Chapter 476: Luring the Enemy

Thirty li outside Clearwater Fort, tents stretched from earth to sky.

In the commander's central tent, Eje, the twelve-year-old adopted son, stood guard before the entrance holding a goose-quill saber, staring entranced at the stone figurines advancing in two columns on the map.

Liu Chengzong, meanwhile, stared entranced at Eje. Though in name he had many wives, he had never shared a bed with Eje's birth mother, Sutai, because he understood perfectly: you could only keep one — the child or the mother.

If he took Sutai, he had to kill Eje; if he kept Eje, he had to keep Sutai at a distance. Otherwise, the boy could never be truly raised as his own.

In Liu the Lion's memory, first there was Regent Zhang Juzheng, then Regent Dorgon — two formidable men, neither of whom ever managed to control a widow and her orphan.

Eje was not an emperor, but within the Marshal's headquarters his significance was much like a little emperor's: he was the gilded signboard of the Mongol Khagan's heir. The headquarters, of course, relied on Liu Chengzong's ability — but Zhang Juzheng's regency had relied on Zhang Juzheng's personal ability too.

After Zhang Juzheng died, the Wanli Emperor stripped him of his bestowed seal-scrolls and four generations of honorific titles, proclaimed his crimes to the realm, and said that opening his coffin and dismembering his corpse was only grudgingly spared — that is failing to control a widow and her orphan. Dorgon thought a single mother raising a child was no great problem; after he died, even his grave mound was dug up.

What neither of those two men could pull off, Liu Chengzong had no desire to challenge. So he kept Sutai provided for, kept her at a respectful distance, and left it at that.

Eje turned his head and suddenly asked, "Father, why advance on two routes and let the enemy know about it?"

Liu Chengzong came back to himself, smiled faintly, took the goose-quill saber from Eje's hands, and pointed at the spot on the map marking High Terrace Camel City. "Eje, we want to advance into the Hexi Corridor. The enemy is blocking the passage, digging trenches and raising ramparts, keeping our army from gaining an inch. What should we do?"

Eje, his little face framed by a small red Mongol cap, lifted his chin. "Smash through them!"

"Admirable courage." Liu Chengzong offered that encouragement, then countered: "The enemy has dug trenches and raised ramparts — that is the premise. A frontal assault would inflict heavy, needless casualties on our army. What if we can't smash through?"

"Can't smash through?"

Eje set his fierce little face and pondered for a moment, then lifted his head again to look at Liu Chengzong and gave an answer that defied all expectation: "If we can't smash through, then we die."

Liu the Lion nearly gave him a thumbs-up. Truly the son of Ligdan Khan. Baffled, he asked, "You've never studied military tactics before?"

"I have. My father said this is called 'put yourself in the death ground and then survive.'"

Liu Chengzong was speechless, then waved his hand. "Don't just learn a phrase and throw it around carelessly. That's 'eager to put your own army in the death ground and be done with it.'"

In truth, he knew Eje hadn't said anything terribly wrong, because in the final year of the Khan's life, he had led the entire Chahar tribe first to charge Yulin, then to cut across Ningxia, then to strike Gansu — reducing the once great and prosperous Chahar to a tiny remnant tribe of barely fifty thousand, men and women, young and old.

And under the conditions of that time, those actions had nothing wrong with them. He pierced three defense zones — that was how he became the last Khan. If he hadn't pierced into Ming territory to plunder, he couldn't even have been the last Khan.

But clearly, right now Liu Chengzong was not here to pierce the front lines and plunder food. He faced Eje and said, "War has no fairness. One side always holds the advantage. At this very moment, the enemy has high ramparts and deep moats — so the high ground favors them."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong raised a hand and pointed at his own chest. "What is called 'first secure victory, then do battle' is the commander's duty: to secure the advantageous position for the army. Only then do the officers and men stake their lives and fight to win."

Once Eje nodded, dazed and half-comprehending, Liu Chengzong shifted tack. "Back to your original question. The Sunzi Art of War says: 'Thus when I wish to give battle, even if the enemy is behind high ramparts and deep moats, they cannot avoid engaging me — because I attack what they must rescue.' To put it simply: make the enemy do what they do not want to do."

