Chapter 58: Finding a Way Out of Impasse

On the journey home, there were no horns, only dead silence.
The road of a defeated army is further than hell.
The wind was still the same wind, but as it brushed against their faces, it carried an unshakeable, decaying stench. The formation was drawn out long, slowly crawling across the withered, yellow grassland.
The groans of the wounded were stifled in their throats, and the occasional mournful cries of the battle-beasts, mixed with the monotonous sound of armor scraping against armor, composed the most desolate melody in the world.
Fan Tong's vanguard battalion marched on the flank of the formation.
Wu Mang lay upon a makeshift stretcher constructed from a few spears and shields. The captured grand banner bearing the character "Wang" was carefully draped over him by Fan Tong, the long-dried bloodstains having dyed the flag a dark, ominous crimson.
A commander's banner served as his coffin, and loyal bones as his monument.
"Chief, they're... following us again from behind," Bao Nianfeng's voice was as hoarse as if it had been rasped by sandpaper. One of the hind legs of his black ox mount was lame, and it walked with a pronounced limp.
Fan Tong looked back. On the horizon, a single streak of wolf-smoke rose straight into the air.
Immediately following it came a second streak, then a third.
Kökö Temür was like an immensely patient hunter, lingering at a distance neither too far nor too close, driving this pack of exhausted prey and waiting for them to collapse on their own.
"Pass the order!" Xu Da's voice came from the front, equally hoarse and exhausted. "Rear guard becomes the vanguard! Form ranks in place!"
The order was relayed down level by level, met only by a succession of sluggish and numb movements.
No one had any strength left.
The battle was brief and tragic; the Yuan cavalry merely loosed a distant volley of arrows before rapidly retreating, refusing to engage the Ming forces in close combat altogether.
Yet this single round of harassment took yet another few dozen lives that were already dangling by a thread.
Night fell, and the great army halted beneath the shelter of a leeward slope.
There was no food left.
The final rations had been distributed three days ago. The soldiers began gnawing on their leather armor; the boiled leather emitted a foul stench, yet it was still fiercely fought over and swallowed down. Some dug frantically into the earth for grass roots, shoving them into their mouths regardless of whether they were poisonous or not.
Hunger was more terrifying than the curved sabers of the Yuan, silently devouring the very last shred of vitality remaining in this army.

Inside Fan Tong's encampment, the atmosphere was equally oppressive.
"Chief, if this goes on, before we even make it back to Beiping, the brothers will have starved to death halfway there," Zhu Di walked up to Fan Tong. His lips were chapped, and his face was smeared with black blood and filth, save for his eyes, which burned frighteningly bright in the firelight.
Fan Tong looked at the soldiers huddled beside the campfire, who lacked even the strength to groan, and felt as though his heart was being tightly clenched by a hand, aching fiercely.
He abruptly stood up and strode with large steps toward the main commander's tent.
Inside the tent, Xu Da was studying a map under the dim light of an oil lamp. The great military god of the Ming looked like an ordinary aged farmer at this moment, his every wrinkle laden with exhaustion.
"General Xu," Fan Tong lifted the tent flap and came straight to the point.
Xu Da raised his head, looking at him with bloodshot eyes.
"Continuing like this is no solution. Men are made of iron and grain is the steel; with empty stomachs, let alone fighting, the men don't even have the strength to walk," Fan Tong pointed outside. "I request to take the men under my command who can still move and scout around the abandoned encampments nearby. The Tatars retreated in a hurry; surely they must have left something behind. Even if it's just a few stray sheep or a few bags of moldy wheat, it's still better than gnawing on leather armor!"
Xu Da looked at him in silence, the only sound inside the tent being the crackle of the burning lamp wick.
After a long moment, he slowly spoke, his voice carrying a trace of imperceptible tremor: "Go. Mind your safety."
Fan Tong took Zhu Di, Bao Nianfeng, and the few remaining dozens of brothers who could still ride battle-beasts, and vanished into the night.
They did not travel far before arriving behind a hill, where they spotted a few abandoned yurts.
"Chief, in this pitch blackness, where are we supposed to find anything? Not even a ghost's shadow is in sight," Bao Nianfeng looked around with a blank expression.
"Let's look around! Those who retreated in a hurry might have hidden food somewhere." He leaped down from his demonic ox mount and swaggered around the vicinity. Not far away on the slope of a hill, he discovered a downward-slanting cave, which must have been used by local herdsmen for storage. Inside, it was completely empty, so he hurriedly pulled supplies out of his own pack.
"Hey, look what I've found!" he called out with feigned surprise.
Piled inside the cave were dozens of bulging sacks, alongside seven or eight robust, plump sheep with their hooves bound, and dried meat.
Bao Nianfeng's eyes went straight in an instant, and saliva unashamedly began to drip from his mouth: "Mother of mine! Are... are these really left behind by the Tatars?"
"Of course they are!" Fan Tong patted a sack without turning a red face or skipping a heartbeat, flour spilling from the seams. "They must have hidden them and didn't have time to haul them away! Quick, carry them all back for me!"
Zhu Di stood silently to the side, casting a glance at Fan Tong, who was grinning from ear to ear like a fox that had stolen a chicken.
Zhu Di said nothing at all, simply stepping forward quietly and hoisting the heaviest sack onto his shoulder.
When Fan Tong and his men returned to the encampment with their "spoils of war," the entire lifeless camp instantly came back to life.

