Chapter 312. Wanyan Zonghan's Recognition
Youngwoo was not the sort of man who simply insisted that things had to be done one way or another.
He understood the field.
He argued that stronger armor was necessary to protect the soldiers, but he did not dictate every detail himself. He listened to craftsmen and commanders and worked out the method together with them.
They discussed, asked questions, tested things in practice, and gradually established standards.
Youngwoo would ask, try, consult, and once a decision was made, he pushed it through without delay.
At first, Wanyan Zonghan was not entirely comfortable with that headlong way of doing things.
Whenever Youngwoo moved, everyone around him had to move as well.
Differences of opinion collided, and meetings often became noisy.
Once men began arguing over whether one method was right or another was better, a meeting meant to find a good solution could easily turn into a contest over who was right.
The third problem was resources.
Youngwoo insisted that they needed far more arrows.
That much was obvious.
But turning an obvious statement into reality meant cutting down an enormous amount of shrub wood, drying it, straightening it, and shaping it into arrow shafts.
Soldiers had to sort suitable shafts even during their rest periods, while craftsmen kept their furnaces burning late into the night to hammer out arrowheads.
Feathers for the fletching also had to be gathered separately.
An arrow was not merely a wooden stick.
The shaft had to be straight, the arrowhead properly balanced, and the feathers attached correctly for it to fly true in battle.
If the wood was dried badly, the shaft warped.
If the weight of the arrowhead was wrong, its flight became unstable.
If even the fletching sat crooked, the rhythm of massed shooting suffered.
The enormous quantity of arrows Youngwoo demanded meant enormous quantities of labor, time, iron, and feathers.
Wanyan Zonghan saw that clearly.
Whenever Youngwoo made a request, men and materials began moving at once.
If he spoke of armor, smiths lit their fires.
If he spoke of arrows, soldiers went out to cut wood.
If he spoke of protecting the horses, harnesses and leather stocks had to be counted all over again.
What Youngwoo demanded was never an abstract ideal.
It meant moving hands, hours, iron, horses, and supplies immediately.
Their resources were already strained, and Youngwoo kept asking for more.
At first, it irritated them.
A wealthy army could manufacture armor, stockpile arrows, and protect its horses properly.
Their problem had never been a lack of will.
It was a lack of material.
They had fought for years with rough equipment, conserving scarce iron and repairing things one piece at a time with the hands of the soldiers themselves.
So when Youngwoo kept saying they needed to make more, prepare more, and equip more, it initially sounded as though he were blaming them for what they lacked.
It even felt as if he were looking down on the methods by which they had survived until now.
That bothered Wanyan Zonghan.
They had not fought this way because they were unwilling to prepare better.
They had fought this way because they had possessed so little for so long.
But as time passed, Wanyan Zonghan began to understand Youngwoo's sincerity.
He also came to see just how practical Youngwoo's methods were.
When circumstances were poor, Youngwoo found a path suited to those circumstances.
He began with whatever could actually be done.
If armor could be made for one man, he armed one man first.
If enough could be made for ten, he gathered those ten into a separate group.
If arrows were lacking, he had wood cut for shafts.
If iron was scarce, he sorted usable metal from captured equipment.
Eventually, Wanyan Zonghan could no longer deny what Youngwoo had become.
Youngwoo stood at the center of the Jin army.
He constantly found work that needed to be done.
And whenever he found such work, he put it into someone's hands.
The smith hammered iron plates.
The soldier threaded leather cords.
The clerk recorded the quantities.
At first, each change appeared small.
But one day passed, then another, and the shape of the army itself began to change.
Youngwoo started with what could be done.
Then he kept at it until what had been started became something real.
Now, with a great battle approaching, the commanders met every day.
Information poured in from scouts and spies sent in every direction.
Reports came one after another: how far the Liao forces had gathered, which tribes were moving slowly, which road the emperor's great banner was following, and which ford the supply wagons were using.
An enormous number of troops continued to assemble.
"Five thousand Xi cavalry from the river region are approaching under Xiangwen Wuda."
"Two thousand Balhae troops are moving north."
"There are rumors that the Shiwei* will join them. Their numbers remain unknown."
Shiwei: a broad group of nomadic and hunting peoples who inhabited northern Manchuria and northeastern Mongolia in ancient times.
"The Tuyuhun** are nearby."
*Tuyuhun: a nomadic people descended from the Xianbei. They migrated westward and established a state around Qinghai and Gansu, becoming an important northwestern power during the Sui and Tang periods. By the Liao era, they survived mainly as nomadic descendant groups incorporated into the Khitan sphere rather than as an independent state.
"We have intelligence that payments from the Liao imperial court are being delayed. Since Huanglong Prefecture fell, their ability to distribute rewards has weakened."
With every report, the enemy seemed to grow in number.
The Liao were gathering tribal forces on a massive scale.
Those tribes moved according to one question:
Would the Liao really win?
After several defeats, many tribal leaders had begun to hesitate.
If Liao victory seemed likely, they gathered in expectation of imperial rewards and plunder.
If Jin victory seemed more likely, they submitted to Jin or delayed their march.
The loyalty of tribal armies did not move on principle alone.
It followed the likelihood of victory and the scent of spoils.
Calling up tribal troops was never as simple as issuing a single imperial order.
Once an edict went out, each tribal chief had to gather his warriors, and the court had to provide the resources necessary to move them.
Troops traveling long distances needed grain.
Horses needed hay and beans.
And tribal chiefs needed a reason strong enough to bring their people out to war.
Silk, silver, wine, horses, and gifts distributed before departure provided that reason.
So when the mobilization of tribal troops slowed, it did not simply mean that an order had arrived late.