"Advancing on two routes, north and south — Mo Yujing's brigade on the northern route advancing to the Black River to build a dam, Gao Yingdeng's battalion on the southern route pressing close along the mountain foot — is all to lure the enemy."

Eje racked his brains for a term he had learned at the academy and blurted out: "A feint?"

"The boy hasn't wasted his time reading."

The word "feint" delighted Liu the Lion. He thought to himself: it's one thing that Eje looks a bit too refined, but if his mind were like his birth father's — nothing in his head but "charge" — then leading troops out on the fifteenth of the first month, by the second of the second month at the latest he'd be entering Eight-Point City to keep his father company for eternity.

That he could come up with the word "feint" showed that the instructors at the Marshal's headquarters' New City Academy were not eating their pay for nothing.

Eje was good at thinking. Actually, rather than good at thinking, it was more that he had seen and heard a great deal. He asked, "But what if the enemy doesn't believe it?"

"Doesn't believe it?"

Liu Chengzong shook his head. Eje was still young, after all. He understood neither war, nor an army in a state of war, nor what was called a quantum superposition state.

"If they don't believe it, then it's no longer a feint. Mo Yujing builds a dam and blocks the river; Gao Yingdeng cuts the enemy's supply line. Attack what they must rescue, that's all."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong crouched down to look at the map and used the scabbard of the goose-quill saber to point toward the upper reaches of the Black River to the north.

His plan was simple: lure the government troops out of their painstakingly constructed trenches and ramparts, and force them to abandon their strategy of holding firm behind walls and come out for a field battle.

For the Ming army, when two forces of four thousand men each appeared before them — one composed of Han, the other of Mongols — if they could only send troops to intercept one, they would likely choose to finish off the Mongols as quickly as possible, then turn and mass their forces to deal with the Han troops.

So the real intended battlefield in Liu Chengzong's mind was the upper Black River. There were mountains, gobi, and desert there, but few farmlands and few irrigation channels — terrain where the Marshal's headquarters troops, unfamiliar with the region, could still bring their skills to bear.

As for Gao Yingdeng's force, its sole purpose was to pin down the enemy, to prevent them from sending overwhelming numbers against Mo Yujing. After all, of the four thousand men under Mo Yujing, over three thousand were Mongols, with only a few hundred veteran border troops.

A feint was not a suicide mission — it was a lure and a pin. Liu Chengzong had no confidence that Mo Yujing could handle an equal number of Ming troops.

After all, genuine Ming border troops, however much their equipment held them back, were professionally tailored for beating up Mongol armies — their efficiency was on a level the Marshal's headquarters could not even approach.

The Marshal's headquarters army was benchmarked against border troops skilled at encampment and fortification, and also had to assault passes and breach forts. Considering the relationship between army transport capacity and marching speed, Liu Chengzong had therefore, by design, eliminated company-level light cannons and the individual three-eyed guns — fast-firing but slightly short-ranged.

In other words, Liu Chengzong's supply lines were strained, and his entire army's armament exuded the poverty-stricken air of "good steel used only on the blade's edge."

His army did not care about sustained firepower. What it cared about was how many lead balls and iron shot it could send out in a single volley. Armored or not, mounted or not, shield raised or not — if I hit you, you go down, dead or maimed.

And what were the Ming border troops, by comparison?

A single battalion with seventy or eighty cannon of various sizes was considered few. Three-eyed guns and matchlocks formed rotating firing lines, firepower so dense no wind could pass through — to say nothing of curved-fire bursting shells, scattering rockets, lead, iron, and gunpowder flung out like they cost nothing.

The workmanship on these things might not have been that good, but the gap in productive capacity was right there in plain sight. To put it bluntly, even a rocket that had lost its powder charge still outranged a mounted archer.

In a pitched battle against an equal number of nomadic troops, they could utterly knock them senseless.

Of course, due to a lapse in thinking, Liu the Lion, for all his rich military experience, did not get to show off for long in front of his adopted son. One sentence from Eje — "What if the army gets lost?" — stopped him cold.

