Chapter 446: Lanzhou Regional Commander

Shi Xiang stood atop the Xichuan Gate tower and gazed west. Beyond the bustling western suburb, lights still blazed brilliantly.

Yet now, everywhere was filled with shouting people and neighing horses. Citizens who had gone out for a night excursion were fleeing back toward the city gate in a panic, cramming into a crush on Wo Bridge. Further in the distance, all was pitch black. The sight made Shi Xiang burn with desperate anxiety.

The dozen or so trusted officers who had followed him up onto Xichuan Gate had already surrounded him nervously, casting hostile glances left and right as they pressed him in hushed voices about when to make their move.

They were clearly itching to turn their blades inward.

Shi Xiang could keep his nerve better than others. He assigned a few trusted men to keep an eye on Battalion Commander Han Ying, who had also ascended the wall, and continued staring into the pitch-black distance beyond the western suburb.

He had to see the Marshal's headquarters army and gauge the strength of both sides before he could give the order to defect... Until then, even if it was just an act, he had to make his trusted brothers put on a show of defending the city.

Because in this city, he was in the minority.

Those dead set on following him were still the same few dozen banner troops from when they had first imitated the crime. Since taking up the post of Regional Commander, he had intended to cultivate some trusted men in the Lanzhou Battalion, but time had been too short. Besides, before a mutiny arrived, it was ultimately hard to tell the loyal from the treacherous.

Colluding with bandits was not something that could be done openly.

Shi Xiang knew he had only one chance: to let the Marshal's headquarters army outside the city enter, while ensuring they could overcome the defending troops inside.

The hardest part of this process was sweeping others along to build momentum.

Shi Xiang and his trusted men were each nursing their own secret schemes. Battalion Commander Zhang Ying gripped the battlements and pointed west, turning his head to shout, "General, the bandits have passed Xichuan!"

Earlier, the firelight outside the city had merged with the lantern light, a scattering of sparks indistinct to the eye. But now, with the troops pressing to within ten li of the city, the riders on horseback raised their torches high, arranging their ranks into lines of fiery dragons. They galloped through the homes, lumberyards, and orchards of Lanzhou's western outskirts, illuminating everything around them as bright as day.

Then the cavalry crossed the river.

Even from several li away, Shi Xiang seemed to hear the sound of warhorses shattering thin ice and wading across the water. The Marshal's headquarters cavalry split into dozens of fiery serpents, treating the winding river as nothing at all. They bypassed the commoners jammed on both banks of Wo Bridge, hugged their horses' manes, and plunged into the river, only to burst forth from the water again in the blink of an eye.

Just then, from the battalion barracks of the Thousand-Household Station on Dragon Tail Mountain southwest of the city, two to three hundred troops charged out, racing down the mountain road to attack the Marshal's headquarters soldiers.

The firelight of the cavalry that had crossed the river converged, then instantly split into two columns. One column charged south along Dragon Tail Mountain to meet and drive off that banner force; the other swept north outside the city to scatter several groups of troops assembling there.

Shi Xiang saw another dozen or so riders bearing torches surround Wo Bridge and actually drive the commoners back. His heart seized with urgency. Han Ying, on the other hand, who was also atop the wall, felt somewhat relieved at this sight and said, "General, the bandits have driven the commoners away. There's no danger of them driving civilians to storm the city, but I fear they will attack soon."

Shi Xiang glanced at him and said nothing. He would have much preferred the Marshal's headquarters army to drive the commoners right to the city walls, so he could conveniently open the gates and let the Marshal's army in. That would be the end of it.

But now, with the commoners driven off, the next step would be setting up artillery positions, and cannonballs in the night had no eyes.

This was no one else's fault — it was Yang Qi's idea.

The commander of the army the Marshal's headquarters had dispatched toward Lanzhou was Wang Wenxiu, who was currently stationed at Xigu with three thousand central-army troops. The rear support was Liu Chengyun, still on the west bank of the Yellow River. The frontline vanguard officers were Luo Rucai, Li Wanqing, and Yang Chengzu, each leading over a thousand soldiers, accompanied by Staff Officer Yang Qi.

Yang Qi knew both the people and the terrain of Lanzhou well, and his background as a surrendered officer gave him a fairly accurate grasp of Shi Xiang's mindset.

