All or Nothing (3)
The Ignition Lance looked for all the world like an ordinary spear, yet it was no spear at all.
Its true nature was a projector that sprayed an ignition solvent compounded on a toluene base—in modern parlance, a flamethrower.
Of course, its operating principle was crude beyond comparison to any later model. A wooden cask filled with the solvent was set high upon the battlements in a place safe from enemy fire-arrows and catapult stones. Bellows pumped air into the vessel, mixing the contents and building pressure within. When the outlet valve was opened, the solvent discharged under the force of that internal pressure and the potential energy of the height difference between cask and nozzle. A torch fixed at the head of the lance ignited the stream as it left the muzzle.
Yes. In that moment, the world’s first flamethrower—crafted by Hui-yeom’s own hand—revealed itself upon the field of war.
—Fwaaaaaaaaash!!
The pressure generated by hundreds of men stomping the bellows at once rivaled the hydraulic force of an electric pump. The solvent that erupted from the Ignition Lances sprayed forth with a force that, with only a little exaggeration, could be compared to a fire-engine water cannon.
Yet there was nothing refreshing about it.
This “burning water cannon,” compounded of toluene mixed with oil, phosphorus, pitch, pine resin, and even expired black powder, recreated the very definition of a scorching hell upon the mortal world.
“Gyaaaaaaaaah!!!!”
Soldiers struck full-on by the stream of flame did not even manage a proper scream before they shriveled. The shrieks came from the men standing beside them, set alight by radiant heat and flying gobbets of fire, roasted alive where they stood. Even soldiers several paces away cried out and recoiled; the temperature of the burning toluene solvent was terrifyingly intense. Steam rose from the thick protective coats of the flamethrower crews—coats that had been deliberately soaked until they dripped. Assistant gunners kept hauling water buckets and dousing the operators again and again.
—Hoooooooooosh…!!
Waves of yellow-blue fire shot from the Ignition Lances and, in an instant, transformed the enemies who had poured through the gate into something halfway between shriveled meat and ash. The flamethrower crews advanced slowly, sweeping the flames outward from the walls as if raking with brooms.
For the soldiers packed near the gate like commuters crushing into a subway car at rush hour, it was a catastrophe beyond all calculation. Worse still, the solvent previously flung through the catapult ports had already spread across the ground around those openings, completely sealing their feet and their line of retreat. When that solvent met the flamethrowers’ fire, it blazed up with ferocious intensity.
A few quick-witted soldiers realized the situation had turned monstrous and spun to flee, only to be swallowed by flames that erupted not from behind them but from the ground beneath their boots.
“Gyaaaaaaaaaah!!”
“Aaaaaaaaaagh!!!”
The conflagration rose so high that some began to fear the walls themselves might burn. In truth there was no such danger. Dali’s ramparts were stone, sand, and packed earth; timber had been used, of course, but not enough for the walls to catch. Moreover, the ground immediately outside had been deliberately kept clear of houses and buildings in preparation for siege, and no forest or thicket stood near enough for the fire to spread.
Chagatai soldiers who had been charging the walls could only stare in blank horror at the burning ramparts and the pitiful screams of men and horses shrinking and collapsing beneath the flames. The acrid stench of toluene mingled with the smell of roasting flesh and rode the wind straight into their nostrils.
Naturally, “fire attack” in this age meant little more than dry straw, firewood, or oil. The “natural” flames produced by such means possessed nothing like the power of an artificially compounded ignition solvent. Adiya Khan, who had never dreamed that a mere film of oil sprinkled beyond the walls could birth a blaze of this magnitude, howled in despair.
“The moment I counter one, another appears…! What is this? What the hell is this? Where do these weapons keep pouring from?!”
He tore at his hair with a face of pure hopelessness.
“Sacheondang!! You cursed weapon-mongers!!!”
From the city’s sole gate, flames billowed like the breath of a Western dragon. Upon the walls that any ladder-borne assault would have to climb, fire burned hot enough to reduce a ladder to ash in moments. All that remained was to scream at men to charge through the inferno, or to hurl catapult stones in an attempt to smash the walls—yet the enemy’s multi-launch rocket systems and cannon were by no means idle simply because they could not strike foes close under the battlements. The catapults had long since become so much food for the guns. Checkmate.
