Chapter 182: Siege Warfare
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 182: Siege Warfare
Piole and the two royal guards crossed paths at different intervals. In the process, the flash of light from Piole’s spear lasted but a moment.
Immediately after, the two royal guards rode a little further in the opposite direction before falling from their horses.
A hole had been punched through their faces, right in the eye slits of their face guards—the only part of them exposed.
In that fleeting moment as they crossed paths, Piole’s spear had struck them squarely in the face, right through the narrow slits just wide enough for the spearhead to pass…!
And she had done it while on horseback, a position where one’s posture is inherently unstable, not to mention while galloping at full speed.
Seeing that the other royal guard had an identical wound in the same spot, it was clear this was no accident.
Against two of the king’s royal guards, whose skills were second to none, Piole had just demonstrated that her mounted spearmanship had reached a master’s level.
“Stop right there!”
The woman herself, however, felt little excitement and resumed her pursuit of Bronx II. To her, it was an ordinary event, not even worth mentioning.
“Gasp—! S-stop her! Stop her!”
For the king on the receiving end, it was a different story. When the royal guards he trusted were killed in the blink of an eye, Bronx II found himself in dire straits.
Without a single glance back, he spurred his horse onward. At the same time, he sent his remaining royal guards to slow Piole’s charge, even if just for a moment.
There were three of them.
Though it was only one more opponent, Piole did not underestimate them. In battle, 1 + 1 could easily become 3 or 4.
That was why she used her horsemanship to its fullest, maintaining a distance where the enemy’s swords couldn’t reach but her spear could, creating an advantageous formation.
When one of the enemy knights, unable to bear the frustration, made a reckless move, she thrust her spear without hesitation.
“Urk… To think I’d fall to a mere woman…!”
Piole’s spear had pierced through a gap in his chainmail coif, which had ridden up during the violent movement. Bright red blood flowed endlessly down the spear shaft.
“Idiot. What does being a man or woman have to do with a fight?”
Piole pulled her spear out, but not before twisting it hard to widen the wound.
The bleeding intensified, gushing like a broken dam. The knight’s face instantly turned deathly pale as he collapsed, soon falling from his horse and tumbling to the ground.
“Jon—!”
“Dammit…”
The two remaining royal guards exchanged glances, then turned their horses and began to flee.
Bronx II had gained a considerable distance in that time, so there was no longer any need to block Piole.
Of course, the biggest reason was that after witnessing Piole kill two knights in an instant, they had quickly calculated that they stood no chance of winning.
“You think you can run?!”
The problem was, there was no guarantee they could. Though both sides were pushing their horses to their absolute limits, the distance between them gradually closed.
This was true even though the royal guards’ horses were fine warhorses. It was, to anyone’s eyes, a clear difference in horsemanship.
“You crazy—!”
The terrified royal guards whipped their horses, but the outcome didn’t change.
One was unhorsed when his mount, stabbed in the rump, went wild. The other collapsed with a spear in his back.
“Tch.”
The reason Piole clicked her tongue despite her success was that Bronx II had vanished among his troops.
“Lady Piole!”
While Piole was dealing with the knights, the cavalry had caught up to her. Seeing that her horse still had energy, Piole spurred it on again.
“We’re going to stir things up before we leave!”
She charged toward an army of five thousand with a mere three hundred cavalry, yet there was no hesitation. The same was true for the cavalrymen following her.
“Yes, ma’am!”
Having witnessed her skill multiple times just moments before, the cavalry followed Piole with unwavering trust.
Meanwhile, if the king’s royal guards couldn’t stop her charge, there was no way a mere infantry unit could. Moreover, these were soldiers who were not in their right minds after marching through such foul weather.
In an instant, their flank, inevitably weak in its defense, was swept away by the cavalry charge.
Unsatisfied, Piole prepared to charge again. The panicked infantry looked like easy prey.
“Lady Piole! Over there—!”
Just then, her adjutant pointed to the outside. A portion of the enemy forces was circling around to form an encirclement.
“So he really is the strongest single lord on the continent, huh?”
“What are your orders?”
Her deliberation was short.
“We’re heading back!”
If they charged again, they could inflict heavy damage on the enemy infantry, but their own cavalry would also suffer great losses.
The problem was that the enemy outnumbered them by more than two to one. Equal losses would only worsen their numerical disadvantage.
