Taiheiki

Chapter 347 Swallowtail Rectangle

Such heated arguments occurred almost daily, but regardless of the queen's threats, pleas, or curses, the prime minister remained stubborn, refusing to send the garrison outside the city gates to attack the besiegers. Five more days passed, and then things changed. The people of Gochou proclaimed the King of Funan, ordering the city's garrison to immediately open the gates and welcome their king into the city—or else hang him.

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"You must act immediately, do whatever you need to do, I command you in the name of the King!" The Queen stood on the watchtower, pointing at the figure not far away and shouting loudly. The Ju-ting people had built a wooden platform inside the wall, on which stood a tall wooden frame. A solitary figure stood on the platform, a rope around his neck, dressed in the robes of the King of Funan.

“That’s exactly what the enemy wants us to do!” Samba pleaded. “If we do that, we’ll only fall into their trap!”

"On the high platform is the king, the shadow of Vishnu, your master!" the queen almost roared. "If you ignore him, you will be violating the Laws of Manu!"

Samba cautiously glanced at the Queen's flushed face. He couldn't be sure if she was genuinely angry or just pretending. After all, in his memory, the Queen and King's relationship didn't seem that deep. Besides, being the King's wife was never as comfortable as being the King's mother. But if this was a trick, then this woman was just too good at pretending.

“If you really want to do this, I can try!” Samba finally relented. “I can send people out of the city to inquire with the townspeople and see if we can bring the king back without any conditions.” He paused slightly, staring intently at the queen’s face, trying to discern something hidden within it. “Or perhaps you have a better plan!”

"Let's do it your way!" The Queen's tone softened.
After seeing the queen off, Samba breathed a sigh of relief. Although he still didn't quite understand what the queen was up to, at least he had gotten through this hurdle. As for how to redeem the king from the people of Gou-chō, that was another matter entirely.

Outside the capital, the camp of the Ju-ting people was filled with the sound of wooden hammers striking the ground. A brand-new battering ram was under construction, along with several long ladders and two rudimentary catapults. The battering ram was made from the trunk of a large tree, secured with iron chains, and its tip was sharpened and hardened by quenching. It had a wooden canopy covered with raw leather to protect it from the defenders pouring hot oil on it.

"Is there any reaction inside the city?" Qielan asked.

"Not yet!" the officer in charge of guarding the King of Funan replied. "In my opinion, the Funan people aren't that stupid! A captured king isn't a king anymore!"

"While what you say makes sense, your voice is far too loud!" Qielan snorted coldly. "We also have a king, and he won't like what you're saying!"

The officer quickly shut his mouth. Qielan glanced at the figure with a noose around his neck on the high platform not far away and suddenly said, "If a captured king is not a king, then is a king who doesn't go to the battlefield a king?"

"General! There's news from inside the city!" An officer ran over.

"What news?" Qielan asked.

"Here it is!" The officer handed over the scroll, which Qielan took, opened, and glanced at it before a smile appeared on her face: "An exchange? How ridiculous. Does he think I'm here to do business?"

Should we refuse them?

Qielan didn't answer immediately. He turned to look at the craftsmen busy beside the blasting machine: "How much longer? I'm asking about this big thing?"

"Two days, no, if we hurry, a day and a half will be enough!" the foreman of craftsmen hurriedly replied.

"Alright!" Qielan shook her head. "Since it will take another day and a half to build, let's kill some time. Send a letter back to the city and ask them to send someone out so we can talk!"

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Qielan's negotiations with the city were interrupted; he had more important matters to attend to. His scouts brought bad news: an army of about ten thousand men was approaching from the northeast, only two days' journey from the capital of Funan. This was likely reinforcements sent by Funan's various vassal states in the southwest. Due to the climate, the rice harvest there was one to two weeks later than in Funan, located on the plains around Tonle Sap Lake, so their reinforcements had departed later. Qielan had to divide his forces to intercept these new enemies to avoid being attacked from both sides.

