"What do we know of the bandits?"

"They captured the village of Turin and drove the villagers out a week ago. They number about 300 men plus maybe 100 female hostages in the village. We know they have 1 grand knight, not less than 10 knights and more than 60 soldiers."

"We have 330 men and 1 lady, about 280 soldiers, 40 knights including yours truly and Sir Sandor plus you, a total of 2 grand knight level fighters."

"Lord Edward, then let us proceed. Sir Bertrand, if you please."

"Alright! SOLDIERS, FORWARD MARCH!"

"Lord Cain, must we really bring this woman with us?"

"Once again, Sir Sandor, I'm not a lord and Mary is not just an ordinary woman, she's also a soldier. Don't worry about her, if she can't even protect herself after all the training I've put her through, she should just die in shame."

"Don't worry, grand knight sir, I will not hold everyone back."

"Remember your words, young lady. Don't promise what you can't achieve."

"I shall keep that in mind, sir grand knight."

"We still have an hour before we can reach Turin. How shall we fight, Cain, brother."

"The usual, 51 knights and grandknights would be the main attack. Assisted by 2 soldier columns of 70 men each on each side. The rest of the soldiers will be under Bertrand as reserve."

When the group arrived in Turin, they found that the enemy was more difficult to deal with.

"This is no ordinary bandit, they know how to use this area to form a Knightslaying garrison? The enemy commander knows his stuff."

Genji then thought of the Knightslaying Garrison and it's strengths. The Knightslaying garrison is a soldier formation that mimics the effectiveness of the soldier column that Genji had thought of using. A soldier column is a unit of soldiers of at least 70-men strong. They are the most basic unit formation in this world. A marching column of soldiers is a strong deterrent against knights, especially in knight versus soldiers situations, where a column of determined soldiers are able to present a huge threat to an individual knight. It usually takes a group of more than 10 knights to break through a column of soldiers, which is usually cost effective for soldiers because a single knight usually has a combat effectiveness of 10 up to 22 soldiers. The Knightslaying Garrison however is more cost effective when you have limited soldiers but have many conscripts.

It's a formation in siege by the defending side, where they replace two-thirds of a soldier column with conscripts. It is more commonly seen after a long siege, when soldier casualties are replaced by conscripts on the defending side. Sieges are in favor of the defender so it would actually work well enough. But this practice of using conscripts is usually frowned upon because these conscripts aren't as good as a real soldier, so they would sadly be used by the soldiers as meatshields to take the brunt of the damage, damage conscripts usually won't be able to survive. Furthermore, these conscripts would surely become soldiers after some proper training so it's like killing the chicken that lays eggs. Training real soldiers is not cheap though, so for unscrupulous nobles it's very cost effective to conscript slaves and criminals as fodder.

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"Alright, change of plans. We'll split into 23 parties of 10 to 11 men each. 2 parties will be responsible for reconnaissance and 20 will be responsible for assault, 1 party will be responsible for the main attack. Reconnaisance parties will be managed by Bertrand. Lord Edward shall coordinate the 20 assault parties composed of 10 soldiers and 1 knight each. The rest of the knights will accompany me and Sir Sandor as the main assault party to cut off the enemy commander's head. Any questions or doubts?"

"As expected of a prodigy, Lord Cain is really skilled in the arts of war!"

"What about me, master?"

"Take this, I want you to keep up with us."

Genji handed his flintlock pistol to Mary.

"Is that a firearm, brother? Where did you get that?"

"I bought it from a peddler."

"Really? I don't seem to remember any peddlers arriving these last few days."

"I have my means."

"I admire your ability, brother, sometimes I think the fief will be better off with you being the heir rather than me."

"Nonsense! Ability can be learned, but qualifications cannot be earned. For a commoner, ability is a curse rather than a blessing."

"Please, let us not bore ourselves with useless chatter, that place won't be capturing itself now, would it?"

"Agree! Lord Edward, I trust your judgement on this fight. Please open a passage to the enemy commander so we can cut off that bastard's head to present to Lord Baron as trophy."

"As you say brother, so it shall be done!"

Edward soon gave the knights their corresponding place to attack. Knights receiving their orders left with their ten men to assume their assault positions.

"Brother, the general attack will happen in 10 minutes."

"We wait for the general assault to begin."

Ten minutes later, Edward blew the horn to signal the attack, his assault parties then took turns in storming the enemy positions. Genji and his team waited as the enemy defenses began to be overwhelmed. When the enemy defenses were waivering, suddenly, the assault in the more critical areas were pushed back.

"The enemy has used their knights, it is finally our turn to move."

To cover their advance, Edward also signalled another round of furious assault. This time, the signal for all out attack, the parties wouldn't take turns assaulting but everyone would attack simultaneously. Genji and the others also moved.

Upon successfuly scaling the first barricade, Genji saw the extent of the enemy defense when he saw 5 soldiers confidently repulsed one of Genji's allied knights.

"These are veterans. The soldiers do not fear knights, that means they might have fought or even killed a few already. Forward!"

After saying that, he charged to the melee, then slashed a nearby conscript skillfully, only using enough force to knock the conscript away. He then proceeded to block an enemy soldier who tried to stab him with a spear. Another soldier then followed up with another attack. Normally, a knight would be flustered by this approach and would use slightly a bit more energy in dealing with the attack, while a soldier would panic and would back away thus leaving a hole in the formation, but Genji has a combat effectiveness of a grand knight, so he dealt with it as any knight would do. Seeing his action, the soldiers on the other side shouted.

"A knight! He's a knight!"

Upon saying that, 4 more soldiers converged upon him, not letting him take any respite. Genji merely blocked the onslaught of enemy attacks continuously, while also controlling the flow of the battle, not letting any of the soldiers pressuring him escape. Seeing the soldiers having difficulty with Genji, 4 more enemy soldiers went to harass Genji. Once the rest of the enemy soldiers discovered that the enemy in front of them has more knight level troops than they can deal with, they found that they couldn't retreat at all and could only be overwhelmed by the rest of the troops that soon arrived in the breach. Luckily for the enemy, only 2 soldiers and 5 conscripts were fatally injured while the rest were disarmed and taken prisoner.

Genji and Sandor then left the knights and soldiers to snowball the advantage in the other positions while they would go straight for the enemy commander.

They finally reached the headquarters and found 2 grand knights, instead of just 1 that they expected. Genji and Sandor looked at each other then looked again at the two enemies that can threaten them.

"Remind me to punch the face of that bastard Bertrand. I'll take the tall girl."

"I'll have to double, no, triple the fool's training this month. But why do I always get the fatty?"