Chapter 287

"Kill!" Zhanmu gritted his teeth and ordered Sir Melongkrehe.

"Your Highness, kill them all?" Melong and the senior officers beside him all stared at him in shock.

"My order you have already heard; if you want me to repeat," Zhanmu gazed at the lofty walls and winding moat of Windrest Fortress, clenched his teeth, feeling his fingers were already crushed, "This is: soldiers who return from defeat, not a single one spared, will be taken straight to the front and beheaded, then the next unit will replace them, charging over that damn moat, scaling that damn wall, until all the foreign mercenaries are slaughtered—if they do not die in battle but choose to flee back, without asking me, kill them outright, then immediately swap in the next unit and continue, until the sun in the sky sets behind the mountains opposite Triumphrock City!" He slammed his golden hook hard onto the campaign desk, "Have I made myself clear?"

"You've spoken perfectly clearly," Zhuangzhu found it hard to accept at once, "But most of these troops are soldiers from the Western Border, ah!"

"I don't care where they're from; if I need them and they're useless, what difference does it make whether they live or die? Better to bury them in the ditch before Windrest Fortress alongside the heroes of history than to freeze or starve in the wild, be chased by wolves or eaten by dragons."

The great camp was utterly silent; silence had thickened the air, and he knew he was again defying everyone's opinion, yet he would not retreat a single step.

If these soldiers and officers stormed his tent and beheaded their leader, Zhanmu would only say that he deserved it.

"There are at most three hundred people inside Windrest Fortress, while I have six thousand—not to mention, reinforcements from Stormland are still on the way," he heard himself roar. The contrast of the numbers and the current bleak situation left him uneasy; he even imagined himself donning armor, grasping a longsword, charging across the long moat, climbing the ladders, and slaughtering those eastern rebels to the last.

Damn it, a few hundred foreign mercenaries have firmly kept them outside the city, and he refuses to accept this outcome. Those renowned predecessors could defeat and repel the Golden Regiment time and again, and he could do the same!

He would not retreat, would not admit defeat, and was certainly no cowardly fool like Duke Tyrion.

Zhanmu looked at Zhuangzhu with the coldest gaze. If so many people cannot take a tiny fortress, what difference is there between them being alive or dead?

"Carry out the order!"

The officers looked at him hesitantly, as if looking at a fool.

"Carry out the order!" He could no longer bear it, thus drew his longsword and shouted at the officers.

The officers still hesitated.

He then immediately stepped forward, kicked Zhuangzhu aside, then pushed aside Taiduosi blocking his path, walked out of the tent, and loudly called the names of the guard captain Jieluomolande and the attendant William Pulusite.

When they had all gathered, he began to muster the personal guard, striding purposefully toward the main gate of Windrest Fortress.

His guards overturned to the ground the warriors whose faces still bore blood, the fortunate survivors from below the city, and one of the squad leaders, roughly bound them, and then, amid their doubts and angry shouts, escorted them bound to the front of his army's camp.

The guards silently dragged the leader of that squad to his front.

He might still remember the squad leader's name, but he now does not want to recall it at all.

The squad leader's face had a patch of skin rubbed away, blood trickling down his face, his chest armor still bore two arrow holes, not to mention his bleeding arm and neck.

"Mercy, Your Highness!" he shouted, "Spare my life, Your Highness! We've already done our utmost, ah!"

When Zhanmu drew his sword with his left hand, his eyes were already full of fear, and his tone had become unfamiliar.

"We've already done our utmost, ah!"

"If you've already done your utmost, then I don't need to kill you!" Zhanmu felt himself going mad, his voice filled with frenzy and a hint of hoarseness and roughness.

At that moment, his officers also stepped out of the tent, together with their soldiers and attendants, turning their gazes toward him.

Zhanmu clenched his fist, and his severed limb sent waves of unbearable phantom pain.

"Unable to take Windrest Fortress," he turned and shouted at the officers and soldiers watching him, "yet you dare to flee back—this is the outcome!"

He swung his sword with all his strength, hoping to kill with a single blow, letting the squad leader die easily.

However, all he heard were screams and wails, so he increased the speed of his swings, and in the end all he could feel was the warmth of blood splashing onto his face.

"Ah," "ah," "ah," he heard himself shouting madly, chopping as he shouted.

Everything had become ugly and ruined.

"Your Highness!" Meiwen reached out to stop him, pushed him aside, then drew his own sword.

Then he heard pleas for mercy and screams from elsewhere, along with the sounds of hacking.

He smelled a strong stench of blood and foul odor.

