The howling of wolves sounded. This was the young mage Sheila coming to visit Claude again.
"You guys just wait here, don't follow me, I'll come down as soon as I get down." Claude said to Mike Jack and the big guy Gemmy beside him, then turned around and walked towards the small shop with a big cherry tree not far away.
forest.
The girl threw herself into Claude's arms and kissed her red lips. After a painful kiss, Claude let go of the flushed young mage: "Why are you here again? Didn't I tell you that during this period?
Don’t you want to come here? The enemy has already arrived, and a war will break out soon. I don’t want you to come here just because I’m worried that something will happen to you..."
"I know, didn't I just want to come and see you?" The young mage pouted and said, "I'm also worried about you. I had a nightmare last night, dreaming that you were injured, so I rushed over to see you.
Look at you..."
Claude didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "I'm not standing here properly. Don't worry, I won't be injured that easily. I will accompany you well when this war is over. You don't have to worry. Don't worry about it in the next period of time."
Come here, wait until I defeat the enemy and then go find you, okay?"
The young mage made four or five trips in half a month, and now everyone knows that Claude found a hunter's daughter in Squirrel Village to be his girlfriend. Diavid was so impressed that he, the boss, even hid
You can find beauties in the deep mountains and old forests, but it is a pity that the young mage has no older sisters...
The young mage nodded while looking at the bustling labor scene not far away: "What are you doing there?"
Claude smiled bitterly: "Nothing, just set up a defensive position. The enemies are all together. If they want to come from here, we have to prepare for defense in advance. That's why I don't let you come to see me. Soon this place will become a battlefield."
Yes, I'm afraid you will be discovered by the enemy..."
"I'm not afraid of them." Sheila said unconvinced.
Claude shook his head: "This is not a question of whether I am afraid or not, but I don't want you to be hurt at all. Although you are a natural mage and the mountains and forests are your home court, now is the age of muskets, even if it is a five-ring battle
Mages have to stay away from muskets and cannot confront them head-on. You can deal with one person or ten people, but you can't deal with a hundred soldiers holding muskets. They are completely outside the range that your magic can't reach.
It poses a fatal threat to you. Even the black wind cannot withstand musket fire. So, don't be brave, don't be curious, and don't take risks. Just be obedient, okay?"
"Okay, I promise to be obedient, then you also have to promise that nothing will happen to you. If, if there is nothing you can do, you can run to me, okay?" Sheila looked into Claude's eyes.
Claude nodded solemnly: "I promise that I will never be a hero. If I am really defeated, I will definitely escape to you."
This is the truth. Everything Claude is doing now is just fulfilling his duty. He will not heroically sacrifice his life for the ambition of the Kingdom of Overas. If he is unable to do so, he will retreat immediately.
, instead of sticking to the position and dying together with the enemy, that is what a fool can do. The green hills left behind are not afraid of running out of firewood. What the ancestors said is always very reasonable. Anyway, Major Leedfunk did not force himself.
We must defend Squirrel Village...
Now the territorial nobles of the Principality of Karnas and the Principality of Eskiline have joined forces together, and more than 4,000 people are rushing toward Squirrel Village in an aggressive manner. Diavid led his troops to attack again, but accidentally got eaten
It was a small loss, and a small team of troops was lost. It seemed that sneak attacks, ambushes, and cold shots were no longer useful to delay the enemy's journey. Claude then decided to dig trenches on the hillside behind Squirrel Village to prepare for a fight with the enemy.
A formal defensive battle.
After struggling with Sheila for a while, the reluctant young mage was sent away. Not long after returning to the position, Murray Ed came over with his men: "Boss, I'm here."
"How many people did you bring here?" Claude asked.
"There are three teams, and one team is left to garrison in Black Rock Village." Murray Ed was very excited. From this point of view, he is a militant: "Finally, we can have a fight. It's really hard to stay in Black Rock Village for so long.
It’s so boring.”
"First let your soldiers help dig trenches, and then dig a communication trench to the back for our retreat." Claude was not polite and immediately ordered Muriel and his soldiers to help.
"Retreat?" Murray Ed looked at the terrain: "Boss, the terrain here is good. We can completely defend here. It is condescending and suitable for us to shoot targets."
