qi. "If we can fight, we fight. If we can't fight, we hold. If we can't hold, we withdraw. Even losing Qinghai wouldn't mean much… Annihilate the enemy army, and victory is still ours."

Yang Qi suddenly caught on as well. The court's cities held commoners and supplies — naturally no one could openly speak of abandoning territory. But the Marshal's Command had practically nothing on the sea; all the commoners were Mongols. Throw a felt tent onto a lele cart and two counties could simply wander off.

With only two county offices left, what reason did they have not to abandon the land?

Yet even though the battlefield hadn't changed, Liu Chengzong's deployment had.

He had only about a thousand mounted scouts at hand. Against the several thousand men of the Dörbet tribe, screening the battlefield was child's play, but against an Oirat main force estimated at thirty-five thousand or even forty thousand, they were clearly outmatched.

That meant leaving the central army here risked encirclement. Once the enemy discovered the command tent within the encirclement, they would likely launch ferocious attacks at any cost.

Therefore, under cover of night, Feng Rang of the Left Materials Battalion led his troops in to relieve them. The Tiger Guard Battalion withdrew forty li northwest overnight, reaching the Right Materials Battalion and the supply train, preparing to provide support to the battlefield.

At the same time, the mounted scout sent to find Yang Yao had also returned, bringing news from Yang Yao's side.

When Liu Chengzong's order arrived, Yang Yao's Right Brigade was still engaged with remnant enemies on the Heka Grassland. Not daring to delay after receiving the order, he had already sent Wei Qian'er's unit to disengage and rush over. They were now a hundred li away, setting up camp and cooking, expected to reach Heka Flat by tomorrow afternoon.

Yang Yao and his subordinate officer Gao Yingdeng would need to gauge the rearguard situation; they would reach Heka Flat by the evening of the day after tomorrow at the latest.

The footsteps of a major battle drew closer and closer, yet the mood in Liu Chengzong's army grew calm and oppressive instead.

At times like this, the more idle the soldiers were, the more restless their minds became. So Liu the Lion ordered the troops to modify the war carts, and even he himself tidied up a war cart after supper.

A shielded cart large enough to cover several dozen men was too much work, and Liu Chengzong's current position lacked that much timber. They had to make do with local materials, armoring the lele carts with sandbags.

Over the past few years, he had acquired several thousand lele carts from the Mongols. These homemade two-wheeled carts of the herders were simple in structure and extremely light — you could grab the shafts and haul things right away. They were an indispensable means of transport in the nomadic life.

But ultimately they were civilian vehicles, not war carts, and offered almost no protection against arrows or lead shot.

Sandbags were the simplest solution. Bee-Sting Needle had tested wet sand's defensive effect against lead shot, and on this battlefield, with almost nothing but gobi flats and sand dunes, plus countless grain sacks from the rations already eaten, it was very economical.

They piled the lele carts high with sandbags. Liu Chengzong even fired his own musket at a sandbag. A heavy musket ball striking the sandbag could penetrate nearly two chi; if a two-cun-thick plank was placed in front, it would only penetrate half a chi.

And if that plank had a layer of armor plates on top, the lead shot could barely pierce the plank at all — and even if it did, it wouldn't travel far in the sand.

Moreover, wet sand worked even better than dry sand, so they hurriedly made many waterskins from the soldiers' whole sheepskin and oxhide sleeping mats and filled them with river water.

As for their jingal guns, Liu Chengzong didn't test them. As far as he knew, the smallest-caliber cannon the Oirat coalition used was about the same as a jingal gun, only much shorter.

What Liu Chengzong never expected, however, was that the first to engage would be neither him nor Feng Rang at the foot of Green Mountain.

At noon the next day, a mounted scout galloped urgently back to the central army, bringing a panicked report from Mounted Scout Commander Ma Xiang.

Just the night before, five mounted detachments, each several hundred strong, had laid pontoon bridges under cover of darkness and crossed the river, then executed a large-scale flanking maneuver from a hundred and twenty li to the north.

The mounted scouts had not discovered them until this morning. After that, they advanced in five columns occupying a width of ten li, driving west at full speed. With a numerical advantage close to a full battalion, they easily broke through the mounted scout screen, charged to Liu Chengzong's flank and rear, and then clashed with the arriving Wei Qian'er unit.

As the entire mounted scout line shifted in response, the main Oirat coalition force laid pontoon bridges along the entire front, crossed the Yellow River in force along multiple routes, and came sweeping westward in a broad push.

The panicked mounted scout had not yet finished speaking when Liu Chengzong, standing outside the tent, raised a hand with a calm expression and stopped the military report.

The horns of the central army camp had already sounded. Everywhere rang with the overlapping roars and orders of the officers; the soldiers hurriedly formed up.

A flustered Yang Qi, his belt with the saber tucked under his arm and one hand pressing his helmet as he fastened it, rushed out of the army tent. Before he could even straighten up, his eyes, turned toward the east, went wide.

In the distance, amid thunderous hoofbeats and camel strides, a great wind had whipped up a vast expanse of white in the east. Thick dust and sand came sweeping westward; the blotted-out light was like black clouds, casting a sheet of shadow over the land.

And before that shadow, the Marshal's Command mounted scouts were like tiny skiffs in a raging storm, exchanging fire and retreating in the flickering, dim light. The mass of galloping figures was a dark, dense swarm, drawing closer and closer to the central army.

Liu Chengzong sighed and fastened his helmet. He knew this was an accidental encounter.

The State Preceptor Khan's ambition was truly wild. He had already withdrawn forty li, yet he still hadn't left the Oirat's projected encirclement. He was encircled after all.

"Pass the order: all units form a grand formation. Prepare to meet the enemy."

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Good evening!