Chapter 695: Dispatching the Troops

West of the Helan Mountains, at Changliushui.

This place lies close to the Tengger Desert, yet thanks to the snowmelt from the Helan Mountains, it has become a land of lush water and grass.

An old shepherd in a red Mongolian hat wrapped his leather coat tight and watched his old dog, gaunt as skin and bones, chase the flock in the biting wind, muttering under his breath that the Taiji had gone mad.

Last winter was bitterly cold; the sand-laden winds blew in from the great desert and froze many of the livestock to death.

Yet just a few days ago, cavalry rode through every winter pasture across the entire grassy flat, relaying the order of their lord, Guru Taiji: the herders were to deliver the lord's flocks of sheep and herds of horses to where the Jaisang was stationed.

Such an order felt all too familiar to the herders — just a few years back, when the defeated Ligdan Khan passed through from the east, the Taiji had issued the same command.

The difference was, that time the order was to leave behind the breeding rams and stallions and send the rest to the encampment; this time, the order was to send every last sheep and horse, the entire flock and herd.

Not a single one left behind.

Guru Taiji had certainly not gone mad.

He was simply like a man swept away by the current, clutching at every last straw that might save his life.

The name Guru sounds a bit rustic, like a child with a growling stomach, but in truth he came from a most illustrious lineage in Mobei.

His great-great-great-grandfather was Dayan Khan.

His great-great-grandfather was Dayan Khan's third son, the one who once seized the Northern Yuan throne — Habuhai Khan, father of Altan Khan — Bars Bolod, whose khan title meant Imperial Uncle Khan.

His great-grandfather was Habuhai Khan's eldest son, the Jinong and head of the Three Tumen of the Northern Yuan Right Wing, Gün Bilig.

His great-grandfather was Gün Bilig's eldest son, the Jinong Noyan Dara.

His grandfather was Noyan Dara's eldest son, Buyan Badara Huang Taiji. Because he was pasturing his herds at the Greater and Lesser Song Mountains in Gansu when his father died of illness, and was away on campaign against the Oirats in the west.

He therefore only inherited his father's post of Commander-in-Chief, and before he could travel to the Eight White Yurts to perform the Jinong succession ceremony, he was killed by Eselebei, a noble of the Dörbet Oirat's subject Khoid tribe.

His grandfather was Buyan Badara Huang Taiji's eldest son, Bushitu, who at just thirteen years old, with the support of Chejin Huang Taiji, inherited his grandfather's Jinong position and held it for forty-eight years.

His father was Sereng Huang Taiji, likewise Bushitu Jinong's eldest son, who inherited the Jinong title at thirty-six, reigned for six months, and passed away that same year.

And Guru Taiji is Sereng Huang Taiji's eldest son.

His uncle Erinchen, taking advantage of his youth, drew in Chejin Huang Taiji's great-grandson, the governing minister of the Three Tumen of the Right Wing, Saanang Taiji, proclaimed the khan title, and seized the Jinong position.

This left the young Guru Taiji, bereft of his father, with barely a few thousand subjects and a thousand cavalry, living in seclusion west of the Helan Mountains.

He had once regarded Ligdan Khan on his western campaign as a wise lord, and offered up sheep and horses when his army passed through, but received nothing in return.

The Khan did indeed dispatch troops, but not for him, and certainly not to defend Northern Yuan traditions.

The Khan simply rampaged through, sweeping across the Three Tumen of the Right Wing, beating down his uncle Erinchen, and throwing Mobei into utter chaos — yet he had no intention of letting him inherit the Jinong title.

Ligdan Khan simply did not want a Jinong!

And this time, the new Khan's command came by letter from south of the border walls.

In truth, Guru Taiji was well aware that this Khan named Liu Chengzong had the wrong bloodline and had never received a proper traditional noble education.

Just as the letter the Khan sent, with its obvious lack of refinement between the lines, showed that he clearly had no orthodox Khanate noble attendants around him, and did not even know of his illustrious Mobei lineage, treating him as though he were some minor Northern Yuan noble holed up in a remote borderland.

But it was precisely this — the fact that Liu Chengzong did not know who he was and treated him with an ordinary heart — that made the weak and isolated Guru Taiji feel a rare sense of respect, stirring a profound goodwill within him.

