Chapter 495: Stout Fellows West of the Pass

At the seventh ke of the mao hour.

Yang Jiamo had already withdrawn to the wall-access ramp below the city. Cannonballs shrieked overhead against the parapet from time to time. A messenger still holding his post on the wall shouted, "Grand Marshal, the last trench has been filled!"

Yang Jiamo, standing on the wall-access ramp, said nothing. Beside him, Vice Regional Commander Wang Xingshan, his face pale beneath his fish-scale armor, said urgently, "Grand Marshal, next they'll fill the moat — I can still lead troops out to form ranks!"

Half a month ago, Wang Xingshan had been struck by a stray heavy-musket ball from the Marshal's Army while forming ranks outside the city. Fortunately, it was a spent ball that had already shattered on impact, leaving only a small wound in his abdomen — not fatal.

The lead fragments had since been removed by the army surgeon. He had been recuperating in bed inside the city, but a wounded man could hardly endure Liu Chengzong firing over a thousand shells in less than two shichen.

More than four hundred seven-catty shells had crashed into the city alone. Wang Xingshan figured that if he kept lying on his cot, he'd be crushed sooner or later. So he had someone help him don his armor, grabbed a crutch, and headed to the front line.

Yang Jiamo gave him a long, deep look. He understood the weight of Wang Xingshan's offer to form ranks outside the city. He shook his head. "Not yet."

Being a general is a profession that goes against human nature. The Yang family had overseen Liangzhou's military affairs for generations, and Yang Jiamo himself had grown up in the ranks. The generals of Ganzhou and Liangzhou were his uncles and brothers; those soldiers were men he saw day and night. But that was before war came.

Once war arrives, a commander has no daily bonds of affection, no obligations to uncles and brothers — only unit after unit of troops, mission after mission.

A man has only one life, and only one chance.

As soon as he finished speaking, Ganzhou Commander Luo Junjie, who was supporting Wang Xingshan, chimed in, "Grand Marshal Wang, rest easy and hold the city. Leading troops out — that's for men like us. We'll make sure those reckless bandits know: Ganzhou may have surrendered, but the dynasty still has stout fellows west of the pass!"

Yang Jiamo nodded slowly and clapped Luo Junjie on the shoulder, accepting the request for battle. "The Luo family of Ganzhou — all of them hard-boned."

Luo Junjie's father was Luo Yiguan. Facing Nurhaci's besieging army, he had defended Xiping Fortress to the death with three thousand men. Every relief force was defeated. When Li Yongfang urged him to surrender, he refused with righteous defiance. His gunpowder spent, he bowed twice to the north, drew his sword, and cut his own throat. His last words: Your servant's strength is spent.

Hearing Yang Jiamo's praise, Luo Junjie smiled calmly. A man dies only once, after all. He clasped his fists. "Grand Marshal, I shall go prepare to sally forth."

The troops designated to sally from the city quickly mustered inside the barbicans of the west and south gates. Meanwhile, on the parapets, batch after batch of door planks, window shutters, bricks, stones, and earth-filled sacks were hauled up by soldiers. Prefabricated battle-sheds were hoisted directly onto the walls to serve as makeshift fortifications where the battlements had been destroyed.

When the bell of the drum-and-clock tower at the very center of Gaotai City struck the chen hour, the battlefield seemed to fall into a brief lull. The general-cannons and Frankish breech-loaders on the walls fell silent; the Marshal Army's thousand-catty cannons arrayed five li beyond the city likewise ceased fire.

Only the ditch-filling crews on the far bank of the moat still toiled under the cover of wooden mantlets. In this momentary pause, Yang Jiamo risked ascending the wall. From the southwest corner tower, already collapsed by shelling, he surveyed the enemy situation on both flanks.

He saw Mongol cavalry outside the west gate dragging earth sacks and branches to fill the moat. To the south, over a hundred artillerymen were pushing gun carriages, closing in on the city wall.

Clearly, this was merely the calm before the storm. Those eighteen cannons had ceased lobbing shells; they were advancing to point-blank range. From what Yang Jiamo knew of their gunnery, their accuracy would rise dramatically within one li.

For Yang Jiamo, however, this was perfect timing. The real contest between attacker and defender would only truly begin once the Marshal's Army closed on the moat.

