Chapter 366
Chapter 366
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 366
Chapter Title: Vortex (4)
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Unlike the advance up to now, a fairly textbook siege was unfolding atop Altkais's outer walls. Majestic banners fluttered atop the city's high ramparts, and arrows rained down sporadically from the defenders.
Our forces had taken no small losses. The two thousand troops to begin with weren't few by any means, but neither were they enough to make a siege truly meaningful.
"Why are those bastards fighting so desperately?"
Gunter's words drew looks of disbelief from his aides.
"What's with you all? Isn't it obvious? This country's fortunes are spent anyway. If they thrash about like this, they can't expect their lives spared after we breach the walls! Even if we fail to take it and just keep them besieged, it'll be the same."
In truth, Fairn's army had no need to attempt a siege at all. From external observation, the garrison inside Altkais numbered barely three hundred.
Naturally, they'd be short on supplies, and the fact that all nearby villages had been thoroughly plundered meant that even without civilians inside, they'd struggle to maintain their stockpiles. A tight encirclement would simply let them wither away on their own.
A week at most. Gunter coldly calculated their time. That was how long until the gates opened on their own. They had no hope left. So why were they fighting like cornered beasts?
"Don't they know our situation too?"
"Even if our supplies are stretched thin, they're still better off than those inside, aren't they?"
"Or maybe... like the Dains always do, they're holding out for honor."
"That could be."
Gunter nodded at his aide's words. Honor, a fine soldier's spirit. He watched the skirmish on the ramparts' gallery: his men desperately hooking ladders to climb, the enemy straining to kick them away.
"How long do you think it'll take?"
"Half a day should suffice."
If they accepted the casualties, yes. The walls encircling the domain's central keep were absurdly vast for a mere three hundred to hold. Indeed, his soldiers were already clambering atop them one after another.
Even if more of their forces remained in the inner keep, so what. They could just set it ablaze then. Gunter smiled leisurely as he gazed at the walls.
"Hah, what a waste of time."
His eyes burned with greed. Were it not for the king's promise that all conquered lands would fall under his name, he would have bypassed Altkais entirely. But not now. His line of march would become his land entirely.
* * *
Soon enough, the last soldiers surrendered, and the gates swung open. Gunter slowly rode through beneath them, surveying his surroundings. The scent of parched hunger hung over the impoverished city's landscape.
"Report."
"Yes, Commander. Altkais siege losses: 220 dead, 131 wounded, twelve horses lost!"
"Remarkably light for a siege. And the enemy?"
"Of the identified 291 enemy troops, more than half are dead. Details still being tallied!"
"Hm...?"
Gunter rode on, looking around. His soldiers dashed along the base of the walls, checking for ambushes or supplies.
Something felt off. He stroked his beard slowly, sensing an eerie unease.
"Why such a high kill ratio?"
"Pardon...?"
"If besieged defenders surrender, their fatalities shouldn't be that high, right?"
It was basic arithmetic from his first days at officer school. Besieged troops in numerical inferiority typically surrendered before real fighting, keeping deaths low.
Even fighting from walls, once the gallery fell and gates opened, defenders lost the will to continue.
Soldiers weren't puppets; they had emotions. Did it make sense for them to fight to the death? Sure, in a village fending off monsters or beasts where surrender meant death.
But man against man, in a domain skirmish just swapping lords? No. Conscripts in such fights had low morale—deserters outnumbered the dead.
"What drove these fools to stake their necks on this dirt?"
"We'll order a search of the keep!"
"Any signs of ambushes or traps inside?"
"No...! Commander, not a rat in the place!"
"Damn it all."
Gunter scowled, scanning around. From the wall base to the town proper, the only noises were his soldiers' boisterous laughter and footsteps.
Not the sounds of a freshly fallen city in war. Screams of women, children's wails—despair-filled clamor like that should fill the air.
Only then did he grasp the strange silence, the gnawing dread.
"It was a suicide squad."
"...Pardon?"
"Stalling tactic. They never meant to survive from the start! Where are the prisoners!"
"Being questioned on the gallery now... Get down!!"
As his aide bellowed, Gunter's hand was already on his sword hilt, eyes on the walls. Just as he'd thought. They had no will to live. Seeing Gunter receiving the report, the prisoners hurled themselves from the ramparts toward him in unison.
Poorly armed, unskilled conscripts through and through. Yet their eyes held resolve—what he'd call 'soldier's spirit.'
-Clang!
Gunter's blade parried a militiaman's sword and severed his neck. Three reached him. The rest were swiftly seized and forced to kneel before him.
"Impressive. Highly honorable."
Gunter looked down at the survivors. Those critically wounded in the takedown groaned faintly, dying slowly.
"Pah!"
One prisoner suddenly spat in Gunter's face. Gunter shook his head and raised a hand. No need for answers or interrogation.
"Kill them all."
He turned and walked away, lost in thought. His aide approached cautiously.
"Commander. You alright?"
"They were militiamen."
"...Pardon?"
