The sentry's shrill cry failed to rouse the majority of the men. This was, after all, a large camp of over three thousand. The slightest shuffle of feet, a few extra words spoken by each man, was enough to completely drown out his warning.
Not until the piercing sound of the military bugle rang out, until the trembling of the ground could no longer be ignored, until even the tent flaps began to shake, did the soldiers awaken as if from a dream.
But just as Otto had anticipated, the proportion of officers in the Schicksal forces was too low.
He recalled reading in a Ming text that their smallest unit was a five-man squad, with officers at each level commanding between two and five subordinate units.
In contrast, Schicksal's flattened command structure meant one officer had to command a dozen units, and the lowest-ranking sergeants even directly commanded twenty to thirty soldiers, making it incredibly difficult to assemble and respond quickly in a sudden crisis.
But Otto was merely the young master of the Apocalypse family, being escorted by this infantry regiment heading to reinforce the front, holding no military rank. Of course, even if he wanted to take charge, it was too late now.
His first reaction was to tightly grip the bag containing the small wooden box and jog towards the nearest section of the palisade wall.
About a hundred yards outside the palisade flowed the river they had followed during the day's march. The squad of soldiers sent earlier to fetch water had dropped their buckets and were desperately fleeing back towards the camp. A dozen or so Ming cavalry trailed them, neither too close nor too far. The soldiers inside the camp dared not open the gates, leaving those trapped outside to curse and desperately pound on the wooden barrier.
This standoff lasted about a minute before the Ming cavalry grew impatient. They charged forward, first loosing a volley of arrows, then used ropes slung from their saddles to lasso several unlucky survivors of the arrow storm. With a kick to their horses' flanks, they dragged the captured men away, disappearing swiftly.
Otto stood on the palisade, watching all this unfold without a change in expression. He knew this was merely an appetizer.
The tremors felt earlier, like ten thousand horses stampeding, indicated the Ming certainly wouldn't have just these dozen riders.
And at this point, clarity began to dawn—
Kallen, in her letters to him, had once described the Ming way of fighting from a warrior's perspective:
"The Ming fighting style is vastly different from ours. They rely heavily on mounted scouts who often infiltrate behind our lines when we least expect it. Consequently, our troop movements are completely transparent to them, leaving us mostly reacting defensively."
"These scouts can penetrate dozens of Luoli behind our lines, guiding their infiltrating cavalry to harass our supply lines, or even our reinforcements. It's gotten so bad that two reinforcement regiments suffered over fifty percent casualties before even reaching the front and had to be consolidated into one."
Otto understood now. The Ming cavalry that appeared yesterday evening were the "scouts" Kallen mentioned. They had first located the Schicksal force's position. Then, attacking a column of 3000 with only forty riders wasn't mindless recklessness, but a probe to test the combat strength of this Schicksal reinforcement.
Evidently, their reconnaissance yielded satisfactory results. Now they had returned with a larger cavalry force, having force-marched here in just one night.
However, Otto wasn't completely panicked yet. He now had to thank—all the soldiers had to thank—that damned Commander Maximus. He had forced the soldiers with unprecedented severity to labor late into the night yesterday, just to erect this thin wooden palisade. Clearly, Maximus had anticipated this possibility.
With this simple palisade, cavalry, who weren't adept at assaulting fortifications, couldn't easily breach it. With the food and water inside the camp, they could likely hold out for a day or two. Furthermore, a large concentration of Ming cavalry behind Schicksal lines would surely be detected. They just needed to hold out inside the camp until reinforcements arrived.
Nodding firmly, he gently patted the small wooden box in his pack, confirming it was intact. Otto strode towards the eastern palisade; he saw Commander Maximus's banner waving there.
A camp for three thousand men wasn't enormous; its perimeter might not even span one Luoli (about 1.5 kilometers). Otto ran quickly along the palisade walkway, reaching Commander Maximus in just two minutes.
