Duan Ling fills the prescription and returns to make a decoction for Cai Yan. Cai Yan lies there, moaning feebly.
“Did he come?” Cai Yan asks.
“Who? Oh, my dad? He already came by.”
Cai Yan makes a low hum in his throat in response and Duan Ling adds, “There was no sword practice today.”
Slowly, Cai Yan lets out a long breath. When Duan Ling finishes simmering the medicine, he helps Cai yan sit up to drink it. The cloth pouch hanging from his neck dangles on the red string, swaying back and forth. When he spoke with Li Jianhong earlier he even took it out to look at it.
“I heard the reason you fought with Batu on the very first day you arrived at the Illustrious Hall was over this very thing.” Cai Yan holds up the cloth pouch. “Is it a piece of jade?”
“Yeah. Here, take your medicine.”
Cai Yan smiles. “Batu was always curious about what’s inside of it, but he didn’t dare mess with you again.” As he speaks he rubs his fingers over the outside of the pouch, then he stuffs it back beneath Duan Ling’s undershirt. “It’s half of a jade torus, half of a ring shape is an arc.”
“It’s a jade arc,” Duan Ling replies.
Cai Yan finishes his medicine and lies down. Duan Ling tells him, “I’ve given you a pretty heavy dose. Get some good sleep tonight and you ought to be fine.”
That night, Duan Ling puts his sword beneath his pillow. Lying on top of it, he’s finding it difficult to fall asleep. His head is filled with images of his father at war; one moment it’s a picture of him cutting someone’s head off, then later it’s a scene of his father’s arrows never missing their mark, looking all-around impressive.
At midnight, Cai Yan is lying on his bed, panting continuously. Dark clouds have hidden the moon, and it’s starting to rain again.
Out on the tranquil avenue, hooves break through the surface of puddles, creating a muffled rumbling as they gallop past. Duan Ling sits up and peers outside. He can feel that not too far away many soldiers are passing by as they hurry out the northern gate, but they don’t sound like the usual clip-clop of war horses. These hoofbeats sound lower, deeper.
Four thousand soldiers are in the brigade that’s in charge of the raid. The hooves of their horses have been wrapped in cloth, and under Li Jianhong’s command they emerge from the northern gate with no one the wiser, quietly detouring around a hill, approaching the back of the Mongol army encamped.
At the same time, the Mongol army is also going around the south side, off to attack Shangjing’s western gate.
In the dense forest soaked through with unbroken rain, Yelü Dashi and Li Jianhong are each dressed head to toe in armour.
“You were right.” Yelü Dashi says, “The fake intelligence we passed along has indeed done its work.
Li Jinahong replies, “What I worry the most is how weak our defenses outside the northern and western gates are.”
“I’d feel even less at ease if we’d put our main forces on the city walls. Ögedei isn’t that smart!”
“Yelü Dashi, don’t say I’m trying to scare you, but you must make Cai Wen deploy one squad over there.”
Yelü Dashi regards Li Jianhong.
“Li Jianhong, I’m the commander-in-chief here. Split up!”
Li Jianhong can do nothing but drop the subject. He and Yelü Dashi come down the hill separately, splitting their forces in two and close in quietly behind the enemy. What they’ve been waiting for as they held fast through an entire month of siege is precisely tonight. After they discussed a course of action, Li Jianhong and Yelü Dashi had decided unanimously to fight a battle of attrition with the Mongol army — first, they had to drag things on until the start of autumn, then send out a messenger with false intelligence. So predictably the message was intercepted by the Mongol army, and predictably they chose tonight to strike.
The main Mongolian forces have already made their way to the western gate, and they silently erect their siege ladders.
Cai Wen leads the city guard, readying their mirthless and cold arrows.
While Li Jianghong commands two-thousand elite troops, their horses’ hooves drumming a dull beat over the earth as they continuously approach the enemy from behind.
“Charge —!” Li Jianhong roars.
“Charge —!” Their two-thousand strong suicide squad charges into the Yuan encampment. Flames shoot up in all directions, crude oil and flaming oil canisters explode loudly, horses whinny, and the Mongol army’s storage of rations and fodder ignite. The flames paint the horizon red.