Making a veteran’s judgment, Piole immediately turned her horse. The cavalry followed.
The infantry, having belatedly reformed their ranks, and the troops that had attempted the encirclement could only stare blankly at the retreating horses’ tails.
Although they hadn’t inflicted massive damage on the besieging army, they had forced a one-sided loss. By any measure, the preliminary skirmish was a victory for the defenders.
The king’s army was demoralized, while Allen’s army’s morale soared. Piole’s daring surprise attack had ultimately achieved its goal.
However, the overall situation was still unfavorable.
“Don’t let your guard down! The enemy still outnumbers us more than two to one!”
“You might want to wipe that smirk off your face before you say that.”
The corner of Piole’s mouth, upon her return, refused to come down. She had just received a report that the only casualties were a few minor injuries from stray blades.
“And according to Jin, this was an expedition they’ve been preparing for a long time. The king didn’t just bring a large army.”
Piole casually ignored Zant’s jab and continued speaking. Just then, a sentry in the watchtower, having spotted a change in the enemy camp, shouted.
“Siege weapons! They have siege weapons!”
“What nonsense is that! We didn’t see anything like that!”
The scouts who had been tailing the king’s army since it left the capital had not reported the presence of any siege weapons. Neither had Jin, who was gathering intelligence in the capital.
“It’s true!”
When the sentry refused to back down, Piole strode up the watchtower. Her eyesight was as good as any sentry’s.
“What the fuuuck?”
Just as the sentry had said, siege weapons that hadn’t been there before had magically appeared behind the enemy lines.
“Wait, there’s more than one or two. How did they hide them?”
Dreng, Muel, and Zant, who had followed her up, also saw the siege weapons and their expressions hardened.
In truth, wary of spies, Bronx II had only the crucial parts of the siege weapons made in the capital, procuring the rest locally.
Piole gritted her teeth.
“The important thing is that we’re fucked.”
They looked exactly like trebuchets. Unlike older, man-powered catapults, these used a counterweight, making them siege weapons of incredibly high accuracy.
Zant spoke cautiously.
“Still, we’ve reinforced the castle gate two and three times over. It should hold for quite a while.”
It was a good thing they had reinforced the gate in preparation for battering rams, the easiest siege weapon to build. Otherwise, the situation would have been even worse.
Even so, Piole’s expression remained dark.
“The problem is we have to just sit here and take it. Roxwood has no siege weapons to counter them. The soldiers’ morale is bound to fall.”
In the end, war was fought by humans. Once the siege weapons had done their part, swords would have to clash, and that’s when the fallen morale would become a problem.
Soon, stones launched from the catapults flew over the castle walls. As the impact points gradually neared the gate, the faces of Piole and the three men grew darker.
“Any word from Dresden?”
“The last news was that Lord Allen would be arriving in Dresden soon. Considering the distance from Dresden, he should be on his way here by now.”
“So we just have to hold out for a week to ten days? Fine. Let’s hold out as long as we can. For now, reinforce the gate and walls with sandbags! What are you doing? Move! Right now!”
Fortunately, they had stockpiled enough supplies to withstand a siege, thanks to Jin’s intelligence, which had warned them of the king’s attack in advance.
The castle’s residents were evacuated to the sturdy inner keep, and the soldiers reinforced the gate and walls.
On top of that, Eleanor’s ability activated, causing several trebuchets to break down.
It was thanks to all this that they were able to endure the trebuchet attacks that continued for three days and nights.
The problem was that Bronx II, having made no progress, was not one to sit still.
“Aargh!”
A soldier carrying supplies to the wall instinctively threw his arms over his head. A stone launched from a trebuchet was aimed right at him.
Fortunately, the stone missed him, but he couldn’t help but scream again.
“Ugh! A-a corpse—!”
What had fallen wasn’t a stone. It was a corpse, dead for some time, its skin blackened and teeming with maggots.
A rain of corpses was falling from the sky.
“Don’t be afraid! The king is getting desperate because we’re not breaking easily! He’s throwing corpses to scare us! This is proof that we’re doing well!”
Piole hurriedly rallied the wavering soldiers. However, she didn’t know that the purpose of throwing the corpses was not simply to frighten them.
The true purpose was revealed three days later.
“An epidemic is spreading!”
Piole and the other knights couldn’t hide their dismay. In an era with no proper medical technology, wasn’t disease even more terrifying than war?
