Chapter Ninety-Four: Yanshui Pass

"Get that cannon fire to stop, damn it! They’re our own men. If you keep shooting, you’ll kill General Lu!"

Beneath Yanshui Pass, more than ten frontier cavalrymen stood below the walls, cursing the garrison at the top of their lungs.

The defenders were thrown into panic. Their company commander had ridden out with the troops, and the highest-ranking officer left inside the pass was only a centurion.

In the torchlight, that centurion was equally at a loss. He rubbed his hands together and said in confusion, "Aren’t those bandits? How could they be men of General Lu?"

"What bandits? Those thieves killed our centurion at Jingjiagou and stole our soldiers’ uniforms and armor. The general feared they would trick their way into Yanshui Pass and came to reinforce us through the night. Who would have thought our brothers would die beneath your cannon shot?"

Feng Rang glanced sideways at Liu Chengzong and thought to himself that their leader was really putting on quite the performance, as though he had truly seen his men die in a hail of cannon fire.

But the tone was a little too hard.

No matter how small, a man on the walls was still an officer. A moment of panic was one thing; after a little thought, he would surely recover his nerve.

How could a mere patrol rider shouting abuse at him really be acceptable?

Feng Rang cleared his throat, turned and pointed toward the distant northwest, then stepped forward in supplication. "Officer, please show mercy and tell the general inside the pass to stop the guns. If this goes on, my own general will be finished!"

Liu Chengzong nearly laughed aloud at that.

The garrison commander at Yanshui Pass had done him a tremendous favor.

He had considered that General Lu might pursue them, and later in the night he had also guessed that the imperial army might be slowed by artillery, but he had never imagined that General Lu’s entire force would come.

At least five cannon with a range of a full li were trading fire with the twelve cannon set atop the mountain by the Yanshui Pass garrison, and neither side was giving ground.

If he had not been in such a hurry to trick the pass open, he would have loved to stand as an onlooker on Stone Slab Mountain and witness the greatest artillery duel of his life.

Cannon fire was nothing unusual.

The guns on both sides were not large in caliber. Any larger and they could not have been moved at all. At most, they were three-hundred- to five-hundred-jin pieces firing round shot of one or two jin.

Nor were there many of them. Altogether there were only seventeen. The guns below the mountain were all fast-firing swivel guns, while those on the heights were all muzzle-loading field cannon.

What made this precious was not the artillery duel itself, but the privilege of watching it rather than being pounded into paste.

Perhaps this would be the only such chance in his lifetime.

And yet he had given that precious chance to Cao Yao and Wei Qianer.

Feng Rang’s words worked. The centurion above the gate grew even more flustered.

He looked toward the northwest, where the fighting still raged. The distance was great, so the sound reached them only faintly, but the flicker of fire was still visible, and that was enough to make him uneasy.

At last, the centurion made up his mind. He struck the battlements with his hand and decided to intervene in this battle born of misunderstanding. Turning to his men, he ordered, "The vanguard, follow me. The rest of you, guard the pass and open the gate."

The campfires outside the pass lit Liu Chengzong’s armored frontier face in alternating patches of light and shadow.

Hearing the slow, heavy creak of the gate opening, he lowered his head slightly. The brow of his iron helm cast a shadow that hid the corner of his mouth as it curled upward.

The sleep-deprived garrison formed into a dragon-twin-water formation and slowly came out through the opened gate. The centurion rode at the front and said, "Come on, follow me to see the company commander."

"Officer, I won’t be taking you there myself, but I can send you."

As they passed one another, Liu Chengzong turned his horse to ride alongside the centurion and spoke softly, drawing the man’s head around.

In that instant, his left thumb flicked the guard of his saber open while his right hand seized the hilt and slashed abruptly. The tip of the reversed blade, with perfect precision, slipped past the helmet’s neck guard and cut across the man’s throat.

"Send you to see the August Ancestor!"

With that shout, he braced one hand on the saddle and leapt down from behind Red Banner. Spinning back with his saber raised, he charged into the dark throat of the gatehouse. "Take the pass!"

More than ten horsemen behind him loosed arrows into the gate passage, while Feng Rang also sprang from his mount, snatched up a blade, and followed him into the throng.

The sudden reversal came so fast that not only the frontier infantry in their brigandine coats failed to react, but even the centurion on horseback was caught flat-footed. Once Liu Chengzong pressed close, the long spears and polearms in the gate passage could not be swung freely. In the blink of an eye he had closed in and, with his knife in hand, toppled several men.