Liu Chengzong's letter did not arrogantly order him to submit or pay tribute; it simply said there was no enmity between them, that he knew he had few troops and his people were poor and struggling, and that if he had any thought of serving him, they could do so through mutual trade — you provide horses and sheep, and I will provide liquor and summer clothing.

Taking thirty thousand as the benchmark, if the horses and sheep provided exceed that, I will grant official posts to you or your sons based on your contribution.

If you are willing, I will protect your right to pasture west of the Helan Mountains, and permit your people to sell liquor and summer clothing to the two hundred thirty thousand households of Mobei, free from any harassment.

With Ligdan Khan's example fresh in his mind, suddenly faced with a Khan like Liu Chengzong — one who seemed able to communicate, and communicate easily — Guru Taiji's feelings were complicated.

Liu Chengzong's envoy had sat in his felt tent for barely an hour before Guru Taiji finished his deliberations, dispatched men to relay the order to every winter pasture under his command, and handed his reply to the envoy.

The letter to Guru Taiji was written by Liu Chengzong in Pingliang.

By the time he received the reply, he had already passed Guyuan, and his troops had reached the line of the Second Border Wall.

It was indeed as Guru Taiji imagined — Liu Chengzong knew very little about him.

But it was not because he lacked Mongol talents well-versed in Mobei affairs.

Liu the Lion had them at his side, and many of them.

In his Tiger Guard Battalion were men like the Great Jaisang of the Chahar Khanate, Usihu; Gaoltu Chechen; Chita Chebei; Garma; and the monk Gelong.

These men have all since changed their names, and are now called Wu Sihu, Gao Letu, Qi Tate, and Ge Erma.

And among the Feathered Forest Cavalry who serve as his personal guards, there are also Northern Yuan warriors like Bayasihu, Erinchen Daiqing, and Dorji Darkhan.

But without exception, what these men knew of Mobei affairs was limited to the situation of the Chahar tribe; they had little understanding of the self-contained system of the Three Tumen of the Right Wing.

Let alone Guru Taiji, one of over a hundred descendants of the Gün Bilig line, belonging to one of the many Ordos families under the Right Wing.

Even Liu Chengzong himself did not really value this minor noble pasturing his herds beyond the Helan Mountains; writing to him was merely an idle move on the chessboard.

There were three nobles pasturing their herds in that area; Guru Taiji's power was slightly greater, while the other two, Chaotu Taiji and Duoerji, were blood brothers, and only by combining forces could they contend with Guru Taiji.

But even all three nobles together did not have the military strength of a single battalion.

Liu Chengzong could not be bothered to persuade each one to surrender individually, yet he worried that when he launched his campaign against Ningxia, the three of them might emerge to plunder with their troops, so he wrote a letter to Guru.

According to his intelligence, of thirty thousand sheep, Guru Taiji could provide at most half; only by combining the resources of all three petty chieftains, estimated from a sustainable development perspective, could that number be reached.

And early-spring liquor and summer clothing were the most sought-after commodities on the steppe.

Because the raw material for brewing on the steppe is milk, and in the cold winter, horses, sheep, and cattle produce no milk — only camels can still give milk.

But few people raise camels.

Typically, on the steppe west of the Ordos, the livestock ratio is: for every one camel, there are two horses, four head of cattle, and forty-five sheep.

To the east, there are no camels or very few, and the proportion of horses increases by one.

This ratio is essentially fixed.

The nobles favor horses and sheep — first, because herding them in groups is convenient, and second, because their economic value is high; they can effectively increase property value and cope well with disasters.

After all, a ewe can drop two or three lambs in a litter and bear three litters in two years; they are easy to raise, can start lambing at a year and a half old, and can multiply wealth three or four times over in three years. If a snowstorm or windstorm hits and they are not completely wiped out, one can quickly stage a comeback.

Moreover, sheep dung can be burned, their milk can be drunk, their meat, innards, and blood can all be eaten, their skins make clothing and their wool is felted into rugs — they adapt to every pasture environment except damp ones.

