Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 104 Bloody Man

Sergeant Taylor, who was resting at his post, heard footsteps outside and asked warily, "Who is it? Password!"

"Benliu." The newcomer answered the code: "It's me."

The code was matched, and old Taylor relaxed, replying with the code: "Hundred Flowers".

Footsteps approached quickly, and Warrant Officer Montagne nimbly vaulted over the wall and jumped into the passageway.

Taylor immediately noticed that Warrant Officer Montagne was holding a strange short gun—strange because it had no ignition mechanism, like an old-fashioned hook gun that required one hand to hold the gun and the other to light it, but it was indeed a firearm.

"What's wrong, sir? Enemy attack?" Sergeant Taylor asked hurriedly.

“No enemy detected.” Winters pulled out a bell. “But the alarm tripwires have all been cut.”

"What should we do? Should we raise an alarm?"

Winters hesitated for a moment, then gritted his teeth and said, "Ring the bell! Sound the alarm!"

Seeing the officer's determination, Taylor became frightened. He licked his lips and advised, "Shouldn't we double-check? The tripwire might have snapped on its own... If it triggers a false alarm, it could cause a huge problem. Should we wait a bit?"

Winters wasn't sure if the tripwires had been deliberately cut. To be on the safe side, they should wait until they actually encountered the enemy before issuing a warning.

Because if it turns out to be a false alarm, Winters will definitely be held accountable, and other sentries may also be implicated.

“Sound the alarm now! Light the alarm!” Winters gritted his teeth again: “It’s better to report a false alarm than to miss one! Go and sound the alarm. I’ll take responsibility if anything goes wrong.”

Seeing the officer on duty's resolute attitude, Sergeant Taylor had no choice but to obey. He quickly ran to the alarm bell, picked up the bell hammer, and began to strike it with all his might.

The urgent tolling of bells echoed across the battlefield in front of the city walls. At first, only the West-Fourth outpost rang the alarm, but the sentries on the old siege wall behind Winters also sounded the alarm.

The military camp was awakened from its slumber, and the officers rushed out of their tents, shouting, "Emergency assembly!" The soldiers frantically searched for their clothes and weapons.

Two beacon fires were lit on the earthen wall next to the West-4 gun emplacement to indicate that there was an alarm.

Other gun emplacements and sentry posts lit a cluster of beacon fires to indicate that their positions were temporarily unaffected.

Winters climbed the ramparts and carefully counted the beacon fires three times to make sure he hadn't miscounted. He immediately summoned Sergeant Taylor: "The beacon fire at West-3 is not lit. Something might have happened. Does any of your men have night blindness?"

“Dan, Wake.” Old Taylor named the two names without hesitation.

"Tell them to take their weapons and come with me." Winters fastened his helmet, drew his sword, and threw the scabbard on the ground.

"Are you going out again?" Old Taylor was very surprised: "We just need to hold the cannons and wait for reinforcements."

“We have to find out exactly what happened at the West-3 artillery position,” Winters explained. “Turning to our posts is like being blind; we won’t know where the enemy is going.”

Sergeant Taylor grabbed Winters' arm: "Then I'll take some men, you stay here."

Winters asked coldly, "Are you as good at fighting as I am? Besides, I don't trust anyone else to scout; I need to see it with my own eyes."

Taylor's ten men were all halberdiers, which was difficult to use in the narrow passageway. Dan and Wake abandoned their long weapons and switched to one-handed swords, following Winters along the passageway toward the West-3 artillery position.

To protect against artillery fire, the tunnel meandered like a snake, with a bend every four or five meters. Just as they were about to reach the gun emplacement, Winters heard footsteps coming from the tunnel ahead.

"Password?!" he shouted immediately.

The person approaching did not answer, but their footsteps quickened as they drew closer.

"Enemy attack!"

Dan and Wake saw a figure flash out from around the corner ahead, and then Warrant Officer Montagne drew his strange short gun and shot the man in the head, knocking him down.

Dan could see clearly that the short gun in the warrant officer's hand had neither a match, nor a spring, nor even a trigger; it was just a stock and a barrel.

However, in the hands of Warrant Officer Montagne, it fired normally like an ordinary firearm.

"The wizard's black magic," the two privates thought simultaneously.

Winters's hand went numb from the recoil of the gun. It was the first time he had used this kind of magic to fire a gun in actual combat, and he didn't expect it to actually work, and work so well.

For Winters, spell-activated guns were far more convenient than arrows. He wasn't good at kinetic spells, but he was adept at fire spells.

Before he could even boast, several enemies wielding short knives rushed out one after another from around the corner ahead.

The drawback of spell-activated guns is also obvious—they only have one shot.

In desperation, Winters threw the empty gun at the other man.

A thought suddenly popped into his head: "Perhaps we could tie the three gun barrels together?"

However, now was not the time to think about such things. Winters switched to his sword and thrust it at the enemy.

Even a coward with no strength, like Winters, who had experienced several bloody battles, would have long been tempered into a fierce warrior, not to mention that Winters himself was an officer who had been trained for many years.

Dan and Wake watched in shock as Warrant Officer Montagne efficiently killed—no, slaughtered—the charging enemies.

