Chapter 464: Cavalry Lances

On the day Suzhou Mobile Corps Commander Zhao Zhirui led his troops to Golden Buddha Temple Fort, the moisture above the snowy mountains finally steamed into a light rain that sprinkled over the oasis.

The cold winds of the frontier had yet to recede, yet both banks of the Quicksand River were already veiled in misty rain and apricot blossoms. The impregnable Golden Buddha Temple Fort showed no signs of having endured a fierce assault — only the gold-panning miners along the Quicksand River had vanished without a trace, leaving the temple less bustling than in days past.

This was no Jiangnan mist-and-rain scene; even the apricots planted at the frontier bore a name called Li Guang.

In the sparse, drizzling rain, two thousand six hundred Suzhou frontier troops, having force-marched eighty li, stood amid a sea of apricot blossoms in the desert oasis. The cold on their armor made them shiver uncontrollably, and the great army banners, soaked through by the rain, drooped heavily under the overcast sky.

Zhao Zhirui realized he had been deceived.

Mobile Corps Commander was a core rank among Ming senior officers, with a well-established promotion system.

Generally speaking, county magistrate and Defense Commander were the ideal official posts an ordinary man could reach in civil or military careers — those depended on ability. But to climb higher, merit alone was not enough; it depended on luck.

After all, what the land of China never lacked was talent. A single Pei County had propped up the vast Han Empire. If a family held a funeral and set out five tables, the cart-driver, the pig-butcher, the funeral horn-blower, the jail warden, the street peddler — they all ate and drank as usual, never imagining that the fool bragging beside them would become a god of war in a chaotic age.

What people lack most is the chance to be tempered.

Zhao Zhirui was a fortunate man. Over the past dozen or so years, he had been given ample chances to be tempered — serving as Defense Commander in Shaanxi, taking up the post of Skirmish General on the Xuan–Da defense line in Shanxi, repeatedly earning merit in battle, and ultimately obtaining the high military rank of Suzhou Mobile Corps Commander.

As a qualified senior officer, he understood just how thorny the situation facing Suzhou was.

In truth, the requests for reinforcements from Jiayu Pass to the west and Golden Buddha Temple Fort to the east had reached Zhao Zhirui at the same time. The reason he chose to rush to Golden Buddha Temple was to eliminate the worry of an internal–external collusion at his rear.

He hoped for a quick battle and swift resolution to quell the bandit rebellion inside the pass, then to swing his army west to relieve Jiayu Pass — to avoid his troops being bottled up inside the pass, caught between advance and retreat.

The Defense Commander of Golden Buddha Temple Fort rode out to meet him, tumbled from the saddle, and reported: "General, three shichen ago, the enemy used two hundred cavalry to trick open Red Temple Fort. Then five to six thousand infantry and cavalry crossed the Quicksand River and came this way. Your humble subordinate hastily lit the beacon fires. The enemy surrounded the fort and called for surrender for half a shichen, then plundered the surrounding area for a spell. Just as the light rain began, they seized the gold-panning workers and led their army northward."

The roving bandits were fighting him with mobile warfare — this was exactly what Zhao Zhirui least wanted to see. "What of their troop strength, weapons, formations, and discipline?"

"Over a thousand crack cavalry and several hundred elite infantry. Their battle formations were strict and orderly, their weapons and equipment all top-quality goods. The mounted troops carried rows of Lightning Lances, and the infantry's clothing and armor looked especially terrifying — covered in blood and riddled with holes, as if stripped from corpses. As for discipline… your humble subordinate finds it hard to say."

Zhao Zhirui nodded slowly. This was largely within his expectations. As early as the day before yesterday, military intelligence from the east had reached him via relay reports — it was no secret that the Qinghai rebel army's false general Zhang Tianlin had routed Bai Guang'en.

The equipment of Bai Guang'en's elite battalion was all top-grade; anyone who saw it would drool with envy. Who would have thought that before the roving bandits they wouldn't last a single round, sent fleeing in utter disarray by rocket fire.

He asked, "Discipline hard to say — what does that mean?"

"Their military discipline seems… capricious. If you say their discipline is good, whenever they spot a wealthy household along the way, they barge right in, making no distinction between good and evil. When they leave, they take everything clean — not even a flour sack left behind. Water vats they can't carry away, they smash to pieces."

