“All you bastards stand firm! Even if you piss your pants, keep those wolf-fang lances level—these bamboo poles are so long, cavalry spears are more than half shorter, they can’t even reach your bodies, so what are you afraid of? Do you want to crawl back into your mother’s womb?”

Diao the One-Eyed gripped a long-bladed armor-piercing spear, watching those green recruits turn pale with fear and tremble at the sight of Chuzhou Army cavalry charging forward, his hoarse voice bellowing in furious rebuke.

His left eye had been blasted out defending Xichuan, blinding him in one eye. Over the years everyone called him Diao the One-Eyed. Even after being promoted to squad leader, no one thought of what his real name was, and he himself paid it no mind.

He once had a wife and daughter, but they contracted water-borne plague while displaced in the countryside. After being incorporated into the Taowu Market militaryMansion, they couldn’t survive many more days before dying in succession.

Diao the One-Eyed said that his wife and daughter got to eat hot soup and rice before they died, making his残 life worth fighting for the Dragon Sparrow Army. He earned military merit and was promoted to junior officer, but had no thought of remarrying and starting a family.

When he received military pay or reward money, he either distributed it to impoverished soldiers under his command, or spent it on drinking, or visiting brothels. But with his left eye socket a black hole missing a piece, plus several knife scars on his face, looking fierce and ugly, every time the girls he found had to close their eyes with funeral faces to complete the deed with him.

This time he had originally been with the Tanzhou Army. Accompanying two Tongyang townsmen who had families in Jinling, they deserted. Ten days ago they arrived at Maoshan to join the Chishan Army, and he was assigned to the Third Command as deputy squad leader, assisting Luo Yunhao from the Han family household troops, commanding a patrol unit of eighty men.

This patrol unit, besides two military officers from Xuzhou and Diao the One-Eyed who had actual command experience as base-level officers, only had twenty veteran soldiers. The other sixty were servants newly enlisted at Maoshan.

Diao the One-Eyed customarily used a thirty-jin iron spear. If not for his hot temper and drinking habit, he might have been promoted to deputy battalion commander by now, with a merit rank of seventh grade. But he himself had no regrets.

He only regretted that fleeing to Maoshan, he couldn’t bring back his iron spear. The armor-piercing spears commonly used in the army were quite excellent, but only weighed thirteen or fourteen jin. Using it felt awkward to him, unable to unleash the power of his ancestral Tongyang Diao family spear technique.

However, as an old military man who had served ten years in Prince Yue Dong Chang’s army before becoming a refugee, while others still looked down on the wolf-fang lance as merely a broken long bamboo pole, he could see that this improvised long bamboo pole with residual branches at the tip was perfectly suited for green recruits.

In cold weapon combat, those who dared to wield blades and fight the enemy face-to-face could be called elite veterans.

The vast majority of soldiers, even after long training, could not achieve this. More often they were incorporated into military formations, wielding long spears and pikes to advance and retreat together with the formation.

These servants who had received no training and had just been organized into units after arriving were naturally even worse. When enemy troops swung blades or thrust spears at them, most couldn’t hold steady the weapons in their hands, let alone fight in formation.

The wolf-fang lance was made from purple-spotted long bamboo grown in Maoshan. This bamboo was quite resilient. Cut and left at a length of one zhang five chi, about five meters.

At such length, held level in hand, under normal circumstances it was enough to keep any enemy and even their weapons outside, making it difficult for them to suddenly attack close up.

Plus, the long and short bamboo branches preserved at the head of the wolf-fang lance spread out like an umbrella, making it difficult for enemies with short weapons or long spears to penetrate through the gaps and press in close.

All this greatly enhanced the recruits’ sense of security in facing battle, so they wouldn’t have the impulse to turn and flee at the sight of enemy cavalry charging ferociously.

Contemporary military organization used patrol units as the basic level. Each patrol unit was divided into four to six squads of varying types—long spear squads, long pike squads, sword and shield squads, or bow and crossbow squads—each with their own methods for forming battle lines or charging into combat.

This organizational method clearly wasn’t suitable for the Chishan Army’s Second and Third Commands, where most recruits had to go directly into combat without training.

