Booooooom!..Bang!
Another shot was fired into Red Dragon City’s walls.
Castor turned to Carla and ordered her, “Carla, lead the wyvern cavalry out and raise some hell over on that battleship.”
When she received that order, Carla’s eyes went wide with surprise. “I’m going to lead them? What are you going to do, Father?”
“I’ll stay here and watch your battle. Since, no matter what, one of us has to stay behind. Now go out there and shut those cannons up.”
“…Understood!”
Carla rushed over to the wyvern stables. After watching Carla depart, Castor turned to speak to Souma over the simple receiver.
“My daughter is coming for you. Prepare to meet your maker.”
“I suggest you do the same,” Souma replied.
The two men glared at one another.
Thus began the battle for Red Dragon City.
The wyvern cavalry under Carla flew up into the sky with coordinated movements.
Carla, being a dragonewt, could fly by herself, but she usually flew on the back of a wyvern so that she could focus entirely on the battle. They would use wind magic to rise up to an altitude cannons couldn’t reach, and then, after getting into formation, they would perform a diving attack. When they finished forming up, and just as Carla was about to give the order to attack, one of the wyvern cavalry came over to her.
“My Lady, please, wait a moment.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Something’s strange here. We’ve risen to this high of an altitude, but I don’t see any sign of reinforcements behind them. It looks like the Albert really is the entire enemy force.”
As she responded to the wyvern knight, who had a dubious look on his face, Carla tilted her head to the side in puzzlement. “Haven’t we already received reports to that effect?”
“Yes,” he said. “However, I think they may be hiding somewhere, or they might have troops standing by in a separate location. My Lady, do you think it’s possible to take a castle with only a siege weapons unit?”
Carla considered the question. “…No, it’s not. Even if they’re able to attack the castle, they lack the power to occupy it and then maintain that occupation. If they want to hold the castle, they’ll need a unit of infantry in addition to the siege weapons unit.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “However, I see no sign of the enemy having those forces.”
“So, basically… what does that mean?”
“I don’t know. However, do you think the enemy might still have something up their sleeve?”
Carla thought deeply for a moment before shaking her head. “Even if they do, it changes nothing. Right now, Red Dragon Castle is being exposed to cannon fire. In order to ensure Father’s safety, we must destroy that battleship.”
“Well… Yes, I suppose that’s true…” The wyvern knight could see that, too, so he backed down quietly.
Carla raised her right hand up high. “The target of our attack is the battleship Albert! King Souma is a target for capture! Let that king bear witness to the bravery of House Vargas!”
“““Yeahhhhhhhhhh!””” Hearing Carla’s orders, the muscular men of the Air Force raised their voices in a cheer.
Compared to the other forces, the members of the Air Force tended to value power for its own sake. In the Air Force, might made right. Might was an absolute. They could leave the thinking and calculating to the other forces.
Those in the Air Force needed only to be strong, and to be ready at all times to tear apart the enemies before them. That was why the soldiers of the Air Force had such a deep respect for Castor and Carla, with their overwhelming power.
“Wyvern cavalry, here are your orders! Descend, charge, then trample the enemy!” she called.
When Carla, who they deeply respected, brought down her hand, the soldiers of the Air Force began their rapid descent towards the Albert.
The ultimate strategy for fighting with wyvern cavalry on an open field was to descend rapidly while unleashing the wyvern’s fire breath to scorch the ground, and then to turn and ascend once more. By the time the soldiers on the ground had readied their bows, the wyverns would already be long gone. With the equipment used to fight land-based opponents, there was little that could be done to counteract this high-power, high-mobility attack.
Not even the Albert’s main cannon would be able to track them at the speed they went, and its armor wouldn’t last long in the face of an attack by a wyvern unit.
It seemed like only a matter of time before the Albert would fall, but…
Twang, twang, twang, twang, twang…
In the next moment, countless objects flew towards the descending knights from the direction of the Albert. By the time they realized they were arrows as thick as stakes, the wyvern cavalry were already caught in the rain of arrows.
“Wha?! Arrows?!”
“Gwah…!”
“Th-They got my wings! I’m going down!”
“Evade! Evaaaade!”
In this barrage of arrows that seemed to rain up from the ground, the wyvern cavalry were forced to turn back and ascend. A number of wyvern cavalry had been shot down in that barrage alone.
The attack had come from below, so most of the damage had been done to the wyverns rather than the knights. Even among the wyverns that managed to withdraw safely, many were staggering in pain with bolts having struck them somewhere.
As she looked at this debacle, Carla punched her thigh in anger. “What was with those bolts?! How were there so many?!”
“If they can reach a wyvern unit several hundred meters in the air, those arrows weren’t fired by any human,” one of her knights responded. “If we consider the number, too… most likely, it was an anti-air repeating bolt thrower enchanted with wind magic.”
Hearing that report from her wyvern cavalry, Carla’s brow furrowed in concern. “An anti-air repeating bolt thrower?! Why is one of those loaded on a boat?!”
“Most likely… they loaded one from a castle’s wall onto the ship.”
The anti-air repeating bolt thrower was enchanted with wind magic to drastically increase its range and allow it to fire tens of bolts per second. It was a weapon specially created to combat wyverns. Normally they were mounted on castle walls, and it was unheard of for them to be loaded on ships.
This was because one of the differences between dragons and wyverns was that, while dragons didn’t fear the sea, wyverns did. When wyverns were out far enough to sea that they could no longer see land, they grew frightened and would thrash around to the point that they became completely uncontrollable. In other words, wyverns almost never fought battleships, so ships had no need to carry anti-wyvern equipment.
Because of that, Carla and her wyvern cavalry had forgotten their natural enemy, the anti-air repeating bolt thrower, until this very moment.
Carla punched her thigh in anger once more. “Damn! He outwitted us by taking advantage of our expectations…”
When she thought back, from the moment this battle had begun, their understanding of how things worked had been falling to pieces. There was a ship running across the land, loaded with weapons it wouldn’t usually have. Because they had tried to resort to their common sense, the enemy had been able to toy with them.
I don’t know if this was that king’s scheme, or if the Prime Minister in Black came up with it, but whichever of them it was, he’s downright nasty, Carla thought to herself bitterly.