The forest is pitch black in every direction; a gale mixed with rainwater blows by. They can’t avoid the rain inside the forest, but they can just barely get out of the path of the chilling winds. Wu Du makes the carriages spread out so they’re in a circle, and he tells everyone to get inside to get some rest. Before he goes in himself to give Duan Ling a report, he also assigns some people to stand guard and patrol.
“We’ll have no choice but to stay here for the night. Good thing we listened to Yan Di.”
“Told you not to show off.” Duan Ling frowns. “Let me see.”
“It’s fine.” Wu Du didn’t use force in the right way earlier, and now his shoulder is all red. He takes off his outer robe and puts it over his arm, revealing his well-built shoulder and back. Duan Ling applies poultices on his skin to prevent any bruising.
“Give us a kiss then.” Wu Du turns his head and kisses Duan Ling briefly. Duan Ling wraps his arms around him from behind, over the rippling muscles of his waist, then looking down, he presses a kiss on his powerful shoulder.
“We’ll be in Hejian by tomorrow.” Wu Du says, “Get some good sleep tonight. Don’t forget to have some ginger soup so you don’t end up catching a cold.”
“I won’t. I’m not as fragile as you imagine. Nothing’s likely to happen overnight so you should just stay here. Someone is already on patrol.”
“I better go keep an eye out on things anyway.”
Duan Ling can’t convince him otherwise, so he has no choice but to let Wu Du go, and lies down in the carriage by himself. The clothes he’s wearing are soaked, and he can’t start a fire in the carriage either, so all he can do is take off his outer robe and lie on the daybed with his eyes closed, wearing only his pants, getting some rest while he’s still awake.
Wu Du comes back in the middle of the night and lies down next to Duan Ling. The heat of his body warms Duan Ling up immediately, and they wrap themselves tightly around each other. Duan Ling loses consciousness and falls asleep.
An indeterminable number of hours later, Duan Ling abruptly opens his eyes.
“Did you hear that?” He asks.
“What is it?” Wu Du is up immediately, alert. They’re both not wearing anything on top, and Wu Du is frowning with a deep furrow between his brows. “What did you hear? Something? Anything?”
The vague hoofbeats that Duan Ling seem to have heard in his dreams are gone the moment he gets up.
“Don’t scare me like that,” Wu Du says, tense. “What did you hear?”
Duan Ling shakes his head, looking bewildered. “Must have been a dream.”
Wu Du puts the White Tiger armour on Duan Ling, and as he’s about to head outside to go on patrol, Duan Ling grabs his hand and lies back down again. “Milord, take it easy, alright?”
“I have to make sure you’re safe. If anything happens to you, how am I supposed to go on?”
Duan Ling is lying on his side in the carriage’s daybed, eyes intent on Wu Du, fingertips brushing over his handsome face that he’s growing to love more the more he looks at it. Even in his wildest dreams, he never thought he can be together with Wu Du, just like this — it feels like he’s found himself the greatest treasure in the world.
Wu Du stares at Duan Ling’s face, utterly engrossed, as though something is bothering him. His eyebrows are drawing together again a smidgen. “You’ve had to endure so much this whole trip there.”
“I’ve endured plenty when I was little too,” Duan Ling replies softly, “You have no idea how good I’ve been having it these days …”
Suddenly, Duan Ling is hearing those hoofbeats again.
“Wait.” Duan Ling says, “I just heard it again.”
This time Duan Ling heard it extremely clearly, and he realises that’s because he’s lying on his side with his ear pillowed over the horizontal armrest of the daybed. The wooden daybed is built into the carriage, and right beneath that is the carriage’s shaft, which is connected to the wheels, and the wheels are on the ground pressed up against a huge rock.
And thus, noises from far away have travelled through the earth and quietly passed into his ear.
“Come over here and listen,” Duan Ling beckons at Wu Du.
Wu Du barely spends any time with his ear to the armrest before he says, “There’s an army marching less than five miles away, and it’s approaching us. Come on!”
“They’re not necessarily coming for us!” Duan Ling says.
The two leap off the carriage and wake everyone so they can move deeper into the forest. Just before they’re about to leave, Duan Ling presses his ear to the ground and listens for a while longer.
“They went around us. The target wasn’t us!”
The rain has stopped; the night is quiet all around them, leaving only a distant rumbling.
Duan Ling has a foreboding thought that this isn’t a simple attack at all. This noise could have come from only one possible source — cloth wrapped around horses’ hooves, an army wishing to launch an attack in the cover of a rainy night.
Wu Du says, “Wang Zheng, keep ten people and stay here, make sure you hide well. The rest of you, whoever can fight, come with us!”
