Chapter 226: Chapter 226
Gustav formed up the line with practiced ease, he knew better than to arrange a fight where the elven archers could be brought to play. 'Importing elven slaves was just asking for trouble… we won't make that mistake again.' The death toll they'd taken on his scouts was not worse only because the elves were few and scattered over a wide range.
Over the weeks of scouting, Gustav learned one thing with certainty.
'If my scouts return alive, the enemy is not there.' And so he guided his forces on a long path around the elven dominated forests that made up the southern half of the Northern Holy Kingdom, and sacrificed the villages and small towns to potential pillage in order to get around the armies of the rebels.
How many died because of his decision… 'Could all this have been prevented if I had just annulled that damn trial then and there?!' Perhaps not, 'The South might still have turned on us, but I would be facing the rebels with a hundred thousand paladins instead of twenty-five thousand…'
It was the one advantage that Queen Calca had over both sides. The Northern Holy Kingdom's paladins were all loyal to Queen Calca, himself, and Remedios. 'In that order though?' That, he suspected, was the true reason why the Queen hadn't simply had Remedios killed. Soldiers were not much for politics, 'Kill their own… you're the bad guy. It's that simple… fuck around and find out…' He recalled the phrase a crude soldier once used about demihumans probing the forests.
The one conflict in it all, he knew was going to come up hard and fast when the truth came out. 'When they learn that the Huntress of the Wilds became the Queen of Frost… when they learn the trial was a sham to kill a hero and Remedios was behind it?' That was the worry which kept him up at night, and as he trotted in front of the forming ranks of the army of the retainers and militia that made up most of the Northern Holy Queen's forces, he still couldn't get rid of his worry.
Allowing demihumans to live 'was' forbidden, but anyone who looked into the eyes of a mother of any species that was just trying to protect its young, or a dying father trying to rise one more time to buy time for its own to escape, knew the pangs of pity for the other side… and more than one had given in and let someone flee at one point or another.
'It's only a matter of time… and what then?' Gustav asked himself just as one of his warriors rode up atop a large warhorse of mottled brown and white and shouted…
"We're ready sir! All we need is your order!"
"Not yet… let them make the first move." Gustav pointed toward the hill a fair distance away. "They'll try to take that, I'm sure, and when my ambush hits…"
He wasn't wrong. [Long Sight], he used the martial art from his scouting days and, true to expectation, a cavalry charge was racing for the hill, the Southern rebels thinking to seize it before Gustav realized his mistake. Hundreds of horsemen, they had a more gentle slope on their side, Gustav couldn't keep back a little smug grin from behind the steadily growing beard.
He was sure his officers couldn't see what he could, they had their banners raised, horses pawing at the dirt on the open ground, 'Win this, and the Southern rebels will quickly realize we got around them, take out this little army, and their supply lines are cut!'
'Little' was a relative term, his army was twenty-five thousand strong, filled with combat veterans, with over ten thousand paladins backed up by experienced squires and augmented by militia that underwent rigorous training required in all Northern Holy Kingdom towns, villages, and cities. By contrast, the Southern Holy Kingdom host that held this field wasn't even the main army, but it was thirty-five thousand strong and was responsible for the resupply of the main host.
'If I could have bypassed it too, I would have.' Gustav reflected while he watched the fools charge toward his trap, the way south was simply too narrow, with a Southern city in the way that he would have to besiege… but with the resources he could take here, he was confident it could be done.
With his magically enhanced vision, he saw it, his smile broadened, archers sprang up from where they lay on their bellies concealed by green cloaks to hide in the grass. They loosed their arrows with such speed that five volleys were in the air before the first one struck a mounted man or his horse.
He couldn't hear the screams of horses or men, but he saw their mouths part, the fear, confusion, pain… horses tumbled screaming, tripping those behind and causing a cluster that struggled to undo itself under withering archery fire.
"Now… sound the advance." Gustav said, and the long horn blew, the drums began to beat, and his army began to advance over open ground before his unfortunate enemy could get a true grasp of just what happened.
The other side's drums boomed, but the first step forward was hesitant, their lines were not clean, they held big shields, larger than those typically used in the North, and mostly round, rather than the more standardized teardrop shaped shields used by the more professional northern forces.
Gustav's smile still hadn't faded, he looked over his shoulder, "Call for a half step, and bring up the archers, tell them to fire when ready, but target the wings, and then call our own to a halt."
The flags were waving moments later and the marching of his soldiers' feet began to slow down. The archers went ahead and, on the surface, it appeared to be madness, like he was offering them up for easy slaughter.
But the ambush unsettled the other side, and the remaining cavalry did not take the bait.
The halt blew when the first arrows sailed through the air.
The whistling, screaming noise of the arrows was replaced by the screaming of the first men of the South to fall down. By the third volley, it was happening.
