Three hundred men, their faces contorted with greed, bloodlust, and fear, rapidly closed on our position.

  I made it to our command position on the hillside in the flank just as Wei Jin gave the signal, a sharp, downward chop of hand.

  “Crossbows!” Wei Jin's voice boomed. “Volley! Fire at will!”

  A dozen crossbows thrummed repeatedly. Iron-tipped bolts hissed from our line. We had opted not to arm the main line with the SanYanChong. Against a lightly armored mob, a repeating crossbow was far more efficient. The ChuKoNu, while lacking the penetrating power of the SanYanChong, was still lethal against unarmored targets, fired much faster, and possessed a greater effective range.

  The effect was devastating. The bolts fell among the dense crowd, a ripple of dead and dying tore through their disorganized mass. Even the skilled amongst them, who could normally deflect these projectiles, found themselves without the space to do so in the crush of bodies around them.

  Dozens went down in that first, terrible second, their charge almost breaking. Their screams lost in the continuous, mechanical thrum-thrum-thrum of the crossbows cycling their next shots.

  A volley of arrows and throwing knives answered from the bandit ranks, peppering our line. Most fell short, but a handful clattered harmlessly against the wall of wood and iron. Our shield bearers carried no weapons, a calculated decision based on our own lack of armor. Instead, each man wielded two shields: a massive, curved tower shield of thick, reinforced timber that they planted before them, and a smaller, heater-style shield strapped to their free arm. The tower shields created mobile sections of wall, providing cover for the entire squad, while the smaller shields could be used to cover a pikeman leaning out to strike or to deflect a stray shot that came over the top.

  The bandits' momentum was not stopped but only slowed. Goaded on by the promise of silver, their confidence still in place as they saw the clear numerical advantage they still held, and the front ranks were forced forward by the weight of the men behind them. The first of them reached the ditch. They leaped, only to be met by a bristling wall of steel and bamboo.

  The wicked tangle of heads of the LangXian was waiting for them. The wolf brush polearms, a nightmarish tangle of bamboo branches tipped with steel hooks and blades, were not designed to kill, but to ensnare. A bandit cleared the ditch only to have his tunic and arm caught by the hooks. He was yanked off-balance and unable to defend himself, and in that same instant, three long spears shot out from the gaps in the shield wall, punching through his chest with wet, sickening thuds. His body was impaled, held upright for a moment before being contemptuously tossed aside to make way for the next. A pileup of the dead and dying began to form in and around the ditch.

  But the enemy was not without its own elite. A handful of figures, moving with a grace that set them apart from the rabble, broke from the main charge. They ignored the grinder at the ditch, their eyes fixed on our command squad on the hill. Not quite masters, these were the leaders of individual rivermen units, whom I spoke with earlier. The hill slowed them briefly as they hit its slope.

  The two Mounted Wolf Messengers spurred their horses forward to meet them with long triple-barreled firearms in their arms.

  The world exploded in a rolling peal of thunder. Six rapid shots, a deafening volley that ripped through the air. The lead martial artist, a man with twin hooks, collapsed, his chest erupting in a red mist. Three others behind him were thrown from their feet as if struck by an invisible fist, their bodies riddled with steel balls. The sheer, concussive force of the sound stunned the bandits closest to us, their charge faltering as they clapped their hands to their ears.

  The two Wolves wheeled their horses around, retreating behind us to begin the slow process of reloading. A white-masked specter moved forward. Xiao Kai flowed into the stunned and disoriented cluster of enemy leaders like water. Her dark steel jiàn was a blur. I noticed she didn't go for killing strokes, which she absolutely could have in their stunned state. A flick of her wrist sent a man's dao spinning from his grasp, his hand bleeding. The flat of her blade slammed into the temple of another, sending to the ground, unconscious. She moved with a speed and grace that was otherworldly, her feet barely seeming to touch the ground. A third man, recovering first from the stunning roar of the SanYanChong, swung his axe in a wild arc. Xiao Kai ducked under it, the pommel of her sword jabbing sharply into his solar plexus. He doubled over, gasping for air, helpless. Unable to organise and individually less skilled, they couldn't stop the masked woman.

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  I drew my own sword, its gleaming steel bathed in midday sun. Beside me, Wei Jin did the same. We did not charge into the fray. Our role was to keep an eye on the bigger picture.

  The pressure at the ditch was immense. The unthinking weight of the men behind forced the front ranks into the meat grinder. Our ditch slowly filled.

