roccoschili Chapter 3 The Traditions of the Cold Creek Guard
Chapter 3 The Traditions of the Cold Creek Guard
Dust was still falling from the floor, and the air was filled with the distinctive bitter almond smell and burnt odor of an M24 grenade explosion.
"Walk."
Arthur retrieved the Webley revolver, which had just reaped lives, his tone as calm as if he were instructing the butler to prepare the car. He kicked open the side door leading to the first-floor hall, his mud-caked riding boots making a chilling crunch on the broken oak floor.
Sergeant McTavish followed closely behind, his Thompson submachine gun slightly raised. Although he was a veteran who had crawled out of piles of corpses, at this moment, looking at the excessively upright back in front of him, he felt an absurd sense of unfamiliarity.
Is this still the same vase who only knows how to fix her bow tie in front of the mirror and spills brandy on her pants when she hears a cannon shot?
That blind shot, and that command that seemed to see through walls—it was as if he were possessed by some ancient war god. Or perhaps, this is what flows in the blood of the Sterling family? After all, their ancestors fought alongside the Duke of Wellington against the French at Waterloo.
Lobby.
This place must have once been incredibly luxurious. The shattered crystal chandelier lay sprawled on the floor like the skeleton of a dead beast, several large holes were burned into the expensive Persian carpet, and the oil paintings hanging on the walls were crooked, with a bullet hole now visible in the face of the noblewoman from the time of Louis XV.
But Arthur wasn't in the mood to appreciate any of this.
On his retina, gray-white lines were rapidly reconstructing the 3D model of the entire battlefield.
The red StuG III assault gun was still parked in the courtyard, the commander kicking the driver's shoulder frantically—the muffled thud from the basement and the grenade explosion had clearly alerted them. The short, thick 75mm barrel was slowly turning toward the main entrance of the hall, accompanied by the noise of the motor and hand-cranked gears.
On the wide staircase leading from the hall to the second floor, the three surviving German infantrymen were in a state of extreme panic.
They didn't know how many people were underground; all they knew was that their comrades had been inexplicably killed by bullets fired from below. Fear drove them to the most foolish tactic: to huddle together and charge down, attempting to suppress everything with firepower.
Five seconds.
Arthur silently recited it in his heart.
From his omniscient perspective, three red silhouettes were stumbling and staggering toward the stairwell. Their tactical movements were distorted and chaotic.
This is the opportunity.
Arthur stopped behind an overturned Louis XVI-style writing desk. He didn't turn around, but simply turned slightly and pointed with remarkably elegance in two directions in the hall with his gloved fingers.
"McTavish, behind that Venus de Milo statue on the left. That's a blind spot."
"Yes, sir!" The sergeant instinctively carried out the order, his body sliding into the shadow of the statue, the muzzle of his Thompson submachine gun resting on the marble base.
"Williams, take two men and hide under that Bechstein grand piano. It's made of solid wood and can stop 9mm bullets."
"Understood, sir!"
Several soldiers quickly took their positions. There were no questions, no hesitation. The cigarette butt in the basement and the blind shot had firmly established Arthur's absolute authority within the small team.
Arthur himself stood behind a massive marble pillar, his body pressed against the cold stone surface. He closed his eyes, and the red dot in his mind was approaching the corner of the stairs.
Closer. Even closer.
He could even hear the crunching of German boots on broken glass and their heavy breathing.
"Don't rush..." Arthur said in a low voice, his words carrying through the air to every soldier's ears. "Wait for my command. We need to show them how rude it is to come uninvited."
Three red figures rushed out of the stairwell.
Those were three fully armed German grenadiers. The one in the lead, holding an MP40, had a look of terror and ferocity on his face and was preparing to fire into the empty hall.
But in Arthur's RTS view, their movements were like a slow-motion movie. He clearly saw the lead German soldier's finger pausing as he pulled the trigger, and he saw the second German soldier's attempt to pull the pin on a grenade.
Right now.
"Fire."
Arthur uttered the word coldly.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat—! Bang! Bang!
The silent hall was instantly filled with the sound of gunfire, like popping beans.
