Outside the southern city wall of West Route Prefecture, the setting sun hung like blood.
Seven breaches gaped across the city wall.
Broken bricks, snapped beams, and corpses lay piled layer upon layer at the slope below, and even the surviving arrow towers on the battlements tilted outward, threatening at any moment to topple into the moat.
The moat had long since run dry.
Countless broken timbers, siege ladders, and severed limbs filled the riverbed, and noisome black blood soaked through the loose earth, pooling into a shallow mire at the base of the wall.
Several garrison war banners stood behind the breaches.
The West Route Army insignia on them had long been blackened by smoke and dust beyond recognition.
There was no cheering on the wall. Neither was there cursing.
Wounded soldiers dragged their injured legs and piled stone block after stone block before the breaches. Those still able to draw a bow kept watch behind the crenellations, wrapping torn cloth around their split fingers before nocking arrow after arrow.
A young soldier pulled a broken spear from a heap of corpses.
The shaft was snapped.
He glanced down at it silently, then picked up a nearby saber instead.
No one asked when reinforcements would arrive.
Three days ago, they still asked.
Now, no one mentioned it anymore.
Central Route Prefecture was hard-pressed to save itself and had to guard the imperial camp.
And East Route Prefecture was too far away.
Three li beyond the breaches, the camp of the Khan's Royal Guard stretched to the horizon.
Fifty thousand troops, tents interconnected, filling the plain.
Row upon row of felt tents crowded under the dusk, and beyond the palisades lay caltrops, ditches, and sharpened stakes. Cavalry rode back and forth on patrol. The royal banner flew high overhead, its black field and gold wolf stretched taut by the western wind.
Nine trebuchets stood at the very front of the formation.
The dread-inspiring wooden frames were stained with grease and blood, their long arms angled toward the city walls.
Hundreds of Khan's strongmen surrounded the machines, rolling newly delivered boulders into the leather slings.
One of those stones weighed at least a thousand jin.
Its surface was roughly hewn, and slivers of dark, dried flesh were wedged in the cracks.
A hundred-man commander rode to the front of the formation, looked up at the crumbling southern wall, and grinned:
"Still patching up the wall, are they?"
A rider beside him said: "They've been at it all day. Every time we smash a gap open, they plug it with their own bodies."
The hundred-man commander raised his whip and pointed lazily at the ramparts.
"Then let them fill it."
"The Khan has ordered: smash for two more hours tonight. Before dawn, tear down that whole southern wall."
"Once our army enters the city, gold, silver, women—whoever grabs them first, keeps them!"
The soldiers around him raised their weapons and howled with glee, already eager for the slaughter to begin.
Some made throat-slitting gestures at the ramparts. Others hoisted freshly severed heads on the tips of their spears and galloped in circles around the artillery positions.
The defenders on the wall watched it all clearly.
Not a single one uttered a word.
The commander of the West Route Army, Han Chong, stood on the shattered gate tower. Most of the pauldron scales on his right shoulder were gone, packed underneath with cloth to staunch the bleeding.
Blood soaked through the cloth, then slowly seeped down between the armor plates.
His personal attendant stepped up behind him and whispered:
"General, another forty-seven wounded men have died."
Han Chong stared out beyond the wall.
"How many able to fight?"
"Counting both on the wall and below, barely six thousand..."
"And arrows?"
"After pooling all the camps together, about thirty thousand shafts. We only have eleven bolt-throwers left, and their cordage is frayed."
"Rolling logs and boulders?"
"Nearly gone."
Han Chong fell silent for a moment.
In the distance, a team of Khan's strongmen had reattached the winch cables to the long arm of a trebuchet.
Dozens of hemp ropes spread across the ground, and behind each one stood scores of bare-chested, burly soldiers.
They needed only the order, and another boulder would arc across the moat, thundering into the seven breaches.
The attendant's lips were cracked and dry. After a long hesitation, he asked:
"General... the reinforcements from Zhenbei Pass..."
"They're not coming."
Han Chong cut him off.
The attendant jerked his head up.
Han Chong's gaze did not move from the enemy formation.
"Zhenbei Pass is surrounded by the Khan's army as well. Marshal Tie has only those troops. If he split his force to save us, he would lose more than just one West Route Prefecture."
"He cannot come."
"He should not come."
The last glimmer of light in the attendant's eyes went dark.
Han Chong turned to look at the city.
In the streets, civilians were being hurried north under the soldiers' orders. Many carried bundles on their backs, dragging children by the hand, pausing every few steps to steal one last look at their homes.
They knew there were no reinforcements beyond the northern gate.
They also knew the Khan's cavalry had already sealed every road.
The so-called evacuation was merely a way for them to die a little later.
Han Chong raised his left hand, the only one still usable.
"Pass the order."
"Collect every drop of wildfire oil left in the city and deliver it to the granary and the government storehouse."
His attendant froze.
"General..."
"Then take dry wood and block all four doors of the granary."
Han Chong's voice was hoarse, each word clear.
"If the southern wall falls, light the fire."
"Not one grain of millet in the state granary, not one inch of iron in the armory, may fall into barbarian hands."
The attendant's eyes reddened instantly.
"And the civilians in the city—what about them?"
Han Chong slowly closed his eyes.
He did not answer.
When the city fell, fifty thousand royal troops would pour in. Everyone knew full well what would happen to those civilians.
Burning or not burning—both led to the same kind of death.
A moment later, Han Chong opened his eyes again.
"One more order."
