Herald of Steel

Menes retreating now would mean saving the bulk of his army.

But this obviously had its challenges.

In addition to the apparent river obstacle and loss of face for him, it would also mean his army would start to starve given they had used up their last morsel of grain in the morning.

So considering this, the alternative of trying to match the enemy until dusk and then run away under the cover of the dark might sound like a pretty good idea.

But that then ran the risk of betting that the additional troops would be enough to halt the collapse and enable the army to stay in the fight long enough.

Menes had no way of guaranteeing his reserves would be up to the task.

So, given the two choices, the supreme general began to actually gravitate towards the former choice, thinking a small certain loss was preferable to a risky gigantic one.

As for the concern about starving, well you had to be alive first, then you can worry about food and water.

Menes further reasoned that if he ran, although some men would certainly die due to starvation, but Zanzan city was only about three days march from here.

So the bulk of them could still make it as people could live for around three weeks without eating.

As fortunately, they had no shortage of drinking water, for the terrain here was hilly and full of small springs, in addition to the presence of abundant underground water, meaning digging wells for fresh water was completely viable.

So he was pretty confident about the chances of most of his men making it back alive. ｂｏ𝚟𝚕.

Even additionally thinking that if worst came to worst, he could even slaughter some of his horses as rations.

Thus with all these reasoning, Menes decided to sound the trumpet for retreat, and even took the horned bugle in his hand, ready to blow it.

When suddenly, his ears were blasted by a tremendous cry of jubilation, seeming to erupt from his right flank.

And a few moments later, he heard his soldiers chanting, “The king is dead! The king dead!”

This was first restricted to only the right flanks, but soon, like wildfire spreading in a forest, the ecstatic roars began to resound from the entire army.

And the exuberant cries were so loud that Menes even forgot about sounding the retreat and instead willed his horse forward to see the source of the commotion.

And shortly after, the general was astounded to see the golden helmet of the enemy king being passed around from soldier to soldier, as was the head that adorned it!

‘Perseus is dead!’ This realization hit Menes with a burst of adrenaline, and unable to control his surging emotions, he then and there roared with every ounce of strength his voice could muster,

“Attack!”

“Attack!”

“The king is dead!”

“Attack!”

And hearing their general’s euphoric roars, the Zanzan men were energized with potent battle zeal while seeing their king’s ornate helmet paraded around, the Tibians began to lose heart.

Hence shortly came this order, the tide of battle began to slowly shift.

Now to understand the events that led up to these euphoric shouts and change in tide, one had to back some time, right where to the right flank of Zanzan’s army was located.

Here, Laykash had concentrated his attacks around the disguised Leosydas, trying to kill him, or at least trying to kill the people in front of him, and thus force him to step forward.

And over time, Zanzan’s cavalrymen appeared to succeed in actually doing that, as at one point, a conspicuous gap had opened up in the Tibian front echelon, one where two horsemen were simultaneously stabbed and thrown off their horse, making Leosydas now directly stare down the enemy.

And though at any other time, he would have let any one of the numerous bodyguards or nobles around him step forward and take his place, today, for some inexplicable reason that even he did not know, the very conspicuous man stepped forward into the very front lines.

Perhaps this was an almost instinctual reaction for a man who had been in so many wars.

After all, ‘Keep the front rows always filled,’ was the first thing they taught in the army.

This doctrine came about because when an army fought using spears, each man did not thrust the weapon horizontally.

But spears were weapons that were easier to use diagonally.

Meaning the individual soldier was protected by two spears from both his comrades on either side.

And conversely, he protected one-half of the flanks of both of them.

So knowing this, it could be easily seen what would happen if a man in the formation was killed.

The two men on either his side would become vulnerable.

And if more such people continued to die,…well a chain collapse would slowly begin.

So it was very likely that Leosydas moved forward to face the enemy through simply a force of habit and the subconscious muscle memory that constant military drills had built up.

Or perhaps his horse which had been bred for war did it for him.

Or lastly, maybe he saw the enemy was on the brink of collapse and felt there was no immediate danger.

No one would ever be able to say for sure why Leosydas chose to pointlessly put himself in harm’s way, likely not even himself.

But whatever the reason might have been, the fact was that Leosydas had stepped forward and exposed himself to the enemy.

And seeing this, Laykash, whose eyes burned with steely determination, and whose heart had bled at having missed such a golden chance previously, decided that this time he would not leave the opportunity in other people’s hands.

He decided to oversee the job himself, and so, disobeying Alxx’s doctrine, he urged his horse to go forward and started to take part in the melee personally, even positioning himself at the very front rows just like Leosydas had.

Here, Laykash being the overall commander of the wing was also ornately dressed, not as much as Leosydas, but sufficiently so, with a very large red plum on his helm so as to attract the attention of his soldiers when giving commands.

Hence, with the presence of both the commanders in the very first rows, a fierce struggle, one even more brutal than that was already going on started to unfold.

“Haha, look the coward has finally decided to join the fight.”

“What good will it do now? Your army has already lost!”

And seeing this, at first, the Tibians taunted the young commander.

While for the Zanzan cavalrymen, seeing their commander fight shoulder to shoulder with them in the same rank, they cheered,

“Haha, brothers what are we afraid of now? When the hero who made Amenheraft run has joined us!”

“If he can defeat a god, what is this puny Tibias?”

Hence, with both sides energized by the presence of their highest commander, the battle reached a new feverish pitch, as they both pushed the other side to give ground.

But ultimately both held their lines steady and firm, as in both the wings, contrary to the center, the fighting was pretty even, with no clear victor.

But that was soon about to change.

As events soon unfolded which would perfectly showcase why it was so dangerous to fight in the frontlines, especially for high-level commanders, and why Alxx expressly forbade it.

But right now, in the right flanks of his army, Laykash, and Leosydas were doing exactly that, with both of them actually squaring off one another right opposite each other.

Here, Leosydas used the traditional two-headed spear of Tibias, designed as such so that if one tip broke, the rider would simply slip the polearm and use the other good side.

While Laykash seemed to have foregone good military strategy and switched to an almost 2-meter-long longsword, a sword specially made for the cavalry to give them a greater reach.

Now, this was not an advisable move for one very particular reason.

And that was that there was a good reason why armies used spears.

In fact, there were plenty.

Cheap.

Greater range.

Easy to master.

And a whole host of other reasons.

Among them there was also the fact that spears were simply the better weapon than swords to be used en mass.

Meaning a large of spearmen were simply the more potent force.

As a matter of fact, an army of spearmen would easily win against an army of swordsmen nine out of ten times.

But then where did swords come in?

Well, swords were more of a personal weapon, and their true lethality bloomed in duels, as a swordsman was expected to win nine times out of ten against a spearman one on one.

And this had less to do with the skill of the user, but more so because this was simply how each of the weapons worked, with the sword being able to attack very effectively and thrust directly forward, whereas the spear was in its element when attacking diagonally.

Thus generally if one wanted his army to win, a spear was the better option, whereas if one really wanted to kill someone right in front of him, a sword was the way to go.

And with this knowledge, it could be seen that the reason Laykash had bought out his sword was to cut Leosydas and only Leosydas.

Or in his mind the Tibian king.

He wanted to do it all cost, and nothing else seemed to matter.