Chapter 312
Chapter 312
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 312
Having led the scouts here, Hudson Hawk—a former hunter—was able to observe the Holy Empire's forces from a concealed position.
'I have to get word back fast.'
Hawk turned and looked back at the scouts he had brought with him. Every face was bloodless with dread. As they had run here breathlessly, they were probably praying that the ones who had raided the goblin village were just some monster-hunting band.
But Hawk, a former hunter himself, knew all too well that their hopes were futile. The only by-product from hunting goblins was leather, and even that sold cheaply, so why would anyone tear an entire village apart just to hunt them?
And even that leather usually sold for next to nothing relative to the effort it took.
'We’re going back.'
When Hawk gave the hand signal, the soldiers nodded, their faces grim. Every single one of them must have been thinking the same thing: they had to get this news back to the fortress as fast as possible.
Though they were at a distance, the scouts still moved carefully as they turned to leave. At that moment, a scream rang out from far away. It immediately conjured the image of someone shouting at the top of their lungs, as if they were deliberately trying to be heard.
'They’ve been caught.'
There had been three scouting parties total when they set out.
That scream was probably from scouts who had been caught by the Holy Empire's skirmishers and were shouting for the sake of the other two groups.
Telling them to run.
Telling them to deliver this news in their place.
It came across as a blood-soaked shriek.
The scouts, Hawk among them, grew grim as they took the scream as their comrades’ dying wish. Then they began slipping away even faster. But the world would not let them go so easily.
'A twitch.'
Something felt wrong.
Hawk sensed it instinctively. Hunters developed senses keen enough to notice even insects and birdsong in the forest. How much sharper, then, would the senses of a hunter who fought monsters be?
As Hawk grew anxious, a shout came from behind him.
"Enemy scout movement detected in this vicinity! Find them!"
It was the enemy's detection magic.
Their steps quickened on instinct, and behind them they felt the footsteps of hundreds—no, more than that. It was as if the enemy knew exactly where they had been hiding and was chasing them down.
'Huff, huff!'
Hearing the pursuing footsteps behind him, Hawk gauged the situation and gritted his teeth. No matter how urgent it was, they had had to avoid revealing their position to the enemy, which naturally meant their own speed had been slower. The enemy had no such need.
"Hank! Billod!"
Hawk's lips parted.
He broke the scouting party's iron rule of silence to call two names. The two soldiers whose names he had called turned their heads, their eyes wavering. Those two were the fastest men in Hawk's scouting party.
"I'm counting on you. And..."
As he ran, Hawk gave the order.
That he was counting on them.
Then he spoke to the other scouts running around him as well.
Telling them he was sorry.
Saying they would make their last stand here together.
"Scatter!"
The moment Hawk's final order fell, the scouts dispersed in all directions.
Making a racket as if to announce, Here I am, come and get me...
"Do not let a single one escape!"
With desperate voices, they urged the soldiers on.
Wizards soared into the sky, and knights galloped down every path a horse could take. They even stripped off the armor they had not removed even to sleep—keeping it on in case of monster attacks—and charged into the forest.
"Damn it. Those rats."
"Could the Gauri bastards have had a forward base all the way out here?"
As the Holy Empire soldiers launched their pursuit, a knight approached Earl Pelloman, who was watching, and asked with a worried expression.
"If there had been a forward base, our own reconnaissance troops would have known about it. Those men are most likely a long-range patrol."
"If, by some chance, they came because they caught wind of our unit..."
"..."
Earl Pelloman's brow furrowed.
What had the soldiers of the Great Holy Empire crossed these treacherous paths for?
The notion they had done it merely out of fear of Gauri was preposterous.
If the Holy Empire had cowered just because it lost one war, it would not have remained the continent’s strongest power for so long. So why had they come this far after sacrificing nearly twenty thousand soldiers?
This war was, quite simply, a race against time.
Gauri, the heart of the Four-Nation Alliance.
Setting aside the visible results—Gauri, which had united kingdoms that for centuries had done nothing but watch the empires' every move.
Even putting aside Roselin, which had been a candle in the wind, Gauri had changed the Haian Kingdom—which had been little more than a battleground for the empires—and had even made the Malin Kingdom, which had always poured all its national strength into fending off the Federal Empire's blade, come forth despite the risks.
Gauri had always stood at the center of the wars up to this point. Naturally, that meant Gauri possessed military strength to match. But if the Empire truly exerted itself, there was no reason it could not take Gauri on. It had more than enough power to do so.
The problem was the other two empires keeping them in check.
That was why they had crossed over in secret. To avoid the eyes of any possible spies, they had even concluded a secret pact with the Maritime Empire and taken the long sea route. Even the Holy Empire found the pressure exerted by the other two empires burdensome.
If only Gauri could be broken, the other kingdoms were only a matter of time.
That was why they had come, accepting the nuisance and the loss of manpower. Yet if they were discovered with the operation's success right before their eyes, even if it did not completely waste all their efforts so far, it would become a tremendous complication.
"We absolutely must not let them escape."
Earl Pelloman murmured the words like a vow.
* * *
"Is that true?"
Even Yeon Hwi-garam, who rarely showed agitation, was different this time. In an instant, the air inside the conference room grew stifling, as if it were being drained away. The wizard who had brought the news was so crushed by the storm-like pressure emanating from Hwi-garam that he could barely open his mouth.
"Hwi."
Go Jin-cheon spoke briefly, his voice heavy.
"My apologies. I lost my composure."
