Chapter 2903: New Journey (9)

Day upon day of battering, honing, taking stock, trying again. Sweat soaked through training uniforms beyond counting; bruises in blue and purple bloomed beyond counting. The skin of backside and thigh wore through time and again, until even squatting over the latrine became an ordeal. Yet change was stealing in all the same. Tan Shuangxi found he knew "Flying Red's" ways better and better — could read the horse's mood and intent in the turn of an ear, in the degree of tension along a muscle. And "Flying Red," it seemed, had slowly come around to this new rider who groomed him, fed him, walked him every day, clumsy-handed but never impatient; his obedience rose plainly, and when Tan Shuangxi drew near he would even push his muzzle out and nuzzle the man's arm.

Once his basic control of the horse reached a certain level, the curtain went up on true combat training. First of all: the cavalry saber. Bayonet work Tan Shuangxi had long since forged to a fine temper, but the mounted saber made him an out-and-out novice. This craft demanded not only skill, strength, and speed, but dynamic balance on the jolting back of a horse.

The instructor was an old cavalryman of very few words, with a knife scar across his throat, grim to behold. His name was Wan; he had gone over to the Senate during the Dengzhou-Laizhou Rebellion. He had crossed blades on horseback with the Qing army, with Kong Youde's rebels, with bandits, and with the Ming army alike, and even saying nothing he carried a killing air that daunted a man. He wasted not one word on speeches — he stepped up and demonstrated.

He bore a regulation cavalry saber, the same pattern as the cotton-wrapped wooden sabers Tan Shuangxi and the rest were using, but gleaming with cold light. The blade ran in a slight curve, single-edged, its point keen — made alike for the cut and for the thrust.

"The cavalry saber is neither axe nor spear." Instructor Wan's voice was a rasp. "Use the point — and the first third of the edge." He ran through several lightning movements: the diagonal cut from upper right to lower left, the level draw-cut from left to right, and a straight thrust quick as a viper's tongue.

"Power rises out of the ground, passes through waist and hip, runs over shoulder and arm, and pours at the last into the point of the blade. The wrist must live — not grip dead. At the instant the edge meets the target, add a small 'pull' or 'draw' to deepen the cut. In the thrust, borrow the horse's forward rush — man and blade one body."

He set the cadets out in line and began with the basic movements broken down, unhorsed. Wooden saber in hand, at the commands, Tan Shuangxi repeated the elementary guard, the diagonal cut, the horizontal draw, the straight thrust, the recovery to guard — over and over and over. The movements looked simple; what they demanded in the ordering of force, the match of footwork, the shifting of balance was extreme. A man accustomed to the two-handed, rock-steady lunge of the bayonet found one-handed saber work choked and wooden at first — worst of all the diagonal cut, which wanted the twist of the waist: he would mind his arms and lose his footing, mind his footing and lose his arms.

"Your wrist is too stiff! The saber is your arm extended — not a stick!" Instructor Wan came to Tan Shuangxi's side and rapped his wrist joint with the scabbard, neither light nor heavy. "Relax! As you cut, imagine the edge is the tip of a whip — throw it out! On the return, elbow lightly bent, and the blade falls back to guard your ribs of its own accord."

He gave particular care to correcting Tan Shuangxi's thrust. "The cavalry thrust is not the infantry bayonet drill. The infantryman drives off a lunge and sends the arm forward; the cavalryman rides on the horse's speed and leans his body into it." He had Tan Shuangxi mime the mounted posture — body tipped a little forward, the saber arm at the instant of the thrust carrying shoulder, elbow, and wrist in one near-straight line, the whole body's weight and rush gathered into a single point at the tip. "Strike and recover at once — the horse is still surging forward. Linger on the blade, or draw it out too slow, and either the saber leaves your hand or you are hauled off your horse! Unlucky, and the hand snaps outright!"

Once the basic movements took some shape, the training rose to attacks on fixed targets. Straw-wrapped posts stood up from the ground and rolled straw mats hung suspended, standing in for the parts of an enemy. Instructor Wan required them to approach from different angles and at different gaits, and to cut and thrust true while in motion.

"Mind the distance! Too close and the saber cannot swing clear — you will wound yourself or your horse; too far and the point never arrives — the stroke is wasted. The true distance is your arm plus the blade, plus a short stretch of the horse's rush." Again and again Instructor Wan hammered on the "sense of distance" — a thing not so pressing in the infantry bayonet fight, but to the cavalryman a matter of life and death.

Then came combination work: open with a quick diagonal cut at the opponent's weapon arm or his horse's head to throw him off, then, in the very instant the horses crossed, reverse the blade in a horizontal draw or turn and thrust into his trunk. Against a horseman armed as you are — how to parry, drain the blow, and counter. Against infantry with long spears or musket bayonets — how to use horse-speed and agility to slip the frontal thrust and take him from the flank.