Torch raised high, a Mongolian soldier rushes onto the gong platform to drum the alarm. Li Jianhong comes speeding by on horseback and shoots a single arrow. The soldier falls onto the golden gong, blood splattering into the air.
“Charge —” Yelü Dashi begins to outflank the camp with his troops, igniting the crude oil depot, the whole thing going up in a burst of flames.
At the same time, the Mongol army’s leader bellows, directing the catapults to throw batches of flaming oil canisters into Shangjing.
Flames are spreading in every direction. The city guard rains down their arrows and suddenly the bodies of Mongolian soldiers litter the ground. A messenger arrives from the rear supply with news of the raid on their encampment, as rocks and arrows pour onto them from the gate towers above, projectiles thick as torrential rain, and only then does the Mongol army realise they’ve fallen into a trap. Ögedei comes charging in with his troops, yelling at the top of his lungs, while Yelü Dashi begins to attack their flank. The well-trained Mongolian army methodically changes formation to cover the besieging troops beneath the city walls.
Yelü Dashi and Ögedei throw angry curses at each other in Khitan and Mongolian respectively.
“Why are you yelling all that at him for?!” Li Jianhong howls at him, “Kill them! Enough yelling!”
Once Li Jianhong finished burning the main Mongol army encampment and arrived with his troops, the third regiment joins the battlefield, and the area beneath the Shangjing western gate becomes something like a meat grinder — all three of the Mongolian army’s retreat have been cut off, leaving a single opening. By all reasonable expectation they should retreat towards the south, but Ögedei makes a daring decision instead: he will try to break out of the army surrounding him by cutting through Yelü Dashi.
The moment Li Jianhong sees the formation change he curses under his breath, and at once fires off an arrow to shoot the messenger dead on his horse but it was already too late. The fifty-thousand strong Mongol army begins to change direction like a single giant. One side seems determined to resist Li Jianhong’s forces to the death, while Ögedei leads his main forces in a sudden attack on Yelü Dashi.
They come at him like a tidal wave; caught off guard, Yelü Dashi’s ranks are scattered and he hastily withdraws from the centre position. With his troops closely behind him, Li Jianhong fights his way to him once more like the tip of a dagger. Just as Yelü Dashi is struck by an arrow and is about to hit the ground, Li Jianhong picks him back up with a decisive spear thrust at the last second and throws him back onto his horse.
Li Jianhong howls, “Open the gate!”
The southern gate opens, and the twenty-thousand men they had lying in ambush here finally emerges, while Ögedei attempts to escape by heading towards the northern gate. One look at Ögedei’s escape route and Li Jianhong immediately runs back to the southern gate, to bypass Shangjing in order to get at Ögedei through the northern gate.
The Khitan forces are just over twenty-thousand strong, while nearly ten thousand of the Mongolian soldiers have already died in battle, which leaves only over forty-thousand; caught in an intense battle between the northern and western gates. Ögedei’s vanguard has already made it to the northern gate. Soon, flaming canisters are flying all over the place, and all the buildings inside the northern gate ignite into a sea of flames.
Flaming canisters fly into the city walls in a parabolic arc, falling towards the inside of Biyong College. With a loud bang they explode and flames shoot up.
Duan Ling wakes up in a flash.
Everyone is yelling. There is the sound of doors opening as young men pour out of their rooms on bare feet. Sword in hand, Duan Ling shakes Cai Yan awake; the fire has already made it all the way to their door.
“The Mongol army is here!” Someone’s yelling.
“Don’t panic!” Duan Ling jumps out of the window and shouts, “Evacuate through the west side!”
All the youths who have their rooms near Duan Ling have come outside. Someone’s yelling, “Let’s go fight! The siege is broken! We can’t surrender!”
“How are you going to fight? Are you going to grab their swords with bare hands?” Duan Ling cries out, “Run for now! Don’t try to be brave!”
Many of them are still discussing among themselves. Displeased, Duan Ling says, “You people can stay then, I’m leaving!”
“I! Go!” Helian Bo cries out.
“Wait wait wait!” Everyone hurries after Duan Ling, catching up to him.
“Where’s the Dean?!”
“Don’t worry about him!” Duan Ling says loudly, “We don’t even have time to worry about ourselves!”
