Chapter 291
Chapter 291
Iron Emperor — Chapter 291
Just then, the long, unbroken blare of horn calls sounded from the Holy Empire camp.
Bwoooooo~!
"Quick march!"
The order rang out loud and sharp.
"All forces, quick march!"
"Uwaaaaah!"
The command was echoed down the line by the frontline knights, and with a roar of acknowledgment the soldiers began racing up the slope.
"Aaargh!"
But magic was not all-powerful.
Over the heads of the soldiers charging at speed, boulders that had bounced off the Shield came crashing down this way and that. Blocked once by the Shield, their force was weakened — but even so, they were terror enough for the men.
Crunch!
"Huk!"
When one soldier failed to notice a falling rock in time and his head burst open, the man beside him collapsed in shock.
Unfortunately for that soldier, there was a knight right beside him.
The instant he dropped to the ground, the knight's sword slashed across the nape of his neck.
Shhk!
Thud. Roll, roll, roll.
His face utterly expressionless, the knight who had just beheaded the collapsed soldier bellowed.
"Do not break formation! Anyone who breaks ranks will be executed on the spot!"
Whether the knight's words had their effect or not, the Holy Empire soldiers kept racing up the slope — even if comrades were dying right beside them, even if wounded men were being trampled underfoot.
* * *
Gazing down at the Holy Empire army closing in fast while taking only minimal casualties, Geomheul and Count Trenis both furrowed their brows.
Because it was only a small fortress, they had virtually no magical power to call upon beyond the wizards assigned to its defense.
In truth, even a larger fortress would have been short on magical power.
"It would be best to roll it out now, I think."
At Geomheul's words, Count Trenis hesitated for a moment.
"If the enemy wizards weren't airborne as they are now, the effect might be even less. Holding back now won't change the fact that we cannot hold this fortress anyway."
"Hoo."
Count Trenis, seemingly persuaded by Geomheul, summoned his adjutant. Then he shouted again to the soldiers launching the catapults.
"I don't care if they break — fire faster!"
"Yes, sir!"
Sweat was already streaming down the backs of the soldiers hauling on the catapult ropes, running along their spines like rivulets.
Crack!
"No!"
"Look out!"
The sound of something snapping inside the fortress erupted, and with it a burst of alarmed shouts from every direction.
Boom! Crunch!
"Keurgh!"
One catapult, unable to bear the strain, broke apart and hurled its stone into the fortress instead of outside the walls. Absurdly, the first casualties were inflicted by their own side.
But this was no time to mourn each mishap.
"Who told the catapults to stop! I said keep firing!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
The catapult crews, momentarily seized by panic, began moving again. A few stole glances at the gruesomely dead bodies of their comrades, tears and snot streaming down their faces. And yet they kept moving.
"Ready!"
What had those sacrifices been for?
Count Trenis's adjutant came sprinting up, looking expectantly at him.
"Haul them up onto the wall!"
"Move fast!"
Ropes were lowered from the top of the wall, and below, men scrambled into motion. As if racing one another, they began hauling up the bound objects. They were enormous balls of straw, each easily two mir in diameter.
"Soak them in oil!"
Soaking them beforehand would have made them too heavy to haul up, so the oil had been stockpiled separately up on the wall.
The soldiers dumped rendered animal fat over the straw balls.
"Torches!"
Fwoosh!
The soldiers stared down with blazing eyes at the Holy Empire troops crawling up like ants.
"Light them and push them over!"
"Uwaaah!"
The moment Geomheul's order fell, the soldiers shoved the blazing balls over the edge, heedless of the heat. And with their shouts, the balls of fire plunged down from the wall.
* * *
Boom! Crash!
Dismay spread across the faces of the wizards who had been fending off the ferocious rain of boulders.
"Oh, hell!"
The fiery masses that had dropped below the wall were now rolling swiftly down the slope. And they were not mere balls of fire — the long trails of flame spreading behind them made it clear they had been drenched in oil.
"Damn it..."
The wizards could only grimace.
With their magic inherently limited, they had no choice but to join the siege in rotations. In a situation like this, they were helpless.
Yet if they dropped the Shield, the falling boulders would immediately threaten the wizards themselves even more. In the end, they could only stand there and watch it happen.
Fwoosh!
"D-dodge! Get out of the way!"
The fireballs came hurtling down so ferociously that even the knights who had been urging the men to hold their ground were scrambling to escape.
But the Massed Battle Array's lack of agility kept the soldiers from scattering quickly, and more and more were swallowed by the flames. The formation itself had become a liability.
Soaked in oil, the fireballs set everything they so much as grazed ablaze. By now, the frontline commanders had no choice but to make a drastic decision.
"Charge! Forward!"
"Uwaaaah!"
A charge order issued barely halfway up the slope. Fleeing was impossible anyway, with their own comrades pressing in from behind.
