Ning Chen stood on the wall, looking out at the battlefield under its haze of powder smoke, and let out a long sigh.
It was over at last!
Whichever side won, it was a loss to the Great Xuan.
At least the battle had not run long, so the casualties should not be too heavy.
He was still thinking about it when two figures came running toward him.
Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng.
When they left the capital, Geng Jing had told them again and again to keep Ning Chen safe.
That was not only Geng Jing’s meaning. It was His Majesty’s.
They had been separated from him by the enemy earlier.
Now the battle was over and they were hunting for Ning Chen in a hurry.
“Where is Ning Chen?”
Feng Qizheng asked it as he ran.
The soldiers pointed the way to Ning Chen.
Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng ran over, looked around, could not see Ning Chen anywhere, and their faces filled with alarm.
“Ning Chen! Ning Chen—”
Feng Qizheng shouted at the top of his lungs.
Ning Chen’s forehead filled with black lines.
“When did you two go blind?”
Mm?
Hearing the voice, the two of them looked at Ning Chen and stared at him for a good while.
“Good God — what have you done to yourself?”
Ning Chen was covered in blood, his face plastered over with it.
Ning Chen was taken aback. “What do I look like?”
Feng Qizheng hollered, “Like you’ve been soaking in a tub of blood!”
Ning Chen looked down at himself. Blood had dyed his armor red — some of it his own, some of it the enemy’s.
He had been killing like a madman just now, and his arm had gone numb with the cutting, and he had not felt anything.
Now that he had let go of it, his whole body hurt, as though he were about to come apart.
He had gone off a wall fifty or sixty feet high. Surviving it was his own tough luck holding, but the fall had knocked him about badly.
Pan Yucheng looked at Ning Chen’s shoulder and at his ear, both of them bleeding, and it hurt him to see it. His brows knotted together.
“Surgeon. Get an army surgeon here, quickly.”
Ning Chen only felt sore all over, and sat down against the low parapet on the wall.
“Are you all right?”
Pan Yucheng asked, worried.
Ning Chen shook his head once. He was too tired to want to talk.
Pan Yucheng said, “I saw you fighting Zhao Bokang. I meant to get across to you, but there were too many of them, and by the time I’d finished them and turned around, you and Zhao Bokang were both gone.”
Ning Chen smiled wryly. “The two of us went off the wall. I was lucky and landed on a body. He was killed outright.”
Pan Yucheng stood with his mouth open, shaken.
Thank heaven Ning Chen was alive.
If he had died, the imperial wrath would have fallen, and not one of them and not one of those officers could have expected to live.
Just then an army surgeon came running up with his medicine case and set about seeing to Ning Chen’s wounds.
Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng watched anxiously.
“Doctor, his wounds aren’t serious, are they?”
“Don’t worry. General Ning is not badly hurt—”
And as he said it he poured strong spirits over the wound in Ning Chen’s shoulder.
“Agh—”
Ning Chen shuddered all over with the pain, the veins standing out on his forehead, his eyes gone red.
“Go easy, damn you!”
Feng Qizheng roared.
Ning Chen shook his head. “I’m all right. Go on!”
The wound in Ning Chen’s shoulder was not long, but it was deep, and the bone showed.
The army surgeon began to stitch it.
By the time the stitching was finished, Ning Chen was soaked through with cold sweat.
Then powder was sprinkled on it and it was bound up with gauze.
The wound on his ear could not be stitched, but luckily it was not deep, and once it was cleaned a little medicine went on it and that was that.
If he had not come around so fast, that son of a bitch would have had his ear off.
“Blind dog with no eyes in his head…”
Ning Chen got angry every time he thought about it. Cut off his ear?
The army surgeon dropped to his knees with a thump, thinking he had hurt Ning Chen. “Mercy, General, mercy—”
Ning Chen hurriedly helped him up. “I’m not cursing you. I’m cursing the bastard who tried to cut my ear off.”
