The Zhou army wore helmets and armor and marched day and night.
As the team marched, the footsteps made the ground tremble slightly.
In order to maintain a certain amount of horsepower to cope with special circumstances, the cavalry would jump off the horse and lead the horse when it was tired, which not only moved the body, but also made the horse less burdened.
Despite this, the intensity of the march left some of the soldiers behind, and the soldiers who had fallen behind were left unattended, just let them go with the infantry behind.
Although if everyone is late, General Zhang may not carry out this order, but if most of the soldiers and horses arrive, the late person will be unlucky.
In the middle of the line, the officers and men of the battalions chased after me, and the formation and queue were already in chaos, but these were not problems, and their first thing was to rush to Lulong, and after getting there to rectify it a little, and after finding out the latest situation on the front line, it was not too late to decide on the next move.
At midnight, the three armies were stationed in place for a short rest.
The soldiers took off their sleeping bags, chewed dry food, poured cold water, prepared forage, and fed their horses, and were busy for most of the hour before falling asleep.
On the fifth watch, the trumpeter was woken up by the officers and soldiers who were patrolling the night, rubbed his eyes and got up, blew the trumpet to wake up the soldiers who were sleeping all over the mountains, and after a little rectification, he hurried on the road again.
It was another day of rapid marching, and there was only half a day's journey left from the Huangzhang Valley Pass, and at this time it had already reached the second watch, and the governor of Yan ordered to rest in place, cross the valley early tomorrow morning, and arrive at Lulong before tomorrow night.
As soon as the military order was given, the three armies were stationed in place, arranged for food and rest, and recovered their strength.
Feeling the darkness to bury the pot to cook and feed the horses, and when the exhausted soldiers got into their sleeping bags and pillowed their waist knives, and were about to fall into a deep sleep, they suddenly felt a slight tremor of the ground beneath them.
"Big things are bad" Without the command of the general, the experienced veteran knew that it was bad, because with the tremor of the earth, the sound of the horse's hooves had reached their ears, and a large number of cavalry suddenly appeared in this place, and the sound of the hooves was clearly sprinting, which could never be their own men and horses.
When the soldiers shouted and screamed out of their sleeping bags, they did not care about their disheveled clothes and did not have time to put on their armour, but they picked up their saddles and hurriedly put them on their horses, and before they could fasten the silks, the sound of rumbling horses' hooves began to roar in their ears.
Thousands of troops, wielding bright steel knives, swooped down from the darkness, like ghosts, and a panicked recruit only saw a black shadow swept past him with a strong wind, and then the screams of his companions sounded farther ahead.
The frightened soldier was glad he had escaped, and another black shadow swept past him in the wind, this time not so lucky, the sharp saber splitting him in half from shoulder to hip.
It was a brutal slaughter, and the sleepy Zhou army was already at the end of its crossbows, and it was attacked by enemy cavalry when it was completely defenseless and most lax.
The enemy's attack was so fast that even the outlying sentinels did not have time to report back the alarm.
In a hurry, even if the Zhou army wanted to form a formation in place to defend itself, it became delusional, let alone a powerful counterattack.
Although the attacking Khitans looked scattered and had no formation, they participated in safaris since childhood, and they had already trained them into elite knights, and they usually worked in groups of three to form an acute angle attack formation, cooperating with each other, cutting off all the obstacles caused to their comrades, and maintaining the fastest charging speed.
And each attack Sharp Triangle maintained enough distance to ensure that after they rushed into the enemy formation, their comrades in the rear still continued to speed and launched a second round of attacks at the same speed.
The attack unfolded throughout the camp where the Zhou army was stationed, and everywhere, the Khitans' overwhelming assault maintained at least five rounds of charges, which were enough to kill one-fifth of the Zhou army and cause them great confusion, so as to ensure that when the Khitans who passed through the camp returned for a second round of sweeps, the Zhou army was still unable to form an effective counterattack.
The Zhou army fell into absolute chaos, no one could make a unified command and deployment of the whole army in this situation, and they had no time to figure out who this sudden Khitan army was and where it came from, they could only fight on their own.
At this time, the elite troops fully showed their ability, with their previous combat and drill experience, they spontaneously formed a circle, the soldiers on the periphery stabbed the enemy knights with spears, cut the legs of the enemy's horses in the dark night with horizontal knives, and used their own lives to buy time for their comrades in the middle, so that they could saddle their horses as soon as possible.
In such a surprise situation, they could not even organize a dense array of guns, and without cavalry confrontation, the whole army would be doomed to be wiped out.
Soon, the well-dressed cavalry came out from the inside, fought with the enemy's cavalry, and in cooperation with their foot comrades, approached the other spontaneously formed defensive camps, merging with each other and forming a larger circle.
Because under the surprise attack of the Khitan cavalry, they have been divided into large and small camps, and if they do not converge as soon as possible, their death is only a matter of time.
Thanks to the technical training that he never put down, after a day and a night of rapid marching, Yang Fan was able to maintain far more physical strength than his companions.
When he slashed and killed several Khitan cavalrymen, and captured a war horse, and turned over on his horse, with the dim starlight and torches scattered everywhere, he could not find a small team of even more than ten people around.
The Khitan iron cavalry was like an iron stream, they did not stop fighting in place at all, but used their charging advantage to repeatedly trample and charge the Zhou army camp, Yang Fan could only mix in the Khitan iron cavalry that was constantly reciprocating, rushing and killing, and constantly harvesting the lives of the Zhou army, while fighting, while trying to rescue his companions.
