Noon light was turning stark and blinding, and the fighting near Hanzhong’s south gate grew fiercer by the minute.

From morning to noon, Wanyan Xiyin had launched six large-scale waves of attack. The first two had been relatively measured, more probing than committed. Once he understood something was wrong, the four that followed came like storm and thunder. By the feel of the battlefield, some ten thousand men on the opposing side had by now rotated through the fighting in turns.

Between each wave there was only a brief lull — the moment when one Jurchen thousand-strong unit, checked, fell back, and the next surged forward.

The sounds of explosions and slaughter carried from a distance. Chen Hai pulled himself up out of a pool of blood, his body already unsteady on its feet. The attack on this position had been beaten back; fighting continued at several other points.

Thick blood dripped from his hair; he wiped at it with his hand, the smell of blood filling his nose. Beside him, corpses lay piled in heaps — some Jurchen, some his own men. Third Battalion Commander Chen Kuquan lay there, his belly split open by an enemy blade, entrails spilling out, slick and glistening.

No matter how long a man spent on a battlefield, he never grew used to that slick, glistening feeling. Chen Hai wiped at his eyes, only to smear them further with blood, and used his comparatively cleaner right sleeve instead. He crouched down and closed Chen Kuquan’s eyes — this had been one of the comrades who’d been with him longest. When Chen Hai had first become a squad leader, Chen Kuquan had been one of the men in his squad. Of that squad, not one still stood before him now.

Only then did the sounds and smells around him truly register again — men running, soldiers searching for the wounded. Someone ran up to report: “…Second Battalion Commander has fallen.” The Second Battalion Commander had been a big man named Chang Feng, his face pockmarked with old scars.

“…If the battalion commander falls, the company commander takes over. If the company commanders are gone, the platoon leaders step up.”

Chen Hai said this calmly, then climbed up onto a small rise nearby. “Bind up the wounded, quickly! Every battalion, count your numbers! The Jin dogs will be back soon! Look at the comrades who’ve fallen beside you! They died in our place — how are we going to repay them—”

His strength was spent by the end; that usually quiet, flat voice of his came out hoarse, which almost never happened.

The battlefield had turned red with corpses and blood, and those still living were mostly stained the same slick red as well. No matter how much men endured, that slick, sticky feeling was never something they grew used to. Some vomited from the horror of it; others chose instead to hurl that same enormous pain back at whoever had inflicted it.

And so, within their bodies, they found a little more strength to keep fighting.

On the eastern edge of the Jurchen line, a thousand-strong unit that had fallen into disorder during the fighting was gradually pulling back. Wanyan Xiyin looked on. He had by now seen the full shape of things on the other side — the Huaxia force numbered barely four thousand, and had already endured five days of brutal fighting, yet here they still were, beating back wave after wave of his Jurchen elite.

The noon sun was almost blinding in its whiteness, much like this whole engagement, which had dragged on long enough to leave him faintly disgusted. His own soldiers were fighting with everything they had, but what lay before him now was simply the result of the enemy’s defensive line being too resilient — Xiyin could only watch as his superior numbers pushed into their position again and again, only to be beaten back, thrown into disorder, or locally shattered each time. The enemy, in truth, had gained little advantage from fortifications either.

The fighting within Hanzhong itself was still ongoing as well. Some of the Jin troops had been driving Han civilians out ahead of them as human shields, while the Huaxia Army built street barricades out of debris, halting the crowd’s advance. Small Huaxia units had slipped past the crowd and into the city, causing considerable chaos — most of the soldiers inside the city were men who had already broken and fled from the battlefield, with little fighting spirit left, and for the moment Xiyin had no ready solution to that problem either.

The old man’s brow furrowed; though his face still looked calm on the surface, the veins at his temple pulsed now and then with anxiety. Some twenty li to the west, Zonghan was locked in the decisive engagement of the whole campaign. The instant he’d confirmed this news, Xiyin had, in truth, weighed several options — abandoning this position and sending the bulk of his forces around through Hanzhong to reinforce Zonghan, or boarding his ships and sailing up the Han River. That last option, of course, was the least efficient of all — the Han River was in flood season now, and the currents grew even swifter past Hanzhong; that stretch of river might well be slower going than marching on foot, and there was the risk of ambush by the Huaxia Army when making landfall.

