Chapter 398: The Shifting Balance of Power

At one corner of the wagon fort, blood-hued light surged skyward.

Gunfire and arrow-rain crossed; three hundred armored Khoshut elite soldiers, sweeping along the hundred-odd surviving Chahar warriors, hurled themselves like a wolf pack against one corner of the formation.

Armored riders spurred their horses and crashed into the line, using the warhorses and even the cavalrymen's own bodies to snap the long pikes; right behind them, dismounted infantry wrenched aside war wagons, broke through sandbags, and charged into the position with short weapons to fight hand-to-hand, while foot archers behind the wagon line loosed arrows in succession.

When the crimson frontier-army armor slammed into the icy chainmail, the line formed by a hundred Marshal's Headquarters artillerymen rang out with the clash of metal and stone.

Even though Liu Chengzong's order had given Yang Qi a moment's advance warning of the enemy charge, this moment still made the battle-hardened Yang Qi's heart leap into his throat.

In his long military career, he had lived through situations even more perilous than this, but back then he had led a regular infantry unit; now he had only these one hundred and twenty artillerymen without their cannons, yet he had to deal with hundreds of dismounted armored cavalry closing in for hand-to-hand combat!

In the Ming army's order of battle, if a bowman's ability in close combat was the ceiling for an ordinary soldier, then an arquebusier's or artilleryman's close-combat ability was the floor tile of the entire army.

Whenever it came to crossing blades with the enemy, they were basically material that would collapse at the first touch.

This had little to do with soldier quality or training regulations; it was purely a matter of troop type, because during at least two stages of their military careers, they would be deliberately selected into this mold.

First, at the initial recruitment, any general would teach according to aptitude — the strong and powerful were given bows and arrows, the weak and feeble were given firearms — to guarantee the lethality of his shooters.

After the army's pay and provisions had run short for a long time, a second or even third redistribution would take place, and the rule remained the same: those who could draw a strong bow still drew a strong bow; those who could not draw a strong bow were switched to firearms.

So when Yang Qi saw several hundred cavalry charging out of the gunsmoke, in his heart he had already accepted the reality that the line before him would be broken through and that he would die a violent death.

There was nothing in this battle that he could change.

He had merely been sent by the Grand Marshal to accompany the artillerymen in their operations; though his rank was high, he was not an officer with an actual command post, and even if he gave an order, the company commander and squad leaders leading the troops at the front were under no obligation to obey.

In truth, he was nothing more than a staff officer who relied on his military experience to help the low-ranking frontline officers understand the central command's orders.

Even in frontline combat, he could not provide the fighting strength expected of a Regional Commander; a substantive Regional Commander would at least have a dozen or even several dozen well-equipped bodyguards at his side who could serve as an elite squad to plug gaps — he had no bodyguards, and at best he himself was just a high-grade soldier.

And standing inside the formation, he had nowhere to flee; his family was still in Xining City, and if he withdrew to the central command tent without authorization, Liu the Lion would certainly cut him down with one stroke.

At the very start of the battle, Yang Qi had already run through these calculations of gain and loss in his mind, and in the end only four words described his state of mind: resign himself to fate.

But as soon as the two sides clashed, the expression of Yang Qi, who stood behind the line gripping his battle sword ready to enforce discipline, gradually changed… At first, it matched what he had imagined.

When the enemy surged into the breach, several dozen long pikes were snapped by the warhorses; the artillery company commander at the front was immediately bowled over by a cavalry lance, his company banner was also broken, and the hastily assembled formation was thrown into disorder.

The front line then descended into a chaotic melee.

But the collapse-at-first-touch scene Yang Qi had anticipated did not appear; on the contrary, the artillerymen were far more composed and cool-headed than he was.

Although the line was falling back, the shattered formation was completing its reorganization and layering in the course of this retreating, step-by-step melee.

The soldiers, each fighting on his own, first sought out in the fray the officers with small flags on their helmets; Yang Qi knew those men were squad leaders, courage chiefs, and fire chiefs, but he had never considered those men to be officers.

Those were merely assets left to the army from Liu Chengzong's early days as a great bandit in northern Shaanxi — in truth they were no different from ordinary soldiers, and even cooks had been mixed in among them.