Drunk on blood and drunk on death screams, the Holy Empire soldiers were no longer in their right minds. The stench of burning flesh and the reek of blood no longer reached their nostrils. Sight, pain, and touch had all gone numb.
"Huff, huff, huff!"
The hearts of the soldiers sprinting up the slope were pounding like mad. But another gift of death came showering down upon them.
A rain of arrows.
A pitch-black rain of arrows began driving into the charging Holy Empire soldiers from head to toe. The men carrying tower shields had become scattered among the ranks in the chaos of the charge order.
The formation had fallen completely out of control.
The human dregs who stabbed a comrade in the back to steal his tower shield and save their own skin.
The selfish bastards who kicked their own allies out of a shield's shadow to keep it for themselves.
The battlefield fools who, unable to decide what to do, clung three or four to a single shield only made themselves targets and ended up like pincushions.
Countless examples of human nature appeared in an instant.
Even so, troops who ran like madmen to reach the wall began to gather in ones and twos, then more and more.
But war is not a footrace. The ladder carriers and grappling-hook troops needed to scale the wall had not yet arrived from the rear.
"Smash the gate!"
Rounding the barbican to break through the gate, the Holy Empire soldiers were forced to learn with their own bodies just how formidable this strange fortress design truly was.
The moment they turned into the barbican, rocks and arrows poured down from three sides, cutting them down in droves.
Yet they pushed forward in a stubborn mass. Retreating offered no better chance of survival — no, they would surely die on their own comrades' blades.
"Aagh!"
"Break the gate, I said!"
"Get on it!"
"Shieldbearers!"
As if competing to see whose voice was loudest, they shouted chaotic orders at one another, piling their own bodies onto the already fallen corpses.
"Rally here!"
But crisis breeds heroes.
One shieldbearer who remembered his training risked his life to hoist a tower shield high overhead.
In panic, three or four soldiers gathered beneath each shield and raised their tower shields to cover above and both sides, clustering together.
Packed tight like a tortoise in an instant, they trudged forward unflinchingly even through the cascading boulders and arrow-storm. Desperate soldiers without shields swarmed around them.
"You sons of bitches! Once we break through this gate, I'll slaughter every last one of you!"
Spewing curses in a voice thick with madness, they began hammering at the stout gate with their weapons. No one cared anymore about the corpses of comrades being trampled underfoot.
"Uwaaagh!"
Thud.
A Roselin soldier, an arrow buried in his chest, toppled from the top of the wall. Not yet dead, he desperately tried to crawl away. Would they leave him be?
"Kill him!"
"Die!"
Dozens of weapons instantly rained down onto the body of a soldier who would have died if left alone anyway. Beginning with this man, Roselin soldiers started falling from the wall one by one. The Holy Empire army had begun its own arrow assault.
"Good! We just have to break the gate!"
Heartened by the thought that their own archers were providing cover, the Imperial troops hammered at the gate as though they had found a path to survival. But the defending Roselin soldiers were not idle either.
Swoosh.
"Wh-what the—!"
Fodder hay — the kind you'd feed to horses — came showering down. The soldiers realized at once what it meant.
"F-fall back! Fall back!"
Before the eyes of the soldier shouting the warning, a torch dropped as if mocking them — and then oil rained down like a storm.
Fwoosh!
"Kyaaagh!"
"Aagh, just kill me!"
Acrid smoke billowed up as soldiers engulfed in flames from head to toe burst out of the barbican and tumbled down the slope. But the fire did not go out — not until the very moment it stole their lives, like the hellfire it was.
* * *
Those who had created the hell below the wall were hardly at ease themselves. Their own hell was unfolding.
"Bring more oil!"
"It's coming now!"
"You goddamn idiots, you have to prepare in advance! You want to save oil and get killed by those Holy Empire mad dogs?!"
The battle was not yet long underway, but already a mountain of corpses as tall as a man had piled up at the foot of the wall.
Now that arrows had begun flying back at them, the top of the wall was no longer safe. A few unlucky soldiers were dragged off the wall, snagged by grappling hooks meant to catch the parapet.
"Don't let the ladders touch the wall!"
"Get the hooks and scythes!"
Using hooks, they shoved the ladders away; with scythes fixed to long poles, they harvested the heads of men clinging to the ramparts.
"Hold! The enemy is taking heavy losses! Hold just a little longer and they'll pull back!"
Geomheul, veins bulging in his neck, urged the soldiers on. The more he did, the more they squeezed out every last drop of strength, thrusting spears and loosing arrows one more time.
"M-madmen!"
Geomheul heard Count Trenis's faltering voice and reflexively turned his head.
"Madmen..."
The same curse escaped Geomheul's own lips.
Reflected in both men's eyes were dozens more wizards rising into the sky — and tens of thousands more troops marching onto the battlefield.