Chapter 575: Pocket

Qinzhou Guard.

Atop the west gate tower, Left Liangyu stood at the battlements, dark circles under his eyes, hair disheveled, grinding his teeth. Inside the barbican, columns of soldiers were marshaling and marching out of the city.

The previous night, Zhang Yichuan's troops had crept close to the city under cover of darkness and loosed over thirty fire arrows into it. One of them flew slantwise into the guard yamen and burst right at the entrance of the main hall.

The sound jolted Left Liangyu from his sleep — he snatched the blade beside his pillow, yanked the bedding, and dove under the bed in one fluid motion. When he came to his senses, he was already curled up under the bed wrapped in his quilt, perfectly safe.

This was not the first time Zhang Yichuan had harassed the garrison, and Left Liangyu no longer feared such harassment. Having faced the fire arrows several times now, he felt he had a fair grasp of these explosive rockets: so long as you were not unlucky enough to be blown up directly, they posed very little threat to the troops inside the city.

For setting houses and buildings ablaze, they were inferior to the old-style fire arrows used to spread flames and startle encampments.

Faced with Zhang Yichuan's provocations, Left Liangyu had remained very cool-headed, holding his troops back and forbidding them from sallying out to fight. This bought him precious time to rally the remnants of Deng Qi's Sichuan army and convert them into his own fighting strength.

By now, several days had passed since the report requesting posthumous honors had been sent to the court. Deng Qi's coffin rested in Longzhou, and it seemed the Chongzhen Emperor had no intention of granting him a posthumous promotion. This left the Sichuan soldiers who had fled to Qinzhou even more bewildered — they no longer knew for whom they had been fighting all these years, or what kind of war they had been waging.

Even Left Liangyu was not confident he could keep these Sichuan troops, but to him, it was not really necessary. Was there anywhere under heaven that lacked soldiers? Did he have to cling to these Sichuan men who had not returned home for years?

So this morning, he made a pact with the thirteen hundred-odd Sichuan soldiers in the army: once he linked up with Sichuan Regional Commander Hou Liangzhu, those who wished to go home could follow Hou Liangzhu back. Before that, however, they would fight bravely for Left Liangyu and earn some traveling money for the journey home.

Left Liangyu was not lying, because a patrol report had arrived from the east this morning: enemy traces had been discovered in both Qianyang and Baoji counties to his rear, which meant the Marshal's army had already broken through from Longzhou — he was about to be encircled.

At this moment, Sichuan Regional Commander Hou Liangzhu's nine thousand troops were stationed in Feng County, and the Yunnan relief army under Long Zaitian — ten thousand native and Han soldiers — was also moving from northern Sichuan toward Hanzhong. Hanzhong Prefecture, near Qinzhou, was the only safe direction.

In the undulating hills west of the city, peasant army sentries of Zhang Yichuan's division, realizing that government troops had left the city, began waving their banners.

In truth, very few men in Zhang Yichuan's division could read flag signals, and the banner-bearers themselves did not know how to send them. The real messengers were the young runner boys dashing along the mountain paths. Still, the soldiers holding the flags had to do something once they spotted government troop movements.

"Chief! The government troops have come out of the city!"

By the time the runner boy came panting up the hill, Zhang Yichuan was already standing akimbo on the summit, helmet on and armor buckled. He had a telescope issued by the Marshal's headquarters and had long since seen the city gates swing open and the columns of soldiers advancing. Several orders to form up and prepare for battle had already been sent down.

Precisely because of this, Zhang Yichuan could afford to be utterly carefree on the hilltop. Leisurely, he patted the runner boy on the head. "You got it wrong. They're the rebels — we're the government troops."

These words left the messenger boy dizzy and confused. For one, he could not figure out who were the government troops and who were the bandits. For another, Chief Zhang was being a little too calm.

Left Liangyu now held over five thousand crack troops in his hands, while their Henan Regional Command division had only ten thousand men. In their world, five thousand was clearly greater than ten thousand — greater by several times, even.

As far as the runner boy could recall, Zhang Yichuan used to tremble at the mere mention of Left Liangyu's name, let alone now that Left Liangyu was advancing straight toward them. Under normal circumstances, Zhang Yichuan should have already ordered the army to strike camp and flee. How could he be as calm as he was today?

