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of the hill, Batu saw a mass of Shou infantrymen gathered in the marsh. The general stopped thirty feet up the hill, directly above the reed bed, and pointed at the bundles of bound rushes.
    Addressing the runners himself, he said, “Tell those men to take reed bundles and jump into the river.”
    The runners glanced at each other, but quickly bowed and rushed to transmit Batu’s command to the throng.
    Looking at the turbulent waters of the river, Pe asked, “Do you really think the men will follow your order?”
    Batu looked west. The horsewarriors were charging down his line almost unimpeded, trampling and slaying every living thing in their path. “Do you think they won’t?” he countered.
    A series of booms sounded from the hilltop. Batu looked up and saw several catapult-spoons crash against their cross bars. Dozens of flaming pitchballs streaked overhead, landing on the far side of the battlefield and setting fire to the sorghum grass.
    A less experienced officer might have thought the catapults had overshot their targets, but the general knew that it would have been impossible to miss the Tuigan horde. The artillerymen had been instructed to aim past the barbarians, trapping the enemy between a wall of fire and the armies of Shengti and Ching Tung.
    Though the tactic blatantly sacrificed Batu’s army, the plan was a good one—or it would have been, had Kwan taken the time to scout his enemies. As it was, however, the minister had trapped a tiger in a paper cage.
    While the artillerymen cranked the catapult spoons down for reloading, four thousand archers rushed over the hilltop. They took a position overlooking the sorghum field and began to fire volleys at the Tuigan riders. The routed soldiers that had been fleeing uphill stopped in their tracks and crouched in grass, fearful of putting themselves between the bowmen and their targets.
    The barbarians ignored these developments and continued to charge. Batu’s soldiers were dying by the dozens.
    “My general!” Pe gasped, staring in open-mouthed horror at the destruction of the Army of Chukei.
    Batu laid a hand on his adjutant’s shoulder. “Don’t despair, Nii Pe. Isn’t this what armies are for?”
    In the minutes that followed, perhaps two thousand pengs reached the marsh and dove into the swollen river, clinging to bundles of reeds. Aside from a steady stream of wounded stragglers, the other three-fifths of the Army of Chukei lay in the sorghum field. Blood had turned the yellow soil to the color of rust. With his army scattered, Batu had nothing to do except watch the battle. He and Pe remained near the bottom of the hill, thirty feet above the marsh.
    The fight began to turn in favor of the Shou. The barbarian charge foundered as horses began to stumble in the mass of dead bodies. The Shou archers fired volley after volley into the churning horde. Small groups of Tuigan tried to mount assaults up the hill. Each time, they met a hail of shafts. The riders in the rear were unhorsed as their dead fellows came tumbling down the slope. The barbarians could not escape the fatal rain across the sorghum field, either, for the valley was engulfed in fire. Nor could they return the way they had come, for their fellows continued to press forward, unaware of the gully of death ahead.
    Batu was as amazed at the effectiveness of the minister’s plan as he was bitter about the sacrifice of his army. He had never expected the old man’s trap to function so efficiently. Though Kwan had sacrificed one small army, it appeared that he would destroy the largest part of the barbarian force without exposing the Armies of Shengti and Ching Tung to a single assault. The battle was an incredible feat of tactics, and the general had to admire his superior’s planning.
    Batu’s thoughts were interrupted by a deafening roar from the hilltop. Again, the ground began to quiver. Fifteen thousand Shou infantrymen rushed over the crest, screaming at the tops of their lungs. As