Black Iron’s Glory

Chapter 286 Return

After the destruction of all three attack towers, that Eskilin infantry regiment proved to have no courage to launch a ferocious offensive. It was only at the end of the month, perhaps at the urging of the nobility of the territory of the Principality of Kanas, that two attacks were carried out. Even without touching the side of the wall, the guards on the wall beat him in the face, and after losing three or four hundred people, the camp was withdrawn.

Since then, the enemy has watched the castle's share in the village only through open spaces until the first snowflake of winter had fallen. Unexpected by Claude and all of the Rangers Battalion, the enemy did not withdraw in the winter, but rather reinforced the battalion building to cut wood, while plenty of supplies were delivered. Looks like they are ready to spend the winter here...

When Claude entered Major Skerry's office, he saw Lieutenant Meister, head of battalion logistics, preparing his farewell with a large pile of documents. Major Scully sighed when he left, telling Claude straightforwardly that the castle's material reserves could last only two and a half months. The ammunition is adequate, the key is grass, and two and a half months has been a very optimistic estimate.

It is now the beginning of December, two and a half months later in mid-February, and soon to be followed by the rainy season of March, which means that the first Battalion of Rangers must be supplied in the rear again by mid-February, otherwise everyone will starve in the castle. Thought the winter would come and the enemy would evacuate. I didn't expect the enemy to attack now, but to adopt a siege tactic. There is a great possibility that this was because the first secret message carried by the falcon fell into the enemy's hands, so that the enemy knew that the material reserves in the castle could last only three months...

Major Skerry should have understood that the leak came from his own secret letter, but there was no other way to think about it. Standing on the walls of the city, you can see with a single telescope that the enemy has perfected his camp, dug trenches in front of the log fence, and kept the towers tight. Alert posts were also set up in the villages to monitor the movement of the castle and to guard against unannounced attacks by a barracks of guerrillas.

“Our enemy has an old rapist commander.” Major Skerry said distressingly: “That's a very difficult guy to deal with. Perhaps the only highlight of the attack on the enemy is the three Towers of Siege, but I can't find any omissions in his defense...”

Claude nodded in agreement with Major Skerry, who had carefully examined the enemy's guard defensive layout in the village on the walls of the city, which was indeed perfect and made people feel like they could not do it. In the case of the village guard posts, the basically forward and backward response, coupled with the wooden trailer towed back from the open space, has transformed the ruined village into a great maze. If a Ranger Battalion wants to sneak up, perhaps just as the enemy intended, entering the village can easily be divided and destroyed by the enemy.

“You're right, sir.“ Claude echoes Major Scully's view: "But if you think about their origins, it's clear, after all, that they fought the Kingdom's army in the Principality of Rimodra for a year and a half, so defensive warfare is what they used to do. It's just that I think they're fighting us like big enemies, isn't there something big going on? With our current strength, there's nothing we can do to attack them from the castle...”

Now there are two and a half battalions left in the castle, the second battalion has been maimed and the rear of the castle is full of wounded. It can be said that the current situation of the Ranger Battalion is that there is not enough room for manoeuvre. It is already good to protect the castle and has no intention of attacking the enemy in secret. Not to mention that winter is upon us, and if we go to sneak up on our enemies on a snowy night, we will not be able to come back out and easily lose our way.

“But our biggest problem now is the lack of grass and the lack of a link to the rear. The sound of gunfire coming from the entrance of the hill a few days ago left me worried that the enemy would seize the position at the entrance of the hill and completely trap us here. I sent several veterans to reconnaissance, and so far they have not returned...” Major Skerry is under a lot of pressure. As head of the battalion, he has to keep a bamboo on his chest in front of the soldiers so that his morale doesn't fall. But he also had to talk to Claude about these real difficulties.

Claude had no choice, and his suggestion to keep lambs and chicken ducks on the roof to attract his enemies to the two meadow carvings didn't work. Perhaps those two prairie golden sculptures would have been, but then the gunfire of the enemy's siege struck the two prairie golden sculptures, circling far away from the castle and never approaching it. As a result, the pigeons in the castle could not be released and remained out of touch with the rear.

“Kill all the horses and feed the sheep with the grass we save, which may allow us to hold on for a while longer.” Claude can only think of a way out of this. Nearly a hundred horses are still in the castle, all purchased by the Ranger Battalion itself to transport grass.

Major Skerry nodded and shook his head: “I just calculated with Lieutenant Meister that killing those horses would only last another half a month. If we do not receive food supplies from the rear by the rainy season, our Ranger Battalion will have to abandon the castle and withdraw to Squirrel Village by March. ”

Knocking on the door, Major Skerry's deputy came in and reported that the veterans were back. They brought back two messages, one good and one bad. The good news is that the entrance to the hill is still in the hands of Lieutenant Muried's squadron, who launched several attacks the previous two days and was repelled, with an estimated 200 casualties. Because of the narrow entrance of the hill, the offensive force could not be expanded, and the enemy abandoned it after the attack was invalid.

The bad news is that the enemy has placed a peripheral defensive position around the entrance to the hill, enclosing the entrance to the hill, which is estimated to have two battalions of troops. The veterans said that they had seen the flag of a battalion of guerrillas flying at the hillside entrance far away, but that they had been unable to bypass enemy positions and contact Ensign Muried for a long time and had not found another way to return to report what had been discovered.

The news further aggravated Major Skerry's distress that the enemy had not captured the entrance to the hill, which was good news, but that the enemy had set up a defensive front around the entrance to the hill, which had also rendered the hill ineffective. Even if a battalion of guerrillas abandons its castle evacuation, it will have to break through the enemy's defensive front before it can return to the rear. If it is pursued by the rear enemy during the attack, the result will still be that the entire army will be overrun, with a maximum of a few leaking fish.