“The king deliberately threw infected corpses! The proof is that the soldiers who handled the bodies the enemy flung over were the first to fall ill!”
To make matters worse, the king’s army, which had only been attacking with trebuchets, began to move. They brought with them newly constructed battering rams and ladders.
“That bastard! Is he trying to take us all down with him?!”
If a plague broke out, the king’s army would inevitably be affected as well. Piole couldn’t understand why the king, who surely knew this, would resort to a biochemical attack.
Even knowing he was terrified of Eleanor’s ability, her opinion didn’t change.
“It’s to strengthen his justification.”
It was Dreng, with his vast experience roaming the continent as a mercenary, who saw through the king’s intentions. As all eyes turned to him, he continued.
“The ignorant masses believe plagues are divine punishment. The nobles aren’t much different. The king wants to create the image that working for a witch brings down heavenly wrath. Look. The soldiers are already wavering, aren’t they?”
Even the mercenaries, whom Allen had hired for a long term at great expense despite having no work for them, were starting to get restless.
If they had been conscripts, they might have opened the gates themselves and offered Eleanor to the king.
The only silver lining was that the priests in charge of medical care within the castle stepped forward.
“Calm yourselves! A plague is just a plague! It is by no means the will of the Lord!”
Thanks to the good relationship between Allen and Archbishop Raceni, they also maintained a good relationship with the church. But that didn’t mean the problem was solved.
“Is there a cure?”
At Piole’s question, the priest shook his head.
“We don’t even know what this disease is. And we can’t gather the church’s best healers in this situation. There is only one way. Quarantine.”
“Just a temporary measure, then.”
Roxwood, surrounded without an escape route by the king’s army, was no different from a breeding ground for disease.
Quarantine could slow the spread, but it couldn’t solve the problem completely.
“Lady Piole! The enemy—!”
A sentry announced that the king’s army was approaching. The perfect timing made it clear that Bronx II had planned all of this.
Trapped on all sides, Piole gritted her teeth. It would be at least three more days before Allen arrived. To buy time, they needed a drastic measure.
“Get the cavalry ready!”
Piole intended to charge once more. The other knights immediately objected.
“It will be extremely dangerous this time! Bronx II is not foolish enough to fall for the same trick twice! He will surely have prepared for it!”
“We have to at least destroy the siege weapons! Otherwise, there’s no hope even if we hold the castle!”
The key was the plague. If they let the enemy continue to fling infected corpses, they wouldn’t be able to hold out until Allen arrived, no matter what they did.
“…The chances of success are greater with two than with one. I will go with you.”
“Dreng?”
“A mercenary who could have died at any moment became a knight, received a domain, and started a family. I have enjoyed this unexpected fortune to my heart’s content, so I have no regrets.”
“What about your child?”
Dreng, having gained a domain and a title, had even taken a wife from a fallen noble family. It had only been a few months since their son was born.
And Dreng was the kind of doting father who bragged about his son, not yet even a year old, every time they met.
“I trust our lord will take good care of him.”
Dreng curled his lips into a grin.
“I will go too! If you entrust the vanguard to me, I will open a path to the siege weapons!”
Moved, Zant also volunteered. Naturally, the eyes of the three turned to the last remaining knight, Muel.
“Ahem. I will stay and defend the castle.”
As the three pairs of eyes staring at him grew colder, Muel hurriedly added.
“I mean, if everyone goes, who will command the defense? Huh?”
“This is why you’re not popular, Muel. You always back out when it really matters.”
Even Zant, who had no interest in the opposite sex, was married, yet Muel, who flirted with woman after woman, was still single.
“Hey, why are you bringing that up again…!”
“I didn’t expect anything from you anyway. Just guard the castle well.”
Piole chuckled, gave him a light punch on the arm, and turned away. Dreng and Zant did the same before following her.
The sly smile on Muel’s face quickly vanished. He knew they were just words; they wouldn’t entrust the castle to him if they didn’t trust him.
Muel forced himself to look outside. It was then that he saw something that shouldn’t have been there.
“Piole!”
At the urgent call, Piole, who hadn’t yet fully descended the wall, came back up. And like Muel, her eyes widened at what she saw.
“Allen?”
A contingent of troops was appearing behind the enemy camp. They were too far away to make out faces, but the banner was unmistakably Allen’s.