Adiya Khan began calculating the moment of retreat. He had suffered a crushing defeat, yet paradoxically that very defeat had eliminated most of his political rivals. If he returned home now he could seize control of his own faction, crush the neutrals, and smother discontent. In the end, every soldier near the walls burned to death; those lucky enough to escape the flames stood far off, flinching, dying by the bullet even as they hesitated. Seeing them, Adiya Khan roared:
“Retreat! Fall back!!”
As if they had been waiting for the word, the Chagatai soldiers flung down their weapons the instant the gongs and drums sounded and turned to run.
“Cease fire! Cease fire! Do not attack the enemy!”
Hui-yeom issued the order at once. The foe was already withdrawing. Most of those who fled would starve or freeze before they saw another spring, and civil war would claim the rest. There was no need to grind precious soldiers and munitions against them here.
“Bring the sandbags we prepared and smother the fires!”
Hui-yeom glared after the Chagatai ranks vanishing beyond the horizon and directed the firefighting. Water would have been useless against a toluene blaze in any realistic quantity; they used the primitive yet effective method of burying the flames under sand. Only by evening was the fire that had heated the entire wall finally extinguished. The enemy left behind nothing but corpses of men and horses packing the walls and trenches. Allied losses numbered a mere handful—men struck by stray arrows, catapult stones, or boiling oil. The enemy dead, though never counted, blackened the plain in numbers that must have approached forty thousand.
It was a perfect, overwhelming victory.
The war in Qinghai Province unfolded differently from that in Yunnan. With their supply lines effectively severed, the Chagatai forces grew desperate and threw themselves again and again against Xining, yet the local garrisons of Qinghai Guard and the White Tiger Army held them at every point. Unlike the Yunnan troops, who had never before experienced major war, Qinghai had faced a Magyo invasion thirty-three years earlier. Long peace had bred a measure of complacency, but the young officers who had survived that earlier struggle were now bearded generals directing the defense. Experienced commanders kept their men strictly to the walls; for Chagatai the siege was far from easy.
Moreover, with the outstanding leader Mongke Khan dead, a single Noyan had claimed the vacant seat, yet he could not dominate the host the way Mongke had. On the barren, desert-like soil of Qinghai their brought supplies ran dry and plunder yielded little; the growing conviction that they would all starve to death began to spread. Deserters multiplied. Then an incident accelerated the collapse: a merchant caravan carrying grain was waylaid and stripped of its entire cargo. The commanders ordered the food discarded—“A merchant hauling this much grain into this wilderness at this precise moment? Suspicious!”—but the starving soldiers ignored them and cooked a meal. That single meal killed hundreds.
“Poison!!”
The toxin had been prepared by poison specialists under the direct command of Dang Su-jeong of the Sacheondang main line; its efficacy needs no further praise. Nor did they fight alone.
“We shall assist as well.”
The Kunlun Sect, which had always stood on the front line against Magyo aggression, once more rose with righteous swords. Employing the peerless light-foot techniques and swift footwork that made them the envy of the jianghu, they slipped into Chagatai camps night after night, assassinated men, and vanished. No amount of sentries could easily detect masters of the martial world who had decided to infiltrate; even when discovered, the Taoist adepts of Kunlun disappeared into the darkness before their pursuers could mount. The nightly toll was not enormous, yet it was more than enough to dry the blood in every soldier’s veins. Now they had to fight assassination terror and sleeplessness as well.
At last the Noyans’ patience exploded.
“At this rate we all die!!”
“The Qinghai offensive has failed! Can you not see it? We must return to Yunnan and rejoin the main force at once!”
Fear that they would be completely isolated inside Qinghai if they failed to cross the Kunlun Mountains before winter drove them hard. Samir Khan, who had merely stepped into Mongke’s place, possessed neither the prestige nor the record to quiet such discontent. In truth he himself probably wanted to retreat more than anyone. Then news of the disaster arrived: Adiya Khan’s army, which had staked everything on an all-or-nothing assault against Dali, had been annihilated and had turned its banners back toward the Mongol plateau. The tale was deliberately “overheard” by soldiers whom the poison specialists had “accidentally” allowed to escape after a staged conversation; it spread through the camps like wildfire. For an army already on its deathbed, the report was the final blow that cut the throat.
