Chapter Ninety-Two: The Counterattack

Wang Pu gave the order, and more than one hundred eighty riders surged forward at once, lining up in a single rank before the great military banner that snapped in the wind. In hardly the blink of an eye, they had formed a neat cavalry line.

"Xiao Qi."

"Here."

"Send ten men to escort Mister Zhen back to a safe place. Send another ten to spread the word: have every hundred-man unit assemble at once, and come here as fast as they can."

"Yes."

At his command, ten retainers rode off to guard Zhen Youcai to the rear, while another ten scattered in all directions.

Clang.

With the clean, bright scrape of metal, Wang Pu slowly drew his saber and angled the blade forward. Ahead of him, a black mass of Mongol horsemen was sweeping down like a tide, pursuing the fleeing soldiers of the Great Ming. Under ordinary circumstances, Wang Pu would never have ridden at the front himself. A commander who gambled with his own life was no fit commander at all. But today was different.

Today, Wang Pu had fewer than two hundred men under him. He was nothing more than a company commander.

"Do you see the Mongol cavalry ahead?"

"Yes!"

Nearly two hundred riders answered in a thunderous roar.

"They have close to two thousand horsemen, and we have fewer than two hundred!" Wang Pu said, pausing for a moment with a grave expression before continuing. "Our numbers are not even a tenth of theirs. Some people say that if we charge them, it will be a dead end. But I am telling you this: as men, as soldiers, even in death we must die looking to the sky. Even in death, we must die on the road of a charge. We will never be deserters!"

The eyes of the riders before him blazed at once. Wang Pu's words made their souls tremble. Apart from Wang Pu's own trusted retainers, the old battle-hardened ruffians among them had never seen a commander like him. Nor had they ever heard a prebattle speech like this, one that set the blood on fire.

The officers they had known before had always kept themselves aloof in peacetime, and when battle came, they had always been the first to run. But Wang Pu was different. In ordinary times, he was like one of their brothers. And when war came, no matter how dire the situation, the first thing on his mind was never retreat.

It was attack.

"I don't care about other people's troops. But not one of Wang Pu's men is a coward!" Wang Pu dropped the tip of his saber slightly, then roared at the top of his lungs, "When enemies meet in a narrow road, the brave win. If you're a man, then follow me... and kill!"

With that one cry, Wang Pu clamped his legs hard against his horse's flanks. His mount let out a mournful neigh, then sprang forward at full gallop. The ground beneath its hooves fell away behind them like retreating waves. Ahead, the black tide of Mongol cavalry rolled forward over the withered grass.

Seeing Wang Pu charge alone and leave the rest behind, the old veterans felt a fire rise and burst within them. That tragic, heroic figure would be forever fixed in their memories, impossible to forget for the rest of their lives.

A voice like thunder rang through their minds: Am I not a man?

Of course I am!

If I am a man, then why am I standing here? Follow the general and kill those Mongol bastards!

"To hell with it!"

"Kill!"

"Cut those bastards down!"

The scar-faced man, Xiao Qi, Lv Liu, the remaining sixty retainers, and more than a hundred of the old soldiers all roared themselves hoarse at once. They spurred their horses and raised their blades, riding after Wang Pu to meet the surging Mongol cavalry head-on. The north wind was harsh, the dead grass bleak, and between heaven and earth there hung a tragic, unreturning air of warriors setting forth never to come back.

At the front of the Mongol cavalry.

Bancetu drove his horse forward at speed, slashing downward with vicious force and sending the head of a fleeing Ming soldier flying. Then he suddenly looked up and saw that, in the grassland ahead, a small cavalry unit had appeared like a phantom. The rest of the Ming army was in full collapse, but that one unit stood like a boulder against the current, unmoving.

Bancetu's eyes instinctively fell on the banner at the head of that Ming cavalry. What sort of banner was that? No border trim, no streamers, nothing but a plain white field with a strange blood-red emblem painted upon it. It was crude to the extreme. It could hardly even be called a banner.

An unaccountable heaviness rose in Bancetu's heart. He instinctively pulled back on the reins, and the Mongol riders behind him also slowed. Nearly two thousand Mongol horsemen first drew inward, then split into front and rear ranks, lining up in neat formation behind him in hardly any time at all.

During the pursuit, more than a thousand riders had already broken away from the main force.

At that very moment, however, the small Ming cavalry detachment ahead unexpectedly took the initiative and attacked.

Bancetu's pupils contracted sharply. He could hardly believe his eyes. The Ming force had fewer than two hundred riders. It would have been one thing if they had merely refused to flee, but they were actually daring to charge nearly two thousand Mongol horsemen. Had these Ming cavalry gone mad? Or were they so arrogant as to think that fewer than two hundred riders could defeat nearly two thousand elite Mongol cavalry?

