I was a knight in the Middle Ages

Chapter 477: The Hague is destroyed, the last dawn

"Captain! We have to break out! If we don't leave now, we will have no chance!" Seeing Stanford staring at the tank in a daze, Hals was so anxious that he slapped him on the shoulder armor.

"Break, break through! Charge--" Stanford woke up suddenly, and when his sword was unsheathed, a string of sparks came up, but he waved it wildly at the iron wall chariot that was slowly approaching in front of him.

The wooden deck of the chariot was nailed with spikes, and the wheels wrapped in iron sheets rolled over the gravel. The squeaking sound was mixed with the clicking sound of the gears, like a monster with iron teeth.

"Captain! We can't charge head-on with the chariots!" Hals grabbed his horse's reins and pointed to the rear. "There's less dust behind us, and the enemy formation hasn't closed up yet. Let's fight our way out from there!"

"Okay, okay! Turn around!" Stanford watched the crossbow on the chariot slowly raise its muzzle, swallowed his saliva with his Adam's apple rolling, and pulled the reins violently.

The formation of 5,000 knights suddenly fell into chaos - the heavy armored cavalry in front had to adjust their harnesses to turn around, their lances collided with each other when they turned, their iron hooves crushed the wild flowers on the roadside, and screams mixed with the neighing of war horses rose one after another.

Time was stretched out in the panic.

When the first row of knights finally turned their horses around, the dust behind them suddenly changed color.

The black horses of the Imperial Light Cavalry had already stepped over the last dirt slope. Their iron spears gleamed coldly in the sunlight, like a gate knife about to fall.

At the same time, the violent cavalry phalanxes on the left and right sides also began to squeeze together, and their spears were close together like a forest, forming an impenetrable iron wall.

"Oh no... they have planned this out!" Hals saw the chariot in front of him suddenly accelerate. The soldiers on the deck pulled back the oilcloth, revealing a pile of Greek fire pots underneath - that was not a chariot for charging at all, but a moving wall of fire that blocked the retreat!

The array of 5,000 knights was now like a tangled ball of hemp rope. Some were still turning around, some were stabbing with their guns, and some were trying to rush to the seemingly "weak" rear, but they ran head-on into the baptism of Quintiles' violent knights.

When the first scream rang out, Stanford saw his horse's front hoof being hit by a sickle, and he was thrown into the dust, with his helmet rolling far away.

He could clearly see the moment when the chariot's crossbow was fired - the stone bullet smashed into the crowd with a sound of breaking through the air, and blood mist mixed with armor pieces splashed and fell into his widened pupils.

"No... Impossible..." Stanford lay on the gravel, feeling the dull pain of his armor being trampled by the warhorse, and suddenly remembered the glass of wine that Philos handed him before departure - it turned out that it was not a farewell, but a farewell.

The shouts of the Imperial Knights faded into a buzzing sound in his ears. Looking at his surrounded subordinates, he finally realized that the "breakout from the rear" was just an illusion left to them by the enemy.

Just like the seemingly friendly alliance flag outside the Constanta Palace, it was a net waiting for them to fall into from the very beginning.

As the oil fire exploded behind the chariot, Stanford saw Hals crawling toward him with the broken sword raised, the cloth under his armor sparking.

Stanford wanted to reach out and pull it, but found that his fingertips had already been cut by the gravel, and blood dripped onto the golden lion emblem of the Imperial Knight, like a flower blooming in the wrong place.

At the last moment when the encirclement was closed, the smell of sea salt wafted in the wind - that was the scent of the Maritime Alliance that they brought from the naval battle, but now it was mixed with the smell of rust and burnt things, and it remained forever on this wasteland outside the Constanta Palace.

"I surrender! We surrender!" When Stanford was trampled into a pulp by the warhorse, adjutant Hals was the first to drop his weapon and kneel down to surrender.

Seeing this, the surviving knights also laid down their weapons - once the door to surrender was opened, they would have no way to retreat.

In this battle, more than thirty knights under Alpha's command died, but nearly four thousand cavalrymen were successfully captured.

