What had happened!?
Colonel Bernal jolted awake. Still in his nightclothes, he rushed out of his room on the castle's highest floor and onto the balcony, where he saw flames still rising two kilometers away.
If Colonel Bernal remembered correctly, that was where the Restoration Army's camp stood.
What happened? Did the Restoration Army's ammunition depot blow up?
Colonel Bernal felt a flicker of delight at the thought, but his good mood did not last. Then he saw-and heard-the fighting down the hillside.
At that distance, and without a telescope at hand, Colonel Bernal could not tell exactly what had happened at the fortress's first defensive line. All he knew was that fighting had clearly broken out there.
Colonel Bernal hurried back into his room. Just then, someone knocked on his door.
"Come in!"
A sergeant wearing a half suit of armor burst through the door. He served as both the colonel's bodyguard and his messenger.
"Colonel, we've been invaded!"
"At the trench? I saw it. That position isn't particularly important. Send a messenger at once to-"
"No, Colonel!"
Ignoring military rank and protocol, the sergeant loudly interrupted Colonel Bernal's orders and blurted out the rest.
"It's the Outer Keep! Someone lowered the drawbridge, and the enemy has entered the Outer Keep!"
"What!?"
Colonel Bernal's feigned look of ease vanished at once, replaced by disbelief.
"Form an assault team immediately and drive them back!"
The blond-haired Polka was astonished by what had happened to him that night.
Before the operation began, he had sensed that tonight's battle would be a hard one. But in his imagination, he would be leading his two hundred men in a bloody struggle against the Minisians inside the castle.
Reality proved rather different. The drawbridge came down, the assault team at the front took