When an army breaks it goes like a landslide.
The Grand Tutor had spent half his life at war and knew it well.
By now there was nothing he could do to turn it back.
“Grand Tutor, fall back! We still have a hundred thousand men on the frontier. While the green hills last there is no want of firewood.”
One of the Grand Tutor’s trusted men urged it on him.
The Grand Tutor looked at his army going down, men and horses together, everything in confusion, and was about to give the order to withdraw when a satchel charge came down beside him.
Boom!!!
The ground shuddered and flesh and blood flew.
At the last instant the Grand Tutor’s man threw himself over him and covered him with his own body.
The Grand Tutor’s head was ringing. He was an old man after all, and it felt as though every bone in him were coming apart, and there was not one place on him that did not hurt.
“Aah…”
The Grand Tutor pushed the man off him. His back was a mess of blood and meat, and he had been dead for some time.
The Grand Tutor could not stop himself roaring with grief and rage.
“Fall back. Fall back!”
The Grand Tutor was beside himself with fury, roaring it again and again.
But his voice was swallowed whole in the explosions and the screaming.
There was no need for him to shout it, in fact. The army had gone completely to pieces and had already begun throwing away helmets and armor and running for their lives.
Up on the wall Ning Chen handed the drumsticks to a soldier.
“Yuan Long, hold back and be ready to cover us at any moment!”
Ning Chen shouted it.
“Yes!”
Ning Chen took Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng and the rest and ran down off the wall.
Mu Anbang and Lei An had thirty thousand men already assembled.
Ning Chen swung himself onto his horse and roared:
“Open the gate!”
The gate came slowly open.
The drawbridge over the moat came down too.
“Sons of Great Xuan, the time has come to make your names… to the man who kills the Grand Tutor, a captaincy of a thousand and ten thousand in gold!”
“Kill!!!”
Ning Chen went first himself and charged out.
“Kill!!!”
Thirty thousand men roared it together, and the spirit came off them in waves.
Up on the wall Yuan Long gave the order. “Stop!”
Inside the catapults’ reach the enemy had been battered to pieces already.
Ning Chen had led his men out of the city, and any longer and they would be hitting their own.
Thirty thousand men went at the enemy like a flood.
The Grand Tutor’s army had long since broken past holding, and seeing Ning Chen come at them they were frightened out of their souls, threw away helmets and armor and ran for their lives.
The Grand Tutor knew the day was lost.
Under the protection of several of his officers he rode hard.
“We are all sons of Great Xuan! Throw down your weapons and surrender and your lives are spared! Resist, and I’ll kill you where you stand!”
Ning Chen rode at a gallop, and as he shouted it he all but took a rebel’s head off with one stroke.
Ning Chen’s ten thousand cavalry had already caught the Grand Tutor’s army.
The war cry shook the sky.
Wherever they passed the ground was covered with bodies and the blood ran like a river.
“Grand Tutor! Where do you think you’re going?”
Ning Chen had spotted the Grand Tutor running.
The Grand Tutor was riding for it, but his own soldiers were everywhere in front of him and he could not get up any speed.
Ning Chen swung his saber and cut for all he was worth.
But the ground was thick with bodies and his horse could not get up any speed either.
The enemy was in complete disorder, running in every direction.
The Grand Tutor’s army had no spirit left in them and no wish to fight at all. They only wanted to get away.
Ning Chen led his men after them, killing as they went.
“Grand Tutor, run! I’ll take men and hold them.”
One of the Grand Tutor’s trusted men shouted it.
The man’s name was Fei Yu, and he was a hard fighter.
“Where have the provost battalion all gone?”
“Protect the Grand Tutor! All of you, stop! Meet them with me! Any man who falls back is cut down!”
Fei Yu put his voice into it.
But at a moment like that it was not worth a fart.
Fei Yu flew off the handle, turned his horse around, and came galloping straight at Ning Chen.
To shoot a man, shoot his horse first; to take the bandits, take their king first.
Cut Ning Chen down and the army’s nerve would go to pieces.
Fei Yu was loyal, and he was brave, and the idea was a good one.
But there was a musket shot.
The ball took him between the brows and he went off his horse headfirst.