"Young Master Otto?"
Seeing the noble young master not cowering in his tent but present on the most dangerous front line, his expression surprisingly calm and composed, Maximus widened his single eye in disbelief.
Was this really the young master known for his weakness and incompetence?
But he had no time to dwell on it. Seeing Otto nod at him, Maximus instinctively nodded back before belatedly placing his right hand over his chest and bowing slightly.
Otto silently stood beside him. Looking out beyond the palisade, his brow quickly furrowed.
About a thousand yards outside the wall, lines of Ming cavalry could be vaguely seen galloping back and forth, holding their battle standards high. They seemed to be dragging branches behind their horses, kicking up vast clouds of dust. Combined with the dim light just before sunrise, the entire sky was stained a焦黄色 (jiao huang se - scorched yellow/ochre).
"What are they doing?" Otto asked curiously.
"It's the same on the east, north, and west sides," Maximus glanced at him. Normally, he wouldn't bother explaining, but having interacted with Otto for some time, he found the young man less obnoxious than other members of the Apocalypse family. Sometimes, his demeanor even resembled a Kaslana, albeit with an added layer of Apocalypse reserve overlaying the Kaslana free-spiritedness.
"They're obscuring the battlefield, preventing us from judging their numbers and direction of attack. I heard the Mongols used this tactic frequently over two hundred years ago."
"Then... what are they waiting for? Why haven't they attacked yet?"
"They're waiting for sunrise." Maximus looked towards the ochre horizon as if seeing through the Ming deployment. "Sunrise on the steppe is exceptionally blinding. If I were the Ming commander, I wouldn't fail to utilize such a helpful ally as the sun."
Otto suddenly understood. No wonder Maximus had rushed to the eastern palisade immediately.
The Ming had roughly four directions to attack from: east, south, west, north. The southern palisade was only a hundred yards from the river, offering almost no room to form up. The Ming commander wasn't an idiot; he wouldn't cram his cavalry onto the riverbank.
In fact, after the previous scouting party left, Otto hadn't seen any Ming banners to the south—encircle three sides, leave one open. Otto knew the term.
Of the remaining three directions, attacking from the west meant facing the blinding morning sun. Attacking from the north was standard. But attacking from the east meant the Schicksal forces would be the ones blinded by the sunrise.
"Matchlock companies, to the palisade! Pikemen companies, push down the tents and form square directly within the camp! Get the First, Second, and Third Companies over here immediately, form ranks right behind the palisade! Move!"
Maximus quickly issued orders. Relying on years of combat experience, he was convinced the Ming attack would come from the east. He decisively moved the three pikemen companies with the highest rate of breastplate equipment and longest service time to this sector.
But... he knew very well how slowly these men formed up. In such chaos, it would only take longer, not less, plus they had to clear the tents first.
Fortunately, the palisade should buy the infantry enough time.
Maximus patted the wooden palisade with satisfaction. The logs composing it weren't thick—products of a rush job, perhaps only as wide as an apple—but they were enough to protect the matchlock gunners from Ming arrows.
Watching the matchlock companies take their positions on the wall first, Otto and Maximus both let out a long sigh of relief. The Ming cavalry had come a long way; they likely couldn't bring heavy artillery and probably weren't overwhelmingly numerous. Otherwise, there'd be no need to obscure the battlefield; they'd just swarm the camp.
If only the palisade, if only the matchlock companies could hold for an hour, even half an hour, it would be enough!
Otto glanced beside him. The matchlock gunners had already lit their slow matches and were loading their first rounds with trembling hands.
Despite the extreme tension, someone couldn't help but yawn, and soon the whole company was bleary-eyed, yawning contagiously—counting back, less than five hours had passed since they finished erecting the palisade... Thinking of this, Otto couldn't suppress a yawn himself.