As the Defense Commander spoke, the scene of wealthy households lining up at the fort to borrow water vats after Zhang Tianlin left floated before his eyes. Then he shook his head and said, "But if you say their discipline is bad, these soldiers, wherever they marched, never entered the homes of common folk. On the east bank of the Quicksand River, three rebels were stripped naked, beheaded, and put on public display, their crimes written on their bodies."

"Deserters?"

The Defense Commander shook his head. "Not deserters. One was a Centurion in charge of supplies. He bought ten jin of fine ink — should have paid five taels, but only gave one tael of silver. Executed for forced purchase. The other two were soldiers. One slaughtered a commoner's plow ox; the other robbed a commoner of a single gold earring. Both were beheaded and displayed."

Zhao Zhirui stepped back, frowning for a long moment, then said with righteous indignation: "They actually pay when they buy things — hoodwinking the people's hearts!"

Putting himself in their shoes, Zhao Zhirui's own army also paid for what they bought, and anyone who dared slaughter a plow ox would likewise be executed. They were the local garrison, after all. But if they fought their way into Qinghai, that would be different — once inside enemy territory, who bothered with such niceties?

It was obvious: this time, the Qinghai Marshal's Headquarters was launching a major incursion not for plunder — they meant to put down roots here.

On that point alone, he estimated the enemy had at least twenty thousand troops outside the pass.

The enemy's large troop strength beyond the pass was both bad and good. If it were only ten thousand troops, Suzhou might well be dragged into a protracted war, because the Marshal's Headquarters had the capacity to supply ten thousand troops over the long term.

But if their strength exceeded twenty thousand, there was no need to worry about the fighting lasting half a year or more. Given the scale of the Qinghai Marshal's Headquarters, they lacked the ability to sustain the enormous supply lines for twenty thousand troops across a thousand-li front. Hold out for two or three months, and once their army grew weary and their coffers empty, they would withdraw on their own.

Correspondingly, the more troops they had and the shorter the time window, the greater the pressure on the Jiayu Pass garrison.

He ordered relay cavalry to fan out northward while saying to the Golden Buddha Temple Defense Commander, "Those corpses — are they still hanging on the east side of the Quicksand River? Send men at once to take them down. Is that something the common people should see?"

Watching the Defense Commander dispatch troops to the Quicksand River's east bank to bury the bodies, Zhao Zhirui sighed inwardly. Bandits with such military discipline, and capable of flexible tactics — they would likely be very hard to deal with.

He cursed under his breath: "Damn these thugs, coming into my defense zone to play the virtuous army."

With that, the Suzhou Battalion frontier troops under Zhao Zhirui turned and advanced north, tracking Zhang Tianlin's traces through relay cavalry and Suzhou's defense network of a watchtower every five li, a beacon tower every ten li, and a fort every thirty li.

In truth, matters were not as complicated as Zhao Zhirui imagined. Zhang Tianlin's unit indeed had excellent discipline, but his moral standards and political awareness were not that lofty — executing soldiers was not done for the purpose of hoodwinking hearts.

It was simply because those three had violated military orders.

He had only a single battalion under his command, deep in enemy territory, where the slightest misstep could mean total annihilation. He also had Wang Ziyong's men with him — those men included few professional soldiers. Military orders had to be enforced strictly just to keep the army's organization intact.

Of the three officers and soldiers executed, the first was purely for corruption. He needed to write proclamations for Gansu and sent men to purchase ink and brushes. Given five taels, he embezzled four — it made Zhang Tianlin so angry his liver ached.

As for the other two: the one who stole the earring — his cause of death was not robbing a commoner, but robbing without authorization. The one who killed the plow ox — his cause of death was not killing the ox either.

Military law forbidding the slaughter of plow oxen was one thing. But such a huge ox, and he secretly killed it — he couldn't finish eating it and dared not tell anyone else. So he took a knife and cut five and a half jin of beef from the ox's leg, refusing to share with his comrades. Wasting food — that was another matter entirely.

To put it bluntly, with the army in Liu Chengzong's hands, supplies of all kinds were sufficient, so being a righteous, benevolent force was no problem. Zhang Tianlin knew that deep in enemy territory, he didn't have that kind of ability. If driven to the last resort, making the army turn savage to accomplish the mission was a measure of last resort too.

But even if brutal and savage, it had to be organized, disciplined brutality — not disorderly breakdown of military discipline. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to fight at all.

Zhang Tianlin was not avoiding Zhao Zhirui. He had simply seen two beacon fires to the north calling for aid, and so he led his troops, volunteering himself, to go be reinforcements.

They were all frontier troops — who couldn't read beacon signals?

