Lady luck did not favor those eager to fight among both forces by blanketing the skies with thick clouds, which caused torrential rains to turn the previously flat and hard ground of the future battle into mud. The Baron of Blackseed was most disappointed by such weather, with his Lenaian cavalry having their mobility limited, but the Duke of Glasdale was no happy man either, his proposed battle plan being delayed by forces outside of his control.
The reprieve lasted four days, with the rain only stopping in the middle of the third, but the ground was still too muddy for any reasonable commander to deploy his troops. I spent those days in the camp doing what I could to keep up with my training, with meditation giving rest to my muscles which were now showing much more profoundly on my body. I would have to wait each morning to see what the weather is like, making sure to not overexert myself on a day when we would be sent into battle.
When the rains stopped on the third day I reasoned that I shouldn’t continue training, since there was a high chance that tomorrow the long-awaited battle would finally begin. As I stood in reserve, behind the right flank of the Duke’s army, my heart was racing with anticipation and excitement. The battlefield was by no means narrow, so the long ranks of men formed up on either side looked breathtaking as we marched down from our hill towards the city.
Gorkas didn’t mind us talking on the way down, perhaps thinking it was a preferable alternative to us being quiet and nervous, so he fielded questions from our squad about the significance of the battle, as well as he could understand. The upcoming fight would be a little over 1000 men on the Duke’s side to the Baron’s 700 or so, although this was just his own estimates from what he can see with his naked eye.
This wasn’t the biggest battle Gorkas has fought in, he proudly told us of his exploits in the days before he became a mercenary when he fought in battles where thousands of men were present on either side, although these numbers still seemed small to a part of my mind as I was reminded of armies numbering in their millions back on Earth.
Without a massive food surplus and good medical knowledge it would be a tall-order for any society in its current stage of development to support such a force, as men were needed to tend to their crops by hand. Gorkas said that as far as local conflicts go, this was already pretty big, although a fight between two countries would definitely involve a lot more soldiers than one between those in the same realm.
Our squad was positioned slightly behind the right flank, a force in reserve for all intents and purposes but what was surprising was that every single other squad and even the captain was ahead of us, forming up a proper battle line which linked to the Duke’s levies on the left. The commander was riding in front of the whole army, going back and forth in front of his countrymen, most likely giving them a motivational speech to raise morale before the battle.
The enemy had begun to arrange their own battle line in front of us, which matched the width of our own but was much thinner on the flanks. As soon as the preliminary forming up was done, Gorkas informed us of the battle plan which he had been aware of for some days already. Backhand Blow was tasked with the most important duty, folding or routing the enemy’s right flank and then focusing on the enemy’s center, hitting them in the side and the rear.
He himself thought it was a sound plan, as attacking from the right was most comfortable for those who were right-handed, myself included. As long as the enemy cavalry ceased to be a threat this battle was nothing difficult and within the scope of traditional battle tactics, according to the squad-leader.
The signal for the start of the battle were the same horns which woke us all up in the morning, with the men advancing slowly to conserve their energy, at least until they were close enough to charge. Our squad advanced as well, about twenty paces behind the rest of the band, with Alula confidently putting one foot in front of another next to me, showing me the proper pace of an advance.
Seeing the erstwhile recruiter-turned-soldier turning up in the morning acting friendly with myself and a few others in my squad who he recruited, and then finding out the man would be fighting in our squad for the upcoming battle was good news in my estimation. At least our squad wouldn’t be down a man, although his appearance reminded me of the late Vaughn, Dorian and I exchanging a look of understanding.
My attention was focused solely in front from the moment the horns were blown, my feet moving in tandem with my squadmates, as I wanted to witness the point at which the two battle lines made contact. There were shouts from both sides of the battle, before the foremost men on either side broke out into a run, intending to overwhelm the front ranks with their charge. On the right flank, the enemy cavalry made a similar maneuver, although they veered off to the side, striking the rightmost men with a mounted charge, some mercenaries being flung by the blunt force backwards a substantial distance.
The enemy light cavalry was roughly half their total number, which meant that man-for-man we outnumbered them almost threefold. The fact that they were mounted served as a force multiplier, however, their long lances and curved blades which were made for slashing presented a problem to us who were armed with swords and shields. Within the first minute of combat, I could see that at least ten of our own men were already lying motionless on the damp ground, with blood staining parts of their body.
There were only a few enemy horses who had fallen thus far, with the dismounted enemy horsemen being crowded by our own mercenaries, and swiftly taken care of. The enemy cavalry didn’t overexpose themselves however, performing many short and quick charges towards the massed ranks of infantry, before turning back at the last moment, taunting us all the while.
Some less patient mercenaries rushed out from the safety of an infantry formation, before being accosted on all sides by enemy cavalry, their cooperation in such maneuvers beautifully efficient and deadly. Most of our casualties came from such over-eagerness, rather than the initial charge of enemy light cavalry. Gorkas’ face was crumpled up in disappointment every time he witnessed one of our fellow mercenaries break ranks and charge forward, repeatedly commenting to us that if we were to do such a thing he’d end our lives even if we survived the enemy cavalry.
