Chapter 6 Hyena Fighting
The two waves of Ming soldiers and Tatars were about a hundred steps apart, which was the limit for launching an attack.

The short three-barreled gun naturally did not cause any harm to the Tartars, but it was a signal to attack. The five servants immediately followed the rhythm of their chief officer and rode forward to start fighting.

Bayala had just characterized the behavior of the two flagmen as abandoning Boshiku and running away, so there was some disunity among the Tatars, or in other words, none of the three Tatars dared to propose a temporary retreat first, lest they be caught by the other side and used to shirk responsibility in front of the flag owner.

Fortunately, there was still a chance of winning, so the Tatars also began to move, but not towards the Ming soldiers, but sideways facing the direction of the Ming soldiers' attack, and the two sides circled again.

The two flagmen stopped shooting arrows because each of them only carried one or two quivers, and each of them had only about twenty arrows. They had already shot down seven or eight arrows in the previous battle, so they were not at the end of their rope and naturally would not waste their arrows in the stalemate.

However, because Bayala asked for an extra pot of arrows, the total number of arrows on him reached thirty. Therefore, while circling, this personal guard of Goshaha occasionally shot an arrow.

The Qing bow was quite large and a soft bow, so its power was limited when used on horseback, let alone on a fast-moving horse. Therefore, Bayala's actions were ineffective.

"How can these Tartars run so fast?" After running around the hill for most of the time, Li Hao was tortured and lost his patience.

After running a little further, they returned to the big hill near Tashan Fortress, and the distance between the two sides remained between eighty and one hundred steps.

"Brother, this is the strength of the Tartars. Their horses are strong and fat, so running for an hour or so is no problem. Our horses and Mongolian horses are slightly stronger than donkeys. We can't catch up with them even if we chase them. If we don't chase them, they will follow us like dog-headed eagles and wait until we can't run anymore before attacking us."

Li Tianyang's words were deeply agreed by the centurion. Among the eight horses they brought out, the strongest one was the one ridden by Li Hao, which was still slightly inferior to the Tartars' horses.

"Their fighting style is a bit like a hyena grabbing its crotch, which is really obscene."

The core fighting style of the Eight Banners of Jianzhou is close-range shooting with Qing bows based on high mobility. In order to ensure that the archers can advance effectively, Lao Nu equipped all the armored bannermen with strong horses. When the archers advance to within thirty or forty steps, if the Eight Banners control the situation, there will even be cases where the archers dismount and shoot arrows.

In addition, there were cases where heavily armored cavalry dismounted and moved away the roadblocks, so some people in later generations believed that the strongest force of the Eight Banners was the mounted infantry, which is wrong.

Due to the absence of horses, the Ming army paid more attention to face-to-face combat than the Mongols and Jiannu, and therefore the Ming army had a considerable advantage in close combat.

The old slaves had long been aware of this problem, and their response was to increase the popularity of war horses to improve the mobility of the army. Therefore, at the beginning of the rebellion, the Later Jin Dynasty began to consciously transform the Eight Banners into a horse-raising slave manor system, using war horses to squeeze the living space of slaves and servants.

By the time the Later Jin entered the Pass, a total of three to four million Han slaves had died in the entire Manchurian estates, in order to ensure the output of grain and bean fodder in the estates, and in turn to ensure the support of the cavalry group of about 60,000 people in the Eight Banners.

Simply put, horses eat people.

When they were about 300 to 400 steps away from Tashan Fortress, Li Hao ordered: "Don't chase them anymore. Let's go back and chop off their heads. There are still three horses of the Tartars over there. Let's get them back first."

He guessed that the three Tartars would not dare to abandon their companions' bodies, horses, armor, etc., and would come back sooner or later, so he decided to sit back and wait.

The six men then reined in their horses, turned around, and galloped quickly southward.

The three Tatars immediately noticed the Ming soldiers' turnaround, but out of caution, they ran forward another fifty or sixty steps before stopping. As a result, the distance between the two sides widened to almost three hundred steps.

"Goshaha, what should we do now?" The two flagmen just wanted Bayala to make the decision so that they could put the blame for Boshiku's death on Bayala in the name of failed command.

"You two abandoned the leader and ran away, resulting in the death of the leader and Jiaqi. Those horses are your Niulu Ezhen's property. You two should find a way to clean up the situation. If you ask me to go back and support you two, I will give you courage for the sake of Gushan Ezhen."