The patrol unit where Diao the One-Eyed served had eighty men, nearly double the size of ordinary patrol units, divided into eight squads of ten men each. In each squad, four recruits wielded wolf-fang lances, responsible for keeping enemy troops at the perimeter; three recruits held wooden or rattan shields, responsible for blocking arrows shot from afar by enemy troops; only three veterans served as squad and section leaders, wielding sword and shield or spear and pike for close combat, or holding bows and crossbows for long-range shooting.

As a veteran’s instinct, Diao the One-Eyed felt that wolf-fang lances carved from long bamboo poles were most suitable for green recruits. But with nearly sixty soldiers under his command having enlisted only about ten days ago, with training of only seven or eight days or even less, whether they could withstand the assault of Chuzhou Army’s elite cavalry made his heart pound with uncertainty.

Even though behind every three recruit squad formations, there was still one squad of elite veterans holding the base of the品-shaped formation.

At this moment, Diao the One-Eyed loudly berated those green recruits who were clearly terrified by the Chuzhou Army cavalry charge, his face covered in knife scars appearing even more fierce with横 muscles.

Two hundred Chuzhou Army cavalry, seeing that hanging back to shoot arrows was useless, now attempted to gather and charge forward.

Two hundred warhorses accelerated to maximum speed, their hooves pounding, making the earth tremble. The dense sound was as terrifying as a violent storm to the ears of the green recruits.

Three patrol units stood before the Chuzhou Army cavalry, with altogether less than thirty longbows or arm-span crossbows. Arrows shot out sparsely, unable to form any scale.

The enemy cavalry were extremely elite. Besides wearing leather armor not easily penetrated by arrows, the cavalrymen lying low on their horses’ backs continued to swing blades and spears to deflect arrows. When they charged close, only one unluckily had an arrow pierce his leather armor, the arrowhead stabbing hard into his shoulder socket. But he could still barely hang on his horse’s back without falling, first spurring his horse to turn back to the main formation a li away!

However, the Chuzhou Army’s elite cavalry weren’t here to trade casualties with the Chishan Army.

The Jianghuai and Jingxiang regions didn’t produce warhorses, and lacked soldiers skilled in horsemanship. The Great Chu army was mainly composed of infantry and naval forces, with extremely limited numbers of elite cavalry.

The Chuzhou Army ranging across Huainan had relatively more cavalry incorporated, but of the fifty-thousand-plus elite troops that crossed the river, cavalry numbered only about ten thousand.

Previously when Danyang city was raided, losing nearly a thousand cavalry and fourteen to fifteen hundred warhorses had already pained the Chuzhou Army greatly.

Facing wolf-fang lances about five meters long with umbrella-shaped bamboo branches at the tips, if cavalry wanted to charge forward and directly cut down Chishan Army soldiers, the horses’ chests and bellies would first be pierced by the sharp tips of the wolf-fang lances, and the cavalrymen themselves would very likely be swept off their horses’ backs by the bamboo branches.

Unless it was a decisive battle, otherwise they’d be insane to directly trample the Chishan Army recruit formations at the cost of heavy casualties, wouldn’t they?

The cavalry commander, even seeing that the Chishan Army soldiers’ faces were pale with fright, but seeing no good opportunity to tear through the Chishan Army ranks, could only turn his horse’s head and lead his troops back.

At this time their backs had to take another wave of arrows, but as long as they were fast enough, taking a few arrows in the back—as long as they didn’t penetrate too deeply—could only be considered ordinary arrow wounds.

When the cavalry formed a single line, almost sweeping past from the flank at extreme speed, suddenly and unexpectedly, a figure threw down his wolf-fang lance and rushed out, pouncing like a fierce tiger, grabbing the waist of a cavalryman at the rear of the formation, pulling him down from the other side, smashing him hard into the muddy ground raising dust everywhere.

“You son of a bitch!” Diao the One-Eyed saw it was a servant from Shang Family Fort, seemingly brave but actually extremely reckless, charging out to tackle an enemy cavalryman. He cursed while his body also sprang forward like a fierce tiger.

The soldiers at the rear of the enemy cavalry formation were all battle-hardened elites. Seeing someone pulled off horseback, immediately two horses wheeled around, two cavalry spears drilling toward that reckless soldier’s back like lightning.