Wu Du throws his leg over Benxiao’s back, reaching a hand out for Duan Ling. Duan Ling grabs it and leaps onto Benxiao as well, sitting down securely behind Wu Du. He straps a bow to his back and takes off at the head of his soldiers.
A unit of Mongol soldiers is charging uniformly towards the city of Hejian in the near distance, concealed in the pitch darkness of night.
“Don’t draw your weapons!” Wu Du raises a hand and gestures palm down to signal everyone off their horses. He tears some strips of cloth off his robe and wraps them over Benxiao’s hooves. Everyone follows his lead and does the same.
Duan Ling asks, “How are we supposed to fight them?”
He’s only ever fought the Mongolians once, and that was while he was in the Altyn-Tagh, mounting a sneak attack on the enemy with Li Jianhong.
Wu Du says, “At any rate, we won’t do anything yet. Let’s check numbers first.”
“Sounds like there are a thousand men,” Duan Ling says.
“I’m talking about us.”
“Twelve.”
One more, and we’ll have enough for the Thirteen Riders of Kunyang, Duan Ling thinks; their chances would be much better if they had thirteen Li Jianhongs. With only him, Wu Du, plus ten cavalry, how are they supposed to fight a thousand people?2
“Wait for them to spread out,” Wu Du says.
“How do you know they’re going to spread out?”
“I’m sure they will. If I’m not wrong, they’ll try to find a way into the city from four different directions.”
Unsurprisingly, when they get to the plains outside Hejian, the Mongols have begun to divide their forces in a way that seems coordinated in advance.
“We’ll follow that group of soldiers in the middle,” Wu Du says, “Come on!”
Wu Du spurs his horse on, taking Duan Ling and his ten horsemen towards the first group under the cover of night. Their target is exceedingly obvious — it’s the enemy’s battalion commander, the one in charge of a thousand men. Soon, their enemy winds their way to the northern side of Hejian, while Wu Du has taken his ten soldiers into the sparsely wooded forest outside the city.
“Are we not going to make some noise and warn the city?” Duan Ling asks.
Wu Du puts a finger in front of his mouth, shh, before he instructs, “Chop some branches, prepare torches and stick them into the ground.”
It’s extremely quiet out there. The Mongolian soldiers dismount and begin their preparations by going through their equipment and throwing their grappling hooks at the edge of the city wall.
Hejian’s garrison is sparsely defended, and there aren’t even any guards patrolling at the top of the towers — who knows where they’ve gone off drinking. The only witness to all this commotion is a couple of firepans. Wu Du waits until the third unit of Mongol soldiers are halfway up the wall before he gives a firm command.
“Charge!” Wu Du says quietly, “Don’t make a sound!”
Though there are only twelve of them, with a sudden charge out of the dark, arrows flying, they make quite an impressive disturbance regardless. Someone hits the ground immediately; the Mongol army never expected someone to ambush them from the back. They hurriedly turn around to meet their enemy, howling at the top of their lungs.
The guards on the wall still somehow have not realised that they’re under attack!
On Benxiao’s back, who is also carrying Duan Ling, Wu Du charges into the enemy’s formation in an instant, and with the Lieguangjian drawn he squeezes his knees tight around the horse’s belly and slashes out with a backhanded sweep. Wherever Lieguangjian travels, soldiers fall off their horses in answer. Wu Du then wraps one arm around Duan Ling and leans them to one side, and with his sword cutting outwards, blood goes flying, and a Mongolian soldier cries out in pain as he’s hacked in two.
This loud cry exposes their position at once, and arrows are suddenly flying at them from all directions. However, Benxiao is extremely well-trained and comes to an abrupt halt to smash its side against the warhorses attempting to catch them in a pincher attack. The soldier on it chops his sabre towards Duan Ling.
Duan Ling calls out in Mongolian, “Don’t hit me! I’m one of you! I’m on your side!”
The Mongol soldier looks at him with a start, then with one swing of Wu Du’s arm the soldier’s head is parted from his neck and flies off into the air.
The Mongolian horses are short and stout to begin with, not at all imposing, while Benxiao is a tall and big Wusun horse. When it smashes against them they simply go flying.
Duan Ling swiftly reaches behind him for an arrow, and every time his arrow leaves his bow a horse neigh and falls, rolling into a ball. He fires off arrows in quick succession — expertly putting into use the dirty trick of shooting the horse before shooting the rider. Soon, there is neighing all around and horses falling all over the place.
“Let’s go!” Wu Du turns his horse around and begins to lead his men to an escape. The Mongolians are hot on their tail, and Duan Ling nocks and draws, leaning back on the horse. His view turned upside down; he lets go of the bowstring and the arrow flies off to hit the leader of their pursuers, shooting him off his horse.
Everyone has rushed back into the forest.
