Chapter 59: Capture
Red Fish could not understand what the men pursuing them were shouting, but Chen Jian's instructions had been clear. The message they yelled was: "The men who fled will be killed by other tribes! Bring the women and the horned deer back, and Jian won't kill you."
Wolf Skin followed closely beside Chen Jian and asked, "Are you really not going to kill them? They killed their own kin before."
"I won't kill them. But I can't say if their former clansmen will. Besides, sometimes being alive is more terrifying than being dead."
Wolf Skin scratched his head, wondering how life could possibly be more terrifying than death. He was about to ask another question, but Chen Jian waved him over, called nine other men, and had them find a few of the horned deer that hadn't been taken.
"Go after them," Chen Jian ordered. "When you get close, shout what I told you. Bring back as many women and horned deer as you can."
"Will they believe it?"
"Those men are afraid of death. Even if they know it's a lie, they'll tell themselves it's true. Whether they believe you or not will depend on how many people are with them when you catch up."
Though Wolf Skin was still a little puzzled, he and the nine men mounted the horned deer and gave chase.
The remaining clansmen were scattered across the plains, either rounding up sheep or inspecting the dead and tending to their own wounded. In an era with no medicine, the line between injury and death was thin. Most who survived blunt trauma would lose their ability to work, and other complications would gradually appear.
From the moment the enemy charged until the fighting ended, only ten minutes had passed. With a total of 400 people involved, it was on the scale of a village brawl.
The battle had been chaotic, but Chen Jian's side had achieved a favorable casualty ratio thanks to their formation. The enemy's charge had been from too far away—a disorganized rush of nearly a hundred meters. This created a gap of more than ten meters between their fastest and slowest runners.
At the moment of contact, except for the hard-pressed right flank, Chen Jian's forces were effectively fighting with superior numbers. The fastest enemies to arrive were cut down before the slower ones even reached the battle. It was a perfect example of why an entire unit should approach the enemy together before charging; otherwise, you were just feeding your men into the fight piecemeal.
Seventeen men from the two allied tribes had died in the battle, and many more were injured, mostly from the fighting on the right flank. Their auxiliaries had suffered even more casualties; in a battle with cold weapons and no formation, the casualty ratio was basically one-to-one.
Chen Jian made a mental note to hold a battle summary with the clansmen after they returned. He also needed to train a few commanders capable of leading squads of around thirty men. In a battle of 200 fighters on his side, opportunities were fleeting. Communication was basically reduced to shouting. He had a drum, but it would take time for the clansmen to memorize the different commands.
He had clearly spotted a tactical opening during the fight but had no way to relay the order. An army needed to be directed like a body. He was the brain, but he needed commanders to act as his arms, who could then direct the warriors—their fingers.
His tribe's unfamiliarity with this new way of fighting had caused some of the chaos. The unit on the left flank had practically stood by and watched the excitement. Furthermore, his battle line was too thin. It was sufficient for dealing with this group of semi-primitives, but if the enemy leader had gathered his forces for a concentrated attack from thirty paces instead of a hundred-pace charge, his five-man deep line couldn't have held. His entire formation would have collapsed, degenerating into a chaotic village brawl.
These were all issues to be analyzed and addressed, to figure out how to fight better in the future.
He was lost in these thoughts when one of the clansmen arranging the corpses saw him and called out his name. In the eyes of the clansmen, this was an unbelievable victory. People always died in battle, and in past disputes with other tribes, it was basically a life for a life. Not counting the auxiliaries, they had lost only seventeen warriors, while the enemy had lost sixty to seventy, with the rest captured.
Since they believed the soul lived on after death, perhaps the fallen clansmen had just gone to another world. Although Jian had said there was no afterlife, they believed there was a world after death. Otherwise, why would relatives who had passed away appear in their dreams? They felt they had two lives—one of body and one of soul—but since no one knew what the soul's world was like, they cherished their current existence all the more. Before death, one could only hope the soul world was like the real one. Even those who survived looked with hope toward the fate of those who had died.
The living were glad to be alive, and they knew this victory was thanks to Chen Jian. More and more of them began to cheer his name.
Hearing the cheers, Chen Jian knew his position had become more secure. This victory would dispel any lingering doubts his clansmen had about fighting in formation. A tangible victory was more persuasive than anything he could ever say.
Amid the cheers, he walked to the place where the fighting had been most intense. Hua and his younger brother lay on the ground; they had not lived to see their people rescued. Before he died, Hua had locked his arms around Badger's leg. His head had been smashed in by the enemy leader. Clansmen were now gently cleaning his body.
Nearby, several men were repeatedly stabbing Badger's headless corpse with stone spears, venting their rage. The tiger-like man had killed five or six of their kinsmen by himself.
