Chapter Ninety-Two: Tracks and Trails

Commander Lu Cheng, the partisan general, arrived at the Well Family Valley by night.

His troops had failed to send scouts back on time. By their prior agreement, that meant disaster.

The colonel stood stiffly in the threshing yard, while more than four hundred imperial infantrymen and cavalry under his command waited in frightened silence.

Another colonel had removed his armor and knelt bare-chested nearby; his more than two hundred men were scattered through the village, searching for any sign of what had happened.

They all knew the general was furious.

The village lay under an eerie stillness. In the torchlight of the mounted patrols, the courtyard walls still showed the holes made by bullets and arrows.

Lu Cheng, helmeted and armored, stood expressionless in the yard beneath the night sky.

At his feet was a shallow, compacted hollow: the recoil mark left when the small tiger-crouching cannon had been fired.

Not far from it lay a wrecked carriage and a broad stain of blood half-covered with yellow earth.

It seemed the bodies had all been carried off. The bandits had left in haste, and the traces they had tried to bury were handled carelessly.

Soon someone came running from the main compound and shouted, "General, we found them!"

Lu Cheng glanced at the colonel kneeling nearby, his expression darkening. "Why are you still kneeling here? Go see to your men!"

In truth, the partisan general was not truly angry with his subordinates.

The order to have more than eight hundred men take provisions in four villages had come from his own mouth.

It had not been some rash move by the two colonels or the eight captains beneath them.

When he gave the order, he already knew the force would be vulnerable to ambush, and might be broken apart by the bandits one by one.

But what choice was there?

According to imperial regulations, regular troops could not receive supplies at the garrison until the day after the army had been dispatched.

Even if the county office of Yanchuan had wanted to supply them, it had not the means.

Ten days earlier, Lu Cheng had led his troops into Yanchuan with the grain they carried, only to find it consumed to the last ration. He had even suspected that Yanchuan County had fallen to the bandits, for every post station along the main road had been stripped bare.

The courier stations had all been burned as well.

His men had gritted their teeth through three days of hunger to make their way back, then eaten their fill for several days before crossing once more through Anding County and on by way of Qingjian.

As a commander, Lu Cheng knew better than anyone what sort of men his troops were.

Jingbian Fort had no ability to provision them either. At most it had scraped together six dry rations for three days.

Those six meals were meant for pursuit and encirclement; they were not to be eaten.

The soldiers of Qin were all hard men, the kind who could endure hunger and thirst above most others, and they carried out every command of his without the slightest slackening.

If Lu Cheng ordered them not to eat, then unless they were on the verge of starving to death, they would not so much as take a single bite.

To pacify the bandits, to keep the soldiers fed, and yet with Yanchuan so poor that even the common people were chewing on roots and grass, there was not a single large village that could fill their bellies.

What else could he do?

He could only let the troops scare the peasants away, and then eat whatever was left behind.

Even so, he had to disperse his men. If they did not spread out, one village would not be enough to feed them, and besides, they had to leave something for the people.

As for whether they would be ambushed, that could only be left to fate.

There are roads one knows are impossible, and yet must still be taken with clenched teeth.

"General, Captain Wang is still alive."

Though helplessness remained helplessness, hearing that one of his captains was still alive only made Lu Cheng angry again. He strode into the rear of the compound, took one look, and came out at once.

He snapped to those beside him, "Get them some water, damn it."

The sight in the back of the compound was infuriating. Rows of frontier troops lay on the ground, mouths stuffed, hands and feet bound, stripped naked, one after another.

The bandits had even worried they might freeze to death, so they had kindly fetched quilts from the village and covered them evenly.

Head to foot, foot to head, four men under one quilt, each of them kept comfortably warm.

As Lu Cheng stepped out of the yard, another banner captain came hurrying over and reported with his head bowed, "General, the bodies of our comrades are over there."

"Have Captain Wang dress and come see me."

The corpses of the imperial troops filled two courtyards, laid out very neatly. Their armor, weapons, and personal gear were all gone.

