47 – Operation Noose (3)

According to Sun Tzu’s Law of War, ‘it is best not to fight’.

However, if you do fight, it is said that the second best way is to subdue the opponent with diplomacy rather than mobilizing the army, it is better to annihilate the enemy army by rotating, and the worst way is to attack the castle.

This is because it does not cost useless money to live peacefully without fighting in the first place, and a huge amount of money goes in as a ‘compensation’ when engaging in diplomatic warfare.

Also, when fighting the enemy, a huge amount of supplies, money, and soldiers’ lives are sacrificed, and in siege warfare, even if the ‘general’ doesn’t make a mistake, even if he mobilizes three times more troops, he loses with enormous sacrifice. .

Right now, I feel the words with my skin.

Although Count Hellsman’s castle is much lower than modern skyscrapers and apartments, even the walls of the lowest gate are nonetheless two or three times my height.

In addition, the process of approaching the castle wall is also difficult.

If you approach only about 500 meters near the wall, a stone from a catapult will fly and break your head, and if you enter within 100 meters, arrows from the enemy will pour like rain.

When you manage to get to the castle wall through it, you have to cross the deep moat while getting hit by arrows, and by the time you climb the ladder to the castle wall, you will be greeted with a barrage of arrows flying from the front and left and right.

If the soldiers charged into such a difficult place, only one out of two would be able to reach the castle wall.

And considering the rate at which it is consumed until we can send soldiers over the walls, even if we have twice as many enemies as we have now…

In fact, the number of soldiers that can fight in the castle will be less than the number of enemy soldiers.

In other words, if we go into a siege, we will surely be defeated in the end.

To prevent such a thing from happening, as soon as I arrived near the wall, I gave orders to Balt and the commanders.

“Take the soldiers under Balt, Helmut, and Weiss, collect nearby trees, and build a simple fortress to surround the castle wall. The guards of the main base will be taken by the knights, and the servants will follow Balt’s instructions and build a fortress to participate.”

One of the knights, who didn’t normally do manual labor like this, seemed unwilling to involve his squires, raising his hand.

“Night Obel. It’s understandable that we stand guard, but some of our servants also belong to the nobility. No matter how much it is Your Excellency’s order, I cannot make them use shovels, pickaxes, and axes like the soldiers. Please think again.”

Is that guy, like Schwein, an idiot who is so absorbed in chivalry and literature that he can’t grasp reality?

This is the enemy’s camp, and it’s a dangerous situation, especially near the ‘enemy’s capital’, which is the most vulnerable to attack, openly conducting a siege operation…

In such a situation, ‘because there are nobility among the knight’s seed’, to ask that the seed be removed as well.

In the yard where I want to carry the log and participate in the construction…

Therefore, I answered him without hiding my displeasure.

“Sir Obel and Sir Balt are high-ranking knights who, although they don’t ride horses, have already been granted several villages and have ‘knights’ like you as their vassals. And Helmut and Weiss are also knights, and the lieutenants are nobles just like your squire. But what? Are you out of your mind to ask for the seeds to be removed from the construction in this urgent situation?”

Hearing my rebuke, Obel didn’t say anything and just shuddered when he heard that ‘a knight with a higher status than himself’ would participate in the construction.

“Right now, only Helsman is leading his entire army to fight against the Count of Nantes, but we don’t know when the enemy’s reinforcements will arrive. It will take another month or two for the enemy’s reinforcements to arrive… but when reinforcements arrive in a situation where you haven’t built a fort, you have to fight defenselessly and surrounded! Hurry up!!”

When those words were spoken, Balt, Helmut, and Weiss bowed their heads toward me and left the tent.

As they exited, Frost looked at me and asked.

“Your Excellency, by the way, if we mobilize all the soldiers and build a fortress, our main base will be empty. Won’t they attack us? No matter how powerful the knights are, there are only 50 of them. If 1,500 city guards attack…”

“There is no such thing. No, I’d rather come in. Even though there are 1500 enemy soldiers, if they come out, ‘Me and 50 knights’ will win if they hold on for a little bit. Let’s see, it takes about an hour or two to get here from the forest, but can you barely survive that much?”

“…”

I looked at Frost, who was speechless, and raised my right index finger and waved it from side to side before speaking.

“I guarantee you, they won’t be in the mood for that right now. because…”

**

Everyone living in the city of Helsman became extremely tense at the news that soon the army of Baron Creutel of the Count of Nantes would invade.

So, unlike usual, the city guards were standing guard with precisely angled postures, and the gates that were always open were firmly locked.

And in front of the locked gates, the serfs of the village who had been deprived of food by Baron Creutel formed a very long line.

“I am Heinz, the chief of Sand Village, and all the people behind here are the serfs of our village. Guard, please open the door. I will die at this rate.”

Hearing that, the guard responded firmly to the village chief’s earnest request.

“Then, the proof that you are the chief of Sand Village? If you’re the village chief, don’t you have something to prove your identity?”

