The lancer cavalry had been seething all day, especially in the afternoon when they were made to haul the ram carts. As the most elite force under Count Corbilly, when had they ever been forced into such grunt work? Moreover, the camp grounds sat higher than the surrounding terrain, so when they engaged in the tug-of-war with the ram cart, they were pulling uphill. When they heaved with all their might, the ram cart suddenly flew toward them. The last thirty or forty lancers at the rear of the formation couldn't react in time, and both men and horses became a mangled mass of flesh and blood. The unexpected loss had driven these lancers nearly mad.
Now the camp gates had been thrown open, and the bloodthirsty lancers launched their charge — a squadron plus a platoon, over six hundred strong. They would charge into the camp and kill anyone they saw, venting the fury in their hearts. Nothing ahead of them could halt their advance.
Sweeping past the camp gates, the lancers braced for a clash. Five Silver-tier lancers instinctively took the lead. They all knew the caravan occupying the camp had several dozen knights who had also awakened their
But after charging into the camp for a good while, the way ahead remained empty — no knights blocking the way, not even a single human figure in sight. Ahead lay only a corridor about ten meters wide leading deeper into the camp. Why did something feel off? The leading lancers slowed more and more until the charge turned into a slow jog. They couldn't stop — six hundred more horsemen were behind them — so they could only control their speed. The rear lancers caught up, riding abreast with them, and gradually massed behind them into a dense cavalry cluster.
It really was wrong. In the lancers' imagination, entering the camp should have revealed a familiar scene: tents everywhere, and they would chase and slaughter enemies among those tents, washing away the shame of the enemy occupying their camp with blood. But the scene before them was far too strange. On both sides of the corridor stood walls three meters high, covered in a thin layer of snow. The lancers could only advance down the corridor.
The sky was dim, and heavy snow fell like goose feathers, obscuring the view ahead.
"Go check what these partition walls are about," someone ordered before long.
The lancers at the very edges prodded the partition walls on both sides of the corridor with their lances. "Wooden walls. These are all wooden walls."
"Strange — where did all this wood come from inside the camp?" a lancer wondered in bewilderment.
"Press on. I don't believe they have that much wood to make partition walls."
The lancers certainly didn't expect that
A few lancers tried to push down the wooden walls, but after expending great effort for a long time, they had to give up. If it were a single wooden wall, it might have shaken a bit when pushed, but these were wagon carriages — essentially long boxes — and when connected they were extremely sturdy. The lancers pushed for a long time only to find the walls had barely shaken at all.
The front seemed to be nearing its end. The lead rank of lancers saw a wooden platform ahead, and then flames erupted as countless torches lit up on the platform, illuminating the surroundings brightly.
The faces of the lead-rank lancers, who could now see the scene ahead, instantly lost all color, turning deathly pale.
Finally, someone shouted in a trembling voice: "T-trap, th-this is a trap, ru-run, retreat..."
A dense formation of black heavy infantry stood before the wooden platform — black shields, black spears. Everyone knew what happened when leather-armored cavalry that had lost its momentum clashed with these heavy "canned goods." But that wasn't the deadly part — it was the twelve large ballistae arranged in two tiers on the platform. The twelve bolts, long as javelins, were trained on the lancers, gleaming with cold, star-like light under the torchlight...
The lancers erupted into chaos. Those in front wanted to flee but were blocked by those behind; those in back kept pushing forward, trying to see what was happening ahead. And behind the lancers were still over two thousand garrison soldiers...
Dolas was in high spirits at this moment — finally, his ballistae would show their might. Looking down at the lancers in utter disarray, he waved his hand and shouted loudly: "Fire!"
First, the six ballistae on the upper tier let out a deafening twang, six bolts streaking like lightning into the lancer ranks, kicking up a storm of blood and gore. Then the six on the lower tier loosed their bolts. Next, the upper tier's six ballistae reloaded and fired again, followed by the lower tier's six...
Cycle after cycle, unending...
The twelve ballistae fired twenty volleys in total; they could fire no more. The bowstrings were on the verge of ruin, and the bolts of the final volley had already lost much of their power and accuracy.
Dolas stood on the wooden platform, struck dumb by the devastation the ballistae had wrought...
A thick, nauseating stench of blood assaulted the nostrils. The passage ahead was carpeted with the dense, tangled corpses of lancers and their mounts. Two hundred and forty ballista bolts had swept the clustered lancers from the passage clean. The earliest bolts had been powerful enough to pierce through five or six men or horses at once; now, only a few dozen survivors remained, standing dazed and hollow-eyed amid the mountains of the dead.
"Urgh." It came from the heavy infantry phalanx drawn up before the platform — someone unable to stomach the gruesome spectacle, retching...
Such was the scene.
"Urgh, urgh." More and more men in the heavy infantry phalanx were retching.
"Heavy infantry, double-time march!" Bodfenger barked. He had suddenly remembered that the heavy infantry under his command now were not the battle-hardened veterans of the White Lion Legion, but a hastily cobbled-together batch of raw recruits. If they dallied any longer, even more soldiers might lose their combat effectiveness to vomiting.
The heavy infantry advanced at the double, their footsteps a rolling thunder, leaving behind only a few dozen men gasping for breath, bent over from vomiting.
