The night stretched vast and boundless.
Beneath that great expanse of darkness, the enormous grinding wheel of nearly a hundred thousand men was breaking apart, disintegrating. Amid fires large and small, scattered like specks across the dark, the disordered clashes of the crowd raged on, fierce and immense.
By the hour of Hai, the largest wave of chaos was tearing through the Western Xia king’s own camp. Men and horses ran in wild disorder, flames caught the tents. The front ranks of the Hostage Corps had already caved in, and the ranks behind them staggered back two steps before anyone could make sense of what was happening — and an avalanche of collapse followed. A Black Banner unit that broke into the crossbow position triggered a chain reaction, bolts flying wild through the chaotic firelight. Screams, running feet, an atmosphere of suffocating dread gripped everything, and Luo Ye, Mao Yishan, Hou Wu, and the others fought on with everything they had, hardly remembering any specific thing anymore, pushing deeper and deeper into the heart of the flames — one step, then two…
Iron-armored warhorses were driven into the camp; some of them had already fallen. Qin Shaoqian pulled off his helmet, threw open his armor, and took up a long blade. Even his vision trembled faintly. Ahead, Black Banner soldiers hurled themselves at the enemy’s ranks.
The team of over two hundred riders responsible for the hot air balloon cut through wave after wave of routed troops, threading their way forward.
Pressure surged in from the darkness beyond and from the chaos within — for that entire afternoon, the seventy thousand men on the outer perimeter still had not managed to hold back the enemy’s advance, and now the full force of that massive collapse was erupting all at once. The Black Banner Army was pressing in at more than one point, but at every single point, those blood-soaked soldiers with wild, murderous eyes kept unleashing devastating slaughter all the same — by this stage, they no longer needed their horses, no longer needed an escape route, and the future itself seemed no longer worth considering…
In the darkness, the night’s fury reached its peak, then burst outward in several directions at once.
From order into disorder, from compression into expansion — the scattering crowds first broke into great sheets, then into knots and clusters, then finally into scattered specks, and even the scattered points of firelight began to thin out. Across the vast expanse of the Dongzhi Plateau, across that immense tide of humanity, as the hour of Hai drew to its close, the wind swept across the open plain.
……
Wolves began to howl across the plain.
The spreading reek of blood drew in the predators of the wilderness; at the fringes they found the bodies and gathered to feed. Now and then, voices carried from far off, torches flared up, and sometimes wolves, tracking the scent of blood on a man, would follow him.
Across a range of more than ten li, the slaughter that belonged to nature’s own law still played out now and again — great scattered bands, or small huddled groups of routed soldiers still passing through, and any sound out of the darkness around them was enough to send them into a panic like startled birds.
After the outer perimeter’s collapse came the breaking of the central formation, and after that, the disintegration of the main position itself. Victory and defeat on the battlefield often left men baffled. Fewer than ten thousand men throwing themselves at a hundred thousand — the sheer concept could only be grasped in the roughest terms. But it was only at the clashing front line, in that instant of the charge, that the pressure and terror became something truly, viscerally real — and these fleeing soldiers, once they had some rough sense that the main formation had collapsed, only ran faster, no longer daring to look back.
Luo Ye and two comrades were holding each other up, walking across the dim, shadowed plain. On his right was one of his own men, called Li Zuosi; on his left was Mao Yishan, a fellow traveler he had picked up along the way — an honest, simple-hearted man, a bit slow-witted, but a fine hand on the battlefield.
As the Western Xia army broke and scattered, they had pursued and cut them down all the way here; some men had run themselves out of strength and been left behind on the road, but a few had kept up the chase in different directions all the same — and in the end, those few had lost their quarry. Realizing there was no one left around them, Luo Ye stood still for a while, and finally began walking back — three blood-soaked men, holding each other up with barely a word exchanged. Luo Ye muttered on and on: “You okay? You okay? Can’t stop, don’t stop, gotta hold on now…”
Mao Yishan kept patting himself down now and then: “Can’t feel anything anymore, but it’s fine, it’s fine…”
“Don’t stop, stay awake…”
“Did we… win?”
“Don’t know, don’t know…” Luo Ye answered without thinking.
They had fought their way straight through the Western Xia camp, chasing after huge crowds of routed soldiers — but as for the outcome of the battle as a whole, they truly had no idea.
Along the road they found a torch about to go out, blew on it to keep it going, and pressed forward. The air along the road reeked of blood, and there were bodies underfoot; they held the torch over them to look. Before long they found two wounded comrades lying back to back on the ground, still as death, but Luo Ye checked and found they were still breathing, slapped each of them hard across the face, and pulled out a small waterskin.
“Don’t sleep, don’t sleep, drink some water, here, just a small sip…”
“You’re hurt, you sleep and you’ll die — come on, hold on, hold on…”
Then five men helped each other forward. After a while, a rustling sound came from up ahead, and four shapes stopped where they stood, and a voice called out, “Who’s there?”
