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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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But the five tribes' side also showed exactly why they have been feared by the mainland for generations. They did not rout. They did not turn their horses and flee into the tundra as they had in the first battle. They were backed into a corner, fighting for the very survival of their bloodlines. Surrounded by the explosive gore of their brothers and the deafening thunder of the Han artillery, the steppe warriors tapped into a primal, fanatical courage.
Even if the terrifying cannons and Hwachas were looking over them and raining fiery destruction down upon their heads, their elite archer cavalry fearlessly wove through the chaos and the rain of explosive arrows.
The horsemanship on display was nothing short of miraculous. Riders steered their mounts with their knees, weaving through the cratered earth, jumping over the burning carcasses of fallen horses, and entirely ignoring the shrapnel tearing through their own ranks.
The Xiongnu and Xianbei veterans led the charge, utilizing the blinding smoke generated by the Han's own black powder to mask their movements. They broke into smaller, highly fluid squadrons, sweeping out to the extreme flanks of the heavy infantry blocks.
They pushed their horses to the absolute limit, closing the distance to the artillery lines with terrifying speed. As they breached the optimal range, they unleashed a localized storm of their own.
The composite bows of the steppes sang a deadly, high pitched hum. Thousands of armor piercing arrows blackened the sky for a brief second before slamming down into the exposed Hengyuan artillery positions.
They impressively managed to shoot down and kill some of the imperial engineers and artillery operators.
The men manning the Black Dragon Cannons and the Hwachas were heavily armored, but they were entirely focused on the complex, dangerous tasks of swabbing barrels, packing powder, and adjusting fuses. They were caught in the lethal rain.
A senior artillery commander from Ji Province, raising a slow match to ignite a cannon, suddenly choked as a barbed Xiongnu arrow punched directly through the unarmored gap in his neck guard. He collapsed against the bronze barrel, his blood hissing as it struck the hot metal.
Beside him, three Hwacha loaders were skewered simultaneously by a volley of Xianbei shafts, their bodies violently pinned against the wooden frames of their war machines. The air was suddenly filled with the wet, sickening thuds of arrows finding flesh, and the panicked shouts of the engineering corps attempting to raise their shields.
For a few, chaotic minutes, the relentless, mechanized rhythm of the Hengyuan artillery was broken. Cannons sat silent, their operators bleeding out in the freezing mud. Hwachas fired wildly off target as dying men collapsed across their elevation levers.
Even though it was ultimately a futile effort, as the fallen Hengyuan operators were replaced almost immediately by reserves stepping up to the machines, it did succeed in disrupting the firing lines.
The discipline of the Hengyuan army was absolute. A loader would fall with an arrow in his eye, and the man standing directly behind him would simply step over the twitching corpse, pick up the blood slicked ramrod, and continue packing the gunpowder without missing a beat. The imperial engineers knew their duty.
They knew the Emperor was watching from the command tent, and they would rather die under a hail of arrows than let the guns fall silent.
But the brief, bloody disruption of the artillery was exactly what the warlords had prayed for. It did buy the nomadic alliance precious time to breathe and reposition.
With the explosive shrapnel momentarily lifted from their heads, the cavalry of the Fuyu and the Yuezhi finally committed to the fray.
From the snowy ridges, thousands of armored foreign riders poured down into the valley. These were not the light, skirmishing archers of the Xiongnu. The Fuyu rode massive, thick coated beasts, wielding armor crushing maces and long axes. The Yuezhi riders wore glittering scale mail, their lances lowered, screaming battle cries in languages the Han soldiers had never heard.
They slammed into the flanks of the Hengyuan heavy infantry with the force of a localized earthquake.
The collision of the two massive forces was a visceral, horrifying spectacle of pure brutality. The front ranks of the Han shield wall braced, their heavy tower shields locking together, halberds thrusting forward in a lethal hedge of steel. The massive Fuyu warhorses crashed into the shields, the sickening sound of snapping timber, crushing bone, and screaming metal echoing across the plains.