  For every man who managed to scramble over the growing pile of his comrades, through the wolf's brush and spears met the squad's two designated swordsmen. Wielding dao and spear and working together, they dealt with any isolated threats that filtered through.

  But a mob, no matter how large, is a fragile thing. Its courage is a shared delusion, easily shattered. The men in the back, unable to see the slaughter at the front, only knew that the advance had stalled.

  The battle had worn on long enough for the crossbowmen to reload. They angled their weapons high, sending their bolts not in a flat, direct line, but in a high, arcing trajectory. It was impossible to miss. Men who could not even see the enemy were suddenly dying, struck from above. The psychological impact was immediate and devastating. A wave of panic ripped through their back ranks.

  The men at the rear, who had been pushing the attack forward, were the first to break. They turned, scrambling over each other to flee. The rout had begun.

  Xiao Kai faced the last of Song's elite, Gao's vengeful disciple. He had recovered from the shock of the SanYanChong. Knives erupted from his hands. Xiao Kai's movements were a fluid dance; a flick of her wrist sent two knives spinning away, a slight turn of her body let a third pass harmlessly.

  Seeing his ranged attack fail, the disciple drew his own sword a blur aimed at her heart. The clash of steel was a high, ringing shriek of protesting metal. His weapon was common steel. Her blade was not. He knew from his last encounter and did what he could to avoid her blade, his own sword flashing between Xiao Kai's strikes. Xiao Kai matched his skill with a blade, and he couldn't avoid a clash forever. A downward slash forced him to block, and Xiao Kai's sword sheared clean through his, but this time he had the foresight to pivot, dodging dark steel jian as it cut down past his injured shoulder.

  With his left hand open, palm forward, he launched the signature strike of his master. The Shadowless hand.

  Xiao Kai met his attack with her own hand, slamming into his.

  For a moment they froze. A silent contest as the two urged their Qi against each other. Gao's disciple was then flung back, spewing fresh blood from his mouth as he flew. Xiao Kai straightened and I watched her take a breath to settle her Qi.

  The big, bearded bandit leader, the one who had tried to greet me with oily pleasantries, had been watching this exchange. A man who watched his world end. The last of his courage evaporated. He turned, scrambling over the bodies of his own men, and ran.

  A hundred individual streams of terror began to flee down the road.

  I turned in my saddle and gave Wei Jin a sharp, decisive nod. "Pursue! Sāncái formation! Let none escape!" he bellowed.

  Then he repeated the command, his hands flashing in the semaphore signals we had drilled, ordering the squads to break into the three-pronged pursuit formation designed to chase down a fleeing enemy while protecting against ambushes or a sudden rally.

  Nothing happened.

  Our men stood firm in their defensive line still locked in combat with the most desperate and most skilled foes who remained. They simply hadn't heard him, their ears plugged with cotton.

  From his position on the flank, Wei's hand signals were obscured by the smoke, the chaos, and their eyes locked on the man they fought right in front of them.

  Cursing under my breath, I spurred my horse, not forward, but sideways, galloping behind our own battle line.

  “Squad leader!” I roared, riding down the line. “Sāncái formation! Advance and pursue!”

  I repeated the order to each squad, my voice raw. Understanding dawned on the face of each leader, and the orders were finally relayed.

  Squads began to peel away from the main line, flowing into the three-pronged shape of the pursuit.

  But we immediately hit our second obstacle. The ditch, our greatest defensive asset, now became a frustrating bottleneck. It was choked with the bodies and our men had to break formation to navigate the gruesome obstacle. By the time our formations had reformed on the other side of the ditch, the main body of the Iron Snake Gang was a cloud of dust on the horizon.

  We settled for a simple mop-up operation, our men easily running down the slowest and most wounded of the stragglers, though I gave orders to capture rather than kill.

  The victory was still absolute. A quick count revealed more than a hundred of their number lay dead or grievously wounded on the field. A string of two dozen prisoners and some volunteered to help carry the wounded on stretchers, under supervision and alongside our own.

  Our own losses were miraculously light; a few men with cuts and bruises from deflected blows, but not a single serious injury. We had faced a force over three times our size and had not lost a single soul.

  The tension of the battle was gone, replaced by the giddy, electric hum of survival. We looked from the carnage they had wrought to our own unbroken line, and a dawning realization of what we had just accomplished began to spread through our ranks.

  I rode before them and raised a sword to the skies.

  “Victory!”

  The response was a single, ragged, cathartic roar that ripped from a hundred throats.