Chapter 48: The Steed Like a Fei Kuai, Swift as Lightning (Part I)

The wind at half-past the Hour of You—around six in the evening—was laden with powdery snow. When Li Xiao pressed his foot into the stirrup and swung himself onto the Khitan steed, the crisp, rattling collision of iron armor plates startled the horse into a sharp snort.

He lowered his head and tugged at the red cloth tied around his arm, which looked startlingly vivid against his Jurchen iron-laminated armor.

"Get your horses warmed up and moving, you bastards!"

"When we charge later, don't let the Jin dogs laugh at us!"

The warhorses were all chewing on dried grass, and the white mist exhaled from their nostrils gathered into drifting clouds in the encroaching dusk. As the moment of departure drew near, the tension among the men mounted. Most of those going on this mission would face nine deaths for every life spared, and very few would return alive.

A heavy sound of footsteps approached from the north.

Raising their eyes, the men saw a mountain-like figure clad in gilt and silver-inlaid *shanyuan* mountain-pattern armor. The animal-mask shoulder guards bared their fangs menacingly, and the snow on the armor plates was melted by his body heat into tiny streams that pooled around his waist and abdomen.

He carried a heavy horse-chopping saber in his hand, the red silk tassel fluttering straight in the wind. Wang Bing’s face had been baked to a purplish-bronze by the fires of war, and a scar ran diagonally from his eyebrow bone down to his jaw, doing nothing to diminish his heroic bearing.

Behind him were five hundred cavalry and over a thousand infantrymen, among whom was Shi Bi. With the addition of the enemy warhorses captured and treated after the last battle, this group likely represented the entirety of the remaining cavalry in Taiyuan.

He walked with an extraordinarily steady pace, every step landing like a pile driver upon the earth. The cavalry following him rattled with armor plates, while the infantrymen dragged their iron spears along the frozen ground, gouging deep trenches into the earth.

"By order of Prefect Zhang!" His voice boomed louder than the battle horns atop the city wall, vibrating the men's eardrums. "These are urgent dispatches for the imperial court! Who has the grit to deliver them?" He had men distribute the letters among the crowd. "The court offers heavy rewards! Fifty taels of silver and a promotion of three ranks!"

A stir rippled through the crowd. Fifty taels of silver—just how much money was that? Usually, they only ever handled copper coins. They had long heard that silver was extremely valuable; a whole string of copper coins couldn't even buy a single tael. How could wretched soldiers like them begin to fathom what fifty taels looked like? As for the promotion of three ranks, it was completely ignored by everyone.

So this was what delivering intelligence was all about. What on earth was written in these letters? Were they requests for reinforcements, or frantic calls for distress?

*Woo—woo—*

Outside the city, the battle horns of the Jin army sounded, long and piercing, resembling the howling of wolves.

Wang Bing suddenly raised his head, the scar on his face casting a cold gleam in the twilight: "The time has come! Open the gates! This general will clear the way for you!"

The screeching whine of turning winchesters pierced the dusk.

The heavy city gates slowly swung open, revealing the snow-covered battlefield outside.

Wang Bing leaped onto his horse, his horse-chopping saber pointing straight toward the Jin encampment: "Lads, charge with me!"

"Kill!" The iron hooves of the cavalry shattered the residual snow; the clattering of armor, the thunder of hooves, and the roaring battle cries merged together like rolling thunder sweeping across the earth.

Li Xiao reined in his horse and followed closely behind. There were five fine Khitan horses in his own squad, so he had chosen not to wear leather armor, sticking instead with his iron-laminated armor. Every few miles, he would switch to a fresh mount. The iron hooves hammered rhythmically against the frozen earth, kicking up bursts of snow that pelted his armor.

The red cloth on his arm whipped wildly in the wind—it was their designated marker to prevent friendly fire in the dark.

At first, he had wondered why they didn't wait until total darkness. Weren't night operations more covert?

On second thought, he understood. Whenever night fell, the majority of the Song soldiers suffered from poor night vision; under the moonlight, they couldn't even keep a grip on their horse reins or see the road clearly. Yet numerous sorties outside the city had already proven that very few men in the Jin army suffered from this affliction.

The veterans in the camp called it "night blindness," but in reality, it was simply starvation. Day after day, they chewed on bran cakes; forget about meat, they couldn't even see a speck of grease, and their eyes had long since been ruined by malnutrition.