Apart from lacking the ability to defend themselves and their hooves damaging grass roots so they cannot stay in one place for long, they are economic livestock with no major shortcomings.

To the nobles who controlled the grazing lands, these two minor flaws were nothing.

The herders themselves would choose to raise cattle. Though they were troublesome to keep and ill-suited for large herds, they produced more milk and could pull carts and felt tents, even haul goods and trade — they were the herders' main labor force.

As for camels, aside from their ability to endure thirst, they had almost no advantages. Unless the terrain specifically required passage through desert and arid zones, neither nobles nor herders would make them their primary livestock.

Bad temper, foul stench, strong urine odor, difficult to train and herd — these were only the minor problems.

The biggest problem was that they were uneconomical.

Sheep could drop lambs at a year and a half old; camels had to be raised to five years old, gave birth only once every two or three years, and produced just a single calf per litter.

And this thing didn't even give milk in winter — its gestation lasted over four hundred days.

This mode of nomadic pastoral production meant that wine in the winter and spring seasons was a rarity on the steppe, something only wealthy nobles could enjoy.

As for summer clothing, that went without saying — what decent person wore a fur coat in summer?

In the Ming-Mongol border markets, iron pots and cloth were both indispensable trade goods.

Liu Chengzong had it relatively easy. The senior commander in charge of this trade under him was Cao Yao, and the region was Gansu.

Cao Yao wanted to supply military provisions for this northern expedition.

Because Gansu was quite prosperous now. The Zhangye Oasis where Ganzhou sat had always been good land, and now Liangzhou was good land too.

Back when they had taken Gansu, thanks to Hong Chengchou, the Wuwei Oasis outside Liangzhou — after scorched-earth burning and reclamation by the Marshal's Army, combined with the already high-yielding Zhangye Oasis — had given Gansu a complete and total bumper harvest.

After deducting Gansu's military grain, the Commandant Governor's Office still had a surplus of grain as enormous as two hundred thousand shi.

Of course, neither Liu Chengzong nor Cao Yao was remotely satisfied with this meager surplus in Gansu.

The land in Gansu suitable for farming exceeded four million mu, yet the land the Marshal's Army's Gansu Commandant Governor's Office could actually cultivate was only eight hundred thousand mu.

So much so that Liu Chengzong's "Intimate-Field Method," which he wanted to promote vigorously to curb soil degradation, was somewhat difficult to implement.

Because there were no people.

Gansu, scarred by war, had an extremely distorted population structure. All commoner households across every trade combined numbered only just over twenty-one thousand — fewer households than Cao Yao had soldiers under his command.

At the same time, these two hundred thousand shi of surplus grain were very difficult to transport to the battlefield.

Once fighting broke out, the northern route would become unsafe. He would have to move supplies first to Lanzhou, then via the western logistics route to Guyuan.

Even starting the transport from Liangzhou, the journey was a full thousand li. If counting from Suzhou, it was over two thousand li — transporting grain was a joke.

But Gansu had a brewing industry and a large quantity of second-hand summer clothing.

Song Xian in Suzhou ran a pawnshop, so he already had a backlog of clothing. If he also purchased cloth, there would be even more.

These goods were light, easy to transport, and high in value. Shipping them from Zhenfan Garrison in Liangzhou to the west of the Helan Mountains — a three-hundred-li stretch of gobi desert and small oasis grasslands in between — using camel caravans to trade with the locals for cattle and sheep was far more cost-effective and convenient.

Liu Shizi's original intent was to use wine, cloth, and clothing to stoke Gülü Taiji's desire, letting him persuade the other two nobles so the three families together would provide sheep and horses as reserve supplies for the Marshal's Army after they advanced into Ningxia.

If they could not achieve a quick victory, one sheep obtained locally would save ten sheep shipped from the rear.

But what Liu Chengzong never anticipated was that he had underestimated the entrepreneurial zeal of the steppe nobles in this era.

Gülü Taiji was profoundly grateful for his proposal. He inventoried his possessions and said he could only scrape together twenty-four thousand three hundred and twenty sheep and one thousand and sixty-six horses.

As for the official post the Great Khan had mentioned, for the remaining four thousand six hundred sheep, his means were truly limited — he simply could not come up with them.