But relying on them, the soldiers spontaneously formed more than twenty small teams of two, three, or even four or five men; these men might never have been under each other's command before, yet at this moment they spontaneously completed the reorganization of the army's grassroots chain of command.

A few courage chiefs, once they had one or two soldiers beside them, stopped retreating and tried to steady the line, but the enemy surged in like a tide and swallowed up those few men of bloody valor in the blink of an eye, and the battle line continued to be pushed backward.

Yet the courage chiefs' desperate, life-throwing-away fighting was not in vain; the fire chiefs and standard-bearers had already completed their organization behind them and laid out a second, more solid battle line.

Most importantly, a company commander named Sun Sanliu took over for the fallen company commander, led the company's several drummers and horn-blowers and eight squad leaders carrying jingal muskets on their shoulders, and withdrew to a position in front of Yang Qi; the sound of small drums rose again on the front line, and the jingals were being loaded.

Only at this moment did Yang Qi realize that, although Liu Chengzong's wagon camp had been thrown together on the spot and its fighting strength was far inferior to a standard Ming army wagon camp, the Marshal's Headquarters artillerymen seemed to be especially proficient at close combat.

The high fighting spirit of the grassroots soldiers gave him a pill of reassurance; as long as they did not collapse at first touch, this battle still had a chance.

His spirits roused, Yang Qi then scanned the battlefield; he should not have looked — as soon as he saw that the friendly forces on both the left and right flanks near the artillery position had each sent two squads forward to reinforce, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end in fright, and he hurriedly spread his arms and shouted at the top of his lungs: "Everyone back to your own positions, no reinforcements!"

Yang Qi knew the artillery position was in grave danger; even if these hundred-odd officers and men fought to the death, they might not be able to keep the surging enemy outside the line.

The slightest misstep, and the enemy would break through the formation at the wagon camp's southeast corner — this directly concerned his own life and the safety of his family.

But even so, the defending troops arrayed on both flanks could not come to reinforce, because the width of the artillery position was not great; even if the enemy attacked in, no more than a hundred-odd men could be engaged at the same time.

As long as they could hold this breach, even if one corner was shaved off, it still would not affect the entire wagon-fort battle line.

Breaking a formation is a process of tearing open a breach; since it is a process, it will not stop — there is only a successful outcome or an unsuccessful one.

Once the southeast corner was smashed through, the breach would naturally expand to the eastern and southern defense lines; enemy soldiers who could not fit into the battle line would widen the front, and the pressure would immediately spread to both flanks.

One hole is easy to patch; holes everywhere… cannot be patched.

Therefore Yang Qi was exceptionally clear that at this moment he could only wait for the central-army reinforcements Liu Chengzong would send from behind him; he absolutely must not draw soldiers from the two flanks.

But as for reinforcements, the wagon camp's manpower was stretched to the limit; with the camp under attack from three sides right now, the central command tent probably had no spare strength to send reinforcements to the artillery position either.

Life and death hung in the balance; whether the deadlock could be broken still depended on the cavalry force outside.

He had just thought of reinforcements when a messenger came running from the rear; Yang Qi was full of anticipation, but to his surprise, the messenger had come only to convey a reminder to beware of the enemy charging out of the gunsmoke.

What damned timeliness is this!

"Though Yang Qi is a defeated general, I can still understand military music; by the time you run over here, we'd all be long dead!"

After saying this, Yang Qi pressed down on his battle sword and told the messenger: "Have the Grand Marshal send me ten bodyguards. If the battle turns against us, this Yang can still step up to the line — go, quickly!"

The words had barely left his mouth when Yang Qi inadvertently turned his head to look toward the command tent and saw white smoke rising from there; this could not help but remind him of the night he had been surrounded, when Liu Chengzong had released those wailing, howling barbarians outside the army's formation.

He thought to himself, what is this — before fighting to the death, the Grand Marshal still wants to invite a shaman to perform a ritual first?

The first messenger had just swung himself onto his horse when the second messenger already arrived, dismounted, handed over a bundle of fire arrows, cupped his fists, and said: "General Yang, the Marshal asks, how long can the artillerymen hold? The Marshal also says, if you cannot hold, fire the rockets and fall back behind the layered line; the Marshal's bodyguards can fight for one ke."

Yang Qi nodded and said: "Please report back to the Grand Marshal: the company commander has fallen in battle; Company Commander Sun Sanliu is leading the troops in resisting the enemy and should be able to hold for a short while. Tell the Grand Marshal to pay close attention to the east and south flanks… The smoke, what's going on?"

