The correct use of this tactic would be to set up soldiers at the inner side of the walls, who would wait until the fire had expanded all over the city, and then when the enemy’s troops started to panic that would be the time for their own surprise attack to start. If it was it’s done like this, it can easily disrupt the enemy’s formation, maybe even force them to retreat. But as he had said before, with no one to operate the trap, it was meaningless.
At this moment, out of the direction of the three other gates black smoke also began to emerge. And when he looked back at the fire at the North Gate he could see that it was spreading at much too fast a rate; as if the whole surroundings had been filled with straw. It didn’t take long until the first cries from the civilians could be heard, indicating that some of their houses were already lit.
This can’t be right… Duke Frances thought, the fire is coming from the north gate, but there was nothing with which to feed the fire, there was only an open space! But if there was nothing, how can the fire spread so fast? Wait… suddenly a horrifying thought popped up within his mind, could it be that Garcia Wimbledon had secretly recruited a witch?
Frances reassuringly touched the God’s Stone of Retaliation which hung around his neck, calming quickly beating heart. Hopefully, it is only a fire ignited by a witch, as long as that is the case I can directly walk through it. After all, with this stone that demonic fire simply cannot hurt me. And furthermore each member of my personal guards is also wearing this thing, so this fire can’t threaten us at all. As for the freedmen, who have no money to donate to the church, I just don’t have the time to attend to them.
Regardless of the fact that he possessed such a stone, the city had still become dangerous, so he decided to flee to the war camp at the South Gate. From there he could not only monitor Eagle City, but also wait for the new King to return with the cavalry. When he thought his next steps through, he immediately gave the Captain of his guards the command: “We will leave the city through the South Gate, during the ride you will blow the horn to gather all of our troops.”
“As you command!”
Everyone immediately went on their way, but when their group came near the South Gate, the flames had begun to cover the whole city, already setting many civilian houses on fire. The heat emitting from the fire became so hot that they were forced to retreat. In addition, the commoners who were originally hiding inside their houses behind closed doors, were now on the streets and fleeing from the flames. Crowding the whole streets with people. They became so many, that even the sword swinging knights were unable to move forward. There was nothing which would help against this panic stricken people fleeing to the only open space available which wasn’t burning yet. At this moment it seemed as if everything would be consumed by the surrounding flames and smoke.
“Everyone calm down; we have to get to the well. From it we can draw water to fight this fire,” Duke Frances quickly gave some orders, “Don’t try to save the houses, they are out of control. Just extinguish the burning obstacles on the streets, so that we get a path out of the city. Don’t stop the horn signal, let other people know where we are!”
“Sir!” shouted a knight who came from the direction of the city center. The knight didn’t even wait until his horse had stopped, instead, he immediately jumped off the horse. When he took a closer look he discovered that it was the knight sent to the North Gate by his Captain. “Sir, at the North Gate we are unable to get the fire under control!”
“What did you say?” Frances couldn’t believe it, so he had to ask again, “You are unable to fight the fire?”
“The flames are burning on this black water,” she said quickly, “Not only is it not extinguished with water, it is even quickly spreading over it, and now the whole northern city is burning!”
“An immortal fire,” Frances murmured, “Yes, it has to be demonic fire.” And then the Duke shouted, “Do not panic! This is Garcia taking advantage of the ability of this evil witches! As long as you wear God’s Stone of Retaliation you’re safe! Even if these flames seem frightening, they simply cannot hurt you!”
“So that’s the reason, you were so benevolent.” Moliere subconsciously stroked her chest, “Sir, what should we do?”
“With the God’s Stone of Retaliation we don’t need to fear anything! Everyone launch, we will break through!” The Duke waved his hand, “These demonic fire as long as we wear the God’s Stone of Retaliation, it will disappear without a trace!” He paused, “Moliere, you will lead the first group of people out, I will stay here and wait for the people who are still coming.”
The female knight nodded in confirmation, “Sir, you have to take care of yourself, pay attention that you don’t!”
Then she turned around and rushed without any hesitation towards the raging fire at the end of the street.
Chapter 112 Battle of Eagle City (Part 3)
It seemed as if the King’s knights were holding a sharp silver blade when they cut into the rear of Garcia’s retreating troops.
The crowd broke into chaos and a lot of people fell to the ground while they were trying to flee, only to end up getting trampled to death by the horses.
Occasionally some of them pulled out weapons and tried to resist the attackers, but against the superior knights they were soon cut into pieces. Leading this kind of unstoppable flood was an elite knight from the camp in the Cold Wind Ridge. It was Knight Neiman who served as the spear point for this attack. Furthermore, his blue cloak which danced in the wind behind him was particularly eye-catching, wherever he went, the enemy would try to flee. Every time after his sword cut down, it would be covered in blood.
Timothy Wimbledon instead stood in the distance on a small hill, overlooking the whole battlefield. At this point, the three thousand people of Garcia’s troops were no longer able to hold together their formation, instead with every second they were falling further and further apart, which brought them to almost completely halting their march.
They won’t last much longer, Timothy thought, the moment when the second of my three teams attacks they will collapse. These people simply cannot resist the assault of Graycastle’s elite knights. Most of them aren’t even wearing any armor, the moment a sharp blade comes close to them, they immediately start losing their will to fight.
Everything happened almost exactly as he had expected, after spending one hour to bypass Eagle City, they had turned over and rode through a sparse forest, finally reaching the road. Back on the road, Timothy ordered his knights to start rushing, and finally, one hour later they were able to catch up with Garcia.
According to the advice of Duke Frances, Timothy divided his troop into three teams of around three hundred knights, and let them take turns in attacking the different sides of the enemy. Like this, he was able to hold some troops back and was always ready to send in reinforcements when it was needed. In order to avoid the possibility that they might get surrounded, his knights were not allowed to attack the center of the enemy’s formation and instead they should attack its flanks. With short speedy dashes, they only cut off the leftovers, with each charge killing only dozens of people.
This tactic was obviously very successful, after a few runs the enemy already had more than a hundred casualties, while still being unable to even retaliate. They even tried to organize a counterattack with their own cavalry, but the gap between their equipment and training was just too far off. Compared to the Knights of the King, the momentary patchwork of cavalry was nothing more than a group of horseback-riding infantry. The moment when they came face to face, those “cavalry” made of the men that had been brave enough to charge into battle were simply killed, or if they were lucky they were able to scatter in all directions.