Perhaps due to the news of new reinforcements arriving, the Han army on the island became more active. They typically boarded boats at dawn, landing in concealed lake bays—places that were everywhere. They would then rest in the reeds by the lake until the afternoon, and after lunch, they would set off refreshed to attack nearby villages, strongholds, and supply convoys controlled by the Ju-ting people. The Han army almost always won, not only because of their superior equipment and training, but also because of their one-sided intelligence advantage—the locals were almost always on the Han army's side, and with guides, the Han army could almost always defeat the weaker side in their raids.

In this situation, after completing his siege equipment, Qielan launched a fierce attack. His tactics were simple yet effective—first came the auxiliary troops and prisoners brought in from all directions, then the mountain people, and finally the Ju-ting army, fully equipped, pushing various siege weapons to ram the walls of Funan's capital. In just two days, the attackers filled in the moat, pushed the battering rams to the city walls, and began to ram them.

"Rockets! Set it on fire! Burn that thing!" Chaos erupted on the city walls. Funan soldiers, risking being shot by the enemy below, peered out and hurled torches and arrows at the battering rams that had reached the base of the walls. But neither the torches nor the rockets, when they landed on the animal-hide-covered spikes of the battering rams, would roll off or quickly go out. Seeing the walls trembling beneath their feet, the defenders panicked. "Quickly, bring the swallowtail torches!" Xu Wen shouted. As Yu Wen's deputy, he had remained in the city as a military advisor. Under his guidance, the Funan people had manufactured a large number of defensive weapons, such as the swallowtail torches. These were made of reeds and other materials bound together into a forked bundle, filled with grease and wax fuel, and with a sharp iron rod at the end. Xu Wen instructed the Funan soldiers to light the swallowtail torches and then throw them at the battering rams. The iron spikes at the end of the swallowtail torches, which fell rapidly from the city wall, pierced deeply into the top of the battering ram. Fish oil from the reeds flowed onto the ram, quickly igniting it. The soldiers pushing the battering rams at the bottom could not withstand the terrible heat and fled from the bottom of the ram, only to be shot down by the archers who had been waiting on the city wall. The battering ram soon became a giant torch.

"Quickly, quickly, build another moon wall behind it!" Xu Wen shouted immediately after carefully observing the extent of the damage to the city wall.

"Build the Moon Wall?" Samba, who had come upon hearing the news, asked in surprise, "Isn't the wall still standing? Why not reinforce it? It would save a lot of manpower!"

"Prime Minister!" Xu Wen explained, "Defending a city cannot be merely a passive defense; we must also skillfully strike at the enemy's siege forces to defeat a superior force. The base of this city wall has already been damaged, making repairs from the inside difficult, while repairs from the outside would only make us easy targets for the enemy. It would be better to simply leave it as bait to lure the enemy in. Once the enemy opens this breach, they will surely send their elite troops through it, attempting to seize the entire city. However, if we build a moon wall on the inside beforehand, the enemy who rushes in will be trapped like turtles in a jar. Our defenders can then fire arrows and throw torches from all sides, preventing the enemy from retreating through the breach in their haste, which will severely demoralize them!"

"Hmm! How high and how long should this moon wall be?" Samba asked.

Xu Wen urged them to estimate: "Fifty paces long and fifteen feet high will suffice. Bring five hundred strong men; the materials and tools are readily available. Let's start now and try to finish before midnight!"

"Hmm!" Samba glanced at the sky; there were still almost three hours until dark, which he estimated was about right, so he nodded: "Let's do as you say!"

Soon, the conscripted laborers arrived, and Xu Wen had personally marked the ground with lime lines as a sign to begin work. The laborers quickly got to work, and Xu Wen divided them into ten shifts, each responsible for a section of the project. Xu Wen ordered food, drink, and cloth to be brought out, telling the laborers that the shift that finished first would be rewarded with food, drink, and cloth; the second shift would only receive food and drink, no cloth; and the third shift would only receive food, no food or cloth.

