The relative calm of the past few days shattered with the sound of a single, high-pitched whistle. It was not a birdcall. It was the sound of death descending from the rocks.
One moment, the valley was still, the air heavy with dust and heat. The next, the world erupted.
From the high ground on both sides of the narrow pass, a tide of Jin cavalry poured down. This was no scouting party; it was a full company, a hammer blow designed to annihilate them. The thunder of hooves was deafening, a physical vibration in the chest, mingling with the guttural war cries of the riders and the shrill whistles they used to coordinate their attack.
Chaos was instantaneous, but it was a chaos with a terrible, brutal structure.
The Jin fought with a fluid, merciless efficiency. Their horse archers created a storm of arrows, not aimed, but saturating the air, forcing men to raise their shields and bow their heads. Behind this curtain of arrows, their lancers charged, long spears aimed like needles at the fractured Song lines.
The Fifth Battalion's discipline, for a moment, held. Captain Guo's voice cut through the din, sharp and commanding. "Shield wall! Spears braced!" The regular soldiers, trained for this, slammed their shields together in a desperate, shuddering line. But they were in the kill zone, surrounded on three sides.
The Jin lancers hit the shield wall like a wave against a breakwater. The sound was a sickening crunch of wood, metal, and bone. Men screamed as lances punched through shields, finding gaps. The orderly line bulged and threatened to shatter into a thousand individual fights for life.
Amid this disciplined carnage, the Seventh Penal Battalion fought like the cornered animals they were. They had no shield wall to form.
Their battle was a sprawling, vicious brawl of small clusters. They used their spears not in unison, but to hook the legs of Jin horses, sending riders tumbling to the ground where they were set upon by three or four convicts with knives and desperation. It was ugly, personal, and effective in the way a rat fight is effective—a struggle for the next breath, nothing more.
At the center of the storm, Captain Guo was a whirlwind of controlled violence. He fought not as a commander on a hill, but as a soldier in the line, his presence a rallying point. A Jin lancer, spotting his officer's plume, broke through and charged him, lance lowered.
Guo didn't flinch. He sidestepped the deadly point with an motion that spoke of countless battles, the lancehead grazing his armor. As the horse thundered past, he swung his sword in a brutal arc, biting deep into the rider's side. The lancer screamed, tumbling from his saddle. Guo didn't watch him fall; he was already turning to parry a saber slash from another rider. For a breathtaking moment, he was the anchor, his skill and fury holding a piece of the line together through sheer force of will.
It was in that moment of supreme exertion, as he shoves the saber-wielding rider back with a grunt of effort, that the arrow came. It did not come from the chaotic melee in front of him. It came from the high rocks, a sniper's shot, silent and perfectly timed. There was no whistle, only a sudden, sickening thwump.
Captain Guo staggered. The arrow struck high on his left shoulder, just above the edge of his leather armor. The force of it spun him halfway around. It wasn't a mortal wound, but it was a debilitating shock.
The precision of the shot was terrifying—aimed not to kill instantly, but to maim, to break the chain of command. His sword arm flew wide, his defense shattered.
Seeing his opening, the saber-wielding Jin rider he had just parried lunged forward with a triumphant roar. Guo, off-balance and wounded, could only watch the curved blade slice a deep, terrible furrow across his thigh.
Bright arterial blood instantly sheeted down his leg. He crashed to one knee, his world narrowing to the fire in his shoulder and the terrifying pump of his life onto the dusty ground. The standard bearer beside him was cut down a second later. The symbol of command fell into the dirt.
The collapse began. The regular troops, seeing their captain fall and their standard drop, their morale wavered. The shield wall, already strained, began to crack. Panic started to spread, more deadly than any arrow.
Lin Wei saw it happen. He wasn't thinking about heroism; he was calculating survival. If the center broke, they would all be routed and slaughtered. Guo was the linchpin. Saving him was a tactical imperative. "Ox Li! To the Captain! Now!" he yelled, his voice raw.
Fighting their way to Guo was a journey through a nightmare. They didn't carve a path; they scrambled, ducked, and stumbled through the chaos. An arrow tore through the sleeve of Lin Wei's tunic. Ox Li took a shallow cut on his arm, barely grunting as he smashed his fist into a Jin soldier's face.
They reached Guo. His face was the color of chalk, his breathing shallow. The system screamed:
"[Subject: Captain Guo. Injuries: 1. Penetrating trauma, shoulder (arrow in situ). 2. Laceration, femoral artery. Critical blood loss. Immediate intervention required.]"
There was no time for gentleness. Lin Wei snapped the arrow shaft protruding from Guo's shoulder, leaving the head embedded. The immediate danger was the leg. He ripped a strip of cloth from a dead man's tunic and his own belt, fashioning a crude tourniquet.
He wound it tight above the gushing wound. Guo cried out, a strangled sound of agony, as the pressure bit deep. But the horrific flow of blood slowed to a seep.
Lin Wei then looked up from the captain's body, his hands slick with blood, and started shouting. Not speeches, but simple, survival-oriented commands. "You! Drag him back! You two, shields up! Spears out! Ox Li, hold this spot!"
He wasn't a commander. He was a trauma surgeon directing a crisis. But in the vacuum of leadership, his clear, urgent voice became a anchor. The regular soldiers, leaderless and terrified, latched onto it. Ox Li became a bastion, a roaring, unmovable object around which a desperate, ragged line re-formed. The penal troops, seeing their "Doc" in the thick of it, fought with a renewed, desperate fury.
The Jin, sensing the Song were no longer fleeing but coalescing into a prickly, desperate hedgehog, broke off their attack.
They had inflicted heavy casualties. It was enough. They faded back into the hills, leaving behind a field of carnage and the moans of the wounded.
The silence that followed was broken only by those moans and the ragged gasps of the survivors. The two battalions were no longer separate. They were intermingled, leaning on each other, staring blankly at the horror.
There was no glory. Only the shared, stunned bond of those who had stared into the abyss and, by some miracle, had not entirely fallen in. The victory was that they were alive. For now. The cost was etched in blood all around them.