In the Wu Dynasty calendar, the afternoon of the thirtieth of the sixth month, in the second year of Jingping. Northwest, Qingzhou, the Dongzhi Plateau.
The sky was high, the clouds thin and scattered.
Western Xia’s main force, a hundred thousand strong, was extending itself northeastward from the edge of the Dongzhi Plateau.
This vast host of a hundred thousand men stretched, front to back, more than ten li across the terrain where plain met mountain gully. The army’s radius of coverage formed a rough oval, and because of the different troop types and their varying rates of advance, the entire battlefield had naturally divided itself into several layers.
Extending out ahead of the main formation were the scattered scout units; ten thousand bubo footsoldiers followed close behind in two groups; further back still, the capture troops, the shock-cavalry retainers, the crossbow corps, and the remaining bubo were arranged into five groups, front to back, flanking the central formation as it advanced. Four thousand light cavalry drifted between the central formation and the vanguard, though by now they had fallen back to the rear of the whole formation, guarding against any surprise attack from the open plain behind them. Around Li Qianshun’s royal banner, the elite core—Western Xia’s most formidable hostage-guard troops and garrison forces, supported by crossbowmen, catapult operators, and the remaining five hundred Iron Kite—numbering some twenty-five thousand men in all, advanced slowly forward.
Within the Western Xia military system, soldiers had always been divided into primary and auxiliary troops, typically in a one-to-one ratio, though among elite units like the Iron Kite this could sometimes rise as high as one to three. Generally speaking, primary soldiers were the skilled fighters, while auxiliaries were considerably weaker—but this southward campaign, occupying so much territory, had itself served as a kind of filtering process. The less capable auxiliary troops had been dispersed to garrison local areas, handling the harvest and grain transport, while the truly elite forces were reserved for the forward advance. As this great army of Li Qianshun’s now pressed forward, the ratio of primary to auxiliary troops remained roughly one to one; even as the main force advanced, the remaining Western Xia units scattered across the lands around Qingzhou were rapidly wrapping up the grain harvest, waiting for the outcome of this great battle to be decided.
As the army advanced, kicking up clouds of dust, the tens of thousands of troops moved slowly forward, banners stretching on in an unbroken line—this was the central formation. The Western Xia royal banner pushed forward across this open plain, scouts arriving periodically to report on conditions ahead, behind, and to either side. Li Qianshun, in full military regalia, sat astride his warhorse alongside the great general Asha Ganbu, both men attentive to the incoming reports.
Probing skirmishes and small clashes had already begun the day before.
Here at the edge of the Dongzhi Plateau, as the Western Xia’s great army had advanced, the Black Banner enemy force they faced had broken camp and moved off. Hearing of this yesterday afternoon, it had at first seemed like good news—but the intelligence that followed carried something far more sinister brewing within it.
A force of no more than seven or eight thousand men, facing down Western Xia’s advancing hundred-thousand-strong host, had split into two columns and broken camp: one heading north, the other, taking the great majority of their warhorses, circling south to loop back around toward the Dongzhi Plateau once more. If the whole army had simply withdrawn together, it might still have been read as flight—but splitting into two columns like this was, plainly, meant to force Western Xia into a choice. Whatever their true intent—harassment or open battle—what it revealed was nothing but deep, deliberate contempt.
And what’s more, given the sheer disparity between a hundred thousand and seven thousand, the fact that the smaller side had chosen to split its forces at all—whether one called it arrogance or ignorance—struck Li Qianshun and the others as an insult that cut to the very bone.
But the Western Xia forces did not split their own army in response. The central formation continued its slow advance, but the vanguard had already begun pushing toward the northeastern infantry column. Scouts together with over ten thousand bubo footsoldiers drove straight at that force of some three thousand-odd men, while light cavalry kept close watch on the southern route, with scouts trailing the cavalry column moving southward as well—the intent being to stretch the battle line out across more than ten li, so that these two enemy forces could offer each other no mutual support at all.
Every Western Xia unit now positioned across this battlefield could overwhelm its opposing force through sheer numerical superiority. Should either engage, the other could confidently join battle as well, and whichever engaged first could count on immediate support from the other. This wasn’t Huzhou—even if the enemy truly proved as unstoppable as the Jurchen themselves, the Western Xia could still grind them down through sheer attrition, feeding in troops piecemeal, before they ever reached the central formation!
