The cannon was pulled back five hundred paces and tried again.
BOOM!!!
The mountains shook and the earth moved.
With one earth-shaking blast, the shot left the barrel and brought down another great stretch of the cliff face.
Broken rock rolled down from halfway up the slope, and dust and earth came rolling after it.
This time, though, everyone had the benefit of experience, and covered their ears before the gun went off.
Ning Chen studied the state of the cliff and estimated that the cannon’s range should reach about fifteen hundred paces.
Though the closer it was, of course, the more force it carried.
Ning Chen had the cannon hauled back to camp and set the master craftsmen to assembling the rest.
He also told Mu Anbang to pick a thousand gunners out of the camp.
The craftsmen worked through the night.
Ning Chen meant to have everything ready within two days, and then the army would march for the frontier passes.
The next morning, Ning Chen came to the camp again.
Several dozen craftsmen had assembled fifteen cannon overnight.
Ning Chen looked at the remaining parts and figured they would make about thirty cannon in all.
Ning Chen gave the order to haul the fifteen cannon out to open ground.
Then the army was assembled, and battalion by battalion they were brought up to learn what a cannon could do.
The warhorses were led out too.
First, to train the gunners.
Second, to accustom men and horses alike to the noise of a cannon going off and to its power.
It would not do to be on a battlefield with the cannon firing and both sides scared out of their wits.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!
A dozen and more cannon hammered away at the cliff face.
The earth moved and the mountains shook.
The rock face came down, and dust and earth swept up in a wave.
At first every soldier there went white at the terrible wall of sound, and the warhorses screamed and stamped in a frenzy.
Little by little, men and horses both grew used to the sound of the cannon and to what it did.
Solid shot had one advantage: it could be recovered.
With exploding shells, at the rate they were firing, there would certainly have been nothing left by the time they went after the Grand Tutor.
The next day, the craftsmen finished assembling the rest of the cannon.
Thirty-two cannon in all.
Every branch of the army came forward in turn to learn what a cannon could do.
Thirty-two cannon hammered at the mountain for a whole day.
By evening a mountain three hundred feet high had nearly been leveled.
Night fell, and the army returned to camp.
Ning Chen and the others went back into the city.
Tomorrow the army marched.
So Ning Chen and the other senior officers held a short council beforehand.
Once Ning Chen had assigned everyone his tasks, he had Zhang Youcai set out a banquet.
Ning Chen raised his cup. “Come on! In the days ahead it’s going to be hard to sit down to a quiet meal. So tonight we’ll drink a few, and drink to a great victory in advance.”
Since they were marching out tomorrow and nobody wanted to hold things up, they stopped short of getting drunk and did not drink much.
When the banquet broke up, Feng Qizheng could not sit still.
“Chief, Ning Chen — the courtesans’ quarter. My treat!”
Ning Chen rolled his eyes at him. “We march tomorrow. Don’t wear yourself out till you’re like a dead dog. Get some honest rest instead.”
Feng Qizheng shook his head. “Blades and swords have no eyes on a battlefield. Every time you go out there you’re gambling your life, and who the hell knows whether you’ll come back alive. So a man shouldn’t shortchange himself before he marches.”
“Come to that, you two have been in Mangzhou this long. Doesn’t it get uncomfortable, holding it in?”
Ning Chen shook his head. Zisu had let it out of him a few days back, and it was not uncomfortable in the least.
Pan Yucheng stood up. “I’m going to rest.”
With that, he put his hands behind his back and left.
Feng Qizheng looked at Ning Chen.
Ning Chen spread his hands. “I still have military business to see to. Go by yourself. Play all you like, but don’t let it get in the way — or you’ll answer to military law.”
“Don’t worry, when have I ever let anything get in the way? If you two aren’t coming, then I’m off.”
Ning Chen gave a grunt.
Feng Qizheng went scampering off, delighted with himself.
Ning Chen rolled his eyes and called him an animal.
He said it, but underneath he envied the man. Feng Qizheng’s constitution really was something else.