They also had four Culverins, positioned at the four corners of the camp. The corners protruded outwards like crude bastions, though their design lacked the careful calculations of proper fortifications due to the rushed construction. Still, better than nothing.
And Schicksal's artillery became the first unit to open fire in this battle.
Although the nearest cannon was over a hundred yards away from Otto, the sudden enormous boom startled him. The entire palisade vibrated as if it might collapse at any second.
Two black spheres traced visible arcs through the air. One slammed into the flat ground about five hundred yards out, the other landed nearby. Both spheres bounced off the impact, propelled by inertia, before crashing heavily into the dust cloud raised by the Ming cavalry.
Otto heard no cries of men or horses. Considering the Ming cavalry's loose formation, hitting them with such sparse fire was indeed extremely difficult.
About ten minutes later, the second volley of cannon fire rang out, missing just like the first.
And just then, on the eastern horizon, blurred by the yellow smoke, a blinding beam of light tore through everything without warning, shining directly into the camp.
"They're coming!" Maximus shouted, agitated.
Facts proved all his tactical predictions correct. Within mere breaths after sunrise, over a hundred Ming riders burst from the dust cloud in an extremely loose formation.
"Are they planning to attack the palisade on horseback?" Otto blinked, quickly dismissing the thought. As the Ming riders closed within five hundred yards, he could gradually discern differences from the previous scouts—
Each man rode one horse and led a smaller packhorse alongside it. What the packhorses carried was unclear, but it undoubtedly consisted of siege equipment.
The two Culverins were still slowly cooling and reloading. The Ming advanced unopposed to within two hundred yards of the palisade.
The matchlock gunners on the wall fired a ragged volley of free shots, but aside from the blinding sun, even under normal conditions, Schicksal matchlock men, accustomed to firing at "two pikes' distance," had negligible accuracy at over a hundred yards.
The Ming cavalry dismounted swiftly, their movements as precise as textbook drills. Working in groups of three or four, they unloaded the cargo from the packhorses in just half a minute. During this time, the matchlock gunners hadn't even finished reloading one round. A brief, eerie silence fell over the battlefield.
As for what they unloaded...
Otto took an almost imperceptible step back, ensuring he could jump off the palisade and flee at a moment's notice. The creak of the wooden planks was particularly grating. Maximus turned his head stiffly; seeing Otto's movement, he said nothing.
"Ten breech-loading swivel guns! (1) Over twenty... what on earth are those things!"
The breech-loading swivel guns (Houzhuang Ying Pao, Folangji-type) were mounted on four-legged curved frames, easily moved directly from horseback, ready for immediate loading and use.
Even stranger was the other type of light cannon (2): iron barrels about the length of a man's arm, reinforced with several iron hoops, lacking even a proper carriage. The Ming simply propped them up underneath with small logs to set the firing angle (3).
As the matchlock gunners fired their second pointless volley, the Ming's thirty-plus artillery pieces were all loaded. The gunners stepped back slightly, and on command, uniformly touched their slow matches to the quick-burning fuses at the cannons' breeches...
In an instant, a barrage erupted, gunpowder smoke coalescing into a thick "sea of clouds."
Hundreds of grapeshot pellets, weaving a deadly rain, arrived first, splintering the wooden palisade and instantly thinning the ranks of the matchlock gunners.
Those still standing couldn't be called "lucky," because in the next moment, over thirty cannonballs, each the size of a goose egg, struck that section of the palisade almost simultaneously.
The thin wall collapsed instantly, revealing the pikemen who had just managed to form their first rank behind it. The violent impact also knocked many matchlock gunners off balance, sending them tumbling backward. One unlucky soul even fell directly onto the upright pikes below.
Otto's luck held; he only landed hard on his backside, which hurt quite a bit.
He scrambled up, clutching the pack to his chest, fumbled inside to check the wooden box was okay, and his racing heart gradually calmed.
Then, he silently took a step back—clearly, the palisade was no longer safe. He, Otto Apocalypse, could not die here. Should not die here.
