Chapter 52: The Steed Flies Like Lu (V)

Veteran Chen watched the young junior officer leap down from his horse. A personal guard handed him a cloth to wipe away the blood, but he waved it aside and strode directly toward the Song soldiers who were still able to move, his voice ringing loud and clear: "Yu Fei, take men to secure all the strategic routes! Withdraw at the first sight of enemy scouts within five li, and do not let them sneak up on us!"

A stocky cavalryman responded with a crisp "Understood."

"Wang Yazi," the junior officer's gaze swept over the ruins, "take two men and search every cellar. Find strong liquor and clean strips of cloth—the more, the better! Bring that broken pot from the stove as well!"

A tall and lean personal guard immediately acknowledged the order and plunged into the roofless earthen huts. The sounds of prying open cellars mingled with the chilling wind.

"Zhao Daniuh!" The junior officer finally pointed at a man with a flat nose. "Chop wood and start a fire! Build several piles, and move fast!"

The flat-nosed soldier grunted an acknowledgement, picked up a broken spear from the ground, and set to work chopping firewood. Sparks flew onto the snow and were instantly extinguished.

His commands were delivered swiftly and sharply, much like the rhythm of his spearhead thrusting in battle.

Veteran Chen watched as he knelt on one knee before a wounded soldier whose leg was bent at a grotesque angle, the trouser leg soaked entirely through with blood.

"Clench your teeth."

With those words, the junior officer unfastened the wineskin from his waist, took a deep gulp, and poured the liquor directly onto the wound.

The injured soldier let out a miserable shriek and convulsed all over. The junior officer pressed down firmly on his shoulder, picked up a shaft left behind by a Jurchen soldier with his other hand, and snapped it cleanly into two pieces. He wedged the fragments on either side of the broken leg, tore off the hem of his own battle robe, and bound it tightly with several heavy turns.

"Those with light injuries, crawl over to the fire yourselves," he called out loudly, his breath smelling of wine. "Those hit by arrows, pull out the shafts first! Anyone with barbed arrowheads, call out to me!"

At that moment, Wang Yazi emerged from the cellar, cradling a jar of liquor in his arms and holding a bundle of hemp cloth: "Commander Yue! I found two jars of distilled wine and some pickled vegetables!"

The junior officer's eyes lit up: "Pour the wine into the pot and heat it! Zhao Daniuh, stoke the fire higher!"

He turned his attention to the soldiers whose arms had been pierced by arrows. "Come here. Wash your wounds with the hot wine, and wrap them with this hemp cloth. It was torn from the Jurchen flags, so it's cleaner than our coarse cloth!"

One soldier had his abdomen slashed open, exposing his intestines faintly to view, his face as pale as white paper.

The junior officer crouched down, stripped a relatively clean white inner garment from a fallen Jurchen soldier, dipped it in the hot wine, and carefully tended to the wound. He then tore down a door panel to serve as a stretcher and had two lightly wounded soldiers carry the man over to the fire.

"Wang Yazi, lend me your spearhead."

The spearhead was still stained with a dark, dried crimson. The junior officer took it and heated it over the flames until it glowed red before telling the wounded soldier with the abdominal injury, "Endure it."

A sizzling, burning sound rang out, mingling with the soldier's muffled cry of agony. Veteran Chen felt his scalp go numb, but the junior officer's expression remained completely unchanged. Not until the bleeding stopped did he bind the wound tightly with cloth strips and make him swallow another gulp of wine. "This stuff will deaden the pain. Hold on."

In the furthest corner, a young cavalryman was enduring excruciating pain, his face distorted, with a broken arrow shaft piercing his left shoulder. The junior officer walked over, unfastened his own fur coat to drape over the man's shoulders, and said in a low voice, "Hang on."

"Has the arrowhead pierced the bone?"

Sun Er's face was twisted in agony as he nodded, his voice trembling like a winnowing sieve: "Commander... Commander Yue, the arrowhead is barbed..."

The junior officer strode over, crouched down, and gently twisted the arrow shaft.

Sun Er let out a howl, cold sweat streaming down his forehead.

"Don't move." With that, the junior officer picked up half a bowl of hot wine, poured it, and motioned for someone to hand him a short blade, its edge still razor-sharp.

He heated the blade over the fire until it was scorching hot, rinsed it with the distilled wine once more, and told Sun Er, "It's going to hurt a bit. Once you get through this, you'll be fine."

Before his voice had even faded, the blade sliced through skin and flesh along the arrow shaft, his movements swift and steady.

Veteran Chen's eyelids twitched violently. He had seen army physicians extract arrows—they either pulled them out forcefully or slashed wildly around them. A technique as precise as this resembled the work of a seasoned physician, fast and causing minimal blood loss.

"Bite down on this."

The junior officer shoved a wad of cloth into Sun Er's mouth. Seizing the moment when Sun Er bit down hard, he pressed his left hand against the flesh surrounding the wound while his right hand gripped the arrow shaft and jerked it upward, simultaneously leveraging the opposite side gently with the short blade.

