Chapter 440 — This Is a War
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
The knights raised their warding shields and at once invoked the knightly art of "Armor of Glory." A metallic sheen surfaced upon their plate, and the same film of protection floated up around the outside of the magic vortex that wrapped the whole charging array.
The sky had turned overcast at some point; under that leaden light the company galloped across the open field, the "Calibrator beam" lit the heavens above the battlefield, and a hundred-odd pale blue streaks of shellfire came down like a meteor shower, bursting upon their ranks.
The elite knightly order of Boulder Fortress was not the same thing as that rabble Count Horsman had summoned up.
They were the finest force in the realm after the Eastern Legion.
Nor were they the same as those knights on Gravel Ridge — careless, unguarded, scattered about.
The combined battle-array they formed was solid as a city wall.
But a wall — even a wall in full charge — is, in the end, a thing of the last age.
Deafening explosions came from every direction; the terrible "Skyfire" tore at the magic vortex around the knights. Sir Marchi saw the earth burst apart on all sides, vast quantities of stone and soil flung up, and the rising dust filled with flickers of arcane energy. The perfect vortex was ripped open; a number of the low-ranked knights at the rear of the column vanished in the towering detonation almost before they could react at all.
Now, at last, Sir Marchi knew how much force those "Skyfire" strikes hurled against Boulder Fortress's magic barrier.
The magic barrier must not be allowed to fall! Once the walls of Boulder Fortress stood directly exposed to such weapons, they could never hold out until the barrier came back up.
Thinking so, he could not help quickening his pace, and the knights who had followed him for years began at once to accelerate with him — though their heads rang from the blast, men raised under harsh discipline since childhood, tempered in the most perilous corners of the kingdom before being posted to Boulder Fortress, could still hold on in conditions like these.
The second attack came swiftly, and this time it was more accurate than the last, and more deadly.
It came from the second height the Cecil men had raised.
No wonder they had built a second height... It was never for drawing water. Its purpose was to cover the warships on the Whitewater River —
Beneath his visor, Sir Marchi's face was like still water.
Efficient command, iron discipline, individual quality that crushed ordinary noble levies outright, and then the tactics of covering an advance with long-range weapons, the infiltration of Boulder Fortress, spies, intelligence, assassination, sabotage...
This was how the Cecil men fought — or rather, this was how that "Gaoyang Cecil" fought.
By comparison, the "cleverest" stratagem he had heard in the military hall of Boulder Fortress was nothing more than poisoning the Whitewater River...
A thought flashed suddenly through Sir Marchi's mind: Boulder Fortress had perhaps fallen long ago — fallen the moment those southerners entered its gates.
He was merely preserving, now, the last shred of dignity owed to his family's name.
On Height Two, Philip stood watching from afar the vortex of magic coiling up over the plain.
It had thinned and dimmed by at least half, yet it still held its basic charging posture; to a "country knight" of rural birth, that vortex stood for something very near the "chivalric spirit" that existed only in books.
And yet he had no choice but to keep ordering the guns to fire, to smash that vortex apart bit by bit — for no order to cease fire had come down, and the two Calibrator rainbow-light cannons on the Whitewater River still required the support of Height Two.
He estimated the column's charging speed, worked out the rough lead and the firing angle required, and then gave the order for the third bombardment.