When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 659: Twelve-pound Griffin Cannon
December 1447, 1 in the Imperial calendar.

The morning light shone on the mottled walls of Fort Fraser, ringing the alarm bell, dust fell from the towering battlements, and fang-like crossbow arrows were spit out with the sound of footsteps.

The side door of the castle opened, and dozens of cavalrymen with swallowtail flags filed out of the doorway.

The chilly spring wind swept across the stone bridge over the river, fluttering the spider-web-like hexagonal battle flags on the bridge.

By the river outside Fraser Castle, all you can see are colorful headscarves, vests and tattoos all over the body and arms.

At the suggestion and request of Lulos, all the secret parties and their private armies in the northern county who could arrive within three days arrived.

Dozens of secret parties gathered together and there were nearly a thousand people, but most of them were wearing thin robes and vests, revealing their bare knees and ankles, and only wore swords and staffs around their waists.

Some of them even hung a straw cage filled with toads around their waists, and took it out to lick it from time to time. Most of them were lean and even skinny.

Some mages who specialize in combat will be gathered together in advance.

They are strong, wearing iron-faced hoods and leather armor, and carrying jagged swords made of obsidian and hardwood on their backs, ready to cast spells and charge fiercely at any time.

Most of the time, ordinary mercenaries and even armored soldiers would be defeated by this move.

If they are near mountain streams, the battle mages even dare to counterattack the extraordinary knights and can actually cause certain casualties.

However, in a small plain area like Fraser Castle, which has been reclaimed and logged by generations of knights and slaves, the knights can suppress the battle mages with their mobility.

"Fraser Castle... they're not going to cost us our lives again, are they?" A battle mage stood on the hillside, his hands resting on the sunshade, looking towards Fraser Fortress.

Another dark-skinned wizard with a scimitar on his waist smacked his lips and said, "We can't even climb up the six-foot-high wall. At least let me kill one of them."

"Isn't there the Saint Grandson of Qianhe Valley?"

"Holy Grandson..." Several secret party members and battle mages looked at each other and saw complicated expressions on their faces.

On the one hand, they admired this farmer for expelling the Church of the Mille-Valle, killing Prince Condé, and giving the Pope a slap in the face.

But on the other hand, this holy grandson seemed to be a fanatic. Not only did he call himself the Pope, he also created his own sect to expel the devil. This made the secret party members who had always opposed the church and worshiped the devil very confused.

"Even if he is the grandson of the Holy Saint, he is not the biological grandson of the false god, right?" Looking up at the heavily guarded black-clad soldiers on the hillside, a battle mage said with envy and complaints, "Can he ask the false god to bring down a pandemic punishment?"

"I heard there's some new type of catapult? Or a clockwork-driven fireball crossbow?"

"Come on, which fireball crossbow can project three miles?"

"Maybe. Don't they have clockwork guns?"

"I made a clockwork gun myself, but it wasn't that powerful." A member of the secret party raised his head. "It would be embarrassing if we called so many people and it turned out to be ineffective."

As if they remembered something, several small and medium-sized secret party leaders immediately found the troublemaker in the team and threatened: "If Lord Horn's new weapon fails, I will beat any of you who dares to be sarcastic. Do you hear me?"

These secret party leaders are still counting on Horn's relief food. It would be too uncomfortable if they were to hold you back.

He couldn't hear the secret party's discussions. He was standing on the high hillside, listening to Lulos talking about the strategy of Fraser Castle in the past few months.

The Fraser Castle strategy proposed by the Joan Party did not come about after Horne's arrival.

As early as June last year, the Ruan Party began to remove the castle strongholds outside Fraser Castle bit by bit until there was no obstacle between Long Causeway and Fraser Castle.

With the clockwork gun, Juan's party finally had the ability to fight against the knights.

Despite this, the secret party army still hesitated and dared not move forward when seeing the cavalry galloping back and forth on the plain.

They were waiting until a certain saint grandson finished casting the spell.

On the hillside, several high priests of the John Party and several elders of the Shadow Society were watching the engineers busying around and the long, straight and thick black pipe under the canvas.