“Headcount,” Wu Du says.
Five, ten … they’re all here.
Duan Ling asks, “Is anyone hurt?”
Two of the cavalry are lightly wounded. “I can keep fighting! Please go ahead and give your orders, Commandant!”
“The ones who are hurt will stay behind as support!” Wu Du says, “Light the torches!”
Their pursuers stop in their tracks outside the forest, not a one daring to venture inside. Soon enough, all the torches are lit, making it look like there are a hundred people in the forest. The Mongol soldiers immediately back away, whispering at each other.
“Charge—!” Wu Du howls.
Leading his men, Wu Du charges once more at the Mongol soldiers. The other side falls into a panic right away, calling out in warning at their own as they turn around and run away. Duan Ling cries out, “Get down!”
Wu Du bends down, and Duan Ling fires off six arrows off in a row, with the soldiers who are hit falling off their horses. Wu Du shouts, “Retreat!”
Their cavalry reins their horses in and turns back again.
“What the fuck, man?!” Finally, someone can’t take it anymore and lets loose the cussing. “This is killing me! Are you going to let us have at them or what?!”
“What’s your name?’ Wu Du asks him.
The other man immediately shuts up. Wu Du says, “If I hear any more blabbing, it’s martial law for you.”
Duan Ling just finds it funny, but Wu Du’s brows are locked in a scowl. “Fuck. Why isn’t anything happening in Hejian at all?”
Hejian is still shrouded in darkness; though they’ve been fighting for ages, no one has come out of the city to help them, and neither is anyone shooting arrows to cover them. In his original plans Wu Du was hoping that even if no one leaves the city, there should at least be archers once they start fighting. He never imagined that the city guard would act as though they’re all dead.
The Mongol army seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach, and they haven’t been scared off either. Duan Ling cannot help but quietly exclaim that this enemy unit really is calm in the face of danger — if it’s any other unit, they would have thought that their ambush has failed, their enemy has seen through their plot, and that the best thing for them to do would be to give up and retreat.
Someone in the Mongol formation howls something and Duan Ling manages to understand it. They’re saying, “There’s hardly any of them! It’s just a diversion! Kill them already!”
“They’re coming!” Duan Ling cries out, “Run for it!”
Wu Du shouts, “Burn!”
In an instant, the Mongols have charged into the forest. Duan Ling’s subordinates spread out among the trees, pulling up the torches that have been pushed into the ground, and tosses them at the treetops where they snap and crackle. With the recent rainfall, as soon as the leaves as lit, the forest is covered in a cloud of thick smoke. Wu Du digs a medicine battle out of his clothes and tosses it up at the trees.
With a loud boom, whatever the medicine bottle was holding explodes immediately, covering the woods in a raging inferno. Thick smoke rolls towards the Mongol soldiers upwind inside the forest.
“Run towards the city walls!” Wu Du calls out.
Finally, someone has noticed the enemy forces.
From high up on the wall, a soldier cries out, “We’re under attack!” And soon after that, a gong is rung. It is not until then that the firepans along the top of Hejian’s city walls light up one by one and all of a sudden, arrows are flying down at them as densely as the rain. Wu Du cusses, howling, “Don’t shoot at us! Fuck, we’re on your side!”
The arrows stop firing from the top of the wall, and the Mongol army charges out of the forest again, disoriented. Repeated attacks earlier had nearly half of the enemy’s two-hundred-odd soldiers collapsed in the poisoned smoke inside the forest. And now, the city gates open and the city defenders finally rush forth, on the offensive.
“Watch it!” Lest they cut down the wrong people by mistake, Duan Ling calls out, “We’re on your side! One of your own! Go fight those Mongols out there!”
Wu Du was just about to chop down the Hejian Defenders with a backhanded cut. Duan Ling says hurriedly, “We don’t have to fight anymore! Let’s retreat beneath the city wall!”
Their cavalry immediately gets out of formation and heads to a remote hiding spot near the foot of the wall in a disciplined manner, to avoid getting splashed by boiling oil that may pour down from above. More and more of the defenders are showing up, and the Mongol soldiers begin to flee. All of Hejian is finally awake; sentry bells are being rung everywhere, and the other city gates have also realised that they’re under attack.
“Who’s there?” A Han division captain calls at them from afar.
“Go fight them! Don’t worry about us!” Duan Ling replies.
And so that captain takes his subordinates and heads towards another city gate to reinforce them.
The sky is gradually brightening, and the thick smoke inside the forest slowly fades away. Hejian is starting to send out people to inspect the battlefield. Duan Ling lets them know that there are still quite a number of enemy troops still, and takes them into the forest. They all dismount and look on as bodies are dragged out.