He never imagined that a twelve-year-old child would be the one to spot his oversight. Mo Yujing had so many Khoshut troops under him, and there was also a Chahar horse unit several hundred strong.

Eje might not understand military matters very well, but he understood his own family's army. What was that saying — "Among any three walking, one must be my teacher"?

Fortunately, the Ming army did not give him trouble. Just as Liu Chengzong stood speechless, the Marshal's headquarters' relay banners were already unfurling across the desert's yellow sands. Frontline intelligence flew a hundred li with the army banners, and in barely two ke, it had traveled from the standoff front to Clearwater Fort.

The sound of rawhide boots with iron-shod soles tramping the covered walkway outside the tent rang out. Liu Chengzong turned his head just as a report arrived. A guard saluted with clasped fists: "Marshal, the front line signals by flag: the enemy has dispatched troops southward."

"Understood."

Different guards had different duties. Liu Chengzong waved the man off to tell the messenger guards to prepare, then frowned and paced inside the command tent, turning the current military situation over in his mind.

He had doubts about the intelligence. He could not figure out why the government troops would ignore the weaker opponent to the north and choose to strike south against Gao Yingdeng's force.

During combat operations, according to the Marshal's headquarters' regulations, every piece of battlefield intelligence was transmitted simultaneously by three methods — called the "Three Couriers."

The First Courier: when the military situation changed, a simple message was sent to the central command at maximum speed. Relay riders spaced one li apart along the line transmitted it by alternating flag signals. It was extremely fast; if the relay riders were sufficient in number and seasoned, they could send a message four hundred li in one shichen.

But its drawback, similar to beacon fires, was that it could not transmit complex information. The longer the distance and the more people involved, the greater the chance that flag signals alone would convey erroneous intelligence.

The Second Courier relied on contracting the relay line: each relay rider fell back to the previous rider's position, passing the message person to person, mouth to mouth. It likewise required considerable manpower but was more accurate and could transmit written letters and verbal messages. However, it was slower — even at top speed, only about eighty li per shichen.

The Third Courier was the most grueling. A trusted guard of the frontline commander had to carry a letter and race to the central command, bearing the most accurate intelligence and the commanding general's clearest thinking. If he could swap horses with the relay riders along the way, all well and good; if not, he had to ride his horse to death. This demanded high quality from the messenger guard and was also prone to mishaps with man or mount. The usual speed was between thirty and sixty li per shichen.

Of course, this was under battlefield conditions where one held the initiative. In the chaos of a melee, intelligence speed could not be calculated this way.

Which meant: when the battle situation changed on a battlefield a hundred li away, by the time Liu Chengzong received the rough intelligence of the First Courier, nearly half a shichen had already passed, and he would still have to wait another half shichen before learning more accurate intelligence.

Liu Chengzong thought for a moment. The forces he currently had at his disposal were four battalions — the Tiger Guard Battalion led by Zhang Tianlin, Feng Rang, Wei Qian'er, and Han Shipan respectively. Given the unreliability of the first victory report, he bent over his desk and wrote several letters, then turned and walked out of the command tent.

Outside the tent, several messenger guards were helping each other fasten the back-banners that marked them as messenger cavalry onto the backs of their cotton armor. Seeing Liu Chengzong emerge, they hurried forward to salute and receive their orders.

Liu Chengzong stepped forward and handed over the letters and tally tokens, instructing them in order: "To Zhang Tianlin: Gaotai has dispatched troops south. Commander Gao's unit is about to engage the enemy. Order his unit to set out immediately and rush to reinforce. They must arrive to coordinate by the morning of the day after tomorrow."

"To Feng Rang, Wei Qian'er, and Han Shipan: Pack and prepare to march; await further orders."

"To Mo Yujing: Gaotai has dispatched troops south. Order him to lead the Khoshut and Chahar battalions south tomorrow, and to strike Gaotai three days from now."

The messenger guards clasped fists in acknowledgment, each vaulting onto horseback and galloping off to their respective battalions.