Most of these victims were trampled to death by war horses in the chaos. Their deaths were horrific. After all, the defeated captives were like a flood and beast that could not be stopped at all.

At five o'clock that evening, Alpha personally led Quintiles' two thousand violent knights, accompanied by three thousand newly surrendered Hague knights, and rushed to the mining city overnight.

The remaining captives were handed over to Da Gama for collection and reorganization - after taking away three thousand strong men, the remaining remnants could no longer cause any trouble.

The pressure at this moment was all on Alpha's shoulders: among these 5,000 knights, there were less than 1,000 original members of the Knights of Fury, and the rest were newly surrendered soldiers.

Alpha's journey was a desperate one, and he could only hope that the two thousand imperial knights who would meet him along the way would be able to deter external enemies and suppress possible internal disturbances.

Late at night, Yassi was shrouded in thick darkness, and the sound of horse hooves of five thousand troops crushed the silence of the Gobi Desert.

Finally, they met up with the two thousand imperial knights sent by General Kuslers at the wall of Iasi.

When the metal gauntlets touched, the friction sound of the armor was mixed with the panting of a long journey, and the dark red cloak fluttered in the night wind, like two flames that were about to merge but kept a distance.

Scouts reported that the outline of the mining city was looming on the horizon more than a hundred kilometers away.

But Alpha's hand holding the reins did not wave the flag of advance.

He looked at the intertwined campfires in the camp:

The silver-patterned armor of the Imperial Knights shone coldly in the darkness—these elite troops from the Central Powers had a mission of merely "supporting and cheering" rather than "fighting shoulder to shoulder";

Among the five thousand men under his command, three thousand of them were Knights of the Hague, their belts still tied with the blue ribbons of their former master, their riding boots stained with lingering seaside salt, and their eyes were filled with resistance to the unfamiliar desert.

In comparison, the two thousand silent mutant knights made him feel more at ease.

These warriors transformed by the potion were crouching on the west side of the camp, with a faint blue fluorescence under their skin and their ears standing up like animals, but they knelt on one knee simultaneously when Alpha passed by.

Their loyalty does not come from bloodline or oaths, but from obedience engraved in their genes, but all this is just comparison.

While the Hague Knights were still whispering, the mutant knights' horses had already been fed with night grass in advance, and their horseshoes were wrapped in thick cloth, so that even the chewing sounds were suppressed to almost silence.

"Set up camp tonight and set off tomorrow morning." Alpha's order was announced along with the horn.

The soldiers unloaded their heavy bags. Some of them sat down on the gravel to wipe their weapons, while others drank muddy water from leather bags.

Alpha looked at the tents rising and falling under the starry sky and tapped the hilt of his sword with his fingertips.

It's not fatigue, but waiting, waiting for the night to get deeper, waiting for the Hague Knights' vigilance to relax as they become sleepy, waiting for the mutant knights' secret sentries to spread all around the camp.

At dawn tomorrow, when the first ray of morning light climbs onto the tip of the spear, this divided army will embark on its final journey.

But at this moment, Alpha needs the night as a bandage, so that the five thousand tired souls can temporarily forget their own calculations in the sand of the Gobi Desert.

After all, before arriving at the mining city, they still need each other's shadows to support the sword that is about to be swung at the enemy in the darkness before dawn.

……

The smell of damp gunpowder mixed with the smell of rust penetrated her nostrils. Lina shrank back, pinching the bloody arrowhead. The torch on the stone wall made her pale face flicker.

Explosions were heard in the distance from the direction of the East City, causing the wall dust above to fall into the gaps in the armor - that was the enemy's catapult bombarding the last defense tower.

Lina looked at the figures moving back and forth in the trenches. Captain Makina's leather armor had long been soaked with sweat. The Alpha Knights' emblem on the shoulder armor was crooked, but still gleamed faintly in the firelight.

"Captain Makina..." Lina's voice trembled under the whistling rain of arrows, "Do you think Lord Alpha is really..."