At the quarter-hour of Wei—roughly half past two in the afternoon by later reckoning—reports from the front indicated that the Black Banner Army was still moving north along the mountainous edge of the Dongzhi Plateau, with no major action yet taken…
…
More than ten li away, at the very edge of engagement, gullies and mountain ridges connected to the open plain beyond. As part of the loess plateau, the trees and vegetation here were likewise sparse; a stream ran down from the hillside into the valley below.
Shortly past noon, the sun hung warm in the sky, and all around lay quiet. On the hillside, a thin sheep grazed on grass; not far off stood a patch of meager vegetable plots and a crudely built little house, where a man in ragged cloth strips was drawing water by the stream.
The land here was poor, and this was the only household in the vicinity—if the place needed a name, some called it Yellow Stone Gully, an obscure spot known to few. In truth, across the whole northwest, there were probably several places called Yellow Stone Gully. That afternoon, a sudden noise cut through the stillness.
The man drawing water glanced north—the sound had come from that direction, though he could see nothing. Then, faintly, the sound of hoofbeats rose from the south.
The man stood there holding his battered bucket, watching the distance, when two riders came galloping in from a slope below. They wore coarse military garments trimmed with fur, heads mostly shaved, with only two locks of hair hanging down from either temple—unmistakably the dress of a foreign people. The man froze for a moment, and the two foreign riders narrowed their eyes at him in turn; one pointed up toward the thin sheep on the hillside, and both spurred their horses forward, one already drawing his bow and nocking an arrow.
The man snapped back to his senses, dropped his wooden bucket, and bolted—but not toward the sheep. Instead he ran toward the little house nearby, where, at the doorway, a grimy, unkempt little girl was toddling out, babbling to herself.
The two riders picked up speed; the man ran faster too. One rider veered toward the house, the other cut in from below, the distance between them and the man closing fast.
The bow-wielding rider loosed his arrow, striking the sheep in the rear; it collapsed with a thud, then scrambled back up and ran off. The two foreign riders exchanged some words, one laughing loudly; the archer drew his blade and charged after the sheep, while the other watched the fleeing man dash past ahead of him, then veered slightly and swung his blade down in a single stroke.
Sensing the horse closing in, the man let out a cry and flung himself forward with all his strength, his body tumbling several times across the rocks with a series of thuds, a scream of agony tearing from his throat—his back had already been slashed, though the wound wasn’t deep enough to be fatal. The little girl by the house tried to run toward him. Meanwhile, the other rider had already cut down the sheep and dismounted to collect his prize. The rider who’d struck the man rode on a short distance before wheeling his horse around, laughing, and coming back.
The man, gashed across the back, rolled a few more times, then crawled to his feet crying out, running again toward his daughter. Behind him, the foreign rider drew closer and closer; as the horse came up behind him, the man gritted his teeth once more and threw himself forward with a shout—his body slamming hard against the ground, his head ringing with a dull buzz. Amid the confused commotion around him, a shadow suddenly streaked past beside him, and in his ears, foreign words rang out in a shout.
Worried for his daughter, he forced his eyes open and struggled to focus. To one side of his vision, a warhorse came tumbling down across the loose rock, and the rider who had been charging at him rolled several times and lay still, already dead—an arrow buried in his chest.
Through his swimming vision, he saw another warhorse come charging down at high speed, sweeping past the rider who’d just killed the sheep. The clash of steel rang out, followed by a figure flying through the air and a burst of blood. Struggling to rise, he saw at last that the ones who had come to his rescue were two Han riders.
Being a country man, long accustomed to living alone, he didn’t know how to put words to any of this. Gritting through the pain, he stumbled over and gathered his babbling daughter into his arms. The two Han riders glanced at him; one raised a strange cylindrical device and looked off into the distance through it, while the other dismounted, searched the body of the dead rider, then walked over, frowning, and pulled out a packet of wound medicine and a length of bandage, gesturing at the knife wound on the man’s back. “Wash it out. Wrap it up.”
