Chapter 613: Backstab

Sparks blossomed in the night sky.

As the Ming army closed in on the formation, ten thousand-jin cannons loaded with canister shot wrapped in silk roared to life.

Amid the alternating thunder of the volleys, ten-foot-long dragons of flame belched from the cannon muzzles.

In an instant, over five thousand three-qian balls tore through flame and smoke, falling like rain and hail, sweeping across the battlefield.

There were only a few scattered screams and wails.

Far more common under the night sky were intact soldiers and mounts ripped into severed limbs and broken arms by the dense curtain of shot — those severed limbs then churned into pulp, until finally a puddle of blood, flesh, and bone splattered onto the ground, the thin mist of the predawn wilderness tinged a faint red.

Shen Guangxian's entire battalion slammed into an invisible, intangible wall of air mid-charge and came to a dead halt.

Six full squadrons of cavalry, in the space of a breath, were reduced — men and horses alike — to barely two squads.

The vast majority of survivors in the cannon fire frantically reined in their horses, even without orders.

Only a handful of riders still raised their sabers and leveled their lances, charging through the thick blood-mist with war cries into the gun smoke just yards away.

But their lonely silhouettes charging through the darkness looked less like warriors and more like madmen scared out of their wits.

Bang! Bang!

A few muffled gunshots rang out from the still-lingering smoke, carrying far across the desolate wilderness.

The war cries finally ceased.

Clip, clop, clip.

A solitary set of hoofbeats echoed from the other side of the smoke. After a few breaths, a warhorse carrying its slumped-over master turned and galloped back toward the halted cavalry column.

Throughout all this, not a single Ming officer, not a single soldier, uttered a single word — even the wounded stopped their howling.

Men could only stare into the darkness with wide, panicked eyes, trying to pierce the blood-mist and gun smoke, to see clearly the monsters lurking in the shadows on the other side of the battlefield.

The gun smoke gradually dispersed.

On the other side of the battlefield, there were no hideous, terrifying monsters.

Beneath torches flickering in the night wind, there were only rows of war wagons, soldiers with matchlocks standing behind them, and over ten heavy cannons with smoke still curling from their muzzles.

Those war wagons were not the specialized wagons of a wagon-fort battalion, nor did they carry wagon-mounted cannons — they were nothing more than ordinary two-wheeled and four-wheeled carts, but their uniform design made them look highly regular when massed together.

Yet the moment Cao Wenzhao saw them, his face turned ashen as death.

Discovering that the Marshal's army had formed a wagon fort actually dealt a heavier blow to Cao Wenzhao's morale than the ten cannons firing canister shot sweeping away five cavalry squadrons outright.

He could not fathom it — Liu Chengzong, a fake Tatar who had stolen a khan's title, how the hell had he gotten his hands on a wagon fort?

Cao Wenzhao came from the Guanning Army and was thoroughly familiar with wagon forts.

He knew their strengths and weaknesses inside and out.

It was neither an invincible formation nor an obsolete tactic.

It was one component of the Ming army's operational system — and only one component.

War wagons, in essence, were a type of military equipment, no different from warhorses, cannons, chevaux-de-frise, or caltrops.

Of course, weapons dictate tactics: an army with many warhorses will naturally use cavalry charges as much as possible; an army carrying chevaux-de-frise will likewise use infantry in linked-formation tactics as much as possible.

There was nothing wrong with that.

As for wagon-fort tactics, a wagon fort on its own was very easy to counter, and once countered, it was easily routed or even captured wholesale.

The wagon fort's advantage lay in easily forming field wagon-barricade fortifications to shelter soldiers. In this respect, the Ming army's specialized wagon-fort war wagons were naturally superior to the Marshal's Mansion's improvised supply wagons.

The deeper reason was that after Sarhū, the Ming army used wagon forts extensively in the Liaodong region to compensate for the elite losses suffered at Sarhū, using the wagon forts to shelter newly recruited troops and enhance their survivability.

The wagon fort's weakness, however, was that in suitable terrain, the wagon barricade was easily smashed by heavy firepower.

Even without superior heavy firepower, a wagon fort was just as susceptible to being besieged.

As long as one had numerical superiority and could achieve field superiority over the troops inside the wagon fort, one could simply cut off their supply lines, or even dig trenches and build walls around the perimeter, and wait for them to run out of food and collapse.

But therein lay a problem:

The army attacking the wagon fort needed more provisions than the wagon fort, stronger cannons than the wagon fort, stronger field-combat capability than the wagon fort, and stronger troop-mobilization capability than the faction inside the wagon fort.