"Every man who can still lift a blade, assemble beneath the southern wall tonight to receive weapons."
"Tell them: Han Chong will hold the last breach himself."
"If the city falls, I die first."
The attendant knelt on one knee, his forehead pressing hard against the broken brick fragments.
"Understood!"
He rose and left.
Han Chong stood at the edge of the gate tower, silently watching the nine trebuchets.
The dusk slowly swallowed the dying sun.
The torches in the Khan's camp began to blaze to life, one after another.
Countless lights spread along the palisade lines into the distance, illuminating the armor of the patrolling riders, and the bloodstains not yet dried on the artillery frames.
West Route Prefecture was a slab of raw flesh trapped on a butcher's block.
Blades on every side.
Within the city, there was no road back.
Beyond the city, no troops to call.
...
Five li south of the Khan's royal camp, a barren ridge rose across the wilderness.
The ridgeline was not high, and on the leeward side grew dense patches of withered wormwood.
Frost crept close to the ground, shrouding the horses' hooves and the soldiers' shins up to the calf.
Two hundred riders lay hidden behind the ridge.
No torches were lit. No one spoke.
The armor these men wore was not the standard-issue armor of the Great Qian Army, but the rough fur coats stripped from the tribesmen of the steppe.
Those fur coats were slashed with knife marks, and dried black blood had caked into hard scabs, carrying a reek so thick that men and beasts alike kept their distance.
Their horses were lean to the bone, yet sinewy as iron, each breath steaming white from the nostrils laced with the scent of blood.
The rations in their saddlebags were long gone. Hanging from the horses' flanks were bulging leather skins and iron cylinders bound tight with hemp rope.
Their faces, weathered and roughened by wind and sand, showed no sign of fatigue—only a cold, hard indifference to life and death.
They had ridden a long detour across the prairie these past days.
They burned the Khan's grain stores. They slaughtered the horse herds of the vassal tribes. And on the icy river plain, they chewed apart an encirclement of thousands of pursuers.
When they first left the pass, they numbered more than three hundred riders.
Now, only two hundred remained.
The ones who lived through it had long shed the restlessness of ordinary soldiers. They were more like starving ghosts crawling out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
The vice-commander, Cao Kuo, lay prone at the top of the ridge.
He pushed aside the dead grass in front of him and looked north.
The camp of fifty thousand troops stretched out of sight.
Palisade layer after palisade, and the outer patrol riders crossed paths every half a burn of incense. Farther beyond, there were several wooden watchtowers for scouting the enemy.
West Route Prefecture was besieged and sealed.
But the royal camp before his eyes also had not a single opening to exploit.
Cao Kuo had fought in the army for more than ten years. He did not consider himself a man afraid of dying.
Even as he gazed at that sea of lights, his pupils still constricted involuntarily.
Two hundred against fifty thousand.
Even if each man could cut down ten, they still couldn't fill the first trench outside the enemy camp.
He retreated down the slope, keeping low, and made his way to the black horse at the very front.
"General."
Xu Zhan leaned against the saddle, making no move to respond.
Cao Kuo's Adam's apple bobbed.
"I've just scouted the area, sir."
"The enemy camp has three rotating cavalry patrols on the perimeter, and watchtowers set up behind the stockade. The west side borders the river, the east side is dug with trenches, and the south is blocked by cheval-de-frise."
"If we approach from the front, we'll be spotted at most two li out."
The few veteran soldiers nearby said nothing.
Cao Kuo glanced back at the two hundred comrades lying low in the frost and mist.
These men hadn't had a full meal in three days.
They could still hold their blades steady.
But their horses might not outrun the Khan's elite cavalry.
He turned his gaze back to Xu Zhan.
"General."
"The fifty thousand royal guard troops have their camp fortified like an iron bucket."
"We have only two hundred men."
"This battle... how do we make our move?"
Behind the barren hill, silence settled in.
In the distance, within the Helian camp, another row of torches flared to life.
The firelight caught the long arms of nine trebuchets, towering high against the broken walls of Western Route Prefecture.
Only then did Xu Zhan straighten up.
The night wind swept over the ridge, tossing the tangled hair at his temples.
He didn't look at Cao Kuo, nor did he count the Helian stockades or patrol riders.
His gaze crossed the fifty-thousand-strong encampment, passed the fluttering golden wolf banners, and finally landed on the nine trebuchets.
His eyes were cold and deep.
Cao Kuo waited for a long time, cold sweat beading in his palms.
Xu Zhan raised his left hand and pressed it against the iron mace at his back.
"Don't rush."
His tone carried no ripple at all.
"Fifty thousand arrogant troops, attacking for three days and three nights."
"A bowstring stretched too long—even if it's made of ox sinew, it must be growing tired."
Cao Kuo's gaze shifted slightly.
Xu Zhan looked into the deepening night and continued:
"They're certain Western Route Prefecture is already in their grasp."
"Right now, they're guarding against the remaining soldiers inside the city, not against us."
"Wait until the barbarian dogs bed down, when their dreams run deep..."
Xu Zhan paused briefly.
"Then we send them off to their graves."
The two hundred riders remained silent.
But the boulder that had been pressing on every man's chest seemed to crack open just a sliver.
Cao Kuo followed Xu Zhan's gaze to the trebuchets, and something clicked.
He abruptly lowered his head and stared at the heavy leather satchels hanging on either side of the horses' flanks.
Greek fire.
Fire-thunder jars.
All of it—the very things Xu Qinghuan had personally allocated to this lone force when they left Zhenbei Pass!
