Chapter 210
Chapter 210
Iron Emperor — Chapter 210
"Victory!"
As the North Roselin army vanished before their eyes, cheers erupted everywhere. With only fifty dead and total casualties—including wounded—under two hundred, this was a supreme triumph, a victory among victories.
The road ahead was still long, but having won a decisive opening battle, the Hawk Corps poured their joy into shouts that spread into the empty sky.
"Congratulations, Daesaja Gowin!"
"You men worked hard as well."
"I never imagined we'd achieve a victory this overwhelming!"
The knights' laughter bloomed with delight as they crowded around to celebrate the victory. Gowin clearly did not mind; a smile kept spreading across his face.
Soldiers stripping armor from enemy corpses to collect spoils wore expressions that, amusingly enough, showed them even enjoying themselves.
"But why did you let the hundred-odd soldiers go free?"
A knight from the Eastern Army wore a puzzled look. They had clearly been in a position to annihilate the enemy down to the last man.
"We let them live, obviously, so they could go and trumpet our strength."
"What do you mean...?"
Gowin clapped the bewildered knight on the shoulder and explained, his voice tinged with laughter.
"What was the decisive factor that destroyed the enemy today?"
"Ah!"
It was just a single syllable, but the Eastern Army knight exclaimed in sudden admiration.
An arrow attack from ten thousand bows.
The North Roselin soldiers who survived and made it back would most likely describe exactly what they had seen. If so, in this battle, the enemy would conclude that the Gauri Alliance Army had deployed over ten thousand archers.
In the troop types of the continent—outside of mountain rangers—there simply was no branch that wielded bows alongside another weapon, so their conclusion was obvious. And once they made that judgment, that they faced ten thousand archers?
Naturally, that would keep them from doubting the apparent strength of the camp, because they would believe the false figure of at least sixty thousand troops.
"It may be a bit of a strain, but tomorrow we must wage an all-out battle."
When Gowin spoke, his manner turning somewhat graver, the atmosphere that had been drunk on victory sobered.
"Isn't that hasty? The current situation already seems sufficient. If we're not careful, the enemy might actually figure things out."
"True. But our mission isn't something that can be accomplished in just a day or two. Someday, they'll receive word that our main force has appeared in their rear, and then they'll start asking questions about our troop strength."
"Even so, even if we wage an all-out battle, our entire force is only fourteen thousand. If we charge in with that number alone, the enemy—unless they're fools—will find it strange. They'll wonder why, having already seized victory's momentum, we're attacking with only a little more than ten thousand instead of our full strength."
"Hmm."
As Beskin voiced his concerns after Gowin, low groans escaped the knights' lips unbidden.
"Driving them without rest is all well and good, but we must also reckon with that reality. If neither course is workable, simply holding out may be an option."
"As I said, we must not give them time to rest."
"Daesaja Gowin."
Beskin called to him, his face heavy with worry. But Gowin paid it no mind and gave orders to the knights.
"Have the entire army prepare to sortie at once!"
At the unexpected command, for a moment the knights could not say a word at all. Outside the tents, a red glow of sunset was already spreading.
* * *
The North Roselin camp was sunk in a somber mood.
Before the body of Count Yulian, lying as still as if asleep, Count Bulkan let slip a voice heavy with grief.
"Kugh."
Count Yulian's death in battle.
This fact brought the same result as if Count Bulkan himself had fallen. Because until he himself had been assigned here as a replacement, Yulian had been the defense commander of the Conrad Plains.
He was a former commander, but his death left the rank-and-file with the impression that one of their highest commanders had been killed, dragging morale down even further. On top of that, according to the survivors, the enemy had barely even been scratched. In the end, fifteen thousand troops had been sacrificed fruitlessly.
Count Bulkan even felt resentment toward Count Yulian, lying before him now a cold corpse.
"Then the earlier intelligence reports were true—their forces really are being continuously reinforced..."
With over ten thousand archers, you could roughly infer the size of their main body. Count Bulkan had to set Count Yulian's death aside and focus on restoring morale in the main camp.
"How are the soldiers?"
"Well, that's..."
At Count Bulkan's question, Viscount Clawman's face turned starkly serious, and he could not continue. Among the soldiers, talk was already spreading that a full-scale battle would break out before long, and they were seriously shaken.
Of course, the command staff had been spreading the line that the day's battle had produced something close to mutual destruction, but the truth of the morning's fight was spreading faster.
Fear spreads quickly.
"For now, prepare to reorganize the troops that made it out. Because in a situation where we no longer hold a numerical advantage, it's obvious we'll be at a disadvantage fighting a pitched battle on open plains. Mobilize the men and rapidly fortify the camp perimeter—by tomorrow at the latest, we must have some defenses in place."
Count Bulkan's judgment was sound.
To gain even the slightest edge, the best course was to fortify their current camp further. And as long as they did not respond to enemy provocations and simply held out, it would suffice.