Another boom sounded in the northern sky, like a firecracker going off, followed by another. The rider handing over the medicine said to the man, “Go. Move fast if you can. It’s not safe around here.”
The other seemed to murmur something like: “Where’s he even going to go? Just hope for the best…” Then the two mounted up and rode off in one direction—they had their own orders to carry out and couldn’t linger for the sake of one mountain villager.
His back aching, the man applied what medicine he could and tried to bandage the wound himself. Then, off to one side, black banners suddenly appeared among the hills—first one or two soldiers, then whole clusters, one after another, streaming endlessly over the ridge and down toward the northwest. The man stared blankly at the column passing through the hills; not far off, the crackle of firecracker-like explosions grew louder and more frequent, seemingly signaling and reporting something, and before long, that great river of soldiers had poured across the ridge entirely!
…
The signal fireworks of the Western Xia scouts kept flaring in the sky, their dense reports keeping pace with the Black Banner Army’s advance, nearly forming a single unbroken line—the scouts cared nothing about being spotted by the Black Banner Army, nor about the small-scale skirmishes and chases happening around them; this was, after all, their assigned task: keep close watch on the Black Banner Army, and apply pressure wherever possible. But until now, the scouts’ warning signals had never come this frequently. Their sudden density now meant only one thing.
The Black Banner Army had made its move!
Two li away, across a stretch of relatively gentle sloping terrain, the figures of the bubo footsoldiers surged forward like a tide, charging toward the northwest. Leading this force of over five thousand men was the young Tangut general Weiming Shu, greatly favored by Li Qianshun; at this moment he ran along the high ground of the slope, shouting orders at the top of his lungs, commanding the bubo to advance and prepare for engagement, to cut off the Black Banner Army’s line of retreat.
More than five li away, another force of five thousand bubo footsoldiers under the general Duluo Wei was advancing in a pincer formation alongside Weiming Shu’s troops, their shared goal being to pin down this Black Banner Army detachment.
The bubo moved swiftly through mountainous terrain and were formidable individual fighters; though perhaps lacking somewhat in formal battle-line formations, as long as they could hold this Black Banner detachment in place even briefly, the situation to follow would become ten thousand men surrounding and cutting down just over three thousand Black Banner soldiers.
And Weiming Shu, in his own heart, did not believe for a moment that his five thousand men couldn’t finish off this arrogant force of just over three thousand. This advance of the hundred-thousand-strong army had been steady and cautious, and while the high command certainly had its own reasons for such caution, as a field commander himself, he wasn’t about to think less of himself simply because the Iron Kite had fallen—his own fighting spirit remained intact.
Put another way: with a hundred-thousand-strong army advancing behind them, if five thousand men didn’t dare engage three thousand, no one would know how to wage war anymore. Staying alert, employing proper tactics, never underestimating the enemy—that was exactly what a commander could and should do.
Weiming Shu did not underestimate the enemy.
Two li to the northeast, the Black Banner Army had already come into view, extending its line westward.
…
The Western Xia scouts’ warning fireworks kept flaring in the sky; among the mountain ridges, mounted light cavalry drove off the surrounding Western Xia scouts with arrow fire. This northern column of just over three thousand men had few cavalry of its own, and the engagements didn’t last long—arrows show no mercy, and both sides took casualties.
“This is driving me crazy!”
Amid the swiftly advancing infantry ranks, someone grumbled aloud. Mao Yishan, listening to the crackle of the signal fireworks, gritted his teeth and frowned along with the complaint. Then someone else called out: “Look over there!”
“Western Xia bubo!”
The words carried over to Mao Yishan’s group; Hou Wu turned and called back: “Western Xia bubo—stay alert…”
“That’s the unit that’s been tailing us this whole time, isn’t it…”
“Damn it, finally get to vent some of this frustration!”
More orders came filtering through the ranks. Mao Yishan drew his blade, and many of the men around him did the same, quickly winding and cinching the red sashes from their hilts around their wrists. Without anyone quite noticing, the whole formation had already begun picking up speed—and on the other side, the bubo host was accelerating as well. Five thousand-odd men, likewise spread across the whole hillside.
