Sharing a Pavilion With You
Chapter 158: Parley With the Enemy

Chapter 158: Parley With the Enemy

[Suggested song for this Chapter – Zombie, The Cranberries]

"Faster, faster," urged Lieutenant Ju, driving the stragglers onwards as Arughtai’s soldiers kept pouring out through the fortress gates. "Come on men, into the crevasse, let’s go! Carry your friends if you have to!"

A great roar could be heard behind them, as their enemies chased them down, getting ever closer, until arrows started to fly within range of the Emperor’s men, striking men in their backs as they ran.

"Those that are not injured, form up!" shouted Ju Rong, and a wall of men gradually took shape at the rear of the retreating forces. "Shoulder-to-shoulder! Shields up!" he roared.

The men formed a small but bristling wall of shields and spears, protecting those who kept on running for the valley behind them.

"Shoot over them!" shouted Arughtai to his Sergeant, and the Mongol archers aimed their arrows up and over the defensive row of shields.

Arrows rained down among those men running and limping for the crevasse, but few found their mark, for it was much harder to aim accurately when you were lobbing bolts over the enemy instead of firing directly into them...

Ju Rong looked behind him, sweat pouring down his temples and stinging his eyes.

"Nearly there, men!" he called to the rear guard, his voice hoarse with shouting. "Hold your formation! Don’t break! Don’t run!"

The fastest of Arughtai’s men reached the line of men protecting the retreating soldiers, and they smashed against the shield wall. Spears were thrust through, and the wall, which was only one man deep, started to buckle, with gaps appearing all across it like missing teeth in an ugly smile.

"Time to run! Let’s go men! Run for the crevasse!" Ju Rong yelled.

The remaining men turned tail and ran for their lives, with the Mongol soldiers close on their heels as they fled into the long valley of rock.

"Chase them down, men!" yelled Arughtai. "It’s a dead end. They have nowhere to go!"

As they entered the narrow crevasse, Ju Rong and his leaders held their position at the rear, allowing the rest of the men to flow into the crevasse as fast as they could run or hobble.

"Here they come men," whispered Commander Bai, as he and a handful of scouts peered out from behind their hidden positions on the steep walls.

He kept his hand raised in the ’hold’ position for his troops to see.

"Lieutenant Rong’s men have passed the cut-off point," Bai Li whispered to his Sergeant. "Let the rest of Arughtai’s men enter the valley before you give the signal."

"Yes Sir!" the Sergeant nodded fiercely.

Finally, the Mongol soldiers streaming into the crevasse thinned at the entrance and Bai Li looked at the Sergeant. "Now!" he commanded.

A firework flew up into the thin morning light and burst, barely visible in the daylight, but audible as it’s high whistle blew across the field of battle.

Bai Li’s men hidden at the entrance and at their chosen ’cut-off point’, began to push huge boulders down the steep slopes, kicking the stays out from under them, then rolling the next rock and the next, until the entrance was filled with rubble and dust, and a similar pile of rocks grew larger and larger a hundred metres deeper into the valley, trapping the Mongol army between the two book ends of boulders.

Some of Arughtai’s men had already passed the second wall of rock, and Ju Rong’s men now turned on these unfortunate frontrunners who had been separated from the main body of their forces and started to slaughter them.

"We’ve been tricked!" Arughtai said to his Chief of Staff. "Retreat!"

"We can’t sire," said the man in a panic. "We’ve been cut off by rocks at both ends. We’re trapped!"

Before the Sergeant could finish his words, the battle cries of Bai Li and his men echoed eerily across the valley, and they emerged in vast numbers, tightly organised, the front row of men forming a wall of swords to prevent their enemies from climbing the steep walls, archers from further up the slopes shooting down into the trapped men below.

The screams and shouts of the dying and injured merged with the battle cries of the Emperor’s soldiers. Bai Li’s men had been fearful and cramped for so long, that they were now roused to crazed heights of bloodlust, as the fighting they had both feared and awaited finally arrived.

Arughtai watched in dismay as his men fell in droves around him, pushing and shoving one another as they tried to reach the non-existent exits, or climbing the walls only to be stabbed by the waiting soldiers.

"Protect our Lord!" yelled his Sergeant, and a dense group of soldiers formed around Arughtai, shields aloft, sheltering him at their centre.

Even so, these men started to fall as rocks rained down on them from above, denting their shields and their confidence in equal measure.

"Is there any way through the rockslide?" he asked his Chief of Staff urgently.

"No, Sire, we could climb over it, but we’d be fully exposed to the enemy while we climbed. They’d shoot us down like fish in a barrel."

Men were screaming and dying all around them. Arughtai’s mind raced with the possibilities, but it seemed there were none... They were at the mercy of these Ming bastards.

"Raise the white flags, Sergeant," said Arughtai regretfully. "There’s no other choice unless we all want to die here. It’s time to negotiate with these Chinese dogs."

Immediately, white flags were unfurled and raised. They flapped clearly in the narrow space on the valley floor.

"They’re surrendering, Commander!" called the Sergeant.

The Emperor’s soldiers continued to fire into the Mongol men and cut them down as they climbed. Without an order to stop the slaughter, they would not do so.

Bai Li recalled the Emperor’s clear order not to take any prisoners. He had known this would become an issue for him if their plan was successful.

All of Arughtai’s men would be trapped, so it would become a huge slaughter of unarmed combatants if the Mongol warriors decided to surrender rather than fight to the bitter end.

He had feared this dishonourable outcome, which he had known would come as a byproduct of their success.

"Hold your fire!" he roared. "Stop killing the enemy!"

It took some time for his command to be relayed right across the battlefield, as soldiers fought on until they realised the fighting had stopped around them.

"The fighting has ceased, Sire," Arughtai’s Chief of Staff finally informed him.

"Take the white flag and go and start negotiating a surrender with their Commander."

Arughtai was still shell-shocked at the turn of events that had taken him from victory to defeat in the blink of an eye.

"Only speak to Commander Bai. Don’t agree to talk to anyone else. Tell him I want to parley and ask him where we should meet to talk in this godforsaken valley..."

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