Chapter 87
Chapter 87
Iron Emperor — Chapter 87
The man on watch caught sight of a huge dust cloud. Moments later, a whistle cut through the sky.
Piyuu!
"Reinforcements are coming!"
"Go tell the Commander!"
Three thousand five hundred elite soldiers, under the Yeolje's orders, were racing toward the battlefield.
"That'll do. I'm already here, so quit yer fussin'."
"General!"
Eulji Buru had already appeared, strolling over with his hands clasped behind his back. The three thousand five hundred men consisted of a unit of five hundred battered remnants from South Roselin, one thousand Gauri elite—minus those assigned to Gauri's own defense and to guarding the South Roselin rear base—and fifteen hundred Gauri recruits, the bulk of the soldiers previously mobilized to reclaim the eastern Reganza Mountains and protect the South Roselin base.
"You, go and inform His Majesty."
"As commanded!"
When Buru gave the order to Hailon, who was standing stiffly beside him, Hailon snapped a salute and sprinted off.
Thud-thud-thud thud-thud-thud!
Clang, clang, clang.
Over a hundred and fifty horsemen and several hundred wagons entered the village. Each wagon carried supplies and soldiers.
"Salute!"
"Oh, Giyul!"
Buyeo Gi-yul, who had been training troops in the rear, saluted Buru, and Buru greeted him warmly. The South Road Army soldiers watching the wagons roll in one after another wore looks of astonishment. Unlike the South Roselin soldiers, every single piece of the Gauri army's equipment was of high quality. And why wouldn't it be—hadn't even the dwarves been stunned by this gear?
Even more eye-catching, however, were the Gauri elite who entered later. They hadn't paid much mind to the recruits who came in first, since those men looked similar to themselves, but when over a thousand soldiers bearing the same appearance as the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry marched in, it planted a solid sense of reassurance deep in their chests.
The warrior spirit gleaming in their eyes was something even an ordinary soldier could recognize instantly.
"......."
Among those watching were the young officers of the South Road Army. They too had never imagined that so many troops with the same look as the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry would arrive. The sight of them leaping down from the wagons the instant they stopped and forming ranks made the word "elite" feel inadequate.
"Incredible."
"......Does a country called Gauri really exist......."
Truthfully, they had only half believed it. All they had ever seen were the two hundred-odd Black Armored Ghost Cavalry. How could they possibly have heard of a nation called Gauri? Yet the Ghost Cavalry's sheer combat power was too overwhelming to dismiss entirely. In their eyes those soldiers looked like a knight order, and two hundred knights was a number that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the knight orders of a duchy.
When they considered that the South Roselin knight order numbered over five hundred, they had concluded that this was not a force belonging to a single domain. But after occasionally picking up stories from the soldiers who had once been slash-and-burn farmers, they had simply laughed it off. Hearing that the nation had been founded only a year ago, they had assumed this knight order was all there was—just a domain-scale force.
But now, that assumption had shattered.
"Form ranks!"
"Move faster!"
Shouts burst out here and there, but it didn't take long for the three thousand soldiers to line up.
"They don't look like defeated men."
"In such a short time......"
And the movements of the five hundred or so soldiers from South Roselin who had arrived with them could hardly be called the actions of defeated men. They moved with a sharpness that set them apart. It was only when compared to the Gauri troops that they seemed to fall short.
"His Majesty the Yeolje approaches!"
The moment Hailon's voice split the air, all three thousand men froze—as still as boulders.
Clink, clink, clink.
As Go Jin-cheon strode closer, the sound of iron scales striking together from his scale armor rang out with unnatural clarity. When Jin-cheon stepped onto the makeshift platform, Giyul, who had led the troops, moved forward.
"In obedience to the command of His Majesty the Yeolje, the Supreme One of All Heavens who embraces all people and all things, Commander Buyeo Gi-yul and three thousand soldiers report their arrival!"
Giyul's voice thundered across the sky as he dropped to one knee. The instant his words ended, three thousand more mouths opened.
"We bow in reverence to His Majesty the Yeolje, the Supreme One of All Heavens who embraces all people and all things! His Majesty the Yeolje, we await your command."
"Mm."
Their voices shook the very hearts of those watching. Though this was nothing more than ritual, that alone revealed the caliber of these men.
Jin-cheon pressed his lips together and swept his gaze across the lined-up soldiers from left to right. He didn't say a word, but every so often he gave a small nod, as if in his own way he was pleased with their training. Still, for Giyul, the tension was unavoidable.
From this point on, it would be a full-scale war. There would be no more training. In this situation, Giyul could not help but worry about what judgment Jin-cheon would pass as he inspected the soldiers.
"Good."
"Yes!"
Giyul raised his voice at Jin-cheon's brief praise. Barely acknowledging Giyul's response with a subtle tilt of his head, Jin-cheon took a single step forward. Standing at the very front of the platform and looking out over the troops, he opened his mouth.
"You've worked hard to get here. This time a large-scale battle is planned."
"What is he doing......."
As Jin-cheon began talking about battle in front of the newly arrived soldiers, the South Road Army officers started to feel a deep unease. Whether he knew it or not, Jin-cheon continued.
"The enemy's strength, as we currently know it, is twenty-five thousand. No—they'll have lost more men who are lying dead by now, so roughly twenty to twenty-two thousand."
