Chapter 304: Zhao Camp, Zhao Camp

More and more people surged into the gate tunnel. The gates were gradually pushed shut again, and the frenzied refugees in front of them seemed to be turning to flee.

"Bar it! Bar it!" everyone in the gate tunnel roared. The gates closed, the bar dropped back into its slot, and everyone cheered. Many shouted with tears streaming down their faces — thank Heaven, the gate tunnel had held.

"Everyone clear out — dropping the portcullis!" someone on the wall shouted again. The men helped each other back as the just-raised iron grille slowly descended. When it slammed down, they all roared again — one more layer of security.

"Reinforcements! Reinforcements!" more shouts came from the wall.

Could it be that Vice General Zhou had led his troops back? No wonder the refugees hadn't been able to break through.

"It's Zhao Camp! It's our Zhao Camp! No one but our Zhao Camp could march in such formation!" There were Zhao Camp retainers on the wall too — the ones who had just charged up to retake the portcullis winch. Their voices were already hoarse and trembling from shouting.

"Zhao Camp!" someone repeated, and an even louder cheer erupted.

Wang Zhaojing stood there dazed, listening to the cheers, and repeated, "Zhao Camp… Zhao Camp…"

As he spoke, tears streamed down Wang Zhaojing's face, and he broke down sobbing. Even as he wept, he shouted along with the others: "Zhao Camp is here! Zhao Camp is here…"

At the very moment the gate was pushed open, the situation on the wall had also turned dire. Refugees, heedlessly shoved forward from behind, used their bodies to tie up the soldiers and militia, covering those climbing up after them. The able-bodied men behind them carried spears and great blades, had some strength and a measure of coordination, and were fresh troops besides. The government soldiers on the wall were caught off guard, and another dozen or so made it up.

There were already over thirty refugee fighters on the wall, with more still surging up behind them. Squad Leader Wang led his soldiers on one side, while Chen Wu led the runners and militia on the other — both sides fighting with desperate fury.

"Old Chen, your family's all inside the city — get out of here! I'll hold them off with my life!" Squad Leader Wang hacked one man down with his great blade, but nearly got skewered by a spear and had to retreat. He had already spotted two men in iron armor climbing onto the wall.

The refugee bandits still had such a card to play — how were they supposed to fight this? Squad Leader Liang still hadn't made it back, the wall was about to fall, and chaos had also broken out at the barbican. It looked like the end.

"The hell with running — if I could run, I'd have run long ago! How can anyone run? Let's just fight to the death together!" Chen Wu shouted back from the other side, frantic with rage. He practiced martial arts too, but his official duties kept him too busy to train deeply, and he was already at his limit. But from the look of things, there truly was no way out.

A soldier beside Squad Leader Wang stabbed an enemy but had no time to pull his spear free before an onrushing refugee cut him down with a blade. He fell with a scream. Squad Leader Wang stepped forward and cut the refugee bandit down in one stroke, then glanced outside the wall. The endless tide of people was still surging up.

"Brothers, we've done right by Xuzhou. Get ready to go," Squad Leader Wang said in a lowered voice, forcing back the enemy before him with his blade.

They were garrisoned in Xuzhou but were not Xuzhou locals. They lacked that determination to defend their homeland. Things had reached this point — there was no chance of victory. His shouting with Chen Wu moments ago was one thing, but now he had to think of himself.

In the current situation, the best they could do was flee through some other city gate, or perhaps hole up somewhere in the city and wait for an opportunity. But looking at the pools of blood and the corpses on the wall, no one dared keep fighting. The militia, able-bodied commoners, and runners, on the other hand, were all Xuzhou natives. They roared and refused to retreat — but their side was suffering even heavier casualties…

"Chief! The refugee bandits are retreating! They're retreating!" someone shouted in a tone of disbelief.

Squad Leader Wang froze. He saw the few men in iron armor who had just climbed the wall scrambling back over it, and the men on the slope were hurrying downward.

The men on the wall were instantly galvanized. The refugee bandits who had been so ferocious moments ago were now fleeing over each other in panic. Some, too desperate to pick their path, even threw themselves off the wall — a fall of several zhang, straight to their deaths.

The wall defenders, who moments ago had faced a choice between a fight to the death or flight, could now do nothing but cheer. More and more men pressed against the crenellations, leaning over the wall to look down, trying to glimpse the reinforcements through the dust and the sea of people.

"…Probably not our commander. If he were coming back, it'd be cavalry, and we'd have gotten word earlier…" someone murmured.

"…It's that kid of mine! That kid from the Zhao family! They've come to the rescue!" From the other side came Chen Wu's shout, full of shock and wild joy.

"It's Zhao Camp! It's Zhao Camp!"

"Zhao Camp is here! Zhao Camp is here!" No one knew who started shouting on the wall, but everyone took it up. The shouts mingled and echoed with the shouts rising from the barbican.

The moment they entered the battlefield, over a hundred refugee cavalry and a large body of refugees actually came forward to meet them. Even the rhythm of the drums shifted slightly.

The standard-bearer and drummer were both behind Zhao Jin. Zhao Jin raised his voice slightly and said, "Just beat your war drum properly. No one's asking you to charge into the melee — what the hell are you afraid of?"

"Steady! Forward! Forward!" Zhao Jin issued the commands without pause. His orders were roared out and repeated by the retainers around him.