This is not a battle. This is an execution.
Sergeant McTavish's Thompson submachine gun spewed blinding flames. This gangster weapon, nicknamed the "Chicago Typewriter," displayed terrifying lethality at close range. .45 ACP rounds sprayed like water onto the stairwell.
Before the leading German soldier could even pull the trigger, a cloud of blood burst from his chest. He was struck as if by an invisible giant hammer, flying backward and knocking down his comrades behind him.
Williams, hiding behind the piano, and two other soldiers also fired their Enfield rifles. These old-fashioned bolt-action rifles had an astonishing rate of fire in the hands of the British army.
The tradition of the "Crazy Minute" has not been forgotten.
The second German soldier had just touched the grenade when a .303 caliber bullet blasted his head apart like a watermelon. Red and white splattered onto the exquisite wallpaper, forming an abstract graffiti.
The last German soldier tried to turn around and escape back upstairs, but he was met by the Cold Creek Guards, who were already fully prepared.
Arthur slipped out from behind the support pillar. He didn't fire, because it wasn't necessary.
McTavish's short burst of fire precisely broke the German's spine.
From the first shot to the last spent cartridge hitting the ground, the entire process took less than five seconds.
The hall was filled with the smoke of gunpowder, mixed with the smell of blood, stimulating everyone's nerves.
"Cease fire."
Arthur's voice pierced through the tinnitus and reached everyone's ears clearly.
He emerged from behind the pillar, his leather boots crunching over the spent cartridge cases on the ground. He glanced at the three twisted corpses at the top of the stairs, his face devoid of any triumphant joy, only displaying an almost cold, critical gaze.
"Your marksmanship was terrible, Williams." Arthur covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, seemingly uncomfortable with the smell of blood in the air. "You wasted two bullets hitting the wallpaper. That's 18th-century handmade wallpaper; it's very expensive to repair now."
Williams paused for a moment, then forced a smile that looked more like a grimace: "Sorry, sir. My hand was shaking a bit."
"Be more careful next time. Waste is shameful in the Royal Guard."
Arthur turned around, preparing to order a retreat.
Suddenly, a chilling mechanical grinding sound came from the direction of the main entrance of the hall.
crunch - crunch -
That was the sound of tracks crushing bricks and stones.
Arthur turned around abruptly, and the RTS interface on his retina instantly lit up with a glaring red alert.
In the courtyard, the StuG III A, which had been stationary, did not reverse away or call for infantry support as he had expected.
It did something crazy.
He was unaware that the infantry had been wiped out, and therefore dared not open fire rashly, but the tank commander was clearly enraged or panicked. The steel behemoth was turning in place, its 75mm short-barreled gun, along with the entire hull, hurtling towards the not-so-sturdy wall of the hall with its floor-to-ceiling windows—it was charging straight at them!
"Damn it! That lunatic!"
Seeing this, Arthur's idealized image of "Hans the Cat Tactical Master" instantly crumbled.
This move is just too "random"!
Without infantry to provide vision or flank cover, how dare they ram assault guns—iron coffins with extremely poor visibility—into buildings? This simply doesn't make tactical sense! This is just taking advantage of the fact that British infantry in 1940 didn't have bazookas. On a map with anti-tank capabilities, this kind of "human scouting" would be pure suicide missions!
But it is true.
"Scatter! Get away from the wall!" Arthur roared, his voice no longer a deep baritone, but a broken roar.
Boom! ...
A deafening roar.
The beautiful wall with its floor-to-ceiling windows, draped with heavy velvet curtains, was brutally torn apart like paper.
Bricks and stones flew everywhere, and dust filled the sky.
A menacing steel vehicle, painted in dark gray, crashed into the hall with unstoppable force. Its tracks swept up the rose bushes and broken bricks from the courtyard, leaving two deep tracks on the expensive Persian carpet.
That short-barreled 75mm cannon looked like a giant finger pointing at everyone's noses, its dark muzzle exuding an aura of death.
"Machine gun! Take cover!"
Private Jenkins, a young recruit, screamed in terror, instinctively wanting to run for his life. For a new recruit, a tank charging at him meant a storm of metal.
