Chapter Ninety-Three: The Prize

Ashina, though fond of grandiose feats and born with an imagination that ran wild, was by no means a fool. On the contrary, as the commander of this ambush against Li Guang, he had his own uncommon strengths. So when he swung his long saber around in a sharp arc and charged toward the Han troops ahead, he had only taken a few steps before he sensed that something was wrong.

The Han cavalry that burst out before him did not seem to be the same group that had just ridden in.

Nothing made this clearer than the weapons in their hands, which were altogether different from those of the Han horsemen from moments before.

They were not long sabers. They were halberds.

For a senior Xiongnu commander of Ashina’s caliber, the ordinary weapons of the Han army were as familiar to him as his own hands. And halberds, for one, were equipment used by Han infantry and chariot troops. How had the weapons of chariot and foot soldiers ended up in the hands of Han cavalry?

With his still-serviceable eyes, Ashina immediately noticed another difference: the halberds in those riders’ hands were slightly unlike the standard Han halberds used by chariot and foot troops. He could not say exactly how they differed, but he was certain of it all the same. This was the intuition of a general hardened by a hundred battles.

Having discovered that the weapons were different, he soon noticed other problems as well. For instance, the armor on these Han riders, and even their warhorses, were all clad in protection.

At last, when his gaze fell beyond them and he saw another group of cavalry charging in behind, he finally confirmed the suspicion that had flashed through his mind a moment earlier: the Han cavalry that had burst out here were indeed not the same ones that had charged in before.

Only after Ashina fully understood this did the long saber in his hand come crashing down in a savage slash. By then the Han cavalry had already reached him. Even if they were not the ones he meant to kill, even if they carried long halberds that looked imposing, overbearing, and lethal, even if their horses were armored, even if they had surged out with murderous force and boundless ferocity, Ashina and the Xiongnu horsemen behind him had no choice but to meet them head-on.

The mountain road was neither wide nor narrow; the cavalry, neither too many nor too few.

Whatever else might be said, Ashina was still a warrior blessed by the Great Xiongnu under the protection of the Kunlun God. In plain terms, he possessed the courage to face a hundred men. So even though the Han rider opposite him thrust his halberd with both length and speed, Ashina still managed to slip past the lethal point with ease, then brought his long saber down hard on the other man’s chest.

Yet once again, something shocking happened.

Ashina had absolute confidence in that blow, but the saber did not split the enemy’s armor and open a spray of blood across his chest as it usually would. Granted, the force of the strike was tremendous and sent the Han rider crashing from the saddle, but that was purely the work of brute strength. The long saber had skidded across the other man’s armor, leaving a vivid slash mark without breaking through it.

Faced with such an unexpected turn, Ashina’s first reaction was not to suspect that the other man wore a layer of iron so thick it was almost horrifying, nor to wonder whether his own saber had gone dull. Instead, he hacked savagely at another Han rider.

This time, he put even more force behind the blow.

The result was still the same.

After several strikes, only the last barely managed to break through the opponent’s armor. The earlier attempts were identical to the first.

Ashina was stunned.

With his exceptional skill, he swiftly adjusted his tactics. His long saber no longer went for the Han cavalry’s armor; instead, it went straight for their throats.

But not every fierce Xiongnu rider possessed Ashina’s skill. They had no time to adjust the angle of their blades. Most of them did not even manage a second strike before they were speared from their horses by the Han halberds.

There were even more who failed to evade the first thrust from the Han riders.

When the Xiongnu horsemen swung their sabers yet could not inflict any real damage with the first blow, the battle immediately turned into a one-sided massacre.

If one spoke of murderous ferocity, the Han heavy cavalry from Sheephead Fort ranked among the fiercest. For more than ten days before this campaign they had been forced to hold back, unable to fight the enemy despite the urge burning in their chests; and in the two days of the defense of Sheephead Fort, they had endured enough of the Xiongnu’s shamelessness and their ugly habit of ganging up on the few with the many. Now at last they had the chance to clash head-on with Xiongnu elite cavalry. Which soldier was not swollen with pent-up strength and boiling blood? And the two days’ rest had given them the stamina to bear that fierce spirit.

This was a battle in which the heavy cavalry’s advantage could be fully unleashed.

This was a battle in which the heavy cavalry could slaughter at will, and would not stop until the enemy was wiped out.

This was a massacre.

Kill them!

That was the most uniform cry of the more than a thousand heavy cavalry.