“Huaxia…”
“Two-one-two-one-two, Mao—” Mao Yishan called out his unit designation as he spoke, being from Second Company, First Battalion, Second Squad, Second Platoon — fairly easy to remember, as it happened. Before he’d even finished, the men across from them had already made him out in the dim light, and a voice called back, “Yishan?”
“Huh? Pla—Platoon Leader? Brother Hou?”
The four of them came forward, likewise leaning on each other — Hou Wu and Qu Qing were among them. The nine of them came together as one group; Qu Qing’s wounds were severe, and he seemed on the verge of passing out entirely. Luo Ye knew all of them; he shook his head. “Not going any further. Not going any further. Let’s… let’s rest here first…”
The wind moaned across the wasteland as night drew close, the reek of blood rolling over the field in waves. The men gathered dry grass and firewood, stripped a couple of garments off the bodies of nearby Western Xia soldiers, built a fire, and set water to boil, using medicine they carried to bandage Qu Qing first, then, one by one, working through the difficult task of dressing everyone else’s wounds.
All nine of them were pushing themselves to the very limit just to get this done, applying medicine and wrapping bandages slowly while murmuring about the battle in low voices.
“Did we win?”
“Who were you chasing?”
“The Western Xia king? You were chasing Li Qianshun? I think I was too…”
“No telling if it’s even true. Damn shame, didn’t get his head…”
Even at a moment like this, Luo Ye’s mind was still on Li Qianshun, and he shook his head with real regret. Hou Wu nodded. “Yeah. No idea who actually killed him, but from the way things looked when we were chasing, seems like we won. Someone must’ve killed the Western Xia king — otherwise why would they be running like that…”
The fire crackled, and their words came scattered, back and forth between them, when suddenly, not far off, came the sound of footsteps and the glow of torches. A group came around from a mound of earth behind them, and a moment later, the two groups caught sight of each other.
These weren’t Black Banner men — in the torchlight they were plainly Western Xia soldiers, and though they looked somewhat bedraggled, there wasn’t much blood on them; they hadn’t been stained by it, and there were a good twenty or thirty of them. The moment the two groups spotted each other, the newcomers stopped where they stood; more than a dozen in front held spears, and some drew short blades from their belts.
On this side, no one spoke. Mao Yishan, drenched in blood, held still for a moment, then grabbed the long blade off the ground and stood up.
The wind swept across the ground, the fire burned, stretching that silent, terrible shape long across the earth. Then Luo Ye rose too, the corner of his mouth curling faintly into something like a smile. One by one, the others by the fire slowly rose as well — nine shapes standing there — and Luo Ye lifted his blade.
“Guess we’re settling accounts here.” Luo Ye said it low. “Shame I didn’t get to kill Li Qianshun — and the first Western Xia officer I run into after coming down from the hills, you lot go and steal him from me too. No fun at all…”
“Huh…” Hou Wu was staring ahead, distracted. “There’s still one right here, isn’t there? Want me to give him to you?”
“Ha, I…” He was about to say something more, then paused — and across the way, the twenty or thirty men were slowly backing away, and then turned and ran outright.
“……”
There was a long silence around the fire.
“Heh heh…”
“Ha ha…”
When the sound came, it was all weak, exhausted laughter. “Scared the hell out of me…”
“You think… maybe we actually won?”
“Sure looks like it…”
“Hahahaha—cowards!”
In the flickering firelight, the nine shapes stood there, and their laughter carried far out across the plain…
Elsewhere across the field, similar figures were still moving about. The fires at what had once been the Western Xia king’s main position were slowly dying down. Great stores of supplies and baggage carts had been left behind; soldiers, exhausted to the very limit, were still moving — helping each other, propping each other up, dressing wounds, drinking a little water or broth. Those who still had strength left were sent out to search for the wounded and the scattered, and soldiers who were found and brought back, propped up against each other, received what treatment could be given and then leaned together against the supply carts by the fires, someone occasionally speaking up just to keep the others from slipping into unconsciousness in their exhaustion.
The hour of Zi passed, then the hour of Chou, and still men kept trickling back; some who had rested a little took up torches again and rode out on whatever captured horses could still move. Mao Yishan and the others didn’t make it back until around the hour of Chou; Qu Qing, badly wounded, was carried into a tent for treatment. Qin Shaoqian dragged his exhausted body through the camp on patrol.
When they settled down to rest once more, Luo Ye and Hou Wu finally turned to each other and said: “We won?”
Dawn broke over a silent camp where people were still sleeping. But one by one, they began to wake, and as they shook the comrades beside them, some found that those comrades had slipped away for good in the deep sleep of the night before. Under the direction of their officers, these men were sent out again, one group after another, to comb the entire route of the great battle throughout the day, searching for the bodies of the fallen, or for any sign of the wounded still alive.
……
On the first day of the seventh month of the second year of Jingping, at dusk, on the Dongzhi Plateau, an army of just over three thousand stood in formation. The great battle had finally come to a halt, and bodies had been laid out to one side, packed dense enough to fill the whole field of view.
