by Troy Denning
As his adjutant passed the orders on, the general contemplated the carnage before him. Considering the small size of the barbarian charge, it had been a bloody battle so far. Judging from what he could see, Batu estimated his casualties at between thirty and fifty percent.
The fight was far from over, the general knew. By disrupting the drummers, the archers had fouled a carefully organized withdrawal. The enemy would not have planned such an operation unless it was timed to coincide with another maneuver, such as an attack on an exposed flank. As much as the general hated to admit it, Kwan had been right not to spring his trap when the barbarians charged. If the minister had sent in the reinforcements, the other Shou armies—not the barbarians—would have been hit in the flank.
While he waited for his adjutant to return, Batu inspected the marsh. Except for a thin screen that remained at the battlefield’s edge, the cavalrymen had cut down all the reeds. Bundles lay stacked in great heaps, easily accessible and ready for use.
When Pe returned, the general gave another order. “The cavalry can stop cutting rushes. They are to remove the tack from their horses and fasten it to a reed bundle. Then they must release their mounts.”
The general was not issuing the order out of sympathy for the beasts. If events proceeded as he expected, five hundred horses would be an unwelcome hindrance in the reed bed.
Pe balked. “How will we counterattack?”
“If the minister’s plan works, there will be no need to counterattack,” Batu replied, glancing at the hilltop behind him. “If it doesn’t, there will be no opportunity.”
Pe nodded and sent a runner with the order.
After the messenger left, Batu said, “Come, Pe. We’ll need a better vantage point to see what happens next.” He started toward the hill.
The ground began to tremble.
Pe stared at his feet in wide-eyed fear. “What is it?”
Batu frowned, looking first at his own feet, then at the battlefield. The surviving archers, fewer than a hundred men, were hurrying toward the marsh. They stopped and looked at the ground, then turned around. A murmur ran down the battle line. The infantrymen looked west, toward the exposed flank. Those who still had crossbows began reloading them. The others drew their swords.
“War magic?” Pe asked, barely able to keep the terror from his voice.
Batu shook his head. “More cavalry—much more.” The general started up the hill at a sprint, Pe and a handful of messengers close behind.
They stopped one hundred feet up the slope. The ground was shaking as if it were in the grip of an earth tremor, and the sound of pounding hooves rolled across the field like thunder. Beyond the exposed flank, a horde of horsemen was charging at full gallop. Their dark figures covered the entire plain. From Batu’s perspective, they looked more like a swarm of locust than an invading army. At the least, he estimated their number to be twenty-five thousand.
“Why send so many?” Batu wondered aloud, unable to tear his gaze away from the host. “We could not have hoped to stop a third the number.”
Pe was too awe-stricken to respond, but Batu understood the answer to his own question as soon as he had asked it. The enemy commander knew he was sending his riders into an ambush. He had sent in extra troops to protect himself.
“They know it’s a trap,” Batu said, turning to his adjutant. “They want to lure our other armies into the open.”
Still mesmerized by the charge, Pe did not respond. The barbarians were two hundred yards away from the exposed flank, which was curling back to meet the charge.
The general grabbed his adjutant roughly, shaking the boy out of his trance. “Send runners to Kwan, Shengti, and Ching Tung. The message is: ‘The barbarians know our plans. Withdrawal without contact may be wisest course.’ ”
“We’ll be left to face them alone!” Pe stammered.
“We’re alone now,” Batu growled, noting that the Tuigan swarm would be on them long before reinforcements could arrive. “Send the message!”
As his adjutant obeyed, Batu watched the charge. The cavalry closed to a hundred yards. Determined not to reveal their commander’s strategy until the last minute, the officers on the exposed flank did not order the retreat. For the first time in his life, Batu wished his subordinates were not so brave. If they did not withdraw soon, it would be too late. The riders would overrun them and cut them down from behind.
Pe returned to Batu’s side. “The message is sent,” the adjutant reported. He pointed at the hilltop. “But we’re too late.”