The sheep were slaughtered and chopped into pieces, combined with cleaned offal, as Fan Tong personally took the knife to stew a massive cauldron of mutton soup, its rich, savory aroma drifting through the air. The sacks were opened, and the coarse grain flour was mixed with water, shaped into rough flatbreads, and baked golden-brown on both sides atop shields.
Every single soldier received a large bowl of piping-hot mutton soup and a hot flatbread.
The sound of ravenous devouring replaced the previous groans and despair. Many soldiers found themselves shedding tears as they ate, swallowing the grief down together with the meat soup and bread.
This hearty meal proved more effective than any motivational speech. It pulled this army back from the absolute brink of collapse by sheer force.
Xu Da stood in the distance, watching the renewed glow of vitality on the soldiers' faces, then glanced at the plump fellow who was hugging an entire lamb leg and gnawing on it until his mouth was covered in grease, his expression infinitely complex.
However, this fleeting warmth was soon shattered by a flurry of urgent hoofbeats.
A scout stumbled and scrambled into the camp; the horse he rode collapsed with a mournful cry the moment it reached the tent, vomiting foam and crashing heavily to the earth.
"Reporting—!" The scout's voice was tainted with the taste of blood. "General Xu! The Eastern Route Army... the Eastern Route Army has been defeated!"
The air, which had just been heavy with the fragrance of meat, froze instantly.
"General Li Wenzhong was ambushed by the main forces of the Yuan army at the Argun River! The army... the army suffered heavy casualties!"
"The General... he used thousands of death-seeking volunteers to pose as a decoy force, and only then managed to break through with the remnants, barely escaping..."
This news poured down like a basin of ice water straight over their heads.
The Northern Expedition had marched along three routes: the Central Route under Xu Da had suffered a crushing defeat, and the Eastern Route under Li Wenzhong had collapsed. Two out of the three routes had now met with failure.
This Northern Expedition, which had exhausted the nation's strength and carried such high hopes, was declaring its failure in the most thorough and humiliating manner possible.
The color drained bit by bit from the faces of the soldiers who had just eaten their fill, turning them as pale as death.
Xu Da's towering frame swayed violently, and he had to reach out to steady himself against the nearby flagstaff to keep from falling. He stared into the endless darkness of the northern horizon, as though he could see the vengeful ghosts of countless Ming soldiers weeping across that vast grassland.
Fan Tong swallowed the final mouthful of meat from the lamb leg. He knew that this meal might well be the last full one many of them would ever have in this world.
The journey home remained the same, but the pack of wolves behind them was now drawing even closer.