Chapter 1 Home and Country

"Follow me!" Zheng Ziming pointed forward with his spear and lightly smacked the stirrup. The black horse under the crotch slowly spreads its four hooves, and its movements are as graceful as a dancing elf.

In the same horizontal row, 400 cavalry also slowly added, keeping a straight line with their own commander, and slowly pressed towards the enemy. Each cavalryman was only an arm's width apart from his companion on his left, and each cavalryman held his spear steadily, four hundred and one of which flashed into a silvery white tide of death in the early spring sun.

After the tide of death formed by a spear, there was a second, a third, and a fourth. Between each other, separated by a distance of about three horse bodies, the spear blades rose and fell with the movement of the war horse, and the parts of the armor collided with each other, making a ** neat sound wave, "Boom, boom, ......boom,

From the early winter of the third year of Qianyou of the Later Han Dynasty to the mid-spring of the first year of Guangshun of the Great Zhou Dynasty, more than four consecutive months of war tempering made the Cangzhou army rise to a higher level in terms of equipment, morale, and combat skills. Therefore, despite the great disparity in numbers between the enemy and us at the moment, they still charged at the enemy without hesitation together with their own commander. It seems that the Hedong Army on the opposite side is not a group of soldiers at all, but a group of native chickens and dogs in armor.

"Zhou", "Henghaijun", "Cangzhou" and "Zheng" recognized the flags one by one and flew in the wind over the team. Clearly tell your opponent who this team is and where it comes from.

Theirs is the Cangzhou Army, the elite of the descendants under Zheng Ziming's account, the Cangzhou Army. Their commander, Zheng Ziming, the former inspection envoy of the three towns of the dynasty, was pinched by the Later Han Emperor and named the Cangzhou defense envoy last spring because he dragged the Youzhou army southward with thousands of township bravery. Their commander, because when the Great Zhou Emperor Guo Wei went south to Bianliang, together with his brothers Guo Rong and Zhao Kuangyin, and his good friends Gao Huaide and Fu Zhaoxu, stayed behind to attack and kill Xiao Tianci, the general in the north of the Khitan, and shocked the Central Plains.

In these years, it is common to change the dynasty. It is also common for princes to kill the emperor and replace him. But what is unusual is that in just a few years, someone has gone from a desperate little thief to a town of real power. Some people neither relied on their blood background nor relied on the remnants of their families, and they were less than twenty and became marquis.

With such a boss in his wake, the hearts of all the brothers were filled with pride and hope. They are proud of the path their manager has taken, and they have a vague glimpse of where they are headed.

Even a bandit can rely on his ability to worship the marquis, so why worry that he can't find a bright future? Even if he can't create miracles in the same way, he can become a powerful envoy. At least, he can also be a assassin, a county order, and even an inspection and command. As long as everyone is motivated through hard work, as long as everyone is as indomitable as him.

"Boom, boom, boom" The sound ......of horses' hooves and the impact of armor was like spring thunder, knocking on the trees, mountains and rivers trembling.

"Boom, boom, boom, boom......, boom" The neat spear blades were like the head of the tide, stepping on the soft earth, stepping on the weeds that had just sprouted, stepping on the remnants of snow that had not yet melted and the dead branches and leaves that had not yet had time to rot, and slowly stepped on the top of the enemy's heads.

"Let go, let go of the arrows, hurry up and release the arrows! Stop them with the arrows!" Looking at the cavalry that slapped over like a wave, the commander of the Hedong Army, the general of the Northern Han Dynasty, and Zhang Yuanheng, the envoy of the Zhenji Festival, had a pale face and shouted loudly.

He was originally the uncle of the emperor of the Later Han Dynasty, and he was the commander of the left wing of the infantry army under Liu Chong in Hedong, because Liu Chong hated Guo Wei for killing the monarch and established himself as the emperor, so he followed a chicken dog to ascend to heaven, and from the commander of 2,000 soldiers and horses, he jumped to a town with tens of thousands of troops. Nominally, it sits on the seven prefectures of Ding, Yi, Heng, Shen, Cang, De and Di, and its jurisdiction is from Taihang Mountain to the sea, across the entire Hebei.

It's just that the name is the name, but the truth is far from the name.

In order to retaliate, Guo Wei first used the guise of supporting his son Liu Yun to tempt himself to sit back and watch him enter Bianliang. then shamelessly broke the contract and stole the throne that should have belonged to the Liu family. After Liu Chong, the uncle of the Later Han Emperor, established himself as the emperor, he immediately led his troops to kill Bianliang at the shortest distance. For Hebei, which is separated by a Taihang Mountain, it was lost to his newly sealed Zhenji Jiedu envoy, Wei Bojie envoy and Yezhou Jiedu envoy to go to the recovery. As for how many soldiers and horses these three Jiedu envoys could have, and what kind of enemies they were about to face, they didn't care.

Therefore, although Zhang Yuanheng nominally owns the land of seven states, in fact, he can only control Yizhou, which has just been redeemed from the hands of the Khitans with gold and silver, and Dingzhou, which is controlled by the fierce general Hu Yancong. Nominally, he was a general and led 100,000 troops, but in fact, the number of soldiers he actually owned was only a little more than 30,000, and more than 20,000 of them were farmers who were temporarily forcibly conscripted, and they had never seen blood at all.

