Chương 184: 184：Sounding the Horn of Revenge

Grand Duke Valentine slowly raised his right hand, silencing the clamor of his tacticians. For once, Valentine did not instantly pierce through the fog of war. Before this vast tactical enigma, he too was but a mortal man. He did not know what the Orc high command was thinking. Nor could he possibly know that the Orc camp harbored a Shadow Priest named Zagar!

Likewise, he had no idea that Warchief Blackstone's seemingly overwhelming siege force of forty thousand was nothing but noise—a false feint designed to draw his defensive focus! The true killing blow was an assassination squad led by eight [Sons of Titan]. In the dead of night, two days from now, they would slip seamlessly through his impregnable obsidian walls to execute a decapitation strike on the Grand Duke himself!

"No matter how deep this conspiracy is buried..." Grand Duke Valentine slowly drew himself up. The grandmaster tactician, a man who had climbed to the absolute apex of northern authority over a mountain of corpses, displayed the sheer, unyielding resolve of an Empire's pillar. He swept aside all meaningless hypotheticals. Staring into the flickering flames, his voice rang out like striking iron:"Faced with the enemy's overwhelming military pressure, we will not sit idle and chase shadows!

As the supreme commander, my duty is to forge the absolute hardest shield and bare every blade capable of shredding them to pieces!" Shwing! Grand Duke Valentine abruptly drew the broadsword at his waist, the ultimate symbol of the Empire's military authority.

"Alaric!"

"Father! I am here!"

"Sound the Tier-One Crimson Alert immediately! Relay my orders to all sixteen military camps along our border!" With absolute, chilling clarity, the Grand Duke issued a series of scorched-earth defensive mandates:"Notify the Royal Griffin Knights! They launch today. Maintain a continuous, rotating blockade of the thirty-thousand-foot airspace above the fortress! Fire upon any aerial targets instantly, friend or foe!

"Notify the Alchemy Workshops! Unseal the subterranean hellfire conduits! I want thirty thousand barrels of boiling oil and scalding water pushed to every battlement and rampart within the day!

"General Marr! You will coordinate with the Mage Towers. Cancel all leave and resupply for the four hundred high-tier White Robe Mages! I want them carving massive, multi-layered defensive barrier matrices in the center of the inner city!"

"The second Warchief Blackstone's brutes dare step within a hundred meters of these walls," Grand Duke Valentine's facial muscles twitched, his thunderous wrath fully unleashed, "you will hammer them with cluster Pyroblasts capable of shattering magical shields! I want them all roasted alive!"

"Yes, your Grace! Long live the Grand Duke! Long live the Empire!" The commanding officers in the hall roared their compliance. Infected by this overwhelming aura of slaughter, every officer's blood boiled. All their previous confusion evaporated, replaced by a frenzied zeal for war. Such draconian, overwhelming suppressive firepower would assure the Orcs paid an agonizingly catastrophic price for daring to lay siege! Fifty miles east of the Misty Swamp. Ironwood Fortress.

This massive stone bulwark was currently shrouded in a pall of gloom and despair. Freezing rain drizzled from the sky. Between the stone slabs of the inner city's training ground, dried, blackened blood was re-hydrated by the rain, exuding a heavy stench of rusted iron. The supreme commander of the fortress, General Galahad, sat silently at a long table. He was staring blankly at a shattered Thorned Iris emblem in his hands.

The badge was stained with dark brown, crusted blood, its edges violently warped by blunt force trauma. It was the relic of his most prized battalion commander. Recalling that tragedy, Galahad's heart—a heart that had endured countless bloody battles—throbbed with agonizing pain. Under the command of the Shadow Priest Zagar, ten [Sons of Titan] had launched a sudden assault.

Cloaked in rock shields, they had completely ignored the heavy ballista fire raining down from the walls of Ironwood Fortress, physically smashing their way straight through the outer chevaux de frise barricades. In just half a day, the three most elite heavy infantry battalions of Ironwood Fortress had been utterly routed by those monsters, suffering over fifty percent casualties. That battle hadn't just crippled the fortress's main forces; it had subjected Galahad's dignity to unprecedented humiliation.

Gabriel strode forward. This fierce general, a master of Lightning-attribute Knight's Swordsmanship, was exceptionally volatile right now.

"Because of that battle, the men are too terrified to sleep at night. They're dreading another monster attack." Gabriel slammed his fist onto the table.

"We lost over fifty men and have hundreds wounded! Are we just going to let this blood debt slide?

"Deploy the troops! Even if you only give me a single battalion, I'll go raid one of their supply convoys! I want to chop off a hundred Orc heads to honor our fallen brothers!" Galahad set down the shattered emblem and spoke slowly. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Revenge? How?