“Grab our bows and quivers!”
“Pick them up outside!” Duan Ling says as he runs with a sword in his hand.
Dean Tang appears, yelling, “Don’t panic! Everyone run along the backstreets! Run along places that are not on fire! We’ll regroup at the Illustrious Hall!”
Many have already dashed out of the alley. Duan Ling looks all around him, and recalling the escape route his father told him about, he ignores the Illustrious Hall and heads off toward the west district of the city.
Yelü Dashi’s military strength is limited, and tonight he has assembled basically all of the forces he has available in a bid to take out all of Ögedei’s subordinates in one fell swoop, therefore it has left the northern gate’s defenses extremely weakened. Within a quarter of an hour, the northern gate has fallen, and the Mongol army charges into the city stepping over the bodies of their brothers-in-arms and dead horses.
And now Cai Wen is leading the city defences to reinforce the northern gate as quickly as he can. Nearly two thousand Mongolian soldiers have already entered the city, spreading through the main streets and alleys, shooting anyone they see including the women, the children, and the old and infirm. There are suddenly dead bodies everywhere, the houses turn into raging infernos, and they collapse one after another. The city patrol fights them desperately and forces the Mongol army back into the northern district.
Biyong College is already burning; servants are trying to put out the fire with buckets of water, but they’re shot to death by a Mongolian soldier. Duan Ling can’t waste any more time looking for people; he turns around, draws his sword, a flash of light from the blade dazzles the eye. At the same time, the soldier draws his sabre and slashes towards him sideways — and as it looks as if it’s about to chop Duan Ling in half, Duan Ling wields the sword as if by instinct, blade turned upwards to meet the soldier’s downward chop. The sword edge and sabre edge crisscross and in an instant half of the soldier’s arm falls right off!
The soldier falls off his horse. Duan Ling calls out, “Run —!”
They run out of the alley through utter chaos; many buildings along both sides of the street are on fire, and the fight between the Mongol army and city guard has already littered the ground with corpses. Cai Yan cries out, “Fall back! Everyone fall back!”
Helian Bo, Cai Yan, Duan Ling and their fellow schoolmates pick up bows and arrows off the ground, unable to tell whether the weapons are from the Khitan army or the Mongolian army, then they fall back into the alleyway. The three of them pick up such things as wooden boards and bucket lids, holding these things in front of them like shields. Behind them are a bunch of scholars, shooting all over the place without any semblance of accuracy.
“I got one!” A young man cries out with excitement.
There are less and less of the city guard. Cai Yan calls out, “Brother! Brother!”
Before they can blink, a Mongolian soldier has run into their defensive perimeter. Duan Ling immediately turns, chopping down on the horse’s leg with his sword, and the soldier collapses onto the ground along with the horse. The soldier shouts odd sounds as he charges towards them, drawing his sabre to attack, but Duan Ling whirls around once more and the soldier misses. Cai Yan and Duan Ling move at the same time, and two swords thrust home — one in the heart, one in the back, killing the soldier.
Duan Ling looks up quietly.
There are more and more of the Mongolian soldiers, and it looks like the city guard won’t be able to hold them back much longer. All of the soldiers are pouring into the alleyway. Duan Ling thinks to himself this is bad.
Cai Yan asks, “Run?”
“We can’t run!” Duan Ling says, “They’ll shoot us the moment we start running! Fall back! Fall back!”
The Mongolian soldiers batter at them over and over again with their warhorses, and as their defenses are about to fail, another snarl rings out from the outside of the alleyway.
“Ögedei!” Li Jianhong’s voice seems to resonate all around them.
Duan Ling’s eyes go wide. At that very moment, Wanlibenxiao leaps through the air, stepping through the roofs of the single story homes just outside, and Li Jianhong charges in, covered in his bloodsoaked armour. With Zhenshanhe in his left hand and a halberd in his right, Li Jianhong descends like war god, and in a scant few moments he has cut down the Mongolian soldiers blocking his way, limbs and blood flying off in a frenzy — there are even soldiers cut entirely in half, horse and all!
And as soon as he’s done, Li Jianhong whips the horse around and dash out of the alley to rejoin the reinforcements, to fight the Mongolian soldiers invading the northern gate.