Diao the One-Eyed reacted faster. His cursing unfinished, though still several steps away, the long-bladed armor-piercing spear in his hand flew out first, sweeping across horizontally.

Those two cavalrymen also had excellent waist skill, leaning back their bodies, dodging the armor-piercing spear. After their long spears spun once, they shook out spear flowers and thrust forward.

Diao the One-Eyed drew the saber from his waist, cutting an arc of light before him, deflecting aside a long spear thrusting at his face. That reckless recruit’s body was also extremely agile—he threw himself flat, letting a cavalry spear stab past along his spine, then grabbed the spear shaft with his backhand, trying to wrench the spear back.

The cavalryman clamped the long spear under his armpit, gripping tightly with his left hand, while his right hand drew the saber from his waist, swinging down at the reckless recruit’s head. Diao the One-Eyed stepped forward slashing horizontally, deflecting that cavalryman’s saber from the side.

The reckless recruit pressed down hard. Not wanting his body dragged off the horse, the cavalryman had no choice but to release his grip. Left and right several more cavalrymen surrounded them, raising spears to thrust at Diao the One-Eyed’s chest.

Fortunately, three or four veterans immediately charged out from the formation, blocking for Diao the One-Eyed the two long spears like venomous snakes, preventing them from piercing holes through Diao the One-Eyed’s chest and abdomen.

Seeing that the Chishan Army also had two cavalry units emerging from behind the formation to intercept, this Chuzhou Army cavalry unit didn’t dare entangle, grabbing up their comrade who was first tackled and withdrawing.

Gasping heavily, Diao the One-Eyed only then saw that the tackled cavalryman had a small knife with a rusty handle stuck in his neck, blood gushing out.

However, Diao the One-Eyed was not in good temper. Grabbing that reckless recruit by his ragged collar, “crack crack” two slaps landed, immediately drawing a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. He cursed: “Disregarding military discipline, unauthorized killing not rewarded—this is the rule the Lord established, just these few points, your brain filled with dog piss can’t remember? You tired of living—I still want to keep my life to enjoy a few more women!”

The recruit was stubborn too. His cheeks immediately swelled red from the two big slaps, but he made no sound.

“Get your ass to the back!” Diao the One-Eyed trembled with rage. Fearing this recruit named Shang Hu would cause more trouble, he kicked and beat him to get him to the back. He’d rather have the squad short one person than leave a hidden danger that would let the Chuzhou Army tear open a gap, causing the entire formation to collapse.

Shang Hu, driven out of the formation by Diao the One-Eyed, felt somewhat bewildered, not knowing where he could go. Even that wolf-fang lance was left behind in the military formation.

After a short while, a horseman galloped up from behind, throwing a scale armor and a straight-spined saber onto the ground before Shang Hu, saying: “Put on the armor and take up the blade. The Lord and Commander Gao specially permit you to hunt freely between formations! But you’d better open your eyes and watch carefully how others kill enemies together with their comrades in formation, and don’t implicate others in losing their lives for you…”

No one would like Shang Hu’s overly reckless martial courage.

Shang Hu picked up the scale armor and blade, turning back to see in the distance on the mountain ridge, Han Qian and Gao Shao reining in their horses behind the formation, observing the probing between both sides.

“That fellow is too reckless, but I like him. It’s rare to see such a good prospect in the army with such strength and agile skill,” Gao Shao said to Han Qian with a smile. “If he can learn to be more clever in this battle and not so stubborn, I’ll take him to my side as a guard.”

Han Qian still had an impression of Shang Hu, this escaped slave from the Shang family.

Of the servants who had come over, able-bodied men totaled nearly eight thousand. After most went to the battlefield, they inevitably turned pale and trembled. But there were a few with extraordinarily bold spirit and natural martial prowess. Like Shang Hu belonged to the type who got too excited in their first battle, their minds going blank and losing control, then pouncing forward to kill enemies.

Gao Shao sending someone to deliver scale armor and a straight-spined saber, permitting him to hunt freely between formations, was equivalent to assigning him the responsibility of an elite scout or reconnaissance rider in the main formation. Actually it was to let him adapt to more intense and cruel battlefields, so that ultimately he could control himself freely and become a good prospect for a brave general.