Soldiers of the Southern army began to push themselves against their own line, each man trying to get behind the shield of the man next to him. The lines began to bunch up in the front ranks.
"Stretch out our line, spread the mounted paladins out!" Gustav barked his order and only watched for a moment as the horsemen obeyed the signal flags and went from clusters of twenty or thirty deep, to being only two, giving the appearance of a much larger force to the oncoming ranks of the South.
The arrows continued to fall, the screaming was now audible, and the march of the South was slowing down.
Whoever functioned as the commander must have been giving orders of their own, because they brought their archers forward into range and began to target those of the North.
'It won't do much good, with the archers spread out, we're aiming at clusters, they're… not so much.' And true to form, most of the arrows landed in between the spaces made by his soldiers.
'Next up will be magic, let the casters duke it out as they see fit, we only need to buy time.' He told himself as he watched the infantry continue to cluster at the front. The big round shield's promise of safety proved so tempting that the officers who moved back and forth to give orders had only the most limited success in stretching the line out again.
The first fireball arced over the lines from the South, it had very little chance of hitting anything, and it didn't. 'More for morale than anything, to show they're fighting…' Gustav realized. He didn't know much about magic, but he knew it cost mana, and that would take time to replenish, nothing short of certain types of undead could cast fireballs indefinitely.
His own mounted mages trotted out on the wings and waited.
"Now." Gustav drew out his sword, and a flag wave brought the archers to quickly fall back between the spaces of his heavy infantry. His sword came down, and the cavalry began to charge. Heavy armored paladins were demons in the battlefield, their heavy horses could trample a dozen men before they would lose momentum, their lances could easily kill two or three before snapping if they were lucky, and the men themselves wore over seventy pounds of metal over their bodies, faceless behind their helmets, they were not going to fall with ease to anything less than a monster.
With the front line clumped up, the heavy paladins had an easy time of getting around the confined lines, and the last desperate counter attack of other mounted men from the South was smashed like a glass window hit by a rock.
The lighter cavalry of the South tore like wet paper under a knife, the smaller horses unable to present a true obstacle, those who survived the clash and who did not fall in a tangle of broken bodies and blood, wheeled their horses away and ran… and not back to their own lines.
The horn blew again, and the heavy infantry began a faster advance, the magic casters went with them, fireballs began to arc back and forth between the two hosts, Gustav's bodyguard sounded his own horn, and the elites, most of whom like himself had at least one piece of magical equipment, headed for the center.
With the Southern lines clustered up and wavering, fireballs consuming men and horses, and arrows striking pain, death, or fear into those who had never tasted battle before, the conclusion was decided before Gustav's lance could find a target.
The teardrop shaped shields of the heavy infantry proved maneuverable, lighter weight, and effectively blocked most blows. The bigger, heavier round shields were useful in formation, but in inexperienced hands they got in the way of their own wielder, obscuring their vision and leaving the lower body vulnerable, while also being heavier and more tiring even to lift.
Screams and blood both filled the air as swords went up and down, maces spattered gray brain matter over green grass, and the noise of dying voices calling out for divine aid covered the noise of any orders or will.
Set on their heels and lacking the same experience, discipline, or equipment… the Southern army began to fall apart.
Gustav could not see the first men run, but those who felt the pulse of battle as surely as they felt the sweat on their brow and running down the crack of their ass, knew exactly what was happening.
Gustav's sword pierced the throat of a young man holding a bright steel sword, it didn't even have blood on it. The moment slowed as if it was by the way his battle senses guided him, he saw the blade in fine detail as if he'd made it himself.
No nicks, no scratches, fresh, clean, new, unstained…
And it fell from nerveless fingers to land point down in the dirt beside the body of the battle virgin Gustav had just pierced. The young man looked up at the sky, his mouth not even moving in a prayer, his dying thoughts a silent wondering about how this could happen to him.
The look was familiar enough to all veterans. 'Every young man sees himself as the hero of the story, not one of the countless dead whose bodies pave the road that heroes walk over. It's always a surprise…' It was an afterthought, meaningless and empty now, and the current head of the Paladin Order simply pressed on, taking the battle virginity of countless figures whose bright blades would never be sheathed or drawn by their owners again.
Until he stopped. The last holdouts began to break and run, the thunderous noise of metal armor and thud of heavy shields being thrown away, the calls to flee replaced all enthusiasm for a fight, and just like that…
The fighting was over, all but the cleanup. 'If we can conscript more into our ranks, fine, the ones we can't, maybe hostages, maybe bodies, we'll see… but this is a fine opening blow to those treasonous bastards.' Gustav thought, taking a cast off banner of the south, he wiped his sword and face clean of mud, blood, and sweat, and savored the cheers of victory that followed which drowned out the cries of the wounded and the dying as if they were not there at all.
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