Standing on the round black-iron turret of Command Tank #1, Pei Xuan looked out across the Yellow-Grass Plains.
A hundred yards in front of him, Duke Tieba was stuck waist-deep in the prairie soil like a planted radish, right beside the steaming mound of horse manure where Daoist Hei-Gu’s two black-booted legs were still sticking straight up into the sky.
Spread out across two miles of crushed grass stood eighty thousand dismounted soldiers of the Northern Iron-Horse Army—plus the twenty thousand bruised lancers who were limping over from the front bumper pile-up.
Even though they had just cheered for General Tie Zhan’s revenge, now that the duel was over, an uneasy silence fell over the hundred thousand northern soldiers.
They looked at the hundred invincible black-iron Spirit-Tanks, then looked down at their own empty hands and tattered boots. In the harsh traditions of the Great Yan Kingdom, when a rebel warlord’s army lost a battle, the captured soldiers were either slaughtered on the spot to save grain, or branded on the forehead and worked to death in iron mines without pay.
“General Tie...” the scarred one-eyed battalion commander in the front row swallowed hard, stepping forward with his head bowed. “Duke Tieba was a beast, and we are glad you smashed his skull! We northern horsemen are not afraid to die, nor do we beg for mercy! We only ask one thing—please ask Lord Pei not to punish our wives and old mothers back in the Five Northern Fortresses! They…