He felt himself crying, but his face was covered in blood, making it impossible to tell whether it was tears or blood.

He threw away the bloodstained longsword, wiped his face with his hand, and solemnly regarded the silent soldiers watching him.

"Sound the horn!" he commanded, "Continue the attack!"

He silently walked past Taiduosi, feeling his stare, and thus glared back fiercely.

"Next time, if my orders cannot be carried out, I guarantee that those I personally behead will have even higher status," he likewise swept his gaze over the other senior officers, "Lord Luoboshitake can behead a count, and I can just as easily slay the count's sons." He drew in a deep breath of icy air, feeling his whole brain fill with sour bitterness.

He looked at the disciplined troops and felt their state had become utterly different.

When he returned to the observation platform, the second wave of assault troops was again entirely killed in action—some fell into the moat's muddy pits, some were shot dead right beneath the city, only a few managed to climb the ladders and reach the battlements, yet they had no soldiers behind them, and were quickly slain by the relatively more numerous defenders, then thrown down to the ground below, piling onto other corpses.

Most of Windrest Fortress's walls face the sea; the landward part is truly narrow, so a small force can suffice to defend against a frontal assault.

Part of his archers stood on the erected railings, nearly as high as the walls, continuously firing arrows at the battlements, but the distance was too great; by the time the arrows reached the top, they had gone limp, barely better than nothing.

The catapult on the other side was noticeably more powerful; each time a large stone was hurled onto a suitable spot, it would take several mercenaries' lives, posing a greater threat to the defenders. Unfortunately, launching stones consumes time and relies entirely on luck, and their luck has consistently been poor.

If the stone struck the fortress wall, the entire Windrest Fortress seemed to emit a booming roar, like the ancient echo of bronze and iron walls. At one moment, Zhanmu felt it was the might of magic.

"Continue!" Zhuangzhu bellowed at the nearby signal officer.

"Left Wing Seventh Squad!" he heard the roar, "Kill!"

Soldiers raised their shields and carefully stepped through the moat's channel filled with ladders and corpses.

The channel had long been dry; as early as several days prior, the soldiers had cut off the upstream flow of the moat, so most troops could safely cross the moat's channel and bring the siege ladders to the edge of Windrest Fortress's high walls.

Constantly soldiers were struck by boulders hurled down from the battlements, and constantly soldiers were felled by cold arrows shot from the walls, yet many still bravely reached the base, erected ladders, and began to climb.

This is where the cruelty lies.

He truly wished that some soldier might unleash divine might, leaping from the ladder onto the parapet in an instant to carve out a safe foothold for those following… but there was no such soldier.

After his death order, the soldiers evidently became even more fearless of death, bravely climbing the walls; a bold individual might perhaps slay one or two unlucky mercenaries, or drag them down together from the high walls into the moat pit filled with mire and stones.

"Execute the sentence!" Taiduosi shouted.

Again, a portion of the soldiers who had retreated from the front returned.

There's no need to judge whether they had just been brave or had just exerted their utmost; the fact that they returned alive while the city remained uncaptured already told the story, and the consequence of not giving their all was death.

Death filled both banks of the moat.

Beneath the high walls of Windrest Fortress lay scattered corpses, but across the river the opposite bank was worse—nothing but headless bodies, shedding even more blood, until finally it could flow along the cold stone's depressions, congealing into a river of blood that poured into the moat pit.

He could only coldly watch as unit after unit of soldiers surged forward.

Each unit's attack order had been randomly written on parchment early that morning by him; he made no distinction between which were Lannister and which were the ill‑fated Tyrells. Zhuangzhu needed only to unfold the parchment to issue orders directly.

When the sun sank into the western forest and the colors of night began to fall, only then did the blast of the charge horn announce a halt.

He did not know how many soldiers were feeling relieved.

Throughout the day he had already sent out twenty squads; needless to say, about sixteen hundred men were all killed in action, and he could not tell how many of them had been cut down by the execution squad led by Taidusi, nor did he want to know.

When night fell, he ordered that dozens of huge bonfires be lit beneath the walls of Windrest Fortress.

He did not want the handful of remaining defenders in the city to have a chance to rest, so, following the order set for the day, he continued to dispatch five more squads.

They would continue to launch intermittent attacks at night, sounding the assault horn to weary the defenders.

"If the gate is broken, wake me immediately." He said to Fuliemongbulakesi, who was in charge of the night attack.

He was awakened at some point near dawn.

"Your Highness, Windrest Fortress is ours." The captain of the guard lifted the flap of his tent and said.