Duan Ling orders, “Drag them all towards the city gates and leave them outside. If the Mongols come back again, hang the bodies on the outside of the gates. If anyone’s still alive, take them as captives.”
“Who on earth are you people anyway?” A soldier squeezes through the crowd to ask them. “Are you all from Jiangnan?”
Wu Du replies, “I’m the newly appointed Commandant of Hejian, and this is the Commandery Governor of Hejian.”
Nobody seems to know how to deal with this new information, and they hurriedly salute Wu Du and Duan Ling. This one military officer and one civil official are already occupying the highest-ranking positions in Hejian.
Duan Ling says, “Dispatch some men to the forest just below the landslide. My people are in there. Bring them all into the city and settle them in the magistrate’s offices for now. Look for someone named Lin Yunqi and retrieve my certificate of appointment from him.”
The soldier leaves as commanded, and Wu Du asks, “Who was on duty last night?”
“My Lord,” another soldier replies, “it was Lieutenant Qin, the very same person who asked who you were last night. He’s just gone to the southern gates to clean up the battlefield there.”
“Take a unit and bring him to me in chains,” Wu Du says, “I’m going to punish him for deserting his post.”
The soldier dares not speak. Duan Ling and Wu Du give each other a look, knowing that there has got to be some favouritism going on. Duan Ling says to Wu Du, “It’s best if you go personally.”
And so Wu Du nods. “You should head inside the city for now.”
“Yeah.”
Wu Du gets on Benxiao then and leaves the area. Duan Ling asks one of his people to make a headcount, see if any of the Mongolian soldiers are still alive.
The soldier recognises one of Duan Ling’s underlings. “Aren’t you Sun Ting, from Ye?”
“It is I,” Sun Ting replies, “I was just coming here to take on a new job with these two lords.”
The soldier laughs. “You just got here, and already accomplished so much …”
All the Mongolian soldiers are being dragged to a clearing nearby to be placed together. Duan Ling suddenly pushes the crowd aside and rushes towards them.
“Batu!” Duan Ling yells, throwing himself at one of the bodies, dragging him away from the rest. This cry has alerted the soldiers around them at once. Duan Ling stares at the familiar face — though Batu has grown, his features are even more rugged than they used to be and covered in dirt besides, for some reason Duan Ling still managed to recognise him at a glance.
“Get me some water!” Duan Ling says to them in a panic
His underlings seem flabbergasted, but they bring him a water bladder anyway. Duan Ling spills the water onto Batu’s face. Batu opens his eyes.
Duan Ling lets out a breath of relief, but to his surprise, Batu is pulling Duan Ling to him by the neck, then springing to his feet to vault into the air. Oh no! Duan Ling thinks. I fell for it!
Duan Ling tries to dislodge Batu, but Batu is ready for him. When it comes to each other’s tricks they’re as familiar with them as the back of their own hands, and Batu Immediately flips him sideways. The world spins around Duan Ling, and by the time he’s back on his own two feet, Batu’s arm is locked tight around him, his dagger pressing against Duan Ling’s throat.
“Seems the heavens are on my side.” Batu says in Han, “Bring me a horse.”
The soldiers stare at each other in dismay, not sure what they’re supposed to do. Duan Ling shouts, “Shoot him! He wouldn’t dare kill me!”
“Bring him a horse!” That soldier from earlier yells immediately, “Don’t shoot!”
Duan Ling says, “Why you …”
“And how would you know I won’t dare kill you?” Batu whispers, his lips moving closer to Duan Ling.
His voice doesn’t sound the way it used to anymore, as though he’s become an entirely different person. He tightens his grip on Duan Ling’s shoulders, and his arms are more powerful than they used to be as well; Duan Ling finds himself unable to move a smidgen, bound so tightly that he has to look up to breathe.
“If you kill your anda,” Duan Ling raises one eyebrow and says belligerently, “Tengri will send you to hell …”
Batu stares back at him in silence.
He still looks the same way he did eight years ago with the same familiar features; early morning sunlight spills into the space between them, so they’re half in the light and half concealed in darkness, almost like they’ve gone back to that library from all those years ago, that very moment as their eyes met each other.
The horse has been brought to him. Duan Ling thinks, this soldier must be colluding with that “Qin”; who knows, maybe they’re trying to get me killed … but he’s already out of time to think about it some more. Batu has hit him over the back of the head, and he instantly loses consciousness, whereupon he’s dragged onto the horse, and they escape towards the plains.
“After him!” Sun Ting says immediately.
Everyone gets on their horses, and they’re off to chase after Batu.