The tides have turned yet again; by the time Duan Ling and the others run out of the alleyway, Li Jianhong has already disappeared, and all before them are Mongolian and Khitan soldiers, caught in a life or death struggle. The Mongolians’ defensive line keeps moving back, and soon they’re once more banished from the northern gate. Every Khitan soldier in combat is sitting on a tall horse, every one of them dressed in iron armour, and to Duan Ling they all look like Li Jianhong.
“Dad …” Duan Ling’s just about to call for him when Helian Bo suddenly grabs his arm and pulls him out of the way of a charging warhorse.
“Lets go!” Cai Yan cries out.
A dozen or more youths pass through the main street into the west district. Even though Duan Ling is concerned about his father, he doesn’t dare run off, and besides, Cai Yan is still ill. They run into an alley, and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves comes to them from the far end as three Mongolian soldiers charge toward them, shooting arrows at them randomly. Everyone starts yelling, but Duan Ling rushes off toward the horsemen. Helian Bo and Cai Yan take a wooden board each, and dash into the alley to block stray arrows for Duan Ling.Then there are three noises — and at the sound, the Mongolian soldiers fall off their horses.
Li Jianhong halts his horse just beyond the alley. The sky is beginning to dawn. Outside the alley, battle cries go on and on, folding into a continuous hum.
“Go through the alleyways towards the west district of the city.” Li Jianhong says, “Head into the Illustrious Hall. Don’t light the lamps.”
The young men go through the back door of a residential home, Duan Ling is at the very end of the line. He turns around and looks up at Li Jianhong.
“I saw a bunch of kids earlier.” Li Jianhong is breathing heavily, but he doesn’t dismount. He says quietly to Duan Ling, “Something was bothering me — it just didn’t feel right, so I thought I’d try to save however many I can. Good thing I came over to check.”
For some strange reason, that’s when Duan Ling’s tears fall. Li Jianhong points at the house next to them to let him know he needs to hurry, and adds, “I’m leaving now.”
Duan Ling gives him a nod, and quickly catches up to the other young men.
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Duan Ling fills the prescription and returns to make a decoction for Cai Yan. Cai Yan lies there, moaning feebly.
“Did he come?” Cai Yan asks.
“Who? Oh, my dad? He already came by.”
Cai Yan makes a low hum in his throat in response and Duan Ling adds, “There was no sword practice today.”
Slowly, Cai Yan lets out a long breath. When Duan Ling finishes simmering the medicine, he helps Cai yan sit up to drink it. The cloth pouch hanging from his neck dangles on the red string, swaying back and forth. When he spoke with Li Jianhong earlier he even took it out to look at it.
“I heard the reason you fought with Batu on the very first day you arrived at the Illustrious Hall was over this very thing.” Cai Yan holds up the cloth pouch. “Is it a piece of jade?”
“Yeah. Here, take your medicine.”
Cai Yan smiles. “Batu was always curious about what’s inside of it, but he didn’t dare mess with you again.” As he speaks he rubs his fingers over the outside of the pouch, then he stuffs it back beneath Duan Ling’s undershirt. “It’s half of a jade torus, half of a ring shape is an arc.”
“It’s a jade arc,” Duan Ling replies.
Cai Yan finishes his medicine and lies down. Duan Ling tells him, “I’ve given you a pretty heavy dose. Get some good sleep tonight and you ought to be fine.”
That night, Duan Ling puts his sword beneath his pillow. Lying on top of it, he’s finding it difficult to fall asleep. His head is filled with images of his father at war; one moment it’s a picture of him cutting someone’s head off, then later it’s a scene of his father’s arrows never missing their mark, looking all-around impressive.
At midnight, Cai Yan is lying on his bed, panting continuously. Dark clouds have hidden the moon, and it’s starting to rain again.
Out on the tranquil avenue, hooves break through the surface of puddles, creating a muffled rumbling as they gallop past. Duan Ling sits up and peers outside. He can feel that not too far away many soldiers are passing by as they hurry out the northern gate, but they don’t sound like the usual clip-clop of war horses. These hoofbeats sound lower, deeper.
