Edward's long, gray hair fluttered like feathers on his temples, and the old seaman was like an albatross in the sky, and the sea breeze made him feel kind. Wrapped in a shackling robe, Edward ascended the high mausoleum from outside Dover along the branches of Watling Avenue, and on the whiteshores of the lighthouse, he finally saw the fleet he was about to join.

Led by the purple "Royal Oak", hundreds of galleys and transport ships lined up in battle formation on the sea, like a three-way siege echelon, and the towering stern "Royal Oak" was a huge siege tower lined with warriors armed with bows and crossbows and boar spears.

The real situation of this formidable "Trident of the Sea" was chaos, and Prince Edmund listened with displeasure to the roar of the gunners below: "Hell, where are the horns filled with gunpowder!" ”

Compared to the gunners on the Dragonhead, the crew of the "Royal Oak" is already the essence of the navy, but again, the gunfire of the big ship is more than twice as complicated. Moreover, the ships were not yet in combat readiness: only half of the guns were now equipped with gun crews, and only fifty barrels of gunpowder were trained, two-thirds of which were ordinary large-particle gunpowder, and the rest were spare double-powered gunpowder and a barrel of powdered ignition gunpowder, and even if only half of the eighteen shiny brass griffons on the side were usable, a salvo would consume half a barrel.

The crew on the starboard side untied the chain of the gun and the rope of the breech at the command of the officer, and then firmly grasped the loading pulley next to the gun to prevent the brass monster from moving.

At the sound of an order, the wiping gunners vigorously lifted the winch rod behind the bore, and after prying up the gun, the team leader stuffed the wooden wedge back and down, and the gun barrel entered the horizontal firing position.

After pulling the gun back, the gunners stopped the gun with the retreat cable, and after pulling out the paint plug from the muzzle, they pulled the pulley chain again to lift the gun carriage, and when the gun muzzle extended out of the gunside gun window, the chain automatically landed and coiled up as if it had life.

"Reload!"

The gunner, holding a sharp fire door pin, stabbed the fire door fiercely, punctured the gunpowder bag in the gun chamber, and then quickly poured the powder powder powder from the horn into the medicine pool and the fire door. After the gunner carefully compacted the ignition with an awl, the gunners on the side removed the palm of the hand blocking the wind and took the horn of the ox.

When the officers saw that the reloading was ready, they did not dare to relax, and they did not even dare to let the gunner turn horizontally or raise the muzzle for calibration, but only ordered to aim and fire horizontally.

Two gunners in each group stabilized the side pulleys, and then the gunners kneeling beside the gun took out the fire rope sealed on the side of the gun carriage, and carefully blew it, while the loader prepared the next charge behind him, and the gun commander clamped the fire door pin under his arm, released the palm protecting the ignition charge, and after taking the fire rope, ignited the powder powder powder with lightning speed.

With a sizzle, crimson flames and smoke erupted from the muzzles, and a total of nine gunwales, with a loud bang, rushed backwards in unison, and the eight-pound shells sped hundreds of yards against the strong wind, and then continued to float on the surface of the water, stirring up bursts of whirlpools, until they finally sank into the black foam.

"Plug the fire door!"

The gunner began to stuff the fire door plug into the fire door, and quickly dragged the white mop out of the bucket with the gunner's eyes, stuffed it into the gun chamber, and turned it repeatedly until he was sure that it had been cleaned, and then dragged out the blackened mop, and the strip of cloth on it was still smoking.

"Reload!"

The loader handed the gunner, a cloth bag filled with large particles of gunpowder, who shoved it into the muzzle of the gun, pushed it all the way to the breech, and the gunner's firing pin poked in again.

The cannonballs were fed, the plugs were put back into place, and four minutes had passed, and the great griffons roared again.

In the stern, Edmund could not see the nervousness of the gunners pulling pulleys, he only felt that the whole ship was shaking, and the sea had been stirred beyond recognition a few minutes ago, with smoke and fire, lightning and thunder.

The crowd on the Costa Blanca was in a panic, and even a well-informed sailor like Edward was shocked. The fleet was still spewing smoke, and the roar resounded across the sea, and in the direction of the flanks of the fleet, the various ships fleeing from this sea area could be faintly discerned.

"I'm going to join such a fleet?" Edward's heart beat involuntarily, and even the burden of debt had never been more frightening to him, after all, the unknown was the most disturbing thing, and over there, a real sea monster was venting its rage.

"What is this?" Prince Edmund's young attendant, Utred, son of Volsiov, finally uttered the first complete sentence.

“Oruth Dracan！” Harding, son of Ansgar, replied without hesitation, glancing at the mainsail above the prince's white horse flag, on which a golden wyvern was woven.

"Anail Dhraige......" the Northumbrian muttered in Gaelic language, all speaking the same thing - dragon's breath.

The smell of gunpowder in the air was so strong that it resembled a poisonous dragon flame, but Harding was as excited as if he had drunk the sweat of a gladiator, and the old frontier of the sea was shaking violently, and the poor worms of the old days did not know that the game had changed forever. At this time, he most wanted to pull the pulley chain himself, sweating profusely, and firing a shot, but his father was on his side, and this young Sean did not dare to get carried away.

Unbeknownst to the people on the Royal Oak, the thunder on the east coast of Dover was nothing more than a hundred miles away, and a real tsunami was making landfall on the southern coast.

Westminster, the King of England, listened patiently to the Ordnance Chief's incessant complaints about his colleagues, and the fat Holder muttered, "I told the Admiralty madman to get him out of the Tower of London with those things, but ......"

Edgar pressed his palm and stopped the other party: "I'll tell the archbishop, let the navy move the gunpowder from the tower to Eastminster." ”

The other party was obviously a little surprised, he just didn't want those satanic powder to blow up the weapons and armor under his management into the sky along with the tower, but he didn't expect the king to plan to store this thing in the holy church.

In 1769, 200,000 tons of gunpowder deposited in the church of St. Nazareth by the Venetians were detonated by lightning and one-sixth of the city was destroyed, and a thousand years after the fires, the church was almost the target of lightning as the tallest building in the regions.

Finally, at the end of the summons, Edgar once again turned his attention back to the map of Saxony, he did not have a complete and efficient staff headquarters, commanding his growing army, and all calculations had to be carried out by his own pen.

Baldwin, the Earl of Lincoln, almost drunkenly entered, and the king's guards were so surprised that they all raised their long shields and spears outward, separating the count from the king.

"Your Majesty...... Something happened! Baldwin exclaimed in Frankish language, and he still had a woman's scent on his face, God knows where it came from.

Edgar stared at the other man silently, and with a single gesture the Anglo-Danish guards were disarmed.

"Did something happen to Normandy?"

Baldwin's eyes widened in disbelief what he had heard, and he looked bewildered until the King asked again in a voice that the whole room heard.

"Yes, I just received news from my father that Bishop Odo of Bayeux has been released!"

The king's expression was extremely peculiar, as if he was a little excited, and there was a kind of melancholy that could not be satisfied.

"Time is running out...... "the king is speaking to himself, and announcing to everyone, "let all the earls go to the Isle of Wight, and tell them that the time for reckoning has come." ”