Bayala thought very clearly that they had lost their horses and the bodies of the two bannermen who died in the battle. The Niulu master of the two bannermen would definitely not let them go. He was also the personal guard of the banner master, so the punishment would only be a levy on his property and land, and he would not lose his status as an armored man.

The two flagmen looked at each other, sighed, and then one of them said, "Then I'll have to trouble Goshha to help us. No matter what, we can't let the Ming soldiers take away Boshiku's body and warhorse."

In the Later Jin Dynasty, retrieving the bodies of comrades who died in battle was considered a merit and could offset part of the punishment.

The sky had become dark. By the time the three Tartars decided to go back to retrieve their horses and corpses, they had already opened up a distance of more than a thousand steps between them and the Ming soldiers. They could not even see the outlines of the six Ming soldiers with their naked eyes, and could only determine their position based on the sounds.

……

"Why are you here?"

What Li Hao didn't expect was that someone had already cleaned up the battlefield, led by the short and fat soldier named Hou Shixian.

"Master Li is helping us fight the Tartars, so we can't just sit there and do nothing. Since you guys are catching up, we'll help gather these horses to prevent them from running away."

There were five soldiers in this camp. It seemed that the five on horseback had all arrived, and the remaining seven drove the ox carts and camels to continue retreating south. These five people worked quite well. The two heads were chopped off neatly, and even the blood at the broken neck was processed, waiting to be pickled with lime. They also recovered four of the Jiannu horses.

"You're really brave!"

Li Hao exclaimed in admiration, and then gave an order: "The Tartars may come back to grab the bodies. The two of you carry one of them to the back of the hill, then lie down and hide. The rest of you get on your horses, the Tartars will be here soon, and you chase them when they arrive."

Two soldiers from the battalion carried out the order and carried away a corpse with great effort.

Li Hao himself took off the short three-barreled gun, the broadsword on his back and other miscellaneous items, pulled out the two arrows, drew out his sword, and then lay down next to the remaining corpse.

"Do you think I look like that?"

Yang Shigong first understood what his team was going to do, so he put one head back on the body and gave the remaining head to Li Tianyang for safekeeping.

“It’s like that now.”

As soon as these words came out, everyone burst into laughter.

It was already dark. Li Hao's armor was red, and his skirt armor was an indistinguishable blue. At a distance of about ten steps, it was impossible to tell the difference between him and the Tartar corpse next to him.

"Be serious, pretend to be cleaning up the battlefield and about to leave. When you hear the sound of the Tartars, chase them out." Li Hao ordered again.

So the eight people in the field began to pretend, some feeding the horses, some eating dry food. Li Tianyang also adjusted the position of the corpse so that the corpse's thigh gently pressed the blade of Li Hao's waist knife to prevent it from being exposed due to the reflection of the blade.

……

"The six people should be here. I'll rush over first and lure them away. There are enough horses over there. You two should hurry up and meet at the cave northeast of Tashan. We'll spend the night there."

Six hundred steps away, the three Tatars quietly observed the Ming soldiers cleaning up the battlefield.

Bayala was confident that the inferior horses of the Ming soldiers could not catch up with him, so he proposed to lure the Ming soldiers to chase them, and then two flagmen would go back to steal the body.

"It all depends on Goshha's personal guards. This time when we go back, each of us will give Goshha a female Nikan."

Nikan means Han people, and the bannerman who spoke painted a big picture for Bayala.

"It's a word."

Bayala was afraid that the two of them would go back on their word, so he happily mounted his horse, waved his hand and asked the two of them to ride away quietly. Then he shouted loudly and rushed towards the Ming soldiers who were illuminated by torches.

"Man, your father, here I come."

For the sake of the two female Nikens, he put in all his effort, shouting all the way, and started shooting arrows as soon as he rushed to fifty steps, for fear that the Ming soldiers would catch up with him.

"Son of a bitch, how dare you talk to your dad like that!"

The five servants and three soldiers acted according to the plan. They immediately mounted their horses and started chasing again. The two groups of people shouted and cursed, and each thought that the other was their son. After cursing for a long time, they even reduced the generation level of both parties to grandfather and grandson.

After the world returned to darkness and tranquility, two Tartars rode up quietly without even lighting torches.

"Fortunately, we still have horses. We should hurry up, lest the Ming soldiers fail to catch up and come back again."

Both flag bearers dismounted, one untied the horse's rope, and the other started to carry the body.

"Hey, are you surprised? Are you surprised?"

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(End of this chapter)