Captain Lydon could be seen calming the men, with at least a few others still willing to try their luck and taking down the horsemen would attack parts of the mercenary battle line at irregular intervals. He then commanded the whole band to advance, at a steady pace while he left the command of the band to the Vice-Captain, and took a few of his own personal guards to deal with the right-most flank, where we experienced the most casualties.
In the first half hour of this unconventional fight, we had only advanced about fifty paces, most of the time the different ranks would tense up and halt in preparation for a charge, although most of them were feints meant to pin us down where we stood. There was a quick lull in the fighting as one of the enemy horsemen couldn’t turn his tired horse around quickly enough, before the Captain himself moved forward at an unbelievable pace and slashed at the leg of the enemy’s mount.
The now dying cavalryman cried out in pain, causing some of the enemy cavalry to disengage from their attempts at feinted charges, a sharp whistling noise calling on them to regroup. I spared a glance at the center of the battle, where our own levies were pushing the enemy counterparts back slowly, and I could see that even though we advanced fifty paces forward, we were only a bit further along than the center where the majority of the fighting was happening.
The captain ordered a halt to our advance, before ordering Vice-Captain Werley to take the majority of the band and hit the enemy infantry in the center, as there was no chance of us catching up to the enemy cavalry on foot. He then ordered our squad, which was still held in reserve to come and reinforce his own group, which would serve as a deterrent to the thirty five or so horsemen who were still capable of threatening our flank.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Our well-rested squad was placed in the very center, where we were expected to hold both flanks together, although this part of the battle was no longer anywhere near as large in scope so our line was made up of about fifty infantry, two ranks deep.
The rest of our band, which was made up of around one hundred heavy infantry, hit the enemy levies in their left flank, causing untold pandemonium among them. When the enemy cavalry regrouped and witnessed what was going on, they committed to a frontal charge, as if they attempted to deal with us using their previous tactics it would not have any impact on the battle as a whole.
Their frontal charge was much deadlier than before, for both of our groups in that regard. My shield caught the enemy lance which was aimed at my torso and lodged itself firmly in my shield, but the accompanying force knocked me to the side almost instantly. The enemy horse hit Alula to my right, who killed the beast with his sword before being unceremoniously pushed to the side just like I was. The Platoon-Captain that Gorkas reported to was killed in the first few moments after the enemy charge, the lance of an enemy horseman lodging itself firmly in his neck, but while our two-man deep infantry line was broken by the enemy’s charge, they were in no shape to continue on to the rest of our band, who was making good progress in the center.
At least ten enemy horsemen died instantly as they were flung off their horses after making contact with our infantry, and at least another five were killed in the subsequent melee, two hands not being enough to deal with the infantry that surrounded them. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Herman dealing with an enemy horseman who was dismounted, and I stood up on unsteady feet after having the wind knocked out of me from the original charge to help him.
At almost the same time as I distracted the enemy who Herman was engaged with, and he lodged his sword into his side in a nasty blow, a still-mounted enemy rode past and slashed at Hermans neck, causing a fountain of blood to gush out from him, a wound that no amount of treatment could deal with. I made sure that the enemy I was dealing with was truly dead, although the bastard managed to slash at my shin with his saber, my reflexes not being fast enough to move my foot entirely out of the way.
I felt a stinging sensation there, but it was nowhere near enough to render me immobile, so after dealing the killing blow I turned back and tried to find the next enemy to deal with, to avenge Herman who had perished in this fight. What I saw stunned me, as the enemies who still had the ability had already put a decent distance between us, fleeing not in the direction of Blackseed but towards the forests in the North.
I allowed myself to sit down in relief for about a minute, before Gorkas nudged me with his knee and told me to get back in formation in case the enemy would attempt to attack us in the flank again. I didn’t see that as being a real threat though, since there were fewer than twenty of the enemy cavalry who had escaped, and I didn’t think that they would be willing to all throw their lives away for a battle which was nearing its conclusion.
I followed the orders nonetheless, eager to have something to do so that I wouldn’t think about Herman and any others in our squad that might have perished. When the battleline reformed I was relieved to see that all of us but Herman were still there, and we stood still with our eyes peeled, searching for any sign of the returning horsemen.
When the rest of our band regrouped with us, looking in much better shape than we did, the tedious task of post-battle cleanup began. The enemy left behind fourteen horses that were still able to move, with some of them sporting wounds on their sides that were not deemed to be untreatable. While stripping the dead of anything that might be deemed useful, the whole band focusing on the cavalrymen who had a lot more worthwhile loot than the levies who the majority of the band had engaged in I overheard the results of the battle from the rest of the men.
Apparently the enemy was unable to break through the left flank of the Duke’s knights and mounted men-at-arms, so after we managed to apply pressure on the enemy center, Baron Lavin fled towards the city, seeing the situation as hopeless with all of his own mounted troops, leaving the rest of his forces as an obstacle to a potential pursuit. The Lenaian horsemen who had caused a lot of trouble to our band had fled North instead of North-West were not expected to be much trouble in the near-future, so the Duke would be laying siege to the city itself assuming the Baron wouldn’t outright surrender.
