Chapter Ninety: The Escort Defense Battle, Part Four

“Break them!”

At the shout from their troop commander, the twenty men in the front rank roared together, cheering themselves and the comrades beside them on. Their mounts’ hooves flashed furiously beneath them as they drove their speed to the limit. The lances in their hands tilted slightly downward, the sharp points aimed straight at the wagon wheels on the side, or else at the cargo boxes on the carts.

Carried forward by the horses’ speed, the cavalry struck with tremendous force. The spears driven into the wagon wheels were jerked upward in a violent sweep, and the riders whose spearheads had bitten into the cargo boxes threw their weight into the attack as well. The instant the boxes tipped inward against the wagon wall, one cart after another was overturned.

The horses pulling the freight wagons could not be compared with warhorses. Though Ding Li and the others had already driven them inward moments before, the crashing noise behind them and the murderous intent in the air startled them all the same. The animals reared and whinnied, then thrashed at the ground in panic, dragging the wagons that had been toppled behind them as they fled in all directions.

In almost an instant, the four wagons forming the barrier were breached. Nearly half the line was broken, and the people who had been hiding behind the wagon wall had already taken cover at Ding Li’s earlier warning. Yet at this moment they had forgotten his instructions entirely. One and all, they stared dumbfounded, faces full of shock, at the scene before them.

Then, after the third rank of cavalry loosed its final volley, one of the escort guards who had stood rooted to the spot suddenly jerked. His blank eyes slowly lowered, and he looked down at the half shaft of a feathered arrow protruding from his chest. Agony flooded through him at once. He threw back his head and cried out in pain. He was the first to react, and though he staggered forward gripping the spear in his hand, rushing at the rider in front of him, he was struck through the body first by the cavalry lance thrust out from horseback. Coldness surged through him, his strength draining away in an instant, and in the end he never succeeded in driving his spear into that lofty figure above him.

“What are you standing there for?! Stab them!”

Ding Li shouted at the dazed men, lunged forward several paces with his own spear, and the advantage of a weapon that long became immediately apparent. Before the rider could even react to Ding Li attacking from the side, Ding Li’s heavy thrust struck the horse beneath him, not only breaking the charge but sending horse and man both crashing off to one side.

“Huo Lang! Have you been scared senseless, damn it?”

After a single spear thrust overturned one cavalryman, Ding Li did not dare play the hero before a mounted charge. He retreated again and again to avoid the riders’ assault, all the while bellowing furiously at Huo Lang, who still stood frozen in place.

Those two warnings were enough. No one needed to wait for Huo Lang, or for Miao Cuihua, Li Shan, and the others, to give orders. Since the wagon wall had already been breached, the carts at either end were thrown into disarray as well. Under the swift organization of the ten skilled riders from Huo Family Ridge, the wagons blocking the way were shoved apart in the blink of an eye, opening a gap barely wide enough for one man and one horse to pass through. Then they swung onto their mounts and filed out one after another.

The escort guards with spears also began to counterattack. But the men Ding Li had deliberately placed in the middle, the ones with the best position, seemed to lack the nerve for it. The instant the wagon wall was first broken, they hurriedly withdrew to both sides. As a result, once the cavalry had broken through, they met no resistance at all. The riders re-formed in a flash, twisting together like a rope being tightened, and their lances stabbed, thrust, and swept on all sides. The escort guards around them wanted desperately to rush in and kill them, but the truth was they could not get close at all.

“Stop them! Stop them!”

Watching the riders flash past unharmed, Ding Li finally realized he had overestimated these river-and-lake men’s nerves. He knew all too well that this was precisely where the difference between trained soldiers and the rest showed most clearly. But he did not want to give up. If several dozen cavalrymen forced through the line and passed through safely, it would not only crush his side’s morale, it would also be disastrous in another way: once the riders regrouped and launched another mass charge, the men who no longer had any barrier to defend would truly become meat on the chopping block. Ding Li believed without the slightest doubt that his side would collapse completely before even one more charge. By then, it would be nothing more than the enemy cavalry chasing them down and butchering them like fish on a cutting board.

Ding Li’s shouts had almost no effect. Few of the men could even think of the dangers he feared. Yet something even more shocking happened, something that startled Ding Li and everyone else far more. Out of nowhere, rough rope loops began to appear in the air, and even the cavalrymen in the midst of their charge had their attention drawn to them.

“Down you come!”

A coachman in his forties wore an expression of delight, his eyes gleaming with greed. In his view, the rope he had just thrown had not snared a cavalryman, nor the beast Ding Li had spoken of, but a golden leaf worth enough to support his family for more than half a season.

The rider caught by the rope around his head was still a little dazed when he suddenly felt his neck tighten, as though a pair of huge hands had clamped down on him. Under the force of the charge, his whole body was ripped from the saddle. With terror all over his face, he crashed heavily to the ground. One foot that had been in the stirrup was twisted and snapped by the sudden change, and he howled in misery.

“Boss, a gold leaf!”

The middle-aged coachman did not fare much better. After all, the man he had dragged down had been riding a fine warhorse, and he himself was carried several steps forward. His hands, gripping the rope tightly, were burned raw in an instant; if he were to open his palm at once, one could see a blurred layer of torn flesh across the surface.