The general looked up and saw the advance formations of the Shengti and Ching Tung armies cresting the summit. They had brought their bulky artillery with them, and thirty catapults of moderate size lined the hilltop. Behind each catapult were several wagons filled with steaming pitch. The artillerymen carried torches.
“Fools,” Batu said, pointing at the sea of Tuigan. “Do they think a brush fire will stop that?”
“Perhaps they intend to burn the artillery and push it down the hill to obstruct the charge,” Pe suggested mockingly.
“They’d kill more barbarians,” Batu replied, eyeing the catapults angrily.
An urgent din of voices rose from the western end of the field. At last, with the enemy horses less than fifty yards away, the flank began its retreat. As the line folded, companies along its entire length began to withdraw. Batu cursed. He had intended the line to turn back on itself neatly, not in a mass, but he had not had the opportunity to explain his plan in person. Now, the officers in the middle of the line were giving their orders prematurely, and the general had no doubt the result would be grave.
Within seconds, the Shou lines had become a jumble as retiring units ran headlong into each other. In indignant confusion, the officers began cursing at their men, then at each other. The disarray of the commanders quickly took its toll on the morale of the infantrymen. They began to flee away from the horsewarriors in any available direction. As Batu had ordered, the officers tried to guide their panicked charges toward the marsh, but hundreds of men were instinctively fleeing uphill, toward the reinforcements.
Batu could not save those men. When the armies of Shengti and Ching Tung charged down the hill, the cowards who had disobeyed their officers would be trampled—a fate Batu felt they deserved.
On the other hand, those who had kept their heads would need him when they reached the marsh. Batu sprinted for the reeds, calling for Pe and the runners to follow. As they descended the hill, the ground quaked more violently. Screams of horror and anguish came from the far end of the field. Without looking, the general knew the enemy’s first line had caught his men.
As he approached the bottom of the hill, Batu saw a mass of Shou infantrymen gathered in the marsh. The general stopped thirty feet up the hill, directly above the reed bed, and pointed at the bundles of bound rushes.
Addressing the runners himself, he said, “Tell those men to take reed bundles and jump into the river.”
The runners glanced at each other, but quickly bowed and rushed to transmit Batu’s command to the throng.
Looking at the turbulent waters of the river, Pe asked, “Do you really think the men will follow your order?”
Batu looked west. The horsewarriors were charging down his line almost unimpeded, trampling and slaying every living thing in their path. “Do you think they won’t?” he countered.
A series of booms sounded from the hilltop. Batu looked up and saw several catapult-spoons crash against their cross bars. Dozens of flaming pitchballs streaked overhead, landing on the far side of the battlefield and setting fire to the sorghum grass.
A less experienced officer might have thought the catapults had overshot their targets, but the general knew that it would have been impossible to miss the Tuigan horde. The artillerymen had been instructed to aim past the barbarians, trapping the enemy between a wall of fire and the armies of Shengti and Ching Tung.
Though the tactic blatantly sacrificed Batu’s army, the plan w
as a good one—or it would have been, had Kwan taken the time to scout his enemies. As it was, however, the minister had trapped a tiger in a paper cage.
While the artillerymen cranked the catapult spoons down for reloading, four thousand archers rushed over the hilltop. They took a position overlooking the sorghum field and began to fire volleys at the Tuigan riders. The routed soldiers that had been fleeing uphill stopped in their tracks and crouched in grass, fearful of putting themselves between the bowmen and their targets.
The barbarians ignored these developments and continued to charge. Batu’s soldiers were dying by the dozens.
“My general!” Pe gasped, staring in open-mouthed horror at the destruction of the Army of Chukei.
Batu laid a hand on his adjutant’s shoulder. “Don’t despair, Nii Pe. Isn’t this what armies are for?”
In the minutes that followed, perhaps two thousand pengs reached the marsh and dove into the swollen river, clinging to bundles of reeds. Aside from a steady stream of wounded stragglers, the other three-fifths of the Army of Chukei lay in the sorghum field. Blood had turned the yellow soil to the color of rust. With his army scattered, Batu had nothing to do except watch the battle. He and Pe remained near the bottom of the hill, thirty feet above the marsh.
