dognovel Chapter 565: Shrinking the Defense Line
Chapter 565: Shrinking the Defense Line
"Hurry up, evacuate if you haven't already! Yoda's army is coming soon!"
The iron bell in the center of town was still swinging in the wind, making a hoarse whimper.
The rebel soldiers ran on the cobblestone road holding torches, shouting until their voices were hoarse - in the distance, the dark clouds were very low, and occasionally a hole was torn by the fire from the artillery, reflecting the black smoke billowing in the fields outside the town, like burning giant pythons, crawling towards the town.
The townspeople, dragging their families with them, flocked to the east gate of the town. An old man, with a hunched back, wrapped a worn woolen blanket on his granddaughter's head. A blacksmith, carrying a hammer on his back and half a bag of oats in his arms, would look back at the smoking roof of his house every two steps.
The little girl at the front clutched half a piece of rye bread, chewing it and sobbing. Her mother patted her on the back and whispered to her:
"Don't be afraid, let's go to Padua. There are Mr. Muenzer's troops there. They will protect us."
Townspeople carrying packages lined up in a long queue and walked along the muddy dirt road towards Padua.
After all the townspeople evacuated, the rebel leader blew the whistle, and the rebel soldiers quickly dispersed and moved into the trenches that had been dug outside the town.
These trenches were dug overnight last month. They are no more than two meters deep and wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The trench walls are temporarily reinforced with wooden boards and covered with wet straw. It has been raining for three days, and the straw has absorbed water and is heavy, making it more concealed than expected.
Suddenly, the sound of horse hooves came from afar, coming closer and closer, making the mud clatter. The soldiers immediately tensed up and put their fingers on the triggers of their crossbows.
"do not move!"
The captain growled.
"Look at the flag!"
The sound of horse hooves stopped a hundred meters outside the trench. The leading cavalryman was holding a white rainbow flag of the heaven on earth, followed by five or six other cavalrymen who were also dusty.
When they dismounted, the detachment leader had already crouched at the edge of the bunker:
"what's the situation?"
"All members of the Hull detachment died."
The cavalryman's voice was as hoarse as sandpaper.
"They blew up the bridge two miles upstream, but Yoda's vanguard has already taken a detour through the shallows to the south. They should be here in two hours at most."
He paused.
"Your detachment needs to hold out for at least a week to buy time for evacuation."
There was a moment of silence in the trench. The detachment commander stared at the cavalry for a long while, and finally nodded.
“May all of us return to heaven.”
The cavalrymen said nothing more, mounted their horses and disappeared into the rain.
The wind outside the town suddenly grew stronger, carrying raindrops into the trench.
The soldiers lay back in the trench, no one spoke. The captain took off his pot helmet, wiped the water droplets on the brim of his hat with his sleeve, turned to look at the young soldier next to him - the child was only sixteen or seventeen years old, his lips were white from the cold, and he had half a piece of uneaten rye bread in his arms.
"Detachment leader."
The young soldier suddenly spoke.
"What is there in heaven?"
The captain was stunned for a moment and looked down at him:
"do not know."
"Then...will we be able to eat enough in heaven?"
The soldier asked again, picking at the bread crumbs unconsciously with his fingers.
"it should be OK."
The captain answered vaguely that he had indeed never seen any "heaven", but he couldn't say "I don't know where we go after we die."
"So when you first joined the rebels, what did the veteran rebels tell you?"
The captain looked into the depths of the rain curtain - three months ago, he was a farmer who was driven out of his fields by Lord Yoda, his family's wheat seeds were stolen, and his daughter cried with hunger.
That night, the rebels crossed the mountain ridge and occupied the village. The leading rebel officer stood at the door of the mill at the entrance of the village with a torch and shouted:
"We don't want to starve to death! We want to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth!"
He remembered holding the hoe and asking:
"What is heaven like?"
The officer patted him on the shoulder and said:
"In heaven, everyone has land to farm, and can eat their fill every day. Noble lords will no longer ride on our heads!"
"Nothing said."
The captain finally said.
"But I heard that they're going to build our place after the model of Heaven. What about you? How did you join?"
The young soldier scratched his head and smiled innocently:
"That day, the rebels came to our village to recruit people, saying that if they joined, they would have enough food to eat. My family had no food, so I thought I would give it a try... I didn't expect that I would actually join."
He patted the dry food bag at his waist.
"Now I have enough rye bread and oatmeal every day. It's much better than working on the lord's land before."
"Correct."
The captain put on his steamed bunting again, and his eyes lit up under the brim of his hat.
"If they can eat their fill in heaven, we can also eat our fill in this world."
He patted the young soldier on the shoulder.
"So we have to hold on here until these bastards leave. Then we can plant wheat in our fields and the mill in town can start turning again. No one will starve to death anymore, and no one will want to bully us anymore."
The rain was getting heavier, hitting the thatched roof of the trench with a crackling sound. In the distance, the sound of horns of Yoda's army could be heard faintly, like the roar of a wild beast in the dark clouds.