It meant that the Liao court's storehouses had been opened, envoys were riding across the country, and tribal chiefs were weighing what they had already received against what they expected to receive later.
When victory became certain, they moved faster.
When the outcome remained doubtful, they delayed even after accepting gifts.
Each new report darkened the mood in the command tent.
And at the center of those meetings sat Youngwoo.
Wanyan Zonghan and the other fierce commanders began asking for Youngwoo's opinion even over a single marker placed on the map or an ambiguous phrase in an intelligence report.
In earlier days, they might have relied on their own experience and courage and simply pushed forward.
Now they first examined the shape of the battlefield, considered the movement of troops, and waited to hear when Youngwoo believed a breakthrough should be attempted.
Youngwoo never drew conclusions immediately after hearing new information.
He separated the problem piece by piece.
Enemy numbers.
Marching speed.
The condition of their horses.
The location of provisions.
The attitude of tribes that had recently submitted.
Some reports were exaggerated.
Others might have been deliberately planted.
Rather than believing intelligence at once, Youngwoo searched for points where separate reports overlapped.
Only when information arriving from different routes pointed toward the same place did he finally lay his hand on the map.
The commanders watched that hand.
Which river he touched.
Which hill he studied for a long time.
At which road junction his finger stopped.
The mood in the tent shifted with every movement.
When Youngwoo finally spoke, everyone listened.
"The Liao army is certainly large. But that does not mean all those troops move as one body. We must see which units arrived first and which tribes joined late. Those who arrived late are more likely to break first. They gathered beneath the emperor's banner, but many of them did not come prepared to give their lives for him."
The commanders nodded.
Youngwoo pointed to another place on the map.
"We should not strike where their numbers are greatest.
We should strike where orders arrive late, where intentions differ, and where the formation looks thick but the resolve inside it is weak.
That is where we open the line and go in."
The meetings continued late into the night.
Outside, the ringing of hammers repairing armor, the snorting of horses, and the soft scraping of arrow shafts never ceased.
Inside, commanders bent over maps and intelligence reports.
The great battle had not yet begun, but its shape was already emerging little by little beneath their hands and through their words.
Many commanders were uneasy.
Youngwoo remained calm.
"They are only numbers. Do not worry too much. We simply have to fight as we trained."
The words that the enemy numbered more than a hundred thousand disturbed the air inside the command tent.
Youngwoo continued to regard that number as exactly what it was:
a number.
There was only one thing he kept asking about.
The location of the Liao emperor.
More important than how many tens of thousands of men the enemy possessed was the location of the emperor's great standard.
Which road was it taking?
In which camp was the emperor staying?
How large was his personal guard?
Which direction were his command banners facing?
Those were always Youngwoo's questions.
Most reports arriving from every direction were little more than rumor.
Someone claimed to have seen something.
A tribe claimed to have heard something.
A merchant said he had heard something while passing through.
Youngwoo did not accept such reports immediately.
He checked whether independent reports pointed toward the same location.
In the middle of all this came news that the Song dynasty had declared war on Liao.
Youngwoo clenched his fist and sprang to his feet.
Every commander in the tent looked up.
A moment later, cheers erupted.
That single piece of news meant the Liao court now had to look south.
The plan to concentrate hundreds of thousands of troops in one place had begun to crack.
Then came word that the Goryeo army had marched.
When they heard that twenty thousand Goryeo troops had crossed the Lushui River, the entire gathering erupted with excitement.
Twenty thousand Goryeo troops were more than just a number.
They were an army that carried the memory of having crushed a massive Liao force at Gwiju.
When Liao commanders and tribal chiefs heard that name, they would remember the shadow of that old defeat.
The battlefield was beginning to move according to Youngwoo's plan.
Song disturbed the south.
Goryeo advanced from the east.
And the Jin army aimed at the northern center.
The Liao still possessed enormous numbers, but the conditions that had allowed all those troops to face in a single direction were collapsing.
And yet Youngwoo's expression darkened.
Every envoy sent elsewhere had succeeded.
Only he believed he had failed.
The thought weighed on him so heavily that he could barely raise his head.
Of course, Youngwoo had not been the only one involved.
Wanyan Xiyin had sent many agents to disrupt the enemy rear.
Youngwoo had merely been one among them.
The uprising he had hoped for had simply never happened.
Even so, he was depressed.
Only then did Commander-in-Chief Wanyan Zonghan truly recognize Youngwoo.
He accepted his judgment, his ability, his character, and his courage.
Above all, Youngwoo possessed an exceptional ability to break a battlefield down into manageable pieces.
He did not speak in grand declarations.
Instead, he divided grand questions into small ones.
"The Xi are coming."
If such a report arrived, Youngwoo immediately asked,
"How many?"
"Several thousand, they say."
"How many are heavy cavalry, and how many light cavalry?"
"Who is their Xiangwen?"
"Which road are they taking?"
"How many days of provisions do they carry?"
"Are they moving with the Liao emperor's personal guard, or joining separately?"
As the questions became more specific, vague fear began to lose its shape.
"Several thousand Xi troops" was no longer a vast shadow.
It became a certain number of heavy cavalry, a certain number of light cavalry, a named commander, a known route, and a limited amount of provisions.
Once divided that way, the enemy ceased to be a mass of fear.
It became an army that could be judged, measured, and dealt with.
By answering Youngwoo's questions, the commanders began to see the enemy differently.
They too had to eat.
Their horses too had to be fed.
They too had to wait for orders from their commanders.
They too calculated profit, weighed victory against defeat, and wondered whether to delay or hurry their march.
Whether Youngwoo intended it or not, his questions always produced the same result.
The vague numbers disappeared.
What remained were concrete things that could be handled on a battlefield.