Military Observers

Texas, Battery Number Two.

The vegetation on the mountainside had been burned into large patches of "baldness," while enemy corpses left unrecovered lay scattered along the mountain road.

Unlike Battery Number One, which served as an outpost position, Battery Number Two, together with Number Three, Number Four, and Number Five, formed a mutually supporting formation. Nearly every location where the enemy could deploy artillery lay within the firing range of at least two batteries.

This meant that, aside from a few large-caliber siege guns, the English army could no longer rely on its range advantage to bombard Battery Number Two at will.

At the very least, the Texas artillery positioned above now had room to return fire. This allowed the Texans to exploit the defender's advantage and turn this mountain road into a meat grinder.

Ulm defended this battery alongside these so-called soldiers of Texas.

For the Chief Winged Hussar of Lower Egypt, who had once been a shepherd, he had been through countless battles since following Lothar from Yoglusburg. Yet in this battle, all he could do was manual labor such as carrying shells and reinforcing the fortifications.

Firearms were not unfamiliar to Winged Hussars, but the firearms recorded in their traditions had long become utterly different from those of this era.

A soldier wielding an entrenching shovel, scooping fallen stones and clumps of dirt from overhead into a basket, asked, "Knight Ulm, your accent sounds rather strange. Are you Austrian?"

Ulm shook his head. "I suppose I'm Bavarian, though I've never been back. I was born while my parents were on a pilgrimage. I remember they were attacked by Turkic people while passing through Asia Minor. Lord Godfrey of Bouillon of Lower Lorraine saved them. After the Holy City was liberated, they settled in Jerusalem."

The soldier seemed