“Don’t let them make you nervous with their shouting, Chou,” Wu said. “They’re yelling to try and make their own fear go away.”
“I’ll try not to, General,” Chou said shakily and with a smile that quickly turned back to a frown.
Wu patted him on the back again then looped his hands through the reins. The Chu Army officers were already moving about their own men, rallying them with impromptu speeches on what awaited their victory. Similar shouts were coming from the ranks of infantry behind them, but they weren’t nearly as loud or adamant as those heard from across the sun-baked plain.
Just let them hold long enough for the main force to arrive, Wu thought as he stared through the shimmering heat waves at the army waiting to destroy them.
And then it came, the final loud cheer and then the deafening rumble as three thousand chariots began their charge. It was as if the men a mile away had stolen the men’s voices, so quiet did it become in the first ranks behind Wu. He could feel the familiar pounding in his chest, the echoing rumble of thousands of horses on the hard-packed earth.
He paid it no heed. He’d grown accustomed to that sensation, having led the charge more often than not, although he had been on the receiving end his fare share of the time. The men behind him, however, had never experienced it before. Wu glanced back and was happy to see that the ranks remained firm, that no men had dropped their weapons and fled in fear. It was a disciplined force that had been put together over the past two years, but Wu still saw more than a few stained breeches from men unable to hold their bladders along with their courage.
He turned his head back to the plain in front of them and saw that the chariots were in a full-out charge. King Yi must be confident indeed, Wu thought, for he was not even bothering with his archers. Behind the swirling clouds of dust he could just make out the infantry beginning their fast march onto the field.
His eyes went to the north hills on their left. Two thousand archers were waiting in the rocky outcroppings, and they had a clear line of fire down onto the plain below. For some reason the Yue army hadn’t concerned themselves with the men, perhaps thinking them ineffective against such a larger force. We’ll see about that, Wu thought with a smile. The men on the hills had been trained well; Wu had watched them during practice both in Ying and in their camps at night so knew that each man could draw and fire more than five shots a minute with deadly accuracy. Still, it was several hundred yards from the hills to the plain below, and they were firing at moving targets.
The Yue chariots were just about in line with that first division of five hundred archers when the air became filled with arrows. They had been aimed well ahead and flew out into the sky in a wide arc soaring up and out before turning down into a torrent of death. The first volley was right-on, and Wu watched as more than a dozen chariots flipped over, their horses, drivers, or both impaled by the arrows. A dozen wooden shafts sprouted from chariot carriages with occupants lucky not to have been hit, and the vehicles sped on, right into line with the next division of archers atop the hill. Again the rain of arrows came down, and again several dozen chariots met a crashing end. Still, even with a hundred or more chariots taken out in such a fashion, nearly three thousand remained, and those quickly corrected their course, steering to their left so as to avoid the deadly barrage from above.
All along the Chu line horses were kicking and stomping their hooves into the ground, and a few even reared up, knocking over their chariots, but the majority held the line. Wu glanced down the lead line of chariots, and even though he couldn’t make out Min on the far right flank, he knew that the general was gritting his teeth as he watched the enemy chariots come closer and closer. Already they were past the second division of archers on the hill and just a few hundred yards from the mouth of the river.
And then the call came and before he even realized it, Wu was cracking the reins down on the two horses in front of him and his chariot was rushing forth to battle.
From the hills the third division of archers let loose, and Wu saw several more chariots crash out of the advancing line, their riders thrown out of the carriages to be trampled to death by the vehicles next to them. Even with a few hundred chariots taken out by archers the Yue line continued to advance rapidly.
Two hundred yards, then one hundred; on they came. Wu could hear the shouts of the men on both lines of the battle and then he was crashing through the line of the enemy and they through his. Horses skittered and cried all around and within moments the air was filled with the sounds of swords and dagger-axes ringing against one another. Wu was surrounded by enemy chariots but didn’t even think. With one hand tightly woven around the reins he grabbed his sword and began swinging while beside him Chou dropped his bow to his feet and took up his own sword.
Their only hope was to fight through the line of chariots before the Yue infantry arrived behind them, cutting off all escape. Wu cracked the reins and tried his best to drive the chariot forward as he swung his sword at the men in chariots beside him. Blood sprayed as he severed on man’s sword arm. He took another through the chest with a savage thrust.
Chou cried out beside him and Wu glanced over in time to see him block two overhead swings from a soldier on the chariot over. Chou was fast, though, and drove his own sword into the man’s stomach as the man tried to raise his sword for another swing. Wu turned away as the red and white guts of the man began to flow from the savage wound, and thankfully just in time to block a swing aimed at his head. Steel rang against steel as he parried and blocked his newest assailant’s attacks with both his sword and chariot, but before either was able to land the killing blow their chariots were past one another. The press of chariots around them was loosening and Wu found that he suddenly had more mobility. He cracked the reins hard and steered toward an opening ahead. A few final swings from his and Chou’s swords and they managed to cut their way out of the battle.