Claude had nothing to be surprised about, and if he was the enemy's commander, he would do the same. However, if Major Skerry were determined to withdraw, he would not be saddened that there was no retreat, that the Great Green Mountains were large enough to enter the mountains from somewhere else and find a path to the mountains, which would not be difficult for the first Battalion of Rangers with experience in finding a path to the three southern counties in the Piclett Mountains. Major Skerry was later and did not go through the winter process of finding his way in the mountains, so worrying is understandable...

Soon there will be heavy snow for days and nights, so don't worry about sneaking up on the enemy. Because heavy snow has built up a thick layer, more than a foot deep, and it's soft enough to trap your foot on your knees. During the day, the sun is a little bright, you can see 20 or 30 meters clearly. At night, that is, you can't see five fingers. Even if the bonfire is lit, the only thing that can illuminate is the distance of three or four meters around...

If the enemy attacks at this time, let alone rush underneath the castle, even if it is just out of the camp, it is possible to disperse the lost direction. Hard walks in the snow for half a day, actually wandering less than three square circles, eventually losing strength was frozen to death alive. So in December, both enemies and guardians consciously stayed in the camp and castle, and they were very safe in the cat winter.

Claude suddenly discovered that he had been in the army for more than four years, the fourth new night he had spent in the army. But this is good, at least better than last year's New Year's Eve in Picklet Hills. Despite being surrounded by enemies and a lack of supplies, Major Skerry instructed the Battalion Logistics Service to provide battalion-wide soldiers with a richer dinner to celebrate this new evening. All sheep and chicken ducks are slaughtered for this, and officers like Claude are divided into a final bottle of fruit wine...

The weather began to be a little sunny when January arrived, and even the snow didn't faint as it did last December for the next few days and nights. Though the land covered with thick snow is still difficult to walk on, the snow accumulation has been pressed against some porcelain and is no longer halfway down, barely allowing people to walk on it. Enemy scouts also started camping, mainly in the perimeter of the castle, in order to monitor the guardians of the castle for abnormal conditions.

Claude asked Diavid to lead his squadron and ambush enemy scouts around the castle. The occasional crisp gunfire in the snowy wilderness gave Claude a chance to expand surveillance of the castle without the death and injury of enemy scouts riding in the steps of the first battalion.

On a snowy night with goose fur, Claude walked silently through the castle's side door with a small group of elite veterans and disappeared into the blank snow. The snow falls in the evening perfectly covering the tracks left by their walks and will not be detected by enemy scouts.

The cold wind, like an ice knife, cut on his face, quickly condensed a thin layer of ice cream on a masked scarf, then melted by the hot gas exhaled in his mouth and nose, melted into cold drops of water and dropped on the robe of the hide, and condensed again into a small piece of ice.

Claude had no idea of the cold, which he had tasted in the Picklet Mountains last winter and was used to. Pull the fine hemp rope in your left hand, and then a callback sent him a long shot, fifteen men, none of them left the team, which is good.

The path was set by Claude himself, and this time they were going to take a diagonal route from another part of the Great Green Mountains, looking for a passage to the entrance to the mountain path, in preparation for evacuating the castle after a battalion of soldiers ran out of food, so that there would be a safe way back.

After entering the mountains, a shelter camp was found. The veterans were experienced and quickly built several snow houses with snow piles. They then built tents inside the snow houses, so that they were both warm and safe, so as not to worry about the tents being crushed by snow or freezing to death too thinly. The only thing to pay attention to is to maintain good ventilation.

After a busy hour or more, the sky was slightly brighter, but the snowflakes continued to drift. Claude had each soldier drink a bowl of hot soup, arrange for a good night's sleep at the bright and dark post, and then start looking for a route to the entrance to the hill in the afternoon.

After lunch, packing started, the snow had stopped, the sky was clear, and the view was wide open because of the good light, which was a good condition for Claude looking for a mountain road to get through. Fifteen people divided into three groups travelled in the direction of the entrance to the mountain lane, and when they encountered the inability to move forward, they turned back. Claude took Maggie and Big Grimes and two veterans to the center, and at the same time drew up a road map to mark the way.

This mountain range is not as dangerous and steep as the Picklet Mountains and looks smooth, but it is not much less dangerous than the Picklet Mountains. A lot of seemingly flat snow is a big trap, and when you step on it, you fall into a deep snow hole. If you act alone, you won't be able to climb it at all, except for waiting to die.

Claude et al. are still using the old method of cutting huge logs directly across bridges where safety cannot be determined. Besides, they didn't really have to pave a path in the mountains, just a temporary passage, so they saved a lot of energy and time and took five days to reach the entrance.

Muried was very surprised by the arrival of Claude and others, who were stationed here to defend the entrance to the mountain lane without worrying about the transportation of logistics. Claude and others were ordered to be entertained, and Claude was told a great news.

“What did you say? Is the war over?” Claude thought he heard wrong.

“It's true, Captain Duriolo of Squirrel Village told me that his family was connected to the Army Department. This was revealed to him by his relatives. Let him stay here for a few more months and return to the king to enjoy himself. He said that the Kingdom has now entered into truce negotiations with the Kingdom of Nasserli and the Principality of Kanas, and even Prince Hansburg has returned to the King...”

Claude knew this Captain Duriolo, who was the battalion commander of this local guard battalion, was helped by his relatives in the Army Ministry, and Squirrel Village was there to give him a resume of service on the front line so that he could have a better future in the Army Ministry. If it was Captain Duriolo, Claude would have believed it.

“I have to get back to Squirrel Village as soon as possible and get this straight. This has to do with the survival and survival of all our soldiers and soldiers in our Rangers Battalion. Get me a horse, I'm leaving.” Claude said without hesitation.