Chương 285: 59.Fort Louis 2

Inside Fort Louis. I was genuinely puzzled. If it had been a single wall section under attack—even a concentrated hammer blow against the main gate—I could have understood it. Defending a fortress was always a matter of watching where the enemy struck and feeding lives and supplies into that point, one segment at a time. But what that soldier had just reported wasn't that. North of the Eastern Wall had been hit almost simultaneously, along its entire length.

I stood at the edge of Fort Louis's wall-walk and rapidly unrolled the map inside my head. From Fort Louis running north to Thornhold, that stretch of wall was close to five hundred kilometers. The average height was roughly eight meters, with sections carrying defensive towers reaching fifteen meters or more. This wasn't some flimsy wooden palisade a few squads could rush and brag about breaching. This was a genuine, literal national border fortification.

How many men would the Yanxia Empire need to mobilize to make a five-hundred-kilometer front look like it was burning all at once? I looked at the handful of officers gathered in front of me and quietly sighed. There weren't many of them. And it was obvious at a glance that every one of them had been ground nearly hollow over the past few days. Some still had unwiped blood on their armor plates. Some had scorched sleeves, as if they'd just been dragged bodily off a burning stretch of wall-walk.

The most senior officer, older than the rest, had eyes so bloodshot the whites had almost vanished. His hands gripped the map with rigid determination, but the parchment still trembled with the shaking of his fingers. I rubbed the back of my head and forced the urge to start shouting back down. This wasn't the moment. At least not at these men. I turned to face them.

"Give me the full report." The moment those words landed, it was like a dam finally finding its release valve. The officers crowded in—some crouching, some dropping to one knee—spreading the map across a nearby wooden table with one corner burned black. The paper was a dense tangle of old and new markings: charcoal, ink, and in a few places, lines someone had simply carved with the tip of a knife.

"My lord, on the surface it looks as though the entire northern stretch of the Eastern Wall is under simultaneous heavy assault. In reality, not every section is facing the same density of main attack." The speaker was an officer with a short beard, his voice worn to a rasp. He tapped several points on the map.

"The Yanxia forces split into multiple attack groups, setting fires, staging feints, suppressing towers, and destroying roads all along the line at once. The true main assaults are concentrated on only a handful of sections—but every one of those sections sits directly on top of a supply junction, a tower cluster, or a rear transfer point. From a distance, it reads as if the whole northern stretch is burning at once." Another officer cut in immediately.

"And they aren't just hitting the wall. They're hitting the wall, the towers, the roads behind the wall, the material sheds, the arrow reserves, and the water relay points. The moment any one of those catches, the two or three neighboring wall sections fall into chaos right along with it." I stared at the map, my frown deepening. I understood. The Yanxia Empire wasn't trying to blanket five hundred kilometers with bodies.

They were using fire, feints, main strikes, and internal disruption to set all five hundred kilometers alight at once. No wonder it had felt so wrong from the air. That sensation hadn't been "one point is about to fall." It had been "the entire wall is starting to come loose."

"At the beginning… we were actually holding…" This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. This time it was the youngest officer, standing at the edge of the group. He looked genuinely close to tears—not the theatrical kind, but the kind that comes from a man stretched past his absolute limit, his voice gone raw, his eyes red, still forcing himself to get the words out clearly.

"When the Marquis of the Eastern Reaches was still alive, all three of the northern command relay lines held, and the tower rotations were intact. Then… then the Marquis fell in battle. The eastern reserves couldn't reposition in time, and the northern command chain started to fragment." He drew a shaking breath.

"After that, the Marquis of the Northeastern Border—who was supposed to move in and secure the northeastern line—saw the Yanxia second wave massing and simply withdrew. Not a fighting retreat after taking losses. He… he took every soldier still capable of marching and ran." The short-bearded officer picked up the thread through gritted teeth.

"The moment he pulled back, the defensive rotation that was supposed to cycle through the stretch between Thornhold and Fort Louis collapsed over a huge span. From that point on, the northern Eastern Wall wasn't broken by the enemy in one clean push. It cracked from the inside first." My expression went dark. So that was it. It wasn't simply that we couldn't hold. Someone had decided not to—and left the burden for everyone else to carry.