"See that? They're charging in," a veteran pointed ahead.

Wang Bing's cavalry were bypassing a newly dug trench of the Jin army. Although the ditch wasn't completely finished, it was deep enough; once you fell in, you could forget about climbing out.

Right now, before complete darkness fell, they could still make out the path. Once it turned pitch black, everyone would tumble right inside.

***

Amidst the shouting, Wang Bing's cavalry had already reached the campsite of the Xi people. Those Xi soldiers were gathered around bonfires to warm themselves. Seeing the Song forces slaughtering their way in, they hastily mounted their horses, drew their blades, and rode out of camp to meet the attack.

Wang Bing's horse-chopping saber swung like a windmill. With a single sweep, he cleaved open a Xi soldier's skull, splattering red and white matter all over his body. Yet he paid it no heed, roaring as he plunged deeper into the fray, while the city walls maintained a detachment ready to provide reinforcement at any moment.

"Right now!" The voice of the veteran leading the squad came from the flank. "Follow me!"

Li Xiao jerked his horse's head, leading a group of over sixty men as they charged toward the flank. He heard the whistling sound of arrows tearing through the air from behind, accompanied by the battle cries of the Jin troops. Wang Bing's feint had evidently succeeded, drawing the vast majority of the Jin soldiers away.

This was one of the tactics used in defending the city: periodically sallying forth to ambush and intercept the enemy to boost the defenders' morale, or better yet, setting fire to the enemy encampment if an opportunity arose while their guards were down.

The twilight grew thicker, and the distant torches flickered like dancing ghost fires.

"Pick up the pace! We must cross the Jin blockade before nightfall!" The iron hooves thundered across the snow. This breakout had only just begun.

"Hyah!"

The veteran cavalry leader was surnamed Chen. He whipped his horse viciously; the steed, stung by the pain, flew forward on all four hooves, carrying him toward the gaps in the Jin southern camp.

The sixty-odd men behind him closed ranks tightly. Just as they charged past the first abatis, a sharp horn blast erupted from the left—wailing and mournful, enough to make one's scalp tingle.

Out of the corner of his eye, Li Xiao caught sight of over a hundred cavalrymen surging out of a yellowish earth fortification. Their leather lamellar armor gleamed with a dull luster under the firelight, crafted from multiple layers of compressed ox-hide with iron plates embedded at vital points, reducing weight while ensuring defense.

Atop their heads were pointed leather helmets, with wolf tails fluttering up and down behind the helms as the horses bounced—a totem worship of the Xi people, symbolizing ferocity and wildness.

"It's the Xi!" Old Chen’s eyes narrowed sharply as he drew his bow to its maximum tension. "Their arrows are poisoned! Watch out!"

Before his voice had even faded, a volley of whistling arrows ripped through the air.

"Duck!" Just as the veteran's roar finished, the rain of arrows hissed past, grazing Li Xiao's iron helmet and embedding themselves into the rump of the horse behind him.

The warhorse reared up in agony, flinging its rider three zhang into the air. Before the man even hit the ground, two follow-up arrows pinned him to the snowy earth.

Li Xiao instinctively pressed himself flat against his horse's back. An arrow grazed his iron-laminated armor and struck the neck of a neighboring horse.

The animal shrieked in pain and reared, throwing its rider into the snow. Before the man could scramble to his feet, another arrow pierced his throat, spraying a mist of blood onto the snow like a suddenly blossoming red plum.

"Don't fight them head-on! Run with me!"

From all around the Jin encampments, battle horns sounded in succession, signaling that more Jin cavalry were galloping in from all directions to surround and intercept them.

Sure enough, in the next instant, the thunder of hooves echoed from every side!

"On the left!" a loud roar came from the front. "The enemy is charging over!"

Out of the darkness on the left flank, a troop of cavalry broke through, sabers flashing as they hurtled straight toward the Song forces!

"Front right!" another Song soldier shrieked. "There's more!"

"Old Man Chen! What do we do?" the burly fellow shouted in panic.

Gritting his teeth, the veteran scanned his surroundings with eyes like lightning, then pointed sharply ahead: "There's a swamp ahead! Charge in! That terrain will bog them down!"

"Head for the river system to the northwest!"