There was no other reason — Zhang Yichuan felt: I'm not fighting alone!

After days of tirelessly calling out to friends and companions, all his old friends in the mountains had come out. Zhang Yichuan now had the confidence to clash with Left Liangyu.

His old friends included not only those who had once been called the Five Camps of the Chuang Army — Chuang General Li Zicheng, Mixed King Zhang Yingjin, Troubled Times King Guo Yingpin, Scorpion Block Tuo Yangkun — but also the Ge-Left Five Camps: Ge Lieyan He Yilong, Left Gold King He Jin, World-Changing King Liu Xiyao, Troubled Times King Lin Yangcheng, and Old Hui Ma Shouying.

Beyond them, there were also Xihe Regional Commander Li Yangchun and Ningqiang Regional Commander Zhang Zhengqi — two fellows who had discarded their princely titles and styled themselves Regional Commanders, bringing their troops along behind. They had not come out to fight; neither commanded many soldiers, and both Ningqiang and Xihe had always been mixed Han and aboriginal regions, with military farms nearly sufficient for self-sufficiency.

It was simply that the two of them had analyzed the situation and concluded that if they stayed in Ningqiang and Xihe, they would probably get beaten.

With the Marshal's headquarters pushing east in force, the rear was left empty. If Ming troops broke through the defensive line and struck into the rear, they would certainly come to beat them. On the other hand, since the Marshal's rear was empty, if they led their troops and stayed put there, Liu Chengyun back in Lanzhou might well grow suspicious, and then they might get beaten anyway.

At the moment, Li Zicheng was near Zhang Yichuan. The Ge-Left Five Camps, it seemed, had headed straight for Nanzheng County in Hanzhong Prefecture under Ge Lieyan's leadership.

Originally, Chuang King Gao Yingxiang was also going to come out this way, but the passage of their dozen-plus camps' armies had not only eaten every bird and beast along the route clean — even the grass had been gnawed bare by the large livestock. They therefore decided to enter Sichuan via Long'an Prefecture instead and not join the crowd here.

Right now, the five Mobile Corps Commanders of the Henan Regional Command division had set up five camps in the narrow valley, presenting a formidable sight with banners fluttering in array. Zhang Yichuan felt that his side's greatest strength at this moment was sheer numbers — he feared no one.

Left Liangyu did not take Zhang Yichuan seriously at all. He was very familiar with the Chuang Army's Five Camps' tactic of using Chuang blades to launch sudden assaults and break formations.

He thought to himself: the strength of the Chuang blade troops lay in complex terrain, where they could come charging out all over the hills and mountains to shatter a battle formation. On the surface it looked like scattered troops fighting scattered troops, but in reality it was organized troops fighting scattered ones. Beyond that, their camp and formation skills were extremely poor. Therefore, as long as the government army's formation did not break, they could stand on invincible ground.

Winning was also very simple: deny the Chuang blade troops their breakthrough, then grind them down on the spot.

His plan was straightforward: send his capable commanders Luo Dai and Zhou Shifeng, each leading a cavalry detachment, to outflank the enemy via the northern and southern foothills of Maiji Mountain. He himself would lead the main force in a frontal assault, bag this ten-thousand-man army, and scatter them to pieces. Then, in grand style, he would turn and march southeast to link up with Sichuan Regional Commander Hou Liangzhu.

Zhang Yichuan watched as Left Liangyu's army marched out of the city — over three thousand men standing outside the walls, yet in no hurry to attack. Instead, they spread out and began laying out encampments and building field fortifications according to the mountain terrain. The sight left him dumbfounded.

After all, morale was different. When Left Liangyu's government troops left the city and stood outside, so long as they were not marching or fighting, it was as good as resting. But of the five camps under Zhang Yichuan, half were raw recruits, and the rest had no psychological advantage against government troops.

When they formed up outside, they had to keep their nerves taut, terrified of being suddenly raided by the government forces.

Yet at this very moment, Zhang Yichuan had been forced into a corner by the situation — he absolutely could not give the order to withdraw. He could only array his camps several li apart from Left Liangyu and stare at him in a standoff.

By noon, he could bear it no longer. Taking advantage of Left Liangyu's troops fetching water by the river, he dispatched his cavalry to fight a small skirmish along the banks of the Ji River. Left Liangyu promptly sent several dozen roving riders forward to engage.

