Chapter 442 — The Battle Ends
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
Ropeni Gran fell into thought for a moment, while Suojilin suddenly raised his head, gazing at the inner-city street shrouded in smoke and dust, his hand already resting on the string of his short bow.
Around them, the Steel Rangers also raised their arms, disengaging the safeties on their thermal ray guns and shields, while the heavy gunners shouldered their man-portable rail launchers and aimed them at the end of the street.
A band of knights and soldiers, looking thoroughly bedraggled amid the smoke and flames, appeared there.
Ropeni lifted her head and saw that the officer leading them was none other than the guard knight Sir Marchi trusted most.
The guard knight saw the Viscountess Ropeni across the way as well, and at the same time saw the black-armored warriors behind her—those strange-armored, silent, orderly figures. Arcane power crawled across their bodies, and their equipment was exquisite; these could not possibly be men of Fortress Stonehold. Their very presence was proof enough that what Sir Marchi had said before departing was true.
Finding Ropeni Gran and the "sabotage crew" she had brought into the city had not been difficult, for the group stood openly in the plaza of the northern district. What had cost him too much time was gathering, amid the chaos, a body of soldiers who could at least hear orders and had the nerve to fight: great numbers had already died on the southern wall and at the watchtowers and arrow towers throughout the city, and the rest were in utter confusion, with scarcely anyone still obeying commands. The hundred-odd men around the guard knight were nearly all the able hands left in the fortress.
When he saw the two bodies at Ropeni's feet, the guard knight realized that the viscountess had likely already finished what she came to do.
The two corpses wore the garb of servants and stable hands, yet their faces were all too familiar.
The guard knight did not know why Ropeni had gone out of her way to kill these two southern nobles, but at the very least he had to fulfill the mission Sir Marchi had entrusted to him—
The fortress could no longer be held. The southern wall was collapsing, and those two beams of energy were still sweeping every high point in the city. Before the Cecilians broke in, every defensive asset of this fortress had already been paralyzed. But at the very least, he would keep Ropeni Gran here.
Yet before these soldiers could launch their meaningless assault, Suojilin spoke first, his voice carrying through the smoke-wreathed street: "The battle is over, soldiers of Fortress Stonehold—the walls have fallen. There is no need to keep fighting."
The guard knight drew his sword from his belt in silence. "I have my orders."
"It is rare in this age to see a knight like you," Suojilin said, frowning at the guard knight. Though the soldiers and other knights the man had brought clearly showed signs of wavering and flinching at the words "the walls have fallen," the knight's own resolve remained firm, and Suojilin could not help but sigh. "If those southern nobles had your courage and conviction... ah, then they would probably all have died on Brokenstone Ridge."
The guard knight seemed not to hear. He only continued forward in silence, one step.
Yet at that very moment, the air beside him twisted suddenly, and then a bizarre, hammer-shaped object materialized out of thin air. The magic runes on the hammer's head flashed, a special spring-loaded mechanism snapped violently outward, and it struck the guard knight hard on the head—he had in fact reacted a moment too late, but the attacker's stealth was simply too great; by the time he reacted, there was no evading it. One blow, and the honorable knight was sent flying, unconscious before he even hit the ground.
The knights and soldiers guarding him did not even register what had happened.