"Warriors of the Khorchin!" Bancetu raised the curved saber in his hand and pointed it forward as he shouted sternly, "Use your blades to teach these overconfident southern barbarians a lesson. Let them know that we Mongols are forever the kings of the grasslands. No one can defeat us here. Ha!"

Bancetu jerked his horse hard and broke into a gallop.

Behind him, more than a thousand Mongol riders, now formed into battle ranks, surged forward on horseback, waving their curved sabers as they rushed to meet the hundred-plus Ming cavalry under Wang Pu.

The two forces closed in at once, and in an instant they met.

"Yah-ho!"

"Hu-ha!"

Two Mongol riders yelled wildly as they came hard at Wang Pu, one from the left and one from the right. Their sharp curved sabers were already raised high, and just as they were about to bring them down on Wang Pu, two flashes of cold light rose from behind him and shot like lightning into the throats of the two Mongols. Their burly bodies jolted violently, then pitched headfirst from their saddles.

The two Mongol riders hit the ground headfirst, and Wang Pu faintly heard the crack of broken necks.

Hooves thundered.

Another line of Mongol cavalry came charging up. The Mongol rider directly facing Wang Pu brought his gleaming curved blade down in a savage chop at Wang Pu's neck.

Wang Pu bellowed and raised his saber to block it. There was a sharp clang, and the Mongol's blade snapped cleanly in two. Wang Pu's saber, by contrast, remained unharmed. A shrill scream rang out behind Wang Pu a moment later, and he did not even need to turn his head to know that the Mongol rider just now had been killed by Lv Liu.

In a matter of moments, the surging Ming cavalry and the pursuing Mongol horsemen crashed into each other like two great waves. Blood blossomed brilliantly across the field. Before the two armies, men and horses toppled everywhere, while severed limbs and mangled bodies flew through the air with ghastly heads. The cries of soldiers and the pained whinnying of warhorses rang out to the heavens.

In the blink of an eye, the two charging cavalry masses had already crossed through each other, leaving more than fifty corpses behind on each side.

Although the Mongols held an overwhelming advantage in numbers, their formation had been stretched out. Fewer than five hundred of them had actually collided head-on with the Ming cavalry. Moreover, the Mongol riders had just completed a long march, and in the pursuit of the fleeing Ming troops they had expended a great deal of strength. In stamina, they were at a disadvantage, and so the two sides fought to a draw.

"Whoa..."

Wang Pu reined in his horse and slowly turned it around. The remaining one hundred twenty-plus Ming riders also pulled their mounts around and once again formed a line behind him.

The brief but fierce clash had clearly drained a great deal of energy from the Ming soldiers. Each of them was panting on horseback like hounds, yet their morale had reached an unprecedented height. At this moment, even if Wang Pu ordered them to storm the Khorchin court at Sanbulachuan, they would probably follow without hesitation.

As the commander is, so are the soldiers.

With his fierce bearing and blooded manner, Wang Pu was changing his old veterans little by little. The coldness in their hearts was being rekindled by his example. The forging of an army soul was a long process, but it had already begun well.

The fierce struggle had also cost Wang Pu a great deal of strength. Breathing hard, he slowly lifted his saber.

Not far ahead, Bancetu, commander of the Mongol cavalry, also raised his curved blade. Just as another brutal clash seemed about to unfold, disorderly hoofbeats suddenly sounded from both flanks. The Mongol riders, poised for battle, and the Ming cavalry alike turned to look. On both wings, two small groups of Ming horsemen had arrived.

"General, your humble servant Cheng Xuan has come under orders to assemble!"

"General, your humble servant Black Tiger has come under orders to assemble!"

The two company commanders rode up to Wang Pu and answered loudly. The two hundred riders behind them were precisely two hundred of the eight hundred bandit horsemen.

Wang Pu cried out, "Fall in!"

"Yes!"

Cheng Xuan and Black Tiger answered in unison, then led their hundred-man units swiftly into the cavalry line behind Wang Pu.

Wang Pu's spirits steadied at once. With these two hundred fresh riders added, his force had risen to more than three hundred. Though still at a disadvantage against the Mongols, the difference was no longer so stark.

"Brothers..." Wang Pu slowly raised his saber and shouted sternly, "I will say it again: as men, as soldiers, even in death we die facing the sky. Even in death we die on the road of a charge. Not one of my men is a coward. We will never be deserters!"

"Yes, we will never be deserters!"

"General, we are all good soldiers!"

"General, rest easy. Not one of us is a coward!"

The hundred-odd men who had already passed through a bloody battle were fired with passion and answered one after another. The two hundred bandit horsemen who had just joined them were also moved by the mood and momentum of the veterans and could not help shouting along. The crowd seethed with emotion, and a burning intent to kill spread everywhere across the grassland with the bitter north wind.

Several hundred paces away, before the Mongol cavalry line, Bancetu's pupils constricted violently. He could feel the murderous intent radiating from the Ming cavalry with terrible force. These Ming horsemen were utterly unlike any other Ming troops he had ever seen. He had never encountered a force like this before. Such an army made him afraid.