None of this deliberation mattered in the end, because if his own force couldn’t crush this four-thousand-strong enemy here at Hanzhong, then everything that came after would lose its meaning regardless.

Zonghan was no child; he wouldn’t assume, simply because his own force had been attacked, that he needed immediate rescue — especially with thirty thousand men facing an assault from barely over ten thousand, and plenty of scattered troops still to be gathered up. This unit of his own, the one farthest from Zonghan’s position, had no cause to go rushing over in a panic. Nor would Zonghan make some careless tactical blunder, falling into a trap or an ambush and suffering heavy losses because of it…

The correct course of action was for Xiyin to crush this Huaxia force here with overwhelming force, and only then move to support the main battlefield. If he could break them within an hour, all the better; if not, then within half a day. But half a day had already come and gone. Their resilience was, at last, beginning to genuinely trouble him.

If the entire Huaxia Seventh Army fought like this, what would the battle at Tuanshan look like?

“Tula.” He swept his command flag down. “Your turn. The Huaxia Army is already spent… break through them—”

The meng’an named Tula received the order. Beneath the noon sun, the war drums grew more urgent still.

Zonghan was no child. He would not make a tactical blunder.

And he himself had to win here, to prove that the entire battlefield could still be won.

He glanced up at the sun.

One more hour, and he’d have them beaten.

“Kill—”

As yet another formation surged forward, the old man raised his sword and gave a great shout.

Then came the roar of a thousand Jurchen voices, like thunder sweeping across the whole field, the fresh troops joining the fray lending new spirit to the men still locked in combat.

Chen Hai raised his longsword and turned to meet the enemy bearing down on him, sending a runner off at the same time.

“Tell Brigade Commander Lin: my regiment has no reserves left.”

He wasn’t asking for reinforcements — he could more or less guess what the answer would be. Lin Dongshan would probably say: I don’t have any either. Hold your ground. But he wanted Lin Dongshan to know the situation regardless, because if his own men were wiped out here, Lin Dongshan would need to decide what to do about it.

Before long, the runner returned with Lin Dongshan’s reply. By then, this position had already been swallowed into the tide of battle.

…

The pale, stark sunlight bore down on the land. Along the road leading west from Hanzhong’s western gate toward Tuanshan, friction of every scale, large and small, was breaking out continuously.

The Huaxia Army had only a small number of men deployed here, but since morning, two companies had been circling the area near the western gate — ambushing Jurchen scouts carrying messages, harassing routed Jurchen troops retreating toward Hanzhong. They had even staged two feint attacks against the gate itself, making enough noise that the garrison had shut the gates tight and dared not venture out at all.

After the Hour of the Snake, Wanyan Yuchi led over three thousand men out through the western gate, bound for Tuanshan, and was ambushed immediately by these same two companies. Using the hill terrain to their advantage, they struck at the Jurchen column moving along the main road, even wheeling out two captured iron cannons — no one quite knew where they’d gotten them — to bombard Yuchi’s formation, forcing him to send cavalry to drive them off. The two companies promptly retreated into the woods, putting on a show of desperate, delaying resistance.

Of Wanyan Yuchi’s three thousand men, nearly a thousand were cavalry — eliminating these two Huaxia companies would have posed no real difficulty. But understanding their purpose, he simply had his cavalry fire flaming arrows to set the woods ablaze, so his infantry could push through quickly.

Six li west of Hanzhong, at a small trading post called Qingyang Post Station, a Huaxia battalion had already taken up position. Around noon, this force of some two hundred spotted Wanyan Yuchi’s approaching column and fortified their position to engage. Yuchi deployed for the assault as well, fighting them for half an hour, but their defense proved remarkably stubborn, and in the end he decided to take a side road and bypass them, heading straight for Tuanshan rather than let this force of two hundred delay him from reaching the battlefield.

