Herald of Steel

In the ensuing chaos following the destruction of the formation, Ural and his men were too busy trying to get a hold of their bearing and restore order to the lines to notice the mass of soldiers approaching them at breakneck speed.

“Quick! March quickly!” The commander of the 3rd legion shouted from behind, urging his men to walk as fast as they could without breaking formation, wanting to catch the cavalry less than 100 meters ahead of them in as vulnerable position as he could.

It would take legion about only one minute to make contact, but the commander wanted to hit them as soon as possible to kill as much cavalrymen as possible before they could run away.

‘They are charging us! An infantry unit, fucking peasants, are charging us!’ Ural was among the first to notice this, and the sight of it filled him with fear and rage.

Fear of the ensuing violent bloodbath that was about to befall his men, and rage at the thought of this being done by mere infantry.

Adhanians tended to look down on foot soldiers as lowly for they were mostly composed of peasants, and viewed cavalry, which was used by nobles as the main attacking force and the important determining factor that won battles.

But Ural had little time to gnash his teeth and vent.

Instead, he decisively turned his horse around and made his way to the second row of the calvary, which was far less affected, and started to scream at the top of his voice, “To me! Gather to me! Line up! The enemy is upon us! Line up!”

He was urging his men to rally around him and trying to restore some sort of solid battle line to withstand the initial infantry charge and minimize the casualties.

This single maneuver, where he chose to basically sacrifice half of his father’s elite cavalry to save the other half was a testament to his competency as a military leader, and to his credit, the move began to work.

Many of the dazed and confused riders, who previously had no idea where their immediate superior was amongst the sea of men, beasts, and carcasses heard the familiar voice of their leader and began to gravitate towards him.

But before the act could truly show its efficacy, Alexander’s men were already upon them.

It was too little too late.

“Javelins!” One of the cavalrymen was heard shouting as the first volley of the projectile was launched from a distance of about 20 meters, the deadly short spears traveling in an arc before impaling themselves on their target.

There were 250 men on the first row of the legion, and as the first three rows let loose their missiles, the 750 javelins shot wrought even more destruction and devastation on the already scattered formation.

Some of the javelins naturally missed, but much more found their target, piercing deep into the naked beasts’ bodies and their riders, with a few javelins even sharing their target, littering them with multiple deep wounds.

This shower of spear rain and the imminent clash with 5,000 men was the last straw for the disorganized men in the first row, and thus the initial forward formation of 1,000 horsemen simply routed, causing even more casualties they pushed, shoved, and stampeded their own to save their hide, their backs following a second volley of javelins.

“Dammit, useless wastes,” Ural ground his teeth as he saw this.

He had hoped the first row would have been able to offer some kind of token resistance to the enemy, buying him enough time to reorganize his rear lines and put up an effective defense, or at least perform an orderly retreat.

But it seemed that was a fool’s hope.

This was also partly because Ural had not given any such order to the first row, neither did he nominate an officer in charge to organize such a procedure.

Thus, the occurrence of the disintegration of the front line.

“Buuuuppp” So seeing no other way, Ural decisively took a bronze horn attached to his saddle and blew on it, the loud blare piercing the ears of all those around him.

And everyone in Ural’s unit understood what it signal meant.

It meant it was time to retreat.

Ural understood there was no hope for his cavalry to survive the infantry charge, and so, without doing something stupid like going after individual battlefield glory or trying to save face as a noble, he unhesitantly issued the call of retreat.

And hearing that, the still relatively tight light cavalry formation simply dissolved, scattering like sand into the wind and routing themselves, and denying the 3rd legion of their kills.

Most of the riders turned to their right as they escaped, which was currently empty grounds as Lord Nibraz had already finished his charge, and the wide open fields actually allowed the horsemen to spread themselves out and run as full gallop without colliding with one another, enabling most of the horsemen to run away safely. .

After all, the infantry could never catch them on foot and so the retreat itself was quite successful, with only a few unlucky ones dying from stray javelin shots, and which was far less than what would have if they had chosen to stand and fight.

Seeing the cavalry run without a second thought, and knowing there was nothing they could, the experienced legion commander decided not to bother, instead urging to his soldiers, “Halt! Halt! Turn back! Turn back! The enemy infantry will soon come. Enemy infantry will come! Turn back! Turn back!”

In addition to the worry of the impeding enemy infantry charge, the legion commander and his officers were also afraid that some of the more hot-blooded troops would give chase to the fleeing horses to try and get a kill, and others would soon follow, causing them to become out of formation and thus vulnerable to an enemy counterattack.

This was not an uncommon technique where cavalries would do a fake retreat to lure the enemy in and then suddenly turn around to flip the tables on the attackers.

Knowing this they thus repeatedly said this command, trying to get the root soldiers to maintain unit cohesion.

And it worked, as the troops stopped their chase, though it was mostly because the enemy cavalry had buggered off even before the infantry would get a good hit on them.

And so the 3rd legion concentrated instead on killing the leftover riders who lay on the ground injured, and moaning in pain in front of them.

Such types of men would usually be taken as prisoners to be exchanged for ransom.

But they neither had the time to do this as the enemy infantry could start marching any moment now nor did Alexander want to take prisoners.

So the unusual event of simply killing them happened, both for the men and beasts which were too injured to be retried, while a few unharmed horses that had not yet run away were retrieved as trophies, their total number amounting to less than 10.

It appeared in terms of horse acquisition, this tactic was a dismal failure.

But in terms of killing horses and destroying a cavalry charge, it was an unquestionable success, because the number of horses Ural lost was truly horrific.

It was nowhere near his conservative number of 200, but in fact double that, at more than 400 horses and riders lost.

Meaning just as the battle started, Ural had lost 20% of his men, which was not just a devastating loss, but a catastrophic one.

For even well-trained armies tended to usually rout at 15% to 20%.

While poorly trained ones did that at 5% to 10%.

Thus it was unknown if Ural’s cavalry would be able to make any kind of contribution in today’s battle.

‘Hmmp, so what if I lost? Lord Nibraz had already destroyed the enemy center. Victory is ours,’ As Ural rode like the wind back to his camp to try and reorganize his men, in a kind of sour grape moment he tried to console himself with such a saying.

He saw his loss as nothing more than one of Alexander’s little stunts, as one last ‘pathetic’ win by the soon-to-be-dead Thesian, and took comfort in that.

Though the fact that the army would win so easily, with the only notable casualties being his, and suffering huge personal losses at that, did sting Ural pretty bad.

And so turned his head back to look that how that battle was going for Lord Nibraz.

It was unknown if he wanted to see the old man triumph, or struggle a bit and acquire some losses so that at the end of it he did not appear too bad.

But whatever he was expecting, he was not expecting to see the sight in front of him.

Because his eyes registered no presence of Lord Nibraz’s cavalry, but only found that Alexander’s lines had fully restored themselves, as if by magic.

‘What! Am I seeing things? Is it the dust? Or am I too tired?’ Ural thought he was witnessing witchcraft as he found Alexander’s ‘destroyed’ lines restored, and he had a sudden sinking feeling in his gut.

“What sorcery is this?” He asked him in a shaky voice, his instinct as a military commander telling him something was wrong.

So he slowed down his horse to get a better view and squinted his eyes through all the dust that had been kicked up by the 8,000 beasts galloping towards their target to try and figure out what was going on.