Chapter 195
Chapter 195
Iron Emperor — Chapter 195
Ssssk!
"Urgh."
The unmistakable sound of a blade meeting cloth and flesh rang out, and another soldier fell to the cold ground.
"What's going on!"
When the soldiers rushing chaotically about spotted the fallen men and shouted, a soldier who had been standing nearby pointed frantically in one direction.
"The armory's in danger! I'm telling you, the enemy bastards headed that way!"
"Ah, I got it!"
"I'll move this guy myself, so get moving!"
Clutching his fallen comrade, who still twitched feebly on the ground, the soldier screamed desperately. The approaching soldiers turned and sprinted toward the place where the weapons were piled.
"Keurk, hack. You..."
"Sorry, friend."
The soldier cradled in the arms of the one holding him clutched at his collar, his eyes filled with resentment. But it lasted only a moment. A Gauri dagger had just severed his final breath.
Thud.
"Time to move."
Setting down the now-lifeless soldier, the lone remaining soldier melted away into the darkness. Only the uniquely shaped long knife hanging from his waist silently hinted at his true identity.
With several escort knights in tow, Imperial military observers rushed toward the frantically sprinting Marquis Mandonel and hurled urgent questions at him.
"What in the world has happened!"
"I'll need a clear picture to say for sure, but it seems the stragglers who came in earlier are actually an enemy raiding party."
"What!"
The Imperial military observers stared at the grim-faced Marquis Mandonel with astonishment. They had never imagined a mere two hundred and some soldiers would dare infiltrate so boldly.
"Can that really be true?"
"If it isn't, then why in the world would they pick out the remaining supplies and set them on fire! Besides, our defenses aren't so lax that breaking in from the outside would be easy!"
At Marquis Mandonel's impassioned reply, the Imperial observers' brows furrowed. Yet they asked no more questions, perhaps because they understood the marquis's state of mind.
"Your Excellency the Marquis!"
"What!"
A blood-streaked soldier staggered up from one side, collapsed, and cried out in a despairing voice.
"An uncountable enemy host has been sighted advancing from the rear. If the enemy sallies out from the gates right now, we'll be trapped with nowhere to go!"
"What!"
At the soldier's desperate report, Marquis Mandonel and the military observers recoiled in shock. An enemy force too large to number was sure to inflict devastating damage in the current situation. If things went badly, they could even suffer annihilation-level losses.
"We must see to the rear defenses at once!"
Viscount Mabel, a military observer from the Holy Empire, shouted urgently. Marquis Mandonel began to turn on his heel, then stopped short.
"No—what are you doing at a time like this! We're in a hurry!"
When Marquis Mandonel halted his steps at such a pressing moment and instead studied the reporting soldier closely, Viscount Mabel urged him again. But as if letting it pass through one ear, the marquis offered no reply and addressed the soldier who had made the report.
"Where is the messenger, that you came to report instead?"
The soldier's uniform was that of a regular soldier. Having caught that detail, the marquis asked out of a strange feeling. The soldier answered at once.
"The messenger was slain by the ambushers, so I came in his stead."
"Marquis, just what are you—"
"Viscount Mabel, doesn't it strike you as odd?"
Cutting off Viscount Mabel's exasperated words mid-sentence, Marquis Mandonel fixed his expression into a hard mask and asked. The other military observers tilted their heads for a moment.
Shhhrk.
Marquis Mandonel's sword rasped against its scabbard as it was slowly drawn, and he continued his explanation to the baffled observers.
"Let alone the question of how we could fail to detect an uncountable host closing to within spitting distance—if they had approached that close, why not simply fall upon us? Why go to the trouble of a diversionary plot and set fire to the supplies? Obviously it would rouse every last sleeping soldier."
"Hrm."
"Setting the supplies ablaze serves to deny us a protracted war. But to simultaneously drive a great host forward in a night assault? That makes no sense, does it?"
It was exactly as the marquis said.
If you intended a rear attack, the natural move was to strike while the soldiers were all asleep. Yet the current result, on the contrary, had woken every last one of them.
To put it plainly, unless the commander was a fool, there was no reason to employ two such contradictory operations at the same time.
"And one more point. If this soldier came all the way here to make his report, the rear should already be in an uproar."
Only then, at Marquis Mandonel's words, did the military observers look toward the comparatively quiet rear and nod. When the situation abruptly reversed, the soldier who had delivered the report raised his head and spoke.
"Son of a bitch, why doesn't a single one of you bastards ever believe me!"
"Wh... what did you say?"
This time it was Marquis Mandonel who was taken aback. For a spy surrounded by escort knights and military observers, the words that came out of his mouth were too absurd and brazenly self-assured. As if oblivious to the swords leveled at him, the soldier clapped himself off and rose to his feet, then continued to heap on abuse.
"Goddamn nosy old bastard, had to ruin everything with his crooked suspicions. My crappy, shit-flinging luck."
Whump!
As if in sheer irritation, the soldier tore off his helmet, hurled it to the ground, and lifted his head proudly. Viscount Mabel's eyes began to tremble violently.
"You... you were the one guarding the Gauri envoy group in the Kingdom of Haian..."
"Oh? It's that punk with no manners from back then, huh?"
It wasn't only Viscount Mabel. Viscount Ishie and Viscount Poling, who had both suffered great humiliation in Haian, opened their eyes wide too. Even amid a crowd of knights, the man didn't lose his composure and kept running his mouth.
It was none other than Gye Ung-sam.
Chapter 60 — Gye Ung-sam's Crisis
Eulji Buru, who had been directing the troops from the forest, began slowly issuing retreat orders as he watched the soldiers trickle back in.
"Fall back little by little and prepare to break out, now!"