But as he frantically swallowed, he turned around only to meet the eyes of countless soldiers.
"Gulp..."
Otto swallowed so hard he nearly crushed his Adam's apple. The soldiers, faces streaked with sweat and grime, just stared at him. Their eyes held no anger, no curiosity, no fear. The first rank had barely managed to form a line; the nineteen ranks behind them were still crammed together. Sergeants should have been shouting names, cursing soldiers into formation, but when he turned, everyone stopped moving, simply staring at him quietly.
The soldiers' ranks were dense, but only relative to the Ming formation. There was still over half a yard between each man. Otto could have walked straight through the gaps without even turning sideways.
But after a moment's thought, he slowly turned back around. His inclination, undoubtedly, was to flee.
He, Otto, was someone deeply afraid of death. Moreover, if the item he carried fell into Ming hands, it would be a disaster for Schicksal, for Kallen.
But he didn't leave. Because, at the critical moment, he calmed down. He knew that as the young master of the Apocalypse family, although these soldiers might not like him, his desertion would be devastating to their already low morale. Conversely, his presence here might offer a slight boost.
Of course, the most important factor was that he currently had nowhere to run. Better to stay put and think of a solution than run out of the camp and be captured by the Ming.
But he didn't dare climb the palisade again, nor could he retreat, so he could only stand awkwardly between the soldiers and the wall with his attendant.
Blocked by the remaining wall, he couldn't see the battlefield clearly, forced to rely on sound and other cues to guess the situation—
The Ming cannons roared again. This time, a section of the wall not far to his left collapsed. Otto could already see many matchlock gunners' legs shaking uncontrollably.
Simultaneously, from the right—the direction of the first breach created by the cannons—came the thunder of hooves.
"The Ming cavalry are charging!"
The pikemen at the breach still only had their first rank formed. They had no choice but to level their pikes, hoping the glinting spearheads angling out from the gap would deter the charging horses through fear of sharp points.
But the Ming cavalry were clearly experienced in charging infantry formations. First, a dense volley of arrows rained through the breach. Soldiers swung their pikes trying to deflect the arrows, naturally with little success. However, the first rank had better protection—chainmail under their breastplates—so the number who fell wasn't overwhelming yet.
But immediately following, accompanied by a series of sharp cracks, Otto jumped involuntarily. At thirty yards, cheap, mass-produced breastplates offered no protection against the Ming sanyanchong (4). Over half the first rank collapsed in the blink of an eye, and even a dozen of the protruding pikes were snapped by the dense hail of small projectiles.
Are they breaking through!?
Otto stared wide-eyed at the narrow breach. He heard ragged gasps behind him; he knew he wasn't the only one holding his breath.
But the expected charge didn't materialize immediately; the camp still had chevaux de frise barricades just outside. The Ming cavalry weren't that foolish.
Vaguely, Otto felt the hoofbeats draw closer. An image flashed in his mind—the Ming cavalry, upon approaching the breach, executed a caracole, similar to Schicksal's cavalry tactic, but their charge was several times faster, tracing a crescent moon trajectory.
Just as they had captured prisoners earlier, they used ropes slung from their saddles to snag the chevaux de frise before the breach, pulling them aside to clear the way for subsequent waves. Then, they galloped along the outside of the palisade, clearing away other barricades along the path. They might even be right on the other side of the thin wall from him right now!
Wait!
Otto's eyes shot wide open. He looked up at Commander Maximus, standing steadfast on the remaining wall section, and was about to shout something when he heard the sharp twang of bowstrings.
Then, Maximus's body slowly tilted backward and fell right in front of Otto.
His face was riddled with arrows, like a pincushion.
Otto's lips parted slightly, his legs went weak, almost collapsing.
The next moment, he truly did slump to the ground, but not solely out of fear, because...
BOOM!