"Warchief Blackstone's defensive lines are airtight. Impeccable. If you march out there right now, you'll just be throwing yourself into the Blackstone Warband's encirclement to die! Do you want this fortress to lose the absolute last man capable of drawing a sword?!" Gabriel instantly lost all his strength. Slumping heavily into a wooden chair, he buried his face in his hands. The tent fell into a dead silence.

The agonizing frustration of being unable to find an opening to wash away their shame weighed on their hearts like a boulder. Just then, a brief commotion outside the tent shattered the oppressive atmosphere.

"Let go of me! You unruly grunts! I am an envoy sent by Lord Soren of Greywater Village! I have top-secret military intelligence of the utmost urgency!" A shrill stream of curses pierced through the rain, an odd mixture of pure Goblin dialect heavily peppered with stiff, formal Human Common. Galahad's brows furrowed sharply. Soren? He naturally remembered the man who had established a territory deep behind enemy lines and miraculously annihilated five hundred Orcs.

"Bring him in!" Galahad barked instantly. Two heavily armored fortress guards effortlessly dragged a Goblin scout—completely wrapped in a mud-caked camouflage tarp—into the tent and unceremoniously dumped him onto the floor. Though the throw made the Goblin bare his teeth in pain, it did nothing to diminish his innate, street-smart hustle. He nimbly scrambled up from the muddy floor, meeting Galahad's scrutinizing gaze without a shred of fear.

Pulling a wax-sealed parchment tube from an oilskin pouch strapped to his chest, he held it high with both hands.

"My Lords! This is the latest Orc military intelligence! My Lord traveled hundreds of miles, risking life and limb to scout this out for you!" Gabriel snatched the bamboo tube, crushed the wax seal, and unrolled the parchment map. After just one glance, the hot-tempered Vice-Commander's breathing stopped completely. His eyes bulged in pure disbelief. He pulled the map closer to the firelight, scanning it over and over again until his entire body began to violently tremble.

"What is it?" Galahad immediately sensed that something was extraordinary and stepped forward.

"Look!" Gabriel's face was flushed with fierce excitement, his voice quivering. With a trembling finger, he pointed to several defensive outposts heavily circled in red ink by Soren.

"To escort the incoming inspection delegation from the Blood Province, the Blackstone Warband is engaged in a massive redeployment of their defensive lines!

"That old madman Blackstone has completely pulled out the three Black Iron Orc battalions that were firmly blockading the area directly in front of Ironwood Fortress!

"They have abandoned their impregnable defensive strongholds and are currently force-marching toward the southern edge of the Misty Swamp!" Gabriel snapped his head up, his eyes exploding with a terrifying, bloodthirsty glint.

"This means the outpost thirty miles from here is now guarded by less than a hundred crippled, elderly grunts, watching over mountains of weapons and grain!

"And that fully equipped Orc battalion that was drafted away is currently on a forced march along the road! They are stretched out into a thin snake formation across a barren, gently sloping terrain!" Galahad snatched the map. A fierce, burning desire for revenge surged into the old general's previously dim eyes. At a critical juncture like this, Soren had absolutely no reason to send someone wading through the swamp just to deliver false intelligence.

If the Orcs were truly executing a massive troop movement, the fortress's scout cavalry only needed to take a quick peek to verify it.

"Soren is handing us an opportunity to counterattack..." Galahad gripped the parchment tightly, the veins bulging on the back of his hands. The weathered veteran instantly saw through the "deeper meaning" behind Soren's intelligence delivery. Soren wasn't just using this chaotic situation to disrupt the Orcs' deployments. Honoring their shared bond as defenders of the human faction, Soren had created the perfect opportunity for Ironwood Fortress to wash away its shame and turn the tables!

If they seized this chance—striking while the Orcs had abandoned their heavy fortifications and left their defenses hollow during a forced march—a single, piercing cavalry charge could completely sever and annihilate a full-strength Orc battalion!

"Such grace cannot be repaid..." Galahad took a deep breath. The suffocating cloud of misery that had plagued him for days was instantly blown away by this sudden tactical opening. Feeling profound gratitude for Soren's intelligence support, he grabbed the shattered Thorned Iris emblem from the table and solemnly pinned it back onto his breastplate.

"Gabriel!" The General's voice roared with restored majesty.

"I am here!"

"Issue the order for revenge! Muster every heavy cavalryman and pike phalanx in the fortress! We march immediately!

"Tonight, on that very slope, I will use their black blood to honor the fallen souls of Ironwood Fortress!"