After a while, figures began to move in the distance. Shrouded by the rain, they appeared and disappeared, like a group of ghosts moving through the darkness.
The detachment leader held the telescope tightly, trying hard to see the situation in the distance clearly.
However, raindrops kept hitting the lens of the telescope, forming a layer of blurry mist, making his vision extremely difficult.
Despite this, he still relied on his years of combat experience to judge from the uniform reflection of the armor and the vibrations from the ground when the large-scale troops marched that it was clearly the Yoda cavalry unit that had arrived.
The captain's heart tightened. He originally thought that the Yoda army attacking this small town might have only a few hundred people. After all, this town was not large and did not seem to be large enough to attract a large-scale attack from the Yoda army.
But now it seems that there may be about a thousand people. He looked at the team getting closer and closer in the distance, and a heavy pressure surged in his heart.
Yoda's army of thousands of people was well-equipped and well-trained, and although every member of his own detachment was brave and fearless, they were far outnumbered, and after a long march, the soldiers were already very tired.
"All soldiers, remain alert! Return to your posts!"
The detachment commander shouted loudly, his voice echoing in the rain, and the soldiers straightened up one after another. Although the rain kept hitting their faces, making it almost impossible for them to open their eyes, they still returned to their respective positions quickly and orderly.
The detachment commander walked back and forth in the trenches, checking the soldiers' readiness and encouraging them loudly:
"Brothers! We are fighting to protect our homes, our loved ones, and the heaven in our hearts! Although Yoda's army is large in number, they are not invincible! We must let them know that we, the Rebellion, will never be defeated easily!"
The rumbling sound of horse hooves crushed the cover of rain.
The first to rush over were the lightly armed scouts. These Yoda soldiers, wearing leather armor and holding short spears, pounced on the antler fence outside the trench like a group of hyenas smelling blood.
"Fire arrows!"
As the captain shouted, dense arrows burst out from the firing holes on both sides of the trench.
The young soldier's fingers were numbed by the vibrations of the cow tendon string. He saw the crossbow arrow he had shot pierce through the rain curtain and accurately pierce the throat of a Yoda cavalryman. The man was wearing a neck armor, but at this moment, a bloody hole was torn in the neck by the triangular arrow, and he fell off his horse like a puppet with its strings cut.
The first wave of arrows whizzed into the enemy group, and some even penetrated the scout's leather armor, bringing down his companions behind him.
But the Yoda's offensive was like the rising tide, surging forward one after another.
"Ready your spears! Hand-to-hand combat!"
The captain drew the dagger from his waist.
The first wave of impact was more violent than expected.
The chevaux de frise outside the trench were knocked all over the place by the war horses. Several rebel soldiers were thrown to the ground and were trampled in the chest by the horses' hooves before they could get up.
The detachment leader saw with his own eyes that a sixteen-year-old soldier had half of his face crushed, and he was still holding tightly in his hand an unfired crossbow arrow.
But more soldiers held on to the chevaux de frise, using their shoulders to support the wooden stakes and their backs to hold their companions, forming a human wall in the mud.
"kill!"
With a roar, the detachment leader jumped out of the trench first.
His dagger chopped into the neck of a warhorse, and warm blood splashed on his face, mixing with the rain and flowing into his eyes.
The hand-to-hand combat instantly erupted into a bloody vortex.
Everywhere there was the crisp sound of metal clashing, the screams of the wounded and the roar of rain.
The captain slashed wildly in the crowd. His dagger had a bent edge, and now he could only rely on brute force to smash the enemy's helmet.
A Yoda soldier came at him with a mace, and when he dodged sideways, half of his ear was cut off, and the blood immediately blurred half of his vision.
The veteran behind him suddenly grabbed him by the back of the collar and pulled him back. The mace grazed his scalp and smashed into the mud, splashing a large amount of blood mixed with minced meat.
"Captain! Gaps on the left wing!"
A rebel soldier shouted while dragging his injured arm. The detachment leader turned around and saw that the Yoda cavalry was pouring in from the gap opened by the barricades. Several rebel soldiers who had not had time to retreat were being besieged.
He gritted his teeth, grabbed a broken spear on the ground, and rushed towards the gap with a dozen surviving soldiers.
The hand-to-hand combat lasted for a full half hour.
When the last Yoda warhorse fell with a dying neigh, the trench was already filled with corpses.
Rainwater mixed with blood gathered into streams in the low-lying areas and slowly flowed to the fields outside the town.
"We...won?"
The young soldier limped over, holding a half-broken arrow in his hand. His right leg was cut by the iron hoof of the warhorse, and blood mixed with rain water soaked his trouser leg.
"Go tell the men to pile the bodies outside the trench."
The captain stood up, his voice as hoarse as sandpaper.
He turned to look at the young soldier, a tired smile playing on his lips.
"And...make some hot soup tonight. We need to nourish ourselves today, as tomorrow we might have something even more brutal."