In the afternoon, on the banks of the river, Liang army scouted the cavalry, who were reconnaissing the enemy situation, found a cavalry approaching.

Because there are many woods around, I suddenly met: the other party also discovered them.

Lu Ji, the leader of the Liang army's scout, judged that the cavalry was a scout of Qi, not a roundabout way and sneak attack, but they happened to be caught by them.

The scout's duty is to spy on the enemy's situation, drive away and annihilate the enemy's scouts. Now the rangers of the two armies are close, and they all have the idea of ​​killing them all.

The sudden encounter soon broke out between the two scout cavalry teams of Liang and Qi, and Lu Ji ordered his subordinates to fight with the team tactics.

The melee of small cavalry soldiers is a test of the single cavalry fighting skills. The cavalry who serves as scouts is also more skilled than ordinary cavalry.

Lu Ji knew that his and his subordinates were only qualified for riding skills, and perhaps he could not compare with the superb riding skills of Qi army scouts, so he naturally did not dare to ask for a "catch and fight".

They used three to five cavalry as a team, and then two teams cooperated to meet the enemy, and used the team's collective combat tactics that they often train on weekdays to offset the disadvantage of their relatively low cavalry skills.

As expected, the Qi cavalry, who were proud of their superb cavalry, scattered apart, spreading like fishing nets, surrounding the Liang cavalry that was facing the team.

The Liang army's cavalry turned into pairs of "mandarin ducks", each rushing left and right in the "fishing net".

The fishing net then changed into "evil dogs", chasing and biting the "mandarin ducks".

From time to time, some people are shot and injured, and people fall off horses from time to time, but the mandarin ducks are "deep in love" and are stronger than gold. They never leave each other and keep holding on to each other's evil dogs behind them.

The aggressive evil dog, relying on its sharp teeth and claws, kept following, pounced on the mandarin duck, shot with a bow, or stabbed with a spear.

Sometimes they change directions, turn around, sometimes they sway left and right, and even deliberately turn to the blind spot of riding and shooting on the right, using their bows to keep shooting arrows and shooting people and horses.

The mandarin ducks have been fighting back hard, sometimes playing in the water, sometimes passing by, sometimes going their separate ways, sometimes gathering together and releasing them freely.

Use a short spear as the beak to peck at the dog's eyes; use a new cavalry scimitar (also known as the lancet) as the claws to scratch the dog's body;

He circled and turned again, vibrated his left wing (came left by riding a bow), and slapped the dog's head into blood.

When the mandarin ducks were bitten and covered in bruises, they used the "mandarin duck scissor" tactic to kill the evil dogs.

Before we knew it, the winner was decided: Qi State's Rangers suffered heavy casualties, and only a few cavalry were left like a stray dog ​​and fled in panic.

After the fierce battle, the open space on the riverside was in a mess. Lu Ji, who was caught in several arrows, was wearing armor, so he was fine.

But the mount was also hit by a few arrows, and the blood was stained red near the wound.

The army was not full of horses. Lu Ji felt a little distressed when he saw that his mount was injured and was very injured. However, he did not care about his heartache and quickly asked his subordinates to count the casualties and seized time to clean the battlefield.

Fortunately, there were some war horses left by the Qi army, which just supplemented the losses of our side. However, there were still a few people who fell off their horses and had not yet died, so they just caught them and asked carefully.

But the Qi army resisted stubbornly and seemed to be unwilling to be captured alive. Lu Ji directly ordered an arrow to rush towards a shield-holder.

The man held a shield in his left hand, and the arrow failed to hit his body, and he also wore a zipper, making his defense very well.

Luji held the reins with his left hand, held the short spear tightly in his right hand, rushed to get out of the right side, and then poked the spear forward and poked the opponent's shield.

Use the force brought by horses to break the shield or knock down the opponent.

However, the man used a shield to thrust the short spear upwards. Then, Lu Ji saw the other party holding a ring-headed knife in his right hand and slashing at his right leg.

At this time, the short spear he held was facing upwards and the tail was downwards. It was too late to turn the spearhead and poke people. He was riding on the horse and was approached by someone and could not hide.

However, Luji's short spear is a double-headed spear. The sharp (the metal pointed end at the tail of a long-rod weapon such as a spear can allow the spear to be inserted into the ground and stand alone) is sharp, like a spearhead.