He had barely passed Qingyang Post Station when more men came creeping up alongside the road — three Huaxia soldiers, hidden in the roadside grass, leapt out as the Jurchen column passed, hurled three grenades, then took off running. They vaulted a small ditch beside the road and plunged into a nearby stream, making their escape — clearly a plan worked out in advance based on the terrain. Nearby cavalry gave chase at once but failed to hit them before they went under.

Wanyan Yuchi had always served under Xiyin and had not taken part in the great campaign in the southwest; only at Hanzhong had he begun facing the Huaxia Seventh Army directly. He had already learned something of this army from the routed troops passing through earlier, but in this moment, facing a force that seemed willing to attack him no matter how outnumbered, he finally found himself thoroughly exasperated.

Those skilled in wilderness scouting warfare, he thought, perhaps had their weaknesses when it came to open battle. With this thought in mind, he turned his gaze west, toward Tuanshan…

…

At this moment, southeast of Tuanshan, in the hills and low ground on the road to Hanzhong, the fighting had risen into a raging tempest.

It was just past noon. The fiercest counterattack yet, led personally by Wanyan Zonghan, had begun.

Beneath the sky, for several li in every direction, routed soldiers lay scattered everywhere, their bodies left unattended on the field; dust still rose from the shelled positions. In the innermost core of the fighting, the most intense combat was forming — Zonghan had committed his elite core of eight thousand men, throwing wave after wave of them, in a frenzy, against Qin Shaoqian’s forces on the hills to the northeast.

After half a day of fighting, more than half of the outer forces had already broken; the remaining several thousand still organized as units were, after their earlier defeats and flight, little more than numbers on a page by now. Only this inner core of eight thousand still held its fighting will — led by mid- and high-ranking officers, some promoted up from Zonghan’s own longtime personal guard, others his in-laws and close kin. At Zonghan’s call, these men understood: the moment had finally come for them to give everything.

Just past noon, the Jurchen meng’an Chala led the first thousand-strong unit in a ferocious charge against the northeastern front. He was an old general who had followed Zonghan since the days of Aguda’s rebellion, now fifty-five years old, tall and broad, his combat record somewhat undistinguished in his younger years — due, in part, to a slight deformity in his right little finger, and in part to the sheer number of brilliant generals in Jin’s early years. He had stayed close to Zonghan for many years; his eldest daughter had married into Xiebao’s household as a consort. Though getting on in years now, he remained vigorous and formidably strong, and was said to keep a great many concubines at home, spending his nights in revelry without ever showing fatigue.

Once Qin Shaoqian’s position had been confirmed and the target set, Chala was the first to step forward and request the charge. Zonghan looked at him and nodded.

The old Jurchen general raised his great axe and led his thousand men charging toward the Huaxia forces on the hill ahead.

A Huaxia battalion moved up to meet them head-on — over two hundred men from the First Battalion, Second Regiment, Third Brigade of the First Division. As the First Battalion engaged, the Second Battalion struck from the flank, forcing Chala to split his forces to respond. Amid the hills and the chaos, arrows filled the air first, then came the explosions one after another; once the two sides closed to melee range, grenades and fire-bombs kept flying without pause, and in the blink of an eye both formations had been torn into confusion, with large numbers of Huaxia soldiers driving straight toward the axe-wielding Jurchen commander.

Once formation broke down, even Jurchen elites showed signs of small numbers of men instinctively scattering sideways once free of the group’s restraint. Zonghan summoned Wanyan Shaba’s cavalry unit: “Enforce military law! Kill any who flee!”

As the cavalry charged out, Zonghan ordered the meng’an Wanyan Zhentu to bring up another thousand-strong unit. This was Sheyema and Xiebao’s cousin, thirty-two years old, who had inherited the title of county earl, a formidable fighter. On receiving the order, he pressed forward.

