Dozens of booming blasts mixed with rolling aftershocks slammed into the eardrums of the Reachmen, making everyone's hearts tremble and their shoulders shake. Fortunately, the terrain around the chosen battlefield was flat and could not produce echoes, so the cannon fire quickly dissipated without creating lingering reverberations that would further damage morale.
"How can this dog-born man of the Night's Watch be so dishonorable?"
Mathis Rowan reined in his startled and restless warhorse, gripped the lens that had nearly slipped from his hand, and muttered angrily to himself.
Although the main task of the vanguard he led was to attract cannon fire, the enemy opening fire before he had even finished setting up his formation was simply too despicable.
But Rowan soon had no time to curse the enemy's mother, because the projectiles from the first round of cannon fire instantly fell into the vanguard formation he commanded and quickly began to show their effect.
...
The Reachmen had first experienced cannon fire at the Battle of the Blackwater Rush. Important questions such as what it felt like to be bombarded by artillery, the patterns of killing and their specific effect, and how to reduce casualties and morale damage had already been mostly understood through investigation, interviews, compilation, reflection, discussion, and propaganda among those on the front lines.
However, this time the situation had changed slightly.
At the Blackwater Rush, the Gift Army's artillery had fired from the north bank to bombard the wedding site on the south bank and cover the river-crossing vanguard. There had been an entire Blackwater Rush between the position and the target. Because the distance was too great, Aegor's artillery used a medium-angle trajectory with elevated muzzles, achieving the tactical objective through maximum range. In addition, the battleground, the riverbank in the dry season, had a certain slope toward the direction of the bombardment. This whole series of factors led to one result: in that bombardment, the "skipping stone," or ricochet, effect that usually occurred with solid cannonballs did not appear at all. If a cannonball did not have the luck to directly hit some unlucky wretch after landing, it could only helplessly smash a deep slanted pit into the muddy ground and vanish from sight.
The cannon fire sounded impressive but was generally inefficient at killing. This was the conclusion the Reachmen had drawn from their first experience, a conclusion that was not entirely wrong, but completely inaccurate.
Today, this artillery battle was taking place on the flat and boundless Reach plains, and the cannon fodder force, tasked with "drawing enemy fire," had somewhat foolishly, whether intentionally or not, chosen to deploy their line of battle at the very edge of the Western Expeditionary Army artillery's direct-fire range.
Aegor ordered them to open fire at once. Aside from the fact that he did not care about nonsense like military ethics, the most direct reason was this: the Riverlands army formation, messy and crowded together before fully deploying, was the perfect target for maximizing the power of solid shot.
Amid whistling sounds, blurry afterimages slammed into the Riverlands vanguard as they were receiving and carrying out orders. The points where the cannonballs first landed had not yet reached the formation, but amid flying blades of grass and droplets of water, they bounced off the ground and back into the air, continuing forward. What followed was a slaughter.
Because the firing angle had been chosen just right, the height the projectiles reached after bouncing off the ground was roughly equal to the height of an average man, creating a perfect and bloody ideal killing zone. As the cannonballs bounced forward, they remained at a height capable of inflicting casualties on the Reach soldiers. When rolling along the ground like skipping stones, they could tear through or break soldiers' legs. When bouncing through the air, they threatened chests, bellies, and torsos. And when reaching the highest point as their momentum waned, they could smash faces or tear off scalps.
The speed of the iron projectiles had already dropped below the speed of sound after the first impact with the ground, but the kinetic energy they carried still completely exceeded anything armor and flesh could endure. This was an overwhelming difference in magnitude, beyond reason. Even after the fourth or fifth bounce, when they had slowed enough to be seen with the naked eye, as if one could simply stick out a leg to stop them, they could still deliver a shock that would make any "brave man" who dared try regret it for the rest of his life. By the time the iron balls finally ran out of strength and rolled to a stop in the grass, they had already torn through the entire formation. Apart from a few that were wildly off target or fired at the wrong angle, every one of them carved a red line through the dense Riverlands formation as neatly as a hot knife through butter, leaving behind bloody, churned, mangled furrows like plowed earth.
This was true flesh and blood flying everywhere. The air was filled with a sweet, bloody mist. Broken bodies and piercing screams were everywhere. Mathis Rowan did not fully recover from the dizzying shock until more than ten seconds later, realizing this was not a nightmare.
Just one round of cannon fire had caused hundreds of casualties!
