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#189 - Chapter 35: Courting Death (V)

Janos looked at it and felt more and more that something was wrong. That seemed to be a city... a city gate?

As the distance closed, the expressions of all the soldiers also became strange. Wasn't the target supposed to be a village of a country lord? This was a city! Look at the tall city walls, comparable to King's Landing. And the magnificent gate tower, with a kind of exotic style (forgive the children for being ignorant, what they saw was actually an arrow tower). The soldiers subconsciously tightened the oval shields in their hands, which could bring them more security.

Everyone couldn't help but stop, because in front of them was a moat more than thirty meters wide. The edge of the river channel was very flat, and seemed to be of the same material as the road. A wide stone bridge wide enough for six carriages to run side by side connected the two banks. They could also see that on the towering city walls, every few steps there was a soldier in light blue military uniform guarding.

Janos's second son, Jesso, said: "Father, are we on the wrong path? Is this that lord's castle!"

Janos looked at the city head suspiciously, and then looked around: "It should be right, this is White Thorn Manor. I came here once ten years ago, and the flag on the city head is the emblem of the Morningstar family." Janos was a little speechless, even if he had not participated in the war, he understood that without engineering equipment, relying only on the eight hundred men under his command, the soldiers only had shields, spears, and short swords in their hands, and they were not equipped with bows and arrows, he had no way to deal with this city.

His eldest son, Moros, tentatively asked: "Father, why don't we send someone forward to shout and let them surrender?" He thought it was right, after all, he was bearing the king's order and didn't believe that the other party dared to resist.

Janos rolled his eyes. The other party even chopped down the Imperial Guards who delivered the decree, how could they possibly submit? But if he went back like this, he would lose face. It would be better to send someone up to shout and see, it was a bit of a headache.

Moros forced a soldier squad leader to step forward and shout, the man had an expression as if his parents had died. He rode his horse to the city and shouted loudly: "We are the capital garrison from King's Landing, Earl Janos Slynt of Harrenhal is ordered by His Majesty the King to arrest Galon Morningstar and Rickon Stark, and all others who lay down their weapons and surrender, His Majesty the King will not be held accountable." This guy didn't dare to say anything too excessive, but what awaited him was a silence.

When Janos saw this situation, he was ready to retreat. It couldn't be blamed on him, who told them that the information they provided was wrong! Moreover, Janos felt more and more uneasy, as if something very bad was about to happen.

The gold-robed officer shouted for a long time under the city, but the soldiers on the city wall ignored him, and didn't even have the mood to look down. Just as he was about to turn back, the tightly closed door "creaked~ creaked~ creaked." slowly opened. Eh! Did persuasion really work? Not only him, but Janos in the distance was also surprised.

When the city gate was completely opened, revealing the situation inside, what appeared was a row of ten heavy armored cavalrymen, holding up four or five meter long cavalry spears. What was the concept? It was that they could poke through the glass of the second floor with a single lift of their hand. Then there was the second row, the third row, the fourth row... layer upon layer undulating with the war horses, like a blue ocean.

The gold-robed officer was stunned, and finally reacted to turn his horse around and prepare to escape. An arrow shot down from the city wall directly pierced his chest. Losing its master, the war horse was startled and ran away, and his body was soon submerged in the trampling of hooves.

The gold robes were just city guards who watched the gate, where had they seen such a battle. The formation immediately became chaotic, and they kept retreating without orders. Although Janos had not experienced war, he still had basic military literacy. He knew that in this situation, facing cavalry, if they lost their formation, they would die faster. He shouted loudly: "Hold on! Don't panic, don't run! The enemy is cavalry, you can't outrun war horses. Form up! Raise your spears!" He tried his best to stop the soldiers from running away, and Janos's shouting still had an effect. These gold robes ran back a distance, and then actually organized their formation.

The members of the capital garrison mostly came from King's Landing. Compared to the farmers in the countryside, perhaps their courage and combat power were worse, but they were more knowledgeable and knew that running away from cavalry would only lead to a faster death. The soldiers wearing shields all stood at the front, and the forest-like spears pointed straight ahead in three layers, top, middle, and bottom. Now that things had come to this, they were going all out.

Janos wiped his cold sweat and was very grateful. In order to cope with the inspection of the king and the prime minister, the soldiers had done a lot of formation training, and now it was useful. The gold robes maintained the formation and slowly retreated. They were not stupid, forming a formation was just for self-preservation, there was no chance of winning if they really fought.

With the sound of neat hooves, the cavalry in the distance had already left the city. There were only thirty rows of heavy armored cavalry, a full two companies of three hundred riders, followed by a full-staffed heavy cavalry archer battalion, five hundred riders were now in a state of combat and did not bring spare horses.

Rickon followed Bick's headquarters, which was at the front of the cavalry archer's line. The atmosphere of this battlefield infected him with incomparable excitement.

Bick looked at the distance, it was time to attack. The further forward he went, the narrower the road would become, which was not conducive to the cavalry's charge. He raised his hand and made a gesture, and the messenger blew the horn. "Doo doo~ woo~!" The heavy armored cavalry unit made some adjustments and became fifteen riders in a row. The cavalry at the front put the cavalry spear in the sleeve on the left, and took out an arm-length armor-piercing cone from behind the horse.

The cavalry unit began to trot, the cavalry charge was a gradual process. The cavalry archers behind used the speed of the war horses, and the range of the cavalry bow would be longer, "buzz~ whoosh~" heavy arrows, like dense swarms of bees, rose into the air!

The top of the gold robes in the distance suddenly darkened, as if dark clouds were pressing down. Many arrows were mixed with whistling arrows, making a sharp sound. The whistling arrows had two functions, one was to indicate the target; the other was like a dive bomber making a buzzing sound, creating great psychological pressure on the people below, sometimes a wave of whistling arrows could even cause a rabble to collapse.

"Be careful! It's arrows!" Less than a quarter of the gold robes were equipped with shields, and the guys in the back with only spears panicked. No matter how well they were trained, they were just a group of recruits who had not experienced war, and the middle and rear sections of the phalanx were in chaos for a while. Dense arrows fell, and the palm-length heavy arrowheads, combined with gravitational acceleration, had extremely strong penetrating power, even heavy armor was not effective. What's more, these gold robes were only wearing chain mail, and basically they were pierced through. Many soldiers who didn't have time to escape were directly nailed to the ground.

Among them, there were also some smart guys who turned the spears in their hands into windmills. But in the dense infantry line, after all, only a few could swing them, and the effect was still there. More people were trying to escape this area in every possible way, and some soldiers in the middle even rushed into the gun formation in the front.