Immediately, the entire encampment erupted with shouts of men, neighs of horses, and the sound of martial music. Every battalion hurriedly packed gear, carts, and horses, making ready to break camp. A swan-horn blast sounded, and Zhang Tianlin's unit promptly formed ranks and marched out of camp, leading horses and mules as they plunged into the boundless desert.

The central army headquarters struck its tents and, together with the Tiger Guard Battalion, Feng Rang's battalion, and Wei Qian'er's battalion, followed closely behind, slowly advancing eastward. They moved against the flow of scout cavalry in hopes of obtaining accurate intelligence from the front lines as quickly as possible.

In truth, the ideal position for the central army camp should have been in open terrain fifty to sixty li from the front, or in complex terrain twenty to thirty li from the front — close enough that the enemy could not see it, yet close enough to deploy forces in the shortest possible time.

But the terrain between Suzhou and Gaotai was absurd: a stretch of desert cut everything off. If the central army camped in the desert, a single gust of wind at night might well bury them all.

The army had not marched long when the central army's scout cavalry delivered another first victory report concerning Gao Yingdeng's unit's movements. The guard reported: "Marshal, the scout cavalry reports that General Gao's unit has broken camp and is marching east."

"Broken camp?"

That word was very specific. To distinguish marching speed, distance, and position, "breaking camp" and "marching" were two different flag signals. Moreover, if he had been moving east the whole time, the scout cavalry chiliarch on the front line, Ma Xiang, would not have gone to the trouble of sending a scout specifically to deliver this piece of intelligence.

By now, Liu Chengzong was inwardly certain that the earlier scout report about Gaotai's enemy troops moving south had been correct. But immediately, a second doubt welled up in his mind — why had Ma Xiang described Gao Yingdeng's unit as "breaking camp"?

The enemy troops at Gaotai moving south meant they had detected Gao Yingdeng's advancing unit. Yet at precisely that moment, the scouts were telling Liu Chengzong that Gao Yingdeng's unit had just broken camp.

Liu Chengzong could roughly guess why the government army was so determined to hit Gao Yingdeng.

In terms of mission, both Mo Yujing and Gao Yingdeng were tasked with luring the enemy. Clearly, Gao Yingdeng had considered that a full-strength battalion on his side would be too intimidating, and had chosen to split his forces as a luring tactic. That was why the troops in front had already been discovered while the troops behind were still in camp and had not yet broken camp.

The troops had marched no more than twenty li when Scout Cavalry Chiliarch Ma Xiang's second victory report on the Gaotai enemy's movements reached the central army. The relay scouts delivered Ma Xiang's letter informing them of the front-line situation.

Just as Liu Chengzong had deduced, Gao Yingdeng had detached one chiliarch's unit to advance first, deliberately exposing them beyond the scout cavalry's protection. He used standard raid preparations — digging latrine pits, organizing group relief — to lure the enemy, then struck toward Gaotai's left flank with over a thousand cavalry.

Only after the Ming army at Gaotai dispatched over two thousand cavalry south did Gao Yingdeng, bringing up the rear, break camp with the rest of his troops.

Closing the letter, Liu Chengzong, leading his army eastward, was filled with mixed emotions. He was very worried — he had sent Gao Yingdeng to lure the enemy because, deep down, he still thought of Gao Yingdeng as the same fool who had once plunged headlong into He Huchen's routed troops years ago.

He had never imagined that a man changes utterly after a few days apart. This guy with the thick brows and big eyes had learned to play tricks too.

Liu Chengzong was very worried that Gao Yingdeng might turn a luring operation into a war of annihilation — three thousand against two thousand, wiping out this Ming army unit.

If that happened, the Gaotai garrison would absolutely never come out for field battle again. Then they would be forced into a grueling siege and assault. After all, he could not really build a dam and flood the Heihe River basin... never mind whether his conscience could bear it — it was the farming season right now.

This battle would hinge entirely on the talent of the enemy's Vice Commander.

Liu Chengzong's body rose and fell with the saddle. He gazed toward the endless barren desert in the distance, gritted his teeth, and said to the messenger riding beside him: "Tell Huang Shengxiao to cast more cannonballs and prepare to send them to the front!"