Chapter 397: Attack and Defense

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Unceasing cannon fire erupted from the southeast corner of the wagon fort. Billowing smoke blanketed the battle line. Shrapnel tearing through the air sprayed toward the galloping cavalry, throwing the three lead hundred-man companies into chaos — men and horses tumbling. The scattered survivors fled in all directions on horseback, leaving behind a field of corpses and trails of blood.

Before the Khoshut lines, the State Preceptor Khan whipped his horse onward, watching expressionlessly as the Chahar auxiliaries serving as bait lay slaughtered across the field and the Han army's artillery position was swallowed by gun smoke.

This was merely an inconspicuous scene on the battlefield. On the wagon camp's eastern and northern fronts, dense masses of Mongol infantry advanced slowly with shields raised, pressing the wagon fort as the distance between the lines shrank from two hundred paces to a hundred.

From time to time, a cavalry company would charge forward. If the Han marksmen had no time to reload and fire, the riders closed in and loosed a few arrows; if they miscalculated and took a volley of shot, they wheeled their horses and scattered back.

Yet all the other sectors were feints. The State Preceptor Khan's true breakthrough target was the wagon fort's southeast corner — where the Han artillery position stood.

Without a word, he raised his left hand. Behind him, a signalman lifted a well-worn Mongol horn and blew a deep, thick note that resounded across the battlefield.

A second wave of three hundred Chahar auxiliaries was urged into battle by the Khoshut nobles. Promised freedom after the fight, the men once more crossed the trench now filled level with corpses and pressed toward the wagon camp's southeast corner.

The State Preceptor Khan's knowledge of artillery was limited — he did not even know that canister and solid iron shot could be fired from the same cannon — but that did not stop a Mongol marshal from using his vast battlefield experience to make sound judgments.

He had realized that the Han army possessed two types of artillery. One, capable of hurling solid iron shot two li away, was arrayed on the wagon fort's southern face.

The other, able to spray clusters of projectiles at around two hundred paces and inflict mass casualties on dense formations, was overwhelmingly concentrated at the fort's southeast corner.

Borjigin Türobaihu had his own threat assessment for these two types of cannon.

Though the two differed enormously in the casualties they inflicted, the State Preceptor Khan reached the same conclusion as his sixth son, whose southern camp had been shattered: solid shot posed a far greater threat to an army than canister, which could kill or wound many more men at once.

Same conclusion, different reasons.

Taiji Dorji had seen that a solid shot could kill him from well beyond extreme range.

The State Preceptor Khan, born in the tenth year of Wanli and now fifty-one years old, had in his finite life commanded forces across the Tianshan range, north and south, fought a hundred battles, and savored glory and wealth. Even if his luck turned so foul that a stray iron ball struck him down, he would die without regret.

What he feared was not death, but the heavy cannon's solid iron shot, which dealt a particularly severe blow to morale and could shroud command in chaos.

The battlefield shifts in an instant. A few solid cannonballs might kill hardly anyone, but once a formation loses coordinated command, the power of solid shot soars when supported by other troops.

Take a thousand-man company deployed in a line. If solid shot strikes the officer's left or right flank squarely, the entire line is severed in two. In a brief moment, several hundred soldiers on one side are left leaderless.

When the central command issues an order to change formation or reposition, the other flank receives it and begins to move. The entire force then falls out of sync and into disorder, multiplying the difficulty of command — and the enemy seizes the moment to charge and cut them down.

Such power is beyond anything a few small canister-firing cannon, killing or wounding a hundred or two hundred men, could ever match.

This dread of heavy artillery drove the State Preceptor Khan to adopt an offensive strategy of using speed to overcome delay.

Speed meant breakthrough; delay meant the enemy's redeployment.

Before the heavy cannon could be shifted from the southern face, he would rapidly concentrate elite troops to force a breach at the wagon fort's weak point, closing to hand-to-hand combat and dragging the Han army into melee.