From behind them came the thunder of hooves striking the ground. Seeing the gate thrown open, the mule-battalion infantry hidden at a distance arrived at last.

As they drew near the pass, they dismounted. Some pulled out homemade grappling hooks and hurled them upward toward the wall, while others charged the gate with weapons in hand.

By then Liu Chengzong was far bolder. The armor of the frontier troops under him had been strengthened again and again with scavenged plates, and he no longer treated close combat with the caution he once had.

The defenders’ long weapons could not fully extend. When the infantry in front struck him with spear shafts, it felt no worse than being scratched. When the men behind thrust at him with spears, so long as he avoided the neck, they could not pierce the overlapping seams of his armor.

As for him, none of the garrison men in brigandine could stand against him for a single exchange. Even if they protected their necks, it made no difference.

As a former frontier soldier from Yuhubao, where good armor plates were scarce, he knew all too well where soldiers hid the rusty, worthless plates.

Finding the weak points beneath a cloth-covered brigandine had become almost instinctive.

It was as though he possessed a pair of x-ray eyes; every plate that could be pierced, he pierced with unerring accuracy.

Before long, he had cut a bloody path halfway through the gate passage.

The defenders jammed inside the passage fell into utter disorder.

Those in front were afraid and wanted to retreat, while those in the middle, crushed in the stampede, were pushed and shoved by the defenders from inside the pass who could not see what was happening and only wanted to surge forward. None of them could get out.

"Push them out!"

Liu Chengzong shouted it.

Feng Rang understood at once. He let go of his blade, flung it at the enemy, grabbed a spear instead, and held it crosswise to block the gate passage. Liu Chengzong seized the spear shaft as well, and together they strained and pushed inward.

On one side stood two former frontier soldiers who had eaten their fill at every meal for months.

On the other were present-day frontier troops, numerous but hungry and exhausted.

Pressed together by the force of just two men, they staggered backward.

One step, then two, and someone fell.

Liu Chengzong pushed forward faster and faster. More and more of the bandit soldiers joined in behind him, driving whole ranks of the garrison back into the pass.

Then, in a certain instant, seven or eight men were shoved to the ground, rolling in all directions, and the attackers broke into the interior of the pass.

Liu Chengzong threw away the spear shaft and once again rushed the defenders with his saber.

They broke.

The mule-battalion soldiers poured through the gate passage in waves, pursuing them in every direction.

Some even rode their mules back out beyond the pass and then charged in again, galloping into Yanshui Pass to hunt down the scattered, fleeing garrison.

This fortress, which guarded the Yellow River crossing and opened the way into Shanxi, changed masters that night.

Liu Chengzong stood upon the gatehouse. There were four cannon there he had never seen before, each seemingly weighing six or seven hundred jin.

Feng Rang climbed up as well, flexing an arm gone stiff with soreness and swelling. "Leader, what now?"

Liu Chengzong smiled.

He could feel that ever since they had left the prefectural city of Yan'an, raided postal stations, burned express relay posts, and fought one battle after another, his standing within the band had risen steadily. He had become the undisputed chief of the lot.

"What else can we do? Those two imperial forces will probably be fighting until dawn at the latest. My guess is they’ve already figured things out by now and are on their way here."

"I remember you used to be in the Beijing Army artillery corps. Do you recognize these four guns?"

Feng Rang needed only one glance before breaking into delight. "Fine pieces! Ye Gong divine cannon, forged artillery. They shoot far and they last."

"Ask the prisoners. Anyone willing to follow us can be assigned to the auxiliaries, fed two full meals a day. As for the gunners, bring them up directly and let the combat troops watch them fire. Those who refuse to follow us, even after surrendering, are not to be killed. Strip them as before and bind them up, and make sure the ropes are tight."

Liu Chengzong did not mind if the prisoners went on fighting him after being rescued.

Freed prisoners were tools for spreading fear among the enemy.

Once surrender became a habit, they would lose the courage to hold out. At the first setback, they would start thinking of surrender.

That would make future battles much easier.

Feng Rang took the order and passed these matters down, then asked, "Can we hold this pass?"

"What are you thinking? If brothers Cao and Gao on Stone Slab Mountain come over and we can gather more than five hundred men, then maybe we can hold it. With just our hundred-odd, we definitely cannot."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong smiled, and there was a fierce edge to it. "If we can’t hold it, we still fight. Otherwise, if we slip away by luck, the imperial forces will only keep growing stronger. Aim the guns true. Kill every commander who comes. If two come, kill two. Make them so afraid they’ll turn pale the moment they see a man on a mule."