Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters-Chapter 440 - 64 Small Improvements

Chapter 440: Chapter 64 Small Improvements

The saying goes: Do not disturb a sleeping lion unnecessarily, and do not stir up trouble without reason.

There’s also a proverb: You shouldn’t touch a tiger’s behind.

What Jeska’s troops did last night could no longer be simply described as “touching the behind.”

It was like setting a tiger’s behind on fire, gouging out a large chunk of flesh, and then, before leaving, kicking its balls fiercely.

Atop the watchtower, Winters nonchalantly stuffed steel nails into the leather pouch on his vambrace, casually saying to Bard, “The Herders are quite fiery.”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Bard replied irritably, “Why did you steal their statue?”

...

“It’s not that I wanted to, you weren’t there,” Winters said solemnly. “These guys saw so much gold, their eyes practically glowed green. I said ‘don’t touch it, leave it there.’ They wouldn’t listen!”

Both men watched as over ten thousand Herder Cavalry—clearly the main force of the Terdon Tribe—surrounded the Bridgehead Fortress inside and out, seemingly intending to attack immediately.

With the sacrificial golden statue taken, the Herders were incensed to their core, frantically eager to reclaim it — that was understandable, but they had chosen the wrong place to start a battle.

Although Jesska’s Bridgehead Fortress was small, it was by no means an easy bone to gnaw on.

This earthen and wooden structure was backed against the riverbank, occupying an elevated position.

It was surrounded by open ground, and the small area of woodland that had existed was completely cleared by Winters and his men. The ground was barren, offering no cover whatsoever.

The fortress walls were connected to the wooden bridge crossing the Confluence River, allowing the defenders to advance or retreat at will.

Moreover, the area around the Bridgehead Fortress was narrow, preventing the enemy from deploying in great numbers despite their larger force.

There were originally two hundred-man units stationed here, and after Jeska’s troops had arrived, they continued to remodel and reinforce the existing fortifications.

Their prep time far exceeded that of Sekler’s forces, so what stood before the Herders wasn’t the sort of rudimentary defense characterized by low walls and shallow trenches found at Sekler’s camp.

Instead, there were trenches over two meters deep and wide, continuous anti-cavalry stakes, four large and one small bastions, and a double-layered defensive wall arranged at varying heights.

Though it couldn’t compare with those intricately designed, costly star forts that strike fear just by looking at them, breaching this defensive system would still cost the Herders hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

The horns sounded, and the distant Herder Cavalry stirred noisily before beginning their advance towards the fortress walls.

“They dare to come?” Winters inhaled sharply in surprise, “Aren’t they afraid to die?”

Bard glared at Winters, jumped down from the watchtower, and headed towards the southwest bastion he was responsible for.

When Alaric who spoke fluent Common attacked The Styx camp, he at least brought dozens of mantlets for cover.

The Terdon Tribe Cavalry in front of them now didn’t even have a few shields to speak of, let alone mantlets, yet they dared to attack so boldly, something Winters found hard to understand.

An idea suddenly struck him, “The Herders couldn’t possibly… be confused about who is the egg and who is the stone, could they?”

Atop the northeast bastion, Mason stared unblinkingly at several red sandstone blocks piled up 750 meters away.

As soon as the stones became submerged behind the wall of Herder troops, Mason bellowed, “Fire!”

The five six-pounder cannons fired in succession, the solid iron balls accurately flying into the crowd, piercing through bodies, and plowing five deep grooves of blood.

Clearly, the Herders hadn’t expected the defenders to have cannons. To project power, they had advanced in tight formations at a slow pace.

But the open ground around them had been marked by Mason, leaving practically no chance for the shots to miss such dense formations.

Yet after only five limited casualty-causing volleys, the Herder forces were already trembling. Not so much because of the casualties, but because they couldn’t bear the psychological pressure of being helplessly bombarded.

Finally, someone’s patience broke. A horse charged, and all the Herders followed in a frenzied dash.

The formation of the Terdon Tribe’s forces was shattered just like that.

As the Herders came within five hundred meters, two twelve-pounder cannons waiting in ambush roared like thunder.

The cannonballs rampaged through the crowd, bouncing upon impact with the ground, mercilessly reaping lives as they went.

“Good shooting!” Mason’s frustration vanished, thrilled with the effect of the shelling.

Leading the way or whatever… What’s more interesting than a cannon? The Lieutenant ordered his men with renewed vigor, “Switch to canister shot!”

Hearing the order, a bunch of “cannoneers” started scrambling to load grape shots wrapped in netting and paper bags.

The cannons which Colonel Robert had desired but lacked, Colonel Jeska not only had… but he had seven of them.

Mason, a Lieutenant dreaming of returning to his artillery roots, would’ve loved to give Bianli City’s cannons a thorough workout. With Jeska’s go-ahead, he immediately took under his command the best five light, long-range cannons and the two twelve-pounder cannons.

The former weighed only half a ton each, but with a bore diameter over thirty, their range was outstanding. The latter weighed approximately a ton and had a smaller bore, but their advantage was in firing twelve-pound shots.

The gunpowder for shooting had been weighed and prepackaged by Mason; the angles for firing had also been personally determined by him.

The other so-called “cannoneers” were complete novices, only responsible for firing, repositioning, cleaning the barrel, reloading, and firing again.

During the defense of The Styx camp, Mason had already trained several novice cannoneers. Now, using the old ones as a core and supplementing with new ones, he had significantly expanded his artillery crew.

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This was how an academy-trained artillery officer, who had been idly tending pigs for years, led a few dozen rough-and-ready novices using Herder cannons to kill Herders—with cannonballs that were scavenged from the Herders themselves.

The cruel tapestry of the battlefield was oddly tinted with shades of magical realism.

However, Winters didn’t have time to ponder the absurdity of the situation; he was waiting for the Herders to come within fifty paces.