Chapter 198
Chapter 198
Iron Emperor — Chapter 198
The movements of the Roselin soldiers trudging along were as listless as if they were sleepwalking. Some soldiers leaned on their spears and swords like walking sticks, not caring whether the weapons broke. Worse still were the soldiers who had discarded their weapons somewhere, moving with painful effort using only a tree branch snapped off along the way as a staff.
"The unit will enter a rest period! Everyone except those assigned to watch duty is to take their ease!"
The knight who had ridden up and delivered his message in a voice brimming with energy—a stark contrast to the soldiers worn down by hunger—had no sooner turned his horse and departed than the soldiers sprawled on the ground began to curse.
"Sons of bitches. They eat their fill and live easy, don't they."
"Damnation. Didn't we all expect this? Even if the lot of us starve to death, those bastards will stuff themselves full."
A stream of feeble complaints and resentment flowed. The soldiers who could at least run their mouths like that were among the better off. Some soldiers, who had collapsed the moment they sat down, didn't stir, leaving it unclear whether they were dead or alive. Only the occasional rise and fall of a stomach told you they were still breathing.
Munch, munch.
"P-Pol! What are you eating right now?"
"Food?"
"Where?"
The moment someone in one corner was spotted munching on something, the eyes of the soldiers around him snapped wide open. Even men who had been collapsed like corpses just moments before jerked upright and lunged.
"N-no, it's nothing!"
"You son of a bitch, you're trying to survive alone!"
"Share just a little with me."
The reactions ranged from a man cursing and threatening the bewildered, denying soldier, to others clinging to him with pitiful looks in their eyes.
"Oh, what the hell!"
The rough-looking soldier who had rushed over and seen what the man called Pol had been eating recoiled in shock.
Beside Pol's spot were countless ants, swarming. The rough-looking soldier's surprise lasted only a moment before he scooped up a handful of ants and frantically shoved them into his mouth.
To survive, he had to eat anything.
Dirt went into his mouth along with the ants, but he didn't care. At his action, other soldiers rushed the ant hole too, picking up and eating the ants scattering in all directions.
"N-no! I found them first!"
Pol, who had discovered them and started eating first, desperately tried to push the onrushing soldiers away and shouted, but it was a losing battle.
"You bastards! I said they're mine!"
Thunk!
"Guuk!"
Along with Pol's frantic shriek, a dagger thick with rust drove into the side of the soldier who had ducked his head and was licking up ants. The soldiers' hunger, their eyes rolling back, had drawn blood. The disturbance only ended when knights arrived and, as an example, struck off the heads of two or three men.
"Worthless scum. Just hold on a little longer and we'll meet up with the supply unit!"
The soldiers who listened to the knight's arrogant words and gazed at their comrades' corpses wore expressions that held something other than fear.
The corpses of comrades, with hot blood still steaming.
As soon as the knight had vanished, someone approached and, with trembling hands, stripped the clothes from a dead comrade. Then he carved out the flesh of the thigh.
"Heh heh heh heh."
A large chunk of human flesh rested in the bloodshot soldier's hand.
With that soldier in the lead, the others with blood in their eyes threw themselves forward, fighting over the freshly created meal.
For all those who behaved that way, there were soldiers of a different sort.
"G-get away, you son of a bitch... ah."
Despite the protests of a soldier lying down, feebly waving a hand, one man clung to him tenaciously. A stench of rot that made the nose curl wafted from the prone soldier's abdomen, but even that smell could not stop this soldier.
"Ihihihihi!"
"Uuurgh."
Mad laughter and moans mixed with agony.
The maggots teeming in the festering wound had become this soldier's main food source. No, to be precise, the wounded who were still breathing were becoming a new source of sustenance.
"The soldiers are growing less and less able to hold out. There was already a difference of around five hundred men between the number that departed this morning and the number that arrived just now this evening. In short, the number who fell behind in a single day today is that significant."
At the reporting knight's words, the nobles inside the command tent could only furrow their brows.
"Have we not hunted intermittently along the way?"
When one noble spoke, the knight hesitated a moment, then slowly spoke up.