The section of palisade directly in front of him disintegrated into countless fragments. If his legs hadn't given way, causing him to fall, the fate of the soldier behind him—face impaled with wooden splinters, body torn in two by a goose-egg-sized lead ball—would have been his own.
Looking up again, he saw over a hundred Ming riders charging loosely towards the breach. The matchlock gunners' fire brought down only a handful. In the final stage of the charge, the Ming cavalry formation gradually tightened, becoming neat and orderly, like a solid wall.
Then, Otto saw those Ming riders level their sanyanchong.
"Run!"
In that instant, without hesitation, he scrambled backward, rolling and crawling away. The roar of the triple-barreled guns erupted behind him, mingling with the screams of soldiers. After that, came the sickening thud and crunch of iron meeting flesh and bone.
Otto ran like mad. He quickly realized he wasn't the only one fleeing. Soldiers beside him, in front of him, behind him, all discarded their cumbersome pikes, running even faster than he was.
Schicksal's line inexplicably collapsed after Maximus's death. Soldiers ran chaotically within the camp. The Ming cavalry followed at a steady pace, deliberately herding them towards the intact formations on the other three sides. If anyone tried to regroup and resist, the Ming riders charged in, swinging sabers and iron maces, scattering them in one go.
Otto and his attendant were swept along by the human tide, running aimlessly. Fortunately, he had a relatively clear goal—south. He knew there were no Ming forces outside the southern palisade. He knew the swift river lay beyond it. He knew this was the Ming's "encircle three, leave one" tactic, but only there lay a sliver of hope!
But it was people packed everywhere; they couldn't find the southern gate. Luckily, Otto's sharp eyes spotted several veterans clad in padded cotton armor moving furtively against the flow. He immediately followed them. After a few steps, he realized they were heading for the southeast corner of the camp.
The east was the first area breached, so the southeast corner was naturally affected. But the Ming cavalry seemed to number only a few hundred, unable to advance on a broad front, leaving a gap—a gap unnoticed by either Ming or Schicksal forces.
Otto hurried to catch up. The veterans either didn't recognize him, or they did, but in this situation, the life of a nobleman was worth no more than a common soldier's.
They helped each other over the southeast palisade, then ran frantically towards the river. The river wasn't wide, just swift-flowing. If they could swim across, the Ming cavalry might not pursue!
But the thunder of hooves shattered all illusions. After a few sharp twangs of bowstrings, the veterans fell one by one. Otto wasn't hit, because his attendant tackled him just in time, taking the fatal arrow meant for him.
But it was useless.
Otto crawled out from under his attendant's corpse and stumbled forward a few more steps. Looking back, he saw about a dozen Ming riders calmly pacing behind him. One pointed at him with a long saber; clearly, they intended to play cat and mouse.
"Heh..."
Otto clutched the wooden box through his pack. If he opened it, crushed its contents, the thousands fighting here would instantly turn into death-seeking berserkers.
But he hesitated again.
He could speak the Shenzhou language. If he revealed his identity to the Ming now, even as a prisoner, he would surely survive, albeit stripped of his dignity.
But what was dignity? For Kallen's sake, such things didn't matter. Besides, he would certainly be sent to the main Ming army camp at the front. If he opened the box there...
Just as he was about to shamelessly raise his hands in surrender, a few golden feathers seemed to drift hazily before his eyes. He saw the gazes of the Ming riders gradually become vacant, unfocused. Then, incredibly, they turned their horses and rode away.
"What... was that?"
Otto had no time to savor the joy of escaping death. He turned to step into the river, but his vision went black, and he felt his body fall into the water.
...
"Meow..."
"Mrow?"
"Meow meow meow!"
"Ugh... cough!"
Otto felt a weight on his chest and abdomen, and suddenly vomited a mouthful of river water, the shock bringing him back to the sensation of being "alive."
He lowered his head and saw an almost spherical cat standing on his chest, kneading him gently with its front paws.