The passageway was narrow, and the enemies could only advance one at a time. Each one that came up was taken down by the warrant officer; none of them could withstand a single blow. As a result, it was only the three of them – Winters, Dan, and Wake – who were pushing forward. Dan and Wake didn't even have a chance to act; they followed behind Winters, stabbing anyone who wasn't quite dead yet.

After eight or nine people were killed in succession, the Tanilians' will completely collapsed. The remaining few Tanilians were terrified and turned to run away as fast as they could.

Winters did not pursue Tanyla after seeing him scale the earthen wall and flee toward the city wall.

He retrieved the pistol he had just thrown from under the body, while Dan and Wake watched him in awe.

"Let's go to the West-3 gun emplacement." After the gun was retrieved, Winters took the lead and continued walking at the front.

Dan swallowed hard, then whispered to Wake, "I finally understand why the warrant officer is called 'Blood Man'..."

Continuing towards the West-3rd Artillery Group, the bodies of Venetta soldiers began to appear in the passageway. The fallen Venettas lay scattered throughout the passageway where the West-3rd Artillery Group was located, their bodies still warm.

"Sir! There's a centurion here!" Wake shouted to Winters.

There lay a corpse in an officer's uniform on the ground, its arms hanging limply, its eyes lifeless.

Winters scrutinized him for a while before recognizing Lieutenant Deckard, the duty officer of the West-3rd Artillery Group. Deckard had a horrific wound on his neck, presumably the fatal one.

“Dead,” Dan concluded succinctly.

Wake spat out a mouthful of saliva: "Nonsense."

Winters tried to recreate in his mind the scene of Deckard and his men's deaths, but there was one problem he just couldn't figure out.

With his brows furrowed, Winters pondered in confusion: "No matter how you look at it, there must have been a fierce battle here, but why didn't I hear a thing, even though I was right next to the West-3 artillery group?"

The cannons were all on their mounts, but all the breechblocks were firmly nailed shut, rendering them unusable in the short term.

Clearly, the purpose of the Tacheng garrison's surprise attack was to destroy the Venetians' artillery. The Venetians had made ample preparations for this, so why didn't they hear any alarms?

Winters checked the alarm bell again; it was intact.

A sharp whistle came from the west, and Dan shouted in panic, "Sir! It's our gun position!"

"Go! Go back!" Winters drew his sword and sprinted toward the West-Fourth Artillery Position, leaving Dan and Wake far behind.

Of the eight artillery positions, the smaller the number, the closer they are to the central axis. The West-4 artillery position is located on the westernmost side and is the artillery position closest to the city wall.

Tanirian soldiers, armed with nails and hammers, scaled the ramparts, leaped into the artillery positions, and charged toward the cannons.

Winters' two squads of ten tried to stop the enemy, but they were outnumbered and pinned down at their posts.

The two sentry posts were positioned in a triangular formation in front of the artillery position, and their structure had been modified according to Winters' requirements: the entrance was narrow, but the interior was large enough to accommodate a team of ten men.

A fierce Tanilian swordsman charged into Taylor's post with a howl, only to be stabbed in the stomach by Buba's halberd the moment he entered. A second Tanilian who tried to rush in was also forced back by the halberdier.

Seeing that they couldn't break through from the front, the Tanirians circled around to the outside of the sentry post, scaling the wall and jumping into it. Old Taylor, carrying his crossbow, shot and killed one Tanirian who had climbed the wall, then drew his saber and slashed at another Tanirian who had jumped in…

Outside the sentry post, a daring Taniri archer stood atop the rampart and fired arrows down at Sergeant Taylor and his men.

Winters fired a flying arrow and knocked the archer off the wall. Without checking if the archer was dead, he drew his sword and charged toward the sentry post.

The Tanirians were completely focused on attacking the Venetians' outposts and didn't notice Winters approaching them from behind.

It wasn't until screams echoed from behind that Tanilia realized she had been surrounded by someone.

"Kill! Warrant Officer Montagne is back! Reinforcements are here!" Taylor, with a knife wound to the head, blood streaming down his face and into his eyes, wiped it haphazardly and roared, raising his sword high: "Big Vinnetta!"

"Huzzah!"

The morale of the Venetian soldiers at the outpost soared, and they charged out of their posts with shouts.

The Tanilian soldiers in the passageway were caught in a pincer attack and immediately collapsed, fleeing over the walls. Those Tanilian soldiers who were slower to escape were all dragged back and killed.

After dealing with the Tanirians in the tunnel, Winters, panting heavily with his hands on his knees, asked Taylor in a hoarse voice, "How's it going now?"

"Cannons! The cannons are gone!" Old Taylor was so anxious he forgot to use honorifics. "At least a hundred Tanyans have come! And the other outpost is gone too!"

"Where are the reinforcements coming from?"

"Not yet."

"Let's go! To the cannons! Follow me!" Winters wiped the blood off his face haphazardly with the hem of his shirt, grabbed a scimitar from a dead man's hand—because his sword was already dulled—and led the group toward the artillery position while leaning against the wall.

The soldiers of the Third Army were spreading rumors that Bloody Montagne was the bravest officer in the army, and the soldiers of Taylor's Ten had just personally confirmed that the rumors were true.

I feel like I've written too much; I need to revise, revise, revise.

Thank you to everyone who voted for the book before, thank you to reader "天水有佳人" for the recommendation vote, and thank you to reader "天镜眼" for the monthly ticket. Thank you all.

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(End of this chapter)