Transmigrated into a Fantasy World with No Clue What To Do Chapter 9: Chapter 8: A Count's Betrayal / The Fall of Hejlsberg

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Chapter 8: A Count's Betrayal / The Fall of Hejlsberg Six years earlier… Duke Alastair Braemar stood inside the large command tent behind a large table with a map of the town of Hejlsberg on it. With him was the second prince of the kingdom of Elgoss, Prince Edgar Dunkeld, and Duke Barron Breegar. Opposite them on the other side of the large table were a number of Counts and other minor nobility that had contributed forces to the troops, many of which had died due to the betrayal of one Count Thomas Thayne during the final battle in the war with the northern kingdom of Westerroch. The second prince himself had been injured in the battle due to the Count fleeing the battlefield at a crucial point that almost turned the tide in favor of the undead hordes that made up the bulk of the Westerroch armies. Fortunately, Duke Braemar’s troops were nearby and able to reinforce the second prince’s forces while evacuating the prince to a safer location so that he could be healed. Had the prince died, the current operation to capture the rogue count would likely have been an order to raze the entire town to the ground instead. As it was, most of the citizens of Hejlsberg had already fled once they found out what the count had done and that the king’s army was on its way to surround the once peaceful town. Those who had stayed behind found themselves living in a nightmare as unseen forces stalked the night, killing entire households whose corpses were missing with only the copious amounts of blood spattered in the homes as testament to what had happened to their occupants. Scouts had confirmed that, by the time the king’s army had arrived, there weren’t many living souls left in the town other than the count’s estate and the nearby barracks in the military district. A fair portion of the battalion that the count had commanded had already deserted. Some of the troops still remained, but as to how many, the scouts were unable to get an accurate count. The town of Hejlsberg was a sizable town that once boasted a large population. It had its own school system to provide a basic education to the children of the town, which would aid them later in life, no matter what career paths they chose. It also had a decent shopping district with a good variety of shops that catered to all walks of life, both rich and poor. It housed a sizable battalion that numbered around a thousand troops with the military district sitting to the southeast of the count’s estate, butting up against the property. More than half of the five thousand citizens of the town worked in the mithril mines that were accessed in the northwestern corner of the town, burrowed into the large cliffs at the base of the towering Mount Killeld, which formed a natural defense from a northern attack on the town. The cliffs stretched from the town’s western walls, all the way to the eastern walls, with the count’s estate backed firmly against them, centered in relation to the eastern and western walls. The current plan was for the king’s army to enter the town from the western, southern, and eastern gates at the same time, fanning out to cover the entire town, searching the many houses and businesses for potential survivors, if any, from whatever had been stalking the remaining citizenry. Oddly, according to the scouts' reports, it seemed as if the remaining troops in the barracks had been untouched by whatever had been killing the citizens. Once the army reached the barracks, they would offer the troops that had remained behind a chance to surrender in return for a lighter sentence than their lord, Count Thayne, and his family would receive, namely exile for the family and death for the count. The second prince wanted to give the count a chance to surrender as well, letting the man go out with some of his dignity intact, but he and all the gathered nobility knew that the count was a cowardly man and would likely have to be ferreted out by a small strike team that was to be led by Duke Braemar