The Duke himself made an appearance as we were nearing the end of our cleanup to offer his congratulations and announce his reward for our efforts in battle. Captain Lydon led him aside to discuss the details, leaving the rest of us to finish butchering the dead-horses at the directions of the camp-helpers, who made their way here after the battle was over.
The gruesome sight might have seemed revolting to me only a year ago, but with the limited availability of meat the aversion to eating horse-meat was no longer there, and I was actually looking forward to a ‘luxurious’ meal at no expense of my own.
The loot from the battle didn’t include only horses and other items from the enemy cavalrymen, the mercenaries who came back from the fight in the center also had about eighty men following them obediently, captives from the enemy levies who surrendered, with a few men-at-arms who were their officers.
I was observing them quietly, pondering as to the reason that these captives were being overseen by us and not the Duke when Dorian called out my name and pointed with his finger at one of the men who was still wearing his armor among the captives.
I understood his gesture, and began discussing with him as to his fate, as I had promised Dorian we would get revenge on the man who killed Vaughn. He just laughed and said that it was no longer necessary, the man having a fate ‘worse than death’ awaiting him. I didn’t understand his inference and asked him to explain, when he informed me that all eighty men that we had captured would be sold as slaves, netting our band a nice payday.
I choked on the horse-stew I was eating, Dorian helping me by knocking on my back to help me get the food down into my stomach. I had seen the slave market in Krilos before, but during all of my visits elsewhere in Euphelia I had not witnessed the trade of slaves on a large scale, so had assumed that it was not a practice that was present in other parts of the continent. Dorian told me that this was the ‘normal’ way of war, and that only those who were of noble birth could hope to escape such fate by paying a ransom.
This didn’t seem normal to me at all though, my upbringing making me think of slavery as revolting, so the practice seemed anything but ‘normal’ to me. I couldn’t exactly force a change of procedure in the band though, so Dorian just consoled me thinking my aversion was due to not being able to put the man who killed Vaughn to death personally.
My revulsion to the way war was fought was reinforced the following day, when our band split off from the main force that had besieged Blackseed, although it was nowhere large enough to encircle the city entirely, the Duke’s men were split in two to cover the two city gates. We headed south-east, where the ‘reward’ for our exploits in yesterday’s battle was located. The Duke outlined three villages in the vicinity of the town, the rest going to him, which we were free to plunder, the spoils being the reward.
Every man who I had respected greatly up to that point, turned into rapacious beasts, treating the villagers like animals. My brain almost shut down, my every instinct telling me that what we were doing was wrong, but if I disobeyed I would almost certainly be expelled from the band, which was not something I wanted. The kind Edmund, who was even younger than I was set fire to the house of a villager after everything of worth was cleaned out of it with a happy expression on his face, his eyes focused on the billowing smoke that had engulfed the straw-roof of the house in less than a minute.
The same people who I trusted with my life were like completely different people by the end of the day’s pillaging, and I was struggling to reconcile my impression of my squad mates with the actions I saw them commit that day. I didn’t feel any desire to participate in the looting, spending my time helping the camp helpers when they found out I was capable of counting along with Fisk.
We were cataloging the sacks of grain, barley, and bushels of wheat that were pillaged from the three villages that no longer existed, while some other camp helpers were counting how many men, women, and children were captured in our short ‘excursion’.
My eyes stared at the floor empty as I sat near the fire, the food that I had picked up from the camp helpers at my side, but the desire to eat eluded me, still shocked by what had happened that day. Cameron and Fisk noticed my unusual state and tried to comfort me, accurately guessing the reason for my feelings of apathy.
Both of them explained that the world wasn’t kind, and if it wasn’t us who did this and got something out of it then the Duke would have done the exact same to these people only a few days later. They tried to make me see the silver-lining in this abhorrent situation, arguing that at least this way we would get something tangible in return for the mercenaries who died fighting for the Duke, and that a nice payday awaited all of us at the end of the campaign.
I must have spoken less than a hundred words for the rest of the two months that we sat in the camp, besieging the city of Blackseed but no assaults being made in the process. The slaves were sold to the Duke himself, who had need of them for a wide range of manual labor tasks, but the horses were still present in our camp, the hay that we had looted put to use as fodder.
There was not much fighting, and I spent my time in solitude trying to make sense of the currently and violence I had witnessed the day after the battle, I did not practice with anyone else, going off into the woods by myself to meditate and keep up with my swordsmanship practice, waiting for the wound on my shin to heal slowly.
One morning I left the camp with the siege camp in its usual state, and after a day of soul-searching I came back to see the flags on the walls of Blackseed sporting the same insignia as those on our camp, ending the rebellion of Baron Lavin Neto. I had intended to go to the squad-tent and sleep off the fatigue I had built up throughout the day, but Gorkas intercepted me near the front gates and told me to follow him, as the Captain wanted to see me.