Yes, afraid.

At the front of the Ming cavalry line, Wang Pu slowly raised the saber in his hand, and cold killing intent once again curved at the corner of his mouth. In the next instant, his hoarse roar rang out across heaven and earth once more:

"When enemies meet in a narrow road, the brave win. If you're a man, follow me... and kill!"

"Kill!"

"Kill!"

"Kill!"

Before Wang Pu's cry had even faded, the three hundred-plus Ming riders behind him were already roaring in unison.

In the deafening uproar, Wang Pu clamped his horse hard with his legs and drove it forward, sweeping his saber out with all his strength. The more than three hundred Ming riders surged after him like a flood bursting through a dam, rolling forward to engulf the Mongol cavalry arrayed in front of them.

Bancetu's expression grew heavier than ever before.

Faced with the high morale and fierce killing intent of the Ming cavalry, he made the most disastrous decision of his life: retreat.

"Withdraw! All troops, retreat!"

At Bancetu's command, nearly two thousand Mongol riders pulled their horses around and began to withdraw.

A bizarre scene unfolded on the grassland. Nearly two thousand Mongol horsemen were fleeing under the pursuit of fewer than four hundred Ming cavalry. Though it was the Mongols who had chosen to retreat, in the eyes of the broken troops from Datong and the Tumed who did not know the full story, the reality looked entirely different: fewer than four hundred Ming riders had defeated nearly two thousand Mongol horsemen.

The shock this delivered to the routed Datong soldiers was decisive. The men who had only moments ago been running in panic and terror immediately transformed into fierce wolves, wheeling around to kill back the way they had come. When things looked bad, they ran faster than anyone else. But when there was prey to seize, they were more ruthless than anyone, more savage than anyone, more eager for battle than anyone.

In truth, Bancetu's decision was not wrong. Avoiding the enemy's sharp edge and inflicting heavy losses through guerrilla warfare had always been the classic tactic that allowed Mongol cavalry to stand unrivaled under heaven. At the height of their power, the Mongol horsemen had used exactly this kind of warfare to sweep across Eurasia and destroy hundreds of agrarian civilizations.

But this time was different.

The Ming cavalry under Wang Pu were not veteran ruffians forged by countless battles alone; among them were also mounted bandits who lived by robbery and plunder. They could practically be called the most elite light cavalry in the history of the Great Ming. In horsemanship and archery, they were no worse than the Mongols, and in some respects even better.

More importantly, Bancetu had chosen the wrong battlefield for this tactic. Besides the Khorchin cavalry and Wang Pu's three hundred-plus riders, there were still more than ten thousand Datong rout troops on the field who had not yet been annihilated. In addition, more than three thousand of Wang Pu's elite cavalry were hurrying in from every direction to join the fight.

Though Mongol riders who had been scattered in pursuit kept rejoining their ranks, Ming riders were returning in even greater numbers.

The Mongols had intended to withdraw while bleeding the Ming forces along the way. The opposite happened instead. In the retreat and pursuit, the Mongol cavalry not only failed to inflict heavy losses on the Ming, they themselves were cut down in large numbers. By the time Wang Pu had gathered nearly three thousand riders, Bancetu finally realized that the tide had turned irreversibly. He decisively abandoned the struggle with the Ming army and fled in rout with the remaining eight hundred or so survivors.

The situation on the battlefield shifted again in a dramatic reversal.

The terrifying spectacle of Wang Pu leading fewer than four hundred cavalry in a mad pursuit of two thousand Mongol riders shook the souls of the Datong fugitives to the core. The men who had been fleeing in terror a moment before now suddenly turned into brave warriors. Shouting and waving empty fists, they wheeled around and killed back.

The poor Tumed women and children fell once more from heaven into hell. The Khorchin cavalry that had just appeared could not save their fate; instead, it only made them pay an even more dreadful price.

At the camp at the Sea of Envelopment, in the Ming main camp.

While Zhang Zian was waiting anxiously for news, a pale-faced little eunuch suddenly rushed in in a panic. Panting, he cried, "Father, something terrible has happened. Something terrible."

Zhang Zian shivered with fright and asked in a trembling voice, "Have the Mongols broken through?"

The little eunuch nodded desperately. "So, so many Mongols. There must be several thousand riders."

"It's over. It's all over." Zhang Zian sighed in despair. "Wang Pu, Wang Pu... this time you really have killed me. Sigh..."

"Father," the little eunuch asked in alarm, "what do we do now?"

Zhang Zian shrieked, "Go outside and tell Zhao Xin that he must hold the camp no matter what."

"Ah?" The little eunuch hesitated. "This..."

"Go at once!"

"Yes."

The little eunuch answered and fled in panic.

Zhang Zian looked around furtively and muttered under his breath, "No, I need to find somewhere to hide. Yes, hide."