The Franco-British Union: The Trials of Time

Chapter 7: The Onset of War, Planning and A Fire Dragon from the South

Several hours later...

29th of April, 21:00

In the Quistadorians' encampment to the north of Gibraltar

     After the first failed attack on Gibraltar, the Duke of Nethiolor, Rictiovarus, summoned his aides including Gaiseric and Sigmund into a meeting which eventually concluded that if attacking in broad daylight didn't work, then it was time to attack under the cover of darkness and thus, the Quistadorians decamped and quickly marched towards Gibraltar under the overall command of Gaiseric.

     Although Sigmund tried to convince Rictiovarus to stop all further attempts at attacking for the time being while their engineers construct proper siege equipment like trebuchets and ballistae, Rictiovarus insisted on continuing the night attack. As a vassal of the Duke, however, Sigmund has no other choice other than to agree to disagree as Gaiseric was already leading his formations towards Gibraltar, it was far too late to stop anything.

     As they got ever closer to Gibraltar, one of the horses at the very head of the formation accidentally tripped over a wire. Its scream and neigh could be heard from miles away but that wasn't it. The wire triggered by the horse, in turn, activated a tripflare which suddenly started burning and illuminating the area, to the shock of the Quistadorians who quickly tried to extinguish it, to no avail.

     Just as the Quistadorians tried to extinguish the burning tripflare, the entire area was illuminated by even more flares burning down from the skies, completely depriving the Quistadorians of their only cover, the darkness, and even temporarily blinded some of them as they stared into the skies, from the sheer brightness of the flares alone, and panicked. It was as if the sun, which should've already set long ago, was coming right at them.

     Gaiseric, upon seeing this, immediately shouted out the order for his men to charge right away. They weren't going to become targets to those strange explosive magic spells, unlike what happened several hours earlier. But even then, the distance between their formations and Gibraltar is still considerable, so they might or might not make it before the Franco-British responds but he is willing to take that risk.

     Unfortunately for the Quistadorians, however, they were right inside the kill zones prepared, specifically for them by the Franco-British Army. Soon, massive volumes of medium machine-gun fire were unleashed on the Quistadorians from a range of about 600 metres, followed by other small arms. The light that illuminated the area allowed the Franco-British defenders to identify targets and bring down very effective fire while the Quistadorians were forced to charge over large distances in disorganised formations.

     It was a one-sided slaughter, thousands of men caught in hails of bullets left with no other choice other than to charge or to retreat to their camp, both of which would certainly lead to doom in one way or another. Although veterans of many campaigns, the foot soldiers and the archers decided to retreat to the camp while the knights, both dismounted and mounted, pressed on. Unlike last time, however, the FBU wasn't going to be so generous.

     Suddenly, the sound of several small explosions could be heard, followed by a shockwave that can be felt through the shaking ground as Gaiseric looked back, only to see clouds of dust, kicked up by explosions of some sort. As the clouds of dust cleared, it revealed the horrific fate of those who tried to make it back to the camp as almost all of them lay on the floor, either dead or severely wounded from the fragmentation that was everywhere.

     Some of the knights quickly stopped their advance and rushed to their comrade-in-arms aid. As for Gaiseric and the rest of the knights, they weren't going to last any longer than their counterparts. They were last seen attempting a futile charge before they were also enveloped into a series of explosions, never to appear again...