Claude shook his head: "We can't defend it. The difference in our numbers is too big. We can defend it during the day but not at night. The enemy will probably arrive tomorrow afternoon, and we will have to retreat until the night after tomorrow. Although the terrain here is good, we can't defend it at night.
There are too many detours. The enemy can go up the mountain from a farther hillside and then detour back to us..."
There was a "boom" and an explosion sounded from behind the hillside.
"What's going on?" Murray looked over there warily.
"Don't be nervous." Claude knew what was happening there very well: "I asked Marki to set some traps there, and at the same time use gunpowder to blow up several paths leading up the mountain to prevent the enemy from coming over there to attack us at night...
…”
Alas! Claude sighed deeply. He had too few troops on hand. Murield brought three teams over, plus Markchi's four teams, plus Diavid's two teams, a total of
There are only 108 people in nine squads, and three artillery crews with 15 people. In addition to myself, Michael Jack, and the big man Gimi, there are only 123 people, which can be considered a real combat strength. Now we are stationed
There were only a few signal corps medics and a dozen wounded soldiers guarding the camp. It was really hard to have enough troops until they were needed.
If there was no hope of defeating this rabble, Claude would have led his men on the run. Now we can only block the enemy layer by layer, taking advantage of the defensive terrain and firepower advantages to gradually consume the enemy's effective strength and put this battle to an end.
The war dragged on. The original plan was to eliminate the territorial nobles of the Eskiline Principality first, but unexpectedly the territorial nobles of the two principalities would join forces, which made Claude's original plan come to nothing.
Diaverde withdrew his soldiers in the evening. He told Claude and others the process of suffering losses. After the territorial nobles of the two principalities joined forces, they rested for half a day and one night, and then
Yesterday morning, they marched towards Squirrel Village again. Diavid led his soldiers to start a sneak attack and ambush, firing cold shots to delay the enemy's progress.
But what they didn't expect was that this time the territorial nobles placed the conscripted citizens of the Principality of Karnas on the periphery, and they would pursue the soldiers whenever they found a sneak attack. Most of the weapons of these citizens were used for close combat.
They had broadswords and spears, but there were so many of them that there was no way to load the muskets during the escape. Even if they were loaded, it was useless. They could only fire once and were overwhelmed by the swarming citizens. Several groups
In this way, the soldiers were forced by the citizens and had no way to escape. They could only fight hand-to-hand, and then killed two or three enemies before dying in battle.
It's not that Diavid didn't think about luring the chasing enemies into an ambush circle. The problem was that the chasing enemies were not dozens or dozens, but hundreds of them rushing towards them from all directions. He and the twenty or so people in the ambush also
He could only take one shot and rush to escape, otherwise he would be completely surrounded. He guessed that the territorial nobles of the two principalities must have given heavy rewards, otherwise the people under their command would not treat them like this regardless of life and death.
They went on a big chase...
In addition, Diavid brought another bad news. The traps on the mountain road have lost their effect on the enemy. With the lessons learned from the nobles of the Principality of Karnas, now the enemy marches and drives a few pack horses ahead to explore the road.
Diaverde said that the two traps they dug a few days ago were discovered by the enemy. They had no casualties and only lost three pack horses. According to the enemy's marching speed, they will arrive here at noon tomorrow.
Muriel proposed to rob the camp at night, but Claude rejected the suggestion after much consideration. First, there were too many enemies. In the past, his more than 100 people could only cause chaos, but could not collapse the enemy. Second, Diavid came to
A few days ago, they had harassed the camps of nobles in the Eskiline Principality territory at night. The enemy had already taken countermeasures. The third was to pull the people over. Even if they came back without any losses, a whole night was wasted on the road.
If the soldiers don't get a good rest, they may not have the energy to deal with the enemy's attack tomorrow...
At noon the next day, I saw a large group of enemy troops coming along the mountain road from a distance. As Diavid said, three pack horses were driven at the front. The enemy scouts estimated that there were about a large group, except for
In addition to the forty or fifty private soldiers of the nobles armed with muskets, walking next to them were the common people in tattered clothes holding broadswords and spears.
Five gunshots rang out on the steep slope next to the mountain road in the distance. Muriel and four soldiers jumped up from the weeds on the slope and ran up the mountain with their muskets. The enemy's march was in front of them.
