By early dusk, the fires in the fields had died, leaving only a thick curtain of smoke that hid the opposite side of the valley. Hsuang feared his army would spend the night in the entrenchments.
Finally, horse whinnies began sounding from the opposite side of the smoky dale.
"Are they our scouts?" Hsuang asked of no one in particular. "I can't see anything in this smoke."
A gentle rumble rolled across the burning fields, as if several hundred horses were galloping down the road from Shihfang.
"It can't be the scouts," said one of the nobles. "They wouldn't return all at once."
"It isn't the barbarians," Cheng countered. "There aren't enough of them."
No one took their eyes off the haze-filled valley.
A moment later, a wide line of riders broke out of the smoke and charged toward the brook. Their mounts were small and slender, with graceful forms and fine features. On their chests and flanks, the horses were protected by barding of hardened leather. The men wore long leather hauberks, split front and rear so they could sit in their saddles. Steel skullcaps, shaped in the fashion of a cone and trimmed with fur, protected their heads. Each man carried a short lance and a melon-sized cotton bag. In the fading light, Hsuang could not see the rider's faces, but he did not doubt they had flat noses and broad cheekbones similar to those of his son-in-law.
On the slope below, archers began nocking arrows. Officers looked toward the hilltop expectantly. Hsuang started to give the order to fire, but thought better of it. There were no more than two hundred barbarians. If he attacked, fifty times that number of men would fire. Thousands of arrows would be wasted.
Instead, he remained impassive as the enemy's small line approached. Every archer in the Twenty-five Armies remained stoic and silent, ready to pull his bowstring taut, resisting the temptation to loose an arrow before receiving the order.
Twenty yards on the other side of Hsuang's fortifications, the horsemen hurled the two hundred bags at the Shou line, then wheeled their horses around. The sacks landed among the defenders with dull plops. Small gaps opened in the lines as soldiers, fearing secret weapons or powerful war magic, scurried away from the mysterious bags.
Nothing happened. The riders rode away, disappearing into the smoking fields as if they were phantoms. The bags continued to lie where they had fallen. Eventually, a few soldiers ventured to open the sacks. Some simply stared at the contents in shock, while others closed the bags and looked away in disgust.
The lines began to rustle with murmurs of fear and anger.
"What can be inside those bags?" asked Cheng, frowning at the scene below.
"We shall see soon enough," Hsuang replied, motioning to his aide to fetch a sack.
When the boy returned, his face was pale and distressed. He carried a grimy hemp sack that held something the size of a melon. The youth bowed and presented the bag to his commander.
Hsuang accepted the sack. Noting that every peng in the Twenty-Five Armies was watching him, he turned the bag over. The head of a Shou soldier tumbled out. Though Hsuang could not be sure, he assumed the head belonged to one of his scouts.
Aware that any sign of disgust or repulsion would translate into low morale, the lord calmly retrieved the grisly head and returned it to the sack. Before he could think of any encouraging words, however, the ground began to tremble. A distant rumble came from the other side of the valley, and Hsuang's heart suddenly beat harder.
"The barbarians are coming," Cheng said, his mouth open in astonishment. "They intend to fight a night battle!"
Dropping the sack, Hsuang ordered, "Stand ready!"
The order was unnecessary. Like their commander, all forty-five thousand of his soldiers had focused their attention on the field. The dim light and heavy smoke made it impossible to see in any detail what was happening on the opposite side of the valley. To Hsuang, it seemed as though the far hill had come alive and was rolling toward them. His feet began to tingle, and the rumble grew increasingly thunderous. Two hundred yards in front of the first barricade, a teeming mass of galloping horses became visible in the smoldering barley fields.
Hsuang nodded to the noble commanding the rocketeers. "Fire when ready," he said to the nan.
The noble lifted his arm to signal, then looked twenty feet down the slope to where his standard-bearer stood. The nan did not give the order to fire, however. Though his rockets were more powerful than normal arrows, they were less accurate and had a shorter range.
The barbarians emerged from the smoke completely, riding shoulder to shoulder. They had let their reins fall free and were using both hands to nock arrows in their bows. In the deepening twilight, the riders' bulky silhouettes made them look like no more than shadows. Their line stretched for an entire mile down the valley, and Hsuang thought he could see several more ranks emerging from the smoke. At a minimum, the charge numbered sixty thousand men.
Eyeing the approaching wall of horsemen, Cheng said, "The enemy has committed his entire army. We'll destroy them in a single battle!"
"What makes you think this is the Tuigan's entire army?" Hsuang asked. His eyes remained fixed on the valley below.
Cheng did not answer. Like Hsuang and the others, he was waiting for the rockets to fire. The rocketeers stood behind the far barricade, separated from the closest conventional troops by gaps of twenty or thirty yards. Each man's kettle held thirty arrows and sat braced atop the barricade. The small end of each kettle was packed with thunder-powder. When the wick was lit, the powder would ignite, shooting the arrows out with incredible force. Or at least that was the theory.
When the barbarians approached to within seventy-five yards of the first barricade, their entire line suddenly reined their horses to a halt.
"What are they doing?" Hsuang demanded, angrily pointing at the enemy. "Why stop a charge in midstride?"
No one could answer.
The air resonated with the twang of sixty thousand Tuigan bowstrings. A black swarm of arrows sailed toward the first barricade. All along the line, men screamed in agony and fell. Hundreds of motionless Shou slipped into the brook and began to drift downstream.
"We cannot wait for the rocketeers any longer!" Hsuang snapped, chastising himself for allowing the barbarians to strike the first blow.
"They're barely within range," the nan objected, still holding his signal arm aloft. "If we wait just a little longer—"
"They're as close as they're going to come," Hsuang yelled, pointing at the stationary line. "Give the order!"
Frowning, the noble looked toward his standard-bearer and dropped his arm. An instant later, the turtle and shark crest began swaying from side to side.
The rocketeers touched their torches to the wicks. A series of booms and claps echoed through the valley, and great billows of black smoke rose into the air.
Hsuang could barely believe the results. In ten places, the kettles exploded instantly, flinging chunks of log and stray arrows in all directions. The rocketeers simply disappeared with the rest of the debris, and all that remained where they had stood were gaping holes in the barricade.
When the kettles did not explode, they sprayed their arrows out in an erratic, cone-shaped pattern that usually fell far short of the barbarian lines. The rockets that did reach the enemy, however, were effective. Nearly twenty riders sprouted arrows and flew out of their saddles with such force that there could be no doubt the men's armor had been penetrated. Dozens of horses dropped to the ground and did not move, dead at first impact. Hsuang could see why his subordinate had wanted to wait. At close range, the rockets' impact would have been devastating.