Four thousand soldiers are in the brigade that’s in charge of the raid. The hooves of their horses have been wrapped in cloth, and under Li Jianhong’s command they emerge from the northern gate with no one the wiser, quietly detouring around a hill, approaching the back of the Mongol army encamped.
At the same time, the Mongol army is also going around the south side, off to attack Shangjing’s western gate.
In the dense forest soaked through with unbroken rain, Yelü Dashi and Li Jianhong are each dressed head to toe in armour.
“You were right.” Yelü Dashi says, “The fake intelligence we passed along has indeed done its work.
Li Jinahong replies, “What I worry the most is how weak our defenses outside the northern and western gates are.”
“I’d feel even less at ease if we’d put our main forces on the city walls. Ögedei isn’t that smart!”
“Yelü Dashi, don’t say I’m trying to scare you, but you must make Cai Wen deploy one squad over there.”
Yelü Dashi regards Li Jianhong.
“Li Jianhong, I’m the commander-in-chief here. Split up!”
Li Jianhong can do nothing but drop the subject. He and Yelü Dashi come down the hill separately, splitting their forces in two and close in quietly behind the enemy. What they’ve been waiting for as they held fast through an entire month of siege is precisely tonight. After they discussed a course of action, Li Jianhong and Yelü Dashi had decided unanimously to fight a battle of attrition with the Mongol army — first, they had to drag things on until the start of autumn, then send out a messenger with false intelligence. So predictably the message was intercepted by the Mongol army, and predictably they chose tonight to strike.
The main Mongolian forces have already made their way to the western gate, and they silently erect their siege ladders.
Cai Wen leads the city guard, readying their mirthless and cold arrows.
While Li Jianghong commands two-thousand elite troops, their horses’ hooves drumming a dull beat over the earth as they continuously approach the enemy from behind.
“Charge —!” Li Jianhong roars.
“Charge —!” Their two-thousand strong suicide squad charges into the Yuan encampment. Flames shoot up in all directions, crude oil and flaming oil canisters explode loudly, horses whinny, and the Mongol army’s storage of rations and fodder ignite. The flames paint the horizon red.
Torch raised high, a Mongolian soldier rushes onto the gong platform to drum the alarm. Li Jianhong comes speeding by on horseback and shoots a single arrow. The soldier falls onto the golden gong, blood splattering into the air.
“Charge —” Yelü Dashi begins to outflank the camp with his troops, igniting the crude oil depot, the whole thing going up in a burst of flames.
At the same time, the Mongol army’s leader bellows, directing the catapults to throw batches of flaming oil canisters into Shangjing.
Flames are spreading in every direction. The city guard rains down their arrows and suddenly the bodies of Mongolian soldiers litter the ground. A messenger arrives from the rear supply with news of the raid on their encampment, as rocks and arrows pour onto them from the gate towers above, projectiles thick as torrential rain, and only then does the Mongol army realise they’ve fallen into a trap. Ögedei comes charging in with his troops, yelling at the top of his lungs, while Yelü Dashi begins to attack their flank. The well-trained Mongolian army methodically changes formation to cover the besieging troops beneath the city walls.
Yelü Dashi and Ögedei throw angry curses at each other in Khitan and Mongolian respectively.
“Why are you yelling all that at him for?!” Li Jianhong howls at him, “Kill them! Enough yelling!”
Once Li Jianhong finished burning the main Mongol army encampment and arrived with his troops, the third regiment joins the battlefield, and the area beneath the Shangjing western gate becomes something like a meat grinder — all three of the Mongolian army’s retreat have been cut off, leaving a single opening. By all reasonable expectation they should retreat towards the south, but Ögedei makes a daring decision instead: he will try to break out of the army surrounding him by cutting through Yelü Dashi.
The moment Li Jianhong sees the formation change he curses under his breath, and at once fires off an arrow to shoot the messenger dead on his horse but it was already too late. The fifty-thousand strong Mongol army begins to change direction like a single giant. One side seems determined to resist Li Jianhong’s forces to the death, while Ögedei leads his main forces in a sudden attack on Yelü Dashi.
They come at him like a tidal wave; caught off guard, Yelü Dashi’s ranks are scattered and he hastily withdraws from the centre position. With his troops closely behind him, Li Jianhong fights his way to him once more like the tip of a dagger. Just as Yelü Dashi is struck by an arrow and is about to hit the ground, Li Jianhong picks him back up with a decisive spear thrust at the last second and throws him back onto his horse.
Li Jianhong howls, “Open the gate!”
The southern gate opens, and the twenty-thousand men they had lying in ambush here finally emerges, while Ögedei attempts to escape by heading towards the northern gate. One look at Ögedei’s escape route and Li Jianhong immediately runs back to the southern gate, to bypass Shangjing in order to get at Ögedei through the northern gate.
The Khitan forces are just over twenty-thousand strong, while nearly ten thousand of the Mongolian soldiers have already died in battle, which leaves only over forty-thousand; caught in an intense battle between the northern and western gates. Ögedei’s vanguard has already made it to the northern gate. Soon, flaming canisters are flying all over the place, and all the buildings inside the northern gate ignite into a sea of flames.
Flaming canisters fly into the city walls in a parabolic arc, falling towards the inside of Biyong College. With a loud bang they explode and flames shoot up.
Duan Ling wakes up in a flash.
Everyone is yelling. There is the sound of doors opening as young men pour out of their rooms on bare feet. Sword in hand, Duan Ling shakes Cai Yan awake; the fire has already made it all the way to their door.
“The Mongol army is here!” Someone’s yelling.
“Don’t panic!” Duan Ling jumps out of the window and shouts, “Evacuate through the west side!”
All the youths who have their rooms near Duan Ling have come outside. Someone’s yelling, “Let’s go fight! The siege is broken! We can’t surrender!”
“How are you going to fight? Are you going to grab their swords with bare hands?” Duan Ling cries out, “Run for now! Don’t try to be brave!”
Many of them are still discussing among themselves. Displeased, Duan Ling says, “You people can stay then, I’m leaving!”
“I! Go!” Helian Bo cries out.
“Wait wait wait!” Everyone hurries after Duan Ling, catching up to him.
“Where’s the Dean?!”
“Don’t worry about him!” Duan Ling says loudly, “We don’t even have time to worry about ourselves!”
“Grab our bows and quivers!”
“Pick them up outside!” Duan Ling says as he runs with a sword in his hand.
Dean Tang appears, yelling, “Don’t panic! Everyone run along the backstreets! Run along places that are not on fire! We’ll regroup at the Illustrious Hall!”
Many have already dashed out of the alley. Duan Ling looks all around him, and recalling the escape route his father told him about, he ignores the Illustrious Hall and heads off toward the west district of the city.
Yelü Dashi’s military strength is limited, and tonight he has assembled basically all of the forces he has available in a bid to take out all of Ögedei’s subordinates in one fell swoop, therefore it has left the northern gate’s defenses extremely weakened. Within a quarter of an hour, the northern gate has fallen, and the Mongol army charges into the city stepping over the bodies of their brothers-in-arms and dead horses.
And now Cai Wen is leading the city defences to reinforce the northern gate as quickly as he can. Nearly two thousand Mongolian soldiers have already entered the city, spreading through the main streets and alleys, shooting anyone they see including the women, the children, and the old and infirm. There are suddenly dead bodies everywhere, the houses turn into raging infernos, and they collapse one after another. The city patrol fights them desperately and forces the Mongol army back into the northern district.
Biyong College is already burning; servants are trying to put out the fire with buckets of water, but they’re shot to death by a Mongolian soldier. Duan Ling can’t waste any more time looking for people; he turns around, draws his sword, a flash of light from the blade dazzles the eye. At the same time, the soldier draws his sabre and slashes towards him sideways — and as it looks as if it’s about to chop Duan Ling in half, Duan Ling wields the sword as if by instinct, blade turned upwards to meet the soldier’s downward chop. The sword edge and sabre edge crisscross and in an instant half of the soldier’s arm falls right off!
The soldier falls off his horse. Duan Ling calls out, “Run —!”
They run out of the alley through utter chaos; many buildings along both sides of the street are on fire, and the fight between the Mongol army and city guard has already littered the ground with corpses. Cai Yan cries out, “Fall back! Everyone fall back!”
