Charging into Hell (II)

Chris was a man who was terrified of dying.

Tonight's bandit raid had been doomed from the start, because Chris had bought a Thermal Imager online.

After nightfall, Chris volunteered for sentry duty. He climbed the hastily erected, five-meter log watchtower and kept scanning his surroundings with the Thermal Imager.

Five meters was not especially high, but it gave Chris a view of everything within a kilometer. Even Small Hill was only a little over six meters tall... Chris paid particular attention to Small Hill.

Civilian thermal imagers in twenty-first-century China were already highly capable.

Within a kilometer, provided there was no interference, a cat, a dog, or even a bird flying past would appear clearly as a white silhouette on the Thermal Imager.

So when the bandits appeared on Small Hill, leading their horses, Chris spotted them immediately.

Their leader was cautious. As soon as he reached the top, he noticed something wrong and dropped flat.

Unfortunately, it was pointless. Darkness was no obstacle to the Thermal Imager.

After spotting the bandits, Chris immediately tugged the rope on the watchtower. Before long, Isaac, who was also still awake, came running to its base.

"They're here! They're coming!"

"Where?"

"On the hill opposite us... thirty-odd men."

"Understood."

Isaac knew Chris had unusual abilities, so he did not ask how Chris had seen the mounted bandits moving in pitch darkness.

Isaac hurried away and quietly began mobilizing everyone inside the wagon formation. He deliberately left the campfires burning so the bandits across the hill would not notice anything amiss.

The gunmen quickly and quietly crouched behind the wagons facing the enemy, hiding themselves. At that point, however, a small problem arose.

The flintlock men were fine. They only had to pour powder into their priming pans and cock their guns to be ready to fire.

The matchlock men had a more complicated task. They still had to light the matches on their guns, carefully shielding them throughout the process so the bandits outside would not spot the suspicious glow.

Yet by the time the matchlock men had finally finished their painstaking preparations, the bandits across the hill had quietly withdrawn.

Chris kept tracking their movements with the Thermal Imager. One look at their direction told him they were not retreating, merely taking a detour.

Chris looked down again and reported the situation to Isaac. Isaac was somewhat disappointed, but instead of dismissing the men, he ordered them to remain ready.

Chris spent half an hour watching the bandits laboriously cross hills and streams, making a huge detour from the hill to the far side of the scrubland. He knew what they intended to do.

Once the fighting started, the watchtower would definitely be one of their targets. Chris dared not linger. He grabbed the ladder and slid down.

Only after reaching the ground did Chris notice two players crouching beneath the watchtower. He had no idea what they were doing.

"What are you two doing?"

They exchanged looks and gave Chris an unexpected answer.

"We're protecting you."

"I don't need protection. Here..."

Chris waved them off and pointed toward the scrubland.

"The enemy's about to charge from that direction. Get over there!"

With that, Chris excitedly ran over himself. He also wanted to grab a musket and join the fun.

Of course, just in case, Chris did not go right up to the wagons. Instead, he hid behind the large rock from earlier that day, then carefully lay against its top, peeking out with half his face exposed.

When the hoofbeats began, the sound alone was deeply imposing. The dull pounding against the earth rolled toward them like thunder.

"Get ready! Stand up!"

Isaac was somewhere out of sight, and now even his voice sounded tense. Chris had said the wire could stop a cavalry charge, but seeing was believing. Until Isaac saw it himself, he could not fully trust that claim.

"Spearmen, move up and prepare to stop the horses! Musketeers, get over here and raise your guns beside the wagons... those campfires behind us! Someone put them out, quick!"

The people inside the wagon formation began scrambling in confusion.

Still, it was only a little confusion. The members of Isaac's Caravan acquitted themselves adequately. They had seen bloodshed during their two months on the road. Their panic came merely from the tension of facing cavalry head-on for the first time.

Amid Isaac's shouted orders, the caravan members were flustered, but they still did what needed doing.

The campfires were quickly extinguished. The musketeers, whether armed with flintlocks or matchlocks, formed orderly ranks behind the wagons and prepared to shoot.

The men carrying long spears steeled themselves and moved to either side of the musketeers. Resting their spears on the wagons and wooden crates, they prepared to trade thrusts with the bandits in close combat.

The hoofbeats drew closer and closer. Just as that rolling thunder reached fifty meters away, with some men nervous enough to nearly wet themselves, bells suddenly jingled. Heavy bodies hit the ground, followed by screams.

"It worked!"

Lin Ruoyu, crouching to one side, was ecstatic. He stood, raised his Flintlock, and fired the first shot toward the sounds in the darkness ahead.

"Fire, brothers! Give them hell!"

"Damn it, don't fire at random!"

Isaac cursed. He regretted not asking His Highness Chris for command of his followers sooner.

Now it was too late.

At Lin Ruoyu's shot, the other five players either began firing multi-barreled pistols into the darkness or took short running starts and hurled their wooden javelins ahead.

Their example proved too much for the dozen or so musketeers in formation. Once the first man pulled his trigger and sent a ball into the darkness, nine others fired after him in an uneven series of cracks.

Seeing this, Isaac could only fire his own Flintlock, then skillfully begin reloading.

"Quick, quick, quick! Reload! Fire at will! Fire at will!"

Every gunman was shooting, and smoke soon spread inside and outside the wagon formation. Even Chris could not resist raising his gun. He found an angle with nobody in the way, fired outside the formation, then turned back and stood behind the rock to reload.

Loading a muzzle-loading musket was rather cumbersome, and the process did not need describing again here.

It was enough to know that any soldier who could fire three shots a minute on a battlefield was unquestionably an excellent soldier.

As muskets cracked around the wagons, still more agonized screams rose from the scrubland, along with horses' whinnies and the heavy thuds of warhorses falling.