Is this... an enlarged version of a clockwork gun?

Several high priests and elders looked at each other, all confused. Leonardo took a pen and paper to record the data, while Hemodine nervously directed the artillerymen to install the mainspring into the rear of the barrel.

With a crisp click of the buckle, several artillerymen carefully installed the rack firing rod and gear on the rotating shaft of the clockwork chamber.

The iron ball slid into the iron pipe from the front end, making a dull sound. In the smell of metal and lubricating oil, Hemodine gave Horn a lazy chest-beating military salute: "Installation and loading completed."

"Good!" Standing next to the long pipe, Horn was delighted from the bottom of his heart.

After Leonardo and Hemordine came up with the concept of the clockwork cannon, it took only one month for them to successfully develop the first prototype clockwork siege cannon.

As no expense was spared, this cannon used the lost wax method and cast iron to create the barrel, a 5-meter-long barrel, an 8-centimeter-thick barrel wall, and a carbon steel spring chamber that is about one person tall.

In the mainspring chamber covered with an orichalcum frame is an 8-pound orichalcum mainspring, which even Horn could not turn a few turns.

This giant clockwork cannon is supported by a crank bracket that adjusts the muzzle angle and direction through two gear sets, as well as a two-wheeled gun carriage made of iron rivets and wood.

Unlike the three-pound cannon like the Falcon Cannon, this Griffin siege cannon fires a solid iron ball weighing twelve pounds and is specially designed for castles.

Most castles of this era were tall, straight and thin, or more precisely, thin relative to human strength.

The thickness of the city wall is about the width of two or three people standing shoulder to shoulder. This thickness is thick enough for catapults and manpower, but not enough for siege cannons.

"Astrology completed, angle and position correct!"

"Calibration completed!"

"Your Majesty has ordered that the cannon be moved forward five centimeters!"

"Everything is ready, requesting launch."

"Allowed." After giving the order, Horn pulled several onlookers and the crowd back a few steps to a safe distance.

Although the mainspring housing is made of carbon steel, it is quite dangerous to pull out the tightened mainspring clip pin. If you are not careful, the mainspring may explode.

During previous transportation, a 10-pound roll of wind-up spring broke through a low-quality C-clamp, and the remaining half of the porter's head has not been found to date.

Hooking the pin with a hook, an artilleryman stepped back a few steps and pulled the rope in his hand hard.

Several high priests who were originally dozing off were suddenly startled. Before they opened their eyes, they felt a gust of air blowing towards them, forcing them to squint their eyes.

There was a loud rumbling sound as if a chariot was running across the sky. A gust of wind blew out from the air pressure valve, and several nearby soldiers and secret party members were even blown backwards by the sudden airflow.

Several old wizards from the Ruoan Party, as well as the elders of the Shadow Society and even Lulos all changed their expressions slightly.

The moment the pin was pulled out, the entire Griffin cannon was shaking. The kinetic energy of the rotating spring was transmitted from the central axis to the gears and was instantly converted into kinetic energy for direct shooting by the firing rod.

The heavy iron ball flew out of the muzzle with an afterimage, leaving a trajectory that broke through the air.

Under the dull gaze of the crowd, it landed on the wall of Fraser Castle from a distance of three miles.

"boom--"

Amid the loud explosion, the secret party wizards stood on tiptoe and looked blankly towards Fraser Castle in the distance.

On the bluestone city wall that was more than ten meters high, a cloud of smoke consisting of brick and stone dust and human bodies rose up.

When the spring breeze blew away the diffuse smoke and brought the terrified shouts and cries from the city wall, everyone swallowed involuntarily.

This tall and difficult-to-climb wall was once the nightmare of many secret party members. Over the decades, they launched hundreds of head-on attacks or surprise attacks, but failed to take a single brick from Fraser Castle.

But now, a gap visible to the naked eye appeared on the originally neat and perfect city wall, and broken stones and mud fell obliquely to the ground, among which were even the bodies of two unlucky knights.

"The wall, the wall collapsed?"

(End of this chapter)