The three packhorses fell to the ground and struggled on all fours, while the locals held up their swords, spears and spears and climbed up the hillside, shouting and chasing after Muriel Ed and others.
Diavid smiled bitterly and said to Claude: "You see, that's it, I'm not afraid of death at all. Every time I chase them, there are at least two to three hundred people. Even if we have support, we can only kill a few of them."
There were about a dozen of us, and the rest of us were still able to chase us to the sky and nowhere. In this way, my three group of soldiers who died in the battle were chased into a dead end by them, with nowhere to escape. We were far away.
Chu watched helplessly as they were beaten to death by the swarming residents."
A small group of soldiers who responded raised their guns from the bushes and shot at the chasing citizens. Seven or eight of the citizens fell down. Unexpectedly, the remaining citizens became more and more fanatical. They shouted and sent more than half of their people towards the responding people.
The small group of soldiers rushed towards them, and the remaining more than a hundred soldiers were still chasing Murray Ed and the others. In this situation, there was really no way for the soldiers to load their ammunition. They could run very fast over a distance of a hundred meters.
It only takes ten seconds. Even if you are ready and can fire another shot, you can only defeat one enemy, and the remaining enemies will not be able to escape...
So the small group of soldiers who responded also turned around and ran away, and soon they were running head-to-head with Murray Ed and the others, and the people chasing them behind them also joined together, shouting and chasing after them.
Claude now understood why Diaverde and the others were complaining when they came back yesterday. They couldn't do anything after running like this all day, and they were almost exhausted. But this time, Muriel led people there to lure the enemy to pursue them.
Yes, they are running towards the position.
"Get ready!" Claude said softly.
The order was quickly passed on to the soldiers one by one, and everyone took their muskets and prepared to aim and shoot. Black barrels stretched out from the bushes used as cover above the position.
Aiming at the large group of pursuers behind Murray Ed and the others.
Muriel directly stepped over the bushes, threw himself into the trench, and said out of breath: "Run, you will kill me..."
"Fire!" Claude ignored him and ordered directly. The pursuing soldiers were now only seventy or eighty meters away from the trenches.
"Bang, bang, bang..." gunshots rang out, and from a distance, a cloud of smoke rose from the long bushes and weeds on the hillside. The fifty or sixty residents who were chasing the front fell headlong.
On the ground, they became the first victims.
All the chasing citizens were stunned. They did not expect to encounter such a large-scale ambush. The sound of gunfire, blood, corpses and the screams of the wounded were intertwined, leaving them at a loss for a moment.
However, there were still people who were awake, and a voice that reacted first shouted: "Quick, rush forward, don't let them reload!"
They were seventy or eighty meters away, and it only took about ten seconds to rush forward and fight the enemy hand-to-hand. This was the idea of the owner of that voice. Most of the people who were stunned there suddenly woke up from a dream, and they clenched the weapons in their hands.
, rushing towards the hillside. Yes, they still have about two hundred people. As long as they rush into the position, are they afraid that they will not be able to defeat the enemy?
Sixty meters, fifty meters... Claude loaded his musket unhurriedly, as if he didn't see the fellow citizens rushing over with ferocious faces.
"Let go!" Mark Qi's roar rang out from the battlefield.
"Boom!" A light infantry artillery hidden in the bushes made a loud noise and sprayed out countless small projectiles, almost covering the entire forward position.
After the smoke dissipated, a dozen soldiers couldn't help but lowered their heads and vomited. This shot of shotguns almost wiped out more than a hundred residents who rushed up. The hillside was full of broken limbs, corpses, and blood.
It is a bloody scene like Shura hell.
There are still thirty or forty surviving territorial residents, but they have been stunned by this artillery fire. They have lost all their weapons and stand trembling among the corpses. Behind them, there are still ten or twenty
A conscious citizen was running away down the hillside in a rolling manner.
He picked up his musket, aimed at a local citizen who was fleeing down the slope, and opened fire. The target fell down. Claude ordered Muriel beside him: "Go and capture those who are still standing there.
"
"What are you arresting them for? They'll all be beaten to death." Murray was furious when he remembered how embarrassingly he had been chased by these people just now.
"Go if we ask you to. After we are captured, someone will do the work for us," Claude said.