The warning fireworks fell silent now; in the distance, scouts watched from among the hills. Both sides closed the gap at considerable speed, drawing steadily nearer to arrow range. The bubo, amid a wave of shouting that echoed across the hills, slowed their pace slightly to draw bows and nock arrows. On the other side, someone bellowed: “THUNDER—” the command signaling that the enemy had raised their bows.
The blade-and-shield men in the front ranks raised their shields with a resounding crash even as they ran, their pace surging to its absolute limit; one man let out a roar, and a thousand voices roared with him: “Follow me… CHARGE—”
Arrows filled the sky ahead! Blades and shields moved like thunder!
“AAAH—”
Mao Yishan raised his shield, bent low, and sprinted forward at full speed, shouting as he ran, and then he heard the sharp crackling patter begin. Arrows struck the ground around him, bouncing and skittering. He kept running! The arrows didn’t bring him down; all around, the dense thunder of running feet seemed to roll like a wave, the two forces closing in on each other.
The formation of just over three thousand men split into two columns, charging at full speed across this gently sloping terrain, straight into the five thousand-strong bubo force.
In his field of vision, the shapes and faces of the Western Xia soldiers rushed toward him amid violent, jarring motion; at the instant of contact, Mao Yishan let out a sharp exhale, and then, along the line of engagement, a thunderous roar erupted alongside the flash of blades: “…KILL!!!” His shield slammed into the crowd, and his blade, swung with everything he had in his body, came down on the head of the man in front of him!
Waves of blood surged up along the front line!
“Kill—!” Weiming Shu was shouting too, calling out, “Hold them back for me—”
“Kill them—!” Mao Yishan brought his blade down again, felt it strike a skull, then a second stroke landed in flesh. All around him rang the fevered shouts of his own side and the equally fevered shouts of the enemy; he kept pushing forward. At what had felt, just a moment before, like the front line of engagement, he now found himself screaming with mad fury, pressing forward two more steps into the enemy line, his surroundings turned into a raging sea of blood…
…
“…From what we can see now, the whole front line has stretched to nearly fifteen li. This force is only three thousand-odd men—how are we supposed to fight this?”
“…Judging from what happened to the Iron Kite, their firearms are formidable—we can’t afford to be careless. But manpower has its limits after all; a few thousand men breaking through simply isn’t realistic. I think the real threat is probably still that cavalry force of nearly two thousand held in reserve at the rear—they’re the ones who defeated the Iron Kite, and they’ve reaped quite a harvest doing it.”
“…The great general’s reasoning does hold up—using the bubo to pin down that three thousand-odd force across a battle line more than ten li long, so this seven-thousand-strong army can’t respond to both ends at once. Still, I can’t help but think this is being overly cautious. Even the Jurchen, who boast of being invincible under heaven, might well hesitate to face a situation like this. Even if we win, there’s something a little humiliating about it.”
Out on the open plain, this was a Western Xia central column twelve thousand strong; the generals Yeli Feng and Ye Beima rode along together, discussing the unfolding battle in low voices. The hundred-thousand-strong army stretched across the vast, boundless plain, and set against two small opposing forces of roughly three thousand men each, front and rear, it did rather give the impression of using a war-catapult to swat mosquitoes. Though the strange, sudden loss of the Iron Kite had shaken people badly at the time, now that they were actually here on the field, turning it over carefully in their minds, it was hard not to wonder whether the whole thing had been badly overblown after all.
“The Jurchen—everyone says they’re formidable, but if you really look at Huzhou, there was a reason for it, and that reason lay with the Liao. Since ancient times, when the few defeat the many, the problem usually lies with the losing side.” When it came to warfare, Ye Beima came from a family with deep expertise in the subject and understood such matters intimately.
“So what do you think will happen this time?”
“They’ve split their forces into two columns, hoping for a stroke of luck. If I were the enemy commander and saw that we weren’t underestimating them, I’d probably have no choice but to pull back and retreat far away, waiting for another opportunity…”
Just as he finished speaking, sudden activity flared up ahead—far off, scout cavalry could be seen riding this way, and their pace was all wrong! One rider broke off toward them and delivered the news.
—Engagement joined ahead!