In other words, if a wagon fort could be starved out by siege, it was not the wagon fort's fault.

When you had the superior transport capacity that war wagons provided, and yet you still lost in provisions, lost in troop strength, lost in cannons, lost in field combat, and lost in mobilization —

then without war wagons, you would only have lost faster.

Because the root of the problem was not that wagon forts were easy to attack — it was that the supreme commander on the battlefield had water in his brain.

A wagon fort carried enough grain and fodder for forty days, yet Sarhū, with its multiple shifting battlefields, was over in four days from start to finish.

The reason Cao Wenzhao's morale plummeted was that his provisions... were not as plentiful as Liu Chengzong's.

His Ningxia army had broken camp and marched twice in a single day — who would normally dare to break camp like that?

It was only because he had so few encumbrances: his entire army had just five days' worth of rations, a few flatbreads tossed into the saddlebags, and off they went!

But disheartened as he was, Cao Wenzhao had not yet given up.

The vanguard commander, Shen Guangxian, his face deathly pale, raced back to the main army, swung off his horse, and clasped his fists: "Marshal Cao, the enemy concealed cannons in their camp. The shot fell like hail, and our troops suffered grievous losses. The men were cowed by the enemy's show of force, and we missed our chance."

"I beg Marshal Cao to feint with cavalry on the flanks to draw their cannon fire aside. I will dismount my cavalry and drive the horses forward for another charge!"

Shen Guangxian knew full well that he had been the one who froze in fear.

If he had held firm, quickly organized his troops to press the attack after the enemy fired, and exploited the time they needed to reload — dismounting his cavalry and driving the horses to charge the formation, using the horses as shields against the bullets — there would have been a great chance to break the enemy line in one push.

But honestly, Shen Guangxian felt he could not be blamed.

Five hundred cavalry wiped out in the blink of an eye — who wouldn't panic at that?

In fact, the tactic of dismounting cavalry and driving horses to charge the formation — if not for that opening cannonade, even with a knife at his throat, Shen Guangxian would never have been driven to such a desperate choice.

Damn it all, he was furious.

The five finest shock-troop squadrons under his battalion, all handed over to Cao Wenyao — now their fate was unknown.

Five cavalry squadrons, wiped out by Liu Chengzong's cannonade.

Most critically, under normal circumstances, with a battalion suffering such catastrophic losses, roughly half the officers should be dead, and the proper course would simply be to retreat.

But the problem was, the thousand troops in his own battalion had been wiped out as a complete unit, while the remaining two thousand were still intact, their fighting strength well preserved — and damn it, they still had to keep fighting.

Yet Cao Wenzhao knew perfectly well that Shen Guangxian's soldiers couldn't fight anymore.

A battalion shorn of a third of its strength, every surviving soldier filled with dread — ordering them to charge and attack now would feel no different in their minds than sending them to die.

Cao Wenzhao shook his head. "Since we've already missed our chance, there's no rush. Take your troops around from the west, make a show of attacking the western face. I'll dispatch another force to circle around from the east... The cannon count on the south side of Liu Chengzong's formation doesn't add up. He..."

As Cao Wenzhao spoke, a wave of dizziness swept through his head. The word "he" caught in his throat, turning into a choke. Only after a heavy sigh did it ease a little.

He had never suffered such humiliation as he had tonight.

In past battles against the Later Jin army, Cao Wenzhao had stood out for his peerless ferocity, cutting down the Eight Banners until they cast aside armor and fled. When suppressing rebels within the passes, he had exploited the peasant army's willingness to accept amnesty — coaxing surrenders, then slaughtering the surrendered — his stratagems endless, running the rebel chieftains in circles.

Only this long, endless night.

His whole being felt as if shrouded in Liu Chengzong's shadow. The northern camp burned to flying ash. Four battalions thrown into chaos by a small enemy night raid, slaughtering each other. His nephew dead on the battlefield. His younger brother missing without a trace. The army sleepless all night, led round and round in circles.

When he finally, with great difficulty, found the enemy's position, it was as if they had been waiting all along for him to walk up and eat cannonballs — twelve heavy cannons arrayed on one face of their great formation.

What virtue, what ability!

And to raid and behead Liu Chengzong in battle... Cao Wenzhao wished he could grab Hong Chengchou — the man who'd come up with this rotten plan — by the collar and drag him here to see these wagon ramparts.

Raid your mother's head. Can my horses jump over that?