The results were minor: thirteen of Left Liangyu's water-fetching soldiers died by the river, while eight of the cavalry Zhang Yichuan sent were shot dead. The remaining mounted men, seeing they were no match for Left's roving riders, fled back to their lines.

But Zhang Yichuan was not pleased by the slight advantage gained in this probe. On the contrary, he was deeply worried.

His troops were indeed poor fighters, but Zhang Yichuan still possessed basic military judgment. From this small-scale clash, he could tell that Left Liangyu's construction of field camps outside the city was a pretense — waiting for something was the real purpose. Otherwise, he could have easily committed more troops and expanded his advantage.

Yet even if he racked his brains, he would never have imagined that Left Liangyu, with just over five thousand men, had a battle plan to encircle his ten thousand.

He merely thought Left Liangyu was waiting for reinforcements, and that the act of leaving the city to build camps meant those reinforcements were about to arrive on the battlefield.

Sometimes a wrong judgment does not affect the correctness of the outcome. Since there were government reinforcements nearby, Zhang Yichuan had only one choice: destroy Left Liangyu before those reinforcements arrived.

Almost at the very moment those few dozen cavalry under Left Liangyu returned victorious to camp, gongs and drums sounded in the narrow river valley. The five camps of the Henan Regional Command, already arrayed in formation, immediately struck camp and surged forward in a mighty torrent toward the southern foothills of Maiji Mountain, where Left's army was building its field camp.

Left Liangyu had not expected Zhang Yichuan to be so decisive, and he was genuinely startled. But his troops were well-trained. As war drums thundered and army banners swayed, even before Zhang Yichuan could reach the foot of the mountain, the troops originally scattered across various hilltops had already assembled and formed ranks.

Seeing that the enemy had no advantage of surprise, Left Liangyu quickly weighed the two sides' strengths in his mind and directly ordered the banner officer to wave the white flag, commanding the army to attack on its own initiative.

Left's army's white flag was very famous among the peasant armies — people even used "White Flag" to refer directly to Left Liangyu's troops. This was not because Left Liangyu was particularly fond of white flags, but simply because his army had fought all the way from the capital region to Shaanxi, always campaigning westward.

In the traditional five-direction military banners, the color representing the west was white.

The influence of these five directional colors was immense — the names of the Black Sea and the Red Sea derive from the five directional primary colors.

So whenever Left's army's white flag moved, everyone knew an attack was coming.

Left Liangyu placed his firearms and artillery in the front and his infantry on both wings, forming a wedge formation and slowly pressing toward the enemy.

Zhang Yichuan's front-camp Mobile Corps Commander, Chongtianzhu, had originally intended to exploit the advantage of surprise, sending his cavalry ahead to disrupt Left's army before they could stabilize their camp at the foot of the mountain. He had not expected Left Liangyu's troops to assemble far faster than he imagined. The front-line cavalry, charging in a single line, slammed straight into the arrowhead of the wedge formation.

By this point, calling a halt was impossible. Chongtianzhu could only grit his teeth and watch the cavalry charge while ordering the infantry behind to rush their firearms and artillery forward in support, bracing for a head-on fight.

Serving as the arrowhead were the Sichuan troops who had just defected to Left Liangyu. Their commander was Wang Yuncheng, the man who had driven Deng Qi to his death. Under his command were one Sichuan infantry Battalion Commander company and one Liaodong cavalry Battalion Commander company.

Facing the peasant army cavalry charging from several hundred paces away in multiple wedge formations, Wang Yuncheng, circling his horse before the formation, showed nothing but disdain. He did not even draw the saber at his waist. Unhurriedly, he rode into the ranks and had the Sichuan infantry with firearms and artillery deploy into a wide horizontal line at the front.

Amid a forest of spears, a breech-loading general cannon roared. In the rising gunpowder smoke, grapeshot sprayed toward the peasant cavalry, blotting out the sky.

Boom! Boom!

With several cannon blasts, the dark-skinned gunners in red iron helmets, working without pause in the smoke, removed the breech chambers. Before the smoke even cleared, other gunners who had been waiting nearby loaded fresh chambers back in, firing a second volley in an extremely short time.