Ning Chen hung the musket on his saddle and led the army past at a gallop, and Fei Yu’s body was trampled to a pulp.
“Kill!!!”
Ning Chen roared it.
Ten thousand cavalry came on behind the Grand Tutor’s army, cutting them down as they went.
“Surrender and you live! Any man who resists is cut down where he stands!”
“Surrender and you live! Any man who resists is cut down where he stands!”
Ten thousand cavalry shouted it in unison after Ning Chen, and it rolled across the battlefield like low thunder.
Ning Chen’s side had their blood up and the spirit came off them in waves.
The Grand Tutor’s side had no spirit left, and as for their bearing… well. There was no bearing left at all.
The clever ones threw down their weapons at once and went to their knees.
Those who put their backs to the wall and fought on, and those who had not yet decided whether to surrender or run, were cut down where they stood.
The Grand Tutor’s army had taken terrible losses.
They had lost at least twenty or thirty thousand men in this one fight.
In fact the Grand Tutor still had sixty or seventy thousand men left, and if he had organized a counterattack all Ning Chen could have done was run.
But there was no organizing them now.
When an army breaks it goes like a landslide.
The banners were gone and the army had been scattered.
Every soldier of them was like a fly with its head off, throwing away helmets and armor and running in all directions.
Hearing the killing behind them, they had had the courage frightened clean out of them and ran for their lives.
If even the Grand Tutor was doing it, there was no need to ask about the common soldiers.
Ning Chen’s men had gone killing mad.
He did not stop the pursuit until he was too tired to hold himself up.
Men and horses alike were worn out.
Dozens of the warhorses had been ridden to death.
Ning Chen’s arm would not lift any more.
The coat of the horse under him had clotted into lumps, all of it enemy blood.
Ning Chen had no killing left in him.
He raised a hand and the army stopped.
“Christ!!!”
Ning Chen could not help swearing.
The Grand Tutor had gotten away after all.
A man running for his life will find two hundred percent of what he has in him.
The Grand Tutor could still run.
Ning Chen honestly could not chase any farther.
He swung down off the horse, his legs shaking under him, and nearly sat down hard on the ground.
He did not need to look. The insides of his thighs were certainly rubbed raw.
“Pass the word. We rest here for an hour.”
The army halted where it stood.
Ning Chen sat straight down on the ground, feeling as though every joint in him were coming apart.
The edge of his saber was full of notches chipped out of it, and the blade was glued over with blood.
“God damn it, I’m too tired… I’m finished!”
Feng Qizheng sat down hard on the ground and then lay flat out where he was.
Never mind the men. The horses could barely stand.
Ning Chen had taken thirty thousand men out of the city, but in fact only the ten thousand cavalry had done any fighting. The other twenty thousand had never once kept up with him.
Not that they had done nothing. The men who surrendered were all taken and held by the force behind.
Pan Yucheng was too tired to speak.
By rights they should have pulled back in the middle of the night.
But Ning Chen had been like a man dosed with an aphrodisiac, howling and chasing them down like a lunatic.
Ten thousand men, and instead of dying at the enemy’s hands they had nearly been worked to death by Ning Chen.
Every one of them lay stretched out on the ground like a corpse without moving, trying to get their strength back in that hour.
“General Ning, you’re hurt?”
Lei An said it, worried.
Ning Chen said weakly, “No. It isn’t my blood. It’s all theirs.”
Lei An said, “No, your leg…”
Ning Chen looked down, and the corner of his mouth twitched hard. Two wounds on his right leg and one on his left, and all of them deep.
“Christ… when did I take those? How did I not feel a thing?”
Feng Qizheng griped, “You were like a madman before. Good God… the sheer viciousness of you when you were cutting people down. Anyone who didn’t know would have thought they’d run off with your wife.”
Ning Chen’s forehead filled with black lines.
No wonder his legs had hurt so much when he got down that he could hardly stand.
He had gone numb with killing, and he had taken three cuts on his legs and never felt one of them.
Pan Yucheng came over, tore off the hem of his coat and did Ning Chen a rough bandaging… the army surgeons had not kept up, and it would have to be done properly when they got back.
(End of Chapter 259)