Chapter 2902: New Journey (8)

The training of the Jeju Island Cavalry Training Squadron seized Tan Shuangxi and his fellow "special service cadets" in a rhythm that bordered on the tyrannical. Under Sergeant Major Feng Laibao's verdict of "neither donkey nor horse," what they faced first was not any deep science of tactics, but how to begin life as a "qualified mule."

For the first few days, scarcely a figure could be seen on horseback anywhere on the training ground. Everyone was out on the apparatus field instead, drilling over and over the fundamentals that seemed to have nothing to do with cavalry: squats, frog hops, planks, weighted shuttle runs.

"Your waist and belly are your root in the saddle! Your legs are the pincers that grip the horse's barrel!" Feng Laibao's roars mingled with the men's heavy breathing, rolling through the flying dust. "You cannot master a horse without strength enough!"

After one round of frog hops Han Zhongying sprawled flat on the ground and wheezed to Tan Shuangxi beside him: "Nastier than a forced march, this, damn it..."

Shao Rui's field uniform was soaked through with sweat, but he ground his way through every movement, lips moving silently — whether he was cursing the sergeant major's ancestors to the eighteenth generation or reciting training formulas, no one could say. Yirden, master horseman though he was, did not escape being "returned to the pot" for re-schooling — "nonstandard" found no welcome here.

Fortunately they all came up from active service, well seasoned by the army's physical training, so this basic work could not stump them. Inside of two weeks, every man had qualified.

Then came the endless schooling in the horse's gaits. Not on horseback — on flat ground, mimicking the rise and fall, the shift of balance, that each pace demanded of the body.

"Cavalry gaits we divide into four: the walk, the trot, the gallop, and the charge gallop. The walk serves for passing difficult ground, night marching, and holding close order — a horse can keep it up for a long while. The trot is the cavalryman's 'working gait,' sustainable for about thirty minutes, fit for most tactical movement. The gallop serves for closing with the enemy fast or breaking off a fight — it can be held some six minutes, and it keeps formation better than the charge gallop; it is the gait we use most in combat. The charge gallop is for the final shock alone." Feng Laibao bore down on his words. "That is the pace at which the horse runs with everything it has — meant for breaking out or charging home in an emergency. It demands the ground be flat, clear of stones and brush, and it must not be long sustained — ten minutes at the outer limit even in the last extremity. Past that, the horse is apt to founder or drop dead of exhaustion. And once the charge gallop begins, keeping formation is finished; the horse's remaining hours of fight shrink drastically, and you may be forced out of the battle with nothing left in him. As cavalry officers, you must keep a clear grip on the spending of your horses' strength."

The cadets stood in ranks and clumsily mimed the various "horse paces" at command — bodies bobbing, mouths supplying the "whoa" and "giddy-up" of rein control — a scene at once comic and grueling. Tan Shuangxi felt like a toddler learning to walk: all his infantry experience and battlefield nerve counted for nothing before these most elementary rhythms of horse control.

More grinding still was the daily labor of the stables. Feng Laibao's doctrine ran: "Wait on the horse as you would on your own ancestors, or it won't look at you as a man." Mucking the stalls, chopping straw, mixing feed, feeding, grooming, walking... every task had its strict procedure and standard.

The feed was mixed to a dedicated formula — daily, four kilograms of grain feed, eight of roughage, plus an extra ration of salt. Feeding turned on the proportions and timing of "hay, grain, water." Millet straw and wheat stalks had to be chopped to the "inch-cut" — longer, and it catches the throat; shorter, and it digests poorly. Beans must be steamed, and the bran winnowed clean of grit and grit-stone. Feed went in by the rule "add little, add often," to keep a horse from picking over it or gorging itself into a sick stomach. Watering allowed no carelessness whatsoever: fresh-drawn well water is too cold and must stand to a mild cool, or the war horse invites colic.

The practice of "hanging the horse" left a deep impression on Tan Shuangxi: the horse was led into the stable, its halter tied to a palm-fiber rope hanging from the beam, its head drawn up high for a quarter hour or so, until the neck stretched full. "It straightens the gullet — good for eating and digesting — and keeps him from bolting his food," an old hand explained. Watching the horses stand there hung, meek or faintly uneasy, Tan Shuangxi's grasp of the words "wait upon" deepened by another layer.

Harshest of all was the night feed. As the saying goes, "no horse fattens without its night grass." At two or three in the morning, when man and beast alike had hit bottom, the cadet on duty had to haul his spirit upright and add the concentrated feed. To walk into a stable at that hour, thick with the warmth and breath of animals, and listen to the soft rustle of horses chewing their night hay — that had a flavor all its own.

Walking the horses was a daily requirement as well. Before daybreak they had to be led from the stable for a slow circuit through the morning mist — the "early walk" — to limber their sinews and let them dung and pass their wind. There was another turnout before and after each meal, above all after supper: fed full, the war horses loved to roll a few times in the sand and then wade the shallows along the riverbank for a bath. At such times they would snort in comfort, even let out a whinny, showing a rare and easy contentment. Walking the chestnut "Flying Red" along the river flats toward evening, watching him dip his head to drink, his breath wrinkling the water, Tan Shuangxi felt the fear and distance that had first been in his heart melt, quietly, at one corner — worn down by day upon day of care and company.

