Hearing Guiche’s concern, Nicola nodded his head.
“Someone’s going to come to ‘open a route’ for us soon.”
After some time idly passing by, a fleet of battleships appeared in the skies above. The ten battleships, by then all neatly lined up in a row, proceeded to bombarding the wall with cannon fire. In the face of the floating battleships’ firepower, the enemy was completely powerless.
“Boom—! Boom—! Boom—!” Accompanied by the thunderous roar of cannon fire and thick clouds of smoke, the walls began to crumble and cheers could be heard erupting from the soldiers assembled at the staging area. Under the barrage of cannon fire, the walls along the battlements collapsed.
And then, appearing right in front of their eyes, was a group of huge mud golems.
“They must be golems made by Triangle-class mages.” Guiche thought to himself.
Since he himself was a Dot-class mage, he couldn't create such large golems. He looked up at them in admiration – Although they were slightly smaller than the mud golems created by Fouquet of the Crumbling Dirt, whom had once rattled the whole of Tristain, they were still huge. The mud golems, with a height of roughly twenty meters, solidly stumbled along, gradually drawing closer to the collapsed walls.
On the backs of the mud golems were flags bearing the family emblems of their respective creators, and Guiche, upon noticing a familiar emblem amongst them, instinctively yelled out loud,
“T-that's my brother’s mud golem!”
It must belong to his brother, since the flag fluttering on its back bore the emblem of the Gramont family, ‘A Rose and Panther’.
At that instant, with a whoosh, a large object of some sort flew straight towards the mud golems approaching the wall. Wham! One of the mud golems had its abdomen shot through, making a gaping hole. The golem immediately lost its balance, and collapsed into a heap onto the ground. The metallic lights shot towards the approaching golems one after another, felling many of them as they were struck by its fire.
“What in the world was that?” Guiche gasped.
“It’s a giant ballista,” Nicola replied immediately. “I’m afraid they're probably operated by the orcs. It's a three meter-long weapon based on the crossbow, capable of shooting giant bolts. If a human were to be struck by it, they would surely be smashed to pieces. But then again, they're not designed to be used against people.”
Guiche worriedly watched his brother’s golem. A bolt was sticking out of the golem’s leg, but fortunately, the mud golem still remained standing.
“Is the Company Commander... a member of the Gramont family?” Nicola asked, noticing Guiche’s excitement.
“I’m the youngest son.”
Hearing Guiche’s reply, Nicola's eyes opened wide in astonishment.
“That means you are the Marshal’s…! What a surprise! What brought you to a lowly musket battalion like ours? With your father’s name, whether it be the knights, or an elite regimental headquarters, wouldn’t you be able to join any battalion you desire?”
“If I were to use my father’s name, does it not mean that it is no longer because of my merit?” Guice replied as he looked to the front.
Nicola was unable to say anything, but after a while, he grinned and slapped Guiche’s shoulder.
“I like your kind of attitude, young master. Since that’s how it is, we ain’t returning back home until we win our merit and glory!”
Soon after, a squadron of dragon knights arrived as well. Heading straight towards the ballistae on the battlements, and with a combination of magic and dragon fire, they quickly silenced the ballistae.
Finally arriving at the foot of the collapsed wall, which had been turned into rubble by the cannon fire earlier, the mud golems began clearing away the rubble.
“They're making an entrance.”
His men would soon rush into the city through that entry. Guiche’s entire body began to tremble uncontrollably.
“You're shaking?”
“…E-even though I would really like to say it's due to the excitement…it's most probably because of fear. Ugh…”
“Heh, being honest is a good thing, you will never succeed on reckless courage alone. But, you can’t be too cowardly either. Regardless, just let me take care of it.”
Nicola raised his hands towards the roughly hundred musketeers behind him. Another fifty or so pikemen acted as their guard. This company consisting of roughly hundred and fifty men, were the soldiers under the command of Guiche.
“Prime and load your cartridge—!”
The musketeers then leisurely loaded their barrels with bullets and gunpowder.
“Company Commander sir, might I trouble you to light this?” Nicola pulled a length of slow match towards Guiche.
Guiche nodded, and cast an ‘Ignite’ spell on the cord. Accompanying the sizzling noise of the slow match smouldering, a burning smell hung in the air. Nicola called a soldier over, and handed the ignited cord over to be distributed amongst the other soldiers.
“This is a slow match given by our company commander! Make sure that it is not extinguished!”
The response that returned lacked any sense of enthusiasm.
Rumble—! The golems cleared away the wall. At that moment, Nicola poked Guiche in the waist and said,
“Company Commander sir, let’s go.”
Raising his wand while still trembling, Guiche yelled out,
“G-G-Gramont Company, forward!”
The veteran musketeers followed behind with staggering footsteps. It was only then that Guiche realised – it was only his own company that was charging forward! The order to charge hadn’t been passed down from the top yet!
“Hey, Sergeant—” He was about to voice his complaint, but stopped upon noticing Nicola’s calm and confident expression.
Once a company had begun advancing, it was almost impossible to halt their advance, and thus they could only continue moving forward.
A few seconds later, an order to “Charge!” resounded from the ranks behind.
Like a surging tidal wave, soldiers, knights, and assorted others all stormed in their direction.
“We're all old veterans after all. If we don’t start out a bit earlier, we won’t be able to keep up.”
Probably because they had set out earlier, Guiche’s company was the first to reach one of the breaches along the battlements. But a couple of knights swept past them, storming into the city.
“But we were the first to get here!” Guiche shouted as he prepared to storm inside, right before Nicole grabbed him.
Immediately afterwards, the knights which had just charged in were sent flying back out together with their mounts, landing in front of Guiche in a miserable state. It seemed that on the other side of the wall were club-wielding orcs, waiting for simple-minded fools like them to deliver themselves to their doom.
Enormous monsters with a size at least five times that of a human, the group of orcs spotted Guiche's party and immediately stormed towards them. Guiche remembered the time when he had gone treasure-hunting with everyone; how they had been ambushed by orcs like these as well. His bronze golems had been pummelled into oblivion by them back then.
A sense of dread welled up within him.
“Fire! Fire! Quickly, fire!” Guiche began to yell frantically.
“Don’t fire just yet! Company Commander sir! Use an incantation to knock over that guy furthest at the back! Quickly!”
Then, acting accordingly to what he had said, Guiche waved his artificial rose. Erupting from the ground below, a hand grabbed a hold of the leg of the orc at the back.
With a “Crash!” right in the middle of the narrow breach in the wall, the orc tripped over.
“1st platoon! The leading group is your target! Fire!”
Without delay, Nicola issued the order to pour volley fire onto the orc at the head of the approaching group.