Tempted by the gold leaves, and especially since they did not have to collide head-on with the cavalry, the coachmen were almost fearless. The only thing in their hearts was Ding Li’s promise from moments before: snare one beast, and earn a gold leaf as payment.

“Got one!”

Another coachman’s eyes lit up. Since the cavalry had broken the wagon wall, he had already changed targets several times. He did not know how many chances he would get to strike, but he was crystal clear on one thing: if he was going to act, he had to make the loop count. After all, that was enough to cover two months of food and expenses for his whole family.

“Even a calf could pull it, so what are you afraid of?”

“Take this!”

“Hit!”

Those coachmen, one and all, were like gamblers who cared more about money than their lives. They cast their enormous stakes onto the table with trembling hands, then after cautiously making their bets they suddenly discovered they had actually taken a bite out of the house itself.

Not only Ding Li and the others, but even the cavalry troop commander who had just charged into the wagon-wall defense had not expected this. Especially when he saw one of his squad leaders dragged out of the battle line by a coachman with a rope over his shoulder, hauled along as though he were leading some beast of burden, and then watched several spear thrusts punch bloody holes through that squad leader’s body, he too felt a chill of fear. A squad leader from a regular army dying in such a manner was simply too miserable.

It was a rare opening. Because the coachmen had unexpectedly joined the fight, the cavalry that had been so fierce a moment ago was thrown into confusion. Their charge stalled, and the Huo Lang whom Ding Li had just warned also leapt onto his horse with a broadsword in hand. Without so much as looking back, he roared at the brothers behind him:

“Kill them!”

He clamped his legs hard against his horse’s belly and surged out alone with his mount. The brothers behind him followed close after, their sabers flashing nonstop. Though there were still fewer than ten riders, they were like a great broadsword spinning and slashing through the air, cleaving the thick rope of cavalry that had just twisted itself together cleanly in two.

At the same time, with Huo Lang’s sudden charge, the escort guards around them who held spears also found their courage. Almost as though they were competing with the men from Huo Family Ridge, they all flushed red and stepped forward with all their strength, thrusting spear after spear toward the cavalry before them.

Twenty-odd men trying to hold them back, with cavalry and infantry mixed together like this, was still nothing much in the cavalry troop commander’s eyes. In his view, these lowborn wretches, whom he ordinarily considered no more than ants, had the audacity to point spears at the exalted imperial cavalry. That only made him more furious. Then, seeing several more of his men stabbed off their horses, he roared again and again, “Don’t break ranks! Push through! Don’t panic, form up and charge through!”

If one spoke of forming ranks and charging, neither the Miao escort agency nor the men from Huo Family Ridge could compare with the regular troops in front of them. But if one spoke of brute strength and the willingness to fight for one’s life, they were no worse at all. Even the coachmen hiding behind the crowd were much the same. In particular, the coachmen were already drawing their ropes back in, tying fresh loops and searching for their next gold leaf.

The escort guards themselves were no slouches. This time, the people who had come out with Miao Cuihua to escort the goods were mostly elite members of the Miao escort agency, and even the shortest-serving among them had at least ten years in the trade. Even if they had no formal drill or coordinated training, they had long since forged a tacit understanding through more than a decade of wandering the martial world.

More than thirty cavalrymen were blocked at once. Spears around them advanced and withdrew in a seamless rhythm, each step seeming chaotic yet in fact cooperating with exquisite precision as they thrust again and again at the surrounded riders. Even though the cavalrymen gradually formed a defensive circle on the spot and were just barely able to hold them off, it was exhausting beyond measure. In particular, the escort guards’ spears had such a clear advantage in reach that the cavalry was forced entirely into a passive beating. Their own lances were nearly half a length shorter, and besides frantic blocking and dodging, they had no chance to strike back at all.

“Brothers! Snare the beasts!”

One quick-handed coachman had already tied another loop. Delighted, he did not forget to call to his companions even as he looked forward to making a fortune. But the moment he raised his arm, before his gaze had even fully settled on the targets before him, a streak of cold light flashed in his eyes and fear surged over his face.

Thud.

The enthusiastic coachman was knocked backward through the air. A cavalry lance drove in through his chest, and in the blink of an eye its sharp point punched heavily into the ground. All that remained was the coachman lying on his back, life gone from his body, his pupils contracting violently, the depths of his eyes still carrying the longing he had felt for that gold leaf.

“Sister Miao! Watch out!”

The instant the cavalry troop commander hurled his own lance, Ding Li realized the situation had changed, but by then it was too late to warn the coachmen behind him. In the blink of an eye he saw one of the cavalry squad leaders throw his lance at Miao Cuihua. Ding Li, who had already been keeping to the outer edge waiting for his chance, finally found his use. He lunged forward and used the spear in his hands to knock the attacker’s lance aside, then in the same motion hurled his own spear straight at the man. The squad leader had not even managed to draw his saber before he was struck by the eight-foot spear and sent crashing from the saddle, shock still frozen across his face.