Wang Xingshan, who had just lain down at the foot of the wall, was roused and temporarily assigned to defend the west gate. Yang Jiamo expected that once the Mongols there filled the moat, they would seize the chance to scale the wall and cause havoc.

But outside the west gate, the terrain offered no room to deploy large siege engines. The moat and outer trench could be filled — but how do you fill paddy fields? The small wheels of siege equipment would bog down in the fields; they'd cover less than two li in three shichen.

As for the northeast flank, Yang Jiamo left only four centurions to divide the defense. The east side was likewise paddy fields — the Marshal's Army hadn't even bothered filling trenches there — and to the north lay the Hei River.

The assault force on the far bank of the moat massed ever more densely, a spectacular sight in Yang Jiamo's eyes.

The entire assault force formed three echelons. At the very front were twenty-six mantlet-carts, each suspending a thick wooden mantlet seven or eight chi square, with spare ropes, beams, and replacement mantlet-boards piled on the carts.

Laborers and soldiers pushed two-wheeled carts in the shadow of those enormous mantlet-boards, filling the moat. They held no formation, each man laboring under the cover of mantlets and equipment. Still, Yang Jiamo could gauge from the scale that this contingent was roughly thirty centurion units — half laborers, half soldiers.

The second echelon comprised only fifteen or sixteen hundred-man companies, seemingly the main assault force. They were equipped with eight assault towers, eight ladder-carts, over a dozen spare long ladders, and an artillery contingent of another four hundred men.

The third echelon was thirty hundred-man companies dispersed five li back, their armor and uniforms the most vivid. Yang Jiamo could even make out the Regional Commander's grand Marshal's banner there — Liu Chengzong was with them.

Assault towers were siege vehicles built slightly taller than the city wall — wooden firing platforms that could carry a small number of soldiers to shoot down at the defenders from a height advantage. When close to the wall, they could also drop planks onto the parapet for soldiers to storm across.

For now, the Marshal Army's assault towers were still crawling forward without soldiers aboard, but through his telescope Yang Jiamo could already see many firelances laid out on the top deck — very, very long firelances.

These two echelons numbered nearly four thousand soldiers, roughly matching the defenders inside the city still capable of fighting. Yang Jiamo was not afraid of them. But as he swept his telescope across the field, a chill rose from the depths of his heart.

Those laborers filling the moat — they were all common folk of Gaotai. A large portion of them were clearly banner troops and military dependents from the Gaotai Battalion, their faded, washed-out mandarin-duck battle coats still on their backs.

The soldiers pushing the siege equipment were, to a man, outfitted in standard Ming army gear. Their attire was nothing like that of the Marshal's Headquarters troops arrayed five li away.

This was most obvious among the officers. Ming officers wore two-piece cloth-faced armor, generally in red or blue.

The Marshal Army's officers, on the other hand — two words: stinking rich.

Strictly speaking, the style of their armor was the same as the Ming army's — also cloth-faced. But they didn't wear it. It was all slung over mules or tossed onto carts.

What they wore were leather-trimmed padded coats and trousers. The cuffs, hems, collar trims, helmets, and neck-guards were all fuzzy — they looked very warm. Over the padded coat and trousers they all wore chainmail. Yang Jiamo couldn't fathom where Liu Chengzong had gotten so much chainmail.

At night, Yang Jiamo had also seen them wearing long, half-sleeved surcoats — neither cloth nor cotton. They looked like felt but far finer. Yet deep down he was loath to guess cashmere... a cashmere surcoat of that size would weigh at least five catties; the yarn alone would be worth five taels of silver. A slightly heavier one, counting the weaver's labor, would run over ten taels.

Yang Jiamo, a full Regional Commander, wore imperial-gift brocade and Luzhou silk in three layers — inner, interlining, and outer. By market price, the whole outfit was worth just three taels of silver. Even counting the embroidery, it didn't reach ten.

So what — a petty separatist regime in He-Huang run by a rebel ringleader, and its squad leaders dress better than a Grand Ming Regional Commander?

But that was not why Yang Jiamo's heart turned cold. What truly chilled him was that these laborers and soldiers outside the city, the very men filling Gaotai's moat, were Gaotai's own military households. Just last year, they had probably been dredging silt from that same moat.

And the soldiers in the first wave of the assault on Gaotai were the Suzhou Corps — the very Suzhou Corps under Yang Jiamo, the Gansu Regional Commander.