A Fuyu warlord, swinging a massive iron mace, completely shattered the top half of a Han infantryman's tower shield, the sheer kinetic force driving the splintered wood straight through the soldier's helmet and into his skull.
But before the warlord could pull his mount back, three Hengyuan halberds shot out from the second rank, hooking the rider beneath his armpits and violently dragging him from his saddle. He hit the freezing mud, and a dozen heavy iron boots stomped down in perfect unison, crushing his chest cavity into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp.
The battlefield devolved into an apocalyptic meat grinder. The pristine white snow was entirely gone, replaced by a churning, boiling slush of freezing mud, spilled intestines, and scalding blood.
On the right flank, the fierce female battalion, the Soaring Valkyries, found themselves directly in the path of a massive Yuezhi cavalry charge.
Without Lu Lingqi at their immediate head, the Valkyries relied on the relentless, brutal training she had drilled into their very bones. They did not flinch as the terrifying, scale armored riders bore down on them.
"Brace!" the Valkyrie captain screamed, her voice cutting through the roar of the battle.
The women dropped to one knee, planting the butts of their heavy spears firmly into the frozen earth, angling the razor sharp tips upward. The Yuezhi cavalry hit the spear wall.
Horses screamed in agony as the steel drove deep into their chests, their massive momentum driving the spears completely through their bodies. The sheer weight of the dying beasts threatened to crush the female warriors, but the Valkyries held the line with fanatical, unyielding discipline.
As the Yuezhi riders were violently thrown from their dying mounts, they crashed into the mud right at the feet of the Han women. The Valkyries did not hesitate. Drawing their heavy, short bladed broadswords, they stepped forward into the chaos.
A Yuezhi noble, his face smeared with the blood of his own horse, scrambled to his feet and raised his curved saber to strike down a young Valkyrie. She ducked beneath the wild, uncoordinated swing, stepping inside his guard.
With a cold, mechanical precision, she drove her short sword up through the weak point beneath his chin, the blade punching cleanly through the roof of his mouth and into his brain. She kicked the spasming corpse off her blade and immediately turned to parry the strike of another desperate rider.
The air was thick with the coppery smell of arterial blood, the suffocating stench of voided bowels, and the choking, sulfurous smoke of the black powder that still drifted across the plains.
Amidst the grinding, claustrophobic horror of the infantry melee, the Yellow Ghost Bodyguards operated as independent, localized vectors of death. They had been dispatched from the command tent by Lie Fan to surgically dismantle the enemy leadership on the field.
They moved through the chaos like specters. A Xiongnu chieftain, desperately trying to rally his routing spearmen against the Han advance, never saw the shadow drop from the top of a ruined supply wagon.
A Yellow Ghost landed silently behind him, wrapping a garrote wire woven from fine steel around the chieftain's throat. With a single, violent twist, the assassin pulled. The chieftain's head was cleanly severed, his headless body standing for a surreal, geysering moment before collapsing into the mud. The Ghost simply vanished back into the smoke, seeking his next high value target.
The violence was intimate, brutal, and entirely devoid of glory.
Men gouged at each other's eyes with armored thumbs when their weapons broke. Wounded soldiers, trampled into the mud by the shifting lines of infantry, drowned in the freezing, bloody slush, their desperate, gurgling screams completely drowned out by the clash of steel.
The nomadic alliance, fueled by the sheer terror of extinction, fought with a savage, animalistic fury. They threw themselves against the impenetrable iron blocks of the Hengyuan infantry, their curved sabers hacking frantically at the tower shields, their horses biting and kicking at the Han spearmen.
They managed to tear bloody gaps in the imperial lines, dragging Han soldiers down into the mud and butchering them in frenzied, localized skirmishes.
But the Hengyuan Dynasty's war machine was simply too massive, too disciplined, and too brilliantly orchestrated from the central command tent.
Inside the pavilion, Lie Fan stood calmly over the tactical map. He listened to the shifting roar of the battle, analyzing the reports flowing in from the ravens and the breathless Oriole runners.
