Translator: DragonRider

  While speaking, Xiao Gui had risen to his feet again and, with the crossbow still against his head, walked forward.

  Zhang Xiaojing didn't dare to pull the trigger, and neither did he dare to withdraw the crossbow. Having no alternative, he backed off one step after another.

  Soon, his back knocked against the door frame with a thud.

  Wuhour (11:00-13:00), the 14th of July, Kaiyuan Year 23 (736 AD).

  The Fengsui Castle, thirty miles north of the Bohuan City, the Anxi Duhu (Duhu is a military agency in charge of inspecting border areas where ethnic minorities lived in feudal China).

  There was neither a shred of cloud nor a trace of wind, only a burning sun high up in the sky, which was brutally shedding its inexhaustible heat over this land. The whole desert was like an oven; each and every grain of sand in it was boiling hot. Despite its scorching heat, the desert still couldn't rid itself of the strong odor of blood and rotten corpses in the air.

  The droopy dragon flag, hanging on the flagpole which had nearly been halved by enemies, had lost its original colors due to excessive exposure to beacon smoke. Piles of corpses could be seen both on and under dilapidated battlements, some of whom were cavalrymen of the Tuqishi Army of Tujue, and others soldiers of Tang Army. Nobody would bury their bodies, because there was hardly anybody still alive.

  Only a dozen soldiers were truly still breathing. Armor of all of them were covered in blood and dirt; even their buns were loose with half of their hair drooping down, which made them look like savages. These men, sheltering from the baking sunlight, were lying this way and that in the shadow cast by a barbican half of which had been destroyed. Only one man was still outside burrowing in those bodies.

  Zhang Xiaojing stooped down and picked up a kampilan only to find that the blade had been turned. He shook his head and tossed it away. Then he found a pike, but the handle was being tightly gripped by a deceased Tang soldier, and he was unable to force the man's hands open no matter how hard he tried. Having no choice, Zhang Xiaojing removed the blade of the pike from the handle and put it into his bosom, his eyes sweeping around with the intention to find a wooden pole to fit the pike blade.

  "Hey, why don't you stop messing around and have some rest?" Wen Wuji lying in the shadow of a broken wall yelled in a hoarse voice.

  "The blades of our weapons were turned. We need to find some replacements. Surely you don't want to fight with your teeth if there's another fight, do you?" Zhang Xiaojing refused to retreat to the shadow and kept rooting through piles of corpses.

  Wen Wuji and a couple of other veterans lying in the shadow chuckled, "Stop it. Would it make any difference if we had new weapons?"

  They had been strenuously defending this place for nine days. Their unit, the Eighth Duhu Regiment, which was at full strength and 300 strong nine days ago, had been reduced to 13 surviving solders. Even the regimental commander had been killed during the fight. It was very likely that none of them would be able to survive the next attack of Turkish army. Surprisingly, under these circumstances, they became open and clear.

  "Big Head Zhang, if you still have some extra strength, you might as well find me some mint leaves. My hands are a little unsteady."

  At the top of the barbican, a bony archer with a hooknose yelled at Zhang Xiaojing. He was restringing a bow. He had drawn the bow so many times that the flesh between his thumb and index finger had cracked some time ago.

  Zhang Xiaojing raised his hand. "Xiao Gui, how many have you killed?"

  "twenty-three."

  "I'll make a mint leaf roll for you myself when it reaches twenty-five."

  "Why the fuck don't you give it to me right now? You might not live that long," Xiao Gui replied in an annoyed tone.

  "I'm sure I'll find some in the mouth of one of these dead ones."

  Zhang Xiaojing raised his head to check the position of the sun. In the normal course of events Turkish army wouldn't launch an attack at noon. They would at least wait until the Weihour (13:00-15:00) was over, which meant that these men would stay alive for at least another two hours. As a result, he wiped off his sweat and lowered his head to resume rummaging around.

  Before long, carrying two pikes, three short sabers and a handful of arrows, he returned to the shadow. After dropping them to the ground with a clang, he directly lay down, panting heavily. Wen Wuji tossed a water sack to him. Zhang Xiaojing upended it above his mouth but only four or five drops of water flew out, which stuck to his tongue and felt like ambrosia. All people nearby subconsciously licked their dry and cracked lips. Unfortunately, there wasn't a single droplet of water left in the sack.

  "The beacon-fire has been burning for a day and a night. Reinforcements from the Duhu should have arrived some time ago even if they had been crawling, shouldn't they?" said a soldier.

