Late Arriving Reinforcements
The next moment, the instinct for survival led Invag to make a foolish decision. He immediately jumped onto the warhorse brought by his personal guards, and with a few trusted guards, he tried to take advantage of the chaos on the battlefield to sneak away in another direction!
However, riding a horse makes one a large target and more easily exposed.
Even more fatally, one of his loyal but utterly foolish personal guards, perhaps trying to rally the scattered troops with the flag, or perhaps simply out of habit, actually raised the enormous, conspicuous battle flag representing the Sparrow Corps high during the escape!
This flag, fluttering in the wind, was like a lighthouse in the darkness of the chaotic battlefield, instantly guiding all the cavalrymen to their destination!
"Look! That's the commander of the Sauron!"
"Surround them! Don't let the one carrying the flag get away!"
The lancers charged forward with lightning speed, like hounds that had caught the scent of blood!
Invag was terrified and frantically whipped his warhorse, but how could their barely starting speed match that of a warhorse already charging at full speed?
Within minutes, they were quickly caught up and surrounded!
"Put down your weapons! Surrender!" Lyon shouted sternly.
Invag attempted to resist, but his personal guards, outnumbered and outmatched, were quickly dispatched and felled from their horses.
The guard carrying the flag was targeted by several spears, and he and the flag were pierced like a hedgehog before he collapsed to the ground with a thud.
A precise arrow struck Invag's horse in the hind leg, and the horse reared up with a pained neigh, throwing him violently to the ground!
Before he could even get up, several cold spears were already pressed against his throat and chest, completely extinguishing any thought of resistance he might have.
Invag, the elite Battle Group Commander of the Sparrow Corps, was captured by Carnford in a state of extreme frustration and folly, and his personal guard either died or surrendered.
With Unag's escape and Invag's capture, the remaining Sauron infantry on the battlefield completely lost their will to resist.
Some of them threw down their weapons and knelt down to surrender, while others tried to scatter and flee into the wilderness, but most were surrounded, driven away, and captured by the cavalry that arrived later.
The battle is finally over.
The last rays of the setting sun sank completely below the horizon, leaving only a dark red afterimage on the horizon, as if sprinkling a layer of congealed blood on this ravaged land.
The battlefield was littered with corpses, the groans of the wounded echoed everywhere, and the air was thick with a nauseating stench of blood and gunpowder.
The remaining defenders began to systematically clean up the battlefield, collect weapons, identify prisoners, gather the wounded, and extinguish any remaining fires.
The rescued Carnford garrison soldiers, supporting each other, looked at everything before them with faces filled with bewilderment and exhaustion at having survived such a disaster, as well as a faint, incredulous joy.
They miraculously survived this bloody battle where they were at a complete disadvantage, and... won the victory.
Suddenly, a rider appeared abruptly on the western ridge!
The sudden appearance of this figure made the Carnford defenders, who had just experienced a bloody battle and had not yet fully recovered from the tension, tense up!
Almost everyone's first reaction was: Had the Sauron cavalry returned? Did they have a reserve force?
A wave of panic, like an icy tide, instantly swept over the exhausted front lines.
The slight relaxation that had just appeared on the soldiers' faces froze instantly, replaced by a deeper weariness and despair.
Many people instinctively gripped their broken weapons, their eyes filled with wariness and fear.
"Enemy attack! Prepare to fight!" The experienced officers, though equally alarmed and uncertain, instinctively shouted in an attempt to reorganize the chaotic ranks.
The soldiers, dragging their wounded bodies, barely managed to raise their shields and form a sparse defensive line, their faces filled with a tragic resignation to their fate.
Even Lyon, who had just orchestrated a brilliant counterattack, suddenly frowned.
He quickly turned his horse to face west, gripping his lance tightly in his right hand.
If it were the enemy, how long could his men hold out given their current condition?
The atmosphere on the entire battlefield instantly tensed up again because of this sudden appearance of a lone rider, as if an even more brutal battle was about to begin.
However, in the midst of this suffocatingly tense wait, the situation on the ridgeline took a dramatic turn.
Following that cavalryman, there came the second, the third... the tenth, the hundredth!
Like an endless stream of cavalrymen, they emerged densely from behind the ridgeline, spreading rapidly across the entire mountainside within sight!
They reined in their warhorses, lined up neatly, silent as mountains, and a chilling atmosphere instantly enveloped the entire battlefield, like a steel forest that had suddenly descended.
The intense rays of the setting sun shone from behind them, obscuring the patterns on their armor and the expressions on their faces in the backlight. But the banners fluttering wildly in the evening wind were so clear they stung the eyes of every survivor.
Those are blooming Broomflower Royal Standard!
"Reinforcements! The kingdom's reinforcements! They've finally arrived!" On the battlefield, someone let out a heart-wrenching cry, which ignited the ecstatic joy of all the Carnford defenders who had survived the ordeal!
Almost simultaneously with the jubilation of the arrival of reinforcements, on the front lines of the battlefield strewn with corpses.
Charlotte staggered to her feet, not bothering to wipe the blood from her face, and searched for that familiar figure amidst the mess on the floor.
Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, filled with extreme fear. She was afraid of not finding him, and even more afraid that the next thing she would see was his cold corpse.
Each fallen plate armor caused her heart to stop for a moment.
Finally, just when she was about to despair, a "tin can" covered in thick blood and mud suddenly moved amidst a pile of corpses trampled beyond recognition by horses' hooves and mud not far away.
He then struggled, very slowly, to climb up from the pile of corpses, supporting himself with his arms.
Although the armor was filthy, Charlotte recognized it almost immediately because of its unique and exquisite design!
"Karl!" she exclaimed, rushing over without hesitation and using all her strength to support his swaying body, carefully helping him remove his scratched helmet.
Beneath the helmet was Karl's pale, weary face, tinged with a hint of relief.
He coughed violently a few times, lifted his heavy eyelids, and looked over Charlotte's shoulder at the massive army that seemed to have descended from the heavens on the western ridge.
Karl gave a strained laugh, his voice so hoarse it was almost inaudible:
"See, Charlotte, I told you so, the Count's reinforcements have finally arrived..."
Seeing his wretched state and recalling the near-death experience, Charlotte was overwhelmed with mixed emotions—heartache and lingering fear. She couldn't help but scold him playfully, her voice choked with emotion, "What good has it done to come! If Lyon hadn't arrived in time, we... we would all have died here! You almost..."
She didn't finish her sentence, but the way she gripped Karl's arm guard tightly betrayed all her fear and relief at having it back.
Just then, the reinforcements on the ridgeline began to move.
Squads of infantry and cavalry, clad in bright armor and impeccably dressed, descended the hillside in an orderly fashion at the commanding shouts of their officers, quickly taking over the Carnford Line.
With the support of this new force, the entire Carnford seemed to be instantly infused with a new soul, straightening its spine from the brink of death.