Chapter 423: THE Truth -4
"...We can shoot him to pieces right now, my Lord."
"Are you an idiot?" Lothair exclaimed, glaring at the commander. "He’s sitting in the open, unarmed, and he’s poured out two silver cups. Clearly, they don’t want to shoot him, and neither should we... he wants to negotiate."
Though Lothair was paranoid about the road and the lack of tracks, killing an unarmed envoy was a terrible mistake.
If this man was here to offer a surrender, or even a temporary truce, shooting him would trigger whatever trap King Erik had laid out in the hills.
"A negotiation?" Gauzlin scoffed, his southern pride slowly returning to his chest. "He sits there like a king while we have an army at his throat. He is arrogant."
"I will go talk to him," Gauzlin declared, puffing out his chest. "I will see what this northern dog wants."
However, Lothair didn’t stop him.
He needed to know what the Iron Kingdom was planning, and Gauzlin was the perfect bait to test the waters.
"Take two guards," Lothair ordered, "Do not draw your sword unless he draws first. Just hear his terms and ride back."
"I know how to handle these savages, Lord Lothair." Gauzlin grinned, kicking his warhorse forward.
The Marshal gestured to two heavily armored knights, and the trio slowly rode out from the safety of the dense pine tree line.
They trotted down the center of the crushed gravel road.
Back at the tree line, Lothair watched them go, his hand resting on the pommel of his broadsword.
His eyes constantly darted from the lone man at the table to the gravel road beneath Gauzlin’s horse.
Out in the valley, Marshal Gauzlin kept his chin held high.
He wanted to look incredibly intimidating... he was a lord of the south, a commander of thirty thousand men.
After all, he wouldn’t allow some nameless general in a fine coat to intimidate him.
"Hey!" Gauzlin shouted as he got closer, "Are you the welcoming committee?! Did your King send you to beg for mercy?!"
The man picked up one of the silver cups, took a slow sip, and set it back down.
He looked up at the approaching Marshal with a blank, almost bored expression.
"Stop right there," the man called out, his voice smooth and calm.
"I wouldn’t bring those horses any closer if I were you."
Gauzlin let out a mocking laugh. He pulled hard on the reins, stopping his stallion about twenty paces away from the wooden table. The two armored guards flanked him.
"You wouldn’t bring them closer?" Gauzlin sneered, resting his hand on his sword hilt.
"You sit alone in the mud, surrounded by nothing, and you dare to give me orders?
I am Marshal Gauzlin of the Frankish Empire!
Where is your army, you arrogant fool? Where is King Erik?"
The man at the table slowly wiped his mouth with a white cloth. He placed the cloth neatly next to his plate.
"King Erik is busy," the man answered. "He left me to handle the pest control."
"Pest control?!" Gauzlin roared, his face turning red. "I have fifty bronze cannons pointed directly at your head right no.! I can turn you and this stupid little table into dust with a single wave of my hand."
"You could," the man nodded. "But you won’t."
"And why the hell not?" Gauzlin demanded, his horse shifting on the gravel.
"Because you are standing on my road," the man smiled, "And I don’t like it when southern dogs dirty my new gravel."
Gauzlin lost his temper.
The disrespect was too much... he didn’t care about Lord Lothair’s orders anymore. He was going to cut this arrogant bastard’s head off and present it to the Emperor himself.
"Kill him!" Gauzlin screamed at his two guards, drawing his steel sword from its scabbard.
However, while walking his horse forward, the guard on the right kicked his spurs into the beast’s flanks.
The animal lunged, its hoof slamming down hard onto the crushed gravel just off the center path.
Clink... The horse kicked a small thing poking slightly out of the dirt.
Before Gauzlin could even blink, the very land beneath them erupted.
BOOOM!
The ear-shattering explosion ripped the world apart... a geyser of fire, black smoke, and jagged gravel shot up from the ground, swallowing the guard and his horse.
The shockwave was monstrous, hitting Gauzlin like a solid wall of invisible iron.
"Damn it!!" Gauzlin shrieked in terror as the blast hit him.
His black stallion panicked. The horse reared up wildly, its eyes wide with panic. It bucked violently, kicking its back legs out in fear.
The horse kicked again, its shoe striking another small, hidden metal trigger buried in the gravel just a few feet away.
BOOOOM!
A second explosion tore through the road.
The sheer force of the blast picked the second guard’s horse entirely off the ground, throwing the screaming knight through the air like a broken ragdoll.
The chain reaction threw Gauzlin from his saddle.
He flew backward, his armor failing to protect him from the impact as he slammed hard into the packed gravel.
The guards kick away from them in a chaotic mess of shattered armor and torn flesh.
They and the Marshal are now in the ground, rolling across the dirt as a thick cloud of suffocating black smoke swallowed the road.
Back at the tree line, Lord Lothair and the thirty thousand Frankish soldiers watched in silence.
The perfectly flat road. The lack of heavy cart tracks. The single man sitting alone in the center of the valley.
It all made sense now.
The man at the table hadn’t even moved from his wooden chair. He just calmly picked up his silver cup and took another slow sip of wine.
If the entire valley was a giant bomb... how were they supposed to reach the port?
Out on the crushed gravel, Marshal Gauzlin was groaning pitifully.
The two guards who had ridden out with him were gone, reduced to bloody pieces across the dirt.
"Help... damn, help me!" Gauzlin shrieked.
"Don’t move a muscle, Gauzlin!" Lothair roared, "Stay where you are! If you touch the wrong piece of gravel, you will blow your own legs off!"
The Marshal froze, pressing his face flat into the dirt.
The Frankish army behind Lothair was on the verge of panic.
Thirty thousand men shifted nervously, they were elite knights and hardened mercenaries, but these commanders doesn’t know how to deal with such a thing... none of them did.
It was their very first time seeing a bombed road.
In standard warfare, you could see the enemy.
You could raise your painted shield against an incoming arrow, or brace your pike against a charging warhorse.
But how in the name of the gods do you fight the actual ground beneath your boots?
Lothair stared down the road.
Should they march and let the casualties fall where they may?
It was a common medieval tactic... Lothair had enough bodies. He could easily order three or four thousand peasant conscripts to link arms and just walk blindly forward.
They would trigger the hidden bombs with their own feet, clearing a safe path with their shattered corpses for the rest of the army to follow.
However, Lothair quickly dismissed the dark thought.
All these souls... wasting them like that wasn’t just cruel, it was sheer stupidity.
He needed those men to storm the port.
Furthermore, forcing thousands of men to intentionally walk into invisible explosions would shatter the army’s morale.
The infantry would mutiny and slaughter their own officers long before they ever reached the Viking city...