With a soft, muffled pop, the barbed arrowhead was cleanly extracted, and the blood seeping from the wound was far less than before.

"Well done!" the nearby wounded soldiers couldn't help whispering in admiration.

Without lifting his head, the junior officer swiftly splashed the distilled wine over the wound. Sun Er convulsed all over from the pain, yet he bit down so hard on the spear tassel that he uttered not a sound. As soon as the bubbling sound of bloody foam ceased, the junior officer picked up the glowing red spearhead, waved it briefly above the wound, and pressed it down in a quick cauterization.

Amid the sizzling sound, he pulled a small cloth pouch from his tunic filled with a black powder.

"This is stanching powder, a remedy from my hometown. It works." He sprinkled the powder onto the wound, wrapped it layer by layer with the white Jurchen inner garment, and finally secured it tightly with a cloth strip, adjusting the tension to perfection.

"Can you walk?" He supported Sun Er's arm and tested his strength. Seeing that the man could still exert force, he finally let out a sigh of relief. "Go lean by the fire and fetch him a bowl of hot wine."

A wounded soldier lying flat on the ground was groaning in agony. His right leg had been trampled by a horse's hooves, and the bone beneath the trouser leg was displaced, swollen as thick as a rising dough roll.

The junior officer walked over, crouched to feel the man's leg, and squeezed his ankle. "Help me hold him down."

The soldier shook his head in sheer terror. The junior officer pressed down on his shoulder, his voice sinking: "Do you want to be able to ride a horse again or not? Hold him down!"

Two men hurriedly pinned the injured soldier's body to the ground.

The junior officer took a deep breath, grasped the soldier's knee and ankle with both hands respectively, and pulled and pushed with a sudden, violent jerk. With a sharp crack, the wounded soldier shrieked and passed out cold, but the displaced bone had snapped back into place.

The junior officer quickly fashioned a makeshift splint out of the split arrow shafts to secure the injured leg, then poured a little more distilled wine into the soldier's mouth. After a moment, the man slowly regained consciousness. Looking at his leg, which was no longer deformed, tears welled up in his eyes.

"What are you crying for?" The junior officer patted his shoulder. "Once your wounds heal, you'll still be riding into battle with me."

He stood up, only to realize that the hem of his battle robe was soaked through with blood and frozen stiff. Someone handed him a clean piece of hemp cloth; he wiped his hands haphazardly and strode toward the next wounded soldier.

Watching his retreating figure, Veteran Chen realized that this young man possessed remarkably broad shoulders.

The campfire crackled. Dawn was fast approaching now, and the smoke could no longer conceal them as Li Xiao leaned against the low wall, leading the last few able-bodied brothers out from the western edge of the village.

"Who goes there?"

A low shout pierced the air like an icicle. The junior officer spun around instantly, his right hand already resting on the bow slung across his back while his left hand firmly steadied the quiver. His dark, glittering eyes locked onto Li Xiao with undisguised killing intent.

The Pingding Garrison cavalrymen behind him tensed instantly, their hands gripping sword hilts as the atmosphere froze over completely.

"Don't shoot! We're our own people!" Veteran Chen hurriedly pointed and explained, "These are brothers who broke out from the city of Taiyuan. They wear these uniforms only to slip past the Jurchen checkpoints!"

"So that's how it is. We almost made a grave mistake."

The junior officer's hand left the bow, but his gaze remained as sharp as a spearhead, sizing them up from head to toe.

Li Xiao was observing him as well—standing there, this man exuded an indescribable sense of oppression. A lingering murderous aura hung about him, making him look less like a creature of flesh and blood and more like a long iron spear quenched in fierce flames. His posture was upright, his shoulders broad and back thick without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and his wrist bones sharply angled—the hands of someone who had wielded a spear for years.

The collar of his faded battle tunic was worn white at the edges, but his cuffs were tightly bound, revealing forearms bulging with muscle that radiated fierce valor.

That pair of eyes, in particular, was as dark and deep as ink. Reflected in the firelight, they looked like two embers buried beneath ashes, ready to start a prairie fire at any moment.

"You are all from the breakout at Taiyuan?" The junior officer spoke, his voice several shades deeper than when he was tending to the wounds.

Li Xiao nodded, undoing the ties of his iron armor to reveal the Song military uniform underneath. "Indeed. I am Li Xiao of Shuzhou, belonging to the Taiyuan cavalry." He stepped aside to reveal the men behind him. "These are all comrades who fought their way out of the Jurchen siege at the cost of our lives."

"Taiyuan... how fares the city?" The junior officer took a step forward, an irrepressible urgency welling up in the depths of his eyes, completely sweeping away the calm composure he had shown while treating the wounded.

As soon as he asked this, Veteran Chen—who had remained unshaken even if Mount Tai were to collapse before his eyes—broke down and wept. It was not a loud howl, but a suppressed, sobbing cry, with tears streaming down his blood-stained face. "The city... can hold out no longer..."

