Chapter Ninety-Six: Counterattack

The shells crashed down outside the pass, and in Liu Chengzong’s eyes, it was as if cold water had been thrown onto boiling oil.

In an instant, the already ragged ranks scattered like an exploded cauldron.

On the city wall, Feng Rang shouted, “Quick, clear the barrels and reload!”

Liu Chengzong had been dozing at the wall, only waking up slightly after shouting twice. He stood on the steps of the upper wall, calling out to the enemy soldiers.

“Wake up! The imperial army is coming!”

Like the imperial troops, the Mule Battalion’s soldiers were exhausted. They had fought at Jingjiagou, eaten horse meat stewed by the imperial army, and then marched forty li to Shibanshan.

They slept roughly in the wild on the ridge of Shibanshan for two hours, then hurried another ten li to join the battle to seize the pass.

After the defending imperial troops had been destroyed or accepted surrender, Liu Chengzong ordered them to sleep—right at the foot of the Yan Shui Pass’s city wall.

How they longed for a comfortable bed!

Now, over a hundred of the Mule Battalion’s men were roused and on their feet.

Yawning and bleary-eyed, they followed orders, hauling arrows and weapons up to the wall, stringing bows and crossbows.

Behind the battlements, the rebel soldiers leaned spears and axes against the stone, holding bows and crossbows in final readiness. They were not as calm as they appeared.

Some had shaking thighs, others clenched their fists repeatedly, and some muttered inaudible prayers through trembling lips.

They did not even have enough men to put one behind each battlement.

Darkness was a blessing; it hid everything, including their fear.

Liu Chengzong’s gaze passed over them, looking down from the wall.

Beyond the pass, firelight flickered as squads of imperial troops stepped from the dark.

The panic from the bombardment had faded. Led by their officers, the imperial soldiers pressed forward with the sound of steady marching, armor scraping, and an overwhelming sense of menace.

For a moment, Liu Chengzong felt his hand on the bow turn cold.

His mind was in chaos—tense at the prospect of desperate struggle, yet excited and anxious about what the future might hold.

It was absurd: as a frontline commander, even Liu Chengzong himself did not realize his mind was not fully on the battle before him.

His thoughts drifted far away, to what lay beyond this fight.

Fortunately, Feng Rang was at his side, pulling him back to reality. “Commander, all four cannons are loaded.”

“Brother Rang, do you know what will happen if we win this fight?”

Liu Chengzong raised a finger. “We’ll be the first among all the rebel armies in Shaanxi to wipe out an entire force under a roving general.”

He took two deep breaths, scanning around him. “Brothers, shout with me: ‘The General sent you here to eat cannonballs! Did you get last year’s pay?’”

The men on the wall shouted in unison, “The General sent you here to eat cannonballs! Did you get last year’s pay?”

The imperial troops did not respond, but pressed forward, executing their orders with unwavering resolve, closing in on the gate.

Again, the shout came from the wall, “Why not surrender to me, Liu Chengzong? I’ll see you fed and never starve!”

Still unmoved, the imperial soldiers advanced to within a hundred paces of the wall—soon, they would be in range to shoot at the defenders.

“They’re not surrendering,” Liu Chengzong said with satisfaction, turning to Feng Rang. “Fire the cannons. Archers, prepare to shoot.”

Liu Chengzu had once told him that persuasion before battle was indeed effective, but never immediate.

Such words could undermine the enemy’s will to fight, depending on their power, but would not erase it altogether.

The battle must go on; persuasion would gradually take effect as the enemy suffered casualties and setbacks, eroding their resolve.

Orders passed from the left-flank captain to the squad leaders and down the line. The men began selecting suitable arrows, nocking and drawing their bows.

Liu Chengzong too took three arrows, wrapped cloth around them, set them aflame, and shot them in sequence—one at a high arc, one at a shallow arc, and one straight—without fully drawing his bow.

The arrows fell at varying distances from the fires outside the gate.

Feng Rang’s left-flank men were using light bows captured from garrison troops, most with a draw weight of forty or fifty jin; Liu Chengzong’s half-drawn shots had similar range and force as their full draws.

The fires outside the pass had been set earlier by the defending troops, placed at distances meant for seventy-jin warbows.

If the archers on the wall shot at the enemy by the fires, most arrows would fall short.

But Liu Chengzong’s three arrows were not for show; in the darkness, no one could see where they landed.

He only wanted to give his men a sense of the real range as the arrows sliced through the air.

The stars had faded, the moon was gone, and in the darkness before dawn, it was pitch black.

At this time, accuracy did not matter—once the arrows left the string, they vanished from sight.

Boom!

The cannons thundered again—four more shells crashed into the enemy ranks, scattering and crushing seven or eight men, gouging gaps in the formation.

But the gaps were quickly filled. At their officers’ orders, rank after rank of imperial soldiers drew their bows, stepped past the outermost fires, advanced seven or eight paces more, and loosed volleys at the wall.

Liu Chengzong shouted, and his men ducked behind the battlements.

A dense rain of arrows thudded into the tower and walls.

In the lull, Liu Chengzong peered through a gap in the battlements. A squad of infantry bearing large shields advanced between the archers, shielding them as they moved. Then, the archers stepped forward ten paces and shot up at the wall.

They were in range now.

The rebels on the wall, under Liu Chengzong’s command, began loosing arrows at the advancing archers.

Yet compared to the imperial troops, their volleys were chaotic and sparse, the arrows falling haphazardly before the lines. The bows were weak, and at this distance, they could hardly inflict real harm.

In the blink of an eye, the imperial troops had established five files of archers before the gate, and began advancing in overlapping formations.

The rear ranks stepped up, the front ranks pressed forward. In the intervals, volleys of arrows flew at the wall—dense, accurate, pinning the defenders beneath the battlements.

Then, musketeers with matchlocks, triple-barreled guns, and bird guns advanced from the rear, moving up through the archer’s lines. They formed ranks thirty paces from the wall, under cover of the arrow storm.

They had no intention of storming the walls, nor the equipment to do so; their task was to suppress the defenders with ranged fire, using their firearms to pick off anyone who showed themselves behind the parapets.

At such distance and in the darkness, accurate shooting was impossible. They fired at shadows—if movement flickered above the parapet, they shot, whether they hit or not.

Twice Liu Chengzong tried to shoot the advancing musketeers, but each time, wary of being hit, he was forced to remain behind the battlements.

His men fared little better—even the artillerymen, when firing, drew enemy fire; one was killed instantly by a bullet to the forehead.

In truth, with such basic, clumsy tactics, the imperials—outnumbering them three to one—could still kill every defender on the wall.

They needed no siege engines. Once most defenders were wounded or dead, even if the survivors did not surrender, the imperials could scale the wall with a single rope.

Liu Chengzong crouched low, darting behind the parapet, moving between men who cowered from the rain of arrows and lead, slapping their shoulders or faces, encouraging them: “Don’t be afraid! A turning point will come soon!”

This was not empty talk.

Even before Liu Chengzong could finish encouraging every man, Feng Rang roared from the wall, “Reinforcements have arrived! The enemy is surrounded!”

Bang, bang!

Before his words had faded, dull cannon blasts sounded from the enemy’s rear.

Tiger squat cannons and Yongzhu cannons.

The light guns sowed chaos among the imperial rear ranks, and a cavalry unit thundered into their backs.

The artillery post from Shibanshan, Gao Xian’s right-flank company, and the added post soldiers and courier cavalry, all under Cao Yao’s command, had joined the battle.

At last, the archers on the wall, long suppressed, could rain fire down from above, launching a counterattack on the imperial troops.