Even through the whistling din of Whistling Arrows, Buru's orders seemed to have reached the men, for the archers at the head of the line fell back to the rear while loosing their bowstrings.
"Where in the blazes has General Gye gone off to!"
When Gye Ung-sam, who should have returned long before, was nowhere to be seen, Buru threw the question at the swordsmen who had come back ahead of him.
"General Gye said he would disrupt the enemy command staff and, when the chance presents itself, cut off the head of the enemy supreme commander!"
"What in the—what did you say?"
Buru's face twisted with utter disbelief. For a moment he was speechless, then he clenched his jaw and yelled at the soldiers.
"Everyone break out, now! If you're late and get caught and killed, I ain't taking responsibility for a single one of you bastards!"
Buru asked no more questions about Ung-sam; he turned his body around and began leading the troops in the breakout.
'Goddamned son of a bitch, why's he pulling stunts nobody ordered! When he gets back, he better expect a beating to within an inch of his life, by God!'
Even as he ran, Buru stole a glance behind him and clenched his teeth.
Gye Ung-sam's voice lashed out at the encircling Roselin soldiers.
"Bring a horse—a horse!"
"Urgh!"
Caught in the iron grip of Ung-sam's forearm, the supreme commander of the Roselin army, Marquis Mandonel, groaned in agony. On the ground, the Imperial military observers who had attempted revenge and been laid out in fewer than a dozen strokes rolled about, grunting.
"You little shit, want me to slit your throat right here?"
"Nnghh!"
The long knife in Ung-sam's hand, which even now held the glint of a savage smile, lightly bit into the skin of Marquis Mandonel's neck. A pained moan escaped the marquis, and a thin stream of red trickled out.
There, in the very heart of an enemy camp numbering in the tens of thousands, Ung-sam had taken the enemy commander-in-chief hostage and was staging the hostage drama of a lifetime. His bearing was not merely composed—it was utterly brazen.
"I said I'll let this piece of trash live if you bring a horse and I get clear. Don't tell me even you bastards don't believe me now!"
Watching the soldiers who could neither easily close in nor dare to attack, Ung-sam muttered under his breath and then let out a scoff.
"As expected, when it comes to hostages, the top dog is best. Ain't that right? Heh-heh-heh."
With so many soldiers only exchanging glances and unable even to approach, he seemed to be savoring the moment. Watching Ung-sam, the nobles and knights chewed back their fury and shouted at him.
"If you release His Excellency the Marquis at once, we will at least spare your life!"
"If you bring a horse right now, I'll at least spare the life of that Marquis bastard!"
Ung-sam fired the noble's coaxing right back at him.
"Hey, Marquis. Look at that son of a bitch. He's pushing hard 'cause he figures if you die, he gets to be the new supreme commander."
"Nngh!"
Ung-sam forced Marquis Mandonel's gaze around with his forearm, showing him the noble who had been creeping in from one side. By sheer coincidence, the man who met the marquis's eyes was none other than his own deputy commander, Count Keosillian.
"H-huff! Your Excellency, it isn't so!"
Before Count Keosillian could even finish his protest, Ung-sam's long knife had swept across and severed Marquis Mandonel's little finger. For an instant the marquis simply stared blankly at what had happened; then, amid the spurting blood and the crashing wave of pain, he screamed.
"Kraaaagh! Keosilliaaan!"
"Next time it won't be a finger. It'll be the wrist. Bring a horse!"
Ung-sam delivered a threat colder and more sinister than anything before. Seeing Marquis Mandonel's finger still twitching on the ground, Count Keosillian ground his teeth and shouted at a soldier.
"Bring a horse out!"
Had it been because he saw Marquis Mandonel's resentment-laced stare?
The deputy commander, Count Keosillian, had no choice but to make a swift decision. At the sight of the horse a soldier led over a moment later, utter wretchedness settled on Marquis Mandonel's face.
'I was far too careless against a single man....'
Marquis Mandonel regretted it too late. The instant he had exchanged acquaintance with the military observers, Ung-sam's drawn long knife had sliced the sword in his own hand clean in half, and in a single stroke the escort knights who rushed belatedly to his aid had all been slaughtered. On top of that, when the Imperial military observers had cloaked their swords in Mana and charged, Ung-sam had spat into one of their eyes—a bizarre, almost freakish feat—and then laid them flat with kicks before they could recover.
And of course, from that moment on, he had suffered the humiliation of being taken captive like this. Afterward, whenever wizards had rushed in to rescue Marquis Mandonel, Ung-sam had driven daggers into their foreheads, and whenever magic had flown at him from afar, he had callously used his hostage as a shield to hold on until now.
"Urgh!"
Bound hand and foot, Marquis Mandonel felt himself hoisted aloft by Ung-sam's strength and was overcome by the sheer misery of his situation.
Trussed up and draped over a horse, his back pressed against Ung-sam's back, he felt rope lash the two of them together around the waist. Perhaps burdened by their combined weight, he could see the horse's tail swishing side to side directly before his eyes.
"Stand aside!"
One of Ung-sam's hands gripped the reins; the other still held the long knife. Its point, naturally, was trained on Marquis Mandonel's throat. Strange as it felt, back-to-back as they were, the situation remained every bit as deadly.
SLASH!
"Kwa-aaahh!"
The knights and soldiers who had hesitated despite Ung-sam's shout hastily cleared a path when one of Marquis Mandonel's ears went sailing through the air.
"Hell. What's wrong with my luck? Cursed be this dog-crap world of mistrust, where no one believes you whether you tell the truth or a lie."
Spouting such pointless sophistry, Ung-sam spurred the horse forward and began riding along the path they had opened for him.