“War is above all else, driven by benefits. A nation or a tribe goes to war in order to pursue certain benefits they wouldn’t be able to achieve otherwise, and wars end when the benefits are no longer worth the cost. In some ways, it is the most ruthless act of trade imaginable.” - Garth Wainwrought, Dean of the Levain Institute for Higher Learning, circa 680 FP.

By the morning of the next day, it was evident that the battle was taking a different turn than usual.

The siege was still ongoing, but the line of soldiers that besieged the city was notably thinner than usual, as they tried to envelop the eastern half of the city. It was quite obvious that they intended to screen their allies from any possible sallies that the city’s defenders might perform. The way the besiegers set up defensive positions was testament to that.

It was excessive preparation, to be honest, as with the rubble of the seventh wall in the way, even if the city’s defenders wished to make a sally, it would be difficult for them to do so quickly. As such the enemy force would have time to respond to their sally, which might well end up as a disaster instead. Because of that, the defenders instead manned the walls of the city in their full might, which made for quite an intimidating sight.

Even if all that happened between them and the Anduillean army that besieged them was tantamount to a staring contest as neither side could really do much against the other.

In the meantime, the larger Podovniy army, all sixty thousand or so that remained of their once hundred thousand strong force, gathered in formation to the south of the city. Despite the rather harried looks of the soldiers – the losses had not sat well with them – they maintained neat formations under the command of their officers.

Arrayed before them were the joint Levainian-Caroman army, over forty thousand strong with the addition of the volunteers that once followed the Free Lances. The mercenaries themselves lurked in the woods to the side of the battlefield, concealed much like a predator in the midst of stalking its prey. Once they found an opportunity, they would pounce at their target.

Unlike the previous battle, this time the Caroman infantry took up the center of the formation, while the Levainian infantry served as the wings and the volunteers as the reserve behind them. Most of the volunteers wielded bows like the previous day, their task more to support from afar rather than risking their lives in direct combat.

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Given that they were poorly trained for that purpose, to commit the reserves into direct combat would be little different than killing them with their own hands anyway.

Behind the wings of the formation were two large groups of light cavalry, mostly Caroman with some Levainian as well, split into four large groups of roughly equal numbers. With the crippling of Podovniy’s heavy cavalry just the day before and the fact that they had not brought many light cavalry since they were preparing for a siege, the cavalry would likely play a pivotal role in the day’s battle.

The tension was palpable in the air. Both armies stared at their counterpart, both formations forward-heavy with their sturdiest infantrymen holding the frontlines. The Podovnian frontline was thinner compared to the previous day, though, as they had shifted part of their best to cover their flanks, having learned from the previous day’s costly debacle.

Trained infantrymen in formation knew how to handle a cavalry charge or strike appropriately, but their effects on less trained soldiers remained devastating, as all too often the weak-willed would break from the sight of a rider and steed charging towards them. In some ways, it was as much an ingrained reflex that needed to be trained away the same way one would train a knight’s warhorse to willingly charge into a throng of foes.

After a long, tense moment that felt almost like an eternity to the arrayed soldiers, finally the order was given. Horns were sounded to signal the attack, and the soldiers marched forth towards their foes at a steady pace. They kept their formation tight as they marched, and even the untrained volunteers in the back inadvertently tightened up their formation upon seeing how the rest marched.

The two armies were separated by a mere kilometer’s distance, which was quickly eaten up by the marching soldiers. Before long, the two groups entered a distance of five hundred paces from each other and the archers on both sides started to make their presence known. Arrows were nocked onto bows and shot into parabolic arcs so that they would fall in the midst of the enemy army.

Such shots, especially with the distance, were unlikely to be accurate or even likely to hurt someone, but with quantity there was a quality of its own, and out of thousands of arrows fired, at least some would find home in an unfortunate soldier’s flesh instead of bouncing ineffectually off their armor. While the better-equipped troops near the frontline could often shrug off the rain of arrows as long as they kept their shields up, the auxiliaries who tend to have worse armor could not say the same.

The skies darkened for a brief moment when the first volley was loosed by both sides at nearly the same time. While archers wouldn’t truly fire in unison upon command – such a thing was just impractical when one used a heavy warbow as holding a nocked and drawn arrow would be extremely tiring – most still fired at roughly the same time.

Some of the arrows even collided with an enemy arrow in mid-air, not due to the archer’s skill, but just because there were over ten thousand arrows flying through the air at the same time.

Under the constant rain of arrows, the footsoldiers at the front lines gave out war cries and yells as they clashed with their counterparts from the enemy army. Those at the front wielded large shields to protect themselves as they crossed spears with their foes, each side trying to overpower the other. Every now and then a soldier fell as they failed to protect themselves in time from an enemy attack, only for the soldier behind them to take their place in the line.

While such clashes looked intense, they rarely decided the outcome of the battle, or even caused many casualties to either side. What decided such things tend to be what went on while such a clash occupied most of the fittest soldiers in either army.