  Wen Wuji squinted his eyes and replied, "It's hard to say. This time Tujue dispatched a lot of men here. Maybe the Bohuan City is under attack as well."

  All people in the shadow lapsed into silence. They all knew what this meant. Once the battle at the Bohuan City fell into a deadlock, they would never be able to last until reinforcements arrived. Wen Wuji looked around and suddenly sighed, "We traveled such a long way to the Western Regions, but I'm afraid we're not going to make it back. Listen up, brothers, those who survive must collect the bodies of those who don't and deliver them to their hometowns."

  Leaning against a broken wall, Zhang Xiaojing replied, "Stop dreaming. Old Wang's from Hedong. Old Fan has to be delivered to Jiannan. And there are Regimental Commander Gan, Liu Wenban, Song Shiliu and Du Poluo…… A lot of people need to be delivered to their hometowns. You'll have to wait years for your turn. Salt your body while you still can and then wait."

  Wen Wuji walked over to the pile of broken weapons, picked up and checked them one by one. "Actually I don't care if I can make it back or not. If death is what the future holds for me, I'll just take it as an honor of dying protecting our country. Provided any of you survive, remember to marry my daughter. I don't want her to be lonely and helpless."

  "With a father like you, how much better could the look of your daughter possibly be? I would rather fight to the death with Turks," yelled another soldier. His words sent others into a fit of weak laugh.

  It seemed as if the word "death", due to the scorching sun, had also lost the influence that it was supposed to have on people. Everybody was talking about it in a relaxed tone, as if they were a group of young intellectuals on a spring outing.

  Wen Wuji clicked his tongue. "Alas. Let me tell you something. There's a secret formula for the making of incense that has been handed down in my family from generation to generation, and she has fully mastered it. It is rumored that a pack of rue incense is worth fifty Guan (a Guan is a a string of 1,000 cash) in Chang'an. If any of you marry her and open an incense store, you would definitely make a fortune."

  "You've been Chang'an? Exactly what does it look? It is said that the imperial palace is even vaster than this desert."

  "Bullshit! Where could they find a roof big enough to cover it if it's really that vast? But I heard that there are 108 fangs in the city! It's a huge city!" observed Wen Wuji smugly.

  All others exclaimed in astonishment. There were merely a dozen fangs in Qiuci. It had never crossed the mind of any of them that Chang'an was so big. Someone remarked in a longing tone of voice, "If I survive, I'm so going to Chang'an and check out the myriad temptations it has to offer. It would be best if your daughter happens to have just opened an incense store. We'll all go there to congratulate her, take away a couple of packs of high-quality incense in passing and see whether or not you would dare to charge us for them."

  Wen Wuji burst into laugh. "I definitely won't. You should all go there, I'll entertain you with liquor from Xinfeng, so that we, brothers of the Eighth Regiment, will have a reunion party in Chang'an."

  "I'll go to a brothel. I've never touched any women yet!"

  "I'll buy my mother a box of flower-shaped hair pins. She has never even bought a box of Shuifen (a cosmetic made from powder and glycerine) before!"

  "Every day I'll go to a different fang and enjoy the food there, and I'll be doing it for 108 consecutive days!"

  "Go to Chang'an! Go to Chang'an! Go to Chang'an!" As their spirits rose, they knocked rocks on the ground with saber sheaths and started chorusing the same sentence.

  Zhang Xiaojing felt a twinge of distress and suddenly said, "Old Wen, maybe you should just leave. Go back and take care of your daughter. It won't make any difference if you are here or not.

  All others agreed, advising him to leave. After a while, someone suddenly blurted, "How about all of us leave here before Turks attack again?"

  All others instantly fell silent. This thought had been lingering in the minds of many of them for quite some time. While they were talking about this topic, someone finally brought this up. Currently, reinforcements were long overdue, while the number of enemies had been increasing by the day. With so few survivors, it wouldn't really make any difference whether they would keep defending this place or desert.

  Unexpectedly, Wen Wuji's face darkened. In a severe tone of voice, he asked, "Who said that? Stand up!" All others remained silent. Wen Wuji stuck an arrow into the ground and observed, "We have orders to defend the Fengsui Castle to the last breath. There are no circumstances under which we are allowed to take other actions. The only thing we are supposed to do is defend this place to death. If we still draw breath and the castle is lost, could any of you say that you defend it to death?"

  "Nobody here is a coward, but we've gone this far……" Zhang Xiaojing summoned up his courage and tried to make a defense.

  Wen Wuji raised his arm and wave it backward. "If we desert, the Bohuan City right behind us might soon fall. And there are also Shayang, Qiuci and the who Anxi Duhu. If everybody sees it this way, how is our country supposed to win this war? All of you have seen with your own eyes how ferocious those Turks are!" Zhang Xiaojing still seemed to want to say something, but Wen Wuji twisted around and observed, "You may leave all you want. I'll stay right here. This is part of the territory of Tang! I'm not going anywhere!"

  He reached out his right fist and heavily smacked it onto his left shoulder. This was a pep salute of the Eighth Regiment, and it meant "to a regretless death". Seeing this, all others had a solemn look on their faces and made the same gesture, which sent Zhang Xiaojing into deep embarrassment.

  Xiao Gui standing at the top of the barbican yelled languidly, "Hey, guys, you may quarrel all you want, but may I ask if any of you could do me a favor and carry a bundle of arrows up here?" By doing this, he had actually given Zhang Xiaojing an out. Zhang Xiaojing hurriedly pulled out the arrow stuck into the ground by Wen Wuji and walked into the barbican.

  Xiao Gui took the arrows, checked it and said, "This one's not very straight. Adjust the feather for me, will you?" Seeing Zhang Xiaojing keep silent, he snapped, "You are such an idiot, Big Head Zhang. You know exactly how stubborn Old Wen is. Why did you deliberately say that?"

  Unconvinced, Zhang Xiaojing took the arrow and replied, "It's not that I myself want to leave! I was trying to persuade him to leave. His wife died many years ago and his kid is still young."

  "Dying on the battlefield is a sworn duty of every soldier. We will be deemed worthy of the Emperor's kindness to us as long as we manage to keep this flag standing before our last breath. Why bother considering so many other things?"

  His tone was rather relaxed, but the point he was trying to make was the same as that of Wen Wuji – this was part of the territory of Tang, and in no circumstances should they abandon it. Zhang Xiaojing stared at him. "You've always been undisciplined and slack. How did you come to make this kind of remarks? Does death not scare you?"

  Xiao Gui raised his head and leaned against the flagpole, an unconcerned look on his face. "Lack of mint leaves scares me more than that."

  "There, there. I've searched everywhere. There's not a single mint leaf left!"

  Xiao Gui gave up, sat cross-legged and resumed restringing his bow. Zhang Xiaojing, stroking the feather at the end of the arrow, sighed, "My parents are gone and I have no children, so I don't dare if I would be able to survive, but Old Wen has a daughter. And if my memory serves me correctly, you have an elder sister living in Guangwu, right? Why don't you just leave?"

  "It's better to die defending this place than to die defending my hometown," replied Xiao Gui slowly. "Everybody has to be responsible for their own–" His head suddenly twitched leftward. "–choices."

  The next instant, an arrow brushed by Xiao Gui's ear and stuck deep into a crack in the stone wall.

  "Turks!" Xiao Gui instantly sprang to his feet, drew his bow and stepped beside the battlements. Zhang Xiaojing hurriedly alerted those down below. Wen Wuji and others immediately rose to their feet, took their weapons and gathered around the barbican.

  It had never crossed the mind of any of them that Turkish army would launch an attack ahead of schedule. It seemed that they were also very anxious to break this impasse at the Fengsui Castal. Xiao Gui, who had amazingly good eyesight, used his palm to shade his eyes against the sun and saw that more than thirty cavalrymen of the Tuqishi Army were galloping towards this place. Judging by the clouds of dust behind them, there were at least one even two hundred more following them.

  "Big Head, give me a hand!" Xiao Gui straightened himself up beside the battlements, adopting a textbook shooting stance.

  Zhang Xiaojing, holding a saber in one hand and a shield in the other, firmly stood by his side. Xiao Gui quickly fired three arrows and with that three cavalrymen fell from their horses. Other galloping cavalrymen quickly fanned out, drew their bows and counter-attacked, but due to the unduly long distance, their arrows lost their momentum when they approached Xiao Gui; Zhang Xiaojing successfully parried all of them with his shield.

  Xiao Gui was an excellent archer. Added to this the commanding height he was at, the range of his arrows was even longer than that of those Turks who were born archers and riders, but he had to be in a standing position while shooting, which meant that he was unable to defend himself and needed others to offer him protection. At this time, Wen Wuji also sprinted up and joined Zhang Xiaojing standing beside Xiao Gui, poised to defend against more concentrated arrows, while others gathered at the foot of the barbican, determined to hold their ground till the last breath.