However, Han Qian’s attention at present was still on the entire battlefield.

To organize a rabble into an army required at least three or four months of training. But currently, even if they kept attacking nearby fortifications and could continuously gather grain, the elderly, weak, women, and children in Maoshan kept increasing. Currently besides the ten-thousand-plus Chishan Army, the elderly, weak, women, and children would also exceed eighty thousand. Daily grain consumption had doubled compared to before.

That is to say, they always had less than a month’s grain reserves. And as new servants continuously came to surrender, daily grain consumption kept rising.

Han Qian simply didn’t have three or four months to train these green recruits.

What Han Qian needed to do now, or perhaps what he expected from these green recruits, was hoping they could nail down the positions where they currently stood.

The so-called wolf-fang lance made from broken long bamboo poles was an extremely famous simple cold weapon in later generations, initially originating from miner uprisings in western Zhejiang, later incorporated into the Mandarin Duck Formation by an outstanding famous general of later generations.

The wolf-fang lance was naturally not omnipotent, but it had one advantage that Han Qian valued most at this time—the wolf-fang lance was long enough, a full five meters long. This could give new soldiers entering battle and immediately facing fierce enemies an extremely strong sense of security.

Moreover, he disrupted the original patrol formation organization, imitating the Mandarin Duck Formation, mixing bowmen, sword and shield soldiers, wolf-fang lance soldiers, and shield soldiers together. But it wasn’t because he saw the Mandarin Duck Formation had miraculous effects in countering elite blade soldiers. It was because recruits without long training could only execute the simplest actions in mixed squads: first, use wolf-fang lances to keep enemy soldiers at the perimeter; second, use large shields to block arrows. The real close combat fighting and long-range shooting were left to veterans.

Of course, he was mainly gambling that Zhao Zhen wouldn’t dare lose too many elite cavalry on Maoshan’s southeastern flank.

In the Jianghuai region where cavalry were scarce, heavy casualties among any elite cavalry force were unacceptable.

Before the Chuzhou Army deployed large-scale elite armored infantry to the White Fox Ridge line, Han Qian dared to rotate the Second and Third Command forces, mostly composed of recruits, to the northeastern foothills of Donglu Mountain, suppressing harassment launched by Chuzhou Army cavalry from the flanks.

……

……

In the harassment operations launched against the Chishan Army on Maoshan’s southeastern flank, Chuzhou Army elite cavalry frequently deployed but achieved no results.

On the entire flank, Han Qian’s requirement for all recruit patrol units from the Second and Third Commands sent to the front lines was to nail themselves in place like stakes, motionless.

Zhao Zhen didn’t dare commit all his cavalry to decisive battle, each time only daring to send two or three hundred cavalry in formation to assault the flanks.

Although Chuzhou Army elite cavalry practiced mounted archery diligently and could often exploit the panic of Chishan Army recruits in facing battle, shooting and wounding or killing many soldiers, even once scattering one or two Chishan Army recruit patrol units—when they wanted to expand the chaos and tear through more of the Chishan Army formations organized by patrol units, the Chishan Army’s elite forces deployed slightly behind would fearlessly penetrate forward through gaps in the front lines, with more excellent armor and weapons forcing the Chuzhou Army cavalry to withdraw, unable to expand their gains.

In three or four days, the Chuzhou Army had over fifty cavalrymen killed and wounded, in exchange for nearly four hundred Chishan Army recruits shot and wounded or killed. Comparing just the casualty numbers of both sides, the battle record appeared quite impressive. But in harassment operations of this scale, it had no practical significance, not even shaking the Chishan Army’s morale.

Because in these three or four days, at least three or four thousand servants with their families entered Maoshan from the west, supplementing the Chishan Army with over a thousand able-bodied recruits.

Currently the Chishan Army had nearly thirteen or fourteen thousand men. At valley entrances and mountain hollows in the northern and middle foothills, they also had this kind of linked bamboo spear formation. Limited by terrain, their cavalry found it even harder to charge in for harassment.