"That is nowhere near sufficient. Not only are there no animals in the vicinity because such a large number of people is moving through, but if the hunting parties venture in even a little bit deeper, they are invariably attacked by monsters...."
At the knight's trailing attitude, some nobles turned their heads away as if displeased. The curses that rose to the tip of the knight's tongue at their attitude, he simply swallowed down and endured.
The truth was that even the little game that was caught was mostly used to fill the stomachs of the nobles and knights.
"Even so, we cannot slow the pace of the march. We can rendezvous with the supply unit in about five days, so accepting minor losses appears to be the best course."
When Count Keosillian looked around the assembly and spoke, the majority of the nobles nodded. In truth, given the current situation, that was their only path to survival. At that moment, a clamorous sound began to be heard from outside.
"A grave situation! A large-scale cavalry force has launched a sudden raid!"
"What!"
At the report of the knight who rushed in from outside, Count Keosillian's eyes flew wide open and he bolted up from his seat. The other nobles were even more shocked.
"What in the world were the rear-guard sentries doing, to not know until the enemy charged in!"
"Th-that is... I am not certain."
The blameless knight who had come to make his report could only stand there helplessly. The truth was, in a situation where even the bodies of comrades were being eaten, there was no way proper watch could be kept.
For the soldiers who had fallen to the rear and been assigned sentry duty, all they had done was peel and eat tree bark to ease their hunger, or collapse as though dead to rest their exhausted bodies.
The Gauri cavalry's attack, beginning with a rain of arrows, met no resistance whatsoever. Launched against men who had no strength to resist to begin with, the attack cut down the Roselin soldiers like rotten sheaves of straw, while the rampaging mounts merely moved among the soldiers, crushing the limbs of those trying to crawl away.
"Form ranks!"
"Move, if you don't want to die!"
Under the harsh shouts of the knights swinging their swords everywhere, the soldiers began to scrape together every last ounce of strength they had—and didn't have—to fight back.
"Archers, loose arrows!"
But the result was wretched, a consequence of the past several days of hunger and laxity. By the time the archers started loosing their arrows, the raiders had already vanished, leaving only countless bodies behind.
Even at a glance, the fallen bodies appeared to number in the thousands, despite the attack's brevity. Count Keosillian, who had been surveying the scale of the damage, was lost in thought for a moment before he spoke, as if he had come to a decision.
"We will have to slaughter and feed to the soldiers all the cart horses, save for those the knights and I ride."
"But how can you make such a decision...."
Horses were not creatures that could even be compared to the lives of common soldiers. Even so, the nobles couldn't help but be astonished by the count giving such an order. Yet a few of them were nodding as if they agreed.
If they were to suffer attacks like this a few more times, it was obvious they would be annihilated to a man before they could ever meet the supply unit. If that was the case, then making the soldiers regain their strength while their numbers were still large—even at the cost of the horses—was the top priority.
As soon as the order was given, the soldiers who had been collapsed began slaughtering the horses, as though they had already eaten their fill. They could not eat the horseflesh raw after such a long fast, and no matter how many they slaughtered, the amount would not be enough to fill every man's belly.
In the end, the butchered horse meat was boiled into a thin soup, but even that alone was enough to restore some strength to the starving soldiers. No, if they rationed it, they could even eat two or three more times. But the meal the soldiers had pinned their hopes on was shattered before they could even bring the first spoonful to their mouths.
"Aaaagh!"
"Enemy attack!"
SWISH-SWISH-SWISH!
The arrows that tore through the sky shattered the happiness of the soldiers waiting for their food, and snatched away their lives at the same time. Soldiers who had fled in terror of spilling their ration of soup died without a sip touching their lips; some soldier collapsed with three or four arrows in him, and even as he drew his last breath, he kept gulping down his soup.
"Huaaang!"
He felt no grief seeing comrades die. He felt no grief even as an arrow lodged in his own body. Only this moment—not being able to eat the warm soup—was hateful and heartbreaking.
The raids continued that day until the break of dawn.
Was it because they could not sleep all night?
