Chapter 220
Chapter 220
Iron Emperor — Chapter 220
"Pigs?"
Duke Palsieon tilted his head. The sound was out of place on a battlefield.
"It also sounds like orcs, my lord."
"What orcs would there be on this battlefield?"
Duke Palsieon dismissed his aide's words with a single remark and fixed his gaze on the allied army's formation.
THWANG!
TWANG-TWANG-TWANG-TWANG!
The sounds ringing out in succession were unmistakably similar to the bowstring twang of ballista-class weapons. At the same moment, fifty-odd logs soaring into the air caught Duke Palsieon's eyes.
"Ha!"
A startled voice escaped the aide's lips.
"Don't tell me — from that position!"
He had assumed the siege weapons would be finished assembling and then hauled forward into range. Attacking immediately from where they stood was naturally cause for shock.
Even as he watched the logs flying toward them, the aide could only stare in disbelief. Duke Palsieon, on the other hand, watched the rising logs and realized that his ominous premonition had been correct, then bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"Everyone take cover!"
The instant the order was given, the soldiers who had been staring dazedly began hiding behind the battlements, using the wall as a shield. The fifty-odd logs hurtling into Partean Fortress came at nearly the same moment.
Fwoo-ang!
"Hup."
A massive log skimmed past just above Duke Palsieon's head. As if that were the signal, the vibrations hammering the walls began.
THUD!
Thud!
"Hee-yaak!"
"Aaaagh!"
Was it because the situation was so unexpected?
The soldiers waiting inside the fortress screamed at the sight of logs that had flown from the sky and embedded themselves into the ground.
The logs kept pounding the castle wall.
RUMBLE!
"Aaaargh!"
On the upper section of the wall where the soldiers had taken cover, a log pierced straight through the torso of one unlucky soldier and drove itself into the ground.
"Hurk!"
"Danger!"
One soldier who had jumped up and was flailing about at the sight of his comrade's upper body practically pulverized and impaled right before his eyes lost his footing and plunged down the inner side of the wall, trailing a long scream. Unlike the sound of logs embedding themselves in the earth, a somewhat lighter impact sound reached their ears.
"How in the world can they reach this far!"
Duke Palsieon shouted as though utterly dumbfounded.
CRASH-CRASH!
"The intelligence we've received so far contained no such weapon!"
The aide, apparently worried his voice would not carry over the impacts hammering the wall, shouted loudly with his head still covered.
"Hmm."
Duke Palsieon raised his head and looked forward.
Until moments ago, they had taken cover more out of panic than as a calculated response to the threat.
The very fact that the logs had flown from such a great distance was astonishing, and he had exercised caution on the off chance that something more might be hidden.
"Aide."
THUD-THUD!
"Yes, Your Grace!"
The aide had regained his composure; even amid the relentless pounding against the wall, he raised his head to observe the outside.
"Casualties among the soldiers are minimal."
"Hmm."
In truth, of the fifty-odd logs, only a dozen or so had actually flown inside.
The rest merely embedded themselves in the walls or bounced off.
The soldiers, too, seemed to realize this fact as they began raising their heads one by one to watch the front.
The allied army had not stirred in the slightest.
"What are they trying to accomplish with this?"
Duke Palsieon only grew more puzzled by the enemy's increasingly unfathomable intentions.
"We should advance a little more."
Marquis Baikal spoke as he watched the logs hurtling toward Partean Fortress.
"The walls seem sturdier than expected."
Geolgeol Jungsang voiced his agreement with Marquis Baikal's assessment.
"It can't be helped. Have them advance another twenty-odd paces in stages."
"Understood."
Jungsang, agreeing with Marquis Baikal's judgment, raised the signal flag and shouted to the soldiers busy firing the Yudonno.
"Sequential advance — twenty paces!"
The moment the order was given, a dozen-odd Yudonno from throughout the ranks ceased loading and slowly moved forward. Even in the interim, the Yudonno left behind kept firing logs into the air.
