On the twenty-eighth day of the sixth month, an urgent dispatch from Ningxia reached the Capital.
The courier had come from the west, riding day and night.
The clerk on night duty broke the seal, and sweat soaked his back before he had finished reading.
The frontier report contained little more than a hundred words, but every word struck terror into the heart!
That night, the Hall of Literary Depths blazed with light.
Shen Duan was staying overnight at the Grand Secretariat.
He sat behind the desk in the Duty Room, the newly arrived dispatch spread before him. He read it three times, his face turning ashen, then pale.
[Tangut roving cavalry launched surprise raids along the frontier, striking and withdrawing three times. They carried off more than a hundred frontier residents and burned seven watchtowers...] [Peng Ding, Commander-in-Chief of the Ning Garrison, rashly sought military glory, disobeyed orders, and dispatched troops without authorization, intending to drive the Tangut roving cavalry beyond the passes. The enemy cavalry unexpectedly lured him onward with a feigned retreat. After he advanced thirty li, they suddenly encircled him on all sides. Our troops had poorly maintained weapons and incomplete armor. Caught suddenly by enemy cavalry, they threw their own ranks into disorder. More than ten company commanders and other military officers were killed or wounded, with countless further injuries. Abandoned military supplies lay in heaps like mountains. The surviving troops retreated to defend the Garrison City.]
"Peng Ding!" Shen Duan forced the two syllables through clenched teeth.
"Idiot! I put you in Ningxia to defend it-to defend it! Not to march out and throw your life away!"
Before his words had faded, hurried footsteps sounded outside the Duty Room.
"Urgent report from the Ministry of War!" A junior clerk rushed inside.
"The