Chapter 65: The Fierce Battle

Six rounds of bed crossbow volleys had already been fired; countless rebels lay dead or wounded on the steps leading to the East Gate. Yet more rebel soldiers pressed forward, trampling over the bodies and blood of their fallen comrades, charging ahead with reckless abandon. Though the bed crossbows possessed terrifying killing power, they could not fire densely enough to halt the tide.

Each bed crossbow could be loaded with about ten arrows at a time. With twenty bed crossbows, barely two hundred arrows could be launched in one volley. Even if each arrow brought down two men, that would only account for four hundred casualties. Preparing for another round of firing took considerable time—much longer than ordinary bows or crossbows. The shots could not be so frequent; relying on bed crossbows alone, it was impossible to wipe out the attacking rebels.

The arrows from the bed crossbows were not densely packed. The number of charging rebels increased, and those who managed to survive the crossbow barrage surged towards the city gate, nearly overwhelming the road. The fearsome strikes from the bed crossbows could not force them to retreat. The rebels drew ever closer to the gate, soon approaching the range of the archers. On the ramparts, Li Chengguang and Gao Shi, commanding the defense, had already ordered their soldiers to prepare to shoot.

The distribution of troops atop Tongguan’s walls was as follows: over six thousand at the South Gate, about three thousand eight hundred at the East Gate, one thousand at the North Gate which the rebels were unlikely to attack in force, and around four hundred at the West Gate. These figures excluded the private troops of the various commanders—like Yang Xi's three hundred personal guards, and the considerable entourages under Li Chengguang, Wang Sili, Tian Qiuliang, among others. These were additional fighting forces, yet at the battle’s onset, such private soldiers would not be deployed to the front lines immediately.

The two thousand men under Pang Zhong and Li Fude had not yet entered the fight; they were resting.

The three thousand soldiers atop the East Gate were far more than had defended Han Tongguan in earlier sieges. Li Chengguang, overseeing the East Gate defense, organized the troops into four waves—eight hundred men per wave for successive volleys, with six hundred held in reserve.

As the rebels drew near the city wall, entering the archers’ range, the first wave of eight hundred soldiers had already lined up in two ranks along the rampart, bows fully drawn, arrows angled skyward.

At Li Chengguang’s furious cry of "Release!" a chorus of buzzing arose; eight hundred arrows, whistling fearfully, launched in a fan-shaped formation, soared through the air, then leveled out before plunging downward toward the advancing ranks of rebels. As the arrows flew, countless shields rose among the rebel line, poised to block the imminent rain.

Many arrows struck the raised shields, clattering to the ground, but plenty found gaps, piercing the densely charging soldiers. Amidst anguished screams, many fell, dead or wounded, and the rebel shields soon became uneven and sparse. At that moment, the second wave of arrows from the ramparts descended swiftly.

The second volley inflicted even greater casualties than the first; more rebel soldiers fell, fewer shields were raised. The Tang army’s third wave of arrows sliced through the air, bringing down yet more rebels amid cries of pain. Still, the following rebels paid no heed, pressing onward with shields, stepping over corpses and wounded bodies without concern.

No matter how dense the arrows, some always managed to slip through. Even in later eras, soldiers could charge through hails of bullets and reach the enemy trenches; in the age of cold steel, arrows could not match the lethality of gunfire. Many rebels survived the archers’ volleys by luck and continued the charge.

Those lucky enough to evade the arrows used alternating cover or the terrain’s protection to string their bows and began firing at the ramparts.

A few arrows were shot toward the ramparts, but their numbers were too few, and some lacked force, failing even to reach the defenders. They caused almost no harm to the Tang soldiers atop the walls. The battle remained one-sided, with casualties mounting mainly among the rebel ranks.

Despite the heavy losses among the charging soldiers, Cui Qianyou, commanding from the rear, did not so much as furrow his brow. He continued to order his generals, colonels, and captains at every level to accelerate the attack, striving to bring the scaling ladders to the East Gate ramparts as quickly as possible, to send more soldiers atop the wall and use numerical superiority to wear down the Tang defenders, hoping to reach the ramparts sooner.

Beneath the East Gate, rebel corpses slowly piled up, but their assault only quickened.

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The fighting at the East Gate was fierce, while attacks on the South Gate continued relentlessly, matching the East Gate in intensity. Sitting in a wheelchair, Geshu Han personally oversaw the defense from the gate tower; his key lieutenants Wang Sili and Tian Qiuliang commanded atop the ramparts. As the rebel vanguard, led by Li, swarmed down into the forbidden trench, Wang Sili, who bore the main responsibility for command, ordered the garrison of the Twelve-Linked Walls to fire first at the rebels within the trench.

The Twelve-Linked Walls were built flush against the forbidden trench, with several beacon towers even jutting into it. The soldiers atop these towers could strike the rebels as soon as they reached the eastern edge. Each beacon tower housed about one hundred twenty soldiers, but this small force wielded considerable killing power. The rebels climbing the western bank of the trench could not raise their shields for cover; their hands were occupied, and shields were the least of their concerns. In truth, the rebels rushing down the trench were easy targets for the soldiers atop the Twelve-Linked Walls.

Unfortunately, the twelve beacon towers were spaced at intervals according to the terrain, guarding the southern stretch of Tongguan’s walls—from the East Gate’s southern section, across the South Gate, to the eastern segment of the West Gate, spanning several miles. The rebels attacking the South Gate now concentrated their assault on the front and flanks of the gate—an area of two or three miles—where bodies piled up, avoiding the most perilous sections. Only five beacon towers projected outward along this stretch—so only these five could strike the rebels; the others had no opportunity to act.

The soldiers atop the beacon towers needed no orders; they were already aiming at the rebels swarming down the eastern edge of the trench, preparing to scale the steep western bank. The towers were built higher than the city walls themselves, and their height gave the archers devastating power. The rebel crossbows on the east side could not reach these towers, and those who descended into the trench, even if they fired upward, could not shoot so high. Thus, unless exhausted, the soldiers atop the Twelve-Linked Walls could continue shooting at the rebels until they reached the western bank, without fear of enemy arrows.

They were in high spirits; each soldier felt as if he were practicing archery, with the surging rebels as their targets.

Once the rebels reached the western side of the trench, they paid no heed to the soldiers atop the beacon towers, for they faced the denser volleys from the ramparts and had to fight the defenders atop the walls, not the hundred-odd men on the towers.

As the rebels poured into the trench, preparing to climb the western bank with ropes, scaling ladders, or bare hands, Wang Sili and Tian Qiuliang atop the ramparts ordered their troops to counterattack with arrows.

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