Zhao Zhen also noticed that the Chishan Army recruits had adapted in extremely short time to the shock brought by cavalry charges. The flank formations grew increasingly stable.

In comparison, their own soldiers became impatient. On two occasions they advanced recklessly, with casualties exceeding ten men each time.

During this period, the Chishan Army consistently used four thousand troops to seal off the passage from Shang Family Fort through the northern foothills of Donglu Mountain, not rushing to launch a siege. Clearly they were also waiting to see if their eastern flank could suppress Chuzhou Army cavalry harassment.

And because the Chuzhou Army never effectively tore through the Chishan Army’s defensive formation on the flanks, the defense troops inside Shang Family Fort didn’t dare emerge from the fort to launch counterattacks.

This actually had very subtle effects on the psychology of soldiers on all three sides.

“Han Qian is using our cavalry to train his recruits’ courage! Could it be they never intended to forcefully attack Shang Family Fort at all?” Yin Peng stood beside Wang Wenqian, asking with a bitter smile.

Wang Wenqian frowned deeply, shaking his head and saying: “Han Qian still wants to attack Shang Family Fort, but before that, he needs to test our determination to assault his flanks…”

He had personally rushed to the front lines at close range in Yin Peng’s company to observe both sides’ contact situation, never expecting that small linked long bamboo poles would cause them such great trouble.

Wang Wenqian was also unwilling to commit elite cavalry to trading casualties. After all, the Chishan Army was not their primary target.

Of course, suppressing the strange weapons made from linked long bamboo poles wasn’t difficult. For example, concentrating two or three rows of heavy shields, or concentrating two or three rows of heavy armored infantry to charge in could suppress these linked long bamboo poles. But the problem was Han Qian placed over a thousand elite veterans slightly behind to anchor the formation. How many elite heavy armored infantry would they need to deploy from the southeastern foothills of Baohua Mountain or even Dantu city?

And if Han Qian then abandoned forcefully attacking Shang Family Fort and transferred his main forces to Maoshan’s eastern foothills for decisive battle with them, how many forces would they need to deploy to ensure certain victory?

Once they withdrew too many troops from the northern front, if Han Qian gave up fighting them in open terrain and retreated into Maoshan, how would they respond? Would they lose sight of one thing while attending to another, ultimately being taken advantage of by Anning Palace?

Wang Wenqian suddenly discovered that apart from harassing the Chishan Army’s flanks at the predetermined rhythm with no efficiency, they in fact had no more effective method to restrain the Chishan Army from forcefully attacking Shang Family Fort. They could seemingly only hope that Shang Family Fort, defended in dangerous terrain, could hold out longer and deal heavy damage to the Chishan Army.

……

……

“Next we’re going to gnaw hard at Shang Family Fort. Commander Gao sent me to ask you—do you want to be the first to charge over and rescue your mother, younger brothers and sisters?”

Shang Hu was consulting with two veteran scouts on methods for controlling horses with free hands, so that when two horses crossed, he could free his hands to do more. A messenger cavalryman came over, reining in his horse before Shang Hu and asking him.

“Who should I report to?” Shang Hu nimbly gathered up his blade and spear, thinking to tie them to the horse’s back and lead the warhorse to report to the new battalion.

“Get lost, you bastard,” an old scout knocked Shang Hu’s hand away with his blade handle, taking back the warhorse. “You can take that armor-piercing spear and should secretly thank heaven and earth. You still dare to covet our horse in your heart? You’re not as honest as you look, kid! After you capture Shang Family Fort and take a couple more heads, then find Commander Gao and ask to transfer to our Jinyun Tower as a scout. Then you can pick two fine warhorses to ride in rotation.”

“Now it’s the Guards Battalion selecting people. Does Guo Nu’er have the guts to poach from our Lord Kong?” The messenger wasn’t polite to the two old slickers either, directly bringing up Kong Xirong’s name to prevent them from deceiving Shang Hu away later.

“The Guards Battalion is personally going to attack Shang Family Fort?” the old scout asked.

“What else?” the messenger asked contemptuously. “Scratching the enemy’s itch like you lot?”

“Wet-behind-the-ears punk…” The old scout laughed dismissively, chasing Shang Hu and the messenger away.