Chapter 97: Guerrilla Lu Cheng

The fighting had gone mad.

The courier horsemen swept through the scattered wounded trailing behind the government troops like a gale, crashing straight into the rear formation carrying the cannon.

In the darkness, shadows lurked everywhere. They had only to loose arrows or thrust spears, and the fight soon became close-quarters chaos on horseback and on foot.

From the moment the ambush began, Cao Yao and Gao Xian could no longer control their men.

The government army was in full rout.

The large number of wounded assigned to the tail of Commander Lu and Captain Bao’s units had been able to keep moving only while the column remained in motion, leaning on one another and forcing themselves onward.

The instant the march stopped, even if fighting still raged ahead, men in the rear could topple over, or even fall asleep standing.

Perhaps only those still upright were sleeping; those who had fallen might already have bled to death.

No one could tell, and no one had the time to care.

The difference between fighting at night and by day was enormous.

If this had been daylight, the unit would have begun to collapse the moment men started slipping away.

Only because it was night did those with thoughts of desertion dare not run.

When the cavalry of the courier garrison charged in from the rear, the sleeping soldiers were jolted awake with cries of terror, and the body’s desperate wartime reflex took hold.

That reflex was not merely shouting, nor mistaking a dropped object for a bomb. Those were only outward signs.

Deeper still was the unease of being torn from the familiar, the subconscious falling out of step with the world outside.

Most of the wounded awakened in the rear did not think the chaos came from an enemy attack; they were certain it was some other internal mutiny.

The defenders at the Pass of the Water-Moat believed the troops of the Border-Pacifying Camp were retaliating for the cannon fire. The soldiers of the Border-Pacifying Camp believed the Pass garrison was seeking revenge for its defeat.

And for a long time they had gone without vitamins, leaving many with night blindness.

They could not see the company standards or the banners on the backs of the captains.

Companies scattered apart, never able to find one another again.

Platoons also lost contact as the fighting split them apart. Men stood back to back, shoulder to shoulder, grabbing madly at whatever weapons lay closest to hand and striking in every direction.

Border-Pacifying Camp, Water-Moat Pass, Lion Camp: the armor of the three forces was identical, impossible to distinguish friend from foe in the dark.

Government soldiers were mixed into the bandits’ ranks, and the bandits could not tell them apart; there were few among the two bandit detachments who knew one another.

Bandits had slipped into the government lines, and the government troops could not tell either.

The bandits came in two detachments, and so they were in fact split into two parts as well: Commander Lu’s men had been transferred from the Border-Pacifying Fort on the Great Wall to suppress the rebels, while Captain Bao’s troops were permanently stationed at the Water-Moat Pass on the border between Shaanxi and Shanxi. No one knew anyone else.

Even the infiltrators themselves did not know, and could only keep cutting and stabbing until they heard from the shouted commands that something was wrong.

But the moment a few who called out to identify themselves were answered by screams, no one dared shout anymore.

They could only widen their eyes, desperately search for the glint of blades reflecting the distant campfires beside them, and then howl meaningless cries while striking back at the light.

Cao Yao, who led the assault, was helpless against this. He gathered a small knot of soldiers by voice alone and charged toward the Water-Moat Pass.

His idea was exactly the same as Gao Xian’s on the other side.

Either retreat or advance. If this battle was lost, falling back would mean being split apart by the government troops; then they could only press forward, break through the enemy line, and reach the foot of the pass, where there might still be a chance of survival.

The howling and slaughtering of soldiers, like ghosts and wolves, made Captain Bao tremble with fear from the depths of his heart. “General, the rear has fallen into chaos!”

General Lu Cheng could hear the sounds coming from behind the line. He closed his eyes in pain and let out a soft sigh. “Captain Bao, go to the front and supervise the fighting.”

Lu Cheng had commanded troops for years and knew exactly what he now faced: his army had finally collapsed.

Night battle was a double-edged sword.