Two beacon fires to the north clearly meant a force of over five hundred but under a thousand was attacking a fort. Whoever was assaulting the stronghold on the northern border wall — they were Zhang Tianlin's friendly forces.

Zhang Tianlin and Wang Ziyong set out on the afternoon of the eighth day of the third month. Over two nights and one day, plundering as they went, they crossed one hundred twenty li. Near West Inn Fort, they sacked the Suzhou Guard's pasturelands, then set fire to Two Mountain Pass Camp. On the afternoon of the tenth, driving herds of cattle and sheep, they appeared near the Jinta Temple Fort, which had called for aid.

Jinta Temple was a place outside the northern border wall of Suzhou.

Inside the border wall lay Two Mountain Pass Camp. Suzhou Mobile Corps Commander Zhao Zhirui had led his troops out from there, marching all the way south, then turning east to reach Golden Buddha Temple Fort, eighty li away.

Zhang Tianlin, on the other hand, had marched all the way north from Golden Buddha Temple Fort, then turned west to Two Mountain Pass Camp. Finding the camp empty, he took everything that could be taken, set a fire to burn it clean, then went north out through the border wall to Jinta Temple.

This stretch of border wall, due to too many gaps along the way, was a border wall in name only. The Great Wall itself crossed the North River and Mandarin Duck Lake, leaving gaps. The area inside and outside the wall along the river's western stretch was all desert. Though the terrain was not exactly flat, there were too many sand hollows. When the wind blew from beyond the pass, the sand would often bury some section of the wall.

Zhang Tianlin led his army out of the pass without disturbing anyone. A hundred or so sandbags laid at the base of the wall, and men, horses, and carts — even little lambs — could hop their way up onto the ramparts.

The force besieging Jinta Temple Fort from the outside was Sechen Taiji. Wholeheartedly and single-mindedly, he had assembled a mixed cavalry unit of a thousand men and received orders from Liu Chengzong to break through into Suzhou via the northern route. When he reached Jinta Temple, he was dumbfounded.

His seven hundred-odd cavalry consisted of one hundred twenty armored cavalry, two hundred forty medium cavalry, and four hundred light cavalry, with fifteen hundred warhorses. Their shock and impact power was immense. Relying on his knowledge of the roads and flaunting the white banner of the Mongol Khan, he had been swaggering about beyond the pass with extreme arrogance.

As it happened, luck was against him. He did know the roads, but he had never been close to the border wall on this side of Jinta Temple.

Deserts come in two kinds: one called gobi, the other called sand hollows. The former is coarse gravel close to a hard road surface — cavalry passes over it with ease. Much of the land beyond Jiayu Pass is this kind of terrain.

The latter, sand hollows, is fine sand — the ground soft and undulating. Men and horses alike have a hard time moving across sand hollows.

The seventy or eighty li of land near Suzhou's northern border wall is gobi, but the thirty or forty li right next to the wall are mostly sand hollows.

In this kind of terrain, Sechen Taiji's armored cavalry — he couldn't charge!

There was no other way. He had to first try to take Jinta Temple Fort outside the border wall. Sechen Taiji had seven hundred crack troops; the fort held only two hundred thirty frontier soldiers. But this matter had a kind of bloodline suppression: when Ming frontier troops faced Mongol cavalry, the Mongols were psychologically half a head shorter from the start.

And the garrison of Jinta Temple Fort, far from panicking, was practically itching for a fight.

Over seven hundred Mongol soldiers, more than fifteen hundred warhorses — with sandy hollows all around, once the fighting starts, nobody's running anywhere. To the Gansu border troops who'd long endured hardship, what did that mean?

New Year's come early!

The brothers in the fort were already counting on their fingers: assuming every cannonball was spent and every grain of powder burned, then in the melee half their own side died and the enemy was wiped out — the survivors would average six heads and twelve horses apiece.

Before the Sechen Taiji had even come within five li of the fort, the whole pack of brutes inside were already stirred to action, one after another pouring out their entrepreneurial zeal to the garrison commander of Golden Pagoda Temple Fort, Li Jun'en.

It was only because Li Jun'en was a steady man, worried that with the Regional Commander leading the army out on campaign the border wall defenses were left empty, that he reined in his tough soldiers' desire to haul their little cannons out of the fort and fight in the open field.

Li Jun'en had entrepreneurial passion too. His idea was to first lure the Mongol troops into attacking the fort, wait until they couldn't take it, then charge out — safe and sound.