The Yudonno that had advanced forward then loaded logs again and fired, while behind them another dozen-odd Yudonno stopped firing and advanced. Watching the fifty-odd Yudonno move in this sequential fashion and launch their projectiles, Marquis Baikal nodded with a satisfied expression.
"How far have the enemy advanced?"
Baron Nyuron, Duke Palsieon's aide, called up to the soldier stationed atop the watchtower.
Perhaps because the enemy's long-range siege weapons could not reach the elevated watchtower, the soldier surveying the battlefield from above answered calmly.
"They advanced just a little and stopped! About twenty-odd mir or so, it seems!"
"Keep watching them!"
Having heard the exchange between his aide Baron Nyuron and the soldier, Duke Palsieon could not suppress his frustration despite being under attack. Of the logs that continued to fly in, roughly two-thirds merely pounded the walls.
"Check the walls for damage and report back!"
"Yes, Your Grace!"
Baron Nyuron, apparently concerned by the enemy's assault battering the walls, summoned a knight and ordered him to inspect for cracks while he leaned out to examine the fortress's outer wall himself.
"How is it?"
At Duke Palsieon's question, Baron Nyuron pulled himself back inside and reported what he had seen.
"The penetrating power seems formidable, but its destructive force is relatively inferior to a catapult's."
"That is a relief, but..."
Since Partean Fortress was designed to withstand catapult attacks and even magically generated physical force, the pounding impacts posed no danger of bringing down the wall itself.
"Hoo. What is their game..."
Duke Palsieon sighed in frustration as he watched the enemy siege unit, which had advanced only slightly before stopping.
* * *
At the very moment the Yudonno were sending logs flying and orcs were straining with all their might to crank the axles and draw the bowstrings, back at the main camp...
"Haap!"
Gye Ung-sam's longsword scattered a flash of light.
Branches sheared off and tumbled down in droves with his every movement.
"Damn it all, what the hell are we even doing."
"Keung. Still, at least you haven't gone off to chop wood the way General Buru or that brat Giyul did."
"Grrm."
Gye Ung-sam, along with Samdopyo, was encouraging the soldiers and neatly trimming the logs the soldiers had felled nearby.
The logs the Yudonno were firing did not come from nowhere. Moreover, the quantity of logs they had originally prepared for launching had not been very large. In the end, due to the change in the operational plan, Eulji Buru had shouldered his great axe and led the Axemen off to cut timber, while Eulji Uru had gone out to collect the sap of the Yubikal tree, which resembled a pine.
The Yubikal tree shared many of the pine's characteristics, and its sap could be used for fire attacks.
All of a sudden, the majority of the Gauri troops remaining at the main camp found themselves dispatched on resource extraction(?), and the remaining South Roselin forces were left to concentrate on defending the main camp.
"Damn it, all the trees in this region are going to go extinct."
"That they are. Heh-heh-heh."
At Ung-sam's grumbling, Dupyo, inexplicably delighted, let out a chuckle.
"Kyaung."
"Oho, our kitty."
With its owner just sitting there trimming branches, the bored saber-tooth tiger came up to Dupyo and nuzzled against him with its enormous body, putting on a display of affection.
Anyone seeing it would have been horrified, but perhaps because it was an everyday sight by now, the soldiers were no longer particularly surprised. Yet Dupyo continued to provide them with endless entertainment.
"Shht — fetch!"
WHOOSH!
A chunk of wood as thick as an average woman's waist left Dupyo's hand and sailed through the sky.
"Is that thing a dog or what?"
Ung-sam frowned and grumbled at the absurd spectacle, but the kitty's reaction was immediate.
"Kyaong!"
"..."
Wagging its tail and bounding in great leaps as it dashed away, it looked exactly like a gigantic dog.
"Heh-heh-heh-heh!"
Amid the dumbfounded looks of Ung-sam and the soldiers, Dupyo's triumphant laughter and the blissful cries of the delighted kitty mingled together.
Chapter 69: Silver-haired Demon
THUD-THUD-THUD!
Several dozen mounted riders tore across the valley, kicking up clouds of dust.
"Company, halt!"
Neeeigh!
