Out on the Yellow-Grass Plains, twenty thousand Northern Heavy Lancers were still sneezing violently in a cloud of red chili-pepper exhaust while trying to untangle their legs from their neighbors’ stirrups.
Back on the northern command mound, Duke Tieba’s face had turned the color of a bruised pig liver.
“Bounced back?!” Duke Tieba roared, slamming the flat of his battle axe against his iron shield so hard that sparks flew. “Those hundred iron turtle-shells anchored themselves into the dirt! They can only block from the front—they are too heavy to turn quickly! Left Wing! Right Wing! Center Army! All eighty thousand Blood-Hoof Cavalry—spread out into two giant pincers, gallop around those iron boxes, and storm straight into Silver-Fork Port!”
WUUUUUU—WUUUUUU!
Thirty ox-horn bugles blew the flanking signal across the northern camp.
The remaining eighty thousand elite cavalrymen pulled their reins left and right, splitting into two massive black rivers of iron armor and red-eyed warhorses that began thunderously circling half a mile to the east and west of Pei Xuan’s hundred-tank line!
On top of Tank #2, General Tie Zhan poked his head out of the hatch and shouted through the brass speaking-tube: “My Lord! Tieba isn’t attacking our front bumpers anymore! He’s splitting his eighty thousand riders into two wide wings to bypass us and hit the unarmored road-crews and farm villages behind us!”
