Chapter Ninety-One: The Escort’s Defensive Battle, Part Five

The encircled cavalry had completely lost the charge advantage that should have belonged to mounted men. After the brigade commander decisively abandoned his lance and even drew his saber before leaping from the saddle, more and more riders became infantry. At the very least, this spared them the tragedy of having their mounts suddenly speared and toppled beneath them.

This troop was indeed well drilled. Even after being stunned by the ambush, once they dismounted they quickly formed small clusters of three or five men to cover one another and hold off the attacks from all sides. For a moment, the escorts’ assault could not make headway.

But in the blink of an eye, the ten skilled horse-archers from Huo Family Ridge who had ridden out around the wagon barricade came thundering back. With the continual snapping of their riding bows, they seemed to have resumed their identities as bandits, and before them lay a merchant convoy with its back fully exposed. The first true round of plundering began.

In an instant, four of the dismounted riders were struck and fell. The cavalry that had just managed to steady itself instantly grew panicked. They had not been able to bring all their military gear with them on this outing, and against the successive, limited volleys of arrows they could do little but use their sabers to knock the shafts aside. Yet they could not also watch for the spears around them. With no way to divide their attention, the riders were either struck by hidden arrows or skewered through the body by spears thrust suddenly into their faces while they were evading the arrows. Some unlucky ones were hit by stray shots that had already missed their mark.

Within the span of a few breaths, seven or eight more men were down. The escorts pressed forward again, shrinking the encirclement by another degree and applying even greater pressure to the cavalry.

It seemed everyone had become a little too absorbed in the killing, or perhaps the plan had gone so smoothly that they had grown overconfident and forgotten that Huo Lang had only intercepted part of the cavalry. There were still a full twenty riders who had successfully broken through the line earlier, and at this moment they had wheeled their horses around and were charging back at full speed.

The only one who noticed this was Ding Li, who had scarcely taken part in the fighting. He spun and sprinted toward a horse, scooped up a spear that had been dropped on the ground, vaulted into the saddle, hauled on the reins to turn the horse around, and kicked in the stirrups without the slightest pause as he rode straight toward the cavalry behind them. At the same time he shouted a warning to Huo Lang at the top of his lungs, “Second Master Huo, hold the rear!”

At once Huo Lang realized that their victory was not even halfway secured. He abandoned the men trapped in the encirclement before him, wheeled his mount, and shouted sharply to the men behind him, “Go! Stop them!”

Along with Ding Li and Huo Lang, several of the wagon drivers also set off. The tragic deaths of their companions had shaken them deeply, especially after the cavalry had all dismounted and they no longer had obvious targets. But when they heard Ding Li’s cry, they immediately turned their attention to the riders. One by one they began to swing their arms with cautious deliberation, their flickering gazes constantly roaming over the twenty horsemen as they searched for and fixed upon the gold leaf that belonged to each of them.

Including Ding Li and Huo Lang, there were no more than eight men in all. Yet facing nearly three times their number, not a single one of them showed fear. Ding Li, in particular, rode at the front, and the long spear in his hand gave him a certain advantage. Though it was not ideally suited to combat from horseback, he paid it no mind at all, his eyes fixed tightly on the squad leader opposite him as the man strained to urge his mount forward.

“Brothers, charge through!” the leader shouted suddenly, twisting the lance in his hand slightly as the distance between the two sides closed at speed, as if trying to rally his men.

On Ding Li’s side, no one spoke. They simply kept kicking at their stirrups, urging their mounts to greater speed. Behind Ding Li, Huo Lang and the others deliberately or unconsciously formed a line abreast, as though each of them were confident they could knock their own opponent from the saddle.

Twenty paces, fifteen, ten, eight...

In the blink of an eye, each side could clearly see the expression on the other’s face. Ding Li, his features set and grave, suddenly moved. He did not, like an ordinary cavalryman, thrust his weapon at the enemy or the horse beneath him. Instead, he abruptly brought the spear across his chest, then drove his arms forward with a violent push. It was as if some immense force had taken hold of the enemy before him, drawing the nearly two-zhang spear abruptly toward itself.

“Huh?” The three men riding abreast, including the squad leader, had just been about to thrust their lances when they hurriedly drew them back and instinctively tried to knock aside the spear blocking their way. Of course, the three of them working together did succeed in deflecting it, but by then the distance between the two sides had closed too much, and they no longer had room to thrust their lances out in time.

More importantly, Ding Li already had a broad-backed saber in his hand. In a flash, he spurred toward the space between the squad leader and another rider. As the three horses crossed, he swung his saber with lightning speed. Two sprays of blood burst into the air, and the squad leader and the other rider, both clutching their lances tightly and still full of unwillingness, toppled sideways and crashed to the ground.

Killing two men in one stroke did not make things easy for Ding Li. With two more riders suddenly in front of him, especially with their lances stabbing at both him and his horse, his saber was nowhere near enough to parry them. Acting with swift decisiveness, Ding Li simply abandoned defense. He yanked hard on the reins, and as the warhorse came to an abrupt stop, he threw himself sideways to the ground without hesitation, avoiding the two attacks. His mount, however, suffered terribly, taking one lance through the front belly and another through its flank, and its cries of pain rang out again and again.

