The People of Youzhou (2)
Ha Yu's Youzhou army was collapsing.
Gongsun Zan, who held the left wing, made his decision in a heartbeat.
"I'm circling behind the center to reach the right. Yigong! Hold them however you can!"
"Brother Bogui, this is—"
"This isn't about whether we can win. It's about whether we live."
Han Dang nodded, his face set like stone.
Half the cavalry that formed Youzhou's left wing peeled away to the rear. The Xianbei were already punching through the right of the center and tearing it apart, and the only way to reach that side was to loop behind like this. Another Xianbei force was charging from the front; ride straight across and they would only be intercepted on the way.
As they drew closer to the center's right, the picture finally came into focus.
"Damn it..."
Behind the Xianbei slamming into the center's right flank, he could see the Wuhuan host sitting idle. They had thrown the road wide open and sat there staring, watching the Xianbei butcher at their leisure.
"You traitorous Wuhuan bastards...!"
He had always known they could not be trusted — but this shameless? They should have been driven beyond the frontier long ago. No: their tents should have been burned, every male put to the sword down to the infants in their cradles, the women parceled out among the soldiers, until the very name Wuhuan was wiped from the earth.
Only clean Han people should live in the Han. Not filth like this, that did not even know how to live alongside anyone else.
Closer still, the center's formation was crushed in on the right, a hideous dent, and the infantry beneath that wreckage were worse. One soldier, his body pulped below the waist by Xianbei hooves, screamed for his mother until an arrow punched through his throat. Another stared blankly at his own dangling right arm, still clutching a crossbow, until his skull was stove in.
A Han infantryman's crossbow was a fine weapon against nomad cavalry — but the men who worked those weapons had their limits. Shooting horse that charged straight at you was simple enough: you aimed ahead, or a little high. But if the enemy tried to swing around, you had to lead them, aim where they would be rather than where they were, and that was a different problem entirely. Neither the commandery administrators and commandants of Youzhou nor the court itself had the leisure to train men to that standard. Unseasoned crossbowmen fell apart the moment an order grew even slightly complicated. That was why you screened the flanks with cavalry, kept the infantry looking only forward, and dug ditches or parked wagons so they would not panic at the sight of enemy horse.
None of these infantry had ever been trained for a situation where the flank stood wide open.
The Xianbei swept through Youzhou's foot as if they were toying with them. Again and again. Xianbei light cavalry almost never committed to charges like this — they could not properly armor their horses — which meant that if they were charging over and over, they were certain the enemy was too broken to so much as scratch a warhorse.
They were right.
Gongsun Zan's fury poured itself at the enemy.
"You animal bastards! Die!"
Horse slammed into horse. Gongsun Zan's spear punched through several Xianbei riders in a heartbeat and dragged them down into the dirt. This was no time to sit back and command; he himself had to charge in ready to die. The warhorses, maddened by the smell of blood, tore at the flesh of other horses and men alike.
Of course the Xianbei cavalry, struck suddenly from the left, did not fold easily.
"I'll take their horse!"
Helian, son of Tanshihuai, slid his bow into its case and drew his sword.
Father!
Even a glance told him the Han cavalry were hammering them with the fury of the damned. This assault could not be allowed to break here.
The Xiongnu had the Luandi clan. The Han had the Liu. The Xianbei had... nothing. Tanshihuai had been the first to bind the Xianbei together, and under the Xianbei name he had unified the north. But the loyalty of the Xianbei people was to Tanshihuai himself, and to the feats he had wrought — nothing more. If Tanshihuai died today, would they give Helian their loyalty simply because he was the son?
They would not. Tanshihuai's son? So what? — that was what they would say.
To inherit even a fraction of the loyalty men had given his father, he had to prove himself. Prove himself until they said, Yes — that is Tanshihuai's son. Only then could he become the second of Tanshihuai's dynasty. A founder alone does not make a house. There must be a second. A dynasty does not begin with its founder; it begins with the second sovereign. If Tanshihuai ended as a first and only generation, he would be a hero who passed like the wind — not the founder of a line. And Helian would remain the son who failed to inherit his father's legacy. If he were even remembered that way, he would be lucky. They might forget Tanshihuai had a son at all.
That cannot happen!
Helian swung his blade with desperate force — so frantic it looked less like attack than defense. No: Helian truly was resisting with everything he had, against a Han offensive that would strangle the first Xianbei dynasty in its cradle.
The melee ground on. The two cavalries tangled so wildly that Gongsun Zan and Helian swept past each other without either man knowing. They had forgotten food and forgotten the need to shit. Blood and sweat and piss ran together; screams and war cries became one sound; winner and loser ceased to mean anything.
But it could not last forever.
The pressure on Youzhou's center eased a little — yet on the strength of Helian's struggle, the Xianbei cavalry began to shove Gongsun Zan's counterattack back, inch by inch. Ha Yu's original plan had been simple: hold the wings taut with cavalry, and let the crossbows punish any Xianbei horse that came charging blindly down the center. Which meant the Han and Wuhuan cavalry on either wing had only been strong enough to check the Xianbei — nothing more. And now the entire Wuhuan right wing had peeled away in betrayal. With every passing moment the color of defeat grew darker.