The farmer, who had never seen blood, certainly did not know how to grasp the warplane. Hearing Zhang Yuanheng's order, they immediately pulled out the Tuomu Bow that they had just received a few days ago, and shot the feather arrows that had been temporarily made towards the front. Most of the feathered arrows did not even fly half the distance between us and the enemy, so they turned around and rushed straight down. A small number of feather arrows barely had enough range, but they also lost their strength, and they hit the Cangzhou army, and they couldn't splash even a little blood.

And the Cangzhou army on the opposite side suddenly began to add. Although it was still not too fast, the momentum of the surge made every Northern Han soldier feel his heart tremble, his feet were weak, and the wooden bow or horn bow in his hand also trembled.

"Release, release the arrows, hurry up and release the arrows! Keep shooting, they are too dense to shoot no matter how you shoot. "At the critical moment, the veterans in the team are reliable. The newly conscripted brethren could not shoot a second arrow for a long time, so they rushed up and swung their scabbards at each other's backs.

The stinging pain in the back made the recruits forget their fear for a while. Tremblingly, he pulled out the wooden bow, tremblingly put the feathered arrow on the bowstring, then closed his eyes and let go abruptly.

"Whoosh Whoosh...... Tens of thousands of feathered arrows took off again, and then fell like hailstones. This time, because it was close enough, about half of them shot into the cavalry.

Dozens of red clouds of smoke rose in the ranks of the cavalry, and dozens of war horses let out low mournful screams from their mouths. However, the forward momentum of the entire team has not slowed down at all. Still moving forward like waves, wave after wave, boom, boom, overwhelming.

"Arrows, arrows!" Seeing that the opponent's offensive was not curbed at all, the Zhenji Festival made Zhang Yuanheng's face pale. Tearing his throat open, like a gambler who is in a hurry to lose, he bet all his family money on the table, "All the arrows, don't wait any longer." It's too late to wait. Everyone, including the old brethren on the left!"

He suddenly remembered that before he set out on the expedition, Hu Yancong, the defense envoy of Dingzhou, dissuaded him. At that time, this person once swore to himself that although Guo Wei sent several rising stars to Hebei to sit in the town, they all had extraordinary skills. Even the Khitan veteran Xiao Tianci was folded in the hands of a few of them, and the 20,000 elites under his command were wiped out. Without more than half a year of preparation, if you rush to lead the troops to fight for Jizhou and Shenzhou now, you will definitely have no chance of winning.

However, Zhang Yuanheng remembered that he repelled Hu Yancong at that time, thinking that this person was afraid that his son-in-law Zheng Ziming would be caught off guard, so he deliberately blew the strength of the enemy army bigger. Now it seems that Hu Yancong's loyalty to the Great Han Kingdom seems to be no problem at all. The problem is that he is in order to sit firmly in the position as soon as possible, and he is actually dizzy.

The third wave of feathered arrows rose into the air, and the number of them was so large that the sunlight in the sky was darkened. This time, due to the input of all the veterans, it finally caused relatively large losses to the Cangzhou army that rushed forward. Zhang Yuanheng saw with his own eyes that red light appeared on the bodies of several cavalrymen who were directly opposite his position, and blood instantly flowed all over half of his body. However, the wounded cavalrymen bent down, wrapped one arm tightly around the neck of the horse, and the other arm clamped the cavalry gun under the armpit, and continued to rush forward, forward, without hurrying or turning back.

Their degree is not fast, compared to the cavalry that Zhang Yuanheng is familiar with, the degree of the Cangzhou army can only be described by the word trot. The war horses under their crotches are not of a good breed, and their height is more than half a head shorter than the horses supported by the Liao people to Hedong. However, their indomitable momentum made Zhang Yuanheng feel his eyebrows wooden, his scalp numb, and his throat so tight that he could hardly breathe.

"Whoosh, whoosh!" The fourth wave of feathered arrows took off again without anyone's supervision. There were a few cavalrymen who fell from their horses with arrows, and in the blink of an eye, they were trampled beyond recognition by their own people who rushed from the back row. In order to survive, most of the people who were hit by the arrow tried to sit upright on their horses as much as possible. Let the crotch mount carry you and pounce on the target with the whole team.

There was no fifth chance to release the arrows, but the recruits in the Northern Han army were still trembling and putting their feather arrows on the bow arms. Aside from this trick, they don't know how to deal with the situation in front of them. Their spears were at their sides, their swords and shields were at their feet, but they did not know whether to drop their bows, and reached out to grab and hold their weapons.

"Stay in formation!" "Stay in formation!" "Stay in formation!" they vaguely heard someone shouting, but they didn't know if the sound was coming from the people around them or the enemy troops. They used all their strength to draw their bows, and before they could release their arrows, they saw countless veterans rush out from their side, crouching on the ground, and poking the back end of their spears into the dirt, the front of which was pointed diagonally upwards as far as possible.

It's just that the ranks of veterans are too thin and too sparse. Before they could figure out whether to step forward to help the veterans or turn around and flee, the cavalry on the opposite side had already rushed in, and with a "boom", the sky collapsed, and the veterans of the Northern Han Kingdom, who rushed to block it by instinct, were swept away by the horse's hooves like a pile of sand on the beach.