At Count Bulkan's orders, the soldiers started moving busily.
They, too, moved out without complaint about the command staff's decision. No—they actually thought themselves lucky that they only had to hold the enemy off, not march out and fight, and they worked to complete even a little more of the field defenses. With only the minimum sentries left out, the entire army was mobilized for the work, and the labor did not end until past midnight.
After a full day's tension and toil, the sleep they fell into was immeasurably deep.
"Damn it."
A grumbling voice slipped from a soldier who, instead of working, was stuck standing watch all night long without moving an inch.
"Herriot, what's with you?"
Leaning against his spear shaft for support, Schulen threw a half-hearted remark toward the muttering Herriot.
"Did you hear it earlier?"
"Hear what?"
"The music drifting out of the Gauri-alliance camp."
"Tch."
Schulen clicked his tongue at Herriot's words.
While the soldiers here had been racing about under heavy tension, laboring—far away, faintly, the sound of music and singing had been drifting over. Standing sentry and feeling the two extreme contrasts in mood, Herriot was irritated, past annoyance and straight into actual anger. The fundamental question of why he had even had to come to this war only made his discontent swell.
"Mutual destruction, my ass. It's obvious our side got crushed."
"Herriot, watch your mouth!"
As the grumbling grew louder, Schulen glanced around and cautioned him. If those words reached a commander's ears, Herriot could land in serious trouble. At Schulen's remark, Herriot apparently felt he himself had been too loud; even as he kept grumbling, he did not forget to check his surroundings.
Once he confirmed no passing knights or officers were nearby, Herriot leaned close to Schulen's ear and moved his lips, his voice quieter than before.
"If we'd been fighting and dying the same as them, you think they'd be playing music and singing and carrying on? Right?"
"Well, that's... something everybody already knows."
"Damn unfair world."
Herriot stared up at the night sky, thick with darkness, and grumbled.
"Hey, Schulen, you think we're gonna make it back alive?"
Herriot asked Schulen, his voice tinged with anxiety. Say what you will, the most important thing to them was confidence they would survive. But Schulen could give him no answer at all.
Herriot felt his irritation reignite.
"You miserable bastard—I asked you a question, so gimme an answer!"
The moment he whipped his head around in anger, he heard something collapse onto the ground, and Herriot understood then why Schulen had been silent.
"D...damn it."
Still annoyed at his friend to the very last—his friend, who lay there with an arrow lodged between his brows—Herriot slowly toppled forward over him. The back of his neck burned and words wouldn't come out right; an arrow must have pierced through the nape the instant he turned. And over their bodies a few more arrows flew in to trample out any lingering spark of life.
"Fire!"
"Enemy night raid!"
The North Roselin camp erupted in chaos.
Fire arrows, filling the sky with brilliant light, plunged down into the tents where soldiers had been sleeping. The tents caught flame at once and blazed fiercely with men still trapped inside, and the shafts, painted black, made them all the harder for knights to knock aside.
"Form ranks, all of you!"
"Move fast!"
Had the previous day's tension and bone-aching labor become poison?
A considerable number of soldiers never made it out of the tents and slipped into an eternal sleep inside the flames. The ones who did manage to wake were throwing themselves toward the half-finished barricades and whatever cover they could find.
"Kee-hee-hee-hing!"
"Hee-hee-hing!"
"What the—!"
The mournful screaming of horses burst out.
The rain of arrows flying into the corral where the horses rested felled one horse after another as they started up in alarm. In the end, several of them smashed through the fencing. Soldiers could be seen scrambling around, trying to catch the horses bolting through the shattered corral.
"What the hell is going on!"
The horse corral lay squarely in the rear, yet it was under attack. And while that was happening, the ones who had smashed through the front and broken in were some five hundred horsemen.
"I said form a spear wall!"
Crunch!
"Gaaagh!"
Amid a scene of utter hell, a knight who had charged in on horseback split open the chest of a loudly shouting North Roselin officer. Through the gruesomely parted ribcage, his heart could be seen pounding wildly, grotesquely framed by the fountain of blood spraying beside it.
"Use the barricades, I said!"
The barricades they had built began to prove effective. As soldiers started clustering together to respond, the horsemen who had surged in for the surprise attack began to lose their momentum one by one.
"Hiyah!"
"Die!"
A single knight, veering to the side to avoid a barricade, belatedly spotted a spearman bursting out from beside him.
Thunk!
"Khurgh!"
A spear blade punched through the armor at his flank and made his head swim. Enraged North Roselin soldiers rushed the knight and drove their spears in. In an eyeblink, the knight was bristling with spears from head to toe before crumpling powerlessly to the ground, blood pouring from his body.
What had begun as a one-sided fight turned into a close-quarters brawl thanks to the North Roselin soldiers using the terrain to counter, eventually forcing the Hawk Corps to withdraw. Yet even as they pulled back, the Hawk Corps kept throwing torches in every direction before vanishing.
So passed the battle in the dead of night.