Stones and broken bricks fell like a sudden storm, and finally ceased.
Wang Shuan wiped a streak of blood from his forehead, turned sideways, and reached out to pull at the brother lying on his right, spitting out a mouthful of sand-laden saliva with a curse.
That man was Xu Wu, transferred from the minor garrison troops two years prior.
At this moment, he lay sprawled beneath a pile of large broken bricks, his head and face completely buried.
Wang Shuan quickly reached down to grab him, but as his hand closed around Xu Wu's wrist bone, he felt it already as cold as pig iron.
He yanked hard at the collar beneath the man's neck—turns out half his ribcage had already been crushed flat by a millstone weighing several hundred catties, caved in with flesh and blood mangled beyond recognition.
No saving that!
"Swap hands! Some of you, carry Xu Wu and Old Zhao to the rear!" Wang Shuan bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Anyone still alive, get your bones set and patched up! The dead—don't leave them under the brothers' feet!"
Two young soldiers leaned their repeating crossbows against the edge of the parapet walk, bent low, and sprinted over to hoist up the comrade sprawled in the muddy filth.
Wang Shuan didn't even pause to catch his breath. He jutted half his head out over the crenellated wall.
Outside the city—no sound at all!
The artillery position that had just smashed the ramparts into quaking ruin—now not even a horn call could be heard from it.
"Helian isn't launching a third wave!?" Wang Shuan was stunned by what he saw and couldn't help shouting.
In the near distance, several Hu overseers with whips in hand strode back and forth, yelling nothing but orders to withdraw.
"Look there!" Zhang San gripped a spear snapped clean in half at waist height, craning his neck to nudge Wang Shuan's elbow. "Those bastards... they've pulled back the sharpened stakes!"
Below the city, at the very front of the artillery line.
With the sounding of horns, the siege catapults—each as tall as the city towers—began slowly retreating up the gentle slope behind them.
The hard-bitten defenders crouched at the merlons stared in disbelief, their eyes going glassy. No one could make heads or tails of this maneuver.
Looking further into the distance, Bayaer and his thousands upon thousands of heavy cavalry were also falling back toward the outer perimeter.
Moments earlier, the heavy shield carts pressed to within thirty paces of the moat, along with several hundred scaling ladders, were now being hauled back toward the main camp on the shoulders of infantrymen.
Not a single Hu rider made a charge at the breach gaping in the city wall.
And yet—
In the center of the enemy camp, the giant black wolf banners hadn't dropped an inch.
The endless campfires still blazed red.
Warhorses stood in row after row at the hitching posts, and countless sabers were thrust blade-down into the mud.
Not a trace of a beaten army breaking camp!
Wang Shuan crouched back down onto the parapet walk along the broken wall, tore a strip of coarse hemp cloth, and hastily wrapped it around the wound on his head. "This is creepy. If they were truly retreating, why would they run off to the slopes leaving a few thousand corpses behind?"
He spat out the sand in his mouth, then cursed on:
"Back in the day in Suzhou, when I dealt with the Qiang dogs—when they wanted to swap even lighter siege gear than this, they'd always send a couple hundred elite riders to flank and guard the flanks. Look behind them now—they don't even leave a single mounted archer to cover the rear! What's the difference between this and running naked through the streets?"
"You don't know a goddamn thing!" Zhang San flung the broken spear aside and stooped to lift a rolling log.
"I say that blast of black oil burning hard under the wall snapped their spine! Or maybe those catapults couldn't take the toughness of our gray-white wall and were scared of snapping their own throwing arms!"
"Bullshit from your ancestors' grave! One swing of that thing just now nearly drove my skull into the dirt!"
"Must be their grain stores at Baiyin Meadow ran dry—they couldn't even swing a rock on empty stomachs!"
The armored men crawling out of the dust each argued their own case, faces flushed red with fury.
But no matter the theory, against the unbroken expanse of torches and the sound of horses beyond the wall, none of it held water.
Just then, hurried footsteps came pounding from the left parapet walk.
Zhao Heng, one hand wrapped in cloth strips, trampled over the rubble in a few strides and charged straight up to Commander-in-Chief Tie Lanshan.
"General!" Zhao Heng's eyes were bloodshot, pointing at the great carts crawling sluggishly back below the city wall, burning with fervor. "We can't miss this chance! They've taken apart all the cheval-de-frise, and those clumsy catapults are stuck in the frozen hollows—they can't be dragged out fast!"
He dropped to one knee:
"Give me five hundred elite riders and let me sortie out the north side gate for one run! One pot of fire oil doused over their heads, and all nine of those giant wooden frames will burn to scrap before your eyes!"
Tie Lanshan didn't answer.
A sortie was out of the question. The garrison forces at Zhenbei couldn't possibly win against that heavy cavalry.
The wind was cold, carrying a bitter smell of blood.
He had rolled in this meat grinder for half his life and knew one thing too well.
Whenever an opportunity was unnaturally strange, nine times out of ten there was a pit of quicksand dug underneath it that could swallow the entire army whole.
"Nonsense," Tie Lanshan rejected flat out. "The thousand-jin gate at the north side passage is already sealed. No one comes to ask—no one gets it open."
