Liao Xingwen simply stopped paying any attention to the Tuoluo’s taunting and gave the order to clear the field.

What he had not expected was Liang Jingwu coming out through the pass with fifty thousand men.

The sight of it struck Liao Xingwen dumb.

Beilin Pass was the most important line the Great Xuan had, and the army did not go outside it lightly.

To put it another way: if it ever came to that, with a Tuoluo army down on them, the people outside the walls would be given up before Beilin Pass was left empty of soldiers.

Liang Jingwu had brought out very nearly every man in Beilin Pass.

“General. What is this?”

Liang Jingwu did not explain. He gave the order straight out: the army was to push thirty miles forward.

The eight hundred or so Tuoluo, seeing the dark mass of Great Xuan soldiers, had no stomach left for taunting anybody, and got away in an undignified scramble.

Liang Jingwu smiled coldly.

The army pushed three miles forward and made camp where it stood.

Liang Jingwu had a chair brought out, and sat leaning on his war blade, looking off into the distance.

Liao Xingwen could not hold the question in any longer. “General, this was a small party of horse. Why move the whole army for it?”

Liang Jingwu said, low, “Who told you it was only a small party of horse?”

As he spoke he held out a slip of paper with blood on it.

“A scout got that back at the cost of his life. Look at it.”

Liao Xingwen opened it and his face changed all at once.

“The North Royal Court has forty thousand men in the field, marching straight for Beilin Pass? This— how is this possible? Thirty thousand were plainly marched away from the North Royal Court. They were short of men. Where would this many come from?”

Liang Jingwu said coldly, “The thirty thousand marched away from the North Royal Court was a sham from start to finish. It was staged for us to see… The whole object was to dull us.”

“You see those hills and gullies out there? The Tuoluo army may well be hidden behind them.”

“That party of horse kept taunting you to draw you in deep… Chase them and I doubt you come back at all.”

“Though the trap was surely laid for me. I don’t suppose they expected it would be you leading the men out this time.”

Shock filled Liao Xingwen’s face.

“The General’s reckoning is uncanny, just as they say. If you had not warned me, this officer would surely have walked into it.”

Liang Jingwu waved that off. “Not me. Ning Chen… As things stand now, it has all gone very much as he reckoned it would.”

“Him?”

Liao Xingwen could not get a word out.

Liang Jingwu said, smiling, “Shocking, isn’t it? I was shocked myself when I first heard his reckoning.”

“But as he said, bold in the guess, careful in the proving… And if the guess was wrong, we lost nothing by it.”

“Old General Chen did not misjudge him. Ning Chen has the makings of a commander… There is something in him other men don’t have. He is bold and he is careful at once. He dares to think it and he dares to do it.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, I’ve come to admire the boy… There are things the rest of us would only dare to think about. He never hesitates. He simply acts. The boy is a man of action.”

Liao Xingwen looked around him. “Where is General Ning? I don’t think I’ve seen him since last night.”

Liang Jingwu smiled and did not answer.

“General. Is there any other word from the scouts?”

The smile went off Liang Jingwu’s face. He said, low, “I’m afraid our scouts have all been dealt with.”

Liao Xingwen’s eyes went dark, but he pulled himself together quickly. “General, let this officer take men forward and scout it himself.”

Liang Jingwu waved that off. “No need. They like to hide, so let them hide… This is not the moment to move.”

He was buying Ning Chen time.

If the Tuoluo army were broken up and ran back to the North Royal Court, they might well run into Ning Chen and his men.

Ning Chen’s men were on foot, and the Tuoluo horse moved fast.

They went on foot because there were only a thousand of them and no baggage train to carry grain and fodder. The snow lay over everything, food was short and grazing shorter, and horses would have starved halfway.

So he had to buy time… a few days at the least, without leaving the people outside the pass unsafe.

What worried him most now was that the Tuoluo army might not be willing to let him have it.

Those men had come a long hard way. Men and horses alike were worn out, and they were short of clothing and short of food… The fear was that they would not be able to hold back and would attack first.

Elsewhere, Ning Chen and his men had halted to rest.

Ning Chen bit off a piece of hard dried meat, took a handful of snow and pushed it into his mouth, and got the two down together.

There was no help for it. In ice and snow like this, to have anything to eat at all was doing well.

And they could not light a fire.

A fire in open country like that is easily seen by an enemy.

He could have built a smokeless stove, but it would have cost too much time. This was a forced march, not an outing, and the men did not have enough time to rest as it was.

The scouts kept reporting the way ahead clear… but Ning Chen did not dare relax by a hair.

He pushed the snow aside, dug up some grass roots with his blade, and put them in his mouth and chewed.

Feng Qizheng came up close. “Are they good?”

Ning Chen nodded. “Sweet. And they’ll top up your vitamins. Have one yourself.”

Feng Qizheng took one, put it in his mouth, chewed once, and his whole face screwed up.

“Pah—” He spat the whole of it out.

The others could not help laughing… The man was a fool and a lovable one. Since when were grass roots good eating?

But watching Ning Chen put them into his mouth one after another, admiration came over every face.

Yuan Long could not hold it in. “General Ning, to look at you, all clean and fair, and then to see how you take hardship. You’re nothing like a young gentleman raised soft.”

Ning Chen could not help giving him a look. “Who told you I was a young gentleman raised soft? I’ve eaten hardship you may never have tasted.”

He waved the grass root in his hand. “I’ve eaten worse-tasting things than this… Don’t think little of a grass root. It fills a belly. It keeps a man alive.”

Just then a scout came in to report a great many hoofprints found ahead.

Every man came alert at once.

“Any sign of the enemy?”

The scout shook his head.

Ning Chen said at once, “Brother Qi. Pass the word. Every man down flat, and not a sound out of anybody.”

“Old Pan, Old Feng… the two of you come with me.”

Ning Chen looked at the scout. “Lead the way.”

With the scout leading them, Ning Chen and the others felt their way forward.

About a kilometer on, a black road showed across the white of the snow, like a single stroke drawn on a sheet of white paper.

Ning Chen and the others went up to look.

Pan Yucheng said, “By these marks there were a good many of them.”

Ning Chen studied the hoofprints. “They’re frozen over, which means this body went through some time ago… And look how wide it is. The road is trodden deep. It would take tens of thousands to do that, wouldn’t it?”

Pan Yucheng nodded.

Ning Chen looked at the scout. “In your experience, how many men would it take to leave a thing like this?”

The scout thought a moment. “General, by this small man’s experience, thirty or forty thousand at the least.”

A great smile came over Ning Chen’s face, and he could not help laughing out loud.

“These prints run off toward Beilin Pass. I gambled right. Ha, ha, ha…”

Pan Yucheng said, “You mean the North Royal Court’s army really has gone to Beilin Pass?”

Ning Chen nodded.

Feng Qizheng said, excited, “So the North Royal Court is short of men now, and thin on its defenses?”

Ning Chen nodded again.

Feng Qizheng was so pleased he jumped where he stood. “Excellent… Cut clean through the North Royal Court and take the King of the Left Court alive.”

Ning Chen looked at the scout. “Pass my order. We go on.”

(End of Chapter 160)