Of course, that's assuming it's a Panzer III tank before it was modified.
"Don't run around! Those are German assault guns! Where did that machine gun come from!"
Sergeant McTavish's shout pierced through the smoke and dust. After weeks of fighting on the French front, he recognized the "toothless tiger" at a glance.
Yes, there was no machine gun. This 20-ton steel behemoth, at this stage of its development, was not equipped with a coaxial machine gun, or even a hull-mounted machine gun!
Because the German army didn't need it at this stage! This thing was originally designed to provide direct fire to the infantry of Guderian's armored divisions... You could use it to destroy bunkers or to open fire on those small tanks.
At long range, its 75mm high-explosive shells are a nightmare for infantry; but once inside a building, it becomes a huge, blind iron coffin.
Arthur was thrown behind a marble pillar by the blast wave, and dust blinded him, but he didn't need eyes at all.
In his RTS God's-eye view, the red assault gun was raging helplessly in the hall.
The German tank commander was clearly panicked. He must have heard the gunfire stop and, thinking the infantry was engaged in a fierce battle, had rushed in to provide support in a frantic manner.
But he guessed the script wrong—there was no fierce battle here, only corpses.
In this interior filled with blind spots, this short-barreled cannon, without a turret and with an extremely narrow field of fire, awkwardly found itself unable to even aim its muzzle at any living person.
"Damn it... he's trying to run us over!"
Arthur's brain was working at lightning speed.
The assault gun was spinning rapidly in place, its engine roaring deafeningly. Since it lacked a machine gun, the crazed German commander decided to solve the problem with its tracks and sheer weight.
Along its turning path, Private Jenkins, who was already terrified, sat slumped.
Although Jenkins heard the sergeant's shout and knew there were no machine guns, he was terrified by the oncoming steel tracks. When faced with such an industrial behemoth, instinctive fear overwhelms reason.
The track plates were tangled with gravel, less than two meters from Jenkins' boots.
"Jenkins! Get moving! You idiot!" McTavish roared from behind the piano, but he was too far away to come to the rescue.
In that instant, reason told Lin Rui: Ignore it. This vehicle doesn't have a machine gun; as long as he hugs the wall and circles around to its side and rear, it'll be a sitting duck.
But the body—the body that belonged to Arthur Sterling, the body of the Cold Creek Guard that had been mocked for centuries—reacted quite differently.
An ancient toxin called "Noblesse Oblige" instantly took over the brain.
"Damn the British Empire."
Arthur cursed inwardly.
He suddenly burst out from behind the load-bearing column.
Without any tactical maneuvers or hesitation, he pounced on the soldier slumped on the ground like a cheetah in an expensive uniform, amidst the billowing dust and roaring engines.
Crunch-!
The assault gun accelerated suddenly, its front end crashing into the fireplace next to it, attempting to crush everything with its right track.
Arthur leaped into the air and tackled Jenkins hard.
The moment they were launched, the heavy tracks crushed the spot where Jenkins had just been sitting, turning the expensive sofa into splinters and rags.
"Bang!"
Immediately afterwards, a sharp shard of marble fell from the fireplace and slammed into Arthur.
It was a corner of what used to be the mantel, heavy and with sharp edges. It grazed Arthur's left cheek, running from the corner of his eye down to his chin. Blood gushed out instantly, blurring his vision. The tremendous impact slammed into his left arm, sending a sharp, bone-cracking pain through him.
"Sir!" McTavish's voice changed.
Arthur lay on the ground, breathing heavily, blood dripping from his chin onto the gray ruins, but he was not dead yet.
The assault gun, due to the violent impact with the fireplace and the marble fragments getting stuck in the drive sprocket, emitted a painful metallic snapping sound from its tracks.
It stopped there, the engine still roaring, but the vehicle was shaking violently, like a wild beast caught in a trap.
Its side—that vulnerable side devoid of any firing ports or machine gun turrets—was now facing Arthur, less than five meters away.
This is the opportunity. Take advantage of its "blindness" and "toothlessness".
