Nightfall

Bodyguards, as Hard as Rocks

Bam!

As he stood near the luxury carriage, an arrow tore through a bodyguard’s chest, the young man with whiskers, then, fell to the ground clutching his bleeding chest.

The moment Ning Que shouted out “enemies attack”, the well-trained Princess’s bodyguard reacted immediately. The bodyguard bravely jumped onto the shaft and blocked the window of Her Highness’s carriage. He didn’t know where the arrow was aimed, but he knew Her Highness in the carriage must be the first target choice for enemies, and he would never let her be in danger.

What the brave bodyguard thought was right, which, however, was at the sacrifice of his young life.

“Enemies attack!”

“Protect Her Highness!”

“Shields!”

Suddenly, bodyguards roared furiously and shockingly.

Countless arrows were swishing from the deep of the wood like a storm, loud enough to muffle the sound of the wind, and making the place a danger zone.

Though Ning Que kept a distance from the surrounding fleet, he laid down the moment the bows snapped. He even remembered to push down Sangsang and the maidservant, both of whom followed him to see what happened from the tent.

He fell down to the ground with a plump, but it was lucky that layers of layers of rotted leaves and pine needles for leaves accumulated through hundreds of years in Northern Mountain Road served as a large cushion and relieved his pain when hitting on the ground. Face against cold leaves, Ning Que listened carefully to the dense sound of arrows whooping ahead and several ones passing above his head, doing a quick calculation of the number of arrows and archers.

At the entrance of Northern Mountain Road were waves of annoyed and nervous voices. Some bodyguards were shouting to organize a defense, some calling out to make orders, and some screaming for backup. Among them, the sound of putting up shields was clear. Those giant shields made by planks from the carriage were inserted deep to the edge of the shaft, which obviously they helped a lot.

Rub-a-dub!

Arrows were deeply inserted in those crude shields with thuds like the pounding of war drums, but much denser and more terrible. Once in awhile, a bodyguard might give a grunt when he was shot by an arrow through the tiny space between shields. Since the horses didn’t compare to those of the warriors of Tang Empire, they painfully fell down and rolled on the ground with a neigh of despair.

A din of arrows whooshing, shields cracking, men grunting and horses neighing was enveloping the camp, which just seconds ago, was filled with laughter and sunshine. But later, it became a total hell.

Whoosh!

An arrow hit into the mud inches ahead of Ning Que. Dirt and small pieces of rock splashed his face, making it red here and there. But, his expression did not change. He laid flat on rotten leaves and pine needles in stillness. He eyed the spaces between the leaves over that arrow in front of him and then south down the Northern Mountain Road.

Instead of ambushing the fleet in dense wood or taking them by surprise at night, the foes chose to start an attack as they just settled down at the entrance of Northern Mountain Road, which was beyond Ning Que’s expectation although he has got natal instinct to danger since young.

At dusk, they were going to meet Gushan Commandery’s troops. They would come to help when people in the fleet would easily get lax and turn slack. That hit the spot for the enemy.

Vaguely noticing numerous figures at both sides of Northern Mountain Road and based on his previous calculation of thick arrows, Ning Que inferred there were approximately sixty enemies.