He was not the only one baffled. On the far bank of the moat, directing the laborers filling the trench, Suzhou Battalion Vice Commander Hu Zhishen was equally baffled. He was wondering why Regional Commander Yang up on the wall wouldn't just surrender.

All this fighting, and the ones dying are our own people. Not to mention, Gansu, Gansu — Suzhou has already surrendered, Ganzhou has already surrendered. You, a Regional Commander of Liangzhou origin, still holding this Gaotai City — what are you even trying to prove?

As far as he was concerned, Yang Jiamo ought to hurry back to his hometown. Of course, whether Grand Marshal Liu behind him would actually let him get back was another matter.

But baffled as he was, Hu Zhishen had no objection to his troops being the first wave against Gaotai. Two months ago, right after Suzhou surrendered, Liu Chengzong had made it plain: once the Suzhou Battalion was reorganized, it would be sent to the front to fight.

Hu Zhishen had been on tenterhooks the whole way here. He had long since claimed the title of Suzhou Garrison's Little Good-for-Nothing. His sole achievement had been, from a position of strength, persuading the utterly spent Mobile Corps Commander Ding Guodong and Chiliarch Mi Layin to surrender — those two were the real hard cases of Suzhou.

And then there was the Marshal's Headquarters-appointed Suzhou Battalion Deputy Vice Commander, Bee-Tail Needle. What kind of creature was that? Hu Zhishen had heard that Bee-Tail Needle was a commoner-army man who had surrendered to the Ming, then surrendered to the Marshal's Headquarters — the man who had led five hundred cavalry to smash the Oirat Tatar horde's ten-thousand-man formation.

The most absurd part? Those five hundred men had damn well split into two columns!

If he obeyed the Marshal's Headquarters, Ding Guodong and Mi Layin were surely sharpening their knives to butcher him. If he didn't obey the Marshal's Headquarters, Bee-Tail Needle had exactly — no more, no less — five hundred riders under his command. Assassinating the Khan of State might require splitting into two columns; taking out a useless little snack like him did not.

The three-thousand-odd men of the Suzhou Battalion had wound their way here from Suzhou Garrison, every commander nursing his own schemes — until they met Liu Chengzong beneath the walls of Gaotai.

Truth be told, Liu Chengzong's personal prowess was nothing special. He too feared assassination by surrendered troops and officers. The first time he met the Suzhou Battalion soldiers, he wouldn't even let them bring weapons to the assembly.

But he was sincere. He knew you couldn't talk ideals to men with empty stomachs.

He had two months' marching rations for the entire battalion brought over at once. Then he publicly summoned the thirty centurions forward and awarded each hundred-man company a pig and a sheep, along with a cartload of soybeans so they could sprout their own bean sprouts for vegetables.

After that, Liu Chengzong pointed toward the engineers' camp. "Siege engines — built. Light and heavy cannons — prepared. We've come a long way and brought no silver. Gaotai City... taking a centurion unit as an example: first to scale the wall, reward of one hundred twenty Hequ fine horses; second to scale, reward of one hundred twenty Mongol fine horses; third to scale, reward of one hundred twenty Guanzhong donkeys. Take the city, and the whole battalion gets three mu of land per man — every man gets a share."

Amid the cheering and acclaim of the entire battalion, Hu Zhishen felt at ease. What he had dreaded most was Liu Chengzong assembling the whole battalion to talk about the court's lack of virtue. That was correct — and useless — nonsense. Soldiers were all common folk, and common folk were the most down-to-earth. As long as you let us live comfortably, whoever you say lacks virtue, lacks virtue.

You let us eat our fill, dress warm, and have a wife — we'll carry the scaling ladders and fight the reigning dynasty. You let us hold our heads high and lord it over others — then we'll climb those ladders and fight the previous dynasty.

Hu Zhishen's suspended heart whooshed right back into his belly. Adviser Dong Ju, the elderly former Suzhou Garrison Instructor, patted him on the shoulder and stroked his beard — the meaning was clear: you're not going to die.

The old instructor was a scholar; he saw through Liu Chengzong's ploy clearly. The rewards mentioned not a single word about officers above centurion. With the ranks united in purpose, those in the middle couldn't stir even if they wanted to.

What the soldiers saw was Liu Chengzong being very generous. What the officers saw was Liu Chengzong being very stingy. So if an officer who already harbored thoughts of rebellion stepped forward to incite the soldiers to mutiny, the soldiers would much rather hand their officer's head to the Grand Marshal in exchange for a reward.

