Hasty Retreat

As the six counts hurried back to their camps, many lesser nobles had still been chatting idly, and quite a few had even gone to seek comfort among the merchant caravans in the rear.

But when the emergency order to retreat—even abandoning supplies—arrived, every lesser noble turned pale with fright and began frantically gathering their men to withdraw.

As for those nobles enjoying themselves among the rear caravans, their own subordinates could only go look for them.

The Northern Principality's cavalry was only ten li away. If they continued quietly closing in on the camp, the time remaining would be no more than half an hour. There was likely not much time left for these lesser nobles.

The counts did not wait to see whether all their vassals had received the message. After passing the order along as widely as possible, they immediately led their cavalry to rendezvous with the king.

To prevent the Northern Principality's troops in the city from noticing anything amiss too early, they did not dare use torches when they gathered either.

More than ten minutes later, the king and several counts had assembled over eight thousand elite cavalrymen, ready to set out.

For this autumn campaign, every count had, as in previous years, brought half the men from their Extraordinary Knight Orders. They had each brought roughly five or six hundred elite cavalrymen, including fifty or sixty Extraordinary Knights.

The king had done the same. Although the Iron Guard Knights numbered ten thousand, he had brought only a little over five thousand men, including more than five hundred Extraordinary Knights.

Though they might have been outnumbered by the Northern Principality by half, they still possessed a faint advantage in this desperate situation: the Northern Principality's cavalry did not know they had been discovered, and their