Darkness deepened fear, and the battlefield was the most terrifying place of all.

Especially when soldiers’ strength, spirit, and willpower were all stretched to the limit in a state of extreme tension.

Not to mention how many had still not recovered from the guilt of killing their own comrades by mistake.

Lu Cheng knew this would happen sooner or later. In fact, during the night fighting against the men from Water-Moat Pass, there had already been many collapses.

When an individual’s mind breaks, it can bring about the collapse of an entire army.

But an army can collapse without anyone’s mind breaking.

So long as organization is lost, soldiers cannot find their general, and the general cannot find his soldiers, the army is already broken.

Yet if the troops can later be gathered again and reorganized, they can still fight.

By contrast, even now, with every man in the rear still fighting, if the commander could not move a single person, then for that army too, it was collapse.

An open battlefield at night was far too easy to shatter, and that was why Lu Cheng had insisted on leading his men into Water-Moat Pass to rest.

After a safe sleep, his hard-riding heroes would return.

For a commander, there was nothing more helpless than this. Faced with rout, even the greatest generals of antiquity could only abandon the army, withdraw to the rear, and gather and reform their forces anew.

The great armies of Wang Mang, Fu Jian, and Geshu Han all broke here.

Yet Lu Cheng had been struck from both sides in the dark.

The pass lay ahead, bandits behind. His soldiers had not even been given a chance to scatter.

Captain Bao had no such thoughts. “But, General, the rear has gone to pieces. Take your retainers and break out!”

“By military order, go to the front and supervise the fighting.” Lu Cheng turned to him expressionlessly. “Steady the morale in the front line. If the soldiers die to a man, what face shall we have to keep living?”

Normally, Lu Cheng, as a general of the central western route of the Shaanxi-Gansu forces, outranked Captain Bao, but Bao was not his subordinate; there was no chain of command between them.

Still, in such a moment, anyone standing in Captain Bao’s place would gladly obey an officer’s order.

An army’s combat power comes from organization. The more effective the organization, the greater the fighting strength.

Captain Bao forced down his fear of the rear collapsing and cupped his fists. “Your subordinate obeys!”

Even so, as he made his way to the front line, he could not help glancing back.

The rear had become a backdrop of slaughter. He saw Lu Cheng take a torch from the hands of the soldiers beside him and still stare at him without the least change of expression.

Or rather, that gaze passed beyond him and fixed itself on the battle line, on the soldiers in the front rank who could still keep a shred of reason amid the campfires.

Lu Cheng was not unafraid, nor was he unshaken. He simply believed he was right.

From beginning to end, he had made no wrong judgment and no wrong decision.

If others had outmaneuvered him and he lost the battle, he would accept that.

But asking him, a rightful general, to surrender to bandits was impossible.

Leaving his soldiers behind and breaking out with his retainers was even more impossible.

In the panicked central formation, eight retainers each raised a great banner. Lu Cheng lifted a torch and set one alight, then stood beneath the burning standard, straight as a spear, calling out for the soldiers on either side to join him.

“The central route of the Shaanxi-Gansu garrison, General Lu Cheng, is here! Government troops, rally to me! Form up and resist the bandits!”

The burning banner shone like a guiding beacon in the darkness before dawn.

The unanimous cry of more than thirty soldiers rang across the battlefield, giving the isolated government troops a rallying point and causing the cannon, silent for so long atop the walls, to roar once more.

The shot slammed into the earth.

The soldiers who had just gathered scattered again, like soil torn open by the blast.

Only Lu Cheng, amid the screams of a soldier whose arm had been blown off, took up the burning banner and kept his back straight as ever, striding with head held high toward the soldiers breaking apart and fleeing in all directions.

“If I, your general, am not afraid, what are you afraid of? Do not fear! Form ranks and resist the bandits! Follow me and break out!

Even if we die in battle, let General Lu Cheng die with you, and our spirits will be honored in glory!”