The noise of shouting and slaughter grew so chaotic it was almost stifling. Some of the Jurchen units still held to a semblance of order, but the Huaxia forces converging from every direction looked, at first glance, dizzyingly disordered. Most of them had already fought through one or two engagements already, and were inferior in both numbers and stamina — but the trouble was that once his own men were thrown in and scattered on the field, they were essentially impossible to regroup, while the Huaxia troops on the other side kept charging forward regardless.

Wanyan Zhentu’s second thousand-strong unit was blocked by his own disordered troops and failed to arrive in time to support; Chala’s thousand men had already been ground apart within the crisscrossing Huaxia assault. His personal guard converged around him, trying to shield their commander as he fell back to link up with Zhentu, when two grenades were thrown in, swallowing the group in smoke, and several Huaxia soldiers charged straight into the crowd after them.

The fighting descended into total chaos. Through his spyglass, Zonghan could still make out Chala’s figure, swinging his great axe furiously. A Huaxia soldier lunged at him, and the two went down together; Chala rolled, rose, and drew his blade to fight on. The Huaxia soldier came at him again; one of Chala’s guards cut in and forced the man back a step, but two more Huaxia soldiers had already closed in. They fought in a tangled knot, and within moments Chala was drenched in blood. Someone threw another fire-bomb, and the rising smoke swallowed the figures locked in combat.

A third wave surged out along the flank, and Zonghan’s own main formation pressed forward in full.

By this point in the fighting, all the so-called strategy and scheming had grown nearly useless — or rather, such things were only the basic groundwork of command. Both sides could only take up their pieces and throw everything they had onto the board; once committed, there was nothing left but to fight with everything one had.

Unit after unit widened the path forward. At the third quarter of the Hour of the Sheep, Zonghan committed his entire army to the battle, and two great whirlpools merged into one, devouring each other with ferocious intensity.

Earlier, Han Qixian and others had urged Zonghan not to risk himself directly, but he had rejected every such counsel.

…

Arrows crossed the sky overhead without pause; explosions sounded now and then; the neighing of horses, the roar of human voices, the echo of blasts — it seemed as though the whole world had fallen into slaughter.

The eye-patched general stood on a small rise, scanning the field with his single eye as the great Jurchen assault unfolded before him.

Jurchen soldiers breaking under the fierce fighting seemed to evaporate outward from this enormous whirlpool, scattering toward the edges, while small Huaxia units cut through villages and wilderness, trying to form themselves into lines that would pierce straight through the Jurchen core.

The assault to the south was especially fierce — the Jurchen center had already been twisted and torn apart by it. Qi Xinhan’s entire brigade had been scattered, but he had gathered a regiment’s worth of men to the south, trying to cut the still-several-thousand-strong Jurchen main body in two.

As for Qin Shaoqian’s own position, the sound of fighting had nearly reached him directly. Over four thousand men, Zonghan among them, were pressing with everything they had toward this hill; blocking them at the front was a regiment under Xu Xiaohu, roughly six or seven battalions — some fragmented down to company level — striking simultaneously from different directions at where Wanyan Zonghan stood. This assault was slowing the Jurchen advance considerably; one might say the great beast was being carved apart even as it pressed forward.

Qin Shaoqian himself stood less than a hundred meters from the front line, and Jurchen marksmen occasionally loosed arrows this way when they could. He had, at most, a security company of about a hundred men with him. A few more companies and battalions were active on the nearby hills and slopes; Wanyan Shaba, leading cavalry, had broken through and circled around toward Qin Shaoqian’s rear, both to cut off his retreat and to potentially launch an assault up this very hillside at any moment.

Fortunately, this hillside was rugged with jagged rock, which made things difficult for cavalry.

“I’ve told Ni Hua down the hill to keep an eye on Wanyan Shaba. He has a battalion he can use — not enough men, so I told him to conscript locally as needed…” Chief of Staff Chi Wenguang came over, looking out at the battlefield alongside Qin Shaoqian. “…What do you think — how long until Zonghan reaches us? Want to make a bet?”

