Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

After a night of fierce fighting, the corridors near each gun position on the western side were now littered with bodies, both Venetian and Tanilian.

If the Venetians hadn't taken the unused gunpowder back to camp every day, last night's losses would have been even more severe.

When daylight came, the Venetians began cleaning up the battlefield and gathering the bodies of their comrades.

Winters and Taylor, having hastily tended to their wounds, immediately returned to the West-Four gun array.

A ghastly wound adorned the brow of Winters, held together by black stitches. If the injury had been two inches lower, Winters certainly would have lost his right eye.

Taylor's sword wound was at the top of his head; he had to shave his hair completely off to sew it up.

However, they were the fortunate ones, for they were still alive.

Buba lay before them, his body already stiff. His eyes, already dilated, stared emptily at the sky, his mouth was wide open as if he were still shouting.

Almost his entire right side of the neck was blown apart by a musket ball from a heavy firearm that killed him. Aside from this fatal gunshot wound, his body had a dozen other wounds, large and small.

He fought with his injuries until a musket ball took his life.

In the last moments of his life, Buba still clenched his halberd tightly. So tightly, in fact, that Taylor couldn't separate his hand from the halberd.

Winters stood silently behind Taylor, his last memory being of many enemies charging at him, and suddenly, it was as if someone had struck him on the head with a war hammer, blood blurring his vision. Buba roared as he swung his halberd to block the foes, while Taylor and Weck dragged him further and further away from Buba.

Winters couldn't recall what happened after that; the blow to his head nearly caused him to faint, clouding his consciousness.

During the melee at the artillery positions, Tanilian marksmen quickly took notice of the Venetian officer charging in the forefront.

Three crossbows swiftly aimed at Winters; two of the marksmen missed, but the third one struck true.

A short, thick iron crossbow bolt hit Winters squarely in the face, knocking him to the ground.

Had he not been wearing a helmet, Winters would have been killed on the spot.

Even Taylor and his men thought Lieutenant Montaigne was shot dead until they brought back the "body" and found that the lieutenant was still breathing. The crossbow bolt had pierced the helmet but failed to penetrate further.

In the chaos, the few soldiers still alive fought desperately to protect the semi-conscious Winters, and Buba was killed during this struggle.

Had Buba not covered their retreat and held back the Tanilian soldiers, Taylor and Weck would have had no chance to drag Winters away.

"So he died like that," Winters thought sadly, "Before dying, he only ate half a loaf of white bread, drank a little beef soup. He said that eating white bread made him happy, and then he just died."

To die for one's country is glorious and grand, and perhaps that's how the messengers would tell Buba's parents. But Winters knew that Buba didn't die for Venice; he died due to the inflated ambitions of a handful of ambitious men.

Those people brought him from his hometown to this island with a piece of coarse bread, and then they let him die here.

"He wasn't even twenty years old, he only ate white bread once..."

"Isn't this what you wanted?" Old Taylor closed Buba's eyes with trembling hands, "You gave Buba white bread, gave him meat, isn't it for this? Isn't it for him to fight to the death?"

Winters didn't answer.

"Isn't it?" Taylor, suddenly impassioned, turned around, grabbed Winters by the arm, and angrily confronted him, "Is it or isn't it?"

"No."

Old Taylor seemed to age a decade in an instant; the anger faded, leaving only a profound emptiness. He murmured, "Then Buba didn't die in vain... didn't die in vain..."

Winters was silent for a long time before he said in a low voice, "No, he did die in vain. If it weren't for the ambition of certain people, he didn't have to die, Dan didn't have to die, many people didn't have to die. We wouldn't have to be here, fighting the Tanilians with our lives."

"I've been on the military grain since the Emperor was still around. Over forty years have passed, and I've long seen through it. The lives of common soldiers are the cheapest thing in this world. Buba's life, my life, all are insignificant to those big shots," said Old Taylor as he carefully tidied up Buba's appearance, his back to Winters, "Common soldiers aren't afraid of death; they just fear dying pointlessly. Buba didn't die for those high-ups; he died for you, because he was fighting with those bastards from Tanilia. If you're not using him, then his death was worth something..."

Taylor covered Buba's neck wound with his collar, stood up, and looking into Winters' eyes, he said earnestly, word by word, "Lieutenant Montaigne, you possess a kind of magic... a kind that makes common soldiers willingly embrace death. Before you, I had only seen such skill in one person, and that was Ned Smith. Please don't abuse this magic; remember the kindness in your heart now, and when you become one of those big shots, don't let us die in vain again."

...

...

The Tanilians launched a night raid on three of the eight artillery positions, nailing down two and a half sets of cannons.

The cannons of the West-Two and West-Three gun arrays were completely spiked, and all the sentry officers and guards were killed in action. Thanks to Winters' counterattack, most of the heavy artillery positioned further back at the West-Four array were preserved.