I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
This is probably the fictional counterpart of the thirteen riders of Yanyun, which was in the Qing dynasty novel "Dramatised History of Sui and Tang. Likely fictional. Kind of like military special forces. ↩︎
The forest is pitch black in every direction; a gale mixed with rainwater blows by. They can’t avoid the rain inside the forest, but they can just barely get out of the path of the chilling winds. Wu Du makes the carriages spread out so they’re in a circle, and he tells everyone to get inside to get some rest. Before he goes in himself to give Duan Ling a report, he also assigns some people to stand guard and patrol.
“We’ll have no choice but to stay here for the night. Good thing we listened to Yan Di.”
“Told you not to show off.” Duan Ling frowns. “Let me see.”
“It’s fine.” Wu Du didn’t use force in the right way earlier, and now his shoulder is all red. He takes off his outer robe and puts it over his arm, revealing his well-built shoulder and back. Duan Ling applies poultices on his skin to prevent any bruising.
“Give us a kiss then.” Wu Du turns his head and kisses Duan Ling briefly. Duan Ling wraps his arms around him from behind, over the rippling muscles of his waist, then looking down, he presses a kiss on his powerful shoulder.
“We’ll be in Hejian by tomorrow.” Wu Du says, “Get some good sleep tonight. Don’t forget to have some ginger soup so you don’t end up catching a cold.”
“I won’t. I’m not as fragile as you imagine. Nothing’s likely to happen overnight so you should just stay here. Someone is already on patrol.”
“I better go keep an eye out on things anyway.”
Duan Ling can’t convince him otherwise, so he has no choice but to let Wu Du go, and lies down in the carriage by himself. The clothes he’s wearing are soaked, and he can’t start a fire in the carriage either, so all he can do is take off his outer robe and lie on the daybed with his eyes closed, wearing only his pants, getting some rest while he’s still awake.
Wu Du comes back in the middle of the night and lies down next to Duan Ling. The heat of his body warms Duan Ling up immediately, and they wrap themselves tightly around each other. Duan Ling loses consciousness and falls asleep.
An indeterminable number of hours later, Duan Ling abruptly opens his eyes.
“Did you hear that?” He asks.
“What is it?” Wu Du is up immediately, alert. They’re both not wearing anything on top, and Wu Du is frowning with a deep furrow between his brows. “What did you hear? Something? Anything?”
The vague hoofbeats that Duan Ling seem to have heard in his dreams are gone the moment he gets up.
“Don’t scare me like that,” Wu Du says, tense. “What did you hear?”
Duan Ling shakes his head, looking bewildered. “Must have been a dream.”
Wu Du puts the White Tiger armour on Duan Ling, and as he’s about to head outside to go on patrol, Duan Ling grabs his hand and lies back down again. “Milord, take it easy, alright?”
“I have to make sure you’re safe. If anything happens to you, how am I supposed to go on?”
Duan Ling is lying on his side in the carriage’s daybed, eyes intent on Wu Du, fingertips brushing over his handsome face that he’s growing to love more the more he looks at it. Even in his wildest dreams, he never thought he can be together with Wu Du, just like this — it feels like he’s found himself the greatest treasure in the world.
Wu Du stares at Duan Ling’s face, utterly engrossed, as though something is bothering him. His eyebrows are drawing together again a smidgen. “You’ve had to endure so much this whole trip there.”
“I’ve endured plenty when I was little too,” Duan Ling replies softly, “You have no idea how good I’ve been having it these days …”
Suddenly, Duan Ling is hearing those hoofbeats again.
“Wait.” Duan Ling says, “I just heard it again.”
This time Duan Ling heard it extremely clearly, and he realises that’s because he’s lying on his side with his ear pillowed over the horizontal armrest of the daybed. The wooden daybed is built into the carriage, and right beneath that is the carriage’s shaft, which is connected to the wheels, and the wheels are on the ground pressed up against a huge rock.
And thus, noises from far away have travelled through the earth and quietly passed into his ear.
“Come over here and listen,” Duan Ling beckons at Wu Du.
Wu Du barely spends any time with his ear to the armrest before he says, “There’s an army marching less than five miles away, and it’s approaching us. Come on!”
“They’re not necessarily coming for us!” Duan Ling says.
The two leap off the carriage and wake everyone so they can move deeper into the forest. Just before they’re about to leave, Duan Ling presses his ear to the ground and listens for a while longer.
“They went around us. The target wasn’t us!”
The rain has stopped; the night is quiet all around them, leaving only a distant rumbling.
Duan Ling has a foreboding thought that this isn’t a simple attack at all. This noise could have come from only one possible source — cloth wrapped around horses’ hooves, an army wishing to launch an attack in the cover of a rainy night.
Wu Du says, “Wang Zheng, keep ten people and stay here, make sure you hide well. The rest of you, whoever can fight, come with us!”