Because the lances had pierced the horses and could not be drawn out in time, the movements of the two riders were likewise obstructed. Ding Li gained a brief opening to breathe, and before the iron hooves of the warhorse could come down on him, he rolled away. With a fierce sweep of his sharp saber, he cleanly severed part of one rider’s horse’s hind leg. The horse, screaming in agony, immediately collapsed to the side. The rider on its back lost his balance, flailed his arms with wild cries, and before he could even hit the ground, Ding Li’s saber had already slashed through half his neck.

The six men under Huo Lang were also quite capable. In hard, head-on cavalry clashes, they had practiced often enough in the Huo Family Ridge stronghold, and they had even seen real combat from time to time while robbing passing convoys. So this was nothing unfamiliar. Though they lacked Ding Li’s prowess of facing three men alone, they still brought down five riders at the cost of only one man being speared from the saddle. Three were wounded and two killed, which was an excellent result.

“Bind them! Don’t stand there dumbly!” Ding Li, having just risen again, picked up a lance from the ground and hurled it viciously at a rider whose back was turned to him. At the same time, he shouted loudly at the wagon drivers nearby who were itching to move.

That shout not only reminded the drivers, it also startled the dozen riders who had just charged through. They had seen with their own eyes the miserable fate of their comrades after being dragged from the saddle by those rope nooses. They had originally meant to smash through the escorts armed with spears all at once, but now they had no choice but to be wary of sudden attacks that might come from above at any moment.

Chief Escort Li Shan had already closed in on the enemy and was brandishing his large saber as he led the charge into brutal close combat. Among the escorts, there were also several men skilled at hand-to-hand fighting who had swapped their spears for weapons they handled best. One of them was even swinging a chained meteor hammer, leaving the enemies armed with standard sabers with nowhere to dodge. If they tried to block it, either the hammer would smash their blades in half, or the chain would slip past the edge and wrap around the weapon in an instant. The lucky ones merely had their weapons torn from their hands; the unlucky were struck by the whirling hammer and had their bones shattered and sinews broken.

Deputy Escort Scarface Wei, meanwhile, had turned his silver-shafted spear into a blooming mass of spearflowers. With the protection of the remaining escort spearmen on either side, he actually kept the riders charging toward them from daring to force their way in recklessly.

The ten Huo Family Ridge horse-archers circling the outside were the most at ease and also, in truth, under the greatest psychological pressure. Though they were not clashing directly with the enemy and their lives were not immediately threatened, every opportunity they had came at the cost of their companions’ efforts. Even the escorts they had never met before were now brothers-in-arms fighting shoulder to shoulder with them. As they rode and ran, every arrow they loosed carried everyone’s hopes. After all, every enemy they shot down meant one less casualty on their own side and one more step toward victory.

Now that all the cavalry had lost their mobility advantage, especially with the ten Huo Family Ridge archers constantly firing from the perimeter and Miao Cuihua, who at some unknown point had picked up two short crossbows from the ground and occasionally used them to pin and kill enemies, this cavalry troop had become the focus of all blades and arrows.

Ding Li and Huo Lang also seized their weapons and entered the fray on foot. One enemy after another could no longer hold out. The close combat erupted in full, and in an instant it reached its height. With every desperate exchange of sabers and spears, bodies fell one after another. Those still able to rise, even if they struggled back into the fight, were quickly finished off by nearby enemies with an added blow before collapsing again, never to stand.

Those who were especially fortunate were dragged or supported out of the melee by sharp-eyed comrades and barely saved their lives. But when they saw the very companions who had just reached out to help them fall in the next instant, they could not bear to stand by and watch those friends die. Even with their wounds, they clenched their teeth, got to their feet, took up their weapons, and hurled themselves once more into the crowd to continue the struggle to the death.

In such a fight to the death, Ding Li’s limbs and body gradually loosened and opened up. He could no longer remember how long it had been since he had last experienced such a scene. Everything around him was almost completely laid bare before his eyes. Whether it was the escorts on his own side, the brothers of Huo Family Ridge, or the enemies trapped within the encirclement, all were fighting with utter disregard for life and death. What Ding Li saw was not merely the cold, merciless flash of blades and the blood that kept appearing before him, but also the hot blood surging through each person present, and the conviction each of them held in their hearts.

For the brothers at their side, each of them could exert every ounce of strength to swing the weapon in their hand. For the wounded comrades behind them, each of them could step forward without the slightest hesitation at the critical moment.

For the different beliefs each held within, each of them could always make actions that others found difficult to understand.

For example, just now Ding Li had personally seen Deputy Escort Scarface Wei, in order to save an escort beside him, allow a saber from the opposite side to carve a wound in his left arm so deep it reached the bone.

It was not only the escorts who could do such things. Ding Li also saw, with his own eyes, that before Huo Lang’s spear could strike the brigade commander, one of the commander’s subordinates suddenly darted forward and threw himself in front of his superior, taking that likely fatal blow in his stead.