The soldiers' movements seemed even heavier than the day before.
Those soldiers who were still moving had faces that were slightly less drawn, which was likely because they had, despite the ceaseless attacks, desperately managed to spoon a few mouthfuls of soup into their mouths. Even so, more than half the soldiers positioned at the rear had not been able to get a taste of the soup they had painstakingly boiled.
Moving in silence, the soldiers could not even muster the will to clear away the bodies of their comrades strewn all around them.
War was always close to death, but this was beyond that. Even in this chaos, there were those carving flesh from the dead, creating a torment worse than death itself.
"Smell of food?"
A soldier readying to move found his head turning of its own accord.
"It's probably just the nobles fixing to stuff themselves."
At his comrade's curse-laden tone, the soldier who had first caught the scent of food shook his head in strong denial and insisted.
"No, the smell is definitely coming from behind us!"
"Then...."
As one soldier stopped and stared toward the rear, the others also turned their heads one by one and stood looking. It was unmistakable: the source of the smell of food, carried on the wind, was the rear.
If it was the rear, there was no need to think further. It was certainly the Gauri cavalry who had tormented them all night.
Gulp.
The sound of someone swallowing came from the throat of a soldier.
Absurdly, it was not anger toward the enemy that had harassed them without rest, but regret over the fragrant smell of food, that took hold first.
"Didn't I hear the Gauri army kills everyone who surrenders, too?"
"Surely not, they're people just like us...."
When one soldier spoke up, another answered. And no sooner had those words ended than other soldiers chimed in.
"No, I heard they let those who don't resist live."
At those words, the gazes of all the nearby soldiers focused on him at once. The soldier, receiving the stares of many comrades, cautiously looked around, and when he saw no knights or nobles nearby, spoke quietly.
"You know that reconnaissance party of seven hundred or so that left by this road before?"
"The one where almost everyone died and only a handful came back?"
Another soldier chimed in knowingly, but the soldier who had first spoken shook his head and continued explaining.
"One of my hometown friends was among the handful who came back alive. He said they definitely took the soldiers who surrendered as prisoners, and let the others go only after having them deliver a warning they wanted passed on."
"......."
"......."
Once the soldier finished his explanation, a moment of silence hung in the air.
They were saying nothing, but their choice was a single one.
A group of soldiers looking like beggars was cautiously approaching, a scrap of cloth—indeterminate whether white or yellow—tied to a club.
"Looks like word has already reached them."
Eulji Buru grinned as he spoke to Go Jin-cheon.
The sight of the soldiers, trembling in fear at the sight of the Gauri cavalry encampment yet desperately waving their yellow cloth, was beyond pitiful—it was nothing less than the desperation of men clinging to life itself.
"Just as planned."
The corner of blunt Jin-cheon's mouth curved slightly upward.
"Prepare porridge for them."
At Jin-cheon's order, Mong Ryu-hwa gave a slight bow of his head and approached the cavalry troopers who were handling the cooking to relay the command. Jin-cheon, who had watched this until the end, turned toward Buru at his side and slowly gave an order.
"Prepare the final operation."
"Just leave it to me."
Buru answered Jin-cheon's command with a dependable air.
The Roselin soldiers who had been lying on the ground, pretending to be stragglers, were soon able to meet the Gauri cavalry. And they found not death, but life.
More than that, they even found peace of mind.
The fact that they could eat a porridge that looked similar to soup, with white steam rising from it, and that the Gauri cavalrymen, who had seemed like demons the night before, were now treating their minor wounds, stirred up more gratitude than resentment.
Of course, their feelings might change given more time, but as a countermeasure, while feeding the stragglers, the Gauri deliberately let slip the remark that had it not been for the Roselin nobles, this war would never have happened in the first place. And the deliberate kindness with which they embraced and cared for them turned the arrows of resentment toward the leadership of Roselin.
Hadn't the nobles, even as the common soldiers starved to death, eaten warm meals, filled their bellies, and ridden their horses in comfort?
Over the course of that single day, the number of soldiers who fell behind, willingly or not, and surrendered to the Gauri cavalry exceeded one thousand.