Chapter 395 — The Northern Rout

The great accelerated guns thundering on and on, the orderly commands and their execution, the low booming of explosions that kept coming from somewhere impossibly far away — war, it was utterly unlike the form they knew.

This was not the "battle" of knights and warriors fighting man to man; it was rather like some machine in operation... like the mechanical clocks those ingenious craftsmen built.

The Cecil legion pressed the switches with precision, the guns fired with precision, the enemy died with precision; the machine ran, and produced its result.

Only at this moment did Margarita and her knight companions realize why the lord had no need of the Second Legion and the Kant Knight Order on the battlefield... For them, who had not yet even grown skilled with the ray gun, entering a battlefield like this would mean nothing but getting in the way.

But just as the Kant knights were sinking into shock and self-doubt, Philip came among them.

"Knights, you wanted to join the fighting — well, your orders have come down."

Wald Perich looked at Philip in confusion: "Us? Isn't the battle already over?"

"Who ever said the war ends when the enemy retreats?" Philip laughed. "Before we set out, the lord said one thing to me: the enemy has the right to open fire, but when the firing stops is for us to decide. Count Horsman sent his challenge to Cecil; now Cecil will answer it in its own way... Knights, form up your men. With the First Legion, you will pursue the invading enemy."

Though he kept feeling that something in those words did not quite add up, the Kant knights, finally given their chance to show what they could do, were in no mood to quibble over details — a chance for a few thousand men to chase tens of thousands did not come along often.

They at once ran off excitedly to muster their troops and prepare to lead them out.

And while the vast allied army of fifty thousand collapsed in an instant in the Brokenstone Ridge region and began to stage the farce of a grand flight, another great host, gathered at Count Horsman's call, still knew nothing of the terrible fate that had befallen their brothers in the north.

The squat, stout Count Franin Pebo stood on the prow of his ship, letting the cool river wind blow away the haze and dizziness left by last night's drinking. He looked at the war vessels great and small upon the river nearby, and reflected that twenty thousand men were advancing to the front under his command, and could not help feeling a surge of high spirits.

Count Pebo was not a man of great prestige in the Southern Frontier, but his family had been established on this land for ages; indeed, as far back as the age of Cecil, the ancestors of the Pebos had been landed nobles here. In the great upheaval a hundred years ago, the Pebo family had preserved its title and fief by choosing the right side in time; though it had inevitably been caught up somewhat in the Cecil affair, and its prestige and influence were far diminished, at least the name of Pebo was still a count's name.

Franin Pebo's lifelong vision had been to restore the family's glory, to make the name of Pebo once more a voice to be reckoned with in the Southern Frontier, to win an influence befitting its count's rank.

Now he felt his chance had come.

When Count Horsman promoted the "Magic Net," he had supported it with all his strength, contributing money, labor, and men to help Karlov Horsman extend the Net across the Southern Frontier; when Count Horsman called for the raising of troops, he was the first to answer, and he brought out every riverboat his family had accumulated over generations to serve as "war vessels." Events had proved all these investments worthwhile.

At last he had his twenty thousand men; at last he had the chance to lead an allied army as a count and seize renown.

If only he could open the road from the Whitewater River to the Cecil domain, and secure the safety of the Whitewater's banks before Count Horsman's great army came south, he could make the name of Pebo ring out again across the Southern Frontier.

(Life is nothing but grind — you just have to keep at it!)