At dawn, the fires of the Zhao army's camp, which had been lit up all night more than ten miles away, were finally extinguished one after another. Then came the curling smoke wafting from the camp. The smoke accompanied by the fragrance of corn in the pot spread all around, and also drifted into the nasal cavity of Tao Heng's horsemen, who had been on duty on the nearby mountains all night. The horsemen were tired and hungry, and when they smelled the fragrance of corn, they couldn't help but stretch their necks and sniff carefully, as if the fragrance could soothe their hunger.

Tao Heng took out half a piece of dry hard cake from the dry food bag he was carrying, and bit it with a clatter. From time to time, he took out the water bladder on his waist and poured a few mouthfuls into his mouth, and then swallowed the Hu Biscuit that was still a little choked after chewing. Looking at the appearance of the cavalry beside him greedily smelling the smell of the enemy's rice, he couldn't help but sigh softly. He turned his head to look at the team holding the kettle and swallowing it like he did.

This person was the one who came with him and Feng Ding from Longxi to cool down, and in the end, one of the twenty or so horsemen remained. This person is a tiger with a bear's waist, and the blessing of the stirrups commonly equipped by the cavalry of the Liangzhou army, now he is good at making a horse lance that is long and weighs more than 30 catties on horseback, and the riding and archery skills are difficult to find opponents among the cavalry in Lingju today. But he was born with a white and beardless Confucian face. After staying in the army for a long time, this person is also full of murderous spirit, and often in the blink of an eye, he can already make the other party dare not move lightly.

Tao Heng took out another oiled paper bag from the dry food bag, shook his hand and threw it towards the team: "Wang Laozhu, there is a bit of horse jerky pickled earlier. Later, you can divide it with the brothers. ”

"Hey!" The team reacted quickly, took the oil paper bag in one hand, looked happy, opened the paper bag and sniffed it, with an intoxicated look. Just as he was about to turn around to distribute horse jerky, he suddenly remembered something, turned around and asked Tao Heng: "Is there still a hundred people?" ”

"It's gone, it's all in your hands." Tao Heng looked at the Zhao military camp two miles away, and replied without raising his head.

When Wang Laozhu heard this, he carefully picked the largest one from the oiled paper bag, walked to Tao Heng's side a few times, and handed over the horse jerky: "Let's eat some of the hundred people." ”

"No, no, no." Tao Heng waved his hand again and again: "I've eaten enough." These were given to the brothers, and they had the strength to continue their journey later. ”

Seeing Tao Heng's resolute expression, Wang Laozhu nodded and walked towards those soldiers. The dry, hard horse meat in the oiled paper packets was by no means an extraordinary delicacy even in the minds of these soldiers. But now there are no more dry and hard horse meat outside than in the camp, and they are better than those dry and hard in the dry food bag, and they cannot be swallowed without water.

Wang Laozhu walked to the vicinity of the gathered soldiers with the oil-paper bag, and the soldiers immediately hula-la-la. Looking at the oiled paper bag in his hand, he swallowed his saliva. Wang Laozhu beckoned: "Sit down and wait for me to share, whoever wants to disobey the rules, don't blame me for discounting his hand!" ”

Hearing his stern statement, the soldiers sat in a circle one after another. Wang Laozhu put the oiled paper bag on the boulder on the side, then took out the ring head knife from his waist, counted the heads, and began to cut the horse jerky that was not much.

After a while, the horse jerky in the oiled paper bag was already divided. Each person gets a small piece. The soldiers put the horse jerky into their mouths, closed their eyes and chewed it carefully for a while, and they all showed expressions that were still unfinished.

"Hugh is too little!" Wang Laozhu looked at the greedy expressions of the soldiers, and said reprimanded: "These were originally rations for one hundred people. Now the hundred people have eaten the bread to satisfy their hunger, and the dried meat has not been moved, and all the meat will be distributed to you. ”

When the soldiers heard Wang Laozhu say this, they all glanced at the hundred people who were still standing more than a dozen steps away, raising their eyes to look at the enemy camp, and there was no complaint in their hearts for a moment. They devoured their own bread and nibbled on it to satisfy their hunger. The team leader and other grassroots generals have already walked to the side of the 100-person captain and began to inquire about today's team movements and arrangements.

Tao Heng looked at the enemy camp two miles away, his face solemn and he didn't say a word. It wasn't until the enemy army had a morning meal and began to pick up weapons from his tent and go out of the camp to assemble that Tao Heng's expression became nervous. He roughly counted the number of enemy troops out of the camp, and saw that the size was no less than 8,000 men, and his expression was even more worried.