After the Khitans chiseled through the camp of the Zhou army and came back from the circle of horses to carry out another round of chiseling assault, the speed finally slowed down and began to besiege the Zhou army that formed a small circle one by one, constantly shooting arrows and even throwing javelins.
The Zhou army, which had finally stabilized its position, also fired arrows and crossbows outward, resisting their attacks with long spears and short knives.
Most of the scattered rangers like Yang Fan have been annihilated by the Khitans, Yang Fan is superb in martial arts, and in this darkness and chaos, the enemy cannot concentrate superior forces to attack him, and he is still alive and kicking up until now.
In the midst of the battle, a group of Zhou troops in front of them who were in formation to protect themselves finally found Yang Fan, who was wandering around and fighting among the Khitan soldiers like a wandering spirit, and immediately shouted to him: "Captain Yang" Yang Fan was exhausted, he hurriedly glanced in that direction in the middle of the fight, and by the faint light of a torch that fell to the ground, he could see clearly the person who called out to him, it was his other driver Shi Rui.
Yang Fan was overjoyed, and immediately circled the horse and fought in that direction.
Shi Beijia hurriedly gathered a small number of defeated backs, and formed a small barrier with dead horses and spears, and was trying his best to block the Khitan attack.
The Khitans circled their horses and ran around their small formation, sometimes shooting a cold arrow, sometimes pulling out a slender and slightly curved sharp saber and rushing at their weak defensive points, and more than two dozen Zhou troops were exhausted in the defensive circle.
Yang Fan held the steel knife with a curled blade, and approached the camp step by step, and at a distance of five or six zhang, a Khitan knight took the lead in entering the defensive circle of the Zhou army, picked up the sharp saber and slashed left and right, and launched a massacre.
For the infantry, in addition to the horseback and archery and the mobility that the infantry can never surpass, that is, when the horse fights, the horse rushes away and condescendingly swings the knife and slashes, and this kind of tactics of the horse slashing obliquely is a fierce killing method that the infantry cannot resist.
Yang Fan was in a hurry when he saw this, but there were at least five or six enemy soldiers in front of him, some of them were holding a powerful three-strand Heavenly Fork, and some were holding a powerful and heavy saber, which could not be solved in a short time at all.
The Khitan cavalry sabre that rushed into the defensive circle of the Zhou army was volleying in the air, killing to his heart's content, every time the steel knife fell, it was convenient to harvest a life after a cold light, its momentum was incomparable, invincible, and the Khitan cavalry behind had already rushed over through this breakthrough.
When Shi Rui saw it, he immediately raised his spear and rushed over, twisted his waist in steps, shook his spear, and was about to stab at the Khitan who killed unscrupulously, and another Khitan jumped in from the gap, the horse was in the air, and the front hooves had not yet landed, and the snowy steel knife in the hand of the knight on the horse swept past the back of Shi Rui's neck, and a human head was connected to half of the shoulder, flying away from knowing where to go.
"Farewell Driving" Yang Fan shouted, blood pierced the pupils, and the steel knife with the blade in his hand slashed at the enemy in front of him, and the Khitan general who made the Tiancha saw that the Tang general's entire body was poked out from the horse, and the knife in his hand slashed head-on with a roar, and he couldn't help but be horrified, and hurriedly put the steel fork horizontally, only to hear a sonorous sound, the knife in Yang Fan's hand folded in response, ending its mission.
The Khitan general was overjoyed in his heart, and the steel fork turned, and the fork handle slammed into the empty force, and his body fell forward, and Yang Fan, who was trying to sit back on the horse, swept him off the horse.
A Khitan soldier stepped forward and stabbed Yang Fan in the back with a shot, the Khitan general made a steel fork to block, and shook the gun away with a "sonorous", the sharp fork tip tightly pressed Yang Fan's heart, looked at the beast pattern on his back, and sneered: "This is a Tang general, tied" There were only five Zhou soldiers left in the fortress and huddled in a corner, each with wounds, and when several Khitans jumped over the barrier in a row, turned around in this small circle, and prepared to kill them all with a charge, the five Zhou soldiers threw away their weapons and obediently raised their hands.
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However, the Khitans did not put down the knives in their hands, and they wandered around, how could they contain the prisoners.
The Khitans occupied favorable terrain in the Huangzhang Valley, lured the enemy to go deeper, and used fireworks to trample on the Zhou army, killing and wounding countless people, so they completely annihilated the Zhou cavalry at a very small cost, and then launched a one-sided massacre of the Zhou army's infantry.
In the Huangzhang Gorge, those foot soldiers had no way to resist at all, and it didn't cost much to annihilate them.
Now, except for the soldiers and horses behind Li Duo's guard of grain and grass, plus the infantry who were far behind by their rapid march, the main force of the cavalry of the Zhou army is only 30,000 people.
In the current situation of waiting for work at ease and conducting surprise attacks at night, even if the Zhou army is twice as large as the Khitan, it is a sure defeat if it is powerless, not to mention that with 60,000 against 30,000, the Khitans occupy an absolute advantage in strength.
When the dawn of the morning dawn in the east, the earth seemed to be dyed with a layer of glow, and the ground was covered with blood and corpses.
The main Khitan force rushed non-stop to the foot soldiers delayed by the Tang army and the grain and grass behind the palace: