strictlysupreme Chapter 66 Corridor
Chapter 66 Corridor
Three counterweight catapults bombarded the same section of wall for two days and two nights straight, with the stones aimed specifically at the same spot.
On the morning of the third day, the gray wall, whose bedrock had been smashed, suddenly bulged outwards and collapsed in large sections with a loud bang.
Gravel and mud splashed everywhere in the moat, and a hazy dust rose into the sky.
The first one to rush in through the gap was a madman.
The bald man, dressed in a faded red robe, roared as he charged into the ruins, brandishing a sword engulfed in green flames.
Robert Baratheon rushed in right after him.
The king, without a full helmet and wielding a warhammer in both hands, crashed his massive body into the breach, causing the surrounding shouts of battle to rise even higher.
The crowd poured into the outer fortress through the breach like water bursting a dam.
The battle on the outer wall ended within half an hour.
But that's where the progress ends.
Around noon, wounded soldiers began to be carried out in batches.
Otto stood at the edge of the camp, looking around. Some had half their jaws missing, others had gaping holes in their stomachs, clutching their protruding intestines and screaming in agony. Most were corpses simply tossed onto carts and hauled away.
Judging from the wounds, they were all slashes and short stabs at extremely close range.
When Patrick retired, he was in terrible shape.
His plate armor was covered in mud and blood, and the left side of his neck guard was dented. He took the water pouch handed to him by a servant, drank half of it, and then suppressed the bloody taste in his throat.
"It's too big to push." Patrick gasped for breath. "There are only two covered walkways connecting the outer fortress to the inner city, one that spans the sea. One can accommodate four people, and the other can only accommodate two."
He wiped his blood-stained face.
"The Ironborn blocked the corridor. Shields were erected in front, spears were thrust in the middle, and people behind were stepping on each other's shoulders to throw axes in. Everyone was crammed together! His Majesty's warhammer couldn't be swung at all inside. The Stormlands people forced their way in, more than thirty of them went in, and were chopped into pieces and pushed out within a quarter of an hour."
"How much came out?" Otto asked.
Patrick looked at him, his voice hoarse: "Less than ten. It was so slippery inside, full of fucking blood and entrails. One slipped, and an Ironborn axe came crashing down. The king got stuck after the first bend and threw a tantrum, smashing bricks, but it was no use."
Patrick didn't give any orders. After finishing explaining the mess, he glanced at Otto and the eleven men behind him.
"My lord, let me go," Otto said softly.
Patrick didn't say anything, but stepped aside.
Otto turned his head and looked at the team behind him.
The ten veterans and militiamen, clad in fish-scale armor, were all pale-faced. The bricklayer, who always complained about the watery soup in the valley, was trembling slightly.
"First group in front. Second group following. Third group pressing down. Gareth is behind me."
Otto tightened his leather gloves, his voice devoid of any inflection.
"Walk."
When we reached the entrance to the main corridor, the stones on the ground had lost their original color.
Beneath their feet lay a layer of sticky, dark red mud. Soil, crushed organs, and a severed hand of unknown origin were all mixed together.
The stench in the air was so strong it made my stomach cramp.
The corridor entrance was packed with people. Robert Baratheon's roar echoed through the stone walls, making everyone's ears ring.
"Push it! Get your shields up there! You bunch of useless cowards!"
Otto led his men forward. He saw Robert.
The king's black leather armor was covered in blood, and the warhammer in his hand was dripping with a red and white viscous fluid because it was covered with too much brain matter and bits of flesh.
He paced back and forth irritably at the entrance of the narrow corridor, which was only four people wide. His warhammer was too long and too heavy, and in the passage where the walls were against the stone walls on both sides, every swing would smash into the wall, making it impossible to exert any force.
The Stormtroopers ahead were pinned down at the first right-angle bend by the Ironborn's shield wall and throwing axes, their screams and the dull thuds of weapons cutting into bones filling the air.
"Get out of the way," Otto said to the two Stormtroopers blocking his path.
"Whose flag is that? This isn't a place where you can sneak around when there aren't many people around. Get out of here!" the infantryman cursed, his eyes bloodshot.
"Your Majesty!" Otto ignored him, his voice cutting through the noisy background, "Bluefork River, Hohenzollern, clear the way!"
Robert turned his head sharply, like an enraged bear.
His bloodshot eyes were fixed on Otto. He paused for a moment, then suddenly recognized the face.
"It's you!" Robert grinned, revealing bloodshot teeth. "Your crab trap! Fine! You try pushing it! If you can't move it, I'll kick you all into the sea!"
