Chapter 333
Chapter 333
Iron Emperor — Chapter 333
"They're still holdin' up well, looks like."
His voice carried a note of pride. But the actual battlefield was far from so optimistic.
On the walls, three or four Holy Empire soldiers at a time kept climbing up and getting thrown back down, and in some places, the number of Holy Empire soldiers getting up onto the walls had begun to outnumber those falling.
"Send reinforcements over there."
"Yes, sir!"
The spot Buru indicated was a section of wall where the Holy Empire soldiers were steadily increasing. A deputy commander waiting in the rear led some twenty soldiers down at a run. After giving the order, Buru looked behind him. Only around fifty men remained in reserve.
"Great General!"
The soldiers, catching Buru's eye, were burning with fighting spirit as if begging to be sent in at once.
"This is gonna be a pain."
Buru, who had been watching them, let out a chuckle. A commander leading cowards was a pain, but a commander leading troops on fire with fighting spirit was just as much of a pain.
The difference, of course, was that the former wore out the heart, while the latter only wore out the body. Just then, the sound that would lead Buru into the fray reached his ears.
KA-KABOOM!
"The western barrier has collapsed!"
The lookout's voice came along with the thunderous roar. Even the barrier that had held out the longest had finally crumbled.
"Look sharp, boys! We're joinin' the dance!"
Buru hoisted his great axe up onto his shoulder and shouted, and the soldiers shook their spears and swords in response.
"Let's go!"
Buru led the fifty-odd men and charged out. Avilrun, who'd been watching blankly from behind, lashed the great general's standard to his back and ran after them.
"Shit, I'm gonna die."
As Avilrun ran after them grumbling, Buru let out an irritating grin and said:
"Don't go dyin'. We're just fillin' our quota."
"Ugh."
A standard-bearer was always the enemy's first target.
And this was the great general's standard, no less. At the moment, the standard-bearer Avilrun had no troops around him to protect him. In the end, he'd given up on holding the flag with both hands and had strapped it to his back.
Thirty enemy heads to join the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry was no longer the issue. He had to fight just to stay alive right now. Even so, a faint smile flickered across Avilrun's deeply scowling face. A strange flutter he couldn't explain had seized his heart.
Countless expressions were crossing the face of Marquis Luchia, who had always been nothing but cold and impassive. The shift in his expression was so drastic it startled Earl Pelloman, who had always served at his side.
"The Magic Corps has returned!"
At the voice of the courier who had ridden up, Earl Pelloman anxiously turned his head. But a question shot out faster than he could ask.
"Keep the report brief."
Earl Pelloman glanced to his side. Marquis Luchia, his rage not yet faded, had personally questioned the courier.
"Five men returned in total. One of them may not survive."
"F-five?"
Despite being in the presence of Marquis Luchia, Earl Pelloman couldn't stop himself from raising his voice. Heavy losses from enemy resistance had been expected, but five men—with the survival of one still unconfirmed—left him with nothing more to say.
"M-many wizards were killed by enemy attacks, but some were also trampled to death by our own advancing troops...."
"......."
Marquis Luchia's eyes trembled.
To the common soldiers, a wizard who had fallen to the ground was not a target to be protected but simply an obstacle. In a situation where arrows were raining down on their heads, the wizards' cries would have been a futile act.
"Marquis. The day is growing dark."
One of the nobles spoke cautiously, asking whether they would continue the battle. Earl Pelloman already knew Marquis Luchia's answer.
"Viscount Seihon. Lead troops personally and make them understand that the Magic Corps is not the sum total of our Holy Empire."
"Understood. I will take the fortress before the day is out."
He had ordered an all-out assault.
The unexpected blow had inflicted heavy damage on the Holy Empire, but the overall tide of battle had not been reversed. In Earl Pelloman's eyes as he watched Viscount Seihon charge out under Marquis Luchia's orders, a troubled light flickered, if only for a moment.
Was it because of the red sunset?
The hot blood spraying from the wounds where weapons had been driven in looked the same color as the soldiers’ skin in the sunset.
"What are you doing! The enemy has no more strength left to resist!"
As if he never tired, the Holy Empire knight ceaselessly shouted at his soldiers.
"Thrust!"
At the command, the Gauri soldiers thrust their spears in unison. The spearpoints slammed toward the Holy Empire soldiers, but unlike at the beginning, many now glanced off the enemy's shields.
"Spearmen, fall back and raise your long spears! Axemen, forward!"
Enemy corpses had piled up to the point where the barrier no longer functioned as a barrier. The relatively longer spear was no longer an advantageous weapon. In fact, cases had started appearing where the enemy would grab the spears and drag the wielders outside the barrier.
"Now! Climb up!"
"Hold them!"
As the thrusting spears all pulled back at once, the Holy Empire soldiers began to pour over in that gap. But the shieldbearers, who until now had been focused solely on holding the line, drew their short swords and began swinging at them.
"Aaagh!"
A moment's lapse in caution invited death. The shieldbearers' short swords drove through the shoulder joints where the armor could not cover. And then the follow-up blow!
"Hup!"
The axes of the axemen, who had taken a huge breath, cleaved through the air and came chopping down in clean arcs.
CRUNCH!
The dull sounds rang out almost simultaneously. A great number of the troops trying to climb onto the barrier met their deaths under the falling axes. Among them were those whose heads were smashed in without even managing a scream. But the Holy Empire soldiers, long inured to death, kept leaping onto the barrier.