Qin Shaoqian lowered his spyglass. “…He’ll never reach us.”

The Huaxia Army’s assault cut through like a blade, stripping flesh from bone, boring straight through the body of the Jurchen army…

…

It had been a long time since Zonghan had felt the sensation of charging into the thick of battle himself.

He had held high rank for so long now — since the middle years of the war against Liao, what he’d needed to consider had, for the most part, been matters of grand strategy: large-scale troop movements, siege warfare, launching a formal assault on open ground and then crushing the enemy that followed.

Across this world, over the past several decades, few had ever matched the Jurchens in strength; rarely had anyone managed to bring a blade to bear so close to him — and on the rare occasions that had happened, he had generally chosen to withdraw or break out first.

What lay before him now was different.

The Huaxia Army fought with ferocity, but its numbers, after all, were not great; his own men, though they hadn’t fought particularly well of late, still had one good battle left in them.

If he pulled back now, the Jurchens would lose every chance they had — only by leading from the front himself, fighting with everything he had, might Heaven still grant the Jurchen people some measure of protection this afternoon.

The command banner advanced amid the roaring shouts, Jurchen soldiers fighting furiously all around; cannons were pushed forward, blasting black dust into the sky. Zonghan advanced sword in hand, surrounded by his personal guard; arrows and crossbow bolts flew past him now and then, and his guards tried to close ranks around him, only to be waved fiercely away by Zonghan himself.

At some point, the Huaxia assault had begun to threaten the artillery position; Zonghan sent two hundred men to reinforce it, driving back the attacking Huaxia company — but before long, more small Huaxia units began slipping in from the flank as well, an inevitable consequence once the flank had already been thrown into disorder. A small Jurchen unit would rarely have found the courage to charge straight in from the outer edge like that, but the Huaxia troops seemed to relish it; some appeared already within a few dozen zhang before being driven back by the thousand-strong unit around Zonghan.

The formation leading the assault at the very front had already been ground apart. Chala was the first to fall to a Huaxia blade. Wanyan Zhentu, after fighting fiercely, had one hand and one leg severed by a Huaxia soldier, and after taking several more wounds was pulled from the field by his guards, barely clinging to life. On every side, small Huaxia units cut straight through one disordered Jurchen formation after another, drawing the troops around Zonghan himself into the fighting as well.

“Follow me — charge—”

Zonghan pressed forward with his sword, and his banner did indeed rally a good number of Jurchen soldiers, drawing them back together even after their earlier rout.

A Huaxia unit struck from the flank; a crossbow bolt flew over the heads of the crowd and struck one of Zonghan’s guards on the armor with a sharp clang. Someone threw a grenade; after the explosion, roiling smoke rose, and the guards on the forward flank surged to meet it. Several mounted guards rode up close, trying to shield Zonghan from any attack that might come, but Zonghan waved his riding crop to push them back: “Don’t be reckless! If they throw a fire-bomb, you’ll all be caught in it—”

Amid the smoke on the forward flank, figures clashed and fell, blood scattering through the air with the flash of blades. Beyond the smoke, Zonghan heard someone shout: “Nianhan is here—”

“Kill him—”

“—Kill Nianhan!!!”

Within the swirling smoke, leading the charge was a Huaxia soldier built like an ox. His eyes found Zonghan across the field as he drove forward through the melee. Zonghan raised his sword: “Go kill him! A hundred gold pieces to whoever does!” Riders surged forward — but on one side of the field, a small band of Huaxia soldiers appeared as well, seemingly answering the call of “Kill Nianhan,” charging in to block the horsemen, and the two groups clashed.

The ox-built Huaxia soldier, amid the chaos not far off, was helping a wounded comrade to his feet; he took up his blade and came this way. Someone shot an arrow at him; he raised his shield to block it, his body drenched in blood. Zonghan glanced to his side, then toward the nearby slope — fighting raged everywhere he looked. He raised his longsword: “On my command!”