As soon as Liu Chengzong's troop-deployment order had reached them, Luo, Li, and Yang's inclination had been to take advantage of the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth of the first month, sweep up the commoners outside the city, and charge right in. With Shi Xiang acting as their inside agent, they had nothing to fear.

But Yang Qi thought otherwise. He had noticed that the Marshal's headquarters' direct-line generals all had a boldness that was somewhat frightening. Sometimes this habit was a good thing, but at other times it showed far too little regard for human life.

People's hearts shift in a thousand ways, and the battlefield changes in the blink of an eye. The Grand Marshal had given them such high authority, with ample troops and supplies, entrusting the entire Lanzhou front to them.

If, through overconfidence, Shi Xiang inside the city refused to act as an inside agent and they charged in only to suffer a defeat — in Yang Qi's view, executing them would not be the least bit unjust.

Yang Qi posed a single rhetorical question that stopped the three hotheads eager to storm Lanzhou and win a great victory dead in their tracks: "Shi Xiang is straddling the wall. How can the three generals be certain he will definitely act as the inside agent?"

With a towering city wall between them, who could be certain?

"If Shi Xiang acts as the inside agent, the three generals can naturally drive straight in. If he does not, we seize everything outside the western suburb, push heavy cannons onto Wo Bridge, and blast the battlements apart day and night to storm the western suburb."

In Yang Qi's view, the once-and-for-all way to take Lanzhou was to storm the western suburb head-on, because this was a concentric city with an inner citadel and outer wall.

Inside was the perfectly square, six-li-circumference Prince Su's palace city; outside was the eighteen-li-circumference Lanzhou outer wall, twisting and turning everywhere. Even if Shi Xiang let them in through Xichuan Gate, beyond Charcoal Market Street, the palace city's west gate, Yongning Gate, would still be waiting for them.

No matter what, a hard assault would have to be fought somewhere — if not outside the city, then inside it. In short, they had to fight until men lost the will to fight and soldiers lost the heart for battle, before they could pierce through four layers of city walls and fully seize Lanzhou.

Yang Qi believed that taking this city would ultimately require a real, hands-on battle.

At this very moment, Li Wanqing had already led his troops to capture the large plateau on Dragon Tail Mountain west of the city. From a single li away, he held the high ground and overlooked Lanzhou's western wall.

He laughed. "Such a fine spot — it'd be a real waste not to build a fort and beacon tower here... Set up the cannons west of the river. Let's go test whether Commander Shi will open the gates or not."

The Marshal's headquarters army was not in the slightest hurry. On the city wall, Shi Xiang was frantic as if his backside were on fire, pacing restlessly as he watched the troops outside the city race back and forth along both banks of the Agan River.

This distance was already within the maximum range of the cannons on the wall. Battalion Commander Han Ying repeatedly requested to open fire, but Shi Xiang kept suppressing him and refused to allow it.

At that moment, another battalion commander in the city, Zhang Yunqi, also sent a man over to ask whether he should march out from camp.

None of the Lanzhou Battalion's three battalion commanders — Han Ying, Zhang Yunqi, and Li Zude — were Shi Xiang's trusted men, and Li Zude was particularly formidable in battle.

Before the battle, Zhang Yunqi had received orders from Shi Xiang to gather his troops and hold the camp. He considered himself the city's reserve force. Now, that battalion of a thousand men was fully assembled in camp, ready to march — they could don their armor and take the field at a moment's notice.

As for Li Zude, by clan lineage he belonged to a remote branch of the Longxi Li family. His uncle was Li Chengxian, the Regional Commander who had died in battle in Liaodong during the Liuhe campaign in the fifth year of the Tianqi reign. Li Zude had many veterans with rich combat experience around him.

It was precisely because Li Zude's troops were so combat-effective that Shi Xiang had sent orders before the battle for him to lead his men to fight fires. After all, during the Lantern Festival, thousands upon thousands of lanterns were lit inside and outside the city. The city had long-standing contingency plans for firefighting, and firefighting equipment was well stocked.

Once they picked up firefighting tools, they couldn't carry weapons.

Axes and saws — those were for tearing down houses to stop the spread of fire.

The most common close-quarters weapon was called a mada, which looked much like a mop: an eight-chi wooden pole tied with two jin of hemp rope, dipped in wet mud and used to beat out flames.