Helian Bo, Cai Yan, Duan Ling and their fellow schoolmates pick up bows and arrows off the ground, unable to tell whether the weapons are from the Khitan army or the Mongolian army, then they fall back into the alleyway. The three of them pick up such things as wooden boards and bucket lids, holding these things in front of them like shields. Behind them are a bunch of scholars, shooting all over the place without any semblance of accuracy.
“I got one!” A young man cries out with excitement.
There are less and less of the city guard. Cai Yan calls out, “Brother! Brother!”
Before they can blink, a Mongolian soldier has run into their defensive perimeter. Duan Ling immediately turns, chopping down on the horse’s leg with his sword, and the soldier collapses onto the ground along with the horse. The soldier shouts odd sounds as he charges towards them, drawing his sabre to attack, but Duan Ling whirls around once more and the soldier misses. Cai Yan and Duan Ling move at the same time, and two swords thrust home — one in the heart, one in the back, killing the soldier.
Duan Ling looks up quietly.
There are more and more of the Mongolian soldiers, and it looks like the city guard won’t be able to hold them back much longer. All of the soldiers are pouring into the alleyway. Duan Ling thinks to himself this is bad.
Cai Yan asks, “Run?”
“We can’t run!” Duan Ling says, “They’ll shoot us the moment we start running! Fall back! Fall back!”
The Mongolian soldiers batter at them over and over again with their warhorses, and as their defenses are about to fail, another snarl rings out from the outside of the alleyway.
“Ögedei!” Li Jianhong’s voice seems to resonate all around them.
Duan Ling’s eyes go wide. At that very moment, Wanlibenxiao leaps through the air, stepping through the roofs of the single story homes just outside, and Li Jianhong charges in, covered in his bloodsoaked armour. With Zhenshanhe in his left hand and a halberd in his right, Li Jianhong descends like war god, and in a scant few moments he has cut down the Mongolian soldiers blocking his way, limbs and blood flying off in a frenzy — there are even soldiers cut entirely in half, horse and all!
And as soon as he’s done, Li Jianhong whips the horse around and dash out of the alley to rejoin the reinforcements, to fight the Mongolian soldiers invading the northern gate.
The tides have turned yet again; by the time Duan Ling and the others run out of the alleyway, Li Jianhong has already disappeared, and all before them are Mongolian and Khitan soldiers, caught in a life or death struggle. The Mongolians’ defensive line keeps moving back, and soon they’re once more banished from the northern gate. Every Khitan soldier in combat is sitting on a tall horse, every one of them dressed in iron armour, and to Duan Ling they all look like Li Jianhong.
“Dad …” Duan Ling’s just about to call for him when Helian Bo suddenly grabs his arm and pulls him out of the way of a charging warhorse.
“Lets go!” Cai Yan cries out.
A dozen or more youths pass through the main street into the west district. Even though Duan Ling is concerned about his father, he doesn’t dare run off, and besides, Cai Yan is still ill. They run into an alley, and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves comes to them from the far end as three Mongolian soldiers charge toward them, shooting arrows at them randomly. Everyone starts yelling, but Duan Ling rushes off toward the horsemen. Helian Bo and Cai Yan take a wooden board each, and dash into the alley to block stray arrows for Duan Ling.Then there are three noises — and at the sound, the Mongolian soldiers fall off their horses.
Li Jianhong halts his horse just beyond the alley. The sky is beginning to dawn. Outside the alley, battle cries go on and on, folding into a continuous hum.
“Go through the alleyways towards the west district of the city.” Li Jianhong says, “Head into the Illustrious Hall. Don’t light the lamps.”
The young men go through the back door of a residential home, Duan Ling is at the very end of the line. He turns around and looks up at Li Jianhong.
“I saw a bunch of kids earlier.” Li Jianhong is breathing heavily, but he doesn’t dismount. He says quietly to Duan Ling, “Something was bothering me — it just didn’t feel right, so I thought I’d try to save however many I can. Good thing I came over to check.”
For some strange reason, that’s when Duan Ling’s tears fall. Li Jianhong points at the house next to them to let him know he needs to hurry, and adds, “I’m leaving now.”
Duan Ling gives him a nod, and quickly catches up to the other young men.
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