"Uh... what's this..."
Seeing him awake, the cat considerately hopped off his body, allowing him to sit up.
Otto's first reaction was naturally to check his pack. Thankfully, the wooden box was specially made; though somewhat waterlogged, it seemed fine—meaning he was still alive, indicating the contents hadn't been compromised.
He glanced back at the river. He must have drifted downstream; that much was clear. The problem was, the river had now turned completely red. Countless headless corpses bobbed along like driftwood.
The Ming take heads for merit—the thought struck him suddenly. He lurched forward and began vomiting violently.
"Mrow?"
The fat cat tilted its head, twitching its mouth disdainfully.
When Otto finally felt a bit better, he noticed the cat had stayed quietly beside him, not leaving.
"Hmm? Are you a house cat?" Otto spotted the ribbon tied in a bow around its neck, something no feral cat would have. Of course, its plump figure also spoke volumes.
The cat gave a slight smile, then suddenly opened its mouth wide at him.
But it wasn't trying to bite. A faint golden light emanated abruptly from its throat. The cat's throat bulged, and it coughed up a golden cube, depositing it into Otto's hand.
"This... what is this?"
The golden cube retained a faint warmth but was completely free of any stomach slime, as if the cat didn't truly exist in this world.
Er... that's right, Otto thought. Any normal cat with something like this stuck in its stomach would have died long ago, wouldn't it?
Otto finally realized this cat was no ordinary feline. But when he tore his gaze away from the golden cube and looked up...
There was no cat before him. The dark mud at his feet bore no paw prints.
Only the golden cube in his hand was tangibly real.
Author's Endnotes:
(1) Breech-loading falconet: Essentially a folangji (Frankish cannon). In the text, it specifically refers to the horse-mounted langji arquebus. Cavalry carried it along; the cannon was transported by horses or mules. When in use, the carrying frame served as a firing mount. Standard loadout: 100 rounds of ammunition.
(2) Origin: This type of cannon is a hybrid of the Ming dynasty's Mielu Cannon (灭虏炮) and Yongzhu Cannon (涌珠炮). All weights and measurements are in Ming dynasty units.
Yongzhu Cannon: 1 chi 7 cun long (~57 cm), 8 cun circumference (~26.7 cm), estimated 6 cm caliber, weight 45 jin (~27 kg).
Barrel length-to-caliber ratio: 8:1.
Standard shot: one large iron ball (about 1.2 jin / 720 g), forty small iron pellets (1 liang each / ~37.5 g), and ten lead pellets (1 liang each). Total projectile load: 4 jin 4 liang (~2.7 kg), with 8 liang (~300 g) of gunpowder.
Mielu Cannon (Ye Gong variant): over 80 Ming jin (~95 modern jin or ~57 kg), using 12 liang (~450 g) of powder and 6 liang (~225 g) worth of lead pellets.
This cannon essentially fires Yongzhu-type projectiles but packs Mielu-level gunpowder charges, explaining why it fires both solid shot and scattershot — a common feature for both Eastern and Western artillery of the time.
As for whether such an ultra-light cannon could breach makeshift forts:
In the Bozhou Campaign, the Ming army used Mielu Cannons for sieges. There were many variants of Mielu Cannons, but given the timeline, it was undoubtedly the Ye Gong variant (one of the models later called the "Red Barbarian Cannon" in the Hongyi series).
(3) Elevation mechanism: The simple tilt adjustment design enhanced mobility for light cannons. At the time, most cannons adjusted firing angles using wooden wedges anyway, so the difference was negligible. See the Battle of Heishui River Scroll (depicting the Qing army's suppression of the Khoja Rebellion) for details.
(4) San Yan Chong (Three-barreled gun): According to the Shenqi Pu (Treatise of Divine Weapons), it could shoot effectively at 50 paces against unarmored targets and at 30 paces against heavily armored ones.
(TL/N: i like this one)