I pressed the anger climbing my chest back down, turned, and walked to the wall's edge, looking out. The sky in the distance was heavy and dark, smoke rising in broken columns. Further out still, at the very edge of what the eye could reach, a massive wall caught the daylight and threw it back in a blinding, gold-edged line across the horizon. The Blazing Scale Wall. The Yanxia Empire's own border fortification. And the space caught between these two great walls was not empty border territory.

It was a meat grinder of the highest order. Men, fire, timber, iron, supply carts, siege frames, corpses, orders, and panic—everything got thrown in and churned together. Whatever came out of that churn still capable of moving was then forced forward to fill the next gap. I stood on the wall, staring at that scarred stretch of land for a long moment, before asking, almost as an aside:"What's behind that wall?" An officer stepped half a pace forward.

"My lord, that side should be Cross-Polis. It was originally our forward bridgehead—a position we pushed outward to hold." That explained it. I'd already thought the name sounded wrong for Yanxia's naming conventions. It had the feel of something hammered into contested ground back when the Kingdom still believed it could reach outward and claim it. Looking at it now, that nail had either been pulled out entirely, or flipped over to serve as a stepping stone for the other side.

The situation was worse than I'd estimated when I first landed. Not because the enemy was particularly brilliant. But because someone on our side had already pulled out the bones that were supposed to be holding the whole structure up. I stood in silence for a while, thinking. The officers around me didn't dare speak, just standing there waiting.

The wind cut along the wall, carrying gunpowder, charred wood, blood, and the faint, sickening sweetness of burned fat—enough to make anyone want to empty their stomach and start over. Finally, I turned back to face all of them.

"For now, we hold the fortress." Several of them blinked, clearly not expecting my first words to be neither an accusation nor some thundering call for a glorious counterattack. I looked at them and went on.

"Patch whatever lines can still function. Eastern wall-walk, arrow supply, water relay, casualty evacuation, night rotation, firebreaks—reconnect what can be reconnected. Once the Kingdom's reinforcements arrive, we'll figure out how to push this line back out." I paused, then added:"Charging around blindly right now accomplishes exactly one thing: a longer casualty list. Nothing else." They exchanged glances—not confidence exactly, but the steadiness of men who'd finally been handed something solid to stand on.

They bowed their heads and moved to their tasks. I waved them off. As the last of them cleared out, familiar footsteps sounded from the far end of the wall-walk. I didn't need to turn around. Ignicia walked in. She'd shifted back to human form, a faint residual heat still clinging to her from the transformation. Her crimson hair fell loose over her shoulders, the edges of her armor lightly dusted with ash. Clearly, that entire dive-and-breath sequence had barely counted as a warm-up for her.

She stopped beside me and glanced over.

"You look exhausted."

"Obviously," I said, staring at the smoking wasteland beyond the wall with very little energy left to spare.

"Someone dropped a five-hundred-kilometer disaster at my feet. Any reasonable person would be exhausted." She listened, and then—unexpectedly—let out a soft laugh.

"This place is nothing like the south." That, at least, was true. In the south, the trouble usually had a face. You could point at exactly who was causing it. Here, the man causing the problem had probably already ridden off on horseback, leaving an entire wall and a pile of half-dead soldiers behind for someone else to inherit. I was quiet for a moment before speaking.

"Ignicia."

"Mm?" I turned and looked at her.

"Tomorrow. Come with me to Thornhold." Her eyes shifted slightly. Not surprise—something faster than that. She was already working out exactly why I'd chosen that place.

"You're really going to kill them?" The question came out perfectly flat. But I knew she wasn't asking whether I planned to draw a blade tomorrow. She was asking whether I'd already decided to personally deal with people who could no longer be allowed to remain. I looked out at the northern line, cracked open like a wound, and told her the truth.

"I don't want to." That was genuine. I wanted it less than almost anyone would believe.

"But my two elder brothers have left me no other choice." Ignicia didn't answer right away. The wind moved through her crimson hair. It moved through the smoke beyond the wall that still hadn't died. After two breaths, she spoke, her voice carrying the same quiet weight as a decision already made.

"I understand." Then she looked at me, her tone as steady as if she were discussing the weather.

"I'll bring a squad with me tomorrow." The moment those words settled, something in my chest that had been sitting there tight and smoldering all day loosened, just slightly. Not because the situation had gotten any simpler. But because, at least, I wouldn't be going alone tomorrow.