Wu Du throws his leg over Benxiao’s back, reaching a hand out for Duan Ling. Duan Ling grabs it and leaps onto Benxiao as well, sitting down securely behind Wu Du. He straps a bow to his back and takes off at the head of his soldiers.
A unit of Mongol soldiers is charging uniformly towards the city of Hejian in the near distance, concealed in the pitch darkness of night.
“Don’t draw your weapons!” Wu Du raises a hand and gestures palm down to signal everyone off their horses. He tears some strips of cloth off his robe and wraps them over Benxiao’s hooves. Everyone follows his lead and does the same.
Duan Ling asks, “How are we supposed to fight them?”
He’s only ever fought the Mongolians once, and that was while he was in the Altyn-Tagh, mounting a sneak attack on the enemy with Li Jianhong.
Wu Du says, “At any rate, we won’t do anything yet. Let’s check numbers first.”
“Sounds like there are a thousand men,” Duan Ling says.
“I’m talking about us.”
“Twelve.”
One more, and we’ll have enough for the Thirteen Riders of Kunyang, Duan Ling thinks; their chances would be much better if they had thirteen Li Jianhongs. With only him, Wu Du, plus ten cavalry, how are they supposed to fight a thousand people?2
“Wait for them to spread out,” Wu Du says.
“How do you know they’re going to spread out?”
“I’m sure they will. If I’m not wrong, they’ll try to find a way into the city from four different directions.”
Unsurprisingly, when they get to the plains outside Hejian, the Mongols have begun to divide their forces in a way that seems coordinated in advance.
“We’ll follow that group of soldiers in the middle,” Wu Du says, “Come on!”
Wu Du spurs his horse on, taking Duan Ling and his ten horsemen towards the first group under the cover of night. Their target is exceedingly obvious — it’s the enemy’s battalion commander, the one in charge of a thousand men. Soon, their enemy winds their way to the northern side of Hejian, while Wu Du has taken his ten soldiers into the sparsely wooded forest outside the city.
“Are we not going to make some noise and warn the city?” Duan Ling asks.
Wu Du puts a finger in front of his mouth, shh, before he instructs, “Chop some branches, prepare torches and stick them into the ground.”
It’s extremely quiet out there. The Mongolian soldiers dismount and begin their preparations by going through their equipment and throwing their grappling hooks at the edge of the city wall.
Hejian’s garrison is sparsely defended, and there aren’t even any guards patrolling at the top of the towers — who knows where they’ve gone off drinking. The only witness to all this commotion is a couple of firepans. Wu Du waits until the third unit of Mongol soldiers are halfway up the wall before he gives a firm command.
“Charge!” Wu Du says quietly, “Don’t make a sound!”
Though there are only twelve of them, with a sudden charge out of the dark, arrows flying, they make quite an impressive disturbance regardless. Someone hits the ground immediately; the Mongol army never expected someone to ambush them from the back. They hurriedly turn around to meet their enemy, howling at the top of their lungs.
The guards on the wall still somehow have not realised that they’re under attack!
On Benxiao’s back, who is also carrying Duan Ling, Wu Du charges into the enemy’s formation in an instant, and with the Lieguangjian drawn he squeezes his knees tight around the horse’s belly and slashes out with a backhanded sweep. Wherever Lieguangjian travels, soldiers fall off their horses in answer. Wu Du then wraps one arm around Duan Ling and leans them to one side, and with his sword cutting outwards, blood goes flying, and a Mongolian soldier cries out in pain as he’s hacked in two.
This loud cry exposes their position at once, and arrows are suddenly flying at them from all directions. However, Benxiao is extremely well-trained and comes to an abrupt halt to smash its side against the warhorses attempting to catch them in a pincher attack. The soldier on it chops his sabre towards Duan Ling.
Duan Ling calls out in Mongolian, “Don’t hit me! I’m one of you! I’m on your side!”
The Mongol soldier looks at him with a start, then with one swing of Wu Du’s arm the soldier’s head is parted from his neck and flies off into the air.
The Mongolian horses are short and stout to begin with, not at all imposing, while Benxiao is a tall and big Wusun horse. When it smashes against them they simply go flying.
Duan Ling swiftly reaches behind him for an arrow, and every time his arrow leaves his bow a horse neigh and falls, rolling into a ball. He fires off arrows in quick succession — expertly putting into use the dirty trick of shooting the horse before shooting the rider. Soon, there is neighing all around and horses falling all over the place.
“Let’s go!” Wu Du turns his horse around and begins to lead his men to an escape. The Mongolians are hot on their tail, and Duan Ling nocks and draws, leaning back on the horse. His view turned upside down; he lets go of the bowstring and the arrow flies off to hit the leader of their pursuers, shooting him off his horse.
Everyone has rushed back into the forest.
