Chapter Forty-Six: When Will the Reinforcements Arrive?

“Deputy Marshal, the Tang army’s defense remains stubborn—we’re suffering heavy losses!” A captain rushed up to Cui Qianyou, who still stood on the hillside observing the battle, and loudly reported the situation.

Cui Qianyou silently waved the young officer away, indicating that he understood.

He had witnessed every phase of the fighting with his own eyes, fully aware that their side had already paid a price of more than two thousand casualties, yet not a single man had breached the gates of Tongguan. The few siege ladders they managed to raise against the city walls of Tongguan were immediately pushed down, and those soldiers who had attempted to climb were either killed or left grievously wounded.

Six waves of assaults had all come to nothing. Though he could see that these attacks had greatly taxed the defenders on the walls and that arrows had rained down in uncountable numbers, it was still far from the time when the Tang soldiers would be exhausted or their arrows depleted.

Had this been before the great victory at Lingbao, after so many sacrifices and still without progress, he would have had no choice but to order a halt to the attack.

But now, everyone knew that the garrison inside Tongguan was severely understrength—at most, there were ten or twenty thousand defenders, while the attackers numbered nearly one hundred fifty thousand. With such an overwhelming numerical advantage, they had to press the assault ceaselessly. If they hesitated, and the Tang reinforcements arrived, the situation would revert to what it had been before the battle of Lingbao: a deadlock between two armies.

Neither Cui Qianyou, nor An Qingxu, nor An Lushan back in Luoyang wished to see that outcome.

Before the battle of Lingbao, the situation had been grim for them—Cui Qianyou knew this well. An Lushan was already considering retreating to his ancestral home in Fanyang. Most of their forces were pinned before Tongguan, while Tang generals like Guo Ziyi, Li Guangbi, Yan Zhenqing, Cheng Qianli, and Li Siyi led fierce attacks in their rear, gaining the upper hand. An Lushan and his commanders, including Cui Qianyou, feared that the passage between Luoyang and Fanyang would be cut off, and that their forces would be isolated and destroyed one by one, so they thought of retreating to Fanyang.

But after the great victory at Lingbao, when Geshu Han’s army of two hundred thousand was almost entirely wiped out and Tongguan was left nearly undefended, if they did not seize this rare opportunity to storm Tongguan and open the gateway to Chang’an, they would never have another chance to lay hands on the capital.

Upon hearing of the victory at Lingbao, An Lushan issued a strict order to take Tongguan at all costs. He himself was marching rapidly with fresh troops to reinforce the siege. Both An Qingxu and Cui Qianyou understood that now, there could be no holding back—the attack on Tongguan must continue, even if the corpses were to pile as high as the city walls. To capture all of Tongguan and open the road to Chang’an, the Han Tongguan must fall; otherwise, they would never have the chance to bring their armies beneath the Sui Tongguan’s gates.

Cui Qianyou again ordered his men to maintain the same tactics—wave after wave, the assault on Han Tongguan must not cease.

With Cui Qianyou’s command, the rebel forces, under the direction of their officers at every level, resumed their attack. This time, the scale increased slightly: the soldiers held their shields even tighter, forming a broad protective barrier as they advanced swiftly toward the walls of Tongguan.

It was impossible to use cavalry in this attack; cavalry could not be effective here, so only the infantry pressed forward, or the horsemen dismounted and fought as foot soldiers. They were seasoned in the arts of siege warfare, and knew that in such conditions, the more completely they shielded themselves, the better their chances of survival.

But the ground before Tongguan was rough and uneven, and even the highest shields could not protect them at every moment. A single misstep, and a deadly arrow would find its mark, bringing injury or death.

Arrows continued to pour down in dense volleys from the city walls, and the rebel soldiers fell, one after another, beneath the battlements.

“Another assault has been repulsed!” On the gate tower above the eastern gate of Sui Tongguan, Yang Xi, observing the battle, could not help but sigh as he saw the rebels suffer heavy casualties yet again and finally retreat in defeat. By now, the dead left by the enemy no longer stirred any feeling in him; he only hoped that Pang Zhong and Li Fude could hold their ground atop the city walls, denying the enemy any chance to scale them.

Even if the rebels did manage to reach the top, they must be cut down before setting foot on the wall.

By his observation, the rebels had already lost at least two or three thousand men beneath the walls, while the defenders’ casualties were no more than a few dozen. Each new wave of attackers seemed to be advancing over the corpses of their fallen comrades.

This enormous disparity in losses owed chiefly to the terrain around Tongguan. If not for the treacherous landscape outside the southeast gates of Han Tongguan—its uneven, broken ground that prevented the rebels from deploying their full strength—if not for this, the defenders would have been overwhelmed. The attackers could not mass their archers for any coordinated volley against the walls; they could only grit their teeth and charge, braving the hail of arrows from above.

This was why the losses were so lopsided. The defenders suffered only from the few arrows that reached the parapets and remained largely unscathed in terms of fighting strength.

As Yang Xi pondered these things, Gao Shi hurried up to the gate tower, loudly requesting permission to lead his troops in relief of Han Tongguan.

All the soldiers atop Sui Tongguan had witnessed the desperate fighting at Han Tongguan. Such scenes had been common in recent months, but today’s battle had a different feel. With only two thousand defenders holding Han Tongguan, it was difficult to resist the rebels’ relentless assaults, which were fiercer and more frequent than ever before. At this rate, no one knew how long the garrison could hold out.

The blood surging in his veins, Gao Shi could no longer restrain himself and once again begged Yang Xi to let him lead a force to reinforce Han Tongguan.

Previously, Gao Shi had missed the chance to join Geshu Han's campaign outside the Pass because he had been ordered to return to the capital to plead with the emperor not to fight beyond the Pass. This spared him the crushing defeat at Lingbao and left him less haunted by that disaster, so he was more eager than most generals to join the fight.

Yet his request was again denied by Yang Xi.

Yang Xi told him that unless reinforcements arrived, there could be no question of sending troops to support the already doomed Han Tongguan. For now, the only mission was to hold Sui Tongguan at all costs, to keep this gateway to Chang’an from falling into rebel hands.

Even if Han Tongguan were lost, as long as Sui Tongguan remained in their hands, it would not be a disaster. The two towns were only a few miles apart; so long as the defenders held Sui Tongguan while the rebels occupied Han Tongguan, the standoff would be tolerable. Yang Xi was unafraid of any such confrontation.

After hearing Yang Xi’s explanation, Gao Shi could only accept the order with resignation and prepared to receive Pang Zhong and Li Fude’s forces after nightfall.

Yang Xi then sent another urgent dispatch by express rider to Chang’an, requesting immediate reinforcements from Emperor Li Longji. As he continued to watch the battle unfold, Yang Xi pondered how soon those reinforcements might arrive.