Chapter 225
Chapter 225
Iron Emperor — Chapter 225
"The range is too short!"
"Damn it, push them forward!"
The soldiers firing the Yudonno were just as desperate.
Firing a log with a net trailing behind it was no simple task. One Yudonno had already been wrenched more than ten mir into the air when its own net snagged the log it had just launched, then crashed to the ground in a shattered wreck. Worse, several sprinting soldiers were caught by rising nets as they swept past, snapping their necks.
"All Yudonno advance!"
"Uwaaaah!"
The Yudonno crews, who had fought longer than anyone else in this war, roared their reply. They never hesitated to proclaim that siege engines were the crown jewel of siege warfare.
The infantry cleared a path for the Yudonno surging forward.
"Everyone, take cover!"
Before someone's warning even finished, an explosion roared directly ahead.
CRASH-CRASH!
Chunks of rock hammered into the ground and bounced up, rolling relentlessly forward until every last bit of momentum was spent.
"Break to the flank!"
"Get clear, you idiots!"
The Yudonno veered sideways and barely dodged the tumbling boulder, but one unlucky infantryman behind it tripped and was sucked under the stone.
"Set up the Yudonno here! Now!"
The Yudonno crews, now within the enemy siege weapons' indirect-fire range, moved with even greater urgency. This was where they truly had to risk their lives.
"Trust our men and keep going!"
"Waaaaah!"
The ranks, which had faltered for a moment, found their strength again. Even though they were now within reach of the catapults mounted on Partean's walls, the soldiers ran like men possessed.
"Shields—to the sky!"
"Uwaaaah!"
THUD-THUD-THUD! THUMP!
Arrows began raining down as well.
The soldiers each raised their shields overhead as they ran, but they couldn't block everything, and one by one they tumbled, shafts buried in their bodies.
Still, the allied soldiers kept running.
They charged on without pause, like fanatics. And then, into their ears, an allied war cry erupted.
"All Yudonno—fire together!"
* * *
The first wave of net-tethered logs had nearly all fallen short, smashing into the base of the wall or barely clearing the moat before planting themselves. Even the ones lodged at the foot of the wall had done little more than bury their heads at an angle, burdened as they were by the trailing nets.
"So far, we've been fortunate!"
"The enemy has stopped firing the nets!"
The knights' reports and the shouts from the watchtower lookouts reached Duke Palsieon's ears almost at the same instant.
"Enemy siege engines are beginning their advance!"
"Enemy infantry are about to enter the catapults' range!"
"Our catapults—ignore the infantry and hurl stones at the enemy siege engines!"
Duke Palsieon rapidly sorted through the breathless chaos and issued his orders. If the enemy siege weapons got close enough to fire effectively, the situation would turn dire. Both sides knew it, and both were fighting with everything they had.
Rocks flew...
and arrows rose into the air.
"The enemy keeps coming!"
"Don't stop—keep firing!"
The archers loosed without pause.
Watching the allied soldiers charge like moths to a flame, Duke Palsieon trembled with fury. Normally an assault advanced through the middle ground while both sides traded arrows to protect their own troops. But this was almost a mad dash straight at the walls.
"What in the world are they counting on?!"
Duke Palsieon's shout burst from his lips at the very moment that nets draped down over the heads of the archers shooting from the wall.
"Aagh!"
A single scream sparked dozens, then hundreds, spreading like wildfire. The nets attached to the logs flying inward swept across the archers on the wall, tangling them as the whole mess tumbled down.
The vast majority of the logs had landed as though they were aimed, draping their nets directly over the parapet. Naturally, plenty of logs also sailed completely over the wall and crashed inside. The wall-top dissolved into panic in an instant.
"How can this be..."
The panic seized not only the soldiers but their commanders as well.
Archers and knights caught in the nets like fish, dragged over the wall and dropped into the interior...
And that was not all.