"Farmers tilling fields before the war. Barely learned to swing a sword, let alone proper training."
No civilians in the city. No, even including the outer hamlets, not one across the whole domain.
The implication was clear. Bait. Bait to delay the advance by half a day. Doomed to annihilation, literal bait. Sacrificing their lives for mere half a day.
Men who burned themselves to buy half a day for their parents, children, families, neighbors. Interrogation, confrontation—meaningless for those fighting to die. What terms could sway them?
Gunter's expression grew complicated. A field commander who'd completed Fairn's advanced military courses, he knew tactics' aims and basics intimately.
'What are they after?'
Every tactic had a goal. Survival, breakthrough, destruction, annihilation, encirclement. Some optimal 'hope.' So what hope drove these men to discard their lives like chaff for half a day?
"Commander, scouts have arrived."
"Found the refugees?"
"Traces of a refugee column passing. Destination..."
"Obvious, isn't it."
Alvert. The steel city, impregnable fortress. This kingdom's capital, whose ancient walls had withstood giants, demons, undead hordes.
But...
"Did they truly think hope lay there?"
With Dane's main force marching on Fairn, what hope in their emptied homeland drew them to that city? Gunter smiled bitterly and headed to headquarters.
* * *
Fernandez held the map spread in his familiar mounted pose. With a Demonica's balance, it was hardly remarkable. He gazed steadily at it atop the swaying horse's back.
"Freyja, withdraw E-31."
-Pop!
A tiny flower bud burst on the wooden brooch at his collar. Acknowledged. Kirhas watched quietly.
"I have no idea what Silver Duke's doing anymore."
"No different from commanding from a ship."
"But this isn't a ship! Lady Freyja's still back there. And she didn't even make this map herself—you're just using paper now?"
"Plenty from what I've seen so far."
Fernandez shrugged. Enemy landing sites, numbers, compositions, terrain grasped—predicting march routes and speeds was simple.
Thus, tracking their positions across the map from various directions, redirecting his troops along those paths. Nothing requiring special skill.
"Does that even make sense...? Calculating times for seven separate advancing columns while maneuvering over twenty raiding parties simultaneously?"
"What else would I be, if not a mage?"
"I'll never learn magic in my life."
"Good. Don't. It's a nauseating study."
Fernandez chuckled, patting her head. They chatted amiably, winding through mountain paths.
Predicting enemy routes was easy. Directing his forces accordingly was trickier but feasible.
Yet battlefields bred unpredictable variables. Desk control had limits. One reason Fernandez plunged into the fray himself.
"Do you know, when Vicente first ascended the throne, Fairn tried invading Dane?"
"Ah, yes... That was the objective then, right? Thwarting Fairn-Dane clash."
"Right. After Vicente's coronation, Fairn sent envoys. To check the weakened Dane amid chaos. Know what the Round Table said then?"
"No... I wasn't there."
Fernandez crested the hill, eyeing the horizon. Camp clusters dotted the distance.
"If Fairn set foot in Dane lands, they'd learn East's strongest knights."
Royal Griffin Knights versus Round Table. A chance to settle superiority? Recalling Bayemier's words, Fernandez smiled faintly.
A massive banner fluttered before the modest camps below: a griffin shrieking skyward.
Fairn Royal Griffin Knights. Inevitably named among East's mightiest forces. One of this war's few variables.
"You mean us two to take that...?"
"As if."
Fernandez laughed, glancing at the map. Beyond tactical units into strategy, magic and war shared traits.
Magic combat's crux: discern foe's spell first, prepare counter or wedge mana to neutralize.
Strategy mirrored it. Grasp enemy's plan, exploit weaknesses, raid garrisons to cripple forces.
Ignore their largest massed army, devour fragmented minimal units one by one, slowly grinding them down. Fernandez's ideal tactic.
Like wedging mana spikes, scattering their dispersed forces—
Severing core mana nodes first, distorting flow.
Counter-spell's basis.
"Kirhas. Sound the horn."
"Yes, Silver Duke."
-Bwooooooo!!
The camps below, deep woods beyond, distant mountains... Nearby gorges and valleys.
-Bwooooooo!!
Horn calls echoed in response from afar. Fernandez waved Kirhas off, gazing down slowly. Knights poured from camps, armed and scanning warily.
"With North's finest and Round Tablers here, let's see what East's strongest amounts to."
Of North's six thousand scattered across theater, four thousand five hundred. Each a clan elite-worthy warrior, emerging from brush, gorges, woods, foothills—one by one, gathering into phalanxes, advancing.
"When did you...? They were scattered theater-wide when you left HQ...!"
"Didn't I say? Vortex."
Vortexes converge to one end inevitably. Fernandez watched North's warriors swelling ranks.
"As this land's last Round Table knight, glad I can offer guest rites."
Knights in camps shouted raucously, drawing steel, mounting up. Horns and warnings blared across positions.
Then, North's assembled warriors roared as one. Their ancestors' sole, final cry.
[Val-halla—!]