That was the most uniform motion of the more than a thousand heavy cavalry.

No other words were needed. One word was enough.

No other expression was needed. One movement was enough.

After the light cavalry had struck deep across a thousand li to blaze their fame in the desert, the heavy cavalry struck again with savage force.

Led by the spearhead company of Ma Dashan’s heavy cavalry, all three companies of heavy riders surged out of the mountain road.

More than a thousand heavy cavalry tore straight through the middle of the Xiongnu formation, killing all the way from the mountain road to the grasslands, shredding the three thousand Xiongnu horsemen into utter disarray.

Faced with Han heavy cavalry that fought like undying war gods, those three thousand Xiongnu riders finally tasted the same feeling their countrymen had felt when they had once tried to block Li Guang from entering the mountains and had suffered a crushing defeat.

The impact of heavy cavalry was simply not something these unprepared Xiongnu riders, crashing together at a moment’s notice, could withstand.

Strictly speaking, only the leading company of the Han heavy cavalry was fully equipped, and only that company could truly be called heavy cavalry. But once that spearhead had opened the way for the units behind it, once the triangular tip of that blade-like formation had driven into the heart of the Xiongnu army, everything became simple and inevitable.

After one charge, the Xiongnu riders who survived by luck and broke through the Han cavalry formation were not yet able to catch their breath before they encountered the next death.

If the Han heavy cavalry they had just met were the first death god, then here was a second.

Ashina, after great difficulty, led several hundred Xiongnu horsemen who had long since lost any semblance of formation through the Han heavy cavalry and into the mountain road. Covered in blood, he had not even managed to wipe the sweat from his brow, nor to sigh over his own good fortune or curse his own poor judgment, before what lay before him stunned him speechless.

The same was true of the several hundred ragged horsemen behind him, who stood blankly in place, equally at a loss.

Ashina saw that on the open ground a hundred paces ahead, a cavalry formation had already been drawn up. At its head stood a man whose face wore a smile that made Ashina’s skin crawl.

It was the smile of a scheme that had succeeded.

Put in kinder terms, it was the triumphant, self-satisfied grin of a child who had snatched a piece of candy.

If one were forced to find a single point in Ashina’s favor, it was this: the riders before him were indeed the Han cavalry he had been pursuing and believed he could annihilate.

But that one favorable point was followed by a far greater disadvantage: the Han cavalry, already arrayed in formation, had drawn their bows and nocked their arrows, and the arrowheads were all aimed at Ashina and the hundreds of broken remnants behind him.

Ashina’s vision swam. He saw the lips of the young Han commander at the front move slightly. It was the shape of a sound being formed.

The syllable was: release.

Retreat!

Ashina cried out in despair.

A sudden buzzing roar rose like a swarm of locusts.

Nearly two thousand light cavalry and several hundred mounted men from Sheephead Fort within the formation released the fingers that had been pinning their arrows in place.

The several hundred Xiongnu survivors were struck down almost at once, most of them in a single volley.

At the front of the Han cavalry formation, the young Han commander in Ashina’s eyes was, of course, Qin Cheng.

Leave none alive. Kill!

Qin Cheng drew his long saber, spurred his horse forward, and issued the order to annihilate the Xiongnu riders before him.

Kill!

The Han cavalry formation shouted as it surged out of the mountain road.

The remaining Xiongnu riders in the road, together with Ashina himself, were swept over by the formation and slain with effortless completeness. After that, more than two thousand Han riders burst from the mountain pass and charged the Xiongnu cavalry still scattered on the grasslands by the earlier assault of the Han heavy cavalry.

A moment earlier, Li Guang had led the Han heavy cavalry in successfully linking up with Qin Cheng’s light cavalry.

The slaughter of Ashina’s three thousand Xiongnu horsemen was only the trophy of victory after the heavy and light cavalry had united.

The light cavalry was not much for charging head-on and killing the enemy in open battle, but clearing away scattered Xiongnu remnants that had little formation or morale left was no difficult task.

Besides, there were also the several hundred riders from Sheephead Fort riding alongside them.

When Qin Cheng led more than two thousand Han riders out of the mountain pass and charged the Xiongnu cavalry on the grassland, who were already in complete chaos and thinking only of fleeing as fast as they could, the heavy cavalry, having just completed a charge that had smashed through the Xiongnu formation, turned their horses around and came thundering back.

Heavy cavalry and light cavalry began a joint pincer assault on the Xiongnu remnants in the middle.

And to clean them up.