As Duke Palsieon and his soldiers had feared, the nets hanging down the outer face of the wall were about to become ideal footholds for the Gauri and South Roselin troops racing toward them.
"So this is what was hidden behind their refusal to engage—doing nothing but running at us."
Duke Palsieon heaved a bitter sigh.
In truth, even if they had known in advance, they would have had no good answer. You couldn't simply refuse to position archers to defend the walls just because it was dangerous.
"Cutting the nets is useless!"
"They're tangled on other logs—they won't come free!"
"Kh..."
This was the hidden purpose behind the strange ballistae the allied forces had been firing day after day up until now. When the logs were studded into the wall like hedgehog spines and you draped nets across them, they formed a ready-made climbing ramp.
You couldn't shove them aside like a ladder, and you couldn't smash them apart like a siege tower.
"Forget everything else—cut the nets and rescue our men!"
Duke Palsieon's bitter, frustrated voice carried over the soldiers. Every commander eventually faced a moment when he had to choose the next-best option rather than the best one.
* * *
"Now—run with everything you've got!"
The incoming arrows had noticeably thinned. The moment the Gauri and South Roselin troops saw the nets stretching from the top of the wall all the way down to its base, their strides quickened like never before.
How could they not?
The allied soldiers who had been racing toward this exact moment drove their loaded carts straight into the moat along with the earth they carried.
Several crossings appeared across the deep-looking moat in moments. Some soldiers began crossing before the earth was even fully packed in, because the low-hanging nets were already serving as makeshift bridges.
"We have to climb up before the enemy frees themselves from the nets!"
"Uwaaaaah!"
The soldiers dashed madly forward, grabbing the nets and clambering upward—even without their officers' shouted urgings, they scrambled up like hatchling spiders swarming a web.
FWIP!
"Guaaak!"
"Aagh!"
Not that the enemy offered no resistance.
Boiling oil poured down, burning through soldiers' skin and sapping their strength until they lost their grip. Some slipped, only to be saved when their legs caught in the nets.
"It's a success!"
Watching the soldiers climb the walls, King Alsein, standing beside Marquis Baikal, could not restrain his elation.
"But..."
Looking around for Go Jin-cheon, hoping to share the joy of the moment, King Alsein found him nowhere in sight. Puzzled, he sought out one of the Gauri commanders.
"That's strange."
No one was there.
When none of the Gauri generals were there to share the historic moment, Alsein and Marquis Baikal began to look bewildered.
Where in the world had they gone?
Just then, a familiar voice reached them.
"Next time I gotta grab somethin' that ain't a bow..."
Eulji Uru came riding up, chattering away as if something was bothering him.
"General Uru."
"Looks like the fight's goin' right nicely."
Uru approached King Alsein and offered an expression of satisfaction at how the battle was unfolding. But a moment later, the question that followed made his face contort.
"Where might His Majesty be...?"
"...."
Uru slowly turned his head and fixed his gaze on Partean Fortress, his expression full of regret. King Alsein, who had initially been baffled at Uru's action, eventually let out a short laugh and tossed out a remark.
"Haha... surely His Majesty did not—"
Kwaaaaang!
The roar of a saber-tooth tiger from the front cut Alsein off mid-sentence. He turned his head.
"Huh?"
Samdopyo and Nyang-i, leading the assault squad, were all but flying up the nets, and slightly above them a man in a red cloak emblazoned with the three-legged crow stood out more than anyone as he climbed.
"No way..."
The figure was exactly the same as someone he knew.
And as far as he knew, there was only one man who wore black armor with five horns. And the familiar shapes already on the wall around him...
"Why in the world are all of them..."
A short man with a Daebu as large as his torso climbed with his stubby arms and legs; another man scaled the net while swinging a distinctive long sword. A long spear flashed brilliantly, and twin axes moved with effortless freedom—the commanders of Gauri....
"Your Majesty!"
Alsein shouted in disbelief toward Go Jin-cheon and his commanders as they climbed the nets alongside the common soldiers.