Chapter 20: The Focus of the World (Part II)

The sound of clashing armor drifted from the western side of the pass.

Sun Yi was busy straightening the armor of his three hundred remaining soldiers. Some of their breastplates still bore the jagged holes of arrow strikes; others wore their arms in makeshift slings across their chests. Yet, every one of them stood tall, their gaze fixed on the signal fires rising in the direction of Taiyuan. The hundred or so warhorses borrowed from Tianmen Pass pawed the ground restlessly, exhaling plumes of white vapor into the frigid air.

"Brother Li," Sun Yi said, presenting a letter, "I entrust this to you."

The wax seal was still warm from his body heat. "This is my memorial to the Imperial Court. If you reach Bianjing, you must deliver it into their hands yourself."

Li Xiao took the letter, the paper feeling heavy in his grasp. "General Sun, why do you insist on this?" he could not help but ask. "Three hundred men—even if they were forged of iron—what use is it to charge toward Taiyuan? Better to come with me to Qingyuan County, rally reinforcements, and then plan our next move."

"Plan our next move?" Sun Yi’s voice was hollow with sorrow. "On the day Shuozhou fell, I should have perished on the ramparts with my brothers. But when that scoundrel Han Yanchang threw open the city gates, I saw our men still firing their bows, shouting, 'General, flee! Save yourself to seek vengeance!' My life has not been my own since that day."

He gestured to the battered soldiers behind him. "Ask these men! Do they want to flee? They do! But where? Should they flee to Tianmen Pass, only to be branded as Jurchen spies by the commander there? Should they flee to Bianjing, only to be pointed at and cursed by civil officials as losers? I tell you, a soldier is not looked down upon because of the slur 'thieving conscript,' but because he lost the battle! Because he failed to protect his own home and country!"

Sun Yi walked over to a soldier whose arm was bound in blood-stained cloth, a jagged, unhealed scar across his face from a Jurchen arrow at Shuozhou.

"This is Wang Erzhu from Fenzhou. He says he failed to stop the enemy, so how could he ever return to face his kin?" Upon hearing this, Wang Erzhu puffed out his chest, though he could not stifle a cough, spitting out phlegm streaked with blood.

"Look at this lot," Sun Yi continued, pointing to a limping veteran. "Old Zhang. He guarded the border for ten years. Before the Liao breached the frontier, he would always grumble about the court owing him a year’s back pay, saying he’d sue the magistrate once he retired. But now..."

The veteran grinned, revealing toothless gums. "Sue the magistrate? The Jurchen dogs are at our doorstep, and we’re about to lose our lives. Who cares about that pittance of pay anymore?"

Sun Yi’s eyes reddened, his voice rising in a roar of tragic fury: "Brother Li, do you think the soldiers of the Great Song are cowards? Do you know that my men haven't received their pay in half a year? The civil ministers in Bianjing squabble over whose calligraphy is inferior, while the generals in their barracks embezzle military funds to keep concubines! Our men in the Hedong Circuit wear rags for armor, wield rusted blades, and eat grain mixed with sand, yet when battle calls, they are still the ones who must charge forward!"

He pulled another letter from his robe—the final testament of Shi Kang, which he had kept hidden. He gripped both letters so tightly his knuckles turned white. "Commissioner Shi fought to the death in Daizhou, his men throwing logs at the enemy on empty stomachs. We fought to the death in Shuozhou, only to be stabbed in the back by the Yisheng Army in our own city. This is not the fault of one or two men; the court is rotten to the core, and the military discipline has collapsed entirely!"

"The people call us 'thieving conscripts' and say that good men don't become soldiers. Why? Because the soldiers they see either steal their grain or flee at the sight of the enemy! But someone must show them that a soldier is not like that!"

"General Sun—" Li Xiao began, but Sun Yi waved him off.

"Our blood cannot be shed in vain. If it is not spilled on the battlefield, it must be spilled in the imperial court. It must create a ripple, something to awaken those who are drunk on their own lives!"

Sun Yi’s tone was bleak. "If we cannot make a ripple, then we will drench them in blood! We will splash it on the walls of Taiyuan and on the faces of the Jurchen dogs, so that all under heaven may see that the Great Song still has soldiers who will not run!" He swung onto his horse, the three hundred survivors following suit.

Sun Yi drew his blade and pointed it toward Taiyuan. "Move out! Let the Jurchen dogs know that even if we are down to our last breath, the soldiers of the Great Song will bite back!"

"Yes!"

The sound of hooves echoed through the pass, heavy with resolve, fading step by step into the mountain trail leading toward Taiyuan.

Li Xiao watched the shrinking line of figures, his throat tightening.

"Uncle Quanwu," he said, swinging into his own saddle, "let’s go to Qingyuan."

"Without waiting for dawn?"

"No more waiting." Li Xiao shook the reins, his horse’s hooves crunching against the snow.

The wind at Tianmen Pass continued to howl, whistling through the dry grass stuffed into the fissures of the city walls.

...

The party had returned to six men: Li Xiao, the old servant, the Shi brothers, Geng Gu, and Lu Feng-hu. Though small in number, they were exceptionally well-equipped, each clad in armor and carrying a recurve bow. They alternated between two horses each—the Khitan mounts they had brought and those seized from the Yisheng Army—having left the rest to Sun Yi and the Zhang brothers.