The fight began to turn in favor of the Shou. The barbarian charge foundered as horses began to stumble in the mass of dead bodies. The Shou archers fired volley after volley into the churning horde. Small groups of Tuigan tried to mount assaults up the hill. Each time, they met a hail of shafts. The riders in the rear were unhorsed as their dead fellows came tumbling down the slope. The barbarians could not escape the fatal rain across the sorghum field, either, for the valley was engulfed in fire. Nor could they return the way they had come, for their fellows continued to press forward, unaware of the gully of death ahead.
Batu was as amazed at the effectiveness of the minister’s plan as he was bitter about the sacrifice of his army. He had never expected the old man’s trap to function so efficiently. Though Kwan had sacrificed one small army, it appeared that he would destroy the largest part of the barbarian force without exposing the Armies of Shengti and Ching Tung to a single assault. The battle was an incredible feat of tactics, and the general had to admire his superior’s planning.
Batu’s thoughts were interrupted by a deafening roar from the hilltop. Again, the ground began to quiver. Fifteen thousand Shou infantrymen rushed over the crest, screaming at the tops of their lungs. As they passed the catapults, they swept the astonished artillerymen along with them and started down the slope. Hundreds of men fell and were trampled by their fellows, but the mass did not slow. When the mob reached the archers, it smashed into the bowmen’s line as if crashing a hedge. Batu had never seen such a mad charge.
A moment later, he saw the reason for the crazed rush. All at once, twenty thousand horsewarriors crested the hill. They raced past the catapults and started down the slope, firing as they rode. The horizon turned black with their arrows. Hundreds of Shou fell every moment, and the survivors rushed forward like a herd of panicked horses.
Instantly, Batu realized what had happened. The Tuigan had been playing games with them since the initial skirmishes. The early assaults had been little more than tests of strength and organization. The tentative attacks had been a diversion designed to keep the attention of the Shou commanders focused on the sorghum field.
While Batu and the others concentrated on the skirmishes in the sorghum field, the barbarians had been circling around the Shou armies, probably at a distance of many miles to keep from being observed. When the attack on the Army of Chukei had finally come, it had only been a diversion designed to lull the Shou into thinking their scheme was working. In the meantime, the Tuigan armies had been sneaking forward. After Kwan had finally committed the Armies of Ching Tung and Shengti, the horsewarriors had charged. By the time the minister had realized what was happening, it was too late. The horsewarriors were already in full gallop.
This whole incredible chain of events became clear to Batu as he watched the barbarian riders drive the panicked Shou down the hill. “Magnificent planning,” he whispered to himself. “Magnificent execution.”
“What did you say, General?” Pe inquired absently, not looking at Batu as he spoke. He was nervously watching the Shou refugees rush down the hill. The fastest runners were less than fifty yards up the slope from their position. Fifty yards beyond that, the first rank of horsewarriors was cutting down stragglers. The riders in the rear ranks were advancing more slowly, pouring a rain of arrows into the fleeing armies.
Batu took a step down the hill. “It’s time for us—”
A Tuigan arrow hissed past the general’s head, lodging itself in Pe’s left shoulder. The adjutant screamed and grasped at the shaft, then his knees buckled. Batu threw out his arms and caught the boy before he hit the ground.
“No, General,” Pe gasped, looking up the hill. “There isn’t time.”
“Be quiet!” Batu ordered. He broke off the shaft, then roughly heaved the youth over his shoulder. “You don’t have permission to die. I still have need of an adjutant!”
The steady patter of Tuigan arrows now sounding all around him, Batu rushed down the last ten yards of hill and entered the marsh. He dropped Pe onto a reed bundle at the edge of the river, then hazarded a glance over his shoulder.
The first of the panicked soldiers from Ching Tung and Shengti were almost at the bottom of the hill, less than fifteen yards away. The horsewarriors were only another dozen yards behind them, steadily hacking and slashing their way closer to the front of the fleeing mass.
