Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 444: Chapter 283: The War Begins (2)

Even if we win, we can’t regain the lost territory.

Duke Edmund opened his eyes and looked at the monocle of Rudolph.

He really wanted to smash those lenses with a punch and shatter his inherent arrogance.

But his clenched fist slowly loosened in the next second.

He even displayed a slight, extremely restrained gentleness on his face: “It’s commendable that on the way back to the city, the general maintained the military discipline of his subordinates.”

His tone was so light, it seemed like praise, everything was as usual.

He nodded slightly again, then instructed, “You have worked hard for many days, rest at the guest building first, sort out the detailed battle report tomorrow and submit it to the Imperial Capital.”

Not a word was mentioned about defeat, retreat, or responsibility.

Rudolph finally exhaled the breath he’d been holding; he barely made it through this.

But deep down, he knew this didn’t mean that Duke Edmund would truly let him go.

Those indifferent eyes, like ice, merely moved the knife away from his neck by half an inch, ready to fall again at any time.

He had to act immediately, quickly contact his friends and old connections in the Imperial Capital, and weave a net that could protect his life.

He would package his retreat, abandonment, and even leaving the battlefield as decisions made to “prudently preserve strength.”

With this thought, he lowered his head, gave a steady military salute to the Duke, and then turned to follow the steward’s steps down the corridor leading to the guest building.

Rudolph’s steps faded, and the door was gently closed.

Edmund leaned against the window and whispered, “He has the high-tier strength of an Extraordinary Knight, we can’t be careless. Find a few more people to act immediately, make sure it’s clean and swift.”

The personal guard immediately accepted the order, responding in a deep voice, turned, and hurriedly left.

Edmund slowly exhaled a heavy breath and stood up from his chair.

He reached for the map box and began to spread out the heavy scrolls on the long table one by one.

The candlelight reflected off the edges of the battle maps, the worn corners frayed like the broken defense line of the Northern Territory.

He couldn’t allow himself a moment of hesitation, even though he had just confirmed the worst-case scenario.

“Stay calm,” he whispered to himself.

The thirty thousand men were all the forces he could directly mobilize at the moment.

Plus, if he could complete the territorial mobilization within three days, pressuring, coercing, and enticing the different forces in the Northern Territory, he might be able to gather a total of seventy thousand.

There was still a great chance of winning, and as long as he could hold them off… the Imperial Capital would take action, he had to preserve time for the entire Empire.

He unfolded the deployment with lightning speed, dividing the response into four target levels:

First-level mobilization targets: Cold Iron Legion, Silver Teeth Legion, and Broken Blade Legion, all subordinate armies, to complete assembly within three days, around the new Frost Halberd.

Order the deputy general to first deploy the defense line, repair the river defenses, set up petroleum pits, and cut down the concealing forest.

Second-level response targets: Send “emergency battle call letters” to border generals with higher loyalty, such as Count Hutton and the Saier Family.

Third-level targets to strive for: Target the military forces with weaker control, such as the Pioneer Nobles from the south and the Empire’s Sixth and Twelfth Legions, allowing them to remain stationed on their own lands, but cannot rely on them for now.

Fourth-level rejection targets: Some families with private contact with barbarians, secretly draft a “kill list,” immediately dispatch shadow guards to execute the purge if they refuse to respond when the mobilization order is issued.

Simultaneously, he issued a political order: Administrative resources to prioritize wartime allocation, including food, iron ore, armor, livestock, and transport horses.

Craftsmen work tirelessly day and night, tripling the production of weapons, shields, and siege equipment.

Local granaries are frozen, switching to wartime ration distribution across the territory, prioritizing according to line hierarchy.

Anyone obstructing the allocation would be immediately dealt with under the crime of “endangering military orders.”

Those who refused to answer the call will be hunted down, have their families ransacked, and have their territories confiscated.

He knew this would offend many nobles, but there was no time for compromise now.

What he wanted wasn’t their hearts, but their soldiers.

Afterward, he picked up his pen and wrote several letters.

The first letter was written to the Imperial Capital, voluntarily reporting the defeat at Wind Flame Valley and requesting intelligence support.

Regarding Rudolph, he changed his wording, simply writing, “General Rudolph of the Sixth Army, fought valiantly to the last moment at Wind Flame Valley, heroically sacrificing his life for the country.”

The second letter was addressed to his son-in-law – Louis.