Never mind that the city defender is Yang Jiamo — even if Zhu Youjian himself were holding the walls, Suzhou Camp would still attack all the same.

From within Gaotai City rang the bell for the hour of Si.

Eighteen thousand-jin cannons were slowly pushed forward to the second line. The Bee-Tail Needle unit's artillery company, mustering forty lion cannons, also drew near the moat. The thousand-jin cannons, now in their prepared defensive positions, opened fire on the temporary fortifications atop the city wall from a distance of one li.

Yet the general cannons and Frankish breech-loaders on the wall all fell silent at this moment. The artillery ceased bombarding the assaulting troops, as if quietly waiting for the Marshal's army to finish filling in the moat.

Under this atmosphere, the Suzhou Camp soldiers grew ever more diligent. Shielded by wooden mantlets, they continuously poured sand and gravel into the moat in alternating waves, then laid out pontoon bridges across the soft, wet ground where the moat had been filled, steadily pressing toward the opposite bank.

Even though the cannons on the wall no longer bombarded them, the Suzhou army's mantlet carts still extended their cantilevered canopies over the moat. Behind them, the Bee-Tail Needle artillerymen pushed their forty nimble, lightweight lion cannons into formation along the mantlet carts' flanks and fired in alternating volleys at the rammed-earth parapet on the far bank.

One-pound iron balls hammered the three-foot-thick rammed-earth parapet on the opposite bank in dense salvos, sending brick and stone flying and clods of earth bursting apart.

One after another, tall assault wagons were slowly hauled to the edge of the moat. As company after company of soldiers climbed aboard the wagons, the defenders on the wall could no longer play dead. They were forced to fire from behind the inner wall, using Frankish-style general cannons loaded with canister shot.

The grapeshot fell like rain, so heavy that the Suzhou musketeers who had boarded the assault wagons could not lift their heads. They could only crouch behind the wooden palisades, listening as Tiger Guard Camp officers explained the differences between heavy muskets, heavy arquebuses, and bird guns, while seizing any chance to exploit their slight height advantage and fire lead balls that could pierce both man and horse at the city's defenders.

The effect, however, was mediocre — because intelligence that the Marshal's army had moved its thousand-jin cannons within one-li range had been grasped by Yang Jiamo. He had long since ordered the wall artillery to pull back behind the inner wall, forbidding them to fire unless absolutely necessary. The defending troops, too, were all sheltering on the horse-ramps and foot-ramps behind the inner wall.

Only three squads of soldiers remained behind in the ruins of the three gate towers — already blasted full of holes — and the east and west corner towers. These men carried small gushing-bead cannons and barbarian-destroyer cannons, hiding in the shadows of the gate towers, awaiting Yang Jiamo's command.

It was not until a great cheer rose from below the wall — the moat had been filled to create several roads three zhang wide, and one assault wagon and scaling-ladder cart after another was advancing on the wall — that Yang Jiamo finally waved his hand and gave the order, sending his household retainers to wave signal flags on the horse-ramps and foot-ramps.

One by one, the Frankish breech-loaders on the wall received the signal and began firing canister shot in rapid volleys to suppress the assault wagons. Even though mantlets were propped up along the battlements, the gushing-bead cannon and barbarian-destroyer cannon squads hidden in the gate towers still sprayed their shot at the assault wagons.

At the same time, fully armed soldiers carrying shields and defensive equipment rushed up the horse-ramps and foot-ramps onto the wall in company after company. Rank after rank of troops armed with three-eyed guns and bird guns deployed along the wall, and instead used the mantlets as cover to fire at the soldiers below from the flanks, also hurling down ignited poison-smoke bombs.

Behind them, oil tanks were set up along the battlements one after another. Shielded by their comrades, soldiers drew up naphtha with fire-tubes, then pressed the cylinder sleeves down onto the assault wagons just a few paces away, spraying fierce fire-oil onto the wooden wagons.

Then, one after another, clay pots filled with fire-oil were ignited and hurled at the assault wagons by the defenders.

Clusters of flame burst violently across the siege wagons. After Liu Chengzong had conquered half of Gansu, petroleum weapons for military use had at last revealed their savage face on the Gansu battlefield, transforming into towering flames that devoured one tall siege engine after another.

Good evening!