Chapter Ninety: The Turks Rout and Collapse

Because the cavalrymen and their mounts that had charged at the front lay piled in the way, those behind them could not surge over their fallen comrades and press the attack. For if they did, the place where they landed would greet them with the gleaming blades of the long sabers. The Turkic swords were shorter in reach than those weapons, and some riders, determined to force their way through the seemingly thin wall of sabermen, were cut cleanly in two, horse and rider alike, by the blades before them.

At once the Turkic force, already reduced by nearly a third, was split into two parts again. But by then the two armies had already become locked together in ferocious combat. In the minds of the soldiers on both sides, there remained only one task: cut down the enemy before them, then seek out the next. Thus, for a time, the Turks trapped within the formation did not realize they were surrounded inside the great array. They simply galloped about within it, searching for the musketeers they had seen earlier.

Yet no matter how they spurred their horses through the formation, they could not find those musketeers anywhere. All they saw were sabermen in heavy armor that even covered their faces. At first glance, the Turks took these men for lightly armored troops in full-body protection, and even tried to hack at them with their sabers or kick and trample them with their mounts. But they soon discovered in terror that even when they hurled the sabermen dozens of paces away with the force of a charging horse, even when they risked their own lives and shattered their mounts’ bones and sinews in a desperate impact, all they achieved was to send the sabermen flying. In the next instant, those men could rise again and come at them with those long blades in hand.

The hundreds of horse and rider corpses strewn across the formation proved once more that their weapons could not wound these Han soldiers. By contrast, the broad-edged long sabers in the hands of those infantrymen could send them tumbling from the saddle with appalling ease. Only then did the Turks, flushed with bloodlust, recover a measure of reason and finally realize that they had been surrounded by the sabermen within the formation.

"Darul, we’re surrounded," one of the bodyguards said to the Turkic cavalry commander.

Only then did the commander, called Darul, notice that he and the cavalry outside had been cut off from one another. Looking around, he saw the Turkic horsemen inside the square formation growing fewer by the moment, and an ominous feeling rose in his heart. If he did not break out at once, he feared he and his men would be trapped and die here in the Han formation. He raised his saber and pointed toward what looked like a weaker wall of men, shouting, "Warriors, gather with me and charge there. Cut a path out. Once we break through, we can join the cavalry outside. To remain here is only death. Better to stake our lives and charge once more."

He squeezed his horse’s flanks and urged it forward, driving straight at the weak point in the formation. That was not the place Li Wenyuan had deliberately set as bait for the enemy’s assault, but rather a gap opened because the sabermen there had run out of strength. Even though Li Wenyuan’s sabermen were drawn from the stoutest Han men in all the Western Regions, the source of soldiers still had its grades and ranks; after all, not everyone’s strength could sustain heavy armor and continuous combat.

As the Turkic cavalry’s assault on one corner of the great formation grew more obvious, Li Wenyuan also saw that the ranks there had become somewhat disorderly, with several sabermen lying on the ground, alive or dead, impossible to tell. A group of Turkic horsemen had already reached the opening, and he hurriedly led the combat team beside him toward that gap. But how could two legs ever outrun four, especially when those legs were burdened with dozens of pounds of armor?

Seeing the Turkic riders drawing ever closer to the breach, Li Wenyuan, in desperation, reversed the saber in his hand, lifted it high, and flung it like a spear at the body of a Turk who was about to burst through. That rider was Darul. Darul had just broken out of the formation and had not even had time to catch his breath when the saber struck from behind, piercing through his back and out through his chest. In the next instant, Li Wenyuan’s hurled blade had pinned him alive to the ground. The other Turkic riders, shaken by the sight, could not help but slow their mounts.

The few sabermen still able to move at the opening saw a Turkic rider pinned to the earth by a saber that had flown past from behind them, and they hastily turned to look. Catching sight of the Turkic cavalry trying to break out, they helped and hauled one another upright, summoning their last strength to block the breach.

By then Li Wenyuan had also arrived with his combat team. After cutting down several Turkic riders in quick succession, he finally steadied the somewhat chaotic line. As the Turkic horsemen inside the formation grew fewer and fewer, the distance between each combat team also shrank. Gradually, the maneuvering room of the Turkic riders was compressed into a single corner of the great formation, stripping away the mobility advantage their horses had provided. Under the pressure of the sabermen advancing slowly like mountains, they had only two choices: either fight a mad, desperate last stand, or dismount and surrender in hopes of saving their lives.

The Turkic cavalry outside the square formation saw that their comrades inside were already collapsing, and sharp-eyed men even noticed that the rider Li Wenyuan had pinned to the ground was none other than their commander, Darul. Their morale faltered at once. Just then someone shouted, "If the commander is dead, why are we still here? Waiting to be killed?" The rider turned his horse and fled in the direction from which they had come.

Only then did the Turkic cavalry fully come to their senses. Seeing the sabermen before them, their armor stained red with either horse blood or human blood, advancing step by step toward them, they were seized by panic and all turned their mounts north in flight.

Watching the Turkic horsemen scatter northward, Li Wenyuan finally let out a long breath. He halted the advancing formation and ordered his men to drag the last small cluster of Turkic riders inside the formation from their saddles and bind them. Then he drove the hilt of his saber heavily into the ground, sinking the blade deep into the earth. After that he removed his helmet and set it on the ground beside him, then dropped heavily onto a horse carcass nearby. He accepted the cloth handed to him by one of his men and wiped the sweat and blood from his face and hair.

The Turkic riders fleeing north had not gone far when they ran into the Fourth Legion, charging down from north to south. Uduro took the lead, galloping at the very front. With every swing of his saber, he toppled more than a dozen Turkic riders. The rest of the cavalry, unwilling to be outdone, followed their commander into the fray. The riders who had broken away from Li Wenyuan’s front line, once they collided with the Fourth Legion’s cavalry, lost even more of their momentum. Then, cowed by Uduro’s ferocity, they quickly fell apart and scattered in all directions, only to be encircled by the cavalry coming up behind the Fourth Legion.

In this battle, of the more than three thousand Turkic cavalrymen who came in the attack, aside from over five hundred captured alive, the rest all perished on the battlefield or died of grievous wounds. Li Wenyuan also seized nearly a thousand horses, though these were all animals raised in Turkic households and were not as fine as those bred in his own military stables. In the end, he simply awarded them all to the civilian laborers accompanying the army.

The End of Chapter.