"Thrust!"
"Waaaaah!"
"Don't let a single one of them onto this wall!"
What greeted the Holy Empire soldiers clambering over before the axes could even be raised again was Geom Muhyul's shouted command and the long spears of the spearmen who had fallen back. Thrust from behind the axemen, the spearheads delivered the final blow to those who had climbed up at the risk of their own lives.
"Get off!"
A shieldbearer roughly shoved the body of a Holy Empire soldier that had been skewered on a long spear like a piece of meat. The soldier's screams and entrails came out with the withdrawing spearhead, yet no one pitied him. Above that, the axes that had been raised again came chopping down once more.
"They mean to see this through to the end."
Geom Muhyul lifted his head and looked at the sky.
The sunset, which had blazed as if burning, was already starting to recede. Darkness was beginning to settle over Gaemun Mountain Fortress, but the enemy assault showed no sign of stopping. It was, rather, growing even fiercer.
Whoosh!
"Wh-what is that!"
"It's fire!"
Fireballs flew over the barrier. The Gauri soldiers faltered at the sudden barrage of fire, and the Holy Empire assault intensified in that opening.
"It’s not magic! Don’t panic!"
Shouts to rally the soldiers rang out from all over. The incoming fireballs were not intended to cause injury. Anything on the Gauri side that could be set ablaze by fire attack had already been consumed anyway.
They had only one purpose.
"You sons of bitches! Fine, let's fight it out all night, you leeches!"
From on top of the wall, Avilrun grabbed a Holy Empire soldier who had charged at him by the nape and hurled him outside the wall, shouting.
"Tch, nice and warm, ain’t it?"
Eulji Buru's voice followed.
The torches were a substitute for the wizards' Light Magic. At Buru and Avilrun's shouts, the soldiers quickly regained their composure and threw themselves back into the fight. Some soldiers even started picking up torches and swinging them at the enemy or hurling them.
"Right! That's how you do it!"
Buru, who had just cut down another soldier, praised the Gauri soldiers' improvisation. But on the faces of the Gauri soldiers smiling at the praise, the fatigue that had been building up was beginning to show.
"Everyone, pull back!"
From behind the Holy Empire soldiers who had been clinging to the barrier like madmen, an order fell—for the first time, not an order to advance. The moment it came, the Holy Empire soldiers began rapidly withdrawing to the rear.
To be more precise, they did not all fall back entirely—some soldiers split off to the left and right.
"Oo-waah!"
The Holy Empire soldiers' cheers rang out as if they had already won. Parting the soldiers, a massive log sharpened to a point at the tip appeared: a battering ram.
For an imperial force that had possessed no notable siege weapons due to the existence of the Magic Corps, even an improvised battering ram like this was necessary. Improvised though it was, it was perfectly adequate for smashing through an improvised barrier. Even the common soldiers could not have been unaware of that fact.
"Charge at full speed!"
"Ee-yaaah!"
It was as thick as two or three grown men and over ten mir in length, but so many soldiers had latched onto it that it advanced swiftly toward the barrier. Well aware of this, the Gauri soldiers quickly brought archers to bear and loosed arrows, but the Holy Empire side was no fool and would not simply take it.
In front of the battering ram, there was a huge barrier crudely woven of shields, and archers who had run up behind the ram were firing arrows at the Gauri archers. And then——
THUD! THUUUD!
The sound of the battering ram slamming into the barrier reverberated with crushing weight.
THUD!
Once, twice, three times, the vibration of the ram steadily driving forward amid the chaos shook the barrier. And on the fourth——the barrier that the Gauri soldiers had fought so desperately to hold came crashing down.
As the inner barrier collapsed, the soldiers on the walls began to waver as well. These were troops who had fought well against the Holy Empire soldiers clambering up the walls, but if enemies began flooding in from inside the walls too, it was blindingly obvious that they could hold out no longer.
"Great General!"
Geom Muhyul's shout, as he desperately tried to hold back the enemy soldiers pouring through the collapsed barrier, reached Eulji Buru's ears.
"No helpin' it, looks like."
A bitter smile crossed Buru's face, as if what had been coming had finally arrived.
"All troops, withdraw below the wall!"
The moment Buru's shout rang out, the soldiers with tense faces tipped over every stone they had stockpiled below the wall all at once and then broke into a run.
Buru and Avilrun likewise shoved back the soldiers charging at them and began rapidly descending the stairs.
Over their heads, the arrows loosed by the archers who had formed ranks below the fortress howled past with a sinister wind. The flying arrows delivered death to the Holy Empire soldiers who had climbed onto the now-empty wall.
It was only for a moment. As more and more troops climbed up with their shields raised, the casualties gradually lessened. But what was clear was that it had slowed their advance to some degree.
"Fall back to the second defensive line!"
"Withdraw!"
The archers had already pulled back and gotten out by the time the withdrawal had begun under Buru's orders. The order to retreat fell from Geom Muhyul's lips as well, fighting at the collapsed barrier.
Just as when Buru had pulled out from the wall, arrows flew toward the Holy Empire soldiers pursuing the retreating Gauri troops.
"A shame we've had to use it so soon."
From Geom Muhyul, who had run up beside Buru, came a voice laden with regret.