Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 285 Silent Thunder

The noble coalition army of Earl Feigen, Lord of Grizzly Castle, was marching towards Jackdaw Town in a mighty force.

Walking at the forefront of the coalition forces were Earl Feigen's family knights and the Inquisition team sent by the church from Jinhui City. Judging from the knights' armor, weapons and warhorses, one could clearly see the difference in strength between the lords they were loyal to.

Without a doubt, the most orderly and imposing army is naturally the family knights under Earl Feigen. The mounts of these knights are all long-maned war horses, which are special products of the Golden City, the capital of Saint Valen. They have stable temperaments and tall bodies, and have great explosive power when running and sprinting. They are a typical breed of war horses, which makes the knights sitting on horseback look more heroic and extraordinary.

The brand new and shiny armor is matched with the exquisite family pattern embroidered on the cloak on the back. The thick armor breastplate on the chest is embossed with a huge and ferocious grizzly bear, as if it is roaring angrily with its mouth open. There is also a dark red gold silk belt tied around the waist, representing that the knight comes from an orthodox family and has undergone professional trials.

There are a total of two hundred such elite knights under the command of Earl Feigen. This is also an elite armed force cultivated and trained by a count's family with a fiefdom over several generations. They are different from the knights raised by those vassal nobles. Every winter in the past, they would rush around the border areas of Earl Feigen's fiefdom, responsible for clearing out the evil orcs who occasionally crossed the Divine Spine Mountains and entered the southern border to plunder, so as to ensure that the lord's fiefdom and property were not lost.

The Earl of Grizzli Castle sent them all on this expedition, hoping that this elite army on the border of Saint Valen could sweep away all enemies in his way with an unmatched momentum and safeguard his lordship and family interests here.

The group of church judges dressed in heavy silver armor and marching silently on warhorses should not be underestimated either. Earl Feigen is not sure how many extraordinary warriors with bloodline talents are hidden in this team of 100 judges, but the knight judge who leads the team, who never speaks, is tall but has an extremely gloomy expression, can be 100% confirmed to be a powerful high-ranking warrior who has experienced hundreds of battles.

Walking behind the knight phalanx was a group of militia and mercenaries numbering about a thousand people. Their equipment was obviously cruder and inferior to that of the elite knights in front. Only a small number of them wore old chain mail and mail that were obviously cobbled together, while the rest were all wearing the cheapest leather armor, and there was a common situation of missing parts. The types of weapons were also extremely complicated, including machetes, spears, flails, and some people even came to join the battle with rusty iron swords.

At the end of the long marching team were the tenant farmers and free farmers who were forcibly conscripted by various noble lords. They had to carry their own rations and drive and drag donkey carts carrying food and combat supplies. They walked on the snow-covered dirt road with one foot deep and one foot shallow, and their speed was extremely slow. The vassal nobles had to send their knights to drive their horses back and forth at any time, and use scolding and whips to encourage them to keep moving forward.

"Your Excellency, the army will soon arrive at Jackdaw Town." Derek, a priest on horseback, tugged on the reins to slow his horse down and slowly approached Earl Fagan, who was walking at the front of the group. "Should we enter the town first to rest for the night and then cross Jackdaw Ridge the next morning, or should we march directly across the mountains at night and catch the enemy off guard?"

Earl Feigen, a sturdy man with black curly hair, chuckled. "Marching through the mountains and forests at night is disadvantageous to us, and it will easily tire the knights and soldiers. There's no need to rush. Let's spend the night in Jackdaw Town. I don't want to sleep in a tent in the snow, only to wake up in the morning with frost frozen over the seams of my armor."

What he didn't say explicitly was that the part of the war that the recruited mercenaries were most looking forward to was probably the small amount of looting they could do in every town the army passed through. After all, they were not like the nobles' domestic knights who received generous military pay.

Although Jackdaw Town was still nominally the fiefdom of Earl Feigen, it did not have any lucrative tax revenue. Moreover, according to the small nobles who had escaped back, the townspeople had been flirting with the wizard lord on the other side of the mountain, and clearly did not take him, the real fiefdom lord, seriously. It was only natural that he should give them a little hardship.

"You said the Mage Lord had fewer than a thousand followers and personal soldiers under his command. Is this information absolutely true?" The High Inquisitor, who had been silent until then, suddenly asked, "Then how did he manage to survive several winters in the northern wilderness with such a small force? Haven't the fel orcs been raiding southward these past few years?"

Earl Feigen coughed awkwardly twice and chuckled, "You've come all the way from Jinhui City and aren't familiar with the local situation. But I know all about those evil orcs. The hundreds of miles of mountains along Jackdaw Ridge are filled with countless valleys and cols that they can disperse southward. With any luck, the frontier territories they're in won't encounter a large number of evil orc tribes."