The tall, one-eyed general walked forward. To one side, the sky burned red with clouds like flame, spreading across the vast heavens, and the black banners, soaked with blood, fluttered in the wind.
He spoke some words, and then spoke some more. In that sunset like fire, standing alongside their fallen comrades, the soldiers in formation stood solemn and resolute. They had passed through an ordeal few others could even imagine, and now, every one of them bore wounds on his body — they had barely had time yet to truly feel what they had been through; only the comrades who had died felt real, more real by the moment.
No one could escape paying a price for the space in which they lived. They had paid that price — many had paid with life itself.
Compared to the hundred-thousand-strong army Li Qianshun had brought crashing down on them earlier, its banners covering the earth, the force standing here now was pitifully small. And yet, in this very moment, even standing on this battlefield covered in wounds, their formation seemed to carry a spirit that surged skyward, stirring the very clouds above.
A roar suddenly rose from the ranks on the Dongzhi Plateau, a roar like thunder, one peal after another, and the ancient battle-horns of the field sounded out, carrying far on the evening wind.
This was a memorial.
On this day, across this field, they had not yet thought of celebration. For the warriors who had gone, they cleared the way ahead with cries and horn calls instead.
……
Across the northwest, the region was still gripped by the scorching heat people called the “autumn skinning.” Zhong Lie, leading several thousand men of the Zhong family army, was being pursued by over ten thousand Western Xia troops, retreating south. He had some awareness of the Western Xia army’s advance on the Dongzhi Plateau — that force which had burst suddenly out of the mountains and, with the advantage of firearms, had abruptly wiped out the Iron Sparrowhawks. Facing a hundred-thousand-strong army, they might have no choice but to retreat, but for now, at least, it had bought him a moment to catch his breath — and in any case, he should be threatening Li Qianshun’s rear, giving the regions of Yuan and Qing some help.
This regicide army was formidable indeed; if it could be brought under his banner, the situation in the northwest might yet turn around. But they were unruly and hard to control, and would need to be used with great care. No matter — even if it started as an alliance of convenience, once Western Xia had been driven off, the Zhong family, holding the northwest, would still command the legitimacy and moral authority to keep them in check.
To the northeast, on receiving word that the Iron Sparrowhawks had been wiped out, the She family army had already thrown everything into a push south. Leading the army, She Kejiu remarked that a man pushed to the brink was truly the most dangerous thing of all — he had known for some time about the food shortages plaguing the Small Cangriver region — and he intended to seize Qingjian and the surrounding territory as the spoils of victory. He had genuinely feared the Western Xia army bearing down on him before, but now that the Iron Sparrowhawks were destroyed, the She family army could finally contend with Li Qianshun on even footing. As for that Black Banner Army, since they had already taken Yanzhou, there was no harm in letting them keep drawing Li Qianshun’s attention — though he would need to find some way to learn how they had managed to destroy the Iron Sparrowhawks.
A regicide could not be employed — he did not dare employ one. But in this world, a ruthless man always found his place; whether they could survive Li Qianshun’s fury was not his concern.
At Small Cangriver, the daily debate between the young man and the old man was still going on, though these past two days both of them had seemed somewhat distracted, and in that state Ning Yi’s words had grown ever more reckless.
“…As things stand, Small Cangriver’s methods of training troops are limited, and our position here is somewhat unusual. But if it comes down to what you say, Elder Zuo — a real fight against the Confucians, against the whole world, blade against blade, point against point — there are ways to manage that too. If the whole world truly bears down on us, if you people are willing to do anything at all to strike me down first, then why should I hold back… For instance, I could start by equalizing land rights, so that those who till the land own the land, and then I could…”
“…What I want to fight for, at its core, is sentiment, reason, and law! It’s precisely the ordering of those three — sentiment, reason, and law — that is Confucianism’s greatest failing… Right, right, you’re right about that, but if the world changes further, then reason must come first… Eh, what’s the use of you cursing at me, we’re having a reasoned discussion here…”
The old man stormed off again, fuming, his beard bristling.
Out in the courtyard, the sunset burned red. Su Tan’er was teaching Ning Xi her characters, and seeing Ning Yi come out, she smiled. “You won the argument again, husband.” But she saw him gazing off into the distance, still somewhat lost in thought, and after a moment he seemed to come back to himself, thought it over, and shook his head with a wry smile. “Not really. Some of what I say now is just stubborn nonsense. Shouldn’t be saying it.”
He looked off toward where the sun was sinking, and Su Tan’er, knowing what was on his mind, did not press him further. After a moment, Ning Yi drew a breath, then sighed, shaking his head as if mocking his own lack of composure. Turning the matter over in his mind, he walked back into the house.
The cavalry messenger was, by now, already hundreds of li down the road.
At Green Wood Stronghold, a grim, oppressive atmosphere hung over everything.
Several thousand li to the southeast, the retinue of Prince Kang’s household was heading north toward Yingtian. Across this silent realm, preparations were already underway for the enthronement ceremony of a new emperor.
The thunder was about to sweep across the land.