A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

The dry rations were finished on the afternoon of March 11th.

After the last meal was distributed, no more smoke rose from the low-lying area. The nine pots stood there, cold underneath.

During the military council that day, Yang Hu asked a question.

Who has spent an entire year on the grasslands?

The eight men from the scout team, all refugees from beyond the Great Wall, were brought in one by one by Cui Ting. The eight men stood in a row, the oldest being around forty years old and the youngest nineteen.

"What does the general wish to ask?"

Ask the shepherd what he eats when there is no food.

The eight people looked at each other. The eldest one spoke first.

"General, the herdsmen will not run out of food. They have horses."

"Once the horse is killed, it's gone."

"I won't kill you," the man said. "I'll take your blood."

The people inside the tent all looked up.

"How do I retrieve it?"

"Tie the horse up, blindfold it, and make a small incision near the tendon in its neck." The man gestured to his own neck. "Collect the blood into a leather pouch. Once enough blood has been collected, tie it with a thread made of horsehair, then apply some ashes from the stove, and it will heal in a few days."

"How much can be taken from one horse?"

"It'll take about half a bag each time," the man said. "After you take this horse, it can still carry things, but it won't be able to run. You can take more in about ten days."

Cui Ting's eyes lit up: "If we go back to collect it again in ten days or so, wouldn't that be..."

"No, that won't do," the man quickly said. "The horses that were raised for the past ten days or so were the herdsmen's own, well-fed horses. Now these horses are losing weight on their own, and if you take too much, they'll collapse."

Yang Hu took over the conversation.

"Name your price for each horse you take at once."

"Reporting to the general, the old custom of the herdsmen is one bag, but the horses now... only half a bag."

"How many people can half a bag hold?"

The man did the math: "Three or four people a day."

Yang Hu went through it in his mind.

Currently, there are over four thousand horses that can be ridden and used for carrying loads when we left the border. Most of them were lost in the ambush. We have gathered back over seventeen hundred horses, including the pack horses. Assuming three people per half-bag, we need to retrieve two thousand horses a day.

Not enough horses.

"I don't need to collect them again every ten days or so," Yang Hu said. "Twenty days later. The 1,700 horses will be divided into twenty groups, one group will be collected each day, with eighty-five horses in each group."

"Eighty-five horses, how much blood did they bleed?"

"Around forty bags," the refugee replied, "enough for about two hundred and fifty people a day."

"Not enough for six thousand," Cui Ting said.

"You don't need six thousand," Yang Hu said. "Blood isn't eaten as food; it's eaten with grass roots and horsehide jelly. If a person doesn't eat any meat for a day, they won't be able to lift their arms after three days."

"And one more thing. The horses used for blood collection must not run away, so they can be used to carry the wounded soldiers."

"General," the refugee suddenly spoke again, "there is one more thing, which I dare not not mention."

"speak."

"The blood must be drunk while it's hot, otherwise it will congeal. But if you drink it while it's hot, it will cause diarrhea," the man said. "The shepherd must add something to it when he drinks it."

"Exchange what?"

"Mixed with mare's milk is best. If you don't have mare's milk, you can boil it with water, but it won't taste good."

"Boil it," Yang Hu said. "Add water, boil it, and add salt."

Cui Ting smiled wryly: "General, we've run out of salt."

"There's a little bit of wood ash in the water," Yang Hu said. "It's the ash from the bottom of the pots where we boiled the horse hides, filtered once, and then mixed in. Not much, just a tiny bit."

Blood collection began on March 12th.

Something went wrong on the first day.

Eighty-five horses were being retrieved. When they reached the thirtieth horse, one broke free of its reins, bleeding profusely, and two people were injured. Yang Hu immediately stopped the operation, ordering the eight refugees to teach each of them individually before allowing them to begin.

It went smoothly the next day.

The incision was made on the neck at the location Yang Hu had specified. After watching the refugee make the first cut, he moved the incision down half an inch.

"Why go down?"

"That spot up there is right next to the throat," Yang Hu said. "If the knife slips, the horse is ruined. Half an inch down, and blood will gush out."

The refugee tried it out, and it was indeed the same.

"Did the general also bleed the horse?"

"I didn't," Yang Hu said. "I had a C-section."

By the third day, the entire army could collect about forty bags of blood a day. The blood was diluted with water, boiled, and a little ash water was added. It was then distributed to the three most important groups: the wounded soldiers, the medical team, and those on duty at the north slope that day.