Chen Jian picked up the stone spear impaling Badger's head, tossed it to Song beside him, and said, "Salt it."
"What for? We should just throw it away."
"We'll take it to the tribes who betrayed their oath. They swore before their ancestors that they would be punished if they broke their word."
"You're going to seek out the tribes that didn't show up?"
"Of course. We will teach them awe and let them know the consequences of breaking an oath."
Song nodded, took the head, and casually slung it over his shoulder. They had no salt here; they would have to get it from the boats downriver.
The battlefield was mostly cleared. The corpses of their own tribe were piled together, and the enemy corpses were in another, much larger, pile.
The smell of blood still hung in the air. Chen Jian gathered the villagers to take stock of their gains.
They had rescued more than 80 slaves, all able-bodied, from the two allied tribes that had been attacked. The former captives were now weeping and recounting their experiences, their relief palpable upon seeing the familiar hair buns of their rescuers.
More than 40 enemies had been captured. Those with minor injuries were kept, while the seriously wounded had been killed to end their suffering. Over 50 old people and children from the enemy village, abandoned during the retreat, were now tied together with ropes. Some of the rescued slaves were throwing stones at them, but Chen Jian paid them no mind.
The tribe had also recovered a dozen frightened horned deer, both male and female. Most had been ridden away by those who fled. The sheep, however, had been secured—more than 130 of them. The harvested grain was piled near several birch-bark tents, and many wicker baskets were filled with seed pods and ears of wheat. Judging by the weaving pattern, Chen Jian guessed they had learned the technique from him.
His clansmen, of course, looked down on the crude, handmade pots, tossing them aside as they searched the birch-bark tents for anything useful. Someone dragged a tiger skin from one tent, drawing an admiring crowd.
More people, however, looked at the captives with a mixture of resentment and fear, discussing what should be done with them. This time, Chen Jian didn't need to offer any guidance. No one proposed killing all the prisoners. Instead, they all thought of putting them to work plowing the land, digging pits, and making mud bricks—all the most exhausting jobs for which they never had enough people.
Men from the other allied tribes began discussing how to divide the sheep and food. A few even had their eyes on the horned deer.
Chen Jian beat the drum to silence the crowd. "These things will be distributed after we return home," he announced. "I said I would give you your share, and I will. But there is one more important thing to do right now."
He pointed to a huge stone in the village. Painted on it was a great red fish leaping from the water. The image was stained with dried, blackened blood.
"Push it into the river. This is our ancestors' land, not theirs."
"That's right!" everyone shouted. Thinking of their own black-and-white flag, they agreed this land did not belong to this fish.
The men found wooden poles and thick rattan vines, which they tied around the stone. Hundreds of them heaved and pried, rolling the massive boulder to the riverbank. With a final, unified shout, they pushed it over the edge.
The moment the water splashed high into the air, the captured enemies broke down in tears. This was supposed to be their land, but now everything was gone. Even their ancestral myth had been cast into the river by these invaders. With the towering bark tents being taken down, nothing remained to prove they had ever lived here.
But the bark tents were not simply dismantled. Chen Jian had his tribe pile up all the enemy corpses, then tear down the tents the dead had built with their own hands and use the materials to light a great pyre. The dead could never have imagined that the shelters they built in life would become the firewood for their own cremation.
Chen Jian was worried the accumulated bodies would cause a plague. Burning them and throwing the ashes into the river also aligned with his clan's beliefs about the soul—it would keep the enemy spirits away from their land and prevent them from bothering the fallen clansmen in their other world.
After the flames died down, they waited for Wolf Skin and his party to return. The women and horned deer were valuable assets that had to be recovered.
It wasn't until evening that shouts were heard in the distance. The tribe members stood on high ground and looked upstream. Dozens of horned deer were slowly making their way toward them, followed by a group of women. The few traitors who had betrayed their kinsmen were riding the horned deer, their hair now hastily and sloppily re-tied into buns. Wolf Skin and his men followed behind. Each held a woman, while the rest of the women walked alongside the herd.
In the village, the rescued slaves saw their former clansmen in the distance and shouted in anger. They picked up stones and threw them furiously, even though they knew they couldn't reach that far. They were furious, but also conflicted. Chen Jian had rescued them, but was he really going to spare those traitors?
The traitors, for their part, avoided the eyes of their original clansmen. They hesitated to approach, but when they saw Chen Jian standing at the front, they finally steeled themselves. On the long journey back, they had told themselves over and over that since Jian had given his word, he would keep it. He would not kill them.
When Wolf Skin's party had caught up to them, they knew they couldn't win a fight. Some had abandoned everything and fled into the wilderness; others chose to believe the shouted promise was true, that they would not die.
Some people will always choose to believe what they want to believe.
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