The knight riding at the very forefront had apparently spotted something; he seized the reins of his galloping horse and raised one hand.
Among the horsemen who had also come to a stop behind him, one man approached, frowned, and spoke as though the situation were troublesome.
"Baronet Haupeu, this will require the main force to arrive before it can be cleared."
"Hmm. It can't be helped. You, report this to the main force. The rest of you, reconnoiter this area broadly. Stay alert, on the off chance the enemy has laid an ambush."
"Understood."
The knight who had received Baronet Haupeu's orders led a dozen riders back the way they had come. Of the remaining fifty-odd horsemen, the soldiers dismounted and, weapons in hand, cautiously inspected the surroundings.
What blocked their path were masses of boulders and shattered, fallen trees. The terrain was too rugged to go around, and clearing it was beyond the capability of a reconnaissance unit.
"Did they tumble down from up there..."
Baronet Haupeu stared in the direction from which the boulders seemed to have rolled, then turned his gaze toward the direction they needed to go.
The thought that Partean Fortress might already be under assault made him impatient, but for now, there was no choice but to clear the obstacles in front of them.
* * *
"Huk! Huk! Huk!"
THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
With every short, sharp breath, the shovels bit into the earth.
True to their reputation as the Earth Tribe, the dwarves' skill with a shovel was on full display.
"Bring them over, quickly."
A dwarf who had finished digging a pit gestured, and the laborers brought over sharpened wooden stakes and drove them into the trap.
"Now we really are doing all sorts of things..."
It had been a long time since they had settled in Gauri.
Training, then work, then labor...
They had done this and that, but digging bare earth was a first. Even when they did labor, it had always been work suited to their expertise; they had never before dug into bare ground that yielded no ore.
"Move faster."
"Heuk."
Yeon Hwi-garam passed beside the grumbling dwarf soldier and delivered a warning.
'Without any presence...'
Yeon Hwi-garam was the quietest of Gauri's commanders, but for some reason the dwarves found him intimidating.
CLANG!
A crisp metallic ring reached their ears.
In an instant, the shoveling of the five hundred dwarves came to a halt as though they had all agreed upon it.
"Ooh!"
"For such high-purity adamantium to exist in a place like this!"
It was the cry of the dwarf who had been digging the ground from which the clear metallic ring had sounded, as he threw himself into the pit.
"Where!"
"Is it true!"
Five hundred dwarves charged over as if possessed.
It was raw ore containing adamantium that had gone undiscovered because the area held no mineral veins. The dwarves swarmed over it, and under their frantic shoveling the massive buried meteorite quickly emerged.
"..."
Yeon Hwi-garam, watching their behavior, was left speechless.
No matter how much they trained them, this was one aspect of dwarven nature that could not be changed.
At fortification sites, if traces of a mineral vein appeared, they would try to tear down walls they had already built — that went without saying. There was even a famous anecdote about dwarves who had run off during training and failed to return, who were later found deep in the mountains. Of course, thanks to that, they had discovered and developed a new iron mine.
Fwoosh.
A flame born from the paper in Hwi-garam's hand began to beat its wings like a living bird.
Gradually rising, the firebird reached above the dwarves' heads and began to swell in size.
"Heuk!"
The dwarves came to their senses under the searing heat.
"Th-this, at least this!"
The dwarves desperately wrapped themselves around the meteorite before the flames, as though ready to defend it to the death. Hwi-garam's warning rang out at them.
"If the work is not finished within one gak, I shall melt this meteorite down."
As if to give proof to Hwi-garam's words, the burning bird radiated heat as fierce as the sun. And then, as though nothing had happened, the dwarves scattered like a swarm of spiders and threw every last ounce of strength into their shoveling.
Hot as Hwi-garam's flames might be, they could not actually melt an adamantium-bearing meteorite. But Hwi-garam had clearly given them a single gak of time. That could be interpreted to mean that if they accomplished the task quickly, they would be granted possession of the meteorite.
"...Half a gak might do it."
A laborer who had been watching from one side muttered.
Hwi-garam knew exactly how to handle dwarves.