Chapter 98: The Spear Lifts the Wolf Banner

As the Turkic cavalry commander gave the order, that mounted band charged toward the southeast exit.

Seeing the Turkic riders bearing down on him, Li Wenyuan wasted no time in leveling the hand cannon in his grip at the approaching horsemen and pulling the trigger without a moment’s hesitation. Before the rising gunsmoke had even dispersed, he thrust the weapon back onto his horse’s back. Then, one after another, he drew out three more hand cannons and fired, until all four pre-loaded firearms were spent. Only then did he take up his long horse lance from the saddle bow.

When the other riders saw Li Wenyuan drawing and firing, they followed suit. In an instant, thunder rolled through Yinwa Gorge; the combined reports of several thousand short-barreled muskets left ears momentarily deafened. Li Wenyuan’s warhorses had all been trained to endure the sound of gunfire, but the Turkic horses were hearing it for the first time. Some of the younger mounts bolted in fright and no longer obeyed their masters.

Even so, although a number of enemy horses were startled and threw the ranks into slight disorder, the momentum of the cavalry charge had already been set, and a little confusion was not enough to stop it. Li Wenyuan held his long lance in one hand, its point aimed straight at the oncoming Turkic horsemen, while his other hand clenched the reins tightly.

Before long, the front lines of the two forces crashed violently into each other. Grasping his lance one-handed and borrowing the surge of his horse’s charge, Li Wenyuan ran a Turkic rider clean through the chest and lifted him straight off his saddle, throwing him down. That immediately drew the attacks of several Turkic riders nearby. Sitting in the saddle, Li Wenyuan feinted with his lance, shaking off two of them, then drew the weapon back and slammed it down from above onto another Turkic horseman. That rider had no time to dodge; his head, sheltered only by a felt cap, took the full force of the blow. In an instant his skull burst apart and he toppled beneath his horse.

Li Wenyuan had no time to mind the liquid splashed across his face—brains or blood, he could not tell. His nerves coiled taut, and he felt no itch from the nameless fluid trickling past the corner of his eye. At that moment he was sweeping his lance back and forth, cutting his way through the Turkic ranks in a furious rampage. Wherever Li Wenyuan’s lance pointed, enemy riders tumbled from their horses, and none could withstand him for more than three exchanges.

After beating back a swarm of Turks who had pressed in together, seeking to cut him from his horse by the weight of numbers, Li Wenyuan looked around. The riders around him were all clad in gleaming heavy armor, and could withstand one or two blows from Turkic sabers. Yet their mounted skill was still somewhat inferior to that of the Turkic elite, and casualties gradually began to appear. As Li Wenyuan surveyed the battlefield, one place especially caught his attention.

There, a rider carried a large banner with an exquisitely embroidered wolf’s head. The Turkic cavalrymen guarding that banner fought with exceptional ferocity and remarkable martial skill. In the brief instant he looked, three or four of his own horsemen were slashed down and thrown from their saddles. As far as Li Wenyuan knew, a banner carrying such a finely embroidered wolf’s head was surely the wolf banner commonly used by the Turks—the battle standard of a Turkic army. On the battlefield, such a standard was usually kept at the side of the army’s commander, protected by the most elite mounted guards chosen from the whole force.

For a people that took the wolf as their totem, the wolf-head banner was an extremely important symbol. As long as the wolf banner did not fall, the Turks would fight with exceptional ferocity. But if it fell, it would deal a heavy blow to their morale. And in close-quarters combat such as this, morale was precisely the key to determining victory or defeat.

At that thought, Li Wenyuan called to his personal guards nearby, pointed his lance at the wolf banner, and said: “Men, follow me through. We’ll take that wolf banner from the frontier savages.”

With that, he wheeled his horse, brandished his lance, and charged straight toward the wolf banner.

The force guarding that banner was indeed the personal cavalry of the Turkic commander, and the commander himself was among them. Seeing a troop of Han riders charging toward them, they cut down the Han cavalry entangled with them, wheeled their horses, and met the small enemy band head-on.

When Li Wenyuan saw that the guards beneath the wolf banner had noticed him and were charging at him, he shouted: “I am Li Wenyuan, Commander of the Western Regions! Which of you death-defying brutes dares to come and fight me?”

Hearing Li Wenyuan announce his name, the Turkic cavalry commander was overjoyed. He thought to himself: if he could wound Li Wenyuan, or even cut him down from his horse, then his cavalry could return safely to Guazhou. And he remembered how, some days earlier, one of his mounted companies had been wiped out by Li Wenyuan’s army. His heart burned with anger and hatred. Countless times he had wished to hack Li Wenyuan into pieces, to avenge those dead kinsmen. Never had he expected the chance to appear before his very eyes. In his great delight, he put aside some of his contempt and prepared to fight Li Wenyuan with all his strength.

Watching that Turkic commander charging toward him, Li Wenyuan did not dare to be careless. After all, his true target was the wolf banner, not a single Turkic rider. Glancing left and right, he reached out and pulled an unfired short-barreled musket from the saddle of the guard on his left. He aimed it directly at the Turkic commander galloping at him and pulled the trigger.

Though the Turkic commander had never seen such a thing before, he had noticed Li Wenyuan’s cavalry using these objects during the charge. These stick-like things would let out a tremendous roar and spew thick smoke. And with every roar, one of his own brave men would fall dead from his horse. In his eyes, such a stick-like object could obliterate a man’s soul outright. So when he saw Li Wenyuan point that stick at him, his mind went blank for an instant—he had no time even to react.

After the gunshot, the Turkic commander looked at the wound in his chest, from which blood gushed outward, and fell from his horse with unwillingness written across his face.

Li Wenyuan then shoved the short-barreled musket back onto the saddle bow of the cavalryman beside him. While those nearby were still dazed by the report, he cut through the guards beneath the wolf banner, ran his lance through the Turkic rider holding it, and seized the banner in his hand. Raising his voice, he shouted: “The wolf banner is lost! Your commander is dead! Will you savages still fight to the bitter end?”

(Chapter end)