"Order!" Artoria's voice made everyone's hearts tighten slightly.
"Continue with the original plan. Grand Duke Andrei, Knight of the Round Table, will guard Red Leaf Fortress. Everyone else, hurry up and transport the people!" When Artoria said this, she seemed to lose all her strength, walking like a ghost past all those who knelt, disappearing into the inner fort of Red Leaf.
Under the choices of fate, she began her transformation as a King.
"Kay…" Gently caressing the seat in the study, everything here had been evacuated. The wine cellar had been covered with flagstones and sealed with wet mud; once it dried, it wouldn't be discovered. The entire manor, from top to bottom, had been cleared out. Money had been sent into the inner fort of Red Leaf, and books, documents, etc., had also been taken away. All that remained were the jujube wood chair and the stone table.
Standing behind the chair, she seemed to recall how she had always stood silently there, watching Kailar write furiously, describing all his grand ambitions on paper.
Kay, you must be safe.
Artoria's bewildered expression slowly hardened into determination. When she emerged from the manor, surrounded by the Knights of the Round Table, her two sword-like eyebrows were raised, carrying an impatient and immense fighting spirit. Quickly defeat these pirates and bring Kailar back!
With His Majesty the King so full of fighting spirit, the Knights were all greatly encouraged, rolling up their sleeves, sharpening their weapons, and gathering their strength to await the invaders.
The distance from Red Leaf Fortress to the sea had no villages or food for their supply. Even the prosperous outer city of Red Leaf Ridge, after shedding its bustling shell, would not yield a single grain of food.
Not a single piece of furniture or item was left, but they would absolutely not find any food or even water. If Kailar hadn't strictly required boiling water and personally spent ten years cultivating this habit among the city people, the small river next to Red Leaf Fortress could also have been a source of water.
After ensuring Red Leaf Fortress was foolproof, Artoria led three thousand Knights and vanished into the vast fields. She had lived in this area since childhood, and for Kailar's people's livelihood, she had traveled all over the vicinity of Red Leaf Ridge with Kailar. How could she not know the way? In an instant, three thousand Knights disappeared with her from the sight of Red Leaf Fortress.
"His Majesty has left." Grand Duke Andrei shook his head, slightly disheartened: "I hope Kay is also safe. That boy is too clever and too cunning; I just hope he doesn't get too smart for his own good."
Turning around, Grand Duke Andrei exuded a powerful, heroic aura: "Gentlemen! Proceed as planned!!"
"Yes!!" The Knight Captains, still deferring to this old senior, all shouted and led their subordinates out of Red Leaf Fortress.
Red Leaf Fortress was immediately emptied.
At this time, inside Red Leaf Fortress, besides twenty thousand militiamen (infantry) and five thousand Knights, there were only thirty thousand able-bodied men from the outer Red Leaf Ridge. All other women, children, and elderly had been evacuated. Fifty-five thousand combatants were more than enough to defend the city.
The remaining Knights, meanwhile, advanced northward.
The chess game slowly unfolded, and the pieces were already in place… But within the Great Pirate Alliance, a fierce argument broke out… Mab Fortigert Brown was an Anglo-Saxon. With his strong body and agile mind, he naturally became the leader of the Anglo-Saxons. And now, he was arguing fiercely for the interests of the Anglo-Saxons: "Why! Why are the Gauls the vanguard?!" He was furious.
Everyone lived by plunder; who wouldn't know the benefits of being the vanguard? The villages and towns along the way alone could make one's coffers full.
Why would they let the Gauls be the vanguard?
The leader of the Vikings was a berserker named Ingolvesi Weichat. They were all strong and powerful men, and they had some intelligence in their brains, otherwise, it would have been impossible for him to stand out from so many berserkers and become a leader.
Hearing Brown's words, Ingolvesi rolled his eyes and asked gruffly: "Do you want to go? Besides walking along the main road, do you know where the other villages are? Do you know where the towns are? Do you know where the wealth is?"
Brown was speechless. Although the Anglo-Saxons and Gauls both roamed the English Channel, the two minority groups, one plundering Camelot and the other plundering Rome, coexisted peacefully. In terms of strength, the Anglo-Saxons, who dared to provoke Rome, were a cut above. However, the Gauls were not weak either. Now, to plunder the Gauls' prey, it was natural for the latter to take the lead. One reason was that they were familiar with the geography, and the other was that they were, after all, the hosts, and needed to be given a little face.
Everyone understood this, so Brown looked at the Gaul leader, Bonaparte de Lute, with very unfriendly eyes. Bonaparte knew that the other party could do nothing to him, so he smugly walked out of the tent, and immediately, the noisy sounds of Gauls gathering their forces came from outside.
"Hmph." Brown knew this was unavoidable, but he was very displeased with the Vikings siding with the Gauls. He snorted coldly and walked out of the tent.
The Viking, Ingolvesi, listened to the commotion outside, a cold sneer on his lips. These fools, their brains were really broken. Did they really think a country was a good target for plunder?
Ever since he was jointly driven out of the Black Sea by Rome and Macedonia, he understood that a country, no matter how poor, could only be defeated by an enemy that was also a country, not by pirates who had no logistics, no supplies, whose women wouldn't even glance at them, and who relied on plunder to have children and continue their lineage.
His gaze had never been on Camelot from the beginning, but rather—on these two allied pirate groups!
His thick lips curled into a ferocious smile. As long as they were severely weakened, he would be able to annex them. Then, having a grand fleet of one hundred thousand men would be an easy matter. Whether it was accepting an imperial amnesty or establishing his own rule, it would be an incomparably beautiful thing.
While the Viking leader, Ingolvesi, was daydreaming, the Gaul leader, Bonaparte, had already begun to command his army to set off.
This time, the Gauls brought sixty thousand men. Although this was ten thousand fewer than the seventy thousand of the other two tribes, as the hosts, their first vanguard was tacitly allowed. Bonaparte, who only brought thirty thousand men and immediately dispersed them into teams of one thousand, directly sent out fifteen teams to plunder towns