He stared coldly at Zhao Heng:
"Chen Changfeng was able to bury that horse trader inside the city's belly for a full five years. You think the chess move he's playing is small? He threw away Zuo Bamu's three thousand elite troops like disposable pawns—would he be afraid of the mere five hundred riders you'd lead out? Not allowed!"
"But General—"
"No buts!" Tie Lanshan's voice hardened. "Summon the two scout squads!"
Soon, two lean-built night scout corporals came sprinting up the ladder and knelt on one knee amid the rubble.
"You two—pick a few dozen nimble-handed men and strip off all your armor." Tie Lanshan's blade pointed out into the thick darkness beyond the wall. "One group slips out through the drain ditch at the west latrine, avoids the Hu cavalry's hidden sentry posts, and works its way to the north slope! Keep sharp eyes on exactly what terrain those nine catapult frames are being dragged to, and which hollows they settle into!"
The blade swung toward the other man: "Second group, follow the dry gully. Watch their supply wagons and livestock—get a real look at whether those Hu soldiers are relocating heavy equipment or hauling back their rear supplies! Whatever you see, both groups must be back inside the pass alive within two hours!"
"By your command!" Both men acknowledged in unison and vaulted over the parapet wall like wildcats.
Order after order flowed from the old general's mouth to the whole city.
"Tell the medics—don't skimp on the medicines. Every living man's wound gets washed clean and wrapped tight!"
"This stretch of wall took out four merlons—go to the timber storehouse, bring up the thickest pine planks, and nail them down into the rubble pits with heavy iron spikes to serve as makeshift barricades!"
Tie Lanshan kicked his boot against a bucket of just-boiled liquid filth:
"Kitchen fires do not go out! Keep the oil and hot pitch boiling. Tonight, even if they put on a theater show out there, we nail our lives into these cracks in the brick!"
Before the chaos could be sorted out, Yang Cang came sprinting up the raised road leading from the main street.
Reaching the general, Yang Cang caught a whiff of the heavy, smoke-blackened oil stench on the old man's body.
"General, everything below is cleared!" Yang Cang said in one breath. "All twelve tunnel openings were plugged up solid by the third battalion holding position. Just now I pulled three hundred sturdy laborers and filled iron buckets with sand and dirt, then dropped them down into the wells along with the corpses underground."
"Right now, aside from that belly full of smoke and grime, those hidden tunnels are completely sealed off for good!"
"Have the armored men stationed at the mule-and-horse market been pulled back?"
Tie Lanshan pressed immediately.
“No retreat! Everyone stays put right where they are. I’ve ordered that not a single crossbow is to be lowered.”
Yang Cang was an extremely shrewd man.
“The tunnel openings may be sealed, but who knows if Old Zhang the Hunchback left some nasty trick behind? I figure we can’t just leave a blind spot. Who’s to say while we’re fighting up front, a few hundred Hun blades won’t pop out of the ground right behind our heads?”
“A sound defense.” Tie Lanshan finally let out a long, heavy breath. “Go—spread the word to the men below. Tonight, even if the Emperor of Heaven himself levels the outer walls, not one man is to abandon those tunnel openings!”
On the far horizon, the war drums never sounded.
The once wide-open buffer zone between the two armies now seemed to have swallowed the Khitan camp into a vast black hole; not a single trace of movement leaked out.
The towering loess ridge in the distance blocked off fully half of the nine colossal trebuchets.
Neither were they hurling stones, nor were any enemy generals riding out to taunt.
The north wind cut straight through the shattered breach in the wall. Along the entire battlements, the soldiers gripping their spear shafts felt cold sweat seep out of their palms inch by inch.
“What the hell are those bastards playing at?” Wang Shuan’s last trace of tears had long since been dried by the biting wind. “Dragging those siege engines behind the ridge in the dead of night—are they that bored they’re pitching tents for their horses?”
Zhang San didn’t even have the strength to answer. He slumped against the half-built firwood barricade, gulping down the ice-cold millet broth that stung his throat like knives.
And so the sky, in that deathly silence, slowly turned from pitch black to pale gray.
The night watchmen had struck the hour three full times.
Outside, the torches still showed no sign of shifting formation, and no more boulders came crashing down from above.
Just as the first half-inch of gray dawn light bled over the horizon, a squad of shadows wrapped in rotting straw and frozen mud scrambled up the northern wall like apes along the vine ladders.
It was the first night-scout unit that had been sent out at midnight to circle around the northern ridge!
The scout nearly tumbled headfirst into Tie Lanshan, collapsing at his feet, not even bothering to wipe the bloody froth from the corner of his mouth.
“Did you see clearly?! Where did they move the heavy artillery?!” Tie Lanshan thrust his blade forward.
The scout struggled to open his mouth, swallowed a mouthful of bitter wind, and said with a voice full of ghostly horror:
“Great Marshal… the Khitans never retreated at all! They spent the entire night collecting their dead… Those carts piled high with Hun corpses—they’ve all been hauled straight to the trebuchet positions!”
(…In the afternoon I just got back to Changsha from the north. In the evening I planned to clean the air conditioner, but this rental’s wiring couldn’t handle the cleaning machine! It short-circuited and caught fire! By 8 a.m. it was finally sorted out… Hope all you dear readers pay special attention to home safety—in old neighborhood rentals, you have to be extra careful!! If something catches fire, you could end up in a police cell.)