If the Great Khan was willing to grant me an official post, I would send my younger brother Batu with two thousand three hundred infantry to serve under your command.

When Liu Shizi saw the letter, his mind went completely blank. He doubted the accuracy of his intelligence on the strength of the Mongol tribes beyond the border.

Wasn't it said that this fellow could produce at most fifteen thousand sheep, and would need to partner with the other two nobles to pool together thirty thousand?

How could this kid alone come up with twenty-four thousand sheep and a thousand horses — and what's more, in such exact, odd numbers?

Had he sold off his family property or what?

Liu Chengzong did not reply to him for the time being, because he truly did not want another two thousand herders eating his military grain.

Camped within the Second Line Border Wall, Liu Chengzong did not send a letter to Hong Chengchou the moment he arrived, because after leaving Guyuan, he had split his main force into two routes.

There were too many people at Guyuan. Not counting logistics and baggage personnel, nearly fifty thousand troops were gathered there. Such a large force, once beyond the Second Line Border Wall, was ill-suited for a swift assault.

It was not their problem; the main issue was Ningxia's geography.

The area between Guyuan and Ningxia, connected by the Second Line Border Wall, was not a flat, defenseless stretch of desolate wilderness.

It was a series of near-desertified sandy gullies, ridges, and earthen hills on the Loess Plateau. What was called Guyuan was merely two intersecting lines forming a cross: the Qingshui River Valley running north-south, and the Second Line Border Wall running east-west.

From Half-a-City in the Qingshui River Valley, once beyond the wall, there were no decent roads outside — only boundless small hills.

Among the small hills was a forked path, one branch heading north, the other northeast.

The northern branch led to Anning Fort and Mingshazhou Fort at Zhongwei. After taking those two forts, the army would cross the Yellow River and could advance north along the river's western bank and the foot of the Helan Mountains, attacking over a dozen forts along the way — Shikong Temple, Date Garden, Guangwu, and others — ultimately reaching Ningxia Garrison City.

The other road, threading between two mountains, led northeast to Hongsi Fort. The path was somewhat more open, following Sweetwater and Bitterwater. It likewise required attacking many forts, and the final destination was Lingzhou, on the Yellow River's eastern bank opposite Ningxia Garrison City.

And heading east along the border wall, there was another pass leading beyond the wall, called Xiama Pass, which via Weizhou also led to Hongsi Fort and then on to Lingzhou.

Only, Half-a-City and Xiama Pass required splitting the army to traverse. Though linked by the border wall in between, once beyond the wall, they could only reunite at Hongsi Fort.

Because between them stood Luo Mountain, eighty li from north to south.

Liu Chengzong could not afford to grind through fort after fort. Even if each one surrendered at the mere sight of his banners, accepting their surrender would still delay the assault on Ningxia Garrison City.

Therefore, his plan was to have Ren Quan'er's Second Brigade serve as the vanguard, with Minister of Rites Zhang Xianzhong as advisor, leading troops out through Xiama Pass, heading straight for Lingzhou via Hongsi Fort to seize the Yellow River's eastern bank.

Next, Wang Wenxiu's Longxi Brigade would be the left wing, taking the northern route straight for Anning Fort at Zhongwei. Ding Guodong's forces from the eastern route, in the Huan County direction, would be the right wing, dealing with the Ningxia Rear Garrison that Ren Quan'er had drawn out.

Liu Chengzong himself would personally lead the three battalions of the Feathered Forest, Tiger Guard, and Clansmen, advancing from Hongsi Fort to Lingzhou to command the campaign.

Of course, behind him, Gao Yingdeng's First Brigade would serve as the rear guard, ready for any contingencies that might arise.

Dusk was drawing near.

Liu Chengzong ordered his soldiers to send out the letter written to Hong Chengchou. Standing atop the gate tower of the Second Line Border Wall, he handed the torch to his attendant.

Five beacon towers were ignited, thick smoke rising into the night sky.

Five signal cannons were fired, their sound shaking the border city.

In the dust kicked up by the dispatch riders' horses' tails, squad after squad of the Marshal's Army cavalry, riding mules and leading horses, formed ranks beyond the wall. One after another, following the smoke and dust, they sped north.