“Please wait a moment.”

The village chief took out a thin iron plate from the inside pocket of his clothes and showed it to the guards.

The guard who saw the plate gestured to the guard above the gate, signaling them to open the gate.

And not long after, the gates were opened on both sides.

Then the guard stepped to the left, looked at the village chief, and said,

“Okay, I confirmed that it was Heinz, the village chief of Sand Village. He and the villagers must enter the castle immediately. After that, follow the instructions of Lord Rance, the castle’s garrison commander, and be careful as you may be punished by military law if you disobey his orders.”

The village chief looked at him, who had let him in, and said while bending his waist like a book opening and then folding.

“Thank you, Nari.”

And not long after, all the villagers hurriedly pulled carts and started to enter.

I, who was standing in the middle of the line, entered the castle along with them, hanging under a high-floor cart to enter the castle.

After entering the gate, I was hanging on the cart for about ten minutes. During that time, I was nervous that I would be caught, but it was because I was so confused with 1,500 soldiers, numerous citizens who lived outside the castle, and serfs from surrounding villages in the ‘cramped castle’.

Fortunately, I was able to break into this castle without getting caught.

Now, as soon as possible, we must dig up the information about this castle, record it, and then get out.

**

A day after entering the castle, the drawbridge hanging outside the moat was finally raised.

As the drawbridge went up, a loud sound came from the watchtower outside the castle.

“I see an eagle crest holding a lily!! Damn, I see Baron Creutel’s army. That number is about 3,000!! It looks like 3,000!”

At those words, the lower rank soldiers in the castle began to be shaken.

“Damn, aren’t you going to die like this?”

“Shut up, do you want to be beheaded for disturbing military discipline? Did you forget that Hans was beheaded a few days ago?”

“Fuck…”

As the soldiers began to agitate, sure enough, the anxiety began to spread to the fleeing serfs and citizens.

“…Now that it’s like this, wouldn’t it be better to surrender? Why didn’t Baron Creutel even plunder? If you surrender, will your life be spared?”

“Surviving is the best thing…”

“That’s right, if you have to live, you’ll even get married to Aria… Aria from the next town has really big breasts… I’ll never die until I touch her…”

“Wake up, Hans. And when do you say that? You never know when you’ll search inside the castle.”

I quickly recorded the decline in the morale of the soldiers and the morale of the citizens in a document documenting the situation inside the castle.

If I were to return alive, I should write it down in as much detail as I can because His Excellency will reward me with this record…

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Maybe I’ll be promoted to ‘Sergeant’ if I’ve completed my mission properly?

And after a while, the captain of the guard, Lance, and several other knights drew their swords and began shouting threats.

“From now on, anyone who agitates the citizens will be cut to death! Shut up if you don’t want to die! And don’t worry!! His Excellency Count Hellsman will come back after defeating that Nantes pig.”

As the word spread among the citizens, the citizens stopped spreading ‘anxiety’ as before to protect their lives.

Instead, everyone started to clear up their anxieties without saying anything.

“Okay then, I will distribute food from now on. I will deliver food to the soldiers first, and then distribute it to you guys, so wait a bit.”

About two hours after those words, the residents of the village I entered in hiding were also supplied with food twice a day.

What was supplied was only half a bowl of porridge mixed with a very small amount of barley and wheat. It had only been a few days since the defensive battle had begun, and they could only supply this much…

If you do this, you will rise up.

So I sneakily lucked out on Matt, who was eating with me next to me.

“Hey, Matt. Can you survive on just this? Even though we don’t go to battle, if we do things like building walls, we have to go out too.”

“I don’t know, Short. just shut up and eat it I’m starving to death…”

“I could say at least a word… Ha, I hope the siege is lifted soon.”

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Matt listened to me and sighed loudly, whispering to me.

“Anyway, where is everyone not looking? Thanks to that, I don’t know when the food will run out, but…”

“right.”

Seeing that this was the same reaction when I approached people in other villages this morning, the public sentiment is that ‘this small castle is full of over 9,000 people without food’.

The prevailing thought is that they will lose because they will not be able to withstand the food.

If that’s the case… Now we just need to figure out what the commanders think.

“Hey, Matt.”

“why?”

“You eat until my porridge. I’m sick to my stomach today, so I can’t eat.”

Hearing this, Matt’s eyes twinkled, and he quickly took my porridge and began to eat the porridge as if he were drinking water.

Taking advantage of that opportunity, I stabbed Matt through the heart with a dagger hidden under my clothes.

“Ughhhhh… you son of a bitch…”

After that, I stabbed Matt in the neck to stop him from screaming.

After making it impossible to speak out, I left.

And I foolishly found a trainee knight in shiny armor patrolling alone, killed him and stole the armor.

After that, he calmly entered the enemy’s headquarters and reported to Lance, the commander of the garrison.

“Sir Lance, I just got back.”