Soon after the enemy troops left the camp and then marched to Lingju County, the thousands of people who remained in the camp were not idle. Under the leadership of their respective generals, they began to dismantle camp fences and tents. And they loaded it into trucks ready for handling. When Wang Laozhu saw this scene, he was very puzzled, and hurriedly approached Tao Heng and asked, "Captain of a hundred people, what are these thieves going to do?" ”

Tao Heng sighed: "Liu Yin wants to move the camp forward, so as to slow down the time and energy spent on sending troops to attack the city. On the first day of the battle, Liu Yin still took the Qiang people first, and the begging marshal last. left 2,000 captives to ride and suppress the formation, and the end was not good. ”

In Tao Heng's impression, since he was in Longxi, his impression of the thief was like this. At first, he did not occupy the Longxi region, and Liu Zhao mostly used the begging army as cannon fodder. And with the elite of his own clan, he swept back the formation. If the cannon fodder effectively consumes the enemy's strength, the Hun elite cavalry who retreats will advance with a drum and take advantage of the situation to break the enemy army. If these cannon fodder did not play a big role, these precious living forces of the Huns would not be able to bear much loss.

After the defeat of Longxi, the large and small Qiang tribes in the Longxi area were intimidated by Liu Zhao's strong military coercion, and sent hostages to Chang'an, so they had to surrender to the Xiongnu. In this way, these rabble in the eyes of the Huns became the new cannon fodder troops.

The Xiongnu and Zahu, who were relatively small in number, had to do everything they could to obtain the priority right of survival of their own people in this troubled world. Correspondingly, there is the complete degradation of foreigners. The rest of the peoples living in the Northland are powerless to fight, and their situation is not much better than that of guinea dogs.

"Let's go!" Tao Heng turned his head to look at Wang Laozhu: "Send one person back to the camp and report the movement of the enemy army here to Sima." We'll continue south. The road here is steep and predicamentous, but for Sima and thousands of robes, we have no choice. ”

On the tower of the city, there were soldiers standing everywhere with torches. The iron pot on the side is full of heating oil. Each pot was surrounded by several soldiers, who threw the firewood they had chopped earlier into the bottom of the pot. The rest of the people held their own fans and fanned the wind towards the burning wood at the bottom of the pot.

In addition, the rest of the guards were on the city wall. It is a matter of their own lives, and no one dares to be negligent. As the black and oppressive military formation of the enemy army in the distance became more and more close, the soldiers on the city wall also broke down in a cold sweat.

After all, among the sergeants standing on the city walls today, there are still mainly temporary conscripted auxiliaries. In the face of the slowly advancing military formation, a doubt arose in everyone's hearts: With such a powerful enemy army coming to attack the city, could Lingju really be able to hold it?

The old battalion soldiers were in their respective positions. Most of the recruited auxiliaries were nervously staring at the enemy army two arrows away from the city.

The Zhao army stopped for a moment outside the two arrows and regrouped. Li Yanzhi raised his eyes on the city tower and looked around, looking at his own soldiers who looked like they were not giving up at the head of the city, and he couldn't help but feel anxious. He turned around and shouted to the drummer behind him, "Beat the drums, prepare!" ”

"Ready!" A group of old battalion soldiers beside Li Yanzhi who were waiting for him shouted one after another. The drummers also took up their drumsticks and struck them vigorously against the snare drums erected on the tower.

Hearing the sound of trumpets and drums, as well as the shouts and cheers of Sima Zuo's soldiers on the city tower, the rest of the soldiers at the head of the city, mainly auxiliary soldiers, cheered up their spirits. After a period of rigorous training, they no longer lack the most basic discipline. It's just that when they don't have a command, they don't know what they should do.

Now that the trumpets sounded, the soldiers took up their shields and erected a strong line of defense along the battlements. In the gap between the shields, the spear heads and blades that had been sharpened for a long time shone with a chilling light.

The soldiers who took care of the cauldron in the city were also protected by the sword players who came one after another. They erected their shields facing the battlements, creating an impenetrable wall of shields for the robes who were busy by the pot. As the fan swayed, the fire under the pot became more and more intense. Green smoke gradually rose from the pot.

After the Zhao army finished the formation, he continued to advance forward until the arrow stopped again. The horn sounded, and the Qiang warriors in the front row and the Jin beggars in the team raised their shields, carried the ladders, and pushed the shield carts to the edge of the city!

"Put!" Wei Xu, who had been waiting for a long time, saw that the enemy army had rushed within the range of an arrow, and his right hand suddenly waved down, shouting. The crossbowmen gathered around him stretched their crossbows out of the wall, each aiming at a rough position, and then immediately pulled the crossbow in their hands.

Hundreds of crossbow arrows burst out of the string and struck the Qiang warriors below the city with a strong wind. Although the crossbow arrows in the hands of these Lingju soldiers roared down, the damage caused by these crossbow arrows could only be said to be negligible against the Qiang warriors who had already raised their shields for defense.