Wu tugged on the reins and paused for a moment after they made it past the fighting. Dust swirled all about but Wu could see that the Yue infantry was still several hundred yards away, although marching fast. Arrows rained down on them from above, causing hundreds of men fell with each volley, but they continued on. Even if the archers managed to kill several thousand men before the whole force reached the main battle there would still be tens of thousands ready, their blood up at the loss of their companions.
Behind them the battle raged, and Wu could hear that their own infantry had already joined the fight in the rear. It was still largely chaos, neither side having recovered from the initial charge enough to sort out their lines and divisions. Wu was not tasked with leading a division, which would have been nearly impossible anyway given the confusion of battle lines at the moment, so he whirled the chariot around the seething mass of men and horses toward their right flank. It was there that he expected to find Min and hopefully Duke Dao as well.
“Fire at the officers!” Wu yelled out above the din of battle as he raced eastward.
“Which ones are the officers?” Chou yelled back as he dropped his sword and reached for his bow.
“The ones with swords!” Wu yelled.
Chou may not have known much about the make-up of the opposing military ranks, but he more than made up for it by his skill with the bow. Before they had gone another fifty yards he had already struck three enemy swordsmen who were wildly swinging away from their chariots. Each man fell with an arrow through the throat.
It quickly became apparent that all semblance of command was lost in the swirling chaos of the battle and that Wu would have a hard time finding Duke Dao or Min’s location. He kept the chariot moving, however, and was soon on the edge of the battle and circling down into his own ranks.
“There!” Chou called out, pointing with his arm toward a cluster of chariots off to the side.
Wu looked and saw that it was Min, doing his best to direct the action of his men. Wu cracked the reins and within a minute was alongside the group.
“Firm up
the ranks!” Min was shouting at the chariots around him. “Get the infantry moving back across the river!”
Wu was surprised that Min was giving the order to fall back so quickly in the battle, but one glance back at the swirling mass of chariots and infantry told him that they were dangerously outnumbered and at risk of being overrun. The enemy infantry would be on top of them in minutes, and if they didn’t break now there’d be a good chance that they would be surrounded and swallowed up.
“Where’s Dao?” Wu yelled to Min when he was alongside his chariot.
“We’ve lost sight of him,” Min yelled back between orders.
Wu frowned and stared back into the maelstrom of battle. For every one of their chariots he saw a dozen of the enemy’s.
“We’ve got to get in there and get him out!” Wu yelled.
“Go, and give the order to fall back to all that you can,” Min yelled back, his attention already back to the men around him.
Wu cracked the reins and headed back into the swirling mass of men and animals, shouting for the men to fall back as he plunged into the chaos. Chou dropped his bow and again picked up his sword, swinging and stabbing as they steered around upturned chariots and drove over fallen men, many writhing in pain from their wounds. All the while Wu called out the orders for the men to pull back and regroup across the river. His words were having an effect, at least; already large groups of infantry were moving back toward the river, the chariots doing their best to take the brunt of the fighting so as to allow them an escape.
As Wu drove deeper into the ranks of infantry and enemy chariots he began to lose hope that he’d spot Duke Dao, but then suddenly he saw him, still atop his chariot, a ring of infantry and chariots around him. He seemed to be directing the attack, and the battle was going favorably around him, although Wu didn’t know how long that’d be the case, especially when the Yue infantry arrived.
“Pull back!” Dao was yelling. “To the river!”
Wu managed to get close enough and Dao spotted him.
“Has Min given the order?” he yelled out as Wu steered through the protective ring to com up alongside.
“He has,” Wu yelled back. “The infantry are already pulling back while the chariots hold.”
Dao nodded and looked around him. “The enemy infantry, how long?”
“They’ll be on top of us in minutes,” Wu replied. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
Wu saw the Duke grit his teeth and frown, not happy with the thought of leaving his men.
“If we don’t get you out of here when the infantry arrives then you’ll be swallowed up!” Wu yelled. “The men need you to stay alive and command them.”
That did it. Dao nodded and tightened his hands about the reins of his chariot. “Lead me to Min, then.”
Wu nodded and put his chariot into motion, glancing back to see that Dao was following behind. The ring of men and chariots advanced with him, although when the enemy chariots saw that the Duke of Chu was moving past them they quickly descended. The infantry were the first to be cut down, but most of the chariots managed to make it through. Within moments they were out of the heaviest of the fighting and advancing upon Min’s position.
“Are the infantry pulling back?” Min shouted when Wu was close enough to hear.
“They are, and the chariots are coming this way, as many as remain,” Wu replied loudly over the sounds of battle.
“The Yue infantry are already too close for us to make it to the mouth of the river,” Min said. “We’ll have to circle around their whole army.”
“Can we do that?” Dao asked. “They still have their archers in reserve.”
“It’s our only choice,” Min said. “We have to protect the area between the river and the hills. If we don’t the enemy chariots will have a straight path down onto our infantry.”
