One Arrow, Two Eagles?

"Yes, Your Highness!" Several Iron Guards swiftly set off in pursuit of Nalant.

The First Prince had originally been ready to have the signalman sound the horn in reply, so that today's great siege could begin.

But now, seeing the expressions of those young nobles, he could only grit his teeth and forcibly swallow the response he had prepared.

He hated Nalant to the bone. If not for that fellow, his first command would have proceeded flawlessly.

Then, beneath the dumbfounded gazes of the lesser vassals and young noble heirs, Nalant spurred his warhorse into a mad dash toward Maple Leaf City, while more than a dozen royal Iron Guard cavalrymen behind him pursued him as if their lives depended on it.

As each second passed, Nalant drew closer and closer to Maple Leaf City.

Two thousand meters, fifteen hundred meters... one thousand meters, five hundred meters...

"Th-this Sir Nalant... what is he trying to do? Does he not value his life?"

"Wait, did you notice? Nalant seems to have already gotten within five hundred meters of the city wall!"

"That's right! Why aren't the Northern Principality soldiers on the walls attacking him? Even the Iron Guard cavalry seem wary—they don't dare get any closer!"

"Could it be because there are too few of them, and the Northern Principality is reluctant to waste trebuchet stones?"

"Probably not, right? Could what Sir Nalant said earlier have been true?"

When Nalant reached a point just over five hundred meters from Maple Leaf City, the jaws of the lesser nobles and young heirs nearly dropped to the ground.

Over the past few days, this five- to six-hundred-meter stretch had clearly been the place everyone feared most, because it lay within the coverage of the Northern Principality's secret technique for small trebuchets.

Yet the