After the reinforcements arrived from the rear, they swiftly repelled the attackers at the West-4 artillery position, and some twenty-odd Tanilian soldiers who hadn't escaped were all captured.

The eeriest aspect of this raid was that sentries at the other two positions failed to raise any alarm.

A post-battle investigation proved that the sentries indeed put up a fierce resistance; however, no sounds from those two positions were heard by anyone. This was true for Montaigne's squad at the West-4 position and Sokolu's squad at the West-1 position.

Rumors spread throughout the camp, with soldiers whispering among themselves that the townsfolk had sacrificed six children to the devil in exchange for some sort of dark magic, which allowed them to silently kill in the night.

Upon hearing this, Layton flew into a rage, and an infuriated Rost Layton personally took to torturing the captured prisoners.

The captives claimed that they hadn't launched their attack from the city gates. A sailor had a stroke of genius and adapted the pulley system used for launching lifeboats from large warships for the city walls; they built a temporary lift with pulleys and planks to quietly lower the soldiers down from the West side of the wall.

According to the captives, their first sneak attack was on the West-3 artillery unit, and as they prepared to attack the West-2 position, the West-4 unit rang the alarm bell.

Captain Hernan, who led the night raid, decided to risk splitting his men in half to attack the West-4 unit in a bid to destroy one more artillery unit while he led the assault on the West-2 unit.

However, no matter how much Layton tortured the captured Tanilia soldiers, they couldn't explain how exactly they managed to assault the Venetian positions without making a sound.

On the night of the raid, not only could the Venetians hear nothing, but the Tanilia attackers themselves heard nothing either. Footsteps, battle cries, the clash of weapons – all were silent.

In hand-to-hand combat, cries of agony and battle shouts are usually all one hears, but this time they could only see mouths opening without hearing any sound.

All the prisoners claimed that during the night raid they could only hear the sound of their own voices, which sounded as if they were talking with their ears covered.

According to the captives, Captain Hernan possessed a form of black witchcraft. Whenever he wished, he could take away the hearing of others within tens of meters around him.

Only one captive remembered that there was a masked guard beside Captain Hernan, who did not engage in the fighting. But since he was a close guard, nobody thought it was strange.

However, this captive had always been under Hernan's command, and before tonight, he had never seen this mysterious masked guard by Hernan's side, nor had he heard about Hernan possessing any black magic.

Beyond that, they could extract no valuable intelligence.

With the inexplicable loss of two officers, over sixty soldiers, and twenty-eight cannons, a furious Rost Layton disregarded the advice of other officers and swore to execute all the prisoners in the most brutal way possible in front of the defending troops.

But when Layton decided to act ruthlessly, no one could stop him.

The Tanilia soldiers on the city walls watched with trepidation as the Venetians made preparations for the execution: soldiers carried dozens of two-meter-long logs to the front of the position, and carpenters began to sharpen the wood.

The Tanilia prisoners, many of whom had been tortured to the brink of death, were brought in front of the city walls with shackles.

After the captives were pinned to the ground, they immediately realized their grim fate, pleading, screaming, praying, yet the executioners remained unmoved.

The executioners drove the sharpened stakes into the [anus] of the captives who were held down, eliciting screams that could give even the bravest man nightmares.

Another executioner behind the captive raised a heavy mallet with both hands, striking down with all his might, hammering the stake deep into the body.

Immediate death was a form of relief for those captives; those who did not die immediately suffered even worse torment.

Afterward, the executioners raised the poles, embedding them into the ground in front of the city wall. Under the victims' own weight, the stakes continued to bury themselves deeper into the bodies.

The victims died quickly, but the stakes kept rising until the sharp end emerged from the captives' mouths or necks, skewering their bodies on top.

Some twenty-odd stakes were arranged in a row like that, with the captives dying miserably under the watchful eyes of the defenders.

Witnessing such a hellish, brutal scene, even the most desensitized person would shudder.

Not only did the Tanilia soldiers on the walls endure tremendous psychological torture, even the Venetian troops were shocked.

The chaplain accompanying the army, Leonard, spoke out bluntly to Layton: "General Layton, you are going to hell!"

"Hmph, as long as William Kidd goes down first," Layton dismissed the clergyman's disdain with indifference.

Even Andre, who lacked any empathy, couldn't bear to witness the spectacle and whispered to Winters, "General Layton has gone too far with this; to kill is to kill, but why in such a manner..."

Winters responded expressionlessly, "No, Layton didn't 'kill' them, he 'executed' them. This isn't aimless cruelty, it's a bloody spectacle."

"By doing this... you'll only make the Tanilia men on the walls fight even more tenaciously..." Antonio sighed.

"Perhaps so," Layton said nonchalantly. "But I've also branded fear into their souls." Find adventures on My Virtual Library Empire

In the song of crows, war was spiraling helplessly towards a direction of greater savagery, brutality, and bloodshed.