Once the grief surging in his heart was somewhat suppressed, Cao Wenzhao continued to Shen Guangxian and Bu Yingdi: "A single battalion shouldn't have twelve heavy cannons. He's weighted his defense on one face of the great formation. We have to pin their cannons on the south side and concentrate our attack elsewhere."

In this era, massed cannon formations were not in vogue. Twelve heavy cannons alone — even of the Great General's weight class — each piece required two carts and six to eight large draft animals, with over ten men counting gunners and drivers.

Add in the other smaller cannons, and if a battalion were assigned twelve heavy cannons, that battalion would be good for nothing else — once battle started, it couldn't move at all.

"We still concentrate the attack on one face. But to keep the cannons fixed on the south, General Bu, your battalion will stay put."

Cao Wenzhao said to Bu Yingdi: "You will dig trenches and raise walls one li from their formation, and force the enemy out."

Bu Yingdi immediately clasped his fists and accepted the order, but still reminded him: "Commander Cao, that may be so, but our army's provisions... building walls won't be enough to surround the enemy."

"How would he know I have no provisions?"

Cao Wenzhao said this without any confidence himself, and his tone softened at the end: "It doesn't matter if he knows. We don't necessarily have to force him out — so long as his cannons don't move, that's enough."

Truth be told, having been outmaneuvered by Liu Chengzong all night, at this moment he truly couldn't be sure whether Liu Chengzong knew about his provisions predicament or not.

But knowing or not knowing hardly mattered anymore. The blood debt of this night was already far too great.

He didn't need to wait for the army's provisions to run out — he wanted revenge right now.

As the orders were relayed, the army swiftly redeployed under the cover of night. Two cavalry units, one on the left and one on the right, began to move around Liu Chengzong's great formation.

Atop the high platform built from war wagons in the center of the camp, with no torches lit around it and everything in pitch darkness, Liu Chengzong gazed out beyond the formation's perimeter and saw Cao Wenzhao's deployments with perfect clarity.

He wasn't afraid of being focused by cannon fire. The four-sided great formation enveloped him, and this distance already far exceeded the effective range of Ming army cannons — even if they fired, they couldn't hit accurately.

To him, however, it wasn't just two cavalry forces moving outside the formation, but three.

To the north were the Ming cavalry, regrouping after their failed night raid.

"Brother Zhang, where are the rockets?"

Zhang Tianlin had been standing expressionless beside Liu Chengzong. Now, at the mention of rockets, both his eyes lit up in the darkness: "Commander, I've got them, I've got them!"

Time to blow people up again!

Liu the Lion raised a hand and traced a zone to the north: "Take half. Blow up that bunch to the north."

Zhang Tianlin had been quite excited, but at these words he froze, his enthusiasm thoroughly doused. He said: "Commander, it's too dark over there, we can't see clearly. This... firing rockets over there would be a waste."

"Don't worry about it. Fire half of them. When we get back, I'll have the Armory Bureau make you more."

Liu Chengzong waved a hand. "After you blast that side, watch which way they run. If they head north, leave them be. If the other two groups run into the cavalry, let them fight each other. Once they start fighting, fire off the rest of the rockets!"

Zhang Tianlin was dumbfounded. What kind of tactic is that?

Still, he figured, there was no real loss in doing it this way. Even if no fight broke out, they wouldn't need the rockets again for a while after this battle ended anyway. Once they got back to Xining, they'd manufacture another batch and get resupplied quickly.

He immediately jumped down from the high platform to relay the orders.

After he left, Liu Chengzong looked south. The Ming troops over there had already begun digging trenches, using the excavated earth and stone to build walls. This is going to be tricky, he thought.

"Send word."

As soon as he spoke, the Feathered Forest Cavalry beside him made ready.

His order came: "Command Gao Yingdeng to prepare to sally. When the blasts sound in the north, press forward and give the Ming troops building the wall a volley of musketry and cannon. Go fast and return fast — don't get surrounded outside."

As for how much effect such an attack would have, Liu the Lion couldn't say for sure either.

If the commander on the south side was a seasoned veteran, he would certainly dig shallow trenches first and pile up low walls for cover against bullets and shot. Gao Yingdeng's battalion was heaviest on firearms, which would actually make them harder to fight.

Thinking of this, Liu Chengzong decided to disgust Cao Wenzhao a little more.

He descended from the high platform, beckoned Han Shiyou over, and said: "Find that hundred-man squad in the Tiger Guard Battalion — the loudmouths who are good at cursing. Have them ask Cao Wenzhao why he won't listen to me and refuses to fight the Later Jin."