"Never block a spear head-on with the saber — that is going looking for death. Ride around it with speed and curve, or cut the shaft through outright."

"In a cavalry meeting you will often get exactly one crossing in which to strike. The movements must run together and be decided; the line of attack must stand clear in your head."

"Whatever happens, once the meeting is over, never linger in the fight — break from the enemy at once, restore your formation, and wait your moment for the next charge. Remember: cavalry's great advantage in war is the shock of horse and man made one flesh. Once you are stuck fighting in place, you are nothing but an infantryman standing rather higher than the rest. So cavalry is not your swordsmanship, nor which man is braver. It is which side holds formation, which side re-forms faster after the crossing and mounts the next charge. Personal valor matters — but discipline and coordination matter more. As commanders, keep that fixed in your minds at all times!"

The training was punishing past the ordinary. By day's end the saber arm ached near to splitting, and the waist and belly were wrung dry by the endless twisting. Light as the wooden saber was, repetition by the hundreds and thousands was enough to raise blood blisters on the palm and split open the web of the thumb. Tan Shuangxi set his teeth and held on.

As the training deepened, his strokes slowly shed their first rawness and stiffness, taking on a little of the flowing arc and the decisive snap. He was still far from Instructor Wan's realm — effortlessness with the killing held quietly inside — but he could feel the tie between himself and this "saber" in his hand drawing tighter by the day. The first time he "cut down" three straw-man targets at three different angles, clean and crisp in a simulated trot attack, and closed with a textbook turn into guard, the ever-stern Instructor Wan gave the smallest nod, there and gone.

Then they were moved up to the higher stage: cutting from the saddle.

Along one side of the training ground they laid out a long lane. Down both sides, at intervals, short wooden posts stood up, dry sheaves of reeds lashed to their tops to stand for enemy infantry; at mid-lane a slightly raised wooden platform bore a clod of earth; beyond it hung an iron ring; and on the ground at the lane's end lay a helmet wound about with straw rope.

Instructor Wan, mounted, cotton-wrapped training saber in hand, walked the cadets through the essentials: "You see? One pass — cut down six 'infantry,' level-cut one 'cavalryman' — the clod; thrust at one 'cavalryman' — the ring; and at the last bend low to hack and flick away one 'enemy lying prone' — the helmet! Every stroke must be made at the horse's full stretch — the action unbroken, the force exact, the placement precise!"

And he demonstrated at once. He urged his warhorse up from slow to fast, and by the lane's mouth the speed was already on him. In the instant his horse swept past the posts he leaned his body sideways, the wooden saber tracing fierce arcs — snick, snick — and the reed sheaves on either hand were "shorn through" at the stroke. At the platform he twisted waist and arm and cut level, knocking the clod flying; at the iron ring his point darted and struck dead in the heart of it; and at the last he all but lay along his horse's neck, arm thrust out, saber chopping down hard on the iron helmet — then one shake and flick of the wrist, and the helmet went sailing off into the sand pit beside the lane. The whole ran like water finding its course, man and horse one flesh, and the cadets watched with their hearts in their eyes.

"That is the standard you are to reach when your training is done. Rice is eaten one mouthful at a time — begin with the simplest, cutting down a single infantryman, then add them one by one, and at the end put it all together in the full run."

Yet even broken into steps it proved a hard row. Cutting down three infantrymen gave little trouble, but at the level cut against the "cavalryman" the difficulty leapt. As for the final stroke — beheading the prone man and flicking the helmet away — never mind the flicking: to strike the reed sheaves without wounding yourself or your horse was already no small feat. Timing, angle, and force of the stroke, and their accord with the horse's stride — off by a hair, and you are a thousand li wrong.

Worse yet: one cadet, tense and out of form, swung back too far and cracked his wooden saber squarely across his own mount's haunch. The horse spooked and reared bolt upright, flinging the man heavily to the ground — sand though it was, he lay half unable to rise, and was carried straight off to the medical station.

Lessons written in blood work better than any sermon. From then on, no cadet dared the least shortcut. By day they drilled slow, broken-down repetitions in the saddle; by night they stood before the posts on foot, cutting at empty air, feeling for the source of the force. Tan Shuangxi's arm swelled so sore it would barely lift, and the rough wooden hilt raised blisters in the web of his thumb — but he set his teeth and held. He knew this was the road every qualified cavalryman must walk, and the capital that would keep him alive and killing on some future battlefield.

The day Tan Shuangxi, in mounted saber drill, first ran the sequence at the trot with something like flow — cutting down all six "infantry," sending the clod flying, striking the heart of the iron ring, and at the last bending low to tip the helmet aside with the back of the blade — Instructor Wan stared at him for a few seconds and snorted through his nose. "Now that's beginning to look like something!"

(End of chapter)