When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 1085 The Burning Wind (Part 1)

The rapid hoofbeats shook the gray-green shrubs and withered yellow grass, causing them to sway from side to side.

The cavalry column of one thousand men stopped at the outskirts of Shovel Town, and Kennard spurred his horse and galloped off to a high ground to scout.

Kennard reined in his chestnut warhorse, raised the visor of his beaked helmet, and his dark gray pupils swept across the scenery before him.

This is a foothill area scorched yellow by the sun, with the sky obscured by billowing dust.

To the west are rolling low hills, their bare, reddish-brown rocks exposed, with sparse thickets of thorns clinging to the slopes like dried spiderwebs.

To be precise, the entire Yellow Tooth Trail area is covered in this yellowish-brown landscape, and although it's at the foot of a mountain, it's not as shady as the city.

At the foot of the steep mountain, several valleys of varying depths split open.

It wasn't particularly wide or narrow; it could probably accommodate fifty or sixty cavalrymen charging side by side.

The town is situated at the junction of the foothills and the plains, and consists mostly of earthen-yellow half-timbered houses with few brick or stone houses.

The only tall building is the steeple church in the town center, which is ringing its bells frantically at this moment.

Further ahead, three pillars of fire rose around Shovel Town, the source of the billowing smoke and the scorching hot wind.

Although the distance was far, you could still hear the screams brought by the hot wind and the crackling sounds of the wood popping.

"They're scum from Owen!" Hawke, the captain of the right-wing cavalry in charge of reconnaissance, arrived. "They're arrayed outside the fence at the east end of town, about seven or eight hundred of them!"

Following Hawke's directions, Kennard climbed another dirt slope, getting closer to the town.

He squinted and saw a dense crowd of people moving around the fence at the edge of the town.

They wore all sorts of leather armor, brandished spears and axes, and many of them were throwing torches at the fence.

Arrows continued to be fired intermittently from the arrow tower behind the fence, yet people still fell off the tower's railing from time to time.

He recognized their attire; they were armed farmers from Oregon, their ranks loose and disorganized like headless flies.

Only the last hundred or so people in the back row were wearing uniform chainmail; they were probably mercenaries.

Just as he thought!
Kennard also had his own considerations regarding going out of the city to meet the enemy.

If the Holy Alliance wants to conceal a large part of its army, then the Longbow Keep Guardians are the best and only shell.

Based on current intelligence, the Longbow Keep Guardians are still in the neighboring Defland County and have not made a move.

Therefore, even if some elite soldiers from the Holy Alliance infiltrate, their numbers should not be too large, at most a few hundred.

Dawn Island is not the Shattered Stone Plains. In such a densely populated place, it would be almost impossible to cover up the movements of thousands of people.

Therefore, Kennard was almost certain that these people were militiamen from Owen City and did not have much fighting ability.

With a cold snort, Kennard drew his knight's sword from his waist: "First team, follow me to the left flank; second team, flank around the right flank and drive them to the open space west of town!"

"Woo—" The sound of the bison horn pierced the dust, and a thousand knights split into two torrents of blue swallowtail banners.

After the torrent passed by, Kennard spread his legs and slammed his iron boots heavily into the horse's belly.

The chestnut warhorse reared up, let out a deafening neigh, and then charged out like an arrow released from a bow.

Despite starting later, they were ahead of all the cavalry.

The soldiers from Owen City outside the fence were still banging on the gate in a chaotic manner, until they heard the earth-shaking sound of horses' hooves behind them, and they turned around in a panic.

The mercenaries in the back row immediately pressed down on their helmets, turned to the front, raised their spears, and formed a gun emplacement.

However, their numbers were too small. Although their spear formation was strong and their thrusts were accurate, the knights' iron hooves were too fast.

"boom!"

The knights' charge was like stones hitting a pottery jar; two knights were immediately sent flying, their breastplates shattered.

Kennard's longsword whistled down, cleaving a mercenary's spear in two, and then severing the man's collarbone, splitting almost half of his body in two.

Blood splattered, but it couldn't catch up with Kennard's charging figure.

Iron hooves trampled, armor clashed, screams and the clash of weapons mingled together, amplified many times over by the howling wind.

Those armed peasants had never seen such a sight before, and before the knights could even get close, they threw down their weapons and scattered in all directions.

The mercenaries put up a brief resistance, but they were quickly overwhelmed and scattered.