He roared: “Kill them—”

The formation pushed forward; the ranks behind lit fire-bombs and hurled them ahead. The handful of Huaxia soldiers there — no more than a dozen or so — scattered in every direction, scrambling for cover; some rolled into muddy ditches, some ducked behind rocks, and some were blown clean off their feet where they stood. Amid the billowing smoke, the front rank of Jurchen soldiers charged in. Zonghan watched as that same Huaxia soldier burst out of the smoke from behind a rock and cleaved one of his guards clean through the chest with a single stroke, blood spraying out as the guard’s body was flung two or three zhang through the air. That soldier then found himself beset on both sides by two Jurchen fighters, stumbling backward, hard-pressed — but as a wounded Huaxia comrade came to his aid, he swung his blade again, this time opening the throat of a Jurchen soldier.

“Good—”

Zonghan spurred his horse forward!

Blood surged hot in his chest; he rode like thunder, and in an instant closed the distance to that Huaxia soldier, bringing his sword down in a single overhead strike!

The Huaxia soldier’s body flung itself forward, using its own momentum to drive his longsword into the leg of Zonghan’s warhorse!

Blood sprayed; the Huaxia soldier, struck by the horse, tumbled and rolled across the ground. Zonghan, horse and all, pitched forward as well. Since the horse hadn’t been at a full gallop, its speed not yet at its peak, its forelegs — though slashed — only stumbled rather than collapsed outright, and Zonghan swung himself down from the saddle. He flung aside his longsword; the guards around him were shouting, “Grand Marshal!” Zonghan threw off his cloak and snatched up a broadsword from the ground instead, charging forward.

In his prime he had favored the blade; in recent years he had mostly given orders from behind the lines, wielding an imposing longsword instead — but in a moment like this, that sword, in the end, wasn’t good enough.

Every Jurchen general who had made his name in the early years of Jin had, without exception, been a warrior on the battlefield. Even in old age, Wanyan Loushi still delighted in personally leading a handful of elite men in armored assaults to seize cities. Wanyan Xiyin, though he mostly handled matters of governance now, could still, in single combat, best men like Wanyan Zongbi — men who would go on to earn fearsome reputations in history — without much trouble. Zonghan was no different. Decades of commanding armies from a distance had never let his own martial skill lapse; even now, blade in hand, he remained one of the finest warriors and hunters among the Jurchen people.

Tall of build, long accustomed to holding great power, he carried an authority and presence that far exceeded the ordinary man; blade now in hand, the chilling killing intent he radiated was enough to shake anyone to the core. The powerfully built Huaxia soldier climbed up from the ground, blood streaked across his face and forehead, Jurchen guards closing in around him, and ahead of them all, Wanyan Zonghan came charging in, blade raised. A flash of wild fervor crossed the soldier’s eyes; his teeth showed in a grin that looked, with the blood-froth at his lips, almost like mad laughter—

He drove off his legs and charged to meet Zonghan. This renowned Jurchen veteran, who had killed more men than could be counted, brought his blade down like a butcher striking his prey — and the Huaxia soldier, half a head shorter than him, swung his own blade up from below with everything he had! Steel flashed skyward to meet steel.

With a resounding crack, the two blades collided with full force in midair. Zonghan’s full-strength strike was, in that instant, forced apart; he staggered back half a step, while the Huaxia soldier surged forward half a step in turn, blade still raised, eyes blazing with fervor, blood-froth spraying from his open mouth as he roared in Zonghan’s face.

“Kill—”

Killing should be a celebration.

Ten-odd years had passed, and now First Company Commander of the Second Battalion, Second Regiment, Second Brigade, First Division of the Huaxia Seventh Army, Niu Chengshu, brought his blade down once more before Wanyan Zonghan. On one side stood a Huaxia soldier who seemed, at a glance, utterly insignificant; on the other, a Jurchen hero who had cast a shadow over this world for decades. Blade met blade, sparks bursting into the air, and in an instant, Wanyan Zonghan was driven back, stumbling into the crowd behind him.

The Jurchen soldiers around him surged forward to close the gap—