Had they not said that artillery inflicted point-based damage? How had it turned into line-based slaughter on the spot? Was this some kind of joke?
There were no tables on the battlefield for the enraged lord to overturn to vent his frustration. Trembling, he realized that he had been misled by the Command. As for whether this had been a malicious lie, or whether the Command itself had also been deceived by Aegor, he had no time to think about that now.
"Quickly spread out to the left and right!" he roared, his voice cracking without his noticing. Things were not unfolding as expected. He should have approached only after fully deploying his formation much farther back. The reason he had not done so was not because he was stupid, but because he had deliberately wanted to expose a flaw to Aegor, luring him into breaking formation and pursuing. It was just that now, the price of this bait was far too high.
It was too late to pull back and increase the distance. Given the quality and training of the cannon fodder force, even a single step backward would undoubtedly turn into a complete rout. All he could do now was try to salvage the situation.
As long as they formed a line and reduced their depth, they could greatly weaken the power of this line-based killing.
War horns and drums blared together, signal flags waved frantically as if in a seizure, logistics personnel began running across the field searching for wounded who could still be saved, and the vanguard soldiers, splashed with blood and briefly stunned, endured their trembling hands and legs and began to quicken their pace, moving to their designated positions...
From "point" to "line," this change in killing pattern caught the Riverlands vanguard, who had undergone "targeted training," completely off guard. But aside from this, there was another reason that deepened their feeling that "the enemy's firepower seems stronger than expected," and that was that the Western Expeditionary Army's artillery had indeed become more numerous.
During the month when Aegor and Daenerys's entire faction remained in the Crownlands after taking King's Landing, seemingly "doing nothing," they had not only carried out large-scale material transfers and logistical preparations, but had also relied on the mature technical team brought from the Gift and the excellent personnel and facilities within the industrial park to accomplish something with maximum effort: establishing the first artillery production line in the south and opening training classes to expand the size of their artillery arm.
The first generation of artillery equipped by the Gift Army had been made of bronze. The reason was easy to understand. To achieve a breakthrough from nothing as quickly as possible, sparing no expense was normal. However, copper was an expensive and scarce resource, and before unifying the Seven Kingdoms, they could not secure a stable and sufficient supply. Fortunately, the technology to deal with this problem had already been quietly developed by the engineers at the Gift Arsenal: iron-cored, copper-bodied cannons. This new structure allowed the cannons to withstand similar chamber pressure with lighter materials, reducing cost, lowering weight, and increasing service life. It could be said to be an excellent choice for large-scale armament before any major breakthroughs in metallurgy.
Speaking of this, the Iron Throne that had been melted down had to be mentioned.
Although it was utterly unqualified as a seat, it was astonishingly excellent as a source of raw material for iron cannon cores. If the iron lumps melted from the Iron Throne were used to cast cannon cores, it would not only save a great deal of time and processing, but also ensure excellent reliability.
With the technology and production line already in place, and only materials lacking before production could begin, Maester Qyburn, the project leader, reported to Aegor and requested that the project of "recasting the Iron Throne into super cannons" be temporarily postponed, and that its material instead be used to urgently cast the first batch of small-caliber iron-cored, copper-bodied cannons for the Western Expeditionary Army.
Aegor boldly approved this request. Thus, a batch of "King's Landing Type I" cannons was born. Slightly conservative improvements had been made to them. Their overall quality was no better than the pure bronze "Gift Type I," but their cost was greatly reduced, and they were more than sufficient for beating down children. They successfully passed inspection and entered service before the Western Expeditionary Army set out, immediately easing the situation of many gunners but few cannons in the Gift Army artillery regiment after its expansion, and doubling the firepower intensity of the entire Western Expeditionary Army.
As for what to do in the future about the two large cannons owed to Daenerys, there was no need to worry at all. Unlike Valyrian steel, which was divided into low-grade "Valyrian steel" and high-grade "dragonsteel," the act of recasting the Iron Throne into the two super cannons "Sovereignty" and "Truth" itself carried symbolic meaning that completely outweighed practical use. As long as the narrative was unified and public opinion properly guided, even if only a fingernail-sized scrap from the Iron Throne were added to the two cannons, he could still insist that they had been recast from the Iron Throne. Who would have the authority and courage to say otherwise?
Before the white smoke from the first round of cannon fire had dispersed, the second round had already begun.
(To be continued.)