Before she could finish her words, she was interrupted by a cough, and a fishy-sweet taste rose in her throat - three days ago, Lina inhaled too much gunpowder in the street fighting in South City.

Makina wiped the blood off the hilt of his sword and looked up towards the city lord's mansion shrouded in thick smoke.

In the former core area, only three arrow towers are still resisting. The military flag of the South City has been cut down long ago. The enemy's black flag is flying in the ruins of the East City. The sound of fighting in the West City is getting closer and closer. The moat of the North City has dried up, revealing corpses lying in the riverbed.

"No." Phyllis suddenly grabbed Lina's wrist and held Lina's hand tightly. "When the master saved us, I knew that the master would not give up any of us."

The sound of shovels scraping soil came from the broken city wall. Phyllis, wearing a gray civilian robe, was staggering towards them with a box of arrows in her arms. The smell of herbs from the infirmary was still on her cuffs.

This clerk, who once couldn't even hold a sword steady, now had a dagger picked up from a corpse tucked into his waist. He didn't even bother to tie his loose hairband, and the wound on his forehead was still bleeding. "Before the city fell, I had just finished sorting out the last batch of armaments lists..."

Phyllis suddenly laughed, her laughter filled with the madness of a desperate struggle. "Our supplies can still hold out. Now we just need to hold on—hold on until Alpha breaks through the encirclement."

"But we only have 3,000 people left!" Lina suddenly roared, pointing her finger at the enemy phalanx that was charging in the distance.

"Yesterday, we were still able to rotate defenses in the West City, but today, even the cooks are picking up spears! Captain Makina, look, the breach in the North City has been breached three times, and those new recruits can't even hold up their shields..."

Lina's voice gradually became hoarse, and she suddenly remembered what Alpha said at the oath-taking ceremony a few years ago: "Follow me, you may die, but at least when you die, your names will be engraved on my military flag."

Phyllis suddenly grabbed Lina's hand and pressed it against her chest. Through the chain mail, she could feel a piece of uneven metal. "Do you know why adults always say 'a city exists as long as its people live'?"

Phyllis looked at the gradually whitening sky. A hint of golden red could be seen faintly in the eastern clouds. "Because this city is not built of stone, it is built by us, the people he pulled out of the mud. I was once a commodity to be sold in the slave market, and you were once a prisoner of bandits..."

Phyllis suddenly pulled off the leather rope around her neck, revealing the brand below her collarbone - that was the shameful mark left by her former master with a branding iron, now half covered by the silver medal bestowed by Alpha himself.

"Our lives are no longer our own. It is the adults who gave us new bones and new blood, so that we can stand up straight and say, 'I am Alpha'." Phyllis would rather die on the battlefield than become the prey of the abyss of hell again.

Suddenly, a deafening horn sounded outside the trench, but the sound was intermittent. There were fewer and fewer soldiers in and outside the city, and all of them died on the battlefield.

Phyllis stumbled to her feet and saw an almost paranoid light in Makina's eyes: "Did you hear that? This is the third horn sound. This is the horn sound that means we haven't given up yet."

Phyllis suddenly thrust her sword into Lina's hand. The hilt still clung to her body warmth. "I'm going to the North City and telling those new recruits that Alpha's flag has never fallen. Even if there's only one man left, the enemy must step on our corpses before they can reach the steps of the Mechanical City."

Lina stepped back with her sword in hand, her boot sole running over a bloody badge - it belonged to the young scout who had died in battle yesterday.

The golden red in the distance became brighter and brighter, I couldn't tell if it was the morning glow or the burning arrow tower.

Lina suddenly remembered what Alpha said when he pinned her epaulettes on her on the day she enlisted: "It's normal to be afraid of death, but don't be afraid to die for something worthwhile."

At this moment, the hilt of the sword in her palm was burning hot, and the shouts of "The city is here as long as we have people" coming from the trenches made her feel more at ease than any armor.

Perhaps the Lord is really on the way. Perhaps in the next moment, the morning glow will tear through the smoke and illuminate those mutant knights with faint blue fluorescence, who are following Alpha's black horse and crushing the enemy's defense line.