"Archers, run to the front and prepare to shoot! Quickly!" Zhao Jin ordered again.

The archers interspersed in the gaps between Zhao Camp's main company and the two mixed companies were all somewhat nervous. But seeing those three companies advancing in good order steadied their nerves somewhat. Each of them had made a calculation: in a fight like this, as long as they ran fast and stayed nimble, they could always keep those three companies between themselves and the enemy. Even if they had to flee the battlefield, there would be others behind them to take the blow.

With their minds settled, they could obey the order and move forward. Watching the archers form up in a disorderly clump in front of him, Zhao Jin bellowed, "You fire ONE arrow, then turn and come back! No extra shots! After shooting, don't run into the spears! Wait for my command!"

There was too much to say — the retainers couldn't repeat it all. Only Zhao Jin's voice rang out, hoarse and straining. No one knew how many of the archers up front actually heard him.

But the approaching cavalry did not charge head-on. From a distance, they saw Zhao Jin's formation and simply wheeled away to one side. With several thousand men packed in such a dense formation, the front ranks bristling with armor and weapons, and several hundred cavalry visible following behind — only a fool would charge straight in.

The cavalry wheeled away, but the refugees came charging with wild battle cries. The faces of the men running at the very front were twisted with frenzy and fervor, though some also showed terror and despair. They had no choice — either they were willing to die, or they would be killed by the men behind them.

"Loose!" Zhao Jin roared. The retainers roared in unison. The hundred-odd archers, who had long since nocked their arrows and drawn their bows, released in a volley.

Over a hundred arrows shrieked through the air and rained down on the refugees a few dozen paces away. The refugees, utterly unprotected, collapsed and sprawled across the ground in droves. Those behind, caught off guard, tripped over the fallen in considerable numbers. The charge lurched to a halt.

The archers' own performance was a sorry sight. Some instinctively tried to loose a second arrow; others scrambled backward in a panic. The archers from Zhao Camp and the joint-defense areas knew to circle around, but most simply barreled straight toward the pike squares. Some spotted the spears and skidded to a stop; others, heedless of everything, kept running, thinking, They can't possibly hurt their own — the spears will have to get out of my way.

What they did not expect was that the spears remained steadily leveled forward, showing no sign of moving aside. The fleeing archers cursed furiously. Some stumbled and staggered, throwing the front of the formation into chaos.

"Next time this happens, run them through!" Zhao Jin roared. He used his own spear shaft to club one dazed archer in front of him to the ground, his eyelid twitching with fury.

It was fortunate that the refugees' charge had been stalled for a moment by the arrow volley — otherwise, this would have turned into a complete disaster. By the time the archers had cleared out from in front of the spears, the refugees were already charging forward again.

"Forward! Kill the enemy! Forward! Thrust!" Zhao Jin bellowed. The drumbeat behind him paused, then quickened to a frantic pace. The mournful suona horn sounded three piercing notes.

Zhao Camp's main company roared in unison and stepped forward. The two mixed companies on the left and right also let out ragged shouts and stepped forward to follow. Behind them, the militia and volunteers all roared as well, instinctively ready to charge ahead. In their minds, a great battle, a fight to the death, was nothing more than charging forward with blade and spear raised — whoever had the best martial skill and the greatest strength would win.

"Follow the rules! Do as Master Jin says!" someone in the rear ranks shouted. The men from the joint-defense areas who had not been placed in the mixed companies were all shouting it.

Only with this restraint did the restless militia and volunteers hold back from charging forward, barely reining in their momentum — though they were still a chaotic mess.

The front lines had already clashed. The first ten ranks of Zhao Camp's main company were all armored, wielding nine-chi long spears with tips polished to a gleaming shine. The refugees charging at them, by contrast, probably couldn't even get their hands on a wooden pole longer than five chi. The better-armed among them carried nothing more than firewood hatchets or short axes scavenged or looted along the road.

Not to mention that Zhao Camp's retainers ate their fill every day and trained relentlessly, brimming with energy. These starving refugees, on the other hand, had drunk a bowl of thin gruel in the morning and eaten nothing since. They were weak with hunger, sustained only by a hollow, feverish fervor. They had seen the slope drawing close to the top of the wall and dreamed of bursting into Xuzhou to enjoy its riches. That, and that alone, was what drove them.

Yet on the strength of that fervor alone, they actually dared charge the front of Zhao Camp's main company. The Zhao Camp retainers, however, had never seen such a frenzied sight and were the first to lose their composure.

One refugee thought he saw enough of a gap between the spears to slip through, kill or wound the spearmen, and break the line. He dodged with a shout, and he did evade the thrusts of two spears, slipping into the gap — only for the second rank's spears to stab forward. He was practically naked. The razor-sharp spearhead pierced through him without the slightest resistance, then pulled back out.

One refugee after another charged forward with mad howls, and one after another died on the spearpoints. Amid this collision, slaughter, and death, the heart of Zhao Camp's main company steadied. They stepped over the corpses and advanced steadily.

On a battlefield, the most prominent part of a formation is always the first to meet the enemy, and troops will always instinctively attack the enemy's most exposed point. For the refugees — a loose mob acting almost purely on instinct, at most driven forward by the men behind them — it was no surprise that they all surged toward Zhao Camp's main company.