385 Facing Off (1/2)
Gu Shenwei waited for three more days before agreeing to fight.
During the three days, the 3,000 soldiers of the Shili family' army, who had come to the city with only their weapons, horses and dry food, plundered the city's treasure and thus accumulated lots of money and slaves. Now, every soldier in the army owned some slaves and several parcels of valuable items.
The slaves in the city were still loyal to their masters, but the nobles declined to trust them. They accused them of doing nothing when the thousands of slave men had been compelled to join the army of the Great Snowmountain and began to take their revenge on the slaves in the city before the war.
This situation made soldiers of the Great Snowmountain somewhat anxious, as they always considered the wealth and slaves of the city as their spoils. Although the Dragon King forbade them from dividing these spoils of war, they still could not remain calm when seeing their loot and slaves fall into the hands of the enemy.
Groups of soldiers came to see the Dragon King one after another, demanding to wage war against the Shili family right now.
The Shili family's army was eager to take their loot away, and the Great Snowmountain troops were in a hurry to obtain the loot back. As such, both of these two belligerent parties wished to fight to see who was the stronger as soon as possible. This was the backdrop for the battle.
The Shili family, who enjoyed numerical superiority in terms of troops, was the first one to issue the challenge. The sons of Shili Molo were confident, since they were well aware that there were only 1,500-1,600 professional soldiers in the Great Snowmountain troops and all the nobles in the city had promised them that the slave soldiers of the Great Snowmountain would change sides amid the war upon hearing their masters' orders.
Gu Shenwei felt the same way about the slave soldiers as the nobles did. Given that, he decided to leave the slaves soldiers behind and assigned a small troop of veterans to supervise them.
The slave soldiers accepted this arrangement obediently and then calmly waited for the outcome of the war. They did not care much about the outcome. All they needed to do was to wait for their master to return with victory, as the winner of the war would surely belong to their master.
The site of the battle was also decided by the Shili family.
This place was not far away from the capital and used to be covered by a Flower Soul Forest, which had already been burnt to the ground by Tuo Nengya. As now there were no plants or trees hindering the soldiers' movement, it was the best place for the two armies to fight a battle.
This place was a piece of low-lying land, and there were slopes on both its eastern and the western sides. As such, these slopes become natural stands for the nobles to watch the fight.
The nobles had never intended to fight against the Great Snowmountain troops by themselves. They had spent a lot to hire their reinforcements and now they only wanted to observe the battle at a safe distance from the slope on the eastern side of the battlefield.
The 1,000 or so noble men also invited their wives and children to watch the fight for a reason that only themselves could understand. These nobles came to the slope followed by a large group of slaves, who stayed by their side and held parasols open for them.
The nobles had been dishonest with the Dragon King from the very beginning, and all the population figures they had provided were incorrect. Every noble family had tried their best to hide many of their young slaves, and now they finally could let all of them out.
As for the two armies on the battleground, neither of them had dispatched all of its soldiers to take part in the battle.
The machetemen troop under the command of Tuo Nengya had been divided into two parts. One part of it stayed behind to supervise their slave soldiers, and the other part went to lie in ambush at a place designated by the Dragon King.
Yesterday, a small troop of swordsmen had launched a surprise attack on the tribal troops' military camp. They killed no one but snatched some valuable items from the camp. This incident made the tribal troops believe that the Dragon King was coveting their wealth. They got nervous and decided to leave one third of their men to defend their camp before they left to fight against the Dragon King's army.
Under such circumstances, the tribal troops still had 2,000 soldiers joining the fight and enjoyed numerical superiority over the Great Snowmountain troops who had only 1,300 soldiers.
Upon seeing that, the nobles of the Land of Fragrance were extremely excited, as it was going to be the first battle that happened in their nation after more than a century. None of the noblemen had seen a real battle, but they had read a lot about wars in the ancient books. Now they all began to show off their knowledge in front of their wives and children, and some of them even started to loudly recite some well-written paragraphs about wars from the books.
They firmly believed that it would be an easy victory for them as their tribal soldiers significantly outnumbered the Dragon King's warriors. Besides, according to their ancient books, the Land of Fragrance had won every war that had happened here before. They were sure that this war was no exception.
They hated the Dragon King, for he had violated the greatest taboo in their culture. They would never accept slaves as their equals.
Before the war, the nobles had held a writing competition which had attracted more than 100 talented young writers to join. Every participant of this competition had to write an article to describe the upcoming battle and submit it to a jury consisting of tribal chiefs and some other elders.
The winner of this competition used metaphorical language to write an epic. In this work, which the author had spent two days and two nights to complete, the Dragon King was depicted as a fierce-looking dragon who led numerous demons to invade the peaceful and civilian Land of Fragrance, and the 7 sons of the Shili family were described as brave young men who rose to the challenge and waged war against the evil dragon. He also described the fighting scenes in detail through a great many pages.
At this moment, the author was reading this story out loud and passionately to his fellow countrymen and winning rapturous applause from his audience.
When he came to the part where the patron gods of the Land of Fragrance were moved by the 7 sons of the Shilli family and about to send troops from heaven to slay the evil dragon, the real battle in the low-lying land began.
The Shili family's army launched an attack first.
Their army consisted of troops borrowed from a dozen tribes outside the Land of Fragrance, who did business with the Shili family; they agreed to join the sons of Shili Molo after being promised ample rewards.
The eldest son of Shili Molo, who was venerated as commander-in-chief of this army, did not know how to handle military affairs at all and even scorned to get involved in a battle, so he simply let the tribal troops stand in a line and allow them to decide when to start a charge and how fast they would charge toward the enemies. As a result, the Shili family's army was just a loose coalition of forces.
As for the army of the Great Snowmountain, its commander-in-chief, the Dragon King, personally led the soldiers to the battlefield, and the soldiers were neatly aligned into three sections: the swordsmen from the Great Snowmountain were placed on the flanks of the battle line, and the 300 conscripted savages who served as bowmen stood in a line in front of the swordsmen.
Due to the fact that neither side was good at fighting on horseback, no cavalrymen were involved in this battle. The swordsmen had once fought on horseback, but their performance could hardly compete with that of professional cavalrymen. In addition, their heavy swords were not suitable for this type of fighting.
At this moment, the Dragon King could not help thinking of his military counselor, Fang Wenshi. ”If that scholar was here, he would be strongly against such an arrangement. He would say that a general should avoid joining the fight and he must focus on managing the overall process of the battle and acting according to circumstances. He has a point, but just like the Chief Priests of the Land of Fragrance, he's somewhat bookish. My army still heavily relies on the soldiers' fighting capacity to win battles. There aren't very many soldiers in my army and they can't work seamlessly and smoothly together. In this sense, there's no 'overall process' that needed to be managed. More importantly, my soldiers all wish to see me fighting together with them.”
The Dragon King needed his soldiers to worship him. This was not out of the need to gratify his vanity. It was just a necessary way for him to better control his soldiers.