Most importantly, scattered gunshots began sounding from the bandits. They were returning fire at the wagon formation.

As Lin Ruoyu was firing his fifth shot, he heard a sharp crack from the wagon in front of him. A lead ball had evidently struck its body.

What? The enemy actually dared fight back!

Lin Ruoyu flew into a rage and turned to shout at the players following him.

"Light the torches and throw them over! Throw them into our trap zone so we can see where those bandits are!"

The torches had been prepared in advance, and the campfires had not quite been extinguished. Two players simply held the torches against the embers, lighting the makeshift bundles of oil-soaked hemp rope wrapped around one end of each piece of firewood.

Then the two of them hurled four torches out of the formation with all their strength.

When the server had first opened, the players had only just gone from frozen meat to living, moving people. Their bodies had been weak, and even throwing with all their might would not have sent anything very far.

Now things were different. They had walked constantly for more than two months and eaten hearty meals of meat and fish every day for just as long. They were all sturdy and well-fed now. Throwing a torch was no trouble at all.

The farthest of the four torches flew more than fifty meters.

The torches landed, illuminating the people and horses struggling among the low shrubs. Musket shots, javelins, and all the other assorted projectiles coming from the wagons grew more accurate.

"Aaaaargh..."

Brand roared in anger and pain. He wrenched his leg out from beneath his horse's belly, struggled to turn over, and sheltered behind its corpse, raising his head to survey the situation nearby.

His horse had fallen moments earlier. Before he could react, someone at the wagon formation had fired and killed his warhorse with a single shot.

Had the dead horse not been his own, Brand would have applauded that shot... Beautiful! Straight through the head, killing it instantly.

Unless the enemy had a sharpshooter who could see clearly even at night, he had simply been terribly unlucky.

The charge of the bandits following Brand had largely stopped too. Not because the fire from the wagons was particularly fierce, but because something was wrong with the shrubs on the ground!

Lying there, Brand felt his agonizing legs and the thin, tough strands wrapped around them. He immediately discovered why his horse had fallen.

"What the hell is this?"

Brand tried pulling hard on it to get the damned thing off his legs, but the moment he tugged, sharp pain shot through both his legs and hands.

The dim light, combined with the fact that Brand had never seen wire fencing before, left the bandit leader at a loss. In the end, he could only grit his teeth and force it.

Yet Concertina Wire was vicious stuff. Once it wrapped around your legs, unless you knew how to free yourself properly, the harder you struggled, the tighter it bound you.

Brand was doing exactly that. He pulled hard for a long time, then finally drew his saber in fury and hacked at the thorny tangle of strands. It was all useless.

Tough Concertina Wire had nothing to fear from slashing swords and sabers.

Only after some time did Brand realize something. He put down his saber and, ignoring the pain, felt around for a while before finally wrenching his foot free of the "steel thorns."

He had suffered several cuts and lost several chunks of skin and flesh, but Brand was finally free.

By the light of the torches the enemy had thrown nearby, Brand could see that his bandits were in serious trouble.

Some were in the same predicament as him. Their horses had inexplicably fallen mid-charge and broken their legs, or were struggling with something tangled around their legs, tossing their heads while their riders lay on the ground.

Some of the fallen men raised their guns and fired, only to be struck by bullets and javelins from the other side when they were forced to stand to reload.

Those javelins were deadly too. Though they were merely sharpened wooden shafts, their points had been fire-hardened, making them hard enough to tear through human flesh.

Some bandits had been luckier. Seeing the men ahead inexplicably crash to the ground, they hauled on their reins and stopped abruptly outside the steel-thorn zone.

Hearing their companions' cries, these bandits hesitated briefly. Then some dismounted, intending to walk over and rescue the stranded men.

But they could not see the ground clearly and knew nothing about the wire. These well-meaning bandits carefully avoided the shrubs and stepped onto ground without weeds covering it. Soon, amid the snapping of steel jaws, one of them clutched his leg and howled.

The bandit had stepped into an animal trap between the strands of wire. Driven by a modern spring, its jaws had "bitten" through his leg bone.

The unfortunate man's agonizing, hopeless fate terrified the others. Those who had entered the thorn zone without yet becoming trapped dared not move.

The few bandits still hesitating outside immediately spurred their horses, turned, and fled. They knew their trapped companions were beyond saving.

The caravan inside the wagon formation was firing guns and throwing javelins at them, while the bandits a few dozen meters away could only endure the attacks, with no idea how to fight back.

After falling from a horse galloping at full speed, how many men could still have held on to their weapons?

Even a bandit who still had his musket could fire only once at most. There was simply neither time nor opportunity to load a second shot.

Realizing this, Brand immediately gave an owl-like "hoo-hoo" cry. It was his gang's agreed retreat signal. Any bandit who heard it had to withdraw immediately.

Nobody at the wagon formation, including the players, noticed the seemingly ordinary owl call. But they did see the bandits struggling to their feet and staggering away.

The sight excited everyone even more. Lin Ruoyu and the other five players actually climbed onto the wagons with machetes and spears, then charged out.

Isaac was horrified. He hurried over, shouting.

"Don't go out! Don't chase them!"

Isaac had never seen such belligerent men. They actually dared pursue the enemy on a pitch-black night, running straight into the trap zone they themselves had laid.

Even if they had set the traps themselves, after the bandits had churned everything up, remembering the original positions would be useless.

Seeing that his shouting did nothing, Isaac was so anxious that he started after them, intending to drag them back himself.

Chris, who had left the large rock, saw this and hurried over to grab Isaac.

"Forget it, forget it. Let them go. They aren't afraid of dying, and it's no loss if they do."