“The battlefield is a canvas for a painting of carnage, with blood as the pigment and corpses as the brush. It is a masterpiece that showcases the epitome of a living being’s ruthlessness, the willingness to slaughter others for their own benefits. It is the paragon of men’s selfishness.” - Eda Agonisuw, anti-war philosopher from Posuin, circa 611 VA. Ironically killed in the civil war that ended Posuin as a nation.

“Kill them! Do not falter! Keep on pushing!” yelled Scipius until his throat felt hoarse. He was positioned near the frontlines, a bit to the left side, where he was doing what he should as a thousand-man commander. Part of that duty involved motivating and encouraging his soldiers to fight harder, which was the reason he had been yelling for the past hour or so.

Another part of his duty was to ensure that his soldiers held their assigned position on the frontline properly. His thousand men were responsible for holding an area a hundredsoldiers wide, and he set them to task by sending them in batches of ten, in small formations five men wide and two men deep. The ones in front would hold the shields while the ones behind strike out with their spears.

Twenty such formations cover the area he was assigned to hold, and each had the other formations behind them on standby. Each time one of the smaller formations took casualties, they would be rotated out and replaced by those behind them. At times formations would be rotated out on Scipius’ command even before that, when he noticed a decrease in performance due to fatigue or the like.

While nearly half of the unit held the front, the rest took the chance to rest while waiting their turn. Each time a small formation was rotated off the frontline, another formation replaced them at the tail end of the queue. The injured would be treated as best as the field medics managed and the survivors of broken formations would be reassembled into new formations to retake their place on the line after they rested.

It was an idea Scipius thought of after the mock battle against the mercenaries back in Levain, as the way the mercenaries made heavy use of smaller units and encouraged independent action left him quite an impression. He had not adopted the mercenaries’ method, as instead he modified it for usage in the line of battle.

The new formation had served him well through the southern campaign, his thousand-man unit taking fewer losses and exhibiting greater effectiveness once they got used to the new arrangement. At the moment they held their own against Podovniy’s finest, giving as good as they took, holding the line firmly and even pushing into the enemy formation.

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Which was better than most of the rest of the front, to Scipius’ pride and satisfaction.

The army’s plan was relatively simple. Scipius learned early in his military career that simple plans tend to be the best. A more complicated plan meant that there were far more chances for something to not go according to plan and ruin the whole thing instead. As it was, the frontline was to hold – and break through the enemy front if possible – while their auxiliaries provided support fire.

His father would personally lead the cavalry to destabilize the enemy formation when he felt the time was right. At the same time, his mother and her personal troops currently lurked just behind the frontlines. Their role was to exploit the moment the enemy formation was destabilized to deliver the crippling blow and shatter the enemy’s will to fight.

He had a bit of worry for his sister, who would be fighting alongside their father as part of the cavalry troops, but forced that worry down with a shake of his head. His father would likely try to keep Astra safe, or at least, as safe as a battle permitted. He knew that was as good as it would get on that matter, as his sister was also quite stubborn and wouldn’t have responded well to being coddled.

While the soldiers were fighting and dying at the front, it was calm where Scipius stood commanding his soldiers. He was right behind the front lines, and as such was too close to the enemy lines for the enemy archers to shoot at him without risking hitting their own troops. At most his troops had to deal with the occasional arrow or two that fell short of their actual target.

Both sides knew what was at stake. They knew all too well that the day’s battle would likely decide the course the whole conflict took. If the Levainians and Caromans lost, then the invaders would be free to besiege Levain at their leisure, likely replacing their losses with more reinforcements from their homelands.

While there were many militiamen inside Levain’s walls, their incomplete training was still a cause for concern, and even if they managed to outlast the enemy, it would likely be a very costly endeavor. None of them were certain that Levain could afford such a “victory”, as it would leave them vulnerable to future attacks as a result.

On the other hand, should the Podovniy army lose the battle, it would render them unable to effectively besiege Levain with what troops they had left, not while they had to deal with the threat from the Caromans and Levainian elites at the same time. Such a loss would pretty much spell the end of the invasion, and they would likely be forced to accept disadvantageous conditions to be allowed to retreat unmolested.

The Podovnians likely considered such a scenario nothing short of a nightmare, especially given the costs they already sunk into the campaign. The losses they already took numbered in the tens of thousands, an acceptable price for victory, but an utter disaster otherwise. Such a loss might well lead to insurrections and revolts as dissatisfied people made their opinions known back in Podovniy.

Which was most definitely a scenario the Marquis of Podovniy wished to avoid at all costs, Scipius thought.