Chapter 209
Chapter 209
Iron Emperor — Chapter 209
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Pwooooooo!
Drums and horns resounded from both sides, as if each were competing with the other.
"All forces, advance."
The moment Gowin gave the order to march, the soldiers began stepping forward. At the same time, the North Roselin camp also started to move, closing the distance step by step.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
Every footfall struck the ground in uncanny unison, thrumming through the heart alongside the drumbeats. Every soldier advancing carried a bow strapped across their back.
"Nock arrows!"
The order fell, and soldiers pulled bows from behind their backs and set arrows to the string. Their feet kept moving; the arrows sat ready on the bowstrings.
Across the field, the enemy was drawing their own arrows as well.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
The sound of footfalls from both sides drew steadily nearer.
Mounted, sword drawn, Gowin gauged the distance to the enemy.
'Conceal the advantage of our weaponry.'
The bows of the Gauri army had an effective range at least three times that of continental bows. But orders had come down not to reveal this. And so Gowin drove his horse forward in silence even after the approaching enemy had already entered range.
Urging his soldiers onward, Count Yulian began advancing his shieldbearers ahead of the archers.
"Shieldbearers to the front!"
"To the front!"
The voices of soldiers calling back the order echoed far and wide.
Survivors' accounts had reported that the arrows loosed by Gauri troops flew far farther than their own. That was why he was pushing the shieldbearers forward.
When the distance had closed to a certain point, archers stepped out from the ranks of the Gauri-South Roselin allied army.
'Mm. Just as the reports said.'
Count Yulian's own bows could reach barely a hundred mir. But the enemy's arrows flew significantly farther. He saw their bowstrings being drawn while over a hundred and fifty mir still separated them.
"All forces, form up and advance at the double!"
Count Yulian's order rang out. The shieldbearers raised their shields and began running forward with quickening strides.
"Waaaaah!"
The soldiers roared as they picked up speed. Then came the unmistakable twang of bowstrings ringing across the field.
Tw-tw-twang!
"Halt! Shieldbearers, raise shields and protect the archers!"
The order was given, but the soldiers had already moved faster than the words. Their bodies had reacted to the threat before their minds could process the command.
WHIZZ-WHIZZ-WHIZZ-WHIZZ!
Arrows tore through the air and hammered down onto the shields, a cascade of impacts drumming against the raised barriers.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
The sound of arrows raining onto the shields sent chills down the soldiers' spines.
"Hold that stance! Shieldbearers, advance!"
Arrows slipping through the gaps between shields ripped screams from a handful of soldiers, but the troops pressed forward with composure. Their pace was slow as a turtle's, but they inched closer until they finally reached the effective range of the North Roselin archers.
"Archer companies, stand ready!"
The knights' orders fell, and preparations for the counterstrike were complete. To loose their arrows, the archers would have to expose their bodies above the shields, and their mouths had gone parched dry.
"Loose!"
The command rang out.
Eager to shoot fast, the archers thrust their bows out past the shields in unison. But with so much more of themselves now exposed, many collapsed screaming before they could even draw the bowstring.
"Guuurk!"
Archers crumpled as enemy arrows struck them. Some of the arrows they released as they fell buried themselves in the waists of the shieldbearers beside them.
"Aagh!"
"Where the hell are you shooting, you orc bastard!"
Curses flew freely, but even amid the chaos, the arrows they had loosed began to rain down onto the Gauri allied army's formation.
Both sides were now exchanging volleys in earnest. For a time, all forward movement stalled as nothing but arrows flew back and forth across the sky.
"They're starting to pull back."
As the incoming arrows markedly thinned out, the Gauri allied formation began falling back. Roughly eighty mir remained between the two forces.
"Don't give them distance! Archers, keep firing! Knights and infantry, begin the charge!"
"Charge, forward!"
"Waaaaah!"
The instant Count Yulian's order was given, the knight order surged ahead first, deflecting the rain of arrows as they charged. At the same moment, the infantry sprinted forward, small shields raised.
"Something's wrong..."
Over a hundred North Roselin knights were charging, yet no counter-force was rushing out from the Gauri allied formation.
In the blink of an eye, the distance shrank by forty mir.
Then the Gauri allied formation shifted.
"No—it can't be!"
It was not just the archers in the front ranks. Every single soldier crouching behind them had taken up a bow as well.
"Those mad bastards—!"
Count Yulian's face drained to the color of bleached paper.
The force awaiting his charging North Roselin soldiers was a unit of ten thousand troops, every last one of them an archer.
* * *
"All together—loose!"
Beskin's voice tore across the entire force.
As if they had been waiting for precisely that command, bowstrings sang out brightly, and over ten thousand arrows arced into the sky.
WHIZZ-WHIZZ-WHIZZ-WHIZZ!
They might not have been specialized marksmen, but these were men who had long trained in suppressive archery, and the Eastern Army troops who had come with them were all archers as well.
Several thousand of those arrows, of course, were aimed straight at the hundred-odd knights charging at the vanguard.
"Gruuurk!"
A North Roselin knight at the head of the charge fended off several arrows with his shield as he rode on—then, turned into a pincushion, toppled to the ground.
"Aaaagh!"
"Charge! Do not slow down!"
In that instant, more than half the knights were flung to the earth.
No matter how formidable the armor the knights wore, a hundred men could not stop several thousand arrows. And forty mir was well within range even for a continental bow.
Against the even greater destructive power of Gauri bows, they had no means of enduring at all.
"Sequential fire!"
"Pikemen, form a square!"
The Hawk Corps responded to each new order with nimble precision.
Like crash after crash of surging waves, the unending cascade of arrows plunged the panicked North Roselin forces ever deeper into death. The twenty-odd knights who did survive that hellish torrent of shafts met an equally hollow end, skewered like meat on the hundreds of long pikes thrust up before them.
"This cannot be happening..."
It was over in an instant.
The knights had charged out in towering confidence. The time it took for them to become arrow fodder and be annihilated was, quite simply, an instant. If that was the fate of knights in heavy armor, what need was there to speak of ordinary foot soldiers?
The troops who had already rushed forward now lay stretched upon the earth, their bodies cooling. All that remained to offer any resistance were the archers who had been loosing arrows and the shieldbearers protecting them.
"Aaaagh!"
"My lord Count, if we stay here, it's annihilation!"
The archers could no longer lift their heads. The shieldbearers fell one by one, pierced through shield and body alike by the endless volley of arrows. Count Yulian saw the enemy knights begin their charge.
"All forces, retreat!"
It was already too late for such an order.
To be precise, there had been no moment even to give the order to retreat. The soldiers who rose up to withdraw appeared to number barely a thousand.
"Kuh-huk!"
"My lord Count, hurry!"
Count Yulian, tears of bitter anguish streaming down his face, turned his horse at his knight's urging.
"To suffer such a defeat, and yet to—"
His voice, heavy as if lamenting that he had not been granted death, never finished. An arrow buried itself in his back and released him from his anguish.
"My lord Count!"
"Cou—guuurk!"
The knights around him who had lamented their lord's death soon followed him, laying their bodies upon the cold earth.
From that first battle, barely a hundred men of the North Roselin army returned alive.