Just then, Zhang Tianlin had already led his cavalry northward. Moments later, streaks of flame shot into the sky from the north side of the formation with shrill screams, their immense light briefly illuminating the northern battlefield.

Beneath the fiery light, across three or four hundred paces, soldiers on both sides tilted their heads back to watch the rocket tail-flames climbing into the sky.

Cao Wenyao had hastily assembled his troops. After the roll call, he was just feeling relieved — the men he led were all elite troops of Ningxia Garrison, and though the night raid had failed, at least the losses after regrouping weren't too severe.

Now, watching the "sky-rocketing monkeys" rising one after another into the air, he wondered: What is that fellow Liu Chengzong doing?

Calling for reinforcements?

He still has reinforcements?

"General, they seem to be flying this way."

Cao Wenyao had never seen anything like this, but watching the rockets' trajectory, a vague unease stirred in him: "Scatter, scatter, scatter! Spread out!"

The cavalry still moved fast. A series of whistles rang out through the ranks, and the centurions leading each unit hurriedly dispersed their men. At the same moment, rocket after rocket slammed into the ground. Some burst before they even landed, and instantly pellets flew in all directions, piercing men and horses, blasting many unlucky souls who hadn't scattered in time to the ground.

Simultaneously, Gao Yingdeng's main camp to the south had also received the attack signal. For a moment, war drums pounded like hammers on the soldiers' hearts.

Company after company of troops pushed their war wagons forward. In the vanguard, twelve heavy cannons, already loaded, were mounted on two-wheeled carts and hauled rapidly forward by warhorses. They closed to a hundred-odd paces, then each horse was turned around. One by one the heavy cannons were seated, and then they fired.

Boom! Boom!

Long before the war wagons had begun their advance, Bu Yingdi had already ordered his soldiers to lie flat behind the freshly dug low wall.

Most of the soldiers had managed to dodge the grapeshot sprayed from the heavy cannons, but the troops had only just raised their heads when many already drew their blades and leaped out from behind the low wall.

They saw squad after squad of infantry, shouldering heavy arquebuses, arrive in quick succession and form a volley line with the wall guns mounted on the war wagons, joining the second wave of fire.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Another wave of thousands of lead balls and iron pellets came hurtling straight at their faces.

Once again, it pinned the soldiers of Bu Yingdi's battalion, who had been trying to rise and fight, firmly to the ground.

Then came the war wagons shifting position and the pounding of hooves. When the officers of Bu Yingdi's battalion risked being shot to raise their heads again, they witnessed a scene that made their jaws drop.

These bastards had come fast and left just as fast — after a single volley, one after another they drove their draft horses, taking advantage of the lingering gunpowder smoke, and fell back into formation!

It was as if those two dense, rain-like volleys of gunfire had been nothing but a brief nightmare, leaving only the ground littered with soldiers writhing and wailing from their wounds.

Squad after squad of the Ningxia border troops huddled behind the bullet-riddled low wall, sighing deeply and lamenting their survival through this night's ordeal.

No one expected that at that very moment, the dense sound of pounding hooves would erupt from behind them.

Centurion Wang Guocai of Luo Rucai's force sat astride his horse, positioned on the left flank of the charging cavalry column. He raised high a torch just lit with a fire striker and traced a circle in the air, as if gripping a goose-quill saber, guiding the column forward in the charge to strike the enemy ahead.

The torchlight flickered and swayed as it cut through the wind, bright drops of oil scattering in the charge, trailing brief, fleeting sparks.

Beside that wavering torch, cavalrymen gripping lances, the border army helmets on their heads casting shadows across their cheeks from their low-pulled brims, looked like demons cloaked entirely in armor, hurtling toward the battle-weary survivors of the Ningxia army.

The warhorses' hooves rose faster and faster, the hoofbeats shifting from rhythmic thunder into a chaotic, disorderly drumming, and then quickly settling once more into the grouped cadence of clop, clop, clop.

The warhorses were changing gait!

A hundred paces vanished in an instant. Lance after lance leveled out in the charge; behind them, cavalrymen rested goose-quill sabers on their shoulders; further back still, rank upon rank of riders gripping golden-melon maces flexed their wrists as they galloped.

The hoofbeats grew clearer — three-beat became four-beat, then in the blink of an eye became two-beat.

The warhorses lowered their centers of gravity, fore and hind hooves alternating at an extremely rapid frequency, charging forward with a momentum that seemed ready to trample the enemy lines into pulp.

The next moment, the cavalry smashed into the formation!