Li Xiao immediately pulled his reins, guiding his horse in a nimble dodge around a boulder. In the southern Xiao River and Wenyu River basins, the rivers were partially frozen in winter, but the ice thickness varied unevenly, and the riverbanks were dense with reed marshes and frozen swamps. Utilizing this terrain could shake off the main force of the Jin cavalry.

***

To the southeast lay undulating loess hills laced with gullies, locally featuring treacherous passes like the Red Cliff Canyons. The vegetation was sparse, covered in winter snow, making paths hard to distinguish.

He looked back and saw the Xi cavalry resembling a pack of starving wolves, howling wildly as they galloped at full tilt, continuously loosing volleys of arrows.

Their horn bows flashed with dark sheens in the twilight, the arrow feathers so dense they looked like a plague of locusts. From time to time, Song cavalrymen cried out and tumbled from their saddles.

"They're blowing the horn again!" someone shouted ahead. In the distant Jin camp, ox-horn bugles echoed one after another, passing the signal down the line like an invisible net tightening around them.

Li Xiao looked up and saw another troop of cavalry bursting out from the northeast, their leather armor glinting coldly in the dusk. Judging by their appearance, they were Khitan cavalry—far more troublesome to deal with than the Xi.

"Cover the left flank!" The veteran's voice cut through the rain of arrows. An expert archer immediately unslung his longbow, nocked three arrows simultaneously, flicked his wrist, and let fly.

The foremost Xi cavalryman dropped from his horse with a thud, his wolf-tail helmet rolling into the snow to reveal a face pierced through by the fletching.

"Fine archery!" Yuan Zhenhai roared, using his scimitar to deflect a flying arrow. The men also carried small round wooden shields strapped to their arms, which could fend off a portion of the incoming projectiles.

Yet they crashed right into a blockade of Jurchen mounted archers ahead. Arrows rained down diagonally; men screamed and horses whinnied, blood spots splashing onto the snow like winter plum blossoms. More arrows surged forward, striking several more cavalrymen. One of them fell to the ground and was trampled into pulp by the hooves of the horses behind before he could even crawl up.

Li Xiao gripped his long spear tightly. The weight of the iron-laminated armor made him strain, but it protected many of his vital points.

Over the past few days, he had continuously replayed the feeling of charging the enemy camp; the whistling sound of the spearhead tearing through the air still seemed to linger in his ears.

Though he lacked that frantic valor at this moment, the spear forms in his mind remained crystal clear—the diagonal slash, the horizontal parry, the sudden retraction. The crisp clashing of iron spear against arrow shafts was piercingly loud.

"Trench ahead!" the veteran suddenly roared. A trench roughly a zhang deep stretched across the snowy field ahead of them, the shadow of sharpened wooden stakes dimly visible at the bottom.

Fortunately, the ditch wasn't wide. The men dug their heels into their horse bellies and charged across, their front hooves landing on the snow of the opposite bank and kicking up a flurry of snow dust.

The cavalry behind followed suit. Two horses, lacking sufficient strength, plunged into the ditch, their miserable shrieks instantly swallowed by the Xi arrow storm.

Crossing the trench, the twilight deepened. Yet the veteran did not head toward the river. Seeing a squad of dark shadows emerge from a snow slope on the right, their wolf-helmets forming a continuous line, the veteran violently yanked his reins and forced the entire troop to veer sharply in another direction.

"Take the abandoned canal!"

He remembered this dry canal. Its bed was strewn with jagged stones, sending sparks flying as the horses trod upon them. When the Xi cavalry pursued them to the edge of the canal, their horses' hooves slipped, throwing their formation into instant chaos.

The cold wind mixed with snow dust poured in from the exit of the abandoned canal. Just as the men poked their upper bodies out of the outlet, they saw a belt of interconnected torches slithering across the snow in the distance—patrolling Jin scouts.

Hearing the commotion, over thirty dark silhouettes skimmed low across the ground, their leather armor glinting with fragmented light under the torches.

"It's the *Guaizi Ma* (Linked Cavalry)!" the veteran shouted in alarm. "Charge through while the chaos holds!"

These light cavalrymen wore leather armor formed from multiple compressed layers of ox-hide, the edges of the plates coated with black lacquer to make them both light and tough—ideal for this kind of infiltration and raid.

Their mounts were Liaodong short-legged ponies; unassuming to look at, they ran as if skimming along the surface of the ground, making not the slightest sound earlier while inside the canal.

"The prey has finally dared to crawl out!"

"Lads, let's go hunting!"