The crossbow arrow that hit the shield in the hands of the warriors under the castle was either bounced away, or it was stuck into the shield held high by the soldiers below, and the white feathers at the end of the arrow were still shaking and swaying repeatedly. In the face of this crossbow attack, which could not be called dense at all, the Qiang warriors holding shields did not stop for a moment, and they continued to march towards the city with neat steps.

In the face of such a raging onslaught, the only way to deal with it is to inflict heavy casualties on them that would collapse them. In this era when there were no weapons of mass destruction, the best way Li Yanzhi could think of was to inflict tons of casualties on these enemy troops by relying on high ditches and deep fortresses, pouring hot oil on them, and lighting a fire.

This method has been practiced once in Jincheng County. Facts have proved that as long as the city walls are built high, and enough ordnance weapons and even fire oil are stored to inflict huge casualties on these barbarians, they can have an absolute advantage in defensive warfare.

The crossbowmen continued to wind up and fire their arrows with all their might. Throughout, however, the casualties inflicted by these crossbowmen on the enemy have been extremely limited. Wei Xu weakly raised his crossbow and released an arrow into the crowd of enemy soldiers who were about to reach the city. The crossbowmen were generally depressed because they had not been able to inflict any substantial casualties on the enemy.

The Zhao soldiers were soon blocked by the widened Lingju County moat dug by the auxiliaries. Liu Yin sent 8,000 people in the first formation, and he also had the intention of making Juxian go down in one go. However, the reality is telling him extremely cruelly that it is not so easy to capture Lingju. Seeing that the Qiang warriors in the front row of his side had been stationed by the moat, Liu Yin waved his hand, and the more than 2,000 Hun cavalry who swept the formation at the back began to ride their horses forward, gradually approaching the towering Lingju city wall in the distance.

When the Hun cavalry advanced to a place about a stone's throw away, they stopped, and then divided into four teams, and galloped towards the city wall of Lingju under the leadership of their respective generals. Li Yanzhi, who was standing on the city tower, was no stranger to this move of the enemy army. The horsemen were on the back of a high-speed horse, and with the speed of the horse, they could shoot arrows farther and higher. He turned his head and said to the drummer behind him, "Beat the drum!" Manage! ”

"Royal!" The old battalion foot soldiers and ironclad foot soldiers gathered on the city tower shouted one after another. The sound of drums echoed on the south side of the city wall, and some of the soldiers patrolling on the city wall stepped forward with their shields in their hands, and then put their shields on the edge of the battlements, forming a higher and stronger shield wall together with the shield array of Fang Cai and Ze.

The old battalion soldiers in front of the city tower also raised their shields one after another, forming a shield wall to cover the city tower. Behind the old battalion foot soldiers, there stood more than a hundred ironclad foot soldiers in armor and armed with knives. Li Yanzhi looked at the Hun cavalry galloping back and forth under the city with a solemn face, and then slowly put the iron mask in his hand on his face.

Seeing that Li Yanzhi was wearing a mask, the rest of the ironclad foot soldiers also followed suit and put on their masks one after another. Two old battalion foot soldiers with shields in the back rushed to the side of the drummer, one left and one right. They lifted up their shields and held up the drummers. Not long after the foot soldiers on the city tower finished all this in an orderly manner, Li Yanzhi saw the Hun cavalry galloping through the small hole in the mask outside his eyes and sent the first wave of arrows to the city tower.

The rain of arrows came in an instant, and the aggressive sound of shooting on the shield was mixed with the sonorous sound of shooting on the armor leaves of the ironclad infantry in the back row, echoing over this section of the tower. Li Yanzhi lowered his head slightly, and let the sporadic arrows hit his helmet and shoulder armor, and the slight stinging pain through his skin from time to time meant that the arrows were hitting the ground crookedly and burrowing into the gaps between the nail leaves. However, there was still a layer of leather armor lining the inside, and Li Yanzhi didn't care about it.

Under the rain of arrows sent out by the Hun cavalry galloping with horses, the Qiang warriors who hesitated on the edge of the moat began to build bridges with wooden ladders, trying to pass through this deadly moat. The crossbowmen who were suppressed by the accurate and continuous rain of arrows from the Hun cavalry could only find an opportunity to shoot a few arrows at the enemy cavalry below the city. However, these crossbow bolts pose no threat to enemy riders at high speeds.

The successful suppression of the cavalry bought enough time for the Qiang infantry to act as the vanguard. Braving the occasional sporadic arrows from the city, these tenacious warriors crossed the moat with wooden ladders and quickly rushed down to the city.

It's just that they didn't know that when they crossed the moat and rushed to the city in dense form, the test of the grassroots soldiers on both sides of this offensive and defensive battle had just begun.