The ranged weapon was called a jitong. Operated by two or three men, it was usually made of bamboo, with a pull rod and piston inside — essentially a giant water gun. Equipped with a water tank and hose, it drew water and stored it in the cylinder. Pushing the rod back hard could spray water over twenty meters, used to douse fires on roof eaves.

The jitong was a friend to dual-use military-civilian talent. During the Luanzhou campaign in the second year of the Chongzhen reign — the battle where Yang Yanchang led his cultist alliance to fill the moat — Cao Wenzhao had used one of these to suck up fire oil and burn down a gate tower, then personally carried a spear and was the first to scale the wall, killing five Tartars.

Shi Xiang was deathly afraid that the firefighting would wrap up too quickly, allowing Li Zude's men to take up weapons and don their armor. If that happened, he might not be able to open the city gates after all.

As luck would have it, exactly what he feared came to pass. Li Zude sent a man up the wall to report that Prince Su and his kinsmen had already fled the city. The Commandant Huang Ming, who had been attending the evening banquet inside the city, had gathered the prince's palace guard and the city's banner troops — several hundred men — and was now helping to fight the fires.

This news sent a chill down the back of Shi Xiang's neck.

Huang Ming had previously been a battalion commander in the Hezhou Battalion. When Liu Chengzong had raided Lintao Prefecture the previous autumn, Huang Ming had led five hundred fire-cart troops outside the city and had a brief encounter with Zhang Tianlin. He had been the only general in the city at the time who dared to march out. After the battle, he was transferred to the Commandant's office but had yet to receive a substantive appointment.

In Shi Xiang's eyes, both Li Zude and Huang Ming were fierce generals who dared to fight and charge. If those two led troops up onto the wall, even if he could open the gates, he would probably have to leave his life here.

Just then, Shi Xiang finally saw cavalry below the wall approaching within a hundred paces. Battalion Commander Han Ying rushed over, clasped his fist, and said, "General, the enemy is within a hundred-odd paces. The falconets are ready — just give the word to fire a shot at them and boost morale!"

Shi Xiang glanced behind Han Ying, shook his head slightly, and said slowly, "Battalion Commander Han, don't let the brothers throw their lives away for nothing. Open the gates."

"Huh?"

Han Ying froze for a moment. He raised his head and met Shi Xiang's expression, puzzled. "What does the general mean?"

"Prince Su has already fled. This city cannot be held." Shi Xiang looked at Han Ying with utter seriousness and said, "Open the gates."

Han Ying caught on. Realizing that Shi Xiang intended to open the gates and surrender, he erupted in fury and cursed, "Shame on your ancestors!"

With that, he reached for his waist, grabbed the hilt of his saber, and moved to draw it and cleave Shi Xiang in two. But to his surprise, he was a step too slow. Just as he raised his blade, an official-issue wrist-cutting knife had already been driven into his ribs from behind, slipping in along the gap between bones.

The torches on the city wall flickered. Han Ying stood atop the wall, sword raised, as if struck by a body-freezing spell. Shi Xiang was clearly within arm's reach, yet that blade simply would not chop down. All he could do was futilely force out a wheezing, bellows-like rasp of indrawn breath from his throat.

He turned his head with great effort, only to feel the sky spin and his vision darken. In the flickering light and shadow of the torches, someone kept saying "sorry" without pausing their hands, swinging a golden mace to smash the trusted aides behind him to the ground.

Another man remained silent, still gripping his waist saber, holding the posture of having just slit the throat of the guard before him, waiting for the household soldier to slowly collapse.

Han Ying turned his head back. Bloody froth sprayed uncontrollably from his mouth with his exhale, yet he still strained every last ounce of strength, trying to thrust his raised sword at Shi Xiang.

Shi Xiang said nothing, merely taking a step back. Han Ying staggered and stumbled to the ground. His eyes, refusing to close, gradually lost their luster. The last sound he heard, amidst the chaotic shouts of slaughter erupting from the city wall, was the grinding of iron chains as the thousand-jin iron gate was finally pulled up.

The Marshal's manor cavalry, fierce as wolves and tigers, immediately charged through the city gate. The mutinying defenders on the wall, seeing the cause was lost, threw down their weapons one after another. Xiuchuan Gate and the western city wall were swiftly occupied by the troops under Li Wanqing's command.

Company after company of Marshal's manor infantry and cavalry advanced into the city. The defenders who hadn't managed to board the wall scattered and fled in all directions, spreading the news of the city's fall within.

Battalion Commander Zhang Yunqi, who had been waiting in camp ready to scale the walls for battle, was horrified by the news of the gate's opening. His troops had not yet set out when the Marshal's manor cavalry already charged into Tan Market Street, bottling them up tightly inside the camp.

Before the soldiers in the camp could set up their muskets and cannons, unified shouts from the Marshal's troops outside the camp, declaring that Prince Su had already fled, rang out. Under these calls for surrender, the soldiers looked at each other in dismay. Zhang Yunqi's order to fire the muskets and cannons went unanswered.

Faced with the choice between executing a few gunners to assert authority and surrendering without resistance, Zhang Yunqi, seeing little chance of victory, chose the latter... The soldiers in the camp's reaction this time fully demonstrated they were still well-trained, fine warriors; their movements in discarding armor and removing helmets were perfectly uniform.

Outside the camp, Shi Xiang, who had led the Marshal's manor cavalry to surround it, finally breathed a genuine sigh of relief as he watched the soldiers inside surrender. It was at this moment that Luo Rucai and Li Wanqing, having left Yang Chengzu with troops at Longwei Flat to coordinate with the follow-up forces, led their own troops fully into the city.

Shi Xiang did not know Luo Rucai, but he was very familiar with Li Wanqing, who guarded the East Pass. He quickly went forward to greet them, saying, "Shooting-Collapse-Heaven, why are you only entering the city now? Two battalion commander units have already surrendered on my orders. Only Li Zude and Huang Ming's units remain in the city, fighting the fires."

Luo Rucai chimed in with a grin, "This Lanzhou Camp of yours is impressive, damn it, they have four battalion commanders?"

Shi Xiang shook his head. "That one's a Regional Commander. He's gathered the Prince of Su's manor guard and banner troops who didn't evacuate the city. Neither of those two are easy to deal with; I wasn't confident in persuading them to surrender."

Shi Xiang had thought up this whole line of reasoning back when he dispatched Li Zude to fight the fires. He didn't know what kind of treatment Liu Chengzong would give him in the future, guessing it probably wouldn't be too stingy, but ultimately, no one could say for sure before the official appointment.

Therefore, he had to first get a grip on the troops of the two battalion commanders, to stabilize the manpower of these two battalion commander units. At the very least, he could preserve the authority of one battalion commander. If he could continue as a Regional Commander, he would; if not, he would at least have Zhang Yunqi to form a mutual defense pact with.

If he could also persuade Li Zude to surrender, then the original core force of their entire camp would be preserved.

"Huang Ming, I know of him. He was in Hezhou Camp before."

Li Wanqing nodded and turned to Luo Rucai, saying, "When the Marshal was raiding Lintao and Zhang Wu had Lanzhou City surrounded, this Huang Ming was still a battalion commander in Hezhou Camp back then. He led the Firearms Battalion in and out right under Zhang Wu's nose. He's got nerves of steel."

Luo Rucai's smile was cruel. "I'd like to see just how big his nerves are."

Just as they were still discussing how to deal with Li Zude, a fast horse came galloping from ahead. It was Li Wanqing's trusted aide, who knelt before the horse and reported: "General, Battalion Commander Li Zude in the city has defected. Huang Ming fled east out of the city. Li Zude has occupied Prince Su's City and requests the General to come to the city wall to parley."

The three men looked at each other. Shi Xiang had spoken beforehand, which made Luo Rucai and Li Wanqing exchange a glance and nod slightly, both believing this was a feigned surrender.

Luo Rucai said, "Shooting-Collapse-Heaven, it seems he wants to trick you into going over there to eat cannonballs."

Li Wanqing asked his trusted aide, "What does he want to ask about from the wall?"

"He says he has two thousand defenders, holding a strong city. If the Grand Marshal treats him with sincerity and appoints him Lanzhou Regional Commander, he will offer the Prince's City to the Grand Marshal with both hands."

Luo Rucai and Li Wanqing simultaneously looked at Shi Xiang. They saw Shi Xiang's eyebrows suddenly shoot up as he gave a mirthless smile and said, "Even the descendant of a loyal subject has surrendered. This shows that Heaven's mandate and the people's hearts are both with the Grand Marshal."

Inside his heart, a tiny figure was cursing furiously: The ambition of a wolf! You, with your thick brows and big eyes, want my Lanzhou Regional Commander post too!

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Good evening!