Chapter 283
Chapter 283
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 283
"Protect the supplies!"
"No!"
Despite the soldiers' desperate struggles to defend the provisions, flames shot up in several places. The raiders, who had seemed so fierce at the first charge, were now being swarmed by dozens of soldiers each and hacked apart one by one.
The soldiers were no fools—they had already figured out that these raiders were the cause of everyone's stomach trouble.
"Don't let the enemy escape!"
"After them!"
For the Holy Empire soldiers, who had already thrown away their shame, the raids had essentially lost all effectiveness.
As the surviving raiders fled like a receding tide, the enraged soldiers began pursuing them without waiting for anyone to give the order.
But excitement was a dangerous thing. The knights, worried about a possible ambush, began calming the soldiers down.
And so, from the Holy Empire army's perspective, a thoroughly filthy and underhanded night was passing.
Chapter 93 — The Beginning of the Raid
By the time the aftermath of the midnight raid was being wrapped up, dawn had already begun to break.
The raiders' corpses were being piled up on one side, while the bodies of their own soldiers who had died in the attack were being stacked on the other.
"Huh... what a turn of events."
Even Public Marquis could not hide his bafflement as he watched the scene unfold.
"Two hundred and eighty dead, three hundred fifteen wounded, and roughly thirty thousand soldiers laid low by stomach sickness. The rest of the men fortunately have only mild diarrhea... In addition, the enemy persistently set fires, burning a quarter of the soldiers' barracks, and we have suffered losses to some of our supplies as well."
The dead and wounded were few enough to be negligible. But thirty thousand men incapacitated by exhaustion, with no way to know when the enemy might strike next—that was unquestionably a problem.
"What of the enemy?"
"The enemy raiders are estimated at about three hundred. It appears we killed half of them. However, we were only able to capture a single prisoner."
"Huh..."
Public Marquis let out a sigh of disbelief.
A moment later, one of the raiders—relatively intact—was hauled before him, limbs bound, and forced to his knees.
"Is this one the sole survivor?"
"Well... the soldiers were in a frenzy, so... my apologies."
They had killed nearly a hundred and fifty raiders and taken only a single prisoner. The knight could only hang his head.
But even Public Marquis found it difficult to lay blame. Who would be inclined to leave the wretches who had exposed their shame alive and well?
"Still, you managed to take one. Well done. How was he captured?"
The marquis glanced at the captive, who was rolling his eyes in every direction, trembling in terror. The knight who had personally seized him cast a contemptuous look at the prisoner and spoke.
"Yes. While moving the bodies, we found him playing dead under his comrades' corpses, using them as blankets. That is how we took him."
"Hmm."
An uneasy murmur passed among the surrounding nobles.
Cowards, whether friend or foe, are objects of contempt. A man who had used his own comrades' bodies as shields to feign death—there was no way he would be looked upon favorably.
But Public Marquis wore a faint smile as he wrapped an arm around the prisoner's shoulder—the man trembling like an aspen leaf.
"In some ways, surviving as you have is itself a blessing of the Lord God."
"P-please spare my life!"
Sensing a path to survival in Public Marquis's show of benevolence, the prisoner desperately struck his head against the ground, begging for his life.
The nobles scowled at the display and were about to step forward, but the marquis's gesture of placing his hand on the captive's shoulder stopped them all in their tracks.
"I have only a few questions. Will you answer truthfully? I swear in the name of the Lord God, I shall grant you eternal life."
"I will tell you everything!"
Every army has its traitors and cowards.
As the prisoner frantically blurted out answers to things the marquis had not even asked, the nobles could not smooth their hardened expressions.
But it was the information coming from the captive's mouth that left them unable to suppress their chagrin.
The operation had struck precisely at the Holy Empire's blind spots.
The weaknesses the Holy Empire had exposed in this operation were, first, the arrogance born of commanding a vast force of a hundred fifty thousand, and second, the complacency instilled by the presence of a flowing river.
The first vulnerability created by the massive army of a hundred fifty thousand was that it made their scouts and sentries focus solely on the threat of ambush.
Attacking a force of a hundred fifty thousand requires troops on a certain scale. They had never imagined that a raid could be carried out with less than five hundred men.
The second was the flowing river...
A well that can be collapsed—even if you poison it, the effect persists. But a river whose water flows continuously? How much effect can you really achieve by releasing poison into it?
And yet, the Haian Kingdom army had exploited the gap created by those first and second factors.
They had hidden a small—an extremely small—number of troops near the river and along its banks, too few to catch a scout's eye.
Then, while the Holy Empire forces were swaggering about like fish in water, they had gathered poisons, medicinal herbs, and plant roots and kept releasing them into the current—not with lethal intent, but with the sole purpose of causing stomach sickness.
However much a river flows, if you target the very moment soldiers are drawing water for their meals and disperse the contaminants, you can foul it sufficiently.
So long as killing was not the objective, it was entirely possible.
"Ha... so that's how it was."
Public Marquis stared in disbelief, and the nobles around him likewise shook their heads at cunning beyond anything they had imagined. In the end, they had fallen for that shallow trick, their defenses had momentarily slackened, and—though only in small part—critical supplies had gone up in flames.