"Huk!"
"Why in the world would you say that!"
The cries burst from the mouths of the South Road Army officers.
They had assumed he would first raise the morale of the newly arrived soldiers, create a certain group psychology, and then casually mention the enemy numbers somewhere around twelve or fifteen thousand. But the way Jin-cheon immediately blurted out the enemy's true strength filled them with sheer bewilderment.
"T-twenty thousand?"
Murmur.
A small commotion rippled through the ranks.
It came from the South Roselin-born soldiers. The formation of the South Roselin troops lined up on the left side of the newly arrived Gauri force was visibly wavering.
"Look at that."
"Huh?"
One South Road Army officer, who had been scowling at Jin-cheon's words, felt a tap on his shoulder from a fellow officer. The officer turned to look at the Gauri troops—both the recruits and Jin-cheon's existing soldiers hadn't so much as flinched. It was exactly as it had been when they first formed ranks.
"Confidence...... or faith......."
The doubt lingered. Strangely, Jin-cheon and his soldiers looked utterly natural. One could almost feel that they—the South Road Army—were the ones out of place.
"Here, I intend to stake everything on victory. So when the time comes, don't dither—just follow your commanding officers and do it properly."
"We obey!"
The soldiers answered Jin-cheon's nearly off-hand admonishment with a roaring reply. Pleased by the sight, the corner of Jin-cheon's mouth twitched upward.
"Today we'll slaughter pigs and cattle and break out the liquor, so eat and drink your fill. As it happens, there's some fine liquor—I brought it myself. Heh heh."
"Yes!"
"Good. Let's get ready for a feast!"
With those words, Jin-cheon's figure vanished from the platform.
"What the—!"
No sooner had Jin-cheon leaped into the air and hit the ground than he merged with the soldiers, and they cheered as he was swallowed up among them.
"A battle is right in front of us......"
The baffled voice escaped from a South Road Army officer. In his eyes, Jin-cheon and his soldiers looked like men who had put the war completely out of their minds and were utterly absorbed by the feast. And when Jin-cheon had jumped off the platform, turning the blade-like ranks into instant chaos, that was something he could not understand either.
That evening at the feast, the South Roselin soldiers and the South Road Army officers watched Jin-cheon rip off his shirt and gulp down liquor with the troops, and after that they could find no more words to say.
Chapter 22 — Vihanen Fortress
Vihanen Fortress, thick with the cloying scent of blood.
On one side, where northern mercenaries and South Roselin soldiers hurried about, the bodies of those who had been alive just hours ago were piled in chunks of ruined flesh. The soldiers passing by wore only blank indifference, even though the sight should have made anyone wince.
"Hoo."
Baron Silen Bels let out a sigh so heavy it seemed it might crack the ground.
Vihanen Fortress was well-situated for defense, but its tactical value was low. That was why no troops had been garrisoned here and it had been abandoned for over a decade. This was a fact known to both the North and South Roselin sides. Who knew each other better than these two enemies?
Baron Silen Bels had seized on that point.
With the Eastern Army and the royal family's direct line still alive, the front lines had managed to hold. But in a prolonged war, that single advantage was as good as certain defeat. Baron Bels, who had later withdrawn from the front, had been tasked with preventing the North Roselin army from taking control of South Roselin while simultaneously harassing their rear.
The problem was that he lacked the manpower for rear-area harassment. He could gather troops, since North Roselin had not yet secured control of the region, but gathering them without being seen had proved difficult. That was why Baron Bels had made Vihanen Fortress his base. His plan had been to slowly assemble forces and then strike the enemy's main offensive that was forming the front against the Eastern Army.
"How could Duke Perren have found it so easily? Where did it go wrong......."
Misery soaked through Baron Silen Bels's voice. He had thought that small troop movements would pass unnoticed because of the rebels scattered across the countryside. But as if they had known this was his base all along, the occupation forces under Duke Camillien Perren Roselin had all descended on him at once.
If things had proceeded normally, there would have been no reason to be surrounded like this.
The problem was the northern mercenaries.
Baron Bels did not know that the Gauri army had been smashing the North Roselin small units one by one in the rear and sweeping up the inhabitants as they went. Nor could Duke Perren learn of the existence of a nation called Gauri—he had received only fragmentary information, thanks to Go Jin-cheon's thoroughness.
No—who could have even imagined it?
Wasn't Gauri literally a country that had dropped out of the sky? A nation normally forms through conflict, but Gauri had experienced none of that. So it was only natural that its army's existence remained unknown. One of the few things they had managed to notice under these conditions was black hair, and wasn't black hair the very symbol of the northern mercenaries?
Naturally, Duke Perren—who normally would have ignored the movements of dozens of scattered remnants—traced the movement of the black-haired troops, that is, the northern mercenaries. In the end, it was the northern mercenaries, who made up over sixty percent of Baron Bels's force, that had tripped him up.
Of course, the original cause was Jin-cheon's unit.
Duke Perren had been convinced that if he could just eliminate them, his future path would be free of obstacles. But when he finally tracked them down, there was an enemy force of no less than ten thousand.
For Duke Perren, it was a golden chance to make up for all his past blunders in a single stroke. And for Baron Bels, it had become a matter of survival rather than rear-area harassment.