As they drew closer to home, Geng Gu’s anxiety became unbearable. Only after learning from refugees that Qingyuan County had not yet fallen did he calm down, though that news was already several days old.

The plains northwest of Yangqu Town resembled a frozen, cracked sheet of iron, the setting sun staining the snow a haunting, dark red.

Li Xiao’s party hid behind a ridge, their hands gripping their reins so tightly they could have wrung water from them. They had never seen such warfare.

Twenty-odd Jurchen cavalrymen circled the three hundred Song soldiers like black lightning. Clad in light armor, they drew their curved bows into perfect crescents. Arrows whistled into the Song ranks, each cry of agony acting like a lash against the heart.

Sun Yi’s men lagged behind, straining to pursue the Jurchens, yet they could not break through the web woven by the flying arrows.

"This is madness!" Lu Feng-hu gritted his teeth. "This isn't a battle—it’s a hunt!"

He was right.

The Jurchens never closed the distance, maintaining a gap of about thirty paces. They moved in groups of three; as one wave finished firing, they would wheel their horses around to retreat, while the next wave immediately moved in, keeping up a seamless, impenetrable rain of arrows. A Song cavalryman tried to charge, but before he had taken two steps, an arrow pierced his throat. The Jurchen rider, despite having already turned away, had fired backward with the speed of a phantom.

It was the "turn-back shot." Jurchen riders could twist their bodies at full gallop to fire behind them; the Liao army called it the "Ghost Arrow."

Geng Gu’s voice trembled. "The Jurchens grow up in the saddle; they can shoot down a wild goose while fleeing backward. Our Song archers can't even hit a target standing still from this distance!"

Li Xiao’s gaze was locked on a Jurchen scout, a *Zayabojin*—the Jurchen term for a scout leader, equivalent to a Song "Captain of Scouts." The man wore a hat of otter fur, the thickest pelt from a creature's neck. He never seemed to aim; every time his bowstring hummed, another man fell. His warhorse seemed to share his intent, stopping at the most cunning angles to allow its master a steady shot before quickly dashing out of the range of any Song counterattack.

Thirty paces away, a Song soldier raised his shield to cover a comrade, but the *Bojin* suddenly switched to an armor-piercing arrow. With a hum of the bowstring, the arrowhead punched through the shield and emerged from the soldier’s throat.

"That arrow!" Shi Yong gasped. "It’s a specially crafted heavy armor-piercer!"

Before the words had left his mouth, the Jurchen formation shifted abruptly. Ten riders veered left, ten to the right, sweeping around the flanks of the Song formation like two black arcs.

Sun Yi shouted for them to "Form ranks," but the Song formation was already in shambles. Some tried to charge, others tried to retreat, and they were bunched together in chaotic confusion.

The Jurchen arrow rain intensified, specifically targeting the horses' legs. As the mounts collapsed, they tripped those behind them, and the screams grew deafening.

The Song soldiers under Sun Yi’s command tried to brace for defense, but the Jurchen cavalry moved like ghosts, picking off the weak points in their formation. Their arrows seemed to have eyes, finding the gaps in the armor—the throat, the face, the armpits. Every shaft claimed a life.

When the Song soldiers gathered their courage for a charge, the Jurchens immediately pulled back, maintaining a safe distance. And when the exhausted Song soldiers tried to retreat, the Jurchens clung to them like marrow-eating parasites.

The Jurchen riders chewed on dried meat, their saddlebags filled with mare’s milk, which they sipped periodically as if this slaughter were nothing more than a post-hunt leisure. One Jurchen rider didn't even look back as he fired an arrow, felling a Song archer, then laughed to his companions, his mirth audible even from a distance.

Li Xiao looked down at his own Jurchen-style armor, the fine iron plates embedded in leather—light and sturdy, far superior to the rusted lamellar armor of the Song.

Even more terrifying was their coordination. The twenty men were spread out, yet they acted as if they shared a single pair of eyes. Wherever there was an opening, a Jurchen immediately filled it; whenever a Song soldier tried to break through, three arrows were aimed at him at once. When a Jurchen’s bow snapped, another immediately tossed him a spare, their movements as fluid as if they had practiced it a thousand times.

"These aren't just scouts," Li Xiao felt sweat drench his back. "They are the elite of the elite!"

Ten riders could shatter a hundred!

These men were not fighting a war; they were demonstrating a crushing superiority. Their horsemanship, archery, tactics, and even their control over the battlefield far outstripped the Song.

The three hundred Song soldiers were being toyed with by twenty men, like a flock of sheep waiting for the slaughter, without even a chance to strike back. These Jurchen riders darted across the battlefield like phantoms, clad in light leather armor, longbows on their backs, their horses as agile as dragons. They circled the Song ranks, keeping a distance of twenty to thirty paces (about 30 to 45 meters).

For an ordinary archer, this distance was the limit of their range, but for the Jurchens, who had hunted in the White Mountains and Black Waters since childhood, it was their most familiar and lethal killing zone.

Shi Yong’s eyes turned red, and he raised his blade to lead a charge, but Li Quanwu dragged him back after only a few steps.

"Are you insane?" Li Quanwu hissed. "You’ll be a living target if you charge out there!"

"Then what? Just watch our brothers die?"

"We can't fight them head-on." Li Xiao signaled to Lu Feng-hu and the Shi brothers. "We’ll circle to their flank and rear and aim only for their horses."

Lu Feng-hu grinned, showing two rows of white teeth. "Should have done that from the start!"