Robert shoved aside the soldiers in front of him: "Get out of my way! Let them in!"
The crowd parted to make way for a path stained with blood.
Otto put the bone whistle in his mouth.
"Enter."
The three men in the first group stepped past Robert and into the dark red intestine.
Without a battle cry, the oak shields made of three loaves of iron fit tightly together, and the veteran at the front, with his hook-and-sickle spear tucked under his ribs, steadily advanced, stepping over the mangled flesh scattered on the ground.
Robert, carrying his warhammer, followed directly behind Otto and Gareth.
"Beep—"
The sound of bone whistles echoed between the narrow stone walls, sharp as a bone scraper.
The veteran pushed hard on the back of the shield bearer on the left with his left hand. The three men rotated thirty degrees to the left in unison, the shield wall cutting at an angle, aiming at the darkness behind the bend.
As they rounded the bend, Ironborn's curses mingled with the sound of three flying axes hurtling towards them.
boom!boom!
Two axes slammed into the shield, sending splinters flying. The boots of the two shield bearers at the bottom slid half an inch into the flesh, managing to hold on.
Seven steps ahead, behind the Ironborn's shield wall were twisted faces, roaring and spewing foul saliva.
"Beep beep!" Two short bone whistles.
The veteran's hook-and-sickle spear moved. It emerged from the gap in the shield, its blade precisely hooking the edge of a round shield opposite him. He pulled it back sharply.
The shield was torn open by half a foot. The shield bearer on the right side of the first group thrust his short spear inside.
puff.
It wasn't a light thrust; it was the savage sound of iron piercing leather armor and tearing apart flesh. The spear tip pierced the stomach of an iron-clad man, who let out a pig-like scream, threw down his weapon, and knelt down, clutching his gushing blood and intestines.
A long "beep" sound.
The first group stepped on the still-alive Ironborn, pushing it forward two steps. The Ironborn made a dull thud as if its bones were breaking under the shield.
Everything seemed to be proceeding as rehearsed in the valley, until they advanced to the central vent in the corridor.
It was a stone cave located diagonally overhead.
The first group had just passed by when a crazed Ironborn, shirtless and with a short knife in his mouth, jumped directly down from the two-story-high ventilation shaft.
He didn't smash into the shield wall, but instead smashed into the gap between the first and second groups, hitting one of the second group's shield bearers.
The immense impact knocked the shield bearer to the ground, and the short knife in the Ironhide's mouth pierced deep into the gap between the shield bearer's thigh and armor.
"Ah—!" The shield bearer let out a heart-wrenching scream as his oak shield slipped from his grasp.
The entire formation was torn apart.
"Damn it!" The other shield bearer on the left was so shocked by the sudden turn of events that his eyes popped out. He instinctively withdrew his short spear used for external defense and turned to poke the iron seed that had fallen in.
This action completely exposed the flanks of the formation to the enemy in front.
"Hold on! Look ahead!" the leading veteran roared hoarsely, but his voice was insignificant in the noise of the corridor.
The iron-clad soldier in front immediately seized this opening. Two throwing axes whistled through the gap and smashed in.
"Pfft! Snap!"
The first axe cleaved off the veteran's helmet and sliced off half of his ear; the second axe chopped solidly into the face of the turning shield bearer.
The militiaman who had been cursing just moments before collapsed, his facial bones caved in, and he fell straight down like a chopped-down wooden stake, his red and white brain matter mixed with blood splattering all over the people next to him.
"Seven Gods! We can't hold on any longer!"
Blood splattered on the face of the shield bearer who was pinned underneath. He looked at his comrade's cleaved face and completely broke down. He screamed and tried to crawl backward on his hands and feet.
The formation has broken down.
In front were the Iron Soldiers wielding machetes, pushing their way in; in the middle were the fleeing soldiers frantically retreating; the left half of the entire triangular structure collapsed.
Six breaths.
On the training field, Otto would blow three short whistles to order the third group to advance and cover the retreat. But in Pike City, taking a step back would mean Robert and everyone else following behind would be caught in the stampede and wiped out.
Otto did not blow the whistle.
He drew the longsword from his waist. Not for commanding, but for killing.
The iron-blooded creature that had fallen from the sky had just gotten up from the ground and hadn't even had time to grip the dagger in its hand when Otto's sword arrived.
There were no fancy slashes. The Braavos water dancers' gliding steps remained precise even on the slippery, bloody mud.
Taking advantage of the momentum of his charge, Otto thrust the tip of his sword at a tricky angle, piercing through Iron's jawbone and straight into his brainstem.
Iron Seed didn't even let out a scream before its body went limp and collapsed.