The wagon fort's weakest point was precisely the artillery position on the southeast side, where sixteen Lion Cannons were massed.

There, gaps existed in the wagons and sandbags serving as barriers, and infantry armed with blades and spears could hardly deploy between the cannon. Assaulting that sector would not only reduce the artillery threat to breakthroughs on both flanks, but also allow them to charge into the formation at the lowest cost.

The sole difficulty lay in this — the attacking soldiers would have to face the horrific casualties of a frontal assault on an artillery position.

This, too, was the cruel choice every commander in this age of advancing firearms had to make: trade fire with an enemy whose projectile power far outstripped your own until defeat, or pay a price in casualties to drag the enemy down to your own level.

In truth, this question tested not a commander's benevolence, but his ability to control his army — and his soldiers' thirst for victory.

On this point, as it happened, the State Preceptor Khan held an unbeatable advantage from the start, for he possessed Chahar auxiliaries whose deaths would not affect the morale of the Khoshut main force.

When the second wave of auxiliaries was thrown into battle and once again shattered and scattered by a single volley, the State Preceptor Khan lowered the cracked telescope clutched in his hand and slowly exhaled in relief.

Because the second wave of three hundred auxiliaries had advanced fifteen paces farther.

He raised his left hand. A messenger swiftly spurred his horse forward and heard him say: "Tell the Darkhan at the front: the enemy cannon require fifty breaths to reload. Prepare to charge the position."

Darkhan was a title originating with the Rouran, later adopted by the Turks as a military rank for commanding troops. By the Mongol era, it had become a widely used honorific.

Today, Darkhan is divided into several grades, bestowed as a reward for battle merit — akin to the Ming dynasty's honorary ranks like Commandant or General. Those with lesser merit are raised to Ba'atur Darkhan; those of outstanding merit to Weijing Darkhan; those of still greater merit to Guyin Darkhan; and those of supreme merit to Wei Darkhan.

Many Mongol noble names recorded in Ming annals are simply replaced by such titles — names like Ba'atur or Weizheng.

The Darkhan the State Preceptor Khan spoke of was the officer commanding the elite troops at the front.

To break through in a single strike, he had prepared two sets of tactics and three thousand three hundred soldiers.

Of these, nine hundred were Chahar auxiliaries and two thousand four hundred were Khoshut soldiers, organized into five assault echelons and a thousand-man reserve brigade.

The battle plan was to send two waves of Chahar auxiliaries against the artillery position: the first to probe the enemy's firepower, the second to gauge the interval between volleys.

Only on the third wave would the true assault preparations begin, using the last three hundred auxiliaries as close-combat elites to screen against the canister shot, shielding the four hundred Khoshut melee experts behind them as they stormed the position.

Once these men opened a breach, they need only hold the line for a brief moment, and the thousand-man brigade following close behind would surge through the gap, break the fort from the corner, and alter the entire course of the battle.

The thousand-man reserve brigade, composed of herder-soldiers, was left for the State Preceptor Khan's second stratagem — driving auxiliaries in a headlong charge against the enemy lines to exhaust their strength, a time-honored tactic of the Mongol army.

But this tactic had one small flaw: the possibility that the auxiliaries might defect on the battlefield, a likelihood increased by charging an artillery position under a hail of shot.

The reserve brigade was tasked with handling exactly this. Should the auxiliaries defect, they would deal with them at triple their strength. In the State Preceptor Khan's plan, this was not a risk — it was an opportunity.

If the auxiliaries defected and the enemy lines held firm, he lost nothing. If the enemy sent troops out to cut them down, they would fall right into the State Preceptor Khan's hands.

The one thing he feared was the wagon fort itself. After dispatching troops south and west, the fort held only five or six thousand men. Han soldiers charging out without the wagon fort's cover — even if they traded two for one in open battle, he still held absolute superiority.

To trade the last drop of Chahar auxiliary blood for the lush pastures and clear waters of Qinghai — it was worth it.