Arthur struggled to turn over and, with his right hand still trembling, pulled a black metal lump from the tactical pylon at his waist.
No. 36M Mills grenade.
Arthur bit down on the safety pin's ring, the rusty taste mixed with the blood in his mouth giving him a savage pleasure.
"You dare to charge in without a machine gun?"
He spat out the pull tab, as if looking at a corpse.
"Hans, is your tactical instructor Japanese?"
Instead of throwing the grenade like a softball, Arthur launched it with a precise, even elegant, low-throwing motion, much like he would throw a ball in the Eton College cricket ground.
The grenade traced a short, precise arc in the air.
It squeezed into that fatal gap—right between the drive sprocket and the stone beam that was jamming it, in the cavity inside the track.
boom--!!!
A muffled explosion rang out inside the enclosed tracked compartment.
The shrill scream of metal snapping instantly drowned out the roar of the engine. The already taut track broke completely under the impact of the explosion, like a giant python being severed, sliding off the drive wheel with a clatter and collapsing to the ground.
The assault gun, having lost power on one side, instantly became a piece of scrap metal spinning in place.
"It's broken its leg! Charge!"
Sergeant McTavish didn't need orders. The instant the explosion occurred, he charged forward with his Thompson submachine gun. Williams followed closely behind, skillfully climbing onto the vehicle and inserting the muzzle of his rifle directly into the tank's observation slit.
But Arthur no longer needs to worry about this.
Once this turretless assault gun loses its mobility and is approached by infantry, it becomes an expensive iron coffin.
Arthur struggled to his feet.
His left cheek was stained red with blood, the wound looking gruesome and terrifying, his once handsome face now resembling that of a demon. His well-tailored uniform was also torn in several places, covered in dust and bloodstains.
Jenkins woke up and, seeing his superior's face covered in blood, was too terrified to speak.
"Sir... Commander..."
Arthur ignored him. He swayed and refused Sergeant McTavish, who was about to run over to help him up.
He used the baton he still held tightly in his hand to support his body and slowly straightened his back.
Despite the pain that made him tremble all over, and despite the ringing in his ears, he still managed to lift his chin, maintaining that almost laughable dignity that belonged to the Sterling family.
He glanced at the MP40 submachine gun he had picked up from beside the German's corpse on the ground, bent down to pick it up, and then disgustedly wiped the blood off it with a handkerchief.
"Stop daydreaming, Sergeant."
Arthur's voice trembled slightly, but it retained that irritatingly arrogant tone. He pointed to the French doors at the back of the hall that led to the garden.
"This beat-up car is blocking the front door, we have to use the back door. What a lack of manners."
Sergeant McTavish stood still, his Thompson submachine gun still burning hot. He looked at the nobleman in front of him, his face covered in blood, swaying precariously, yet still trying to put on an air of "it's no big deal."
Looking at that horrifying wound—it was left to save a private. Looking at the still-smoking wreckage of the assault gun—it was destroyed by a grenade.
The sergeant's Adam's apple bobbed. Something hard inside him shattered.
He didn't speak.
But he suddenly brought his legs together, and his heels made a crisp thud.
That's the standard British Army standing at attention posture.
Sergeant McTavish raised his oil-stained right hand and gave the officer he once looked down upon the most an impeccable salute, a salute unique to the Cold Creek Guards.
It's not a perfunctory response, nor is it mockery. It's respect.
Seeing this, the soldiers straightened their backs.
Arthur was taken aback, seemingly not expecting this veteran to pull this stunt.
His lips twitched as if he wanted to laugh, but the movement aggravated his wound, causing him to gasp.
"Alright, McTavish."
Arthur turned around, slung the MP40 submachine gun over his shoulder, and waved his cane with his back to the crowd.
"Save your energy for running away. That's how the Royal Guard should be."
He strode toward the mist-shrouded garden.
In his RTS view, more red dots were surging toward him from all directions.
But none of that matters anymore.
Because he knew that from this moment on, the group of people behind him were no longer defeated soldiers ready to abandon him at any time, but his wolf pack.
And he is a wolf.