Chapter 32: The Widowmaker (Part Two - Seeking Subscriptions)

Liu Tong originally intended to launch a night attack, but just as he reached the city walls, he noticed that the defenders were reinforcing their positions. A startled soldier accidentally loosed an arrow prematurely, turning what was meant to be a stealth raid into a full-scale assault. Unfortunately, they only had makeshift scaling ladders, which were actually prepared for a surprise infiltration. Now that the defenders were fully alert, the utility of these ladders was severely limited.

Liu Tong’s cousin, Liu Lan, looked at him and asked, "Uncle, what should we do now?"

"We can't keep fighting like this. The losses are too heavy for us!" When Liu Tong defected to Liang Shidu, he brought with him over three hundred youths of the Lingzhou Liu clan. Now commanding for the first time, Liu Tong had placed his clansmen into various junior officer positions throughout the army. Just moments ago, his other nephew, Liu Yishan, had his head pierced by an arrow, dying a tragic death beneath the walls of Lingzhou City. Even his own biological son, Liu Tianyi, had been struck in the shin bone. Given the medical standards of this era, Liu Tianyi would be confined to a bed for the rest of his life.

Thinking of how his only son had almost perished beneath the walls of Lingzhou, Liu Tong felt a towering hatred. Yet, looking at the endless array of defense tactics displayed on the ramparts—especially the fact that even now, the Lingzhou garrison had not bothered to ring the alarm bells, clearly showing that the defending commander believed he could handle the situation with ease—Liu Tong gritted his teeth and said with bitter resentment, "Retreat for now! Build proper siege engines, and resume the attack after dawn!"

Hearing Liu Tong's command, the Liang soldiers felt as if they had been granted a pardon. They hastily retreated. In truth, the Lingzhou garrison had not inflicted massive casualties on the Liang army below, accounting for only a little over two hundred casualties. However, the feeling of these sudden firebombs dropping from the sky like moths flying into a flame, followed by dense volleys of arrows that left them nowhere to hide and no way to evade, was utterly suffocating.

Moreover, the weather was freezing. As they lay on the snow, their hands and feet grew numb with cold. Not only were their shots inaccurate, but they lacked any strength. Even if a blind cat chanced upon a dead mouse and managed to hit an enemy, the foe would act as if nothing had happened, pull out the arrow, and immediately shoot it back at them.

Watching the Liang soldiers slowly retreat like a receding tide, Liang Zan praised, "Commander Chen is truly a born military genius, anticipating even the enemy's night raid. Otherwise, if the enemy had managed to slip through a gap, we would have suffered a disastrous defeat!"

"Uh..." Chen Ying had no idea how to respond to Liang Zan. He had never anticipated that the Liang army would launch a night raid; the real reason was simply too embarrassing to utter. He Yue'er had been using every possible feminine wiles to seduce him in his quarters. As a normal man, Chen Ying had almost failed to hold his ground. But remembering that He Yue'er was sent by Li Xiuning, Chen Ying dared to pluck out his own eyeballs and crush them like glass marbles if he believed He Yue'er's seduction wasn't instigated or hinted at by Li Xiuning.

"Stop talking nonsense!" To cover up his embarrassment, Chen Ying put on a stern face and said, "Now hurry up and tend to the wounded soldiers, eat, and rest! We still have fierce battles ahead of us!"

At this moment, whether it was the Lingzhou garrison or the soldiers of the Right Guard Escort, everyone looked upon Chen Ying as if he were a divine being. Chen Ying's orders were executed without the slightest hesitation or discount.

Chen Ying did not stand on the battlements to catch the cold wind. He returned to the interior of the city gate tower to carefully analyze the current political landscape. Xue Ju of Hexi had already perished, leaving only the King of Yongle, Li Gui. Although Chen Ying was unsure how the Tang Dynasty pacified Li Gui, he remembered that in the second year of Wude, the Tang of Li completely annexed the Hexi region. Thus, Li Gui's demise was not far off.

The sky gradually grew brighter, and the camp cooks within the city hauled barrels upon barrels of food up to the city walls. Because Chen Ying had captured a large number of injured and dead horses, horse meat was supplied in abundance. Even for breakfast, there was a bowl of millet rice accompanied by two half-pound portions of horse meat. Although horse meat did not taste particularly good, these ordinary soldiers, who rarely saw any meat year-round, ate with immense satisfaction.