On the third night, a theft occurred.

A soldier from the left battalion crept up to the pot in the wounded soldiers' camp and scooped out half a ladle. He didn't go far; he squatted down in a clump of grass a dozen paces away and drank it all.

The stretcher bearers arrested him. After arresting him, they didn't know what to do, so they tied him up and took him to the bottom of the earthen ridge.

Shao Qi arrived first and immediately wanted to use military law upon seeing him.

"General, starvation is a small matter; this is a mistake we cannot make!"

When Yang Hu arrived, the soldier was kneeling on the ground, trembling violently. He was only seventeen or eighteen years old, with no beard and two sunken pits under his eyes.

"Haven't you eaten for a few days?"

"...He only received it once in three days."

"Why was it only received once?"

The soldier dared not answer. A sergeant next to him spoke for him: "Reporting to the general, he gave his share to a wounded fellow soldier the day before yesterday, and he did it again yesterday."

There was silence for a moment under the earthen ridge.

Shao Qi lowered his raised hand.

Yang Hu squatted down and untied the rope binding him.

"Starting today, you will be working in the wounded soldiers' camp."

The soldier was taken aback: "General, you won't punish him?"

"Punishment," Yang Hu said. "You are to serve those two people you gave up, until they can stand up again. You take their portion, but you are not allowed to taste a single bite."

The soldier kowtowed to the ground.

Yang Hu stood up and turned to Shao Qi.

"General Shao, starting tomorrow, add a clause: all those who request allowances must report them."

"Why report this?"

"Make a note of this," Yang Hu said. "He gave way twice today, so tomorrow it'll be someone else's turn to give way to him. I need to see this account in the open; I can't wait until someone starves to death in the grass before I find out."

Su Heng reported this on the fourth day.

"General, more than twenty wounded soldiers in the wounded camp are able to sit up now. Yesterday there were nine."

Yang Hu wrote the two numbers down in the notebook.

"Reorganize the triage," he said. "Those who can sit up should be moved from the innermost circle to the outermost circle. Let those who are moved out do their own work."

"What are you doing? They can't even stand up yet."

"Things you can do while sitting," Yang Hu said, "Twisting ropes, rolling bandages, tending the fire, and rubbing the mud off the grass roots. As long as a person has something to do, they'll recover quickly. I tried this in Qing Shi Kou."

Su Heng noted it down.

On the fifth day, the first batch of seriously wounded soldiers were carried out.

It's not about carrying it out to bury it, it's about carrying it out to sunbathe.

That day, the weather was unusually clear, and Yang Hu had the outermost hundred or so men carried to a sunny slope and laid out in rows. Some complained about the trouble, but Pang Xiaowei's whipping silenced them.

Those more than one hundred people lay in the sun for two hours.

That evening, Su Heng remarked, "General, this batch smells lighter today."

The sixth day, March 17th.

The most important number since we left the border has been released.

After Cui Ting finished counting under the pole, he handed over the booklet.

"General."

"explain."

"Of the 403 seriously wounded soldiers, nine have left, leaving 394." Cui Ting's finger pressed on that line. "Today, 67 of them can stand up and walk three miles on their own."

Yang Hu stared at this number for a long time.

Sixty-seven.

That was also the number of people who collapsed that night.

"Write it down," he said. "No need to write anyone's name, just write this: Sixth day without food, 394 seriously injured, 67 recovered."

"General, why should we remember this?"

"In the future, someone will tell me that four hundred wounded soldiers are four hundred burdens." Yang Hu closed the booklet. "I'll show this to him."

From that day on, the nine pots in the depression were put back on fire.

What was cooking in the pot wasn't rice, but blood diluted with water, horsehide jelly, grass roots, and wild vegetables. The soup was murky and fishy, ​​yet more than 6,100 people lined up to receive it, and not a single one left.

That night, Yang Hu was standing on the slope when Su Heng brought over a lamp.

"Is the general still looking north?"

"Um."

"What did you figure out?"

"The fires over there are fewer," Yang Hu said. "A few nights ago, we could see a whole patch of fire, but tonight there are only a few scattered spots left."

Su Heng lowered the lamp and looked north.

"General, we made it through."

"We made it through," Yang Hu said. "All 6,188 men survived, not a single battalion was lost."

He tucked his hands into his sleeves.

"But that doesn't count as winning. Just surviving means you haven't lost."