With Xu Wen's generous rewards, each shift worked with great enthusiasm. By dusk, the first three shifts had completed their sections. After inspecting the quality of the work, Xu Wen ordered the distribution of rewards. Those who received rewards enjoyed food and drink nearby, pointing fingers and criticizing their still-working colleagues. This greatly angered everyone, but also boosted their work efficiency; no one dared to slack off anymore. By nearly midnight, the moon wall was finally completed.

"Xu Guishi, do you really think the bandits will choose to launch a fierce attack here tonight?" Samba asked with a worried expression.

"Hmm!" Xu Wen nodded. "The city wall beneath our feet is so badly damaged that any bandit who isn't blind will definitely notice. In a siege, the most important thing is to find the enemy's weak points and then do everything in our power to create an opening. The rest is simple. If I were the bandit's general, I would do the same!"

Samba was impressed by Xu Wen's confident words and nodded: "I hope the gods will arrange things as you say!"

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At dawn.

The daytime drums and horns had fallen silent, replaced by a suffocating stillness. The city walls, bathed in the dim moonlight, appeared a cold, leaden gray, like the corpse of a colossal beast. Only a few scattered torches outlined the crenellations of the walls.

Outside the city, every fifty paces along the attackers' long siege tower stood a watchtower, its torches flickering, forming a long string that resembled a noose tightly gripping the city's neck, seemingly intent on strangling its inhabitants. The air was thick with the smells of burning wood, damp earth, and the stench unique to rotting corpses.

The attack by the Gochō people began silently. In the grey dawn, hordes of soldiers poured out of their camp, smearing mud on their weapons and faces to shield themselves from the glare. There were no drums or bugles, no shouts, only the soft clinking of weapons and armor and the muffled breathing of suppressed breaths.

The battering rams, built overnight, were slowly moved toward the city wall like shifting hills, propelled by elephants and soldiers. Their heavy wooden frames made a dull creaking sound that was particularly jarring in the silence of dawn.

A sharp gong shattered the silence. The lookouts on the city wall finally spotted the approaching enemy and hurriedly banged on the gongs beside them. The guards were immediately awakened and began to rush to the city wall in a panic, preparing to resist the enemy's attack. The Ju-chō people also stopped trying to hide and shouted in unison as they surged toward the city wall.

Just as Xu Wen had predicted, the Gou-ting people focused their attack on the section of the city wall where the battering rams had breached it the day before. On this section of wall, less than fifty meters long, they deployed three battering rams, two siege towers, six war elephants, and two thousand soldiers—all Gou-ting, not some ragtag mob. Clearly, the Gou-ting general had also discovered this weakness and intended to gamble heavily, hoping to capture the capital city through this point.

The archers of the Gochō people rushed to the moat and fired arrows at the city walls to cover their battering rams as they crossed the moat and reached the base of the wall. Under the rams' canopies, soldiers pushed the battering rams, while others, armed with hoes and crowbars, dug at the openings created by the rams, removing stones and rubble. The defenders above them braved the constant barrage of arrows, hurling swallowtail torches at the battering rams below. Although men fell, the survivors pressed on relentlessly. Finally, a torch landed on the ram, its sharp iron prongs embedding deeply into the canopy, causing burning fish oil to flow down and ignite into a flame.

Now it was the soldiers under the battering ram's roof who suffered. They rushed out from under the roof and pounded on the flames, trying to extinguish the dovetail. Although people kept falling from the arrows, no one retreated—everyone knew that there were at least dozens of crossbowmen on the city wall aiming at them. If the battering ram was set on fire, everyone would die.

Thus, the attacking and defending sides were locked in a war of attrition. The defenders peered out, braving arrows to hurl torches at the battering ram, while the attackers risked being shot to constantly rush out to extinguish the flames. Lives were constantly being lost, while the flames on the battering ram's roof were extinguished and rekindled, extinguished and rekindled again. Of course, the scouts under the roof did not waste the time their comrades had bought with their lives. They wielded shovels and axes almost frantically, and a crater seven or eight feet long, two or three feet wide, and six or seven feet deep had already appeared on the city wall before them.

(End of this chapter)