Translator: CinderTL
To the southwest of Stonebridge Town, there were no trenches, but there was the fast-flowing Warren River. The vanguard of the Orcs chose to launch a frontal assault on the eastern gate of the town.
On the eastern horizon, the sound of war drums rolled in like muffled thunder.
Orc warriors clad in heavy armor formed a skirmish line, each carrying two bulging sacks filled with dirt. Their robust muscles glistened with oil under the sunlight, and even with a load exceeding three hundred pounds, their steps remained steady as usual.
"Load the Bursting Shells!" Major Hodgson's roar echoed along the city walls. The artillerymen quickly loaded the shells into the cannons, the fuses glinting dangerously in the sunlight.
When the Orc trench-filling team charged to within five hundred yards of the city wall, the first six-pounder cannon let out an ear-splitting roar. The shell traced a perfect parabola in the air and exploded above the Orcs, raining down fragments like a deadly shower. The Orcs below fell in droves. A soldier carrying a sack of dirt had a bloody flower bloom on his chest, and the heavy sack pinned him down in a pool of blood.
After suffering heavy casualties, the first wave of Orc soldiers, braving the artillery fire, successfully filled the trench with their sacks.
"Keep filling! Don't stop!" the One-Eyed Commander roared from the rear, brandishing his battle axe.
The second wave of Orcs advanced over the bodies of their comrades, throwing sacks of dirt into the trench. The cannons on the city walls fired continuously, and the smoke soon obscured the battlements.
The defending artillerymen, having conducted test firings earlier, had pre-compiled firing tables based on experimental data, recording the required powder charges and barrel elevation angles for different target areas. As a result, their accuracy was quite impressive, and each explosion wreaked havoc among the Orcs. Due to the primitive nature of the delayed fuse technology, the Northwest Legion's Exploding Shells did not always detonate successfully. However, even without exploding, the kinetic energy of the shells themselves caused terrible casualties.
A particularly burly Orc warrior with red plumes on his helmet charged forward carrying three sacks of dirt. When a shell exploded at his feet, the giant staggered forward for more than a dozen steps before finally collapsing. The three sacks rolled into the deepest part of the trench.
The edges of the trench were now piled with small hills of corpses and sacks of dirt, the dark red blood seeping into the soil, staining the ground a strange ochre color.
Major Hodgson put down his telescope and noticed that his palm had been cut by the rubble of the city wall—the Orcs' ferocity far exceeded his expectations. At this rate, the first trench would soon be filled.
The defensive forces of Stonebridge Town numbered about five thousand, including two battalions of regular infantry and three thousand militiamen.
Major Hodgson keenly noticed that the militiamen on the city walls were beginning to pale, their knuckles turning white as they gripped their muskets.
A young tailor's apprentice even started retching—when he saw a shell cut three Orcs in half.
The Major strode towards the northern section of the city wall where the militiamen were stationed, his military boots thudding heavily on the stone bricks.
"Look at the weapons in your hands!" he suddenly grabbed a militiaman's rifle and held it high above his head. The new barrel gleamed blue in the sunlight. "Do you know how many lords' soldiers outside the Northwest Bay are still using swords and spears?"
The militiamen instinctively touched the standard bayonets and ammunition pouches at their waists. These weapons were indeed far superior to the "lord's army" their fathers had described. If used well, they could take the enemy's life from a distance.
"Perhaps some of you know that His Majesty the King of Crystal Glare has trained an army modeled after the northwestern forces. In less than a year, this army quelled the rebellion in the southern part of the kingdom. And although you are just militiamen..."
Major Hodgson emphasized his words, "the live ammunition you've fired during training," he patted the ammunition box beside him, "is more than what the new royal army in the capital is allocated in a year!" He deliberately kicked over a wooden crate, and the round bullets clattered and rolled across the ground.
An officer who had once been in charge of militia training suddenly laughed beside him. His rough hands steadied the rifle: "Boys, remember the shooting competition? Those Orcs are built like this..." He gestured exaggeratedly, "They're even easier to aim at than moving targets!"
A few militiamen chuckled along, their tense shoulders gradually relaxing.
Seizing the opportunity, Major Hodgson leaped onto the battlement and pointed at the Orc troops regrouping outside the city: "They rely on brute strength, but we rely on this—" he tapped his temple, then knocked on the rifle's bolt, "and this."
By noon, a three-yard-wide passage had finally been cleared through the eastern trench with corpses and sandbags.
A wild horn sounded from the Orc ranks, and the lightly armored archers immediately crouched and charged out. They wielded six-foot-long Beast Horn War Bows, with Burning Arrows in their quivers—this was to suppress the firepower from the city walls.
"Archers, take your positions!" the One-Eyed Commander's roar echoed across the battlefield.
But as the first wave of archers rushed through the passage, a sharp whistle suddenly rang out from the city walls.
"Fire!" Major Hodgson's sword slashed through the air, and twelve cannons along the middle section of the wall fired simultaneously. The shrapnel exploded into a deadly metal storm in the air.
The Orc archers at the forefront were instantly riddled with holes, and the Burning Arrows scattered across the ground, igniting the hemp bags that filled the trench.
The surviving archers frantically sought cover, but all usable objects for concealment in the town's outskirts had long been cleared away. At that moment, puffs of smoke erupted from the battlements again, as the defending soldiers calmly fired their rifles at them.
The lead bullets pierced through the thin leather armor of the Orc archers, continuing to harvest the survivors of the artillery barrage.
"Retreat! Fall back—" An Orc Centurion had just raised his bone whistle when a sniper's bullet pierced his chest. His body swayed and then tumbled into the blood-filled trench.
In the end, less than half of the archers stumbled back to their formation, leaving behind a bloody passage of hemp bags and the twisted corpses of their comrades.
A terrifying red light flickered in the One-Eyed Commander's eye as he snapped the command flag in his hand: "Grayman's bastards... This doesn't seem like a small town with weak defenses!"
The Orc vanguard launched three charges on the eastern side of Stonebridge Town, each time being repelled by the concentrated fire of cannons and rifles. The piled-up corpses at the edge of the trench had formed a horrifying low wall, and the blood had soaked the soil into a dark red mire. The One-Eyed Commander's eye gleamed with a gloomy light in the smoke of battle, and he had no choice but to order a temporary halt to the attack.
"Turn southwest!" The One-Eyed Commander spat out a mouthful of blood, his battle axe pointing towards the direction of the Warren River. "The river can't be deep everywhere!"
His command was carried out. The Orcs, dragging their weary bodies, circled around to the southwest side of the town. Sure enough, they found a shallow crossing point at a bend in the river. They raised their weapons overhead and began wading across. The icy water reached up to their waists, and the swift current made their progress extremely difficult.
(End of the Chapter)
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