Tender moments, however, were always brief. More training hard on their heels. Once they had the basic feel of a horse's temperament and could see to the daily care without mishap, they were at last permitted to begin bareback riding.

The bar was not high — sit a bare-backed horse walking a circle, and you passed. But sitting that bare back with nothing to hold to, no purchase anywhere, clinging on by waist and legs and balance alone — for most men it was a wall of difficulty.

Falling became daily bread. Fortunately the training squadron had laid in for it: thick straw pads were stacked at the edge of the ground, and Feng Laibao and the old hands corrected without pause.

"The waist is a spring! The legs are pincers! Your backside follows the rise and fall of the horse's back — it does not slam down onto it! Relax! Stiff as a door plank, and the horse is miserable, and sooner or later you'll be bounced off!"

Tan Shuangxi lost count of his falls. At first, the least strange movement from "Flying Red" made him tense and rigid, and the result was an unceremonious fling onto the straw. Little by little, he learned to feel the play of the muscles beneath him, to try fitting and guiding with waist and belly and inner knee instead of fighting. The first time he sat "Flying Red's" jog for nearly a quarter hour without clutching the mane, seated steady on strength of his own, the sense of achievement ran even higher than his first kill in battle.

He had barely found the door into the bareback trial when more concrete and more dangerous subjects crowded in behind it. The sergeant major's words still rang in their ears: "Mules! Don't think it some great feat to sit a horse without falling off. Cavalry fights on horseback!"

From there the training bent toward the word "combat." First came elementary rein control and work on gait transitions. Once saddles and bridles were issued, the cadets were required — at the different paces, walking and jogging — to guide their horses through turns, halts, and accelerations by fine changes of rein, leg pressure, and the shift of body weight.

Since the horses they were presently equipped with were mostly Mongolian stock, the various modern saddles Nick had brought over did not fit — the difference in build was too great. The Senate's cavalry was currently furnished with a copy of the old Japanese Army's Type 14 cavalry saddle, descended from the Type 30 saddle, which suited the smaller Mongolian horse and had won wide praise in the Russo-Japanese War for ease on long rides.

"The hand is the order, the leg is the whip, the balance is the heading!" Feng Laibao, mounted on a well-schooled black gelding as if he had grown there, demonstrated how a light tap of the calf alone, married to a subtle draw on the reins, sent the horse nimbly round the posts and back. "Don't haul on the reins with dead force! A horse's neck is stronger than your arms! Work with him — make him understand your intent!"

Easy to grasp, and a hundred times harder to do. Tan Shuangxi found that "Flying Red," though broken in after a fashion, answered these fine commands fast or slow by turns; now and then he misread one and threw his head in a sulk. Tan Shuangxi had to concentrate to the last degree, feeling every muscle stir beneath him, foreseeing the horse's response, adjusting his own cue. By day's end his inner thighs were rubbed to a burning rawness — and his mind was more drained still, wearier than on the forced marches of years past.

In one turning drill Han Zhongying took up his reins too sharply; his somewhat hot-blooded "Flying Armor" flung up its head and nearly hauled him out of the saddle, drawing a burst of abuse from Feng Laibao: "If you can't hold him, dismount! Don't wait for him to dump you in the ditch!"

Obstacle training was punishing and dangerous in its turn. Four obstacles stood on the ground: a low adobe wall, a wooden rail fence, a wide ditch, a narrow trench. The point of the drill was not merely that the horse should get over them, but to hammer out the rider's control of his balance, his hold on rhythm, and his accord with the horse through the crossing.

Even horses already schooled by the horse-training detachment kept their fear of obstacles: they would rush up, slam to a stop or swerve without warning, and launch the rider clean over their heads. What the moment called for was not the whip but patient leading. The cadets had to bring their horses up to the obstacle again and again until it grew familiar, encourage with feed and stroking, first lead them across at a walk, then attempt a slow crossing, building confidence by steps.

"When a horse dares not jump, nine times in ten it's the rider who was afraid first! Your fear runs down the reins, runs through your body — the horse reads it out plain as print!" Feng Laibao was dressing down a cadet who had failed again and again before the trench. "If you have no confidence in yourself, what right have you to ask the horse to trust you and jump with you?"

A seat thrown back at the instant of takeoff, or too violent a lunge on landing, could cost the rider his seat or jar the horse's spine. Once, jumping the wooden rail, Tan Shuangxi held his reins too tight at the spring; "Flying Red" rose poorly, a forehoof clipped the top of the fence, and though the horse did not fall, the jolt fired Tan Shuangxi hard into the air — on coming down his tailbone cracked against the saddle bow, pain blacking his sight, and a long half minute passed before he got his wind back.

(End of chapter)