The Second Young Master Mingxin stepped off the boat, looked out at the snow-blanketed earth, and shuddered, hugging his arms to his chest.
"What a miserable place — so bloody cold! Nothing like being back in Longcheng."
"But my sister Jinyi was bullied, and no matter how cold it gets, I have to come out here and deal with these barbarians. How could I let a little north wind stop me!"
A tactful attendant offered his counsel: "Young Master, it's freezing out here. There's a brazier on the boat — you'd be better off staying aboard. This campaign against the barbarians still needs you at your best. What if you catch a chill and miss your chance to contribute?"
"You make a fair point!"
"Very well, then — I'll leave it all to everyone else. Get some cement and throw up a few buildings over there for the men to shelter in. I'll head back to the boat!"
Watching the Second Young Master retreat, an old retainer of the household muttered under his breath, "The young master is the master's spitting image."
They had come with a single purpose.
To drag the emperor of the world's most powerful realm back to Longcheng.
It was bound to be a long, costly undertaking.
But Zhao Baihui and the Zhao clan didn't care in the least.
Their family had been hurt. Someone had to answer for that.
This time they would make an example that the whole world couldn't ignore — a clear warning that anyone who dared lay a hand on the Zhao family had better be prepared for the very worst.
They had better ask themselves whether they could bear the consequences.
…
A quiet little town. A cavalry column of some thirty riders swept into it without a sound.
One rider seized a fleeing townsman and fixed him with an icy stare. "Tell me where the barbarians are in this town."
"Either you die, or they die. Choose."
The man's hand trembled as he pointed in a direction.
The rider grabbed him and hauled him up onto the horse. "Lead the way."
Moments later the horsemen crashed through the gates of a manor house.
Not long ago, a band of barbarians had broken down those same gates, slaughtered the wealthy merchant who owned the place, and made it their own. Now, barely any time later, the gates were broken down a second time, and every last barbarian who had settled in was put to the sword.
The place was turning into quite a cursed property.
"Move out. Next one."
Without the shelter of great city walls, cavalry in this age were invincible — and these were Wolf Soldiers.
The reckoning began in the territories north of the great river.
Head after head was brought back by the Wolf Soldiers.
The master had said he wanted ten thousand barbarian heads. That meant the tally could run over, but never short.
The Wolf Soldiers ranged far and wide, cutting down barbarians wherever they found them.
The barbarians despised them with a burning hatred, yet could never get their hands on them.
Longcheng had by now mastered the production of glass, and with glass came a new invention: the spyglass. Armed with spyglasses, the notion of the barbarians catching the Wolf Soldiers was pure fantasy.
Left with no good options, the barbarians dispersed their forces into small teams of their own, mirroring the Wolf Soldiers' tactics, hoping that sheer chance might eventually yield results.
The Wolf Soldiers had never crossed blades with the barbarians before, and the barbarians assumed the Wolf Soldiers couldn't amount to much — surely inferior to themselves. For decades, for centuries, the warriors of the steppe had stood at the absolute peak of martial prowess.
The Wolf Soldiers, for their part, had never fought the barbarians either, but they knew their enemy inside and out. They had studied the barbarians' weapons and armor in detail. A clash was coming sooner or later, and knowing your enemy is half the battle.
In a valley gorge, two forces stumbled headlong into each other.
One thousand barbarians against five hundred Wolf cavalry.
"Ha! You damned Wolf Soldiers — we've finally got you! This is Duoduo's moment of glory!"
"Brothers, charge! His Majesty's reward is waiting for us!"
A thousand barbarians surged forward like a pack of starving wolves, the earth shaking beneath their hooves.
The five hundred Wolf Soldiers stood their ground like five hundred statues.
"They're charging at full gallop from that far out — not sparing their horses at all. Are these really people who grew up on horseback? Or is their commander just an idiot?"
"Ha. Maybe they're afraid we'll run. They don't know we rode out to meet them on purpose."
"Ha. All the better. Let them tire their horses out. When they try to flee later, they'll be that much slower."
"Ready — begin!"
While the barbarians thundered forward in a frenzy, the Wolf Soldiers began to sing.
The melody was mournful — filled with longing for home, with yearning for loved ones left behind, with the pride of riding out to war, and with a quiet readiness to lay down one's life if fate so demanded.
The feeling spread through the ranks. The excitement and fever in the wolves' eyes gave way to a cold, blank calm, as though they had passed into a trance.
"Loose!" The barbarians raised their bows and let fly in a high volley.
A storm of arrows fell — and rattled off iron-plated armor. Not a single rider was unhorsed.
"Ready!"
The singing ceased. The Wolf Soldiers reached behind them and drew steel crossbows.
"Loose!"
A storm of arrows answered back. Barbarians fell in swaths.
Those steel crossbows far outclassed the barbarian bows in both range and hitting power.
If they hadn't spent time singing to stack their buff, they could have loosed several volleys already. But of course, there was also the concern of scaring the enemy into fleeing too soon.
"Charge!"
"Loose!"
The two sides exchanged several volleys. The barbarians suffered catastrophic losses while the Wolf Soldiers emerged almost entirely unscathed.
Panic seized the barbarians, but there was no retreating now — the two forces were too close.
The thunder of collision.
The two cavalry forces smashed into each other!
Cavalry charges left gaps between riders rather than packing them shoulder to shoulder, and the ground was wide. Most horses swept past one another in close, glancing passes.
A few unlucky pairs crashed head-on.
Two great beasts, each weighing hundreds upon hundreds of jin, slamming into each other at full gallop — both horses went down. Both riders were thrown. The unlucky ones snapped their necks on impact.
Mingwei rode at the very front. He leveled his long saber and let the momentum of his horse do the work, effortlessly shearing off heads and upper bodies one after another. When barbarian scimitars struck his iron-plate armor, they left nothing more than a small nick or a scratch.
The two forces swept through each other. The Wolf Soldiers numbered nearly five hundred still — a handful of unfortunate souls had been unhorsed. Of the thousand barbarians, barely three hundred remained.
The survivors, having scraped through those few minutes of meat-grinder carnage by sheer luck, were stunned senseless.
"Demons — demons! They can't be killed! They're demons! Run—"
"Half of you, give chase! The other half, clear the field!"
Mingwu raised his hand. The two lead companies spurred their horses in pursuit; the remaining two companies stayed to clean up the battlefield.
An hour later, Mingwei returned.
Of the thousand barbarians, just over a hundred had gotten away.
Whatever else could be said of them, these barbarians were superb horsemen who had grown up on the steppe and come of age in the saddle — skilled with both bow and horse, and no easy prey to run down.
"Third Brother, we've gained eight hundred horses. The Wolf Army can expand. And these horses are better than ours — well-fed and strong."
"This is just the beginning. The way things are going, we'll have more horses than we know what to do with. Get a count of our casualties and we'll head back."
The tally from the battle: roughly 850 barbarians killed.
Wolf Soldiers: 2 dead — two unlucky men who had been thrown from their horses and broken their necks.
"Have proper coffins prepared for our fallen brothers and send them home. Fallen leaves must return to their roots."