“Then lead us around,” Dao said.
Min nodded and steered his chariot north. With a last glance back behind him he cracked his horse’s reins and put the chariot into motion, the rest quickly doing the same. Wu glanced about. No more than two hundred chariots comprised their division, the rest still fighting it out in the middle of the field, trying to buy the infantry as much time as possible to get across the river. Once there the men would be safe from the enemy chariots, which would have to circle around the mouth of the river and come down the narrow corridor between the water and the hills. The bulk of the enemy infantry would most likely try and fight their way across the river, which was narrow and shallow enough to stop low-lying chariots, but not men on foot. It would be a tough fight, and one that they hadn’t anticipated getting into so quickly. The Yue forces were better-organized and more powerful then they’d thought. Wu gave a silent prayer to Shangdi that their main force was running south to join them.
As they broke north many of the enemy chariots disengaged as best they could from the fighting to pursue. Chariots were fierce weapons when allowed the mobility that was their main feature, but when surrounded by infantry they quickly became bogged down and were easy to defeat. The Yue forces knew this well, and at the sight of the Chu chariots speeding north toward their own fast-approaching infantry lines, they too sped north. The respite from the fighting allowed the Chu infantry to pull back en masse and gave an opportunity to those Chu chariots still in the midst of battle to disengage themselves and head toward the mouth of the river on their own. At least he’s saving his army, Wu thought as he glanced over at Duke Dao.
Within moments of breaking north they were speeding past the Yue infantry divisions.
“Take up your bow and take out as many of them as you can,” Wu yelled to Chou over the rumble of wheels all about them.
Chou once again put down his sword and picked up his bow. He sidled around Wu and nocked an arrow, taking careful aim before firing. Even with the shaking of the chariot there was little chance that he would miss; the Yue infantry was arrayed in the thousands all alongside of them and made easy targets. Wu saw other arrows flying out from the chariots around him, as well as those still raining down from the hills above. A large section of the Yue left flank disengaged from their march to swing into the path of the advancing chariots. While many men would be killed if more than two hundred chariots slammed into them, there numbers were enough to ensure that they could stop the whole force in a manner of minutes. Ahead of them Min saw the move and steered them well clear, their horse-drawn chariots faster than even the most capable runners in the infantry. Still, there were thousands of men in the lines, and it took them some time to pass to the rear of the column.
There they found a new set of problems: directly behind the infantry were the two large divisions of archers, already in place and readying their bows to fire upon the hills where the Chu archers were embedded. And coming down directly beside them, and right at the advancing column of Chu chariots, were several hundred enemy chariots. Wu’s mouth came open at the sight; either King Yi had held a large portion of his chariots in reserve or they had already broken off from the fighting in the middle of the field and somehow gotten up and around their own infantry. It was a large dilemma, and Wu knew that they were trapped. Behind them came hundreds of chariots, to their left were thousands of infantry men, and ahead of them were archers and even more chariots. The only route open to them lay to their right, a direction which would take them further from the fighting still taking place in the middle of the field, and the river mouth where their presence was so urgently needed.
Ahead of them Min reined up his horses and slowed his chariot. Duke Dao was in the chariot next to him, and after a moment Wu was able to steer up alongside as well.
“We’ll make a break right behind the infantry,” Min yelled out to them. “Scatter as many of the archers as you can to buy our men in the hills more time.”
“It’ll be close,” Wu yelled back. “If enough of those archers stand their ground it’ll impede our movement and allow some of the infantry and chariots to close the gap in front of us. We’l
l be trapped.”
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take, and quickly,” Min yelled back as he gripped his reins tightly. “Besides,” he added with a smile, “when have you ever known archers to hold their ground?”
Min cracked the reins and sent his chariot into the thin gap between the south-marching infantry and fast approaching chariots from the north. Wu smiled despite himself as he watched him go; the man was actually enjoying this, he realized. Wu yelled out and cracked the reins, sending the chariot into motion behind Min and Dao, a newfound burst of confidence upon him.
FOURTEEN
Wu quickly realized that confidence was needed, and hoped that the drivers of the chariots behind him got a piece of it as well. Ahead of them stood more than two thousand archers, on either side of which were infantry and chariots. Riding in front, Min cracked his reins repeatedly, trying to get every last ounce of speed from the two horses pulling him, while beside him Duke Dao did the same. Already the rear ranks of the Yue infantry saw what they were attempting and were turning about to impede their progress. It was an uncoordinated move, however, one lacking in leadership and direction, and the men would most likely be unable to come into any type of blocking stance until they reached the last of the three long columns. The chariots were another matter entirely. Driven by disciplined officers who could make decisions on their own, they quickly turned their cars about to block the path before the Chu chariots reached their archers. It would be close, Wu quickly saw, but he didn’t think they would pull into position in time to block their first few ranks, and he suspected that only a few dozen of their two hundred chariots would by stymied by the attempt.
The Warring States, Books 1-3 Page 36