All Lina has to do now is to hold the sword tightly in her hand and live long enough to see the morning glow - even if it's just for one more glance.

"The enemy is here again, and this time they are determined to crush us - prepare for battle!" Makina stared at the black crowd rushing towards the horizon, and tightened his palm with his knuckles white as he clenched the carved handle of the magic spear.

The gun barrel glowed faintly blue in the night wind, and the swaying figure in the sight made his pupils shrink suddenly.

Lina's fingertips were still shaking as they brushed against the trigger guard. Looking at the monsters that had been knocked over by ordinary bullets but had gotten back up, she let out a suppressed curse, "It's these cyborgs and mutants again... They're simply indestructible cockroaches."

Lina had seen too many of her comrades torn to pieces by the mutants' claws—those guys were as fast as lightning, their skin was tough enough to repel ordinary arrows, but the beating core of their chests was hidden between their ribs, like a piece of glowing rotten meat.

"Aim the large-caliber magic guns at the mutants! Switch to heavy weapons for the cyborgs!" Makina was certainly aware of the dilemma at hand.

Although the mutants are agile, as long as you seize the opportunity to advance and aim at their core, the energy bullets of ordinary magic guns are enough to destroy their weak points;

Unlike the cyborgs, those "mobile fortresses" wrapped in alloy exoskeletons cannot even be scratched off by ordinary attacks.

The heavy magic spear, which can only be controlled by an intermediate knight, relies on kinetic energy vibrations to destroy the internal mechanical structure - but at this moment, the number of knights in the mining city who can carry a heavy spear can be counted on ten fingers.

"Captain! There are only nine heavy gunners left!" Phyllis pulled open the communicator on her collar, her hoarse voice mixed with the sound of explosions in the distance.

"Each heavy bullet is made from fragments of magic crystal. Our stockpile..." Phyllis was swallowed up by a violent explosion before she could finish her words.

Phyllis, the administrator who usually wore a neat uniform, clutched her blood-stained sleeve.

What he had on his waist at this moment was not a pen but a pistol, and his arm was still stained with the powder he had applied when he bandaged the wounded last night.

Makina suddenly turned the gun around, and the red light of the magic gun swept across the mutants running wildly in the front row: "The mutants belong to the magic gun team, and the cyborgs are left to the heavy gunners - be frugal!"

Makina knew that the staggering steps of the cyborgs made them easy targets for the magic spears, but every shot wasted by the heavy spear meant another gap in the city wall.

The enemy's harassment last night forced the defenders to stay up for three whole nights. The searchlights in the watchtower began to flicker, resembling the soldiers' bloodshot eyes.

The eastern skyline is being drenched in rust. The rising sun, which should symbolize hope, now looks like a drop of blood dripping into ink, staining the clouds hideously.

Makina knew what dawn meant—the enemy would take advantage of the daylight to launch a full-scale charge and crush this isolated city into powder with absolute force.

All they could do was to grip the hot gun handles tightly, stare at the increasingly clear metal reflections in the scope, and wait for the first gunshot to break through the morning mist.

"Remember, every bullet must hit their weak spot." Makina suddenly opened his collar, revealing the pale golden knight emblem below his collarbone, which glowed faintly in the gradually brightening skylight.

"Wait until the sun rises completely... let's show these monsters that the stones in the mining city are harder than their bones." This is the last moment, and Makina no longer hesitates.

The array of magic spears cast neat shadows on the city wall, and the gun barrels rose and fell with their breathing, like a group of silver-scaled pythons ready to strike.

In the distance came the humming of the cyborg's hydraulic joints, mixed with the inhuman roars of the mutants, but it could not cover the low song hummed by a new recruit.

It was a miner's chant that had been passed down in the mining town for a hundred years. Now it was sung intermittently, but it pierced into everyone's trembling chest like a nail.

The morning light finally climbed up to the top of the city wall, and the first magic gun bullet cut through the air with a tail flame.

This is the darkest moment before dawn, and also their last daylight.