The church priest nodded in agreement. "Indeed, ever since the demons' offensive against the Evil Moon Mountains slowed, they seem to have redirected a large number of their forces to raid the Evil Orcs' tribal court deep in the icy plains. As a result, they've shifted a large number of their main forces to deal with their old neighbors in the wasteland. The ones wandering around Jackdaw Ridge are likely just a mob of small tribes."

Upon hearing this, Earl Feigen immediately revealed a confident smile, and with a hint of flattery, he warned, "But we can't completely let our guard down. Although His Majesty the Grand Duke and the Church have already wiped out most of the Federation's forces in the country, there are certainly still many who have slipped through the net within the territory of this wizard Harvey, secretly assisting him. To deal with these evil wizards with strange methods, we naturally need you to step forward..."

The High Judge, with a cold and arrogant expression, snorted upon hearing this. Just as he was about to speak, the scout knight sent by the Earl in front suddenly rushed back and rushed to Earl Feigen to report, "Your Excellency, we have discovered that the Mage Lord's private soldiers have gathered outside Jackdaw Town and have built a number of temporary fortifications. We estimate the number of troops to be around 500." "Oh? They didn't hide in the pioneering territory in the northern wilderness and wait for us to come, but chose to take the initiative to attack?" Earl Feigen raised an eyebrow and laughed contemptuously. "That's good. At least it saves us a lot of trouble in crossing mountains and rivers. I hope that Mage Harvey himself is waiting for us in Jackdaw Town right now. That way, I don't have to go to the wilderness to search for him and bring him back after defeating his vassals."

"Inform all knights to assemble in formation, slow down their horses, and wait for the order to charge at any time."

The High Inquisitor said calmly, "We will hide within the knights' charging formation, keeping a constant watch on any possible Union spellcasters. The battle priests will also provide support from the rear to prevent them from sending spellcasters to disrupt our infantry and baggage trains."

As they spoke, the two of them led a team of knight officers to a high slope where they could see Jackdaw Town from afar, and observed the situation of the enemy forces gathered outside the town.

Count Feigen immediately noticed that the enemy team's composition was very strange. None of them wore armor. Instead, everyone wore the same thick cotton clothes of dark black color and soft cotton hats on their heads. The weapons were distributed more comprehensively, and they were all carried on their backs with long handles. They should be some kind of spear-like weapons, and they seemed to be specially designed to deal with knights' charges.

But the enemy's soldiers were crowded together in three or four rows, with no wooden barbed wire chevaux de frise and no trenches dug in advance to trap horses. They only relied on a few earthen walls made of sacks less than one meter high in front of them. Did they expect to resist the charge of their fully armed and heavily armored knights?

With such a thin line of defense, the knights probably wouldn't need to put in any effort, as a concentrated charge would be enough to break through it.

It turned out that he was a spellcaster with no experience in leading troops in battle. He had no common sense at all and dared to cross the mountains and come to him. He really treated war as a child's play.

According to the principles of warfare between nobles, Earl Fagan, as the initiator of the war, should have first sent a servant with a flag to the enemy camp, requesting to meet with the enemy's noble lord, formally declare war on the enemy on behalf of the Earl, and at the same time hand over a document of surrender.

It was just a formality following aristocratic etiquette. Fortunately, the other party was not of true aristocratic origin, which saved Earl Fagan a lot of trouble in superficial work.

The knights of the noble coalition did not assemble very quickly. Small nobles from the rear kept riding their horses to the army and slowly joined the charging phalanx. Earl Feigen frowned and was about to find the vassal nobles to scold them, when he suddenly heard a few low buzzing sounds coming from the enemy positions in the distance. He quickly turned his horse's head and stood up to look, and found that behind the weak defense line of the enemy soldiers, dozens of balls of bright white light flashed by. Before he could react, a series of tragic wails of people and horses suddenly rang in his ears.

The church priest beside him immediately shouted a warning, "Be careful, there are a lot of spellcasters in the enemy army! They... they are using long-range cluster casting! Quickly, disperse the knights and take cover..."

The Knights of the Judgment Army, who were endowed with the power of blood, reacted quickly. They each pulled the reins of their horses and rode into the mountains and forests on both sides of the road, moving stealthily and quickly towards the enemy positions.

Are a large number of spellcasters unleashing magical attacks on their knight phalanx?

Could it be that the other party secretly hid an elite Federation mage regiment in their own wasteland territory?

Earl Feigen felt his head buzzing. "So many spellcasters? How is this possible?"

(End of this chapter)