A short while later, the weakened Captain Wang, dressed in plain clothes found in the village, came forward and knelt. "General, this subordinate was incompetent and was ambushed by the bandits..."

"Where did they come from, how many were there, how did they fight, and where did they go?"

Lu Cheng walked through the bodies with an expressionless face, closing the eyes of his dead men who had died unwillingly, and asked four questions in succession.

When he reached one corpse, he stopped. He recognized it as another captain under his command. Lifting the blood-soaked undergarment clinging to the body, he saw that the blood at the chest had already darkened.

The spear point, stripped of its wooden shaft, was still lodged in the flesh.

Lu Cheng narrowed his eyes, the anger brewing in his chest at last breaking loose. He turned and glared at Captain Wang. "How could his men let the enemy get close enough to kill him? The whole unit deserves to die!"

Captain Wang knocked his forehead against the ground and spoke in a rush. "I do not know where the bandits came from, only that there were more than four hundred of them. Light cavalry came howling down on us, arrows falling like rain.

"We held the courtyard and counterattacked with flying mortar cannon. The bandits were a rabble; our unit had already broken them with the mortar cannon, and only then did Captain Qi lead the troops out.

"Unexpectedly, the bandit chief was exceptionally fierce. Concealed in his stirrups, he rode alone into the formation and hurled his spear, killing Captain Qi. He also shot down several of our men with bow in hand from both sides.

"The bandits were greatly emboldened by this. Their mounted troops regrouped, and the flanks pressed in to slaughter us. We were too few to withstand them..."

"And then you surrendered to the bandits?"

No anger or pleasure could be read on Lu Cheng's face. Lowering his lids, he glanced at Captain Wang. "Not a scratch on you, yet you were stripped bare and tied up like a slaughtered pig."

Captain Wang had nothing to say and again struck his forehead to the ground.

Lu Cheng did not dwell on it. He had seen too many enemies surrender when defeat was already beyond recovery. In a displeased tone he asked, "What did the bandit chief look like?"

There are many brave men in this world.

Only among rabble can individual valor reverse a collapse.

Because rabble do not understand fighting, do not understand war.

One cannon shot can send them scattering in all directions; one brave man can bring them flocking together again.

To scatter and to gather are merely different forms of a rabble being broken.

They should neither scatter nor gather. They need only stand their ground, motionless as a mountain.

"A northern army helmet, split in two, red frontier armor, cavalry gear... and the horse." Captain Wang lifted his head, speaking urgently. "A northern horse with a red mane and mottled coat."

Lu Cheng understood at once. This bandit was a deserter leader.

Northern army armor, skill with bow and horse, having destroyed every courier station and post house from the city of Yan'an Prefecture to Yanchuan.

Everything matched. It must be Liu Chengzong, the one who had recently broken into Yan'an Prefecture.

"He has shown himself, which saves us the trouble."

Lu Cheng nodded slowly.

When he received orders from the commander’s office on the middle route of the Yan-Sui defense line, he had been worried. The brothers Liu Chengzu and Liu Chengzong, who had broken into Yan'an Prefecture to raid the prison, had both once served in the frontier army, and their father had been a scholar who had held a minor official post.

That family knew the frontier troops very well; they might already be hiding somewhere and difficult to capture.

For that reason he had even sent men to Fish River Fort to ask about them, and had learned that Liu Chengzong had a horse dyed with red mane.

He had not expected them to be so bold, not only refusing to flee, but daring to ambush imperial troops.

At the thought, Lu Cheng’s mood improved again. "Do you know where they went?"

"Subordinate... subordinate heard someone outside the courtyard mention Shaanxi in a low voice."

Shaanxi, Shaanxi... Lu Cheng was thinking when his expression suddenly hardened. "Bad. They stole your soldiers' uniforms and armor, and they were once frontier troops. They may be trying to bluff their way through the Yanshui Pass!

"Quickly, assemble the units and ride to the aid of Yanshui Pass!"

Under the night sky in Well Family Valley, the imperial troops moved with torches like a winding dragon of fire among the hills, passing beyond Yanchuan County town and hurrying toward Yanshui Pass forty li away.