If he wanted to meet the Tuigan another day, Batu realized, there was no time to fasten Pe to the makeshift raft. He grasped Pe’s wrists and guided the boy’s hands to the rope securing the reeds together. “Hold on,” he ordered.
The general pushed Pe and the bundle into the river, then waded out behind the awkward raft. When his feet began to lose contact with the bottom, he locked his wrists into the rope and kicked with all his might. The swift current grabbed the raft and quickly pulled it farther away from shore.
Behind Batu, a chorus of guttural yells sounded. The general stopped kicking long enough to glance over his shoulder. The barbarians had caught the Shou refugees in the marsh that he and Pe had just escaped. Batu glimpsed one thousand flashing blades and heard one thousand agonized cries. A moment later, the current spun the raft around so that Batu could not see the burning sorghum field, and the river dragon carried him toward safety.
3
Supreme Harmony
State your business in the Hall of Supreme Harmony,” the chamberlain commanded.
The bureaucrat stood before a set of gilded doors that opened into the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The majestic hall stood in the emperor’s summer palace, which was located in the city of Tai Tung, over thirteen hundred miles southeast of the Dragonwall. The palace had been converted into a temporary command center for the war against the barbarians.
Batu Min Ho bowed, scrutinizing the chamberlain with a single glance. The man had thin lips, narrow eyes, and a disdainful expression. He wore an orange maitung—a floor-length tunic with a high, buttoned collar. On his chest, blue and white embroidered sparrows soared across the silk sky, slowly descending around his body in a lazy spiral.
In contrast, Batu wore the same chia he had worn during the battle. It was now cracked and shriveled, with dozens of stitches popped at the seams. The general himself looked as worn and as haggard as his armor.
It was no wonder. The two weeks since the battle in the sorghum field had been the most trying of his life. After escaping the Tuigan massacre on their reed rafts, Batu, Pe, and less than two thousand Shou soldiers had regrouped fifty miles downstream. Batu had sent Pe and the rest of the wounded south with a small escort. The other survivors he had organized into the semblance of an army.
The general’s next move had been to start an orderly retreat. As he moved south, Batu h
ad fanned out his forces, conscripting all able-bodied males from every hamlet his men encountered. The other villagers he had forced to flee, and the makeshift army had burned everything it passed—villages, food stores, grain fields, and even wild grasslands. By seven days after the battle, the wall of smoke had stretched over a front of two hundred miles. Nothing but scorched earth had remained behind.
Batu’s strategy had been simple. He had intended to slow the barbarian advance not through combat, but through hunger. Without an ample supply of food, such a large cavalry force would be forced to spend much of its energy foraging. As long as the Tuigan were scavenging, they would not be fighting.
The plan had worked well, and Batu had sent several messengers to Tai Tung reporting his successes. He had been able to slow the enemy’s advance to a crawl. At the same time, he had avoided fighting the Tuigan, save for a few minor skirmishes with advance scouts.
So, when he had received an order recalling him to Tai Tung, the general had been surprised. He had also been disappointed. Contrary to what Batu had hoped, Kwan Chan Sen had escaped the slaughter at the sorghum field, probably with his wu jen’s help. The recall to Tai Tung had come from the minister. It was in response to that summons that Batu now stood in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
The chamberlain allowed Batu to remain in his bow for a condescending length of time before returning the gesture with a perfunctory head tilt.
Too weary to take offense at the slight, Batu looked up and said, “I am Batu Min Ho, commander of the loyal and worthy Army of Chukei. I have been summoned by Minister Kwan Chan Sen.”
The chamberlain studied Batu’s ragged chia and sneered.
Finally irritated by the man’s arrogance, Batu added, “The summons seemed most important.”
The bureaucrat nodded. “Yes, it is a matter of great urgency,” he said. “The general is to be complimented upon his appreciation of that fact.”
The chamberlain turned and whispered to one of the six sentries standing to either side of the entrance. They held themselves at strict attention, their expressionless eyes focused straight ahead. The guards wore the emperor’s yellow dragon-scale armor and held broad-bladed polearms called chiang-chuns.