"General need not be overly concerned; it's a fire the Marshal lit."

Liu the Lion had set up several dozen large cauldrons in front of the command tent and was stewing a meat-and-sauce soup.

If any side could not hold, his bodyguards would go into the melee wearing cotton jackets underneath, thirty jin of chainmail in the middle, and forty jin of cloth-faced iron armor on the outside; even if they held for one ke without dying, upon returning, the bodyguards would effectively be a temporary loss of manpower for the next two hours.

They absolutely could not do without drinking some salty broth.

Liu Chengzong did not pay excessive attention to the artillery position at the southeast corner, because both the south and east faces of the army's formation were in critical condition; although they were still in the exchange-of-fire stage, the Khoshut forces circling around would from time to time send a cavalry unit to make a charging feint, and he dared not let down his guard.

Any clear-eyed man could see that those cavalry units were only making false charges during lulls in the fire, but no one could guarantee that the next one would still be a false charge — it might very well be a real collision.

Even more critical was that Khoshut cavalry force that had circled around to the south.

The thing Liu Chengzu had worried about most had happened: that was indeed a surprise force dispatched by the Oirat commander; they had no intention of charging the formation, but halted far off, two li away, directly south of the army's formation, like a hawk poised to strike.

Wei Qian'er, who was stationed with his troops outside the formation to the west, had wanted to lead his cavalry out to drive them off, but Liu Chengzong had called him back with a flag signal.

Rather than sending Wei Qian'er to drive them off, Liu Chengzong preferred to bear the cost of the risk and keep a hidden card in his hand.

If Wei Qian'er chased the enemy cavalry too far and something unexpected happened, Liu Chengzong would be left with nothing at all.

So even as the battlefield raged fiercely, a mixed Han-Mongol cavalry force sat idle on each of the western and southern sides, watching the show, separated by two or three li and staring at each other without moving.

As the dismounted armored riders drove deeper into the formation, the follow-up thousand-man herder corps also slammed into the southeast of Liu Chengzong's wagon camp.

Only this time they advanced in a deep column; once the vanguard linked up with the elite troops, the follow-up forces immediately fanned out to both flanks, threatening not just the artillery position but also enveloping both the eastern flank of the southern formation and the southern flank of the eastern formation, trying to widen the breach.

But their elite vanguard found it very hard to push deeper into the position, because the artillerymen's jingals had finished reloading. Across a breach barely twenty paces wide, terrifying gunshots rang out from time to time, filling the heavily armored, unstoppable Khoshut vanguard elites with panic.

The squad commander, a man called Sun Sanliu, fired his jingal with vicious cunning.

This hundred-man artillery company was equipped with ten jingals. After the initial chaotic melee, only eight squad leaders had managed to retreat into the formation with their jingals to reload. At first, the loaded jingals were fired from men's shoulders, but Sun Sanliu found the results poor.

In this packed crowd, at such close range, it should have been the ideal battlefield for jingals. But these Khoshut elite soldiers all wore mail and four-mirror armor. A jingal could hardly achieve the result of dropping four or five men with one shot; one shot could only drop one man, at most wounding the man behind him.

Sun Sanliu was very dissatisfied with this outcome. He decided to shoot people's feet.

Although the artillery's three thin ranks were at constant risk of being broken through, the depth of three ranks of soldiers was less than the length of a jingal. Placing the jingal on the ground, the gunner lay prone behind the line, just able to reach from behind the line to the front.

The Baghatur Darkhan sent to the front by the State Preceptor Khan had taken a mace blow to the head. Protected by his helmet, he was only a bit dazed and had withdrawn some ten paces from the front line. Surrounded by his own soldiers, he watched them break into the enemy formation.

The battlefield situation had already made him beam with delight. Breaking the formation and killing his way into the enemy's center — after the battle, the State Preceptor Khan would surely promote him to Uijing Darkhan at the very least.

But just then, two bangs, one left and one right, rang out at the front and shattered his beautiful dream.

With a thunderous bang, gunpowder smoke drifted up from the ground. When that shot came, the Darkhan felt nothing much, only that the subordinates he had charging the line had suddenly thinned by a layer.

The biggest problem was that although they were fighting dismounted, they were all wearing cavalry armor, which meant their legs and feet were not well protected in foot combat.

The Marshal's Manor soldiers were the same, because lamellar armor and cloth-faced iron armor differ in form between infantry and cavalry.

Heavy infantry armor usually took the form of a surcoat reaching to the feet, one piece from top to bottom, called full harness. If not front-buttoned, the opening was on the right side, and the armor plates from armpit to hip on both sides could be fully packed in.

Heavy cavalry armor, on the other hand, was divided into upper and lower pieces. The armored skirt was split front and back, and its length stopped three cun past the knee. The upper armor also had a few fewer plates under the ribs compared to infantry armor.

Because cavalrymen crouch with bent knees on horseback, an overly long armored skirt trips the feet. Fully packed underarm plates would, when mounted, push up into the armpits above and chafe the hips below, making it hard to stay low.

This was also why cavalry armor had accessories like groin guards, armpit guards, waist guards, and hanging leg guards.

The Khoshut heavy cavalry had groin guards, armpit guards, and waist guards, but no hanging leg guards. Their armor simply had not accounted much for dismounted foot combat.

So when a jingal's eight pellets sprayed out in a small fan and swept across the attackers' lower body, a dozen or so men were either kneeling on the ground or hugging their legs and rolling all over.

Then the Han artillerymen pressing forward, gripping long spears and goose-quill sabers, poked here and stabbed there. Where stabbing really wouldn't work, they brought out the golden melon maces, avoiding the large plates of the four-mirror armor and whacking at the mail-protected spots — clang clang, a few blows, the armor was fine, the man was gone.

The elite fierce warriors caught in the sudden attack had not yet reacted before the battle line was pushed back several paces again. The men behind hurriedly pressed forward once more, only to hear two more gunshots coming from underfoot.

Liu Chengzong in the rear did not know Sun Sanliu's tactics, but he could see that the battle line at the southeast artillery position had suddenly lurched forward two segments.

This greatly eased his mind. If the southeast was not a big problem, then the only problem left was that cavalry force roaming outside. By now, the scattered stragglers on the western formation had been annihilated, and his army still had two sides unused.

"Tell Huang Shengxiao, don't bother moving the heavy cannons either. Open a feigned weakness on the south side and lure that cavalry into attacking."

Liu Shizi spoke as he donned his armor. The guards beside him helped arrange his gear. He gazed eastward and said, "They should be tired. Inflict a round of slaughter on the enemy, and we'll sleep well tonight."

The order reached the south side, and Huang Shengxiao understood immediately. The four company commanders on the left wing of the southern horizontal line were already engaged with the herder soldiers attacking the artillery position.

Even so, Huang Shengxiao still drew three squads from the right wing and sent them to support Sun Sanliu at the artillery position.

The moment his men moved, the situation changed at once. That cavalry force roaming outside grew restless, but because they were still threatened by Wei Qian'er, they barely stayed in place at their camp.

Just then, they saw Wei Qian'er's cavalry suddenly rush northward in a whirlwind.

After a brief hesitation, this three-thousand-strong cavalry force left five hundred riders as a reserve, and the remaining host swarmed toward the south side of the wagon camp to reinforce the all-out assault on the battlefield.

The State Preceptor Khan's hidden surprise force on the outer line was gone.

What greeted them were Huang Shengxiao's twelve heavy cannons, releasing thousands of projectiles at a hundred paces and plowing dense, fan-shaped cracks across the Gobi battlefield.

At the same time, Wei Qian'er and Zuo Guangxian's force of over four thousand riders circled the formation from west to north, forming nearly a hundred charging wedge formations, and like a wolf pack charged at the enemy besieging the wagon formation to the north.

The thousand-plus defenders on the west side of the wagon formation, led by He Huchen and Han Shiyou, also mounted their horses, charged out from the formation, circled southward, and struck the flank of the enemy attacking the south side.

Attack and defense had reversed.

Liu Chengzong, fully arrayed in double-layered armor, stood at the center of the formation. The high, piercing wail of suona horns and the rumbling of war drums rose behind him at the same time. The interlocked four-sided formation burst open from the west, like a colossal crimson python coiled on the Gobi suddenly lashing its body, opening its blood-drenched maw at an enemy twice its size — a serpent swallowing an elephant.

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Good evening!