Broken in spirit, Samir Khan cried:
“Retreat! Fall back!”
Frost was already forming on the rivers. Crossing the Kunlun again with troops exhausted by long campaign would cost many lives, yet it was still better than starving, freezing, or being slaughtered here. In the end, the Chagatai Khanate’s ambition to swallow the Central Plains and restore the glory of the old Yuan Empire foundered before it could pass Yunnan and Qinghai.
By contrast, the losses suffered by Yunnan and Qinghai were unbelievably light. To win so vast a victory not merely in a single great battle but across an entire war was a feat rare even when the whole of Central Plains history—and world history—was surveyed. And it was this very campaign that later historians would point to as the moment when the world first took notice of Sichuan, “the arsenal of the world,” of the Sacheondang Family that ruled it, and above all of the legendary genius Dang Hui-yeom, who was said to have laid the foundation for “world peace through overwhelming force.”
Even a victorious war leaves a bleak aftermath. Losses that the fever of triumph had hidden now pressed into view.
Back at last in Baoshan County, Jin-hwa—once the daughter of a prosperous Caffa plantation—knelt in stunned grief before the ruined coffee fields. Her parents stared in desolation; she, whether she noticed their pain or not, only spun about searching frantically for one person.
“Yun-ga! Yun-ga!”
She wandered the trampled earth without rest, yet there was no hope of finding her lover’s face among the hoof-churned soil. At last she sank down at the mouth of the narrow path that had always led him to the outpost.
“Uhk… heuuuuh….”
It was too cruel. What was war, that it could decide life and death and destroy the very means of living? Everything felt distant and dreamlike; endless tears welled from her eyes.
Then:
“Huh? Someone’s crying over there.”
“This path is known only to us. Could it be a ghost?”
“Idiot, the sun’s high in the sky—what kind of frozen ghost would that be?!”
At the murmur of voices Jin-hwa jerked her head up. Tears blurred the faces of the figures descending the trail. She scrubbed her eyes with her sleeve—and in that instant a voice she had dreamed of night after night rang out.
“Hwa-mae!!!”
Strength she never knew she possessed flooded her heavy body; she sprang up and ran.
“Yun-ga!!!”
The little group coming down the lonely path was none other than the Noksan employees of Baoshan’s First Outpost—the men who had first engaged the enemy and whose fates had been unknown. One of them flew down the trail and crushed her in his arms as though he would break her. Though winter was only beginning, spring had already arrived in both their hearts.
“Good news.”
A faint smile touched Hui-yeom’s lips as he read one of the Minjeongwon reports. His face was always gentle, yet the smile now was a fraction warmer than usual. The closing lines of the document read:
…Furthermore, the full survival of all personnel of Noksan First Outpost, whose whereabouts had been unknown, has been confirmed.
They severed the approach path, isolated themselves, and delayed the enemy’s advance; thereafter, making full use of their intimate knowledge of the mountain terrain, they successfully held out and survived within the highlands.
Fortunately their dependents also completed evacuation in safety; the families of Station Chief Jo Deok and every employee have been verified unharmed.
It is the opinion of this office that commendations are warranted.
“Excellent.”
Hui-yeom, full of energy, prepared to organize a celebration for the war’s survivors and their families. Yet fate would not grant him leisure. Only a few days after the enemy crossed the border, Baek Beon returned from Beijing. The eunuch who normally wore an odd little smile now wore a face of iron severity.
Dang Hui-yeom, Young Master of the Sacheondang Family, receive the Emperor’s command.
You are ordered to present yourself in Beijing at once and to report in full detail every occurrence of the late war—most especially the new weapons of your own creation—holding nothing back.
While the prostrate members of the Dang Family shuddered and some broke into cold sweat, Hui-yeom himself wore a wicked little smile.