“Headcount,” Wu Du says.
Five, ten … they’re all here.
Duan Ling asks, “Is anyone hurt?”
Two of the cavalry are lightly wounded. “I can keep fighting! Please go ahead and give your orders, Commandant!”
“The ones who are hurt will stay behind as support!” Wu Du says, “Light the torches!”
Their pursuers stop in their tracks outside the forest, not a one daring to venture inside. Soon enough, all the torches are lit, making it look like there are a hundred people in the forest. The Mongol soldiers immediately back away, whispering at each other.
“Charge—!” Wu Du howls.
Leading his men, Wu Du charges once more at the Mongol soldiers. The other side falls into a panic right away, calling out in warning at their own as they turn around and run away. Duan Ling cries out, “Get down!”
Wu Du bends down, and Duan Ling fires off six arrows off in a row, with the soldiers who are hit falling off their horses. Wu Du shouts, “Retreat!”
Their cavalry reins their horses in and turns back again.
“What the fuck, man?!” Finally, someone can’t take it anymore and lets loose the cussing. “This is killing me! Are you going to let us have at them or what?!”
“What’s your name?’ Wu Du asks him.
The other man immediately shuts up. Wu Du says, “If I hear any more blabbing, it’s martial law for you.”
Duan Ling just finds it funny, but Wu Du’s brows are locked in a scowl. “Fuck. Why isn’t anything happening in Hejian at all?”
Hejian is still shrouded in darkness; though they’ve been fighting for ages, no one has come out of the city to help them, and neither is anyone shooting arrows to cover them. In his original plans Wu Du was hoping that even if no one leaves the city, there should at least be archers once they start fighting. He never imagined that the city guard would act as though they’re all dead.
The Mongol army seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach, and they haven’t been scared off either. Duan Ling cannot help but quietly exclaim that this enemy unit really is calm in the face of danger — if it’s any other unit, they would have thought that their ambush has failed, their enemy has seen through their plot, and that the best thing for them to do would be to give up and retreat.
Someone in the Mongol formation howls something and Duan Ling manages to understand it. They’re saying, “There’s hardly any of them! It’s just a diversion! Kill them already!”
“They’re coming!” Duan Ling cries out, “Run for it!”
Wu Du shouts, “Burn!”
In an instant, the Mongols have charged into the forest. Duan Ling’s subordinates spread out among the trees, pulling up the torches that have been pushed into the ground, and tosses them at the treetops where they snap and crackle. With the recent rainfall, as soon as the leaves as lit, the forest is covered in a cloud of thick smoke. Wu Du digs a medicine battle out of his clothes and tosses it up at the trees.
With a loud boom, whatever the medicine bottle was holding explodes immediately, covering the woods in a raging inferno. Thick smoke rolls towards the Mongol soldiers upwind inside the forest.
“Run towards the city walls!” Wu Du calls out.
Finally, someone has noticed the enemy forces.
From high up on the wall, a soldier cries out, “We’re under attack!” And soon after that, a gong is rung. It is not until then that the firepans along the top of Hejian’s city walls light up one by one and all of a sudden, arrows are flying down at them as densely as the rain. Wu Du cusses, howling, “Don’t shoot at us! Fuck, we’re on your side!”
The arrows stop firing from the top of the wall, and the Mongol army charges out of the forest again, disoriented. Repeated attacks earlier had nearly half of the enemy’s two-hundred-odd soldiers collapsed in the poisoned smoke inside the forest. And now, the city gates open and the city defenders finally rush forth, on the offensive.
“Watch it!” Lest they cut down the wrong people by mistake, Duan Ling calls out, “We’re on your side! One of your own! Go fight those Mongols out there!”
Wu Du was just about to chop down the Hejian Defenders with a backhanded cut. Duan Ling says hurriedly, “We don’t have to fight anymore! Let’s retreat beneath the city wall!”
Their cavalry immediately gets out of formation and heads to a remote hiding spot near the foot of the wall in a disciplined manner, to avoid getting splashed by boiling oil that may pour down from above. More and more of the defenders are showing up, and the Mongol soldiers begin to flee. All of Hejian is finally awake; sentry bells are being rung everywhere, and the other city gates have also realised that they’re under attack.
“Who’s there?” A Han division captain calls at them from afar.
“Go fight them! Don’t worry about us!” Duan Ling replies.
And so that captain takes his subordinates and heads towards another city gate to reinforce them.
The sky is gradually brightening, and the thick smoke inside the forest slowly fades away. Hejian is starting to send out people to inspect the battlefield. Duan Ling lets them know that there are still quite a number of enemy troops still, and takes them into the forest. They all dismount and look on as bodies are dragged out.