The next day, early morning!
Horns sounded outside the city.
The army marched.
When Ning Chen came to Mangzhou, the Changling Army and the musket battalion together had come to twenty-seven thousand men.
Better than ten thousand of the Left Chancellor’s men had been taken prisoner.
After that, twenty thousand of the Grand Tutor’s were taken, and with Lei An’s persuading, several more scattered bodies of soldiers came over — something over three thousand.
Qi Yuanzhong had brought fifty thousand.
Now, setting aside the losses and the wounded, there were roughly a hundred thousand men.
A hundred thousand men marched, in good order and nothing left tangled, in at the south gate and out at the north.
Outside the north gate, the war banners streamed.
A hundred thousand men, filling the ground and joining it to the sky.
Ning Chen told Zhang Youcai to mind the house well.
The Mei residence still had the Left Chancellor’s gold and silver hidden in it.
The man left to hold Mangzhou was a deputy commandant of the Changling Army, a capable man who had come through a hundred battles.
There were still several thousand wounded in the city, and someone had to stay to look after them.
Once everything was arranged, Ning Chen mounted Diaochan and rode straight for the open country beyond the walls.
Ning Chen had set out from the capital with two thousand musketeers.
The warships could not possibly have carried two thousand horses, so Ning Chen alone had brought Diaochan.
He was used to riding her.
Outside the city, Ning Chen looked at the army stretching away without end, and his blood rose.
He was born liking a battlefield.
Ning Chen rode forward to the head of the army.
“Soldiers! The hour has come for us to make our names. If we can recover the frontier passes, I, Ning Chen, will go before His Majesty myself and ask that every one of you be rewarded.”
黃沙百戰穿金甲， 不破邊關終不還。
A hundred battles in the yellow sand have worn my golden armor through; until the frontier passes are broken I will not come home.
“March out!”
The runners passed Ning Chen’s words down the ranks, rank by rank.
Boom! Boom! Boom!!!
The war drums beat on the city wall, and the sound of them rang to the sky.
A hundred thousand men, like a dragon whose tail could not be seen, set off for the frontier passes.
A hundred thousand men could not move fast.
Seven days later, they had covered only half the road.
In his tent, Ning Chen was gnawing at strips of dried meat hard enough to give a stone a run for its money, washing them down with tea.
“This officer, Lei An, requests to see General Ning.”
Lei An’s voice came from outside the tent.
Lei An had charge of the baggage train — tents, grain and fodder, siege carts, scaling ladders and the rest. All of it needed a professional to manage.
“Come in!”
Lei An lifted the flap and came in. “General Ning, the scouts report that they’ve found Wu Kingdom men.”
Ning Chen was startled. “Where? How many of them?”
Lei An’s expression was a little odd. “A hundred and some. The general knows them.”
Ning Chen was taken aback, then laughed. “Pang Yun and that lot?”
Lei An bowed. “Yes!”
“Where are they?”
“A dozen miles or so from the camp.”
Ning Chen began to laugh.
This had been part of his plan all along. Keeping their horses in the first place was precisely so that they could not get back in time to carry word.
When two armies are at war, envoys are not put to the sword — but he was not going to let Pang Yun and the rest go back and report either.
In this bitter cold, Pang Yun and his men were short of food and short of clothing, and without so much as a weapon they would have trouble bringing down game. By the time they reached the frontier, the fighting would be over.
Ning Chen smiled. “Pay no attention to them.”
“Yes!”
“Lei An, it’s bitter cold now. The men’s rations have to be guaranteed.”
Lei An bowed and said respectfully, “The general may set his mind at rest. Our grain and fodder are ample. We won’t let the men go hungry.”
Ning Chen gave a grunt.
“If the general has no other orders, this officer will go and get on with it.”
“Go. You’ve worked hard!”
Lei An saluted and withdrew.
Ning Chen went on working at the dried meat and studying the map of the frontier country.
(End of Chapter 272)