Amid the screaming of warhorses, rider after rider tumbled from their mounts mid-gallop. Half of the several wedge formations were shattered by the few cannon shots. The remaining few hardened their resolve and charged the position, but were ultimately broken and repulsed fifty paces from the front line. With no choice left, they loosed a few arrows from a distance, wheeled their horses, and fled.

Even so, the rearward Chongtianzhu breathed a sigh of relief.

In Zhang Yichuan's Henan Zongbing Division, mounted troops were the most elite soldiers — one could even say every battalion was built around the mounted troops as its core. The remaining Chuang saber men and long-spearmen were, in idle times, nothing more than auxiliary troops who held the horses' reins, helped riders dismount, and fed and walked the mounts.

Whether these mounted troops could actually charge into the formation once they reached the battle line was another matter, but even if they did, fewer than one in ten would survive — and his battalion would be shattered.

Fortunately, the horse detachment withdrew after suffering only light losses, and the firearms support from the rear was swift. The remaining three battalions — Song Jiang, Yidougu, and Santiaolong — followed close behind. Once the main army arrived, even if they had to force it, they would devour these three thousand men.

But Zuo Liangyu clearly did not see it that way. His horse detachment had pulled back, yet his wedge formation, after firing two volleys on the spot, pushed its cannon carts forward and began moving again. They even took the chevaux-de-frise from the accompanying war wagons within the formation and distributed them to the squads as they advanced — two per squad of ten. Step by step, heft by heft, they pressed forward relentlessly.

Seeing this utterly obvious formation, Zhang Yichuan nearly laughed out loud.

Zuo Liangyu intended to exploit his soldiers' superior ferocity to break through the center and cut his battle line in two — impossible.

Never mind that he had five small battalions of two thousand men each; even if he had only three, Zuo Liangyu's three thousand troops could never cut through. Even if one said the roving bandit army was utterly useless in a fight, just stretching out their necks for the blade — six thousand heads would exhaust them to death.

Let alone the delusion of cutting through. Impossible to cut through. His soldiers were adept with the Chuang saber. Even if they were cut through, they would rise again and envelop Zuo's three thousand men inside.

Zhang Yichuan immediately gave the order for the five battalions to deploy into a great formation three lines deep to meet the collision of Zuo Liangyu's wedge formation. He then led his central army down from the hill and threw himself into the great formation as well.

Meanwhile, within the Ming army's formation, Zuo Liangyu — clad in a crimson one-shouldered battle robe and fish-scale armor — gazed from afar at the five Henan battalions. Watching the enemy formation shift slowly and chaotically as dispatch riders spurred their horses about, gradually drawing toward the center, a smile spread across his face. He ordered several military banners raised in the central army and sat his horse as if victory were already in hand.

At that moment, Wang Yuncheng on the front line once again led his troops to engage the enemy. But the artillery of Chongtianzhu's division had also reached the front. The vanguard forces of both armies traded cannon fire back and forth, fighting with furious intensity amid the booming roar of the guns.

Zuo Liangyu laughed and said to the central army officers beside him: "I originally thought that when the Sweeping King submitted to Liu Chengzong, the Marshal's Office would at least send a few officers to his army. But now it seems the Marshal's Office has exhausted its manpower and sent him no one at all. This Zhang Yichuan hasn't improved one bit."

"Once we've dealt with him, we'll take our military merits and go find Hou Liangzhu. Ha — this will count as a major court victory over the Marshal's Office."

His words had barely faded when the army's formation began to shift. The originally sharp wedge formation had been stalled by the artillery duel at the front. But the troops on the two wings did not continue pressing toward the center to seek a breakthrough. Instead, they formed a wild-goose-wing formation and kept advancing, even quickening their pace.

In the blink of an eye, Zhang Yichuan's five battalions contracted toward the center, while the thousand-man detachments on Zuo Liangyu's spread wings, carrying chevaux-de-frise, planted them squad by squad into the ground to maintain the width of the battle line. At the same time, the army fanned out toward the flanks.

Wang Yuncheng's four hundred Liaodong cavalry even looped around behind their own formation and launched a swift charge forward from the left side of the left-wing thousand-man detachment.

Zuo Liangyu had laid an enormous sack — using three thousand troops to turn the tables and encircle ten thousand peasant soldiers inside the sack.