Chapter 117 (1/2)

Chapter 117 Chase (Part 1)

It was Carter’s first time that he seeing a battle.

A lineup of more than three hundred knights was unable to even scratch the edge of their defensive line, instead, they had been totally crushed.

Until the end, they had failed to even enter into a range of fifty meters – it was the hunter team’s fire line, only when the enemy had come closer than fifty meters were they allowed to open fire.

The four cannons had brought the enemy’s assault to a complete halt at merely one hundred meters. Along the range of one hundred and fifty to one hundred meters, laid an orderly row of twenty bodies, it was as if they had run into a wall. And these men, like himself, belonged to the strongest category of fighters, Knights; otherwise, they would have never been able to control their horses under the sound of gunfire.

In the end, Carter was glad that he wasn’t one of them. He felt a faint hunch that the battles in the future would become very different, and it was only a matter of time, until Roland Wimbledon the master of such a powerful force would aspire to the throne and aim for kingship.

When the members of the First Army saw the bloody battlefield, they became dizzy and began vomiting or had other adverse reactions. But this wasn’t the reaction they would show if they had personally killed the enemy during close combat, the sense of deterrence brought on by killing someone over a long distance was much less when compared with killing someone with a knife, their reaction couldn’t be counted as critical. Carter picked a set of people from his own team to pick up the severed limbs and put them back with the dead bodies, while still searching for the living people.

The sun gradually fell behind the mountains, and when Carter looked at the blood-red sky, and the distant woods with its crying crows, he was suddenly hit by a dull and dreary feeling.

The era of the Knights was over.

…

Even until now Duke Ryan was still unable to recover.

He couldn’t understand how it was possible that he had lost, even more to a line of defense as thin as a slice of onion skin, normally it would have been enough to poke it with just a finger to run through it, but today, it was his knights who fled like they had come face to face with the Devil. In truth, he couldn’t even blame them because the assault was under the command of his elite knights.

His personal guards had even to chop down several people so that the blindly fleeing mercenary didn’t come close to the Duke’s position. But he was unable to do anything else, no matter how much he shouted, he couldn’t unite the defeated men once more. In desperation, even Duke Ryan had to retreat with the flow of fleeing people, and their mindless escape only stopped after they had crossed nearly ten miles.

When the night came, the Duke chose a place close to the river bank to camp. Even after setting up torches to lead the separated knights and mercenaries back to their camp, most of their people were still missing. To make matters worse, the freedman had without any hesitation left in the carts with the food, so tonight they had to slaughter a few horses to serve as rations.

The five nobles huddled together, within the camp’s largest tent, looking with a fearful expression towards Duke Ryan, however even he wasn’t in any better constitution.

“Who can tell me, what kind of new weapon it was that they had used? They are far better than crossbows, and they don’t seem to be throwing the stones like with a catapult,” the Duke began to speak, while glancing at Rene, ”You also stood at the forefront, tell me what did you see?”

“My Lord, I… couldn’t see anything clearly,” Rene answered, “I only know that every time this roar could was heard, our men would fall in batches, especially when it sounded for the last time, it seemed like the rushing knights had been hit by an invisible wall. Furthermore I also saw how their heads and arms were split from their bodies, it was just as if …” he thought for a moment, “we were like an egg dropped from the height of a city wall.”

“Was it the power of a witch?” Count earl whispered frightened.

“No,” answered the Duke, “My knights were wearing a God’s Stone of Retaliation, so the power of a witch couldn’t have hurt them! We weren’t attacked by witches, in front of those stones, they are nothing more than an ordinary woman.

“Oh, that’s right, sir,” Rene suddenly spoke up, as though he was remembering something. “Before I heard the loud bang, I saw how carts which stood in a row, they had a huge iron pipe, it emitted a red light and a cloud of smoke.”

“An Iron pipe? What red light and what smoke? Doesn’t that sound like the ceremony barrel?” Count Elk asked with much doubt in his voice.