Inside the wagon camp, beneath fluttering banners, Liu Chengzong briefly raised his telescope to the south, his mind filled with the roaring din of musketry and cannon.

Liu Shizi was struggling with all his might to suppress the battlefield clamor's effect on him, focusing his attention on the Khoshut central army's flanking cavalry force dispatched southward.

At a critical juncture like this, keeping calm was difficult.

The troops inside the wagon camp were even fewer than the State Preceptor Khan imagined. Liu Chengzong had just over five thousand men at hand.

Moreover, because they had brought too many mules and horses and the flat Gobi terrain offered no place to hide the livestock, and the battle had been joined in haste, his wagon fort was spread wide on all four sides. His reserve support force amounted to a mere four hundred bodyguards.

So what he feared most was the State Preceptor Khan launching an all-out assault.

That meant that if the enemy attacked in full force with death-defying troops on the eastern and northern fronts and the wagon fort was drawn into hand-to-hand combat, he could hold for a quarter-hour at most in conventional fighting. Even abandoning the wagon fort would only buy him half a shichen.

The length of time he could hold had nothing to do with how elite his soldiers were, how good their equipment, or the superiority of their tactics. Without reserve troops to rotate in, even the strongest soldiers' stamina could only last that long.

Thus, the key to victory or defeat in this battle lay with the relief force, not the central army.

The relief force was the four-thousand-strong cavalry brigade commanded by Wei Qian'er and Zuo Guangxian. Once they wiped out the several hundred enemy troops who had charged the western front, they could free their hands to strike the northern front and lift the siege on the central army.

That was why Liu Chengzong's attention was fixed on the cavalry force circling beyond firing range to the south.

In his eyes, the Khoshut host slowly pressing forward on the eastern and northern fronts was the regular force — the zheng in "hold with the regular, win with the extraordinary."

And if this cavalry currently making a flanking maneuver came charging at the formation — whether from the south or the west — that would mean they too were regular troops.

Relying on the wagon fort, as long as both the west and south faces could hold them off, there would still be one face of soldiers able to reinforce elsewhere if the worst happened.

As long as the troops were divided into two squads fighting in rotation, giving them time to recover their strength, then for Liu Chengzong everything would be fine. The time the formation could hold firm wouldn't just double — he could last until tomorrow, until Yang Yao led the cavalry back to turn the tide.

But if they hung far back, beyond the firing range of the west and south faces, and — just as Ma Ke had done to the southern camp's enemy — applied pressure to the wagon fort from the outer line, preventing the west and south faces from withdrawing their squads to rotate with the east and north faces' soldiers, then they would be an extra surprise force.

That would be utter catastrophe for Liu Chengzong — a perfect pincer cavalry tactic would have taken shape.

Just then, at the southeast corner of the formation, an artillery command officer rounded the war drums and ceremonial guard and rushed urgently to the central command, his face full of anxiety as he reported: "Grand Commander, the artillery is pinned down by the enemy — they can't support the east and north faces!"

Liu the Lion blanked for a moment, thinking, isn't this bullshit?

Since when has artillery ever been the ones pinned down by the enemy, rather than the ones keeping everyone else too terrified to run?

Seeing his incredulous expression, the command officer quickly turned and pointed to the front line, explaining: "They keep sending troops to charge the gun position — two squads already!"

Liu Chengzong looked toward the southeast with suspicion, his gaze passing over Yang Qi's Lion cannon squad overseeing the battle, toward where the cannon barrels were aimed.

The first thing he saw was a field of corpses a hundred paces beyond the artillery position — a rough glance showed at least a hundred or so. Among them, a warhorse unable to rise lifted its neck in a mournful whinny, and wounded soldiers wrapped in robes crawled toward the edges, struggling to survive.

Beyond that crawling crimson ground, three or four hundred herdsmen-soldiers in leather robes and bearing weapons, driven by several officers, were raising banners high and charging at a slant toward the artillery position at a rapid pace.