The visibility had widened significantly. Standing on the city wall, Chen Ying looked out at the shivering Liang army soldiers in the cold wind; at this moment, no cooking smoke seemed to rise from the Liang formation.

Seeing this, a plan formed in Chen Ying's mind.

"Liang Zan, go find a few soldiers with loud voices!"

Before long, Liang Zan brought over twenty loud-voiced soldiers to Chen Ying.

Chen Ying instructed, "All of you, stand on the city wall and shout to the Liang army: 'Brothers of the Liang army, are you hungry? We have food here! Surrender to the Great Tang and you'll have meat to eat!'"

The phrase was very short and simple, and the twenty-or-so soldiers learned it after a single try. They shouted at the top of their lungs toward the foot of the wall: "Brothers of the Liang army, are you hungry? We have food here! Surrender to the Great Tang and you'll have meat to eat!"

Yet, after shouting more than a dozen times, there was no reaction whatsoever from within the Liang formation.

Liang Zan watched as Chen Ying happily ate his millet rice and remarked, "Commander, it doesn't seem to be doing much good?"

"It would be a miracle if it worked right away!" Chen Ying said, his mouth full of food and his words somewhat muffled. "I'm just doing this purely to disgust the Liang army!"

"Disgust them?"

"Of course! If we let them smoothly prepare their siege engines, it will give us a hard time later on!" Chen Ying laughed. "So let them shout. It has no effect now, but it will have an effect in the future!"

As for the Liang soldiers beneath the city hearing the Tang army's shouting, it was far from having no effect—in fact, the effect was profound. Deng Jichang was originally a merchant from Feng'an County in Lingzhou. A month prior, while preparing to flee back to the Guanzhong region, he had been captured by the Liang army. There were quite a number of common people like Deng Jichang captured by the Liang army. However, the Liang army was not running a charitable foundation; they captured these civilians, picked out the able-bodied young men, and left the elderly, weak, women, and children to fend for themselves.

Because Deng Jichang knew how to read and write and was skilled in arithmetic, he naturally became a baggage secretary for the Liang army. To say that Deng Jichang held any loyalty to Liang Shidu would be sheer nonsense. However, Deng Jichang dared not disobey the orders of the Liang army because his parents, wife, and children were being held hostage in Yanzhou.

As long as any of them dared to flee privately, the family members detained in Yanzhou would undoubtedly be killed, and his wife and daughter sold to the Turks as slaves. When the shouting began atop the city wall, Deng Jichang looked at the people whispering among themselves nearby.

Although he could not hear clearly what they were discussing, Deng Jichang knew very well that these people were all deliberating on how they could surrender to the Tang army.

At that moment, the battle drums of the Liang army's Left Division Headquarters began to beat.

"Thump, thump..."

The deep, resonant drumbeats shook the entire sky. In truth, the Liang army's preparations for the assault were not yet complete, but prompted by the Tang army's shouting from the city walls, the morale of the Liang army had begun to waver. Liu Tong was forced to issue the order to attack prematurely.

With Liu Tong's command, a proper, purely traditional Chinese-style siege and defense battle commenced.

Since Liang Shidu's supplies were also not abundant—such as hundreds or thousands of catapults relentlessly bombarding the city wall day and night—Liu Tong could not afford such a luxurious style of warfare. He had no choice but to use heavy crossbows to suppress the archers on the city wall, followed closely by scaling ladders.

Two ranks of over two hundred heavy crossbowmen, carrying heavy crossbows on their backs, slowly advanced, shielded by swordsmen on either side. Upon reaching the distance calculated by their officers, they sat down together and drew the crossbows using the strength of their waists! This wasn't even the most terrifying part; the most terrifying were the eight flat, four-wheeled wooden wagons. Pushed by dozens of soldiers, they slowly rumbled toward the city wall.

When Chen Ying saw the appearance of the Liang heavy crossbowmen, his expression remained entirely natural, but upon catching sight of those four-wheeled wooden wagons, his face changed drastically: "Widow-makers?"