“Misfortune seeks company.” - Old folk saying.

“Curses! Have you sent the messenger to Xiao Jiangjun Taouan to retreat in an orderly manner!?” yelled Zhong Jiangjun Kang Lu-Shih to his attendant as he watched the deteriorating situation at the front lines from afar. The way the enemy had suddenly brought out new forces from the forests to their north and south just after his scouts detected a detachment of enemy cavalry coming from behind smelled of a pre-arranged maneuver.

He had assigned Xiao Jiangjun Amila Taouan, youngest daughter to the late Da Jiangjun, as the field commander of the offensive for the past few days, partly to help the young woman to snap out of the quagmire of sadness and depression she was stuck in. The sudden loss of her mother, brother, and three cousins was a big impact on the young woman’s psyche, as could be expected given the circumstances, so Lu-Shih hoped the monotony of commanding the stable battle of attrition would help her somewhat.

That said, he never expected the stable situation to suddenly upend itself without warning after just a few days. Sure, his people reported that there seemed to be more people on the defending side the previous day, but that was expected. The enemy would naturally have their own reinforcements, especially since they had been fighting for a while now.

What he failed to expect was for those reinforcements to include odd and bizarre looking troops in large quantities that had the courage to turn the tables on him just a day after they arrived. He suspected that the enemy troops that even now kept coming from the forests must have hidden there through the previous day, though he still had no idea what route the enemy cavalry had taken to get behind his forces.

One way or another, everything accumulated to a potential disaster for the imperial army, doubly so when he saw how the enemy’s defense line had some of its structures swing open like a gate and disgorged massive war chariots towards them. If the battlefield was more open, where his cavalry would have room to maneuver, he would be able to engage the chariots to his advantage. At the cramped, close confines of the battlefield they were at, and with the way those chariots simply ran over his soldiers, however, there was little that Lu-Shih could have done.

“The messenger had gone out five minutes ago, Jiangjun, but given the situation… it might well be that Xiao Jiangjun Taouan could not take control of the situation,” said Lu-Shih’s adjutant with a rather nervous tone. “Some of the soldiers at the front are routing already. It is difficult even for an experienced commander to control the army in that state.”

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“Fine,” said Lu-Shih with a sigh. The situation up front was one he couldn’t change, and it would be too late even if he was to ride there to take control in person, as things would have deteriorated further by the time he arrived. Instead, he chose to do what he could to stabilize the situation where he was first. “Mount up and gather the cavalry, we need to prevent these enemies from throwing our camp into chaos as well.”

“As you command!”

While his adjutant rounded up his personal group of escorts amongst the cavalry, Lu-Shih went to his horse and mounted the beast skillfully. He had fought through the succession war as a cavalryman and rose to his current rank by feats of arms, so it was something he was used to. One of the soldiers brought him his trusted old spear once he was seated, and he led his horse on a calm walk towards where his escorts were.

To his surprise, the enemy cavalry had directly ignored the fences his troops put up around the camp, and was already breaking through several sections of it by the time he gathered with his escorts. The big, bulky, armored beasts that the enemy rode either directly crashed through the wooden fences or uprooted them with a heave from their horns.

“With me! We must stop them before they could wreak havoc in our camp!” yelled Lu-Shih as he led a large part of the Imperial army’s cavalry contingent to meet the enemy cavalry head-on. Due to the enemy’s defensive fortifications, the cavalry had not been given much to do after the first couple of days, so they rode with eagerness to finally contribute more to the battle.

In terms of numbers there were more of the imperial cavalry compared to their odd foes, but Lu-Shih knew better than to take his foes lightly. He led his troops around the camp, with the main force he led about to meet the enemy headlong, while another two detachments circled around to strike at the enemies from the flanks shortly after.

As the distance rapidly closed to under a hundred paces, most of the cavalrymen at the front of the imperial formation took out their bows and loosed arrows at the opposing cavalry. To their dismay, however, their arrows failed to elicit much of a response, nor any result from the enemy, whose armor was so thick that the arrows just bounced or shattered off them.

Instead, once they closed to fifty paces, Lu-Shih noted how some of the enemies seated at the backs of the horned beasts – there were three of them on each of the beasts – lifted odd-looking crossbows and started to crank a lever on its side. The next thing he knew, those crossbows spat out bolt after bolt towards his troops, with far more lethal results compared to their own barrage.

The adjutant riding to Lu-Shih’s left had the misfortune of having been the target of four bolts at the same time. One of the bolts struck the man on the arm, another hit him in the thigh, but the last two pierced into his chest, straight through his armor and deep into his body. It was a sight that made Lu-Shih couldn’t help but to break out in sweat even as he deflected one bolt that came his way with the shaft of his spear.

Even the impact he felt through his weapon scared him, as it made it clear to him just how much force each of those bolts contained.