NOVEL NEXT Ch. 22
Chapter 22: Better to Be a Peaceful Dog
From the very beginning, from the way her defensive positions were arranged to how the 212 bunkers were distributed, it had been a massive pocket-bait formation.
Otherwise how could cavalry possibly have found such a perfect place to launch a charge? What had they been thinking?
Stepping over the ground littered with severed limbs, Mitia walked up to the half-dead Niparmo.
Seeing his stubborn, unseeing eyes, she shook her head slightly: “Pathetic confidence.”
Niparmo had perhaps guessed at her dispositions; he might have suspected that a large number of musketeers waited behind the Astal lines.
But in the end he still could not pull himself out of the brilliance of cavalry charges he had witnessed in decades of warfare.
He had still chosen to believe that heavy cavalry, bolstered by magic, could break through any obstruction.
Unfortunately for him, he was wrong.
This time he faced not single-shot muskets, but heavy machine guns firing large-caliber metal rounds at a rate of eight hundred shots per minute.
There were thirty of those things in total, and even Mitia herself would not have dared to take them head-on.
The price for Niparmo’s mistake was brutal: the loss of five thousand main heavy cavalry equaled a quarter of the kingdom’s lesser lords marching to death in that charge.
The twenty thousand light cavalry had also been drawn from the surrounding territories’ mobile forces; the kingdom’s northern gate lay wide open and would tremble beneath Mitia’s army peaks.
With the supreme commander dead, the remaining tens of thousands of Niparmo troops surrendered without surprise, and the battle was over.
On the attackers’ side, the Niparmo allied forces had committed over three hundred thousand men; casualties were difficult to tally, but roughly forty thousand survivors surrendered.
On the defenders’ side, the Astal domain had suffered over ten thousand casualties; none of the three participating divisions remained intact.
The captured soldiers were disarmed on the spot and gathered together.
Only after two reserve divisions were brought in by train did Mitia begin the prisoner screening.
Disposition was simple: all those holding noble titles were to be seized and summarily executed on the spot; the remaining prisoners were to become slave labor, forced into dangerous heavy-labor industries across the Astal domain to earn points to buy back their freedom.
The three divisions that had endured the war and the two newly arrived divisions were broken up and reformed with veterans mentoring the newcomers; the excess half-division was sent back with slaves.
The four remaining full divisions marched toward the nearest seaport city, Sendegas, and toward Sivius, the kingdom’s major supply depot this campaign had targeted.
They had met almost no resistance.
Two lordships nearby, terrified by the dispatch reporting the kingdom’s front-line annihilation, had opened their gates and surrendered.
The commander of the newly reorganized First Division had even taken the opportunity to seize Titusburg behind him, and the Second Division had likewise copied the tactic and taken Yospata City.
Upon receiving the reports, Mitia immediately ordered them to stop — she wanted more than mere territorial submission.
Under her new orders, each division occupied one domain and conducted a sweep of lords within it.
Once the lists were complete, Mitia formally launched a large-scale operation of blood and retribution.
Earlier, when Mitia’s troops had entered cities without harming so much as a hair, the frightened civilians had been calmed; but today’s large troop movements had tightened their nerves again.
Hearing no strange sounds nearby, a braver person would open the door and poke their head out — and would see at once the notices plastered on their house walls.
【Anti-Nobles and Landlords Act】【Civilian Equality Treaty】 and similar posters covered the streets and alleys.
The Civilian Equality Treaty emphasized civilians’ rights and brand-new welfare policies, while the Anti-Nobles and Landlords Act’s lines were soaked in bloody intent.
All noble-owned slaves would be unconditionally taken in by the Astal domain; all private troops were to be disbanded; all property would be unconditionally confiscated and personal freedom restricted while evidence was investigated by teams of non-commissioned officers.
Any noble who violated the new lord’s decree would be immediately executed; anyone who resisted the decree would be immediately executed.
Civilians were encouraged to submit evidence or reports — the reward was a sack of grain.
After a while, a group of common people in shabby clothes repeated the posted rules loudly in the streets and alleys so those who could not read could understand the new decrees.
More and more people opened their doors and gathered before the notices, listening as literate folk read them over and over.
But in the neighborhoods where nobles lived, the atmosphere was not so friendly.
At the gate of a luxurious, quiet manor, a clatter of rapid footsteps suddenly sounded.
‘Bang!’
After a gunshot, the heavy manor gate was flung open and a regiment of soldiers charged in.
Anyone holding a weapon was executed on the spot until everyone in the manor had been gathered.
The regiment commander, looking at the dark, pressing crowd, produced the files of crimes vetted by the sergeant major and began to read them aloud; each time a name was read, a gunshot rang out.
When the list finished, the remaining people were given some grain and silver as severance pay, and then hired to load the manor’s goods onto carts to be taken to the city lord’s mansion.
In a coastal fishing village in the southern reaches of the Sendegas domain, dozens of soldiers in crude armor were ransacking fish crates on a simple pier.
The fishermen, fresh from a brush with death, cried and begged for mercy, for a few catches to be left, but got nothing but more merciless lashes.
In the end, only a few bodies, stripes of whip-scarred corpses, were left behind as the soldiers shouldered all the haul and strode away.
The plunderers returned to the village in high spirits and joined other units; harsh breaths and moans came intermittently from the wooden huts they passed.
When one soldier spat thick phlegm onto the staring eyes of a young, energetic corpse, he sneered: “Damn, that brat never knew his place. Bad luck.”
Not far off, the hunched old village headman knelt on the ground with an expressionless face.
A flicker crossed his murky pupils and his lips trembled, but he said nothing.
“Charge! Charge!”
Suddenly, the village entrance echoed with hoofbeats and shouts.
The soldiers, bundled up with bags and packs, looked around in confusion.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Before they could see the attacking cavalry clearly, a series of strange sounds erupted and their comrades around them collapsed to the ground.
Those not killed let out earth-shattering wails.
From other huts, disheveled soldiers rushed out and were cut down by scattered gunfire.
Several officers clutching their belts ran out of the old village headman’s house at that moment; seeing the scene, they panicked and instinctively ran back inside to hide.
The cavalry had already charged close, and they raised their lances and fired in succession, quickly dealing with the soldiers nearby — whether standing or kneeling, all were equal.
“Don’t kill me! I surrender! I’m a noble! If not, I’ll take her with me to death!”
An officer hiding in a house, watching his men being killed by incomprehensible weapons, was torn apart inside.
At a window he raised his sword and drove a naked girl in front of him to shield himself and the others.
Her once pale, delicate skin was smeared with grime and blood; her tangled hair covered her face, and her body lay exposed to the eyes of dozens of men.
A young officer on horseback, his collar flashing silver, raised his lance at them but could not bring himself to pull the trigger; his gaze shifted away instinctively.
Other cavalrymen had also finished reloading and held their weapons with hesitation.