But this made the Sechen Taiji very unhappy.

Forget attacking the fort — they'd barely reached two li outside it when two little soldiers lying in ambush behind a sand dune blew several men sky-high with a landmine. A dozen or so light cavalry rode off to chase those two soldiers, and as they neared the fort, Frankish cannons boomed and hammered them.

By the time the army deployed one li outside the fort and the soldiers dismounted, intending to fill in the trench, they were shelled again by stone throwers and fire cannons, which spooked the warhorses so badly that one soldier was literally trampled to death.

The Sechen Taiji gave up. He pulled his troops back from the siege and switched to bribery, telling the defenders, I've got lambs over here — surrender and we'll eat together.

The defenders paid him no mind at all, thinking to themselves, once we finish you off, you little Tartar, what won't be ours?

They held out stubbornly like this for two days, both sides' hearts pounding. The Sechen Taiji was thinking, if they don't come out and fight me in the field soon, it's going to delay military operations. Inside the fort, Li Jun'en was thinking, the Regional Commander went south and still hasn't returned — could something have gone wrong inside the border?

Right at this critical moment, Zhang Tianlin arrived.

A mighty host of over five thousand men came over the Great Wall, scaring the Sechen Taiji so badly he started packing his valuables to flee. The fort's garrison, their morale soaring, charged out in one furious wave.

Two hundred thirty men — they left only one to watch the gate.

When Li Jun'en was captured, his face was full of bitter resentment. Who could have imagined that the men charging out from inside the Great Wall would turn out to be enemies?

When the Sechen Taiji led his troops back, all he saw was the Golden Pagoda Temple Fort garrison being stripped of their weapons. Before he could even feel pleased, he discovered that Zhang Tianlin's soldiers weren't just taking the Golden Pagoda Temple garrison's armor and weapons — a pack of wolf-like, tiger-like veterans from the Marshal's Manor were disarming his men too.

He saw Zhang Tianlin throw an arm around him, sighing with deep feeling: "The Grand Marshal's foresight is truly divine. I just knew the Marshal would send someone over here to link up with me. I'll accept the warhorses and armor. Tell the Marshal that Zhang Tianlin will not fail his mission."

The Sechen Taiji's Chinese was excellent — clear and precise. But now, flustered, he stammered, a complete Awang reincarnation, opening his mouth and producing only: "Aba aba."

After a long pause, the Sechen Taiji finally managed: "No, the Marshal ordered me to lead troops across the sands into Su..."

Before he could finish, Zhang Tianlin shot him a murderous glare. But only for an instant — his expression softened into something gentle and serene, full of Buddha-like radiance. Smiling and shaking his head, he stepped aside: "No, no, Taiji, your Chinese still needs work. I, Guo Tianxing, am a crude man — I honestly can't understand a word you're saying."

"The scouting riders have been caught up from behind. I can't keep you company now — I'll treat you to drinks after the battle."

With that, Zhang Tianlin swung himself up onto a warhorse and gave the order to his left and right: "Field Battle Left Brigade, Left Battalion — lead horses and don armor!"

At the command, amid the chaotic sandy hollows, over three thousand riders began pulling on other men's armor and leading other men's warhorses, searching for their positions.

Zhang Tianlin's voice rang out: "You've all got horses now. Grip your cavalry lances tight and follow me to deal with that arrogant Suzhou Regional Commander on our tail who doesn't know the height of heaven or the depth of earth!"

They had come fast and left even faster. In the gradually receding column, the Sechen Taiji stood outside Golden Pagoda Temple Fort, looking left, then right, and spotted Wang Ziyong standing beside him. Wang Ziyong's troops looked much like his own — none of them had any decent equipment on them.

"Chief Wang, this..."

Wang Ziyong sighed and waved a hand. "His army — everything except the soldiers themselves is looted. Relax, Taiji. Once he wins, we'll have equipment. It's fine. Guo Tianxing can fight. Let's slaughter a sheep and eat."

The Sechen Taiji took off his helmet, scratched his head in bewilderment, and asked again: "But I didn't see them with any cavalry lances. My armored horse troop — our lances are all still here. They didn't take them."

Wang Ziyong, in the middle of looking for a sheep, froze. He turned back toward the desert stretching beyond sight and shook his head. "They've got them. Guo Tianxing says a fire lance is his cavalry lance. Zhang Yide had an eighteen-foot serpent spear; Zhang Tianlin has an eighteen-zhang serpent spear."