Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 105 Execution
After a night of fierce fighting, the passageways near the artillery positions on the west side are now littered with corpses, including those of Venetians and Tanirians.

If the Venetians hadn't brought back leftover gunpowder to their camp every day, last night's losses would have been even greater.

After daybreak, the Venetians began to clean up the battlefield and collect the bodies of their fallen comrades.

After quickly treating their wounds, Winters and Taylor immediately returned to the West-4 Artillery Group.

Winters had a gruesome wound on his forehead, barely stitched up with black cotton thread. Had the injury been two inches lower, Winters would certainly have lost his right eye.

Taylor had a knife wound on her head, and she had to shave her head completely to get it stitched up.

However, they are all lucky because they are still alive.

Buba lay before them, his body already stiff. His dilated pupils stared blankly at the sky, his mouth wide open, as if still screaming.

His right side of his neck was almost completely ripped apart; a lead bullet from a heavy musket killed him. In addition to this fatal gunshot wound, he had more than a dozen other wounds of varying sizes on his body.

He fought on, wounded, until a lead bullet killed him.

In his final moments, Bubba still gripped his halberd tightly. So tightly that Taylor couldn't separate his hand from the halberd.

Winters stood silently behind Taylor. In his last memory, many enemies charged at him, and suddenly he felt a sharp blow to the head, as if struck by a warhammer, blood blurring his vision. Bubba roared and brandished his halberd, blocking the enemy, while Taylor and Wake dragged themselves further and further away from Bubba.

He couldn't remember anything after that; the blow to his head nearly knocked him unconscious, blurring his consciousness.

In the melee at the artillery position, the Tanilia gunners immediately noticed the officer Vineta who was charging at the forefront.

Three powerful crossbows were quickly aimed at Winters. Two crossbowmen missed, but the third crossbowman succeeded.

A short, thick iron crossbow bolt struck Winters squarely in the face, knocking him to the ground.

If he hadn't been wearing a helmet, Winters would have been shot dead on the spot.

Even Taylor and the others thought Warrant Officer Montagne had been shot dead, only to find him still alive when they retrieved his "body." The crossbow bolt had pierced his helmet, but hadn't penetrated any further.

In the chaos of battle, the surviving soldiers fought desperately to protect the delirious Winters, and Buba was killed in the process.

If Bubba hadn't stayed behind to hold off the Tanirian soldiers, Taylor and Wake would never have had the chance to drag Winters away.

“He died just like that,” Winters thought sadly. “He only ate half a piece of white bread and drank a little beef broth before he died. He said he was happy to eat white bread, and then he died just like that.”

To die for one's country is glorious and noble, perhaps that's what the messenger would tell Bubba's parents. But Winters knew that Bubba didn't die for Veneta at all; he died because of the inflated ambitions of a small group of ambitious people.

Those people brought him from his hometown to this island with a piece of coarse bread, and then let him die here.

"He's not even twenty years old yet, and he's only ever eaten white bread once..."

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Old Tyler closed Bubba’s eyes with trembling hands. “You gave Bubba white bread and meat, wasn’t that all for this? Wasn’t it all so that he would fight to the death?”

Winters did not answer.

"Is it or not?" Taylor suddenly became agitated. He turned around, grabbed Winters' arm, and looked angrily into Winters' eyes, demanding, "Is it or not?"

"No."

Old Tyler seemed to have aged ten years, his anger dissipated, leaving only endless emptiness. He murmured, "That silly Bubba didn't die in vain... he didn't die in vain..."

Winters remained silent for a long time before whispering, "No, he died in vain. If it weren't for the ambitions of certain people, he wouldn't have died, Dan wouldn't have died, and many others wouldn't have died. We wouldn't be here fighting to the death with the Tanirians."

“I’ve been eating soldier’s rations since the emperor was still alive. More than forty years have passed, and I’ve long since seen through it all. A common soldier’s life is the cheapest thing in the world. Bubba’s life, my life, both are the same. No important person treats us like human beings.” Old Tyler carefully tidied Bubba’s appearance, his back to Winters, and said, “A common soldier isn’t afraid of death, he’s only afraid of dying in vain. Bubba wasn’t fighting for those important people; he was fighting Tani for you. If you’re not using him, then it was worth it…”

Taylor covered Bubba's neck wound with his collar, stood up, looked Winters in the eye, and said earnestly, word by word, "Warrant Lieutenant Montagne, you have a kind of magic... a kind of magic that makes ordinary soldiers willingly die. Before you, I've only seen this ability in one other person, and that was Ned Smith. Please don't abuse this magic. Remember your current mercy, and when you become a big shot, don't let us die in vain again."

……

……

The Tanirians launched a night raid on three of the eight artillery positions, destroying two and a half artillery emplacements.

The artillery of West-2 and West-3 was completely destroyed, and the officers and sentries on duty were all killed. Thanks to Winters' counterattack, most of the heavy artillery in West-4, which was positioned further back, was saved.

After reinforcements arrived, they quickly repelled the attackers at the West-4 artillery position, and all twenty-odd Tanirian soldiers who had not escaped were captured.

The most bizarre thing about this raid was that the sentries at the other two positions failed to raise any alarms.

