Chapter 47: Securing the Port

“Open fire! Kill these Song invaders!”

The dwarf officer on the front line watched the Song soldiers advancing to the beat of the drums and gave the order to fire. Yet he seemed to have forgotten something: were these dwarf armies not themselves invaders in the Fonibo region?

Under the bombardment of the Song Kingdom’s superior artillery, the dwarves had no choice but to abandon their defenses, which had been blasted into ruins, and confront the Song soldiers in the open. Otherwise, standing their ground and exchanging fire while under attack from Song artillery would have been a losing proposition...

Amid the volleys from the dwarf lines, men in red uniforms fell one after another. The soldiers beside and behind them crossed over the corpses without expression and continued forward, following the officers ahead who carried their swords of command.

Even when an unlucky officer was occasionally struck and brought down, no one stopped to attend to him. From beginning to end, the soldiers maintained their steady advance.

After enduring two volleys, the Song soldiers finally reached a distance of thirty paces. Withstanding the scattered musket fire of the dwarves, they halted, raised their weapons, and took aim.

“Fire!”

At the officer’s command, three ranks unleashed their volley as one.

The dwarf soldiers who had just been slaughtering the redcoats with impunity suddenly collapsed in heaps, and their orderly firing line fell into disarray.

“Hold steady! Reload! Fire only on command!”

Under the dwarf officers’ shouts, the plate-armored soldiers did not flee. They continued reloading, waiting for the order to fire.

And so it went: one volley from the dwarves, followed by one volley from the redcoats. The dwarf line, already vastly outnumbered by the Song soldiers, was battered into tatters within only three volleys.

The dwarf commander stared in shock as the enemy marched straight through the musket fire and into the killing range of thirty paces, then unleashed devastating fire from three ranks. In only a few short minutes, nearly half of his men had been killed.

Quite apart from whether the dwarves’ willpower could hold, there were no longer enough of them to fill even a basic battle line.

The dwarf commander knew that the situation could not be salvaged. He drew his sword of command and charged forward with his personal guards.

“Fix bayonets! Charge!”

Led by their commander at the very front, the remaining several hundred dwarves once more rallied their collapsing morale and roared as they charged the Song soldiers thirty paces away.

“Aim. Fire!”

Seeing the enemy launch a bayonet charge, the Song officer remained utterly calm and steadily ordered another volley from three ranks.

During the charge, the dwarves—now even closer—fell in another wave of corpses. All the guards before their commander were blasted into bloody holes by the volley.

After firing, the Song soldiers skillfully hurled a volley of grenades, and then...

Then they actually withdrew!

“Excellent. The officer at the front still has a flexible mind. Faced with these desperate dwarven ironclads, engaging them in a bayonet fight when victory is already assured would simply waste the lives of our soldiers. Muskets and grenades are enough to destroy them.”

The Song commander in the rear smiled as he spoke.

When the dwarf commander saw the Song soldiers fleeing backward, his eyes filled with fury. Those cowards would not even grant the dwarves the chance for one final clash of bayonets!

The Song soldiers scattered to both sides. At that moment, the advantage of fighting without armor became clear. No matter how extraordinary the dwarves’ stamina was, there was no way they could pursue lightly equipped redcoats while wearing dozens of pounds of gear.

Then the dwarf soldiers watched in despair as another three orderly ranks of Song troops appeared. Once the soldiers in front withdrew through the gaps in the formation, the rear ranks unleashed another volley. Immediately afterward came another barrage of grenades.

The dwarf commander fell along the road of the charge together with more than a hundred of his soldiers. After enduring yet another round of explosions, the remaining dwarves looked around and saw fewer than three hundred comrades still standing. They knew that continuing the charge would be pointless.

Thus, after the dwarf commander’s death, they naturally collapsed.

At that moment, the tide of battle turned. Seeing the dwarven assault force break, the Song infantry charged without hesitation, bayonets fixed.

Even those remaining dwarves who wished to turn back and fight to the death could only meet their end beneath the overwhelming numbers of the enemy.

Most of the fleeing dwarves were pursued until their strength gave out, then stabbed to death along the road of their retreat.

The battle lasted from early morning until evening. More than ten thousand dwarf defenders were completely annihilated by the Song army—annihilated in the truest sense of the word. There were no prisoners.

The Gestapo entered Marshal Fumando’s command room with a broad smile.

“Haha! Our Great Song has achieved a glorious victory and driven a wedge into the continent of Europa. This will be the starting point of our struggle for supremacy across Europa!”

“Yes. The sacrifices of those young men were worthwhile. To victory—cheers!”

After Marshal Fumando finished speaking, his glass struck that of the beaming Gestapo. The toast between the two highest-ranking Song officials marked the triumphant conclusion of this landing operation.

According to the postwar figures, the Dwarf Empire had suffered heavy losses, while the Song Kingdom had lost only a little over 4,200 men. Whether judged by the casualty ratio or the results achieved, this was a victory worthy of celebration. Their enemies had been the elite regular army of the Dwarf Empire.

The entire army of the Dwarf Empire consisted of absolutely loyal and highly trained soldiers. The empire had no so-called elite units or second-line troops. Every soldier admitted into its regular army had undergone rigorous training and tests of loyalty.

The Dwarf Empire’s centuries of preparation had produced hundreds of thousands of dwarven warriors who feared neither death nor hardship.

It was this very army that, by withstanding the final desperate charge of Frankish cuirassiers, had directly destroyed the military power of that nation with its long martial tradition. Although the Frankish Empire had already suffered heavy losses, every country still acknowledged that the soldiers of the Dwarf Empire were elite warriors.

And now, these same elite troops, fighting on the defensive, had suffered such a lopsided defeat at the hands of the Song Kingdom—and had even lost an entire port city.

This had been a head-on battle, fought by force against force!

Still, some jealous observers claimed that the Song Kingdom had won only because it was protected by its powerful ironclad ships, and that once the fighting moved onto land, its combat strength would certainly be reduced.

But were ironclad ships not themselves a symbol of the Song Kingdom’s strength?

After receiving news that the port had fallen, the Dwarf Empire’s relief army halted its advance. The empire’s high command adjusted its strategy. The defeat in direct combat had clearly failed to extinguish the dwarves’ ferocity. The entire upper echelon of the Dwarf military was now planning a large-scale decisive battle involving its main forces.

Since they could no longer prevent the Song army from landing, they would let the entire force come ashore and annihilate it in one stroke—just as they had destroyed the last strength of the Frankish Empire in that previous decisive battle.

In a direct confrontation, the Dwarf Empire, from the highest commander to the lowest soldier, was filled with confidence in certain victory!

To be continued.

P.S. Thanks to Lord Weakwater Three Thousand for sending the first monthly ticket. There will be another update tonight, making a total of ten thousand words today.