On top of that, a considerable number of the soldiers' barracks had burned down.
Of course, many soldiers had already been outside suffering from stomach trouble, so there were mercifully few who burned to death. But until fresh supplies arrived, a large portion of the troops would be forced to sleep under the open dew.
"Still, it is a relief. Had it been a full-scale assault, the damage would have been far greater."
"Ha... but if they had attempted that, the entire plan would inevitably have been discovered in advance."
"Well, that is also true."
After exchanging opinions with his staff officers on several points, Public Marquis turned his head to look at the prisoner, who still clung to a sliver of hope.
"Whatever the case, I thank you for speaking honestly."
"Oh, no, not at all."
At Public Marquis's kindly tone, the prisoner once again relaxed and bowed his head. Public Marquis patted the man's shoulder, then summoned a nearby knight and transferred custody of the captive, saying:
"As I promised, I shall bestow eternal life upon this soldier... Now, go and prepare the purification ritual for the heathens."
"Understood."
"Th-thank you."
At Public Marquis's words, the knight's face turned rigid, while the captive broke into a bright smile.
The reason the knight's face stiffened, in contrast to the prisoner's grin, was that he knew the horrors of the purification ritual overseen by Public Marquis.
The purification ritual that drains every last drop of a heathen's blood—the preposterous rite that claims a divine blessing will then cause newly sanctified blood to flow through the veins. He could only feel pity for the prisoner, who knew nothing of it.
As the prisoner was led away, one of the staff officers tilted his head.
"Still, I cannot help but think last night's raid used too few troops. If they had targeted only the supplies, I would understand, but burning the soldiers' barracks... Surely they must have realized the casualties among the troops would be low."
"There is that. And the fact that all the dead soldiers were from the Haian Kingdom army is also something I cannot fathom."
"Indeed, that is true."
Questions piled upon questions, yet no satisfying answers emerged.
The prolonged absence of any Roselin army sightings was a source of unease as well. If battle broke out while the soldiers' stomach ailments were still not fully recovered, they could easily suffer unexpectedly heavy losses.
"For now, mobilize our magical power to the fullest extent and prioritize treating the incapacitated soldiers. Have the general healers and Wizards work in concert to restore the troops suffering from stomach sickness to normal. Now that the Haian Kingdom forces have appeared, they may have already joined their armies and be advancing to strike us as we speak."
"Understood."
Once Public Marquis issued his judgment, the staff officers began moving in earnest. It was an urgent matter.
"Still, something I cannot understand..."
Public Marquis could not shake the feeling that the war was sinking ever deeper into a quagmire.
* * *
Go Jin-cheon's reaction to the news of the Haian Kingdom's first victory, delivered via Communication Magic, was brief.
"We ought to call it the Great Battle of Diarrhea."
"..."
At Jin-cheon's sudden pronouncement, the generals closed their mouths.
"Now, I've heard of the Battle of Salsu, but..."
Only Eulji Uru managed to force an awkward laugh and continue the conversation.
"In any case, Marquess Gaun of the Haian Kingdom has shown clever resourcefulness."
"That he has. And in a way, this has made the enemy even more wary."
Uru chimed in to back Yeon Hwi-garam's words.
Though the operation had not inflicted significant direct damage on the enemy, it had produced a major shift in the complexion of this war.
First, the Holy Empire forces would now find themselves forced to exercise caution even when using the river water.
Second, the Haian Kingdom army's appearance would ratchet their state of alert even higher than before. That, in turn, would inevitably make their advance more hesitant.
Third—and most critically—the soldiers' morale would steadily decline. Sleeping rough was bearable for a day or two, but troops prosecuting a war who were repeatedly exposed to the night dew would certainly develop ailments. Once that happened, their morale could only sink lower and lower.
And had not Roselin itself already destroyed whatever spaces they might have used for shelter?
"Now the critical point will be cutting off their supply lines."
"If it's Marquis Baikal, he'll be more than capable. Once their regular supply schedule is disrupted, the enemy field commanders will naturally resort to reckless gambles. Wasn't that the case with Su and Tang?"
Jin-cheon spoke in a low voice and swept his gaze across the gathered commanders.
Having all endured a long history of struggle, they understood precisely what Jin-cheon meant. As the determination to succeed etched itself onto the generals' faces, Hwi-garam added a remark.
"And Su and Tang, for their part, had already known of our Gauri's strength and prepared accordingly."
"That they had. Those Holy Empire bastards, by comparison, have been riding one victory after another, and even just looking at this war, the gaps in their planning are plain to see."
"Correct. And that is exactly why their supplies are bound to fall short. Winning this war is not the important thing—how we win is what matters. This war will not be the end, that much is certain. But we must achieve victory without losses, so that they will think twice before provoking us again. After that, the other empires will restrain any second provocation by the Holy Empire, if only to maintain the balance of power."
"We shall engrave it upon our hearts!"
Uru answered Hwi-garam's words, and at the same time, Jin-cheon's long explanation continued.