Before he even had time to wonder at the enemy's move, farther away, the setting sun's glare struck his spyglass — a mass of armored cavalry had finished assembling, and behind them, a great host of troops hidden amid the dust was advancing steadily forward, hundreds of paces at a time.

At that very moment, the front line roared — sixteen Lion cannons fired in succession at the enemy. The smoke and dust churned up by the gunpowder blocked his view, but in the instant the smoke billowed up, he seemed to see the enemy's armored riders launch their charge.

The sight made his hair stand on end. In a single instant, time seemed to slow. All the clamor and battle cries on the field vanished from his ears, leaving only his dilated pupils staring fixedly at the artillery position, whose formation was looser than elsewhere.

The next moment, everything came rushing back — war drums and battle cries, the roar of firearms all crashed into his ears. Liu Chengzong turned his head, his face contorted, and let out a hoarse roar at the banner and drum corps: "Defend the southeast! Escort troops, with me!"

Boom — the war drums abruptly stopped. The drumsticks struck the drumhead one last heavy time, pounding out a soul-shaking sound. The entire central command outside the commander's tent froze for an instant. Flag-bearers raised their banners, messengers ran to relay orders, and the soldiers who had caught on suddenly shifted the military music's tone.

Before the messenger even reached him, Yang Qi, a veteran of many battles, heard the change in the military music and frowned in bewilderment, looking toward the central command.

It wasn't that the Guyuan Grand Commander had sharp reactions — he instinctively thought he hadn't given any order, so why the hell was the military music blowing nonsense on its own?

Only the next moment did intelligence return to his brain, and he realized he had switched masters — the supreme commander of this army now was Liu Chengzong.

But defend the southeast — Yang Qi chewed on that direction. Southeast — that seemed to be right in front of him.

Yang Qi might not have been an exceptionally brilliant grand commander, but as a man who had risen from the Governor-General's Staff Corps, he was indeed an officer who obeyed orders.

Even as he smelled the acrid smoke and stared into the white haze before him, he did not doubt the command issued by the banner and drum. He simply drew the heavy war sword at his waist with a face full of puzzlement and gave the order in a firm voice: "Plug the gap! Form ranks, prepare for close combat!"

On the other side, veiled by the gunpowder smoke.

Several nomadic cavalrymen carrying lasso poles crossed the trench, driving dozens of inferior horses meant to soak up bullets as they roved back and forth on the left and right flanks. In their midst, three hundred elite riders led by three vanguard Darkhans trampled across the sands stained red with Chahar blood and charged straight into the smoke.

On the southeast and south faces of the wagon camp's formation, the company commanders directing the battle spotted this cavalry rushing in at full tilt and immediately ordered their soldiers to turn their guns and fire.

Row after row amid the smoke, the gunners had only just taken aim when the galloping horse column had already passed through their field of fire. Even if a few lucky lead balls struck the column, they mostly hit the unclaimed inferior horses on the outer edge, with negligible effect.

Inside the artillery position, the gunners had only just blocked the gap with gun carriages and sandbags, and columns of infantry were still maneuvering behind them, when a headwind scattered the lingering gunpowder smoke from the air.

What greeted them, a dozen paces away, were fierce armored riders hurriedly reining in their horses. Some had already dismounted, slapping their horses' rumps to drive their mounts behind them, then turning back, drawing their foot bows, and loosing arrows straight at them.

Close combat was now unavoidable.

Some were dismounting, drawing round shields and waist sabers as they charged the wagons, intent on tearing the gap open wider for the troops behind.

Other riders, charging too fast, had not expected the gap to already be plugged. With no time to react, they followed their Darkhan, lances raised and horses leaping into the formation, crashing headlong into a forest of spears and blades.

War wagons were knocked aside by wounded horses, bronze Lion cannons crashed to the ground. Inside the formation, steel met steel, and short blades clashed.

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Good morning!