Worse still, the Xianbei host was far larger than Ha Yu or the four generals he had chosen had ever assumed. There was no way Gongsun Zan, peeling off half the left-wing horse, could absorb a cavalry assault of that weight.
"Bogui!"
Xu Rong risked everything to ride to Gongsun Zan's side, leaving Ha Yu's staff work to Gongsun Du. Gongsun Zan barely glanced his way. He knew the voice and shouted without turning.
"We have to ease the center back! Get Colonel Ha's headquarters up onto the hill behind us and hold there!"
There was no outrunning Xianbei cavalry on an infantryman's legs. The best they could do was seize the high ground and hold, and give the men even a sliver of relief from a fight they could not win.
"Pull the men back...? If we give ground now, every man will break and run!"
"I know that...! That's why I'm asking you!"
Gongsun Zan had decided he had no choice but to trust Xu Rong's experience and skill. Xu Rong clicked his tongue.
"Fine. But the hill only buys us a moment. If they surround us, it's over."
Supplies would be cut at once. They would not even be able to find drinking water.
"Then we hold anyway and wait for relief—!"
Gongsun Zan cut down another enemy rider as he answered. The enemy was already pouring toward Xu Rong as well. He laid about him with the spear until several more went down in a row, and only then found a breath of space.
"I'll take that to Colonel Ha. Get yourself out of here too, Bogui!"
"I'll move with the center!"
If the Han army had one stroke of luck, it was this: Ha Yu knew how to keep men fighting when the situation was against them.
If he had never endured a Xianbei encirclement in Beidi Commandery, Ha Yu would have given up, handed command to Xu Rong or Gongsun Du, and gone vacant. But he succeeded in holding their minds together — even if he had to invent the truth to do it. The soldiers did not stop to ask whether his words were true. They obeyed because they needed them to be. The question — hadn't they come here to meet the Xianbei in open battle and win? — they chewed up and swallowed.
Barely — truly barely — Ha Yu, Xu Rong, and Gongsun Du got their headquarters planted on the crest of the hill. Han soldiers formed a ring around them. They smashed what few wagons remained and stood the wreckage as a palisade, and even the sparse trees on the hill were axed down and thrown into the wall.
Gongsun Du moved among them without rest, sorting the wounded by how badly they were hurt, counting what weapons they still had. He sent the injured up close to Ha Yu's headquarters and pushed anyone still standing toward the outer line. Xu Rong had no choice but to send his own long-serving veterans to the outside as well. He knew many of them would die. He swallowed the tears and did it anyway.
A short while later Gongsun Zan, drawing on the experience of having once broken out of a Xianbei encirclement, joined them at Ha Yu's headquarters. But when he reached the crest where Ha Yu, Xu Rong, and Gongsun Du stood, his face went hard as stone.
The people he had expected to find were not there.
"Where is Yigong?"
At the question after his hometown junior, Han Dang, Ha Yu, Xu Rong, and Gongsun Du all shut their mouths, their faces grim.
"Then I'll go after him myself!"
"Bogui! You're the only cavalry strength we have left!"
"If we lose Han Yigong it's no different from losing everything!"
Xu Rong seized Gongsun Zan's arm hard.
"You think I like standing here with both eyes open while Yigong dies?!"
"Let go. While we stand here arguing, Yigong and his men are dying."
"Bogui!"
Xu Rong looked ready to hold that arm if it killed him. Gongsun Zan looked ready to draw his sword, cut the hand off, and ride for Han Dang anyway. But the standoff did not last. Gongsun Du suddenly surged to his feet and pointed west.
"They're here! They actually—!"
Relief.
Han Dang had already made his peace with dying.
Even Brother Bogui can't come for me through this.
He did not resent it. No one could punch through a Xianbei cavalry cordon that thick, and even if they did, they would never punch back out. Coming would only mean dying together.
Keep our losses to the line of my own death. No more.
Kill as many as he could before he went, and buy the rest of them time to regroup. It was a common thing on a battlefield. There always came a moment when someone had to be spent so the rest could win — or simply get away. Until yesterday that someone had not been him. Today, it was. It was only the moment every fighting man had to be ready for.
That did not mean he was not afraid. It only meant that, facing a death he could not dodge, he was thinking about what his death would mean.
He stroked his horse's neck. It was a fine animal. He was sorry it would have to die with its master.
But I can't let the Xianbei ride you against the Han.
If he charged and the horse died first, and then he died, that would be a mercy. If not, he meant to cut the animal's throat himself at the last instant. Even a beloved mount could not be left to serve an invasion of the Han.
He called his men in close and was searching for the weakest point before giving the order to charge when, suddenly, the Xianbei rear shuddered.
What—?
A single rider smashed through the Xianbei horse and came bursting toward Han Dang. The first thing Han Dang saw was the crimson headcloth the man wore. A fierce, vivid red. He looked about Han Dang's own age. A young warrior.