Feng Qizheng was all curiosity. “Who tried to cut your ear off?”
“One of our own. I fell off the wall and was knocked out, and this idiot must have taken me for one of the enemy and wanted my ear. The pain was what woke me up.”
Ning Chen said it angrily.
Pan Yucheng and Feng Qizheng looked at one another. That had happened?
It was a sad story, but for some reason the two of them just wanted to laugh.
The commander in chief of an army, very nearly getting his ear cut off by his own side and taken in for the reward. It really was very funny.
“Are you two laughing at me?”
Ning Chen glared at the pair of them.
Pan Yucheng kept his face straight. “No. We’re very angry.”
Feng Qizheng nodded and nodded. “That’s right. We’re furious!”
Ning Chen rolled his eyes. The two of them were plainly about to lose the fight and laugh out loud.
“I remember what he looks like. I’ll settle with him later.”
Ning Chen said it, still fuming.
Just then Yuan Long came racing up onto the wall, asking where Ning Chen was as he ran and heading their way.
“Pan the Gold Coat, have you seen General Ning?”
Ning Chen rolled his eyes in exasperation. Was he really this hard to recognize?
He said sourly, “I’m right here.”
Yuan Long turned to look, and his mouth fell open. “General Ning, are — are you all right?”
“I’m fine. What is it? Why the hurry to find me?”
Yuan Long bowed, his voice quick. “General Ning, the scouts report — the Wu Kingdom’s woman emperor is leading a hundred and fifty thousand men in person, coming straight for the gate-fortress.”
The faces of Ning Chen and the others changed at once.
Ning Chen forced himself up onto his feet. “How far off are they?”
“Ten miles.”
Ning Chen’s face darkened. “Ten miles, and this is the first word of it?”
Yuan Long said, “Word may well have come earlier, but we were all in the middle of the killing and everything was in chaos. There was no way to get it to us.”
Ning Chen’s eyes went sharp, sweeping the battlefield.
“We’ve just come through a hard fight, but it’s only a hundred and fifty thousand men. We have more troops than they do. If they dare come, let none of them get home again.”
Yuan Long said in a heavy voice, “Fifty thousand of them are the Divine Wolf Army.”
Something in Ning Chen jolted hard.
Pan Yucheng’s and Feng Qizheng’s faces both changed.
The Divine Wolf Army were the Wu Kingdom’s finest, and they fought savagely.
Fifty thousand of the Divine Wolf Army among a hundred and fifty thousand meant the fighting ahead was going to be brutal.
Ning Chen was silent for a moment.
“The young men of the Great Xuan are not necessarily weaker than the Wu Kingdom’s Divine Wolf Army.”
“Yuan Long, pass my order. The cannon and the catapults are to be hauled outside the walls at once.”
“And the musket battalion and the crossbow battalion are to assemble at the front.”
Yuan Long bowed with cupped fists. “Yes!”
And hurried away.
Ning Chen climbed up onto the low parapet on the wall and roared out at the top of his voice, “Soldiers of the Great Xuan! A hundred and fifty thousand Wu troops are bearing down on us, meaning to take the territory of the Great Xuan.”
“Inside this wall is the Great Xuan’s territory. It is our home. It is ground that countless soldiers of the Great Xuan gave their lives to win.”
“Anyone who thinks to cut away the Great Xuan’s territory is dreaming. Of the Great Xuan, not an inch is given up.”
“Whoever’s soldiers you were before, whatever happened before, that is our own family business. No outsider gets to bully us for it.”
“From this moment you are not rebels. You are all men of the Great Xuan with iron in your bones. When this battle is over, whatever you may have done before, I, Ning Chen, can promise you this: it will be let go and never raised again.”
“Men of the Great Xuan, take up your weapons and hold the enemy off with me. We swear it — they will be kept outside this wall.”
The runners ran themselves ragged along the wall, passing Ning Chen’s words down rank by rank.
(End of Chapter 277)