Louis was currently one of his most trusted kin.

Under his governance, order was meticulous, trade was thriving, and the people’s morale was stable, making it almost the only miracle in the Northern Territory not ravaged by war and plagues.

But after all, he had only been in the Northern Territory for three years, his foundation wasn’t stable, and military reserves were weak.

Edmund gently expressed his concerns in the letter and reminded him to guard the southeast of the Northern Territory, for the eastern wing must remain firm.

…

He personally wrote several dozen letters in total, sealed, stamped, and waxed them, and handed them to the waiting Gale Birds to immediately dispatch them to various places.

……

Mist surged within the valley like a slowly receding tide.

The morning at Qingyu Ridge carried a bone-chilling cold, the wet and cold wind carried fine snow particles hitting leather armor and cloaks, turning into icy damp marks.

Louis stood on the cliff platform halfway up, his cloak fluttering in the wind.

His gaze traveled beyond the platform’s steep cliff, overlooking the developing defense works below.

The zigzagging wooden and iron chevaux-de-frise along the valley path, combined with spouts for burning petroleum and mechanical trap pits, resembled a giant steel snake bristling with thorns winding through the snow.

Occasionally, craftsmen revealed the gleam of spiked iron chains beneath the snow cloth.

Ballistae and batteries were pushed onto newly erected stands, the wooden wheels creaking dully on the icy surface.

“Raise the chute’s angle by half a foot over there,” Louis directed, pointing towards the high rock wall.

A team of knights in snow-white cloaks immediately responded, dragging massive wooden beams and petroleum vats, climbing the perilous mountain path to the designated location.

Although the suggestion was trivial, it was mainly to assert Louis’s presence.

On the other side, soldiers wedged massive stones into the grooves with crowbars and iron wedges.

Once released, these hundreds of pounds of stones would cascade down the slides, transforming into a deadly avalanche.

He lifted his eyes towards the canyon’s deeper recesses, the inevitable path for the enemy army.

If they dared to venture into this mist-shrouded gorge, they would be ensnared in a purgatory of crossfire and falling boulders, a trap Louis personally crafted.

At this moment, a knight on a frost-covered warhorse arrived, handing over a letter stamped with Frost Halberd City’s seal.

Louis received it, glanced over the cracked wax seal, and unfurled the parchment.

The writing was rushed, the ink still wet, the lines radiating a cold urgency.

Duke Edmund reported that the main forces of the Northern Barbarians had breached the northwest defense line, describing the terrifying phenomena arising post-casualty in their ranks.

He ordered Louis to strictly guard the southeastern passage, not to redeploy.

Louis folded the letter, sealed with triple layers of wax by the Ministry of Military, as casually as if storing a receipt, and slipped it into a hidden compartment of the desk.

In truth, before the letter arrived, he already knew most of its contents, if not more, given that he had a leg up.

The closer the Daily Intelligence System got to the war, the more urgent and dense the information became, fueling anxiety.

That bizarre Northern Barbarian army seemed like a layer of frost being peeled back, revealing flesh and barbs within.

Among this intelligence, two points were most critical.

First: [Upon death, Northern Barbarian soldiers’ bodies instantly ignite with twisted plant and flesh sparks, emitting a scorching red mist that engulfs nearby brethren, surging their rage and strength. Only by disrupting their rage can their boon be ended.]

This line caused Louis’s brows to furrow. Rage, the cheapest and most fierce fuel on the battlefield, had been converted by the enemy into a contagious power.

As a result, he summoned Hillco, commanding him to swiftly develop a secret weapon to counter this phenomenon, though its effectiveness remained to be seen.

Second: [A Northern Barbarian army of over five thousand will cross Qingyu Ridge from Ice Sea County seven days later, heading straight for the heart of Red Tide Territory.]

This intelligence made his eyes flash with a cold light.

Qingyu Ridge was his place of renown.

A gorge sculpted by blades and snow, narrow enough to transform an army into a hill of corpses within a day.

There, he had severed the reinforcements of the Snow Swearer.

So days before the letter’s arrival, he had stealthily left the main city, leading the vanguard to Qingyu Ridge, laying traps in the gorge the Barbarian army must pass through.

When the enemy appeared at the gorge’s entrance, they wouldn’t encounter a skirmish, but an ambush meticulously orchestrated, destined to bleed the Northern Barbarians rivers of blood.