Post-battle reconnaissance confirmed that the sentries had indeed put up fierce resistance, yet no one heard any unusual noises from either position. This was true for Montagne's squad at West-Fourth gun emplacement and Sokor's squad at West-First gun emplacement. Rumors spread through the camp; the soldiers privately said that the Tani from the city had sacrificed six children to the devil in exchange for some kind of evil magic that allowed them to kill silently in the dark.

Upon learning of this, Layton flew into a rage and personally tortured the captured prisoners.

According to the prisoners' confessions, they did not attack from the city gate. Some sailors inside the city had a clever idea: they used the pulley system technology used to launch small boats from large warships on the city wall. They built a temporary elevator using pulleys and wooden planks and quietly lowered the soldiers down from the corner of the western city wall.

According to the prisoners, they first attacked the West-3 artillery group, and when they were preparing to attack the West-2 artillery group, the West-4 artillery group sounded the alarm.

In order to destroy one more artillery group, Captain Hernan, who was leading the night raid, risked sending half of his men back to attack the West-4 artillery group, while he led his team to attack the West-2 artillery group.

However, no matter how much Layton tortured the captured Tanilia soldiers, they could not explain how they managed to launch a silent raid on Veneta's position.

On the night of the attack, not only the Venetians could hear nothing, but even the Tanilians who launched the attack could hear nothing. Footsteps, shouts, the clash of weapons—nothing could be heard.

In the past, the sounds of screams and shouts of killing filled the air during hand-to-hand combat, but this time they could only see others opening their mouths, but could not hear them making a sound.

All the prisoners confessed that during the night raid they could only hear their own voices, and that they heard a kind of voice like their own voices behind their ears.

According to the prisoners, Captain Hernan possessed a form of black magic. He could deafen anyone within a few dozen meters of him if he wished.

Only one prisoner recalled that Captain Hernan had a masked guard beside him. The masked guard did not fight, but since he was a close bodyguard, no one found it strange.

But the prisoner had always been Hernan's subordinate, and he had never seen this mysterious masked guard by Hernan's side before tonight, nor had he heard that Hernan knew any black magic.

Besides that, they couldn't get any valuable information out of him.

Having lost two officers, more than sixty soldiers, and twenty-eight cannons without explanation, an enraged Rost Layton, disregarding the advice of other officers, vowed to execute all the prisoners in the most cruel way in front of the defenders.

But when Layton decided to go all out, no one could stop him.

The Tanilian soldiers on the city wall watched in trepidation as the Venetians prepared for the execution: the soldiers carried dozens of logs, each over two meters long, to the front of the position, and the carpenters began to sharpen the logs.

The Tanirians, shackled and bound, were brought to the front of the city walls; many of them had been tortured to the point of near death.

Once the prisoners were pinned to the ground, they immediately understood their tragic fate. They pleaded, howled, and prayed, but the executioners remained unmoved.

The executioners plunged sharpened wooden stakes into the [monthly] gates of the held-down prisoners, who let out screams that would haunt even the bravest man's nightmares.

Behind the prisoner, another executioner raised a large wooden mallet high with both hands and struck it down with all his might, driving the stake into the body instantly.

For prisoners, dying on the spot was already a kind of relief; those who survived had to endure even more horrific torture.

The executioners then lifted the stake and planted it in the open ground in front of the city wall. Under the weight of the body, the stake continued to penetrate deeper into the body.

The victim would die quickly, but the stakes would not stop, and eventually the wooden spikes would pierce through the prisoner's mouth and neck, impaling the prisoner's corpse.

Twenty-odd wooden stakes were planted in a row there, and the prisoners died tragically under the watchful eyes of the guards.

Witnessing this hellish and cruel scene would make even the most numb person tremble.

Not only did the Tanirians on the city walls suffer immense mental anguish, but even the Venetian soldiers were shocked.

Father Leonard, the chaplain accompanying the army, bluntly told Layton, "General Layton, you're going to hell!"

"Hmph, as long as William Kidd goes down first, that's fine." Layton scoffed at the disdain from the clergy.

Even the utterly unemotional Andrei couldn't bear to watch this scene and whispered to Winters, "General Layton went a bit too far. If you're going to kill someone, just kill them. Why go to such lengths..."

Winters replied expressionlessly, "No, Layton didn't 'kill' them, Layton 'executed' them. This wasn't aimless brutality, it was a bloody performance."

“You’re only making the Tanilians on the walls more resilient…” Antonio sighed.

“Perhaps so,” Layton said nonchalantly, “but I have also branded fear into their souls.”

Amid the cawing of crows, the war is irrevocably plunging into a more savage, cruel, and bloody state.

Before, I would sometimes go to sleep when I got home because I was tired, and then get up to write. This is not good. I need to adjust my schedule and make sure I go to sleep before 1 a.m., and then post whatever I write, no matter how much or how little.

Thank you to all the readers who voted for this book before, especially Black Computer Accessories, Tianshui Youjiaren, Justice and Purity is Koala, 20181202201418435, writersblock, Yu Shi Tong Zhou, Leixiao Dangtu, Ami, Yuan Hongjian, Please Call Me Happy Sheep, 20190303064452621, and Dream of Dawn. Thank you everyone.

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(End of this chapter)