Lu Ji directly held the short spear, raised his arm with the trend, and used the special sharp spear as the spearhead, using the technique of poking people with a double-headed spear and poked straight downward.

Just before the ring-headed knife hit his right leg, he poked the opponent's part.

The man screamed, covered his face, and staggered back. Lu Ji was about to turn his horse's head and repair the other party's spear. Then the companion who arrived pulled out a willow leaf-shaped scimitar and cut the man over with one knife.

The confrontation ended instantly, and the companions who came to rescue breathed a sigh of relief: "Fortunately, they used a double-headed short spear."

"It can even kill him if it is not a double-headed spear, provided that there is a slaughter."

Lu Ji said lightly, looking at the guy still twitching on the ground, he decided to give the other party a pleasure.

He stepped on the stirrup's right foot and then touched the horse's belly.

The mount moved straight forward and approached Qi Bing's body. Lu Ji touched the horse's belly with his right heel. The mount raised his right front hooves and stepped directly on the man's chest, stomping it down.

It's over, I can't die anymore.

Luji didn't have to pull the reins, but just touched the horse's belly with his heel, so he rode his mount.

Their boot heels, filled with metal parts called "Spurs", have strips of metal bulges on it and rotatable ratchets at the end.

The ratchet's prick is a blunt prick. The rider only needs to lean his heel against the horse's belly. The spur's ratchet can make the horse feel pain but not hurt.

Therefore, the spurs on the heel of the boot can replace the whip in some cases, allowing the rider to give orders to the horse.

This is very important because we often use weapons with both hands during cavalry warfare, so we cannot pull the reins or throw the whip, and we can only rely on our legs to control the mount.

It also relies on various movements of legs to issue orders to the mount, which has great requirements for the tacit understanding between people and horses.

With spurs in cavalry boots, they can poke the horse's belly with the heels and tell the mounts straightforwardly what to do (turns, acceleration, etc.), instead of relying on long-term riding to cultivate a tacit understanding with the horse.

Of course, you have to practice using the Spurs to control the mount, but it takes much less time.

Seeing that it was getting late, Lu Ji ordered his subordinates to move faster: "Check it out quickly and take away the useful ones. The sun sets later, we have to find another camp."

He did not forget to explain: "The head level is cut off and taken away, that is a meritorious person."

I looked at the double-headed spear in my hand and was quite satisfied.

If the length of the spear reaches more than 18 zhang, it is called a spear.

The spear used by cavalry is called a horse spear. Because it is very long, it must be very heavy. If you want to make it better, you have to go through long-term training.

People who use spears not only need to work hard, but also need to practice horse spear techniques, so it is not easy to practice well.

However, the two-edged spear, which is rarely used by people, is a double-headed spear, is even more difficult to use well.

In contrast, spears with a length of no more than 18 zhang or short spears with a suitable length are faster for novice cavalry.

Scouts had to investigate everywhere, but horse lances were not convenient to carry, so they could not avoid various wars, so they usually carried short spears as long soldiers.

If the horn is replaced with a spearhead, the short spear will become a double-headed spear (two-edged spear), and the combat techniques are very rich in the same way as the two-headed spear.

When using the double-headed spear, there are no need to consider the change of forward and backhand. There are many attack routines and are easy to get started. Therefore, the scouts of Xuzhou Army (light cavalry) have all started to learn to use the double-headed spear.

Whether it is a spur, a scimitar or a double-headed spear, a series of improvements are to reduce the threshold for cavalry to form combat effectiveness. It is necessary to train useful cavalry in a shorter time and shorter training costs.

The cavalry also strengthened team combat training and fought in small teams during combat, in order to make up for the weakness of personal low riding skills and rely on discipline and organization to defeat the enemy.

What is the specific effect? ​​It must be tested through actual combat.

The confrontation that Lu Ji and his subordinates experienced today at least proved that such training and tactics were effective.

And wearing spur boots, double-headed spears, cavalry swords like willow leaves, and half-equipped horse armor may become typical marks of Xuzhou cavalry.

The afterglow of the setting sun was about to disappear on the horizon, and the Liang cavalry slowly left with the captured war horses, carrying the bodies of their fallen comrades, and some spoils.

The once hustle and bustle of the river bank has returned to peace.

Only those headless bodies and war horse corpses, as markers of fierce fighting here, were gradually swallowed up by the night.
Chapter completed!