In truth, the heavy infantry saw little use against the lancers. The few dozen survivors had long since lost all will to resist. After the heavy infantry made short work of a dozen or so, Bodfenger himself lost interest. He ordered the remaining forty or fifty lancers disarmed and escorted away, then led the heavy infantry toward the front of the passage, where the roar of battle had erupted.
For the garrison soldiers following behind the lancer cavalry that had been slaughtered by the wagon-mounted crossbows, luck was not much better. First, they suffered a massed volley from four hundred or so crossbowmen. The longbowmen who could have opposed them were at a complete loss, because they couldn't find where the enemy was. The crossbowmen all hid behind the partition walls on both sides of the road, having cut firing holes into the bottom of the wagon compartments. They aimed and fired steadily, and the longbowmen were almost completely wiped out.
The remaining garrison soldiers could only rely on the sword-and-shield soldiers on the periphery to shield them, but they were still continuously struck by crossbow bolts...
The passage floor was covered with garrison corpses. Snowflakes drifting from the dark, overcast sky fell onto the blood flowing on the ground, quickly forming a thin layer of red ice.
The garrison soldiers had no way to advance or retreat. The men who had fallen back from the front reported that the lancer cavalry had been completely annihilated, and crossbow bolts kept streaming from the partition walls on both sides of the road. The Gold-tier bastard son of Count Corbilly who commanded this garrison force sensed something was wrong and urgently ordered a retreat. But the wooden wall on the left side of the camp gate suddenly collapsed — this was a genuine single-row wooden partition wall, not one assembled from wagon compartments.
At this moment, Ross had already engaged that Gold-tier commander, and the two were locked in a fierce, evenly matched struggle. Meanwhile, Terman led the knight order galloping freely through the passage, with no enemy able to withstand a single thrust of his spear.
The wooden partition walls in the passage occasionally had small gaps just wide enough for a single person to pass through, but the garrison soldiers who slipped through soon let out screams that echoed out — even a Silver-tier bastard son of Count Corbilly who charged in met the same fate. They didn't know that behind each gap were stationed over a dozen spearmen and one or two Silver-tier veteran students from
When Bodfenger's heavy infantry phalanx appeared in the passage, the already broken garrison soldiers finally despaired. Some threw down their weapons and knelt on the ground, baring their necks to await death. Others, in a final desperate struggle, charged at the heavy infantry phalanx as if seeking death — they were either cut down by a single sword stroke, pierced through by a spear, or shot dead by crossbow bolts flying from both sides.
Soon, the passage was filled with garrison soldiers kneeling and surrendering with discarded weapons. The battle was over. Ross, who had taken a sword blow to the shoulder, beheaded the Gold-tier bastard commander, holding up the head and laughing heartily. Bodfenger, on the other hand, was quite put out — wasn't there another Gold-tier one? How had he disappeared?
What Bodfenger didn't know was that the other Gold-tier bastard had been squeezed in among the lancer cavalry, unable to advance or retreat, and had been shot through the chest and abdomen by a wagon-mounted ballista bolt, dying an utterly undignified death.
Three large fires were lit on the camp's defensive wall. Soon, shouts and flames erupted in the sweep force's main camp — it was
Where did these two thousand-plus prisoners come from? Lorist questioned a few surrendered garrison soldiers to understand. The two thousand-plus prisoners in that camp had all been captured by the sweep force after breaking through several mountain strongholds in the western mountains; they were to be taken back as slaves and forced labor.
What to do? Lorist shook his head with a bitter smile — he could only bring them back first. There were no clothes or food in that camp; by tomorrow morning, half of them might well starve or freeze to death. He sent Reidi and Pat to find Terman and Fatty Shi respectively, informing them of the situation. He had Terman take the knight order and a squadron of spearmen over to the opposite camp to fetch the people, not forgetting to gather up the wooden rafts and the like along the way — perfect firewood for a snowy night like this.
On this side, he had Fatty Shi clear another open space in the camp's northwest sector to pitch tents, set up bonfires, and cook some porridge to warm up the two thousand captured able-bodied men who would soon arrive. He also had him gather some clothing and blankets for them. As for whether they stayed or left tomorrow, that would be up to them.
The camp's northwest sector had originally been arranged for the four hundred-plus able-bodied men rescued in the camp, the group coerced into coming along from Castle Meister, and the hundreds of refugees trailing behind the caravan just to beg a bit of food to survive. Now placing the two thousand-plus prisoners rescued from the enemy camp there was quite fitting.
The incessantly clamoring two thousand-plus able-bodied men soon reached the camp gate, but once inside the camp they gradually fell silent. No one dared raise their voice, not even to breathe loudly, for beneath their feet lay a dark red road of blood. Corpses were piled on both sides of the road; the surrendered garrison soldiers were cleaning them up, stripping off their leather armor and clothes, then lining the naked corpses along the roadside into walls of the dead...
Having passed along the road stained dark red by fresh blood, they only recovered some vitality after being led to the camp's northwest sector. Lorist was very satisfied with this shock effect; what he worried about most was that these rescued able-bodied men would be unruly, raising a ruckus in the camp and disturbing the camp followers so they couldn't rest in peace.
Snowflakes kept falling without cease, draping the earth in a new garment of snowy white.
In the camp, bonfires blazed brightly, their light shining clear. Lorist stood before the main tent, watching the falling snowflakes, and let out a deep sigh. A night of slaughter had passed; he only wondered how many more such battles they would encounter on the journey ahead...