"The Fuyu heavy cavalry have engaged our right flank," Sima Yi reported quickly, moving a collection of wooden markers across the map. "They are pressing the Valkyries hard. The lines are holding, but the pressure is immense."
"The Xianbei archers have disrupted battery four and five on the left," Lu Xun added, pointing to the northern ridge. "They are attempting to circle behind the heavy infantry to strike our supply wagons."
Lie Fan did not blink. His mind absorbed the chaotic variables and instantly formulated the counter measures. He was playing a game of continental chess, and the pieces were written in blood.
"Order General Dian Wei to pivot the second heavy infantry division fifteen degrees to the right. Reinforce the Valkyries and crush the Fuyu against the tree line," Lie Fan commanded smoothly, his voice devoid of any panic. "Tell the reserve artillery crews on battery four to ignore the archers. Load canister shot. Wait until the Xianbei riders commit to the flanking maneuver, and then sweep the ridge clean. Have General Zhao Yun take five thousand light cavalry and sever their retreat."
The orders were dispatched instantly.
Out on the blood soaked plains, the results of the Emperor's brilliant, omniscient strategy were immediate and devastating.
As the Xianbei horse archers confidently galloped around the left flank, attempting to exploit the momentary disruption of the artillery, they suddenly found themselves staring down the barrels of the reserve cannons. The Hengyuan engineers had not loaded high explosive shells, they had loaded canister shot, thousands of jagged, rusted iron nails and lead balls packed tightly into canvas bags.
The cannons fired point blank into the charging cavalry.
It was a giant, mechanized shotgun blast. The entire frontline of the Xianbei flanking maneuver was literally erased from existence. Men and horses were shredded into unrecognizable piles of meat and shattered bone by the expanding cone of flying iron.
The charge completely collapsed, the surviving riders desperately trying to rein in their terrified mounts, only to find Zhao Yun's pristine, disciplined light cavalry sweeping in behind them, cutting off their escape and slaughtering them in the crossfire.
On the right flank, the massive, towering figure of Dian Wei arrived just as the Fuyu cavalry thought they were making headway against the female battalion. The giant general roared a battle cry that shook the snow from the distant pines, wielding his massive twin iron halberds like a man possessed.
He waded directly into the Fuyu cavalry, swinging his weapons with such terrifying strength that he shattered the armored legs of the warhorses, bringing the heavy riders crashing down into the mud where the heavy infantry mercilessly speared them.
The battle raged on, an unending, grueling nightmare of attrition and slaughter.
The nomadic alliance fought with the desperate, clawing fury of a dying animal. They continued to send wave after wave of riders into the meat grinder, their arrows darkening the sky, their heavy cavalry attempting to bash a hole through the relentless, marching walls of Hengyuan steel.
The air grew thick with the metallic stench of blood and the blinding, choking smoke of black powder. The pristine steppes were completely unrecognizable, transformed into a cratered, burning wasteland of death.
But the Hengyuan forces did not falter. Guided by the flawless, omniscient intellect of their Emperor sitting in the command tent, and fueled by the absolute, fanatical devotion of the veteran generals on the field, the Imperial Army continued its methodical, grinding advance.
Every time the nomads found a weakness, Lie Fan plugged it. Every time they attempted a desperate ambush, the artillery blew it apart.
The butchery continued without pause, the sun slowly beginning to dip toward the western horizon, casting long, bloody shadows across the plains.
The men on both sides were exhausted, their muscles screaming, their armor dented and slick with gore. Yet, the war horns continued to wail, and the war drums continued to beat their inexorable, terrifying rhythm. The fate of the northern hemisphere hung in the balance, trapped in the freezing mud, as the armies of the nomadic tribes of the old world and the empire of the new relentlessly tore each other to pieces in a battle that showed absolutely no signs of ending.
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Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 36 (203 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 11)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 1,010 (+20)
VIT: 659 (+20)
AGI: 653 (+10)
INT: 691
CHR: 98
WIS: 569
WILL: 436
ATR Points: 0