Otto kicked Ironborn's corpse aside, his blood-stained boots landing hard on the back of the fleeing soldier who was trying to crawl backward.
"Go back," Otto said softly.
"Sir... he's dead! Martin is dead! His head's gone!" The fleeing soldiers, covered in blood, cried out hysterically.
Without a word, Otto raised his foot and kicked the fleeing soldier hard in the side, sending him tumbling and crashing into the stone wall on the left, landing right next to the body of his fallen comrade.
"Take the shield of the dead! Stand against the wall!" Otto pressed the tip of his sword against the throat of the fleeing soldier. "An iron-blooded axe can split your face, but I can skin you inch by inch. Pick up the shield!"
Forced by Otto's sword, the fleeing soldier, his voice trembling and choked with sobs, pried the blood-soaked oak shield from the faceless corpse and pressed it firmly against the drafty gap in front of him.
"Third group! Fill in!" Otto practically roared as he gave the order, then shoved the blood- and saliva-stained bone whistle back into his mouth.
"Beep—! Beep beep!"
The alternating long and short whistles sounded again.
The two veteran substitutes gritted their teeth and stepped forward. They roughly kicked aside Martin's corpse, trampled on their comrade's sticky brains, and slammed their shields into the Ironborn trying to squeeze in.
Blood splattered on their faces, some from enemies, some from their own. They roared like wild beasts.
Standing behind Oto, Gareth's hand holding the sword trembled violently.
He stared at the scene before him, a scene resembling a slaughterhouse, watching Otto force his own men to plug the breach with the tip of his sword. His stomach churned, but he gritted his teeth and refused to vomit.
At the very back of the procession, Robert Baratheon had a complete view of everything.
The king's excitement faded. He looked at the corpse of his fallen comrade, at the militiaman who was desperately pushing forward while holding his comrade's shield and weeping, and at Otto Hohenzollern's cold command.
This team was broken, ugly, and on the verge of collapse, but they were like rusty but tightly locked iron gears, grinding forward inch by inch through the pile of shredded flesh.
The next forty steps, every inch of the stone slab, were soaked with the cost.
The Ironborn launched a frenzied counterattack. Unable to pull their spears out, the shield bearers simply abandoned their spears, drawing their short swords and stabbing each other through the gaps in their shields.
The veteran leading the second group had his shoulder blade pierced by a spear, but he seemed oblivious to the pain, gripping the spear shaft tightly with his intact left hand, allowing his comrades behind him to take the opportunity to behead the iron-willed man.
The number of people in the team is decreasing.
When they could finally see the light at the end of the corridor, only seven of the eleven men remained standing.
The four remained forever inside that sticky, stone-like intestine.
"Beep—"
With a final long whistle, the seven blood-covered men staggered out of the corridor and onto the open bluestone courtyard of the inner fortress.
The surviving Ironborn, seeing this demonic army emerging from the mountains of corpses and seas of blood, finally screamed in terror, completely collapsed, and fled in disarray towards the depths of the castle.
As the sea breeze swept away the stench of blood from his nostrils, the defeated soldier who had been holding the shield of the dead man suddenly collapsed to his knees on the stone slabs of the courtyard, clutching the blood-stained shield and wailing uncontrollably.
The veteran at the front had lost half an ear, and blood flowed down his neck into his armor. He leaned against the wall, panting heavily, his eyes fixed on the sky, as if trying to confirm whether he was still alive.
Seven people, seven people covered in blood.
Otto stood at the exit, spitting the bone whistle he had been holding in his mouth into his palm. The whistle was covered in slippery blood and deep teeth marks he had made himself.
He glanced back at the eighty-step-long stone intestine. A dozen or so Ironborn corpses lay on the ground, along with four soldiers clad in fish-scale armor; their bodies had been trampled beyond recognition by the storm-borne soldiers who followed.
"Hahaha...hahahaha!"
A suppressed yet wild laugh echoed from the courtyard.
Robert Baratheon strode out of the corridor.
His warhammer was covered in bits of flesh, and his leather armor was torn to shreds, but he looked like a lion that had just feasted on blood.
He looked at the seven half-dead, weeping soldiers on the ground, then at Otto, who was sheathing his sword.
Robert didn't pat Otto on the shoulder, nor did he mention the "crab trap" again. The king strode up to Otto and pounded his chest heavily with his huge, calloused, and blood-stained hand.
"Hohenzollern of the Blue Fork!"
The king's booming voice drowned out the roar of the waves.
"Take the rest of your lunatics and wash off the filth! Tonight, I want you all sitting in the hall, drinking the best wine I brought!"