Clung to the rear.
It could not be helped.
Three hundred had to hold back five thousand.
Everyone knew that if they clashed head-on, they would not last a single day.
So the Baekryongdae did not fight.
They fought without fighting.
Stopping the enemy's advance was itself the battle.
They first clung to the rear.
They targeted the tail of the long, stretched column—the slowest, the most exhausted.
They lowered their bodies over their horses and approached with the wind at their backs.
At a single signal, arrows poured down.
It was not a scattered rain, but a precise shower aimed at skulls.
When three, four, five men fell, they dispersed at once.
If the enemy's main force turned to face them, they were already gone.
They crossed ridgelines and curved through thickets.
It was not flight, but distance control.
When space opened, they returned.
They struck suddenly and withdrew again.
If pursued, they ran.
If the enemy halted, they shot once more.
At night they were even more relentless.
They targeted the edges of encampments where horses were tethered.
Losing only a few mounts drastically slowed an army's march.
When a horse falls, a man walks.
A walking army is slow.
They dug ditches along the route.
They forced water into new channels, turning earth to mud, then covered it lightly with wood and soil.
It looked like solid ground.
The first soldier stepped—and vanished.
Those behind, driven forward, fell atop him.
Screams stretched down the line, and in that confusion, arrows flew again.
That was considered a minor measure.
They dug deeper pits.
Wide enough for a horse's leg to plunge in.
Inside they planted sharpened stakes.
Dry grass and thin soil concealed the trap.
Infantry were clumsy readers of the earth.
Unlike cavalry, they did not feel the grain of the ground beneath them.
They strung ropes between trees at waist height in the dark.
When the first man tripped, those behind collapsed over him.
In that instant of chaos, arrows whistled from the woods.
They scattered caltrops.
Small iron spikes pierced soles and hooves.
One step meant limping for a day.
Two meant being abandoned.
They moved the markers set by the enemy's advance scouts.
Safe paths were redirected into danger.
In the dark, a wrong turn led to traps.
Some routes ended in steep declines.
Dozens tumbled down together.
Even without pitched battle, the numbers shrank.
One man, two men at a time.
Eventually, the gap narrowed.
It was the only way to minimize their own losses.
But behind it lay brutal labor.
They had to outrun the enemy's route and prepare the ground first.
They rode ahead, then dismounted and took up shovels.
They dug earth, cut timber, stretched ropes.
Palms split.
Dirt lodged beneath fingernails.
At night there was barely time to breathe before moving again.
The Third Unit, departing later, was consumed almost entirely by labor.
It was pitiful to see.
They dug all day.
They carried logs across their shoulders.
They built traps, covered them, then built again.
Some rode and loosed arrows.
Others crouched in earth, carving pits.
The work had no end.
Once the enemy cleared one section, another awaited.
They blocked the path, attacked while it was cleared, then vanished.
When the obstacle was removed, another appeared.
With each step forward, the Royal Guard never knew what awaited them.
An army that hesitates grows weary.
A weary army grows anxious.
Over time, the numbers thinned.
Those caught in traps.
Those wounded and left behind.
And deserters.
The most common crime in any army is desertion.
Especially among those at the rear.
Harassed constantly by unseen arrows, never knowing when the next would fall,
some slipped into the darkness and did not return.
The march slowed.
What should have taken a day stretched into two.
The formation tightened.
More scouts were deployed.
Jang Sigi urged the soldiers onward.
He increased the number of forward scouts.
He ordered every path inspected.
But the road was no longer a road.
It was impossible to tell where earth ended and trap began.
The Baekryongdae relied on mobility.
They appeared on horseback and vanished just as swiftly.
An unseen enemy is the most terrifying kind.
This was not a matter of a single day.
It was a long, grinding war of attrition.
Three hundred did not collide head-on with five thousand.
They made the five thousand exhaust themselves, unravel themselves.
And in the meantime,
they prepared for one decisive strike.