"The Jurchen catapults fling boulders into the city as if they cost nothing, smashing a dozen sections of the wall to pieces every single day. Our soldiers are dwindling with every battle, and the common folk... the common folk can no longer survive!"

He wiped his face, his voice trembling beyond recognition. "That residential district in the east of the city had half a street crushed by a single boulder, killing a hundred souls or more..." Veteran Chen choked on his words. "Our food is nearly gone, the tree bark and grass roots have all been dug up, and I saw with my own eyes a man pressing frozen Guanyin earth into his mouth..."

"And the wounded,"

Yuan Zhenhai chimed in. His shoulder had just been popped back into place, and though he grimaced in pain, he paid it no mind. "We're running out of medicine and cloth; wounds are rotting and suppurating, and more men are dying of sheer agony than in battle. If you hadn't seen the sights inside the city—walking the streets, stepping on nothing but ice and blood, occasionally tripping over a child's severed shoe!"

The junior officer's hands clenched tightly until his knuckles turned white, causing the iron spear leaning against the wall to tremble slightly. He whipped his head around to gaze in the direction of Taiyuan, where the morning sky remained piercingly red, resembling a glowing piece of hot iron.

"Damnable!"

He cursed under his breath, his voice filled with gnashing hatred yet weighed down by profound helplessness. "We were stationed at strategic passes like Jingxing to clear out Jurchen scouts and gather intelligence on Taiyuan, yet we had no idea the common folk in the city were suffering such torment."

"Jingxing?"

"Precisely." The junior officer took a deep breath, suppressing his churning emotions. "We belong to the Pingding Garrison, ordered by Liu Jiao, the Pacification Commissioner of Zhending, to guard this Jingxing Pass."

Jingxing Pass was the most perilous of the Eight Passes of Taihang. From Taiyuan, passing through Yuci and Pingding Garrison, crossing Niangniang Pass and Huolu County (modern-day Luquan District in Shijiazhuang), one could lead straight to Zhending Prefecture.

Back in the day, Han Xin fought his famous battle with his back to the river along this very route.

That battle took place by the Mianman River outside Jingxing Pass, where he dispatched two thousand men carrying red flags to hide in the mountains. When the Zhao army poured out in full force, these men seized the enemy camp. Upon looking back, the Zhao camp was filled with the red flags of the Han army, and the army collapsed instantly—not because they couldn't fight, but because the path was too narrow. As the defeated troops retreated, more of them were pushed off the cliffs by their own comrades than were killed by enemy blades.

"Now the Jurchen dogs want to sever the connection between Taiyuan and Zhending, and they rely on this very route to transmit intelligence. I brought my brothers here precisely to wipe out the scouts and messengers along the way and cut this lifeline."

"Only," he laughed self-deprecatingly, "Commander Qian up top claimed he was feeling unwell and declined three times, leaving me, a junior officer of Chengxin Rank, to take on this duty."

Chengxin Rank belonged to the fifty-second official tier, and a junior officer was an unranked temporary assignment directing and training small squads of fifty to one hundred men, not a formal military official of the imperial court.

Yet judging by his fierce valor in charging the enemy lines earlier and his steady composure in treating the wounded, how could he possibly resemble a low-ranking officer of no consequence?

Veteran Chen pulled an oilcloth parcel from his tunic and unwrapped it layer by layer to reveal the letters inside. "Look at this!"

"What is this?" The junior officer took the letters, examining them closely by the firelight, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper.

"These are joint-signed pledges from the civil and military officials inside Taiyuan City!" Veteran Chen said excitedly. "They contain crucial military intelligence! If we can deliver this to the imperial court, it is said we will receive fifty liang of silver as a reward and be promoted by two or three official ranks!"

Mad Tiger Lu also hurriedly fished out the letters from his own tunic: "I have a copy here too! Take them—with an extra copy, we double our chances!"

The junior officer's hands trembled slightly as he held the letters, his fingertips brushing against the signatures on the envelopes. The firelight flickered across his face, illuminating the old scars along his jawline drawn taut.

"Bounty silver and official titles are secondary." The embers in his eyes brightened once more. "The important thing is that these letters will let the court know Taiyuan is still holding on with all its might."

He carefully folded the two letters, tucked them into an inner pocket close to his chest, and unfastened his own leather wineskin, handing it to the others. "There is water and dried meat inside. Rest your stomachs with it, and when dawn breaks, we will return to the Pingding Garrison together."

The junior officer instructed Zhao Daniuh: "Boil some more hot water for the brothers from Taiyuan to clean their wounds." Yet as he turned away, he quietly wiped his face, unsure whether he was brushing away melting snow or something else entirely.

The campfire crackled on, casting long shadows of the men.

In the distant wind, the faint sounds of artillery from the direction of Taiyuan could still be heard, but in this ruined village, because of this unexpected encounter, the crucial military intelligence had gained a much greater chance of being delivered safely.