Duan Ling orders, “Drag them all towards the city gates and leave them outside. If the Mongols come back again, hang the bodies on the outside of the gates. If anyone’s still alive, take them as captives.”
“Who on earth are you people anyway?” A soldier squeezes through the crowd to ask them. “Are you all from Jiangnan?”
Wu Du replies, “I’m the newly appointed Commandant of Hejian, and this is the Commandery Governor of Hejian.”
Nobody seems to know how to deal with this new information, and they hurriedly salute Wu Du and Duan Ling. This one military officer and one civil official are already occupying the highest-ranking positions in Hejian.
Duan Ling says, “Dispatch some men to the forest just below the landslide. My people are in there. Bring them all into the city and settle them in the magistrate’s offices for now. Look for someone named Lin Yunqi and retrieve my certificate of appointment from him.”
The soldier leaves as commanded, and Wu Du asks, “Who was on duty last night?”
“My Lord,” another soldier replies, “it was Lieutenant Qin, the very same person who asked who you were last night. He’s just gone to the southern gates to clean up the battlefield there.”
“Take a unit and bring him to me in chains,” Wu Du says, “I’m going to punish him for deserting his post.”
The soldier dares not speak. Duan Ling and Wu Du give each other a look, knowing that there has got to be some favouritism going on. Duan Ling says to Wu Du, “It’s best if you go personally.”
And so Wu Du nods. “You should head inside the city for now.”
“Yeah.”
Wu Du gets on Benxiao then and leaves the area. Duan Ling asks one of his people to make a headcount, see if any of the Mongolian soldiers are still alive.
The soldier recognises one of Duan Ling’s underlings. “Aren’t you Sun Ting, from Ye?”
“It is I,” Sun Ting replies, “I was just coming here to take on a new job with these two lords.”
The soldier laughs. “You just got here, and already accomplished so much …”
All the Mongolian soldiers are being dragged to a clearing nearby to be placed together. Duan Ling suddenly pushes the crowd aside and rushes towards them.
“Batu!” Duan Ling yells, throwing himself at one of the bodies, dragging him away from the rest. This cry has alerted the soldiers around them at once. Duan Ling stares at the familiar face — though Batu has grown, his features are even more rugged than they used to be and covered in dirt besides, for some reason Duan Ling still managed to recognise him at a glance.
“Get me some water!” Duan Ling says to them in a panic
His underlings seem flabbergasted, but they bring him a water bladder anyway. Duan Ling spills the water onto Batu’s face. Batu opens his eyes.
Duan Ling lets out a breath of relief, but to his surprise, Batu is pulling Duan Ling to him by the neck, then springing to his feet to vault into the air. Oh no! Duan Ling thinks. I fell for it!
Duan Ling tries to dislodge Batu, but Batu is ready for him. When it comes to each other’s tricks they’re as familiar with them as the back of their own hands, and Batu Immediately flips him sideways. The world spins around Duan Ling, and by the time he’s back on his own two feet, Batu’s arm is locked tight around him, his dagger pressing against Duan Ling’s throat.
“Seems the heavens are on my side.” Batu says in Han, “Bring me a horse.”
The soldiers stare at each other in dismay, not sure what they’re supposed to do. Duan Ling shouts, “Shoot him! He wouldn’t dare kill me!”
“Bring him a horse!” That soldier from earlier yells immediately, “Don’t shoot!”
Duan Ling says, “Why you …”
“And how would you know I won’t dare kill you?” Batu whispers, his lips moving closer to Duan Ling.
His voice doesn’t sound the way it used to anymore, as though he’s become an entirely different person. He tightens his grip on Duan Ling’s shoulders, and his arms are more powerful than they used to be as well; Duan Ling finds himself unable to move a smidgen, bound so tightly that he has to look up to breathe.
“If you kill your anda,” Duan Ling raises one eyebrow and says belligerently, “Tengri will send you to hell …”
Batu stares back at him in silence.
He still looks the same way he did eight years ago with the same familiar features; early morning sunlight spills into the space between them, so they’re half in the light and half concealed in darkness, almost like they’ve gone back to that library from all those years ago, that very moment as their eyes met each other.
The horse has been brought to him. Duan Ling thinks, this soldier must be colluding with that “Qin”; who knows, maybe they’re trying to get me killed … but he’s already out of time to think about it some more. Batu has hit him over the back of the head, and he instantly loses consciousness, whereupon he’s dragged onto the horse, and they escape towards the plains.
“After him!” Sun Ting says immediately.
Everyone gets on their horses, and they’re off to chase after Batu.
I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
This is probably the fictional counterpart of the thirteen riders of Yanyun, which was in the Qing dynasty novel "Dramatised History of Sui and Tang. Likely fictional. Kind of like military special forces. ↩︎