At the quarter-hour of Wei, the northern force of over three thousand Black Banner soldiers had suddenly turned west; around the hour of Shen, they engaged Weiming Shu’s army, while Duluo Wei’s force pursued westward, striving to complete the encirclement!
According to plan, this was exactly the moment when Yeli Feng and Ye Beima’s own force was meant to push north as well, to ensure everything went smoothly. Both men had indeed planned for exactly this—only, it came as something of a surprise.
The enemy had actually gone through with the attack?
What were they even thinking…
…
On the western slopes of Yellow Stone Gully, the roar of battle boiled over. As the two great armies collided, they crashed together, hacked at each other, scattered apart…
Despite Weiming Shu’s desperate shouts to hold formation, the five thousand bubo scattered apart like seawater struck by a falling boulder. When the Black Banner Army crushed through to the central formation, he led his personal guard forward to meet them, only to slam headlong into that same boulder himself, his detachment shattered and scattered in all directions. A blade had caught him across the face, taking half an ear off; drenched in blood from head to toe, he was dragged clear by his own guards.
The bubo were considered among Western Xia’s finest—skilled at mountain warfare but weaker in formal battle-line combat, or so many had judged them. But that assessment only captured their relative strengths and weaknesses in the abstract; when it truly came to formation fighting, the bubo were far from helpless—more than capable of bullying one or two ordinary armies. But this crushing force bearing down on them now was simply too strong in formation combat.
They might scatter instinctively while running, but the instant contact was made, this enemy’s ranks pressed together in tight, nearly seamless formation, their collisions and killing carried out with a resolve that chilled the blood. The bubo, accustomed to fighting with flexibility, were plenty fierce in their own right—but faced with this kind of crushing impact, once the front ranks collapsed, the ranks behind were shoved forward in an avalanche.
Not long after, Duluo Wei, leading his bubo force at high speed toward the west, ran into scattered, fleeing squads of bubo as he approached Yellow Stone Gully. By the time he set foot on this stretch of hillside himself, the scene of the battlefield lay before him: bubo soldiers cut down and scattered across the entire hillside, corpses and blood strewn across the slopes, stretching out into the distance in a long, unbroken trail.
Having routed Weiming Shu’s forces, the enemy had spent only the barest minimum of time tending their wounded before moving west again—and in truth, they hadn’t had many wounded to tend at all; those struck by arrows during the initial charge accounted for roughly half of their casualties, and after only a brief clash, the entire bubo formation had been left utterly dazed by the enemy’s relentless, ferocious assault.
Duluo Wei stood on the hillside taking all this in, his five thousand men around him doing the same—some confused, some scornful. Duluo Wei swallowed hard. “After them!”
In his heart, he already knew: this had turned into serious trouble.
…
On the thirtieth of the sixth month, at the hour of Shen in the afternoon, in Qingzhou, the first clash between the Black Banner Army and Western Xia’s hundred-thousand-strong host, after nearly a full day of maneuvering, erupted suddenly.
Near Yellow Stone Gully, the Black Banner Army’s Second and Third Regiments, under Pang Liu’an and Li Yi, some three thousand six hundred men in total, engaged the five thousand bubo of Western Xia’s Weiming Shu. Before long, they broke straight through Weiming Shu’s force and pressed on westward once more, back onto the plain of the Dongzhi Plateau.
At that same moment, out on the southwestern plain, Lin Jingwei and a party of men, moving with a cavalry column, were watching the sky.
He frowned. “Not much time left. With this wind, it won’t be easy…”
Not far off, the cavalry column was moving forward, about to part ways here. Qin Shaoqian rode up, asked a few brief questions, and frowned slightly.
“If these things work, all the better—but if they don’t, we shouldn’t have pinned too much hope on them to begin with. Master Lin, you’re in charge of this. Use your judgment. We’re moving on ahead.”
Lin Jingwei nodded. Behind him, the horses of the cavalry column carried crate after crate strapped to their backs.
The sunlight was bright, and the wind across the sky was gentle. By now, news of the engagement in the front had already traveled north to reach the main body of the Western Xia’s central force.
News of the bubo engaging in battle, and of the bubo’s swift defeat, arrived in quick succession, spreading through the entire army within moments.
Everyone who received the news felt their scalp prickle in the same instant.
They were coming for them—