"Commander, should we give chase?" Hawke rode up to Kennard, the feathers on his helmet blackened by smoke. "No need." Kennard pulled on the reins and turned, leading the left-wing knights through the center of the town.

The burning wooden house and fence crackled and popped, and sparks were swept into the air by the wind, like a swarm of fireflies.

"Call out everyone in town who can move to put out the fire. They don't know how to start fires; they haven't burned many houses at all!"

The townspeople were already trembling with fear inside the stone houses, and only dared to peek through the crack in the door when they heard the knights' shouts.

Kennard ordered several dozen able-bodied men to be selected and sternly commanded, "Fetch water and put out the fire! If the fire reaches the granary, your entire town will be wiped out!"

The able-bodied men scrambled to find the water buckets, but Kennard turned his horse around and charged toward the foothills to the northwest.

The earthen slope where Count Stryffin was trapped, he had just found out, was behind that mountain.

From afar, he could already see flags waving on the trees on the hillside; they were the coat of arms of the Skolston family.

"Leave fifty men to keep watch, the rest of you follow me!" Kennard's voice boomed in the wind, and the remaining nine hundred elite knights immediately followed.

The billowing dust rushed toward the foot of the mountain again, but when it was still half a mile away, Kennard's heart tightened and he abruptly reined in his warhorse.

Two lines of cavalry, about two hundred men, emerged from the shadows behind the low hill, each holding a black iron pipe.

"It's a clockwork gun!" Hawke exclaimed from the side, having participated in the Thousand Rivers Valley War.

"Don't panic, lie down on the horse and charge forward!"

Before Kennard could finish giving his order, the cavalrymen pulled the triggers.

"Bang bang bang!" The dense gunfire echoed through the valley. Lead bullets whistled as they flew, and several knights fell from their horses, blood gushing from their armor.

"Scatter! Charge!" Kennard roared, brandishing his longsword and ducking to avoid several whistling lead bullets.

He knew how powerful these guns were; they had a long range but a slow reload, and he had to take them down in the gaps between winding them up.

The knights immediately split into small groups and charged toward the hillsides on both sides.

The cavalrymen using clockwork muskets were clearly well-trained; upon seeing the knights charging, they immediately turned their horses around and retreated, while others continued to turn back and fire.

Lead bullets whizzed past the knights, kicking up clouds of dust on the ground and mountain walls behind them.

Kennard's gaze swept over the cavalrymen, and his heart skipped a beat.

Their horsemanship was superb, allowing them to move freely up and down steep slopes; they were clearly the elite of the Holy Alliance.

However, their individual martial arts skills were lacking, and their sword-wielding movements were noticeably clumsy.

"They're newbies!" Kennard shouted as he charged ahead, lead bullets grazing his shoulder armor and sparks flying. "Don't get bogged down with them, just charge straight through the pass!"

The knights surged up the hillside like a tidal wave, and the Holy Alliance cavalry's lead bullets rained down, but they could not stop this torrent.

A Holy Alliance cavalryman, whose horse's leg was entangled in thorns, turned around and tried to slash at the charging knight with his saber.

But the opponent struck him with a spear and knocked him off his horse, whereupon he screamed and rolled down the hillside.

With his longsword, he felled three Holy Alliance cavalrymen in succession. Kennard's iron hooves trampled over the corpses and charged up the hill. The sight before him made his pupils shrink.

Behind the hillside was a narrow valley, with the corpses of several Skolston soldiers scattered at the entrance, and trails of blood left by horses' hooves on the ground.

The Holy Alliance cavalry had broken free of Kennard and retreated deeper into the valley.

The leading knight even glanced back at Kennard, repeatedly thrusting his sword in and out of its sheath.

Kennard initially intended to rush down the hillside and stop them, but considering Count Stryffin's safety, he instead charged toward the other side of the count's banner.

As I rode my horse to the corner, all that remained on the ground were a dozen or so soldiers' corpses and a flag that had been cut down.

"Where is the Earl?!" Kennard grabbed a townsman who was paralyzed with fear by the roadside. The man was a middle-aged man with a thick beard.

The townspeople pointed tremblingly into the depths of the valley: "They were...they were taken away..."

Just now, a female knight, wearing silver armor, led a group of people and helped the Count into the carriage... and headed that way..."

Kennard abruptly released his grip, and the townspeople fell to their knees with a thud.

"Hawk!" Kennard's voice was filled with suppressed anger. "Take a hundred men and guard the valley entrance. The rest of you, follow me!"

　P.S. There's more!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)