At Jin-cheon's single word, the oppressive energy that had filled the conference room instantly subsided back to stillness. King Alsein, who was present, and the others felt a renewed shiver at the force Hwi-garam had just displayed.
'Even I would’ve struggled to react.'
Duke Ken of Marlon and Marquess Gaun of Haian, who had never properly witnessed Hwi-garam’s power before, swallowed dryly as cold sweat ran down their backs.
"Is there no more precise information?"
At Jin-cheon's question, the wizard hurriedly bowed and answered.
"Th-that is so, Your Majesty. There is no exact report yet, but an unknown force is definitely approaching the area around Gaemun Mountain Fortress. A scouting party was organized and dispatched immediately, so we should know the truth before long."
The news that had flown in from the homeland was, quite literally, a bolt from the blue.
"So we still don’t know for certain."
"If that force belongs to the Holy Empire transport fleet that vanished before the war, we’re in trouble. More precisely, it would make the current situation fit together."
At Hwi-garam's composed words, a deep furrow etched itself between Jin-cheon's brows. That was because he could grasp, at least roughly, what Hwi-garam was implying. Several nobles who were quick on the uptake had already understood his meaning, and their faces were turning to expressions of horror.
"So there were more than just those fools, then."
"Wha-what will you do?"
King Alsein asked, his voice trembling slightly. That single question held a great deal within it.
It had been Gauri that took in South Roselin when it was a fallen kingdom.
It had been Gauri that helped reclaim that fallen kingdom and achieve the unification that had been the fervent wish of countless ancestors. Moreover, it had been Gauri that had gathered all these powers here to stand against the empires.
Though it was Alsein who asked the question, right now, in this moment, the sentiments of everyone present in this room were the same.
"Everything will be decided after the exact situation is clarified. Duke Baikal."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Jin-cheon deferred answering Alsein's question.
"Issue an emergency alert across the entire front immediately. If the Holy Empire really has infiltrated Gauri’s rear, they may take advantage of our disarray and press southward."
"Indeed."
Duke Baikal answered with a grave expression.
"Reinforce the defenses even more thoroughly and show them that we are unshaken. And enforce absolute silence about this—under no circumstances let this information leak to the soldiers yet."
"We will bear that in mind."
Even though no one knew what might happen to Gauri, Jin-cheon’s order was not about Gauri itself but about reinforcing the front here and now. Alsein and the other allied leaders could not decide whether to laugh or cry at the command.
Each of them simply hurried off to their respective tasks.
* * *
The Holy Empire soldiers, who had been dashing chaotically among the trees, began to form a semicircle around one spot and slowly tighten it.
"Now the bastard is a rat in a trap!"
Even without a knight saying it aloud, there was no way the soldiers did not understand the current situation. But every Gauri scout they had discovered so far had resisted so fiercely that they had not managed to capture a single one alive.
"God damn it!"
They needed to capture at least one alive to learn how many scouts had been watching them. They also had to determine whether these men were part of a routine patrol or had come because they had noticed something unusual.
Aaaagh!
Another horrifying scream rang out from inside the circular net the soldiers had thrown around them. The ensuing commotion made it all too clear that the owner of the scream was a Holy Empire soldier.
"Deploy the Knight Order."
At the command given by Marquis Bello von Luchia, who had approached before anyone noticed, Count Chiera Pelloman voiced his concerns in a cautious tone.
"We have not yet identified their exact position, and there are unknown dangers."
A considerable portion of the casualties incurred while hunting down the Gauri soldiers so far had come from traps or sudden ambushes. Despite knowing their escape route was blocked, the Gauri soldiers had no thought of surrendering; rather, they seemed intent on killing even one more enemy, inflicting damage cool-headedly even while surrounded.
Because of that, the enraged soldiers hacked them to death one after another despite orders to take them alive.
"We have no time to drag this out any longer. Have the knights take the field."
"Understood."
At Marquis Luchia's high-handed command, Earl Pelloman raised no further objection and summoned the knights to relay the order.
Perhaps the knights themselves had been feeling considerable annoyance and frustration toward the Gauri scouts running wild everywhere, because at Earl Pelloman's order they charged off without a backward glance.
"It's the knights!"
As the knights entered the encirclement, a few soldiers could be seen exhaling in relief. The faces of the soldiers forming the perimeter were lined with exhaustion.
"Useless wretches."
One of the knights, seemingly irked by the sight of those soldiers, furrowed his brow.
"Be careful."
"Huh, you?"
One of the knights who had been commanding the soldiers inside the defensive line came into view, his armor dented and battered into a sorry state. Setting aside the common soldiers, it was surprising that even a fellow knight was in such a mess.
"Look over there."
Instead of showing embarrassment at his fellow knights' reaction, he raised a finger and pointed up into a tree.
"Huh?"
"What in the...!"
People were not fruit, yet Holy Empire soldiers were dangling from the tree in clusters like bunches of fruit. Worse, while those hanged by the neck were few, the soldiers suspended by the legs or the waist did not look much better off.
"They used thorny vines—and even smeared poison on them."
"Hmm."
The soldiers, their skin turning a ghastly blue as the poison spread, could do nothing but let out the occasional moan.
"And that is not all."
In another direction he pointed, the corpses of more than ten soldiers lay scattered, their upper and lower bodies torn apart. And to one side, a massive log had rolled to a stop, soldiers crushed beneath it groaning in pain.
"I fell prey to that one myself."
"Just how many of them are there?"
"Not many. It looks to be about five or six, but seeing these traps, they clearly prepared all this in advance."
"Hmm."