“Not pressing an advantage when it was there to exploit is folly. Pressing an advantage that did not exist? That is even greater foolishness. To succeed, one must know how to read the situation correctly, and reach accordingly, for to fail to do so would just result in a waste of lives.” - Excerpt from “Musings on Tactics and Strategy” by Nestor Ambroglio da Nunez, Duke of Algenverr and military genius from the Times of Turmoil.
“Dammit, they saw us coming,” muttered Reinhardt under his breath when he noticed how the suspected enemy elites started breaking away in an orderly manner from the Coalition army’s left flank they were engaging at the time. The right flank he led was still pushing their way through the enemy force on their way to come to the left flank’s rescue, but the enemy already showed signs of retreat while they were still a distance away.
Naturally, from Reinhardt’s actual position on the battlefield, fighting amongst his mercenaries right on the frontlines, it would have been impossible for him to have realized the situation. As usual, it was his artifact that allowed him to assess the situation he normally wouldn’t be aware of thanks to the bird’s eye view it provided.
The way the enemy withdrew in an orderly manner hinted that they too realized the situation that was about to befall them, that he was leading the right flank with the intent to catch them in a pincer attack. It was quite a feat of discipline and organization to deliver messages over the distance and enact them with an army ten thousand in size so cleanly.
Which only made Reinhardt more certain that the force that was escaping was definitely the enemy’s elite soldiers. The vast majority of regular troops would not be able to transition from fighting to retreat in such a smooth and orderly manner, at such speed. It was something he was uncertain his mercenaries would be able to match, even, which spoke volumes about the level of discipline and cohesion shown by the enemy soldiers.
Granted, the Free Lances as a whole was more likely to tuck their heads down and continue charging headlong until they came out on the other side of the enemy formation rather than to turn around and retreat, but the point still stood.
“Stop trying to push as hard as you can. Spread out more and take out as many of these bastards as you can before they escape!” ordered Reinhardt to his platoon leaders, the artifact he was wearing carrying his voice magically to the recipient artifacts carried by each of the others. “We’re not going to be able to catch our primary target, so try to hurt the rest of them as badly as you can while they’re here.”
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Messengers from the Free Lances also conveyed his words to the mercenary leaders to his company’s left and right, since the Free Lances had unofficially been leading the mercenary troops on the right flank, partly due to them being the largest of the mercenary companies present. None of the others had any issues with the arrangement, or if they did, they kept their silence after the Brewers and Silver Eagles, the second and third largest companies, voiced their support over the setup.
As the Free Lances slowed their push and spread more to start slaughtering their foes, the Brewers and Silver Eagles finally caught up, as they had been left chasing after the Free Lances during the push, neither company able to fully match the speed with which the Free Lances pushed through the enemy forces. They saw what the Free Lances were doing and quickly ordered their people to follow suit.
The Silver Eagles still needed some help from Erycea’s – and Alycea’s as well, at that point – platoons to be able to keep up with the Free Lances in that sort of offense, while to the Free Lances’ left flank, the dwarves from Barnaby’s Brewers simply lowered the visors of their helmets, tucked their chins close to their chest, and charged out with their shields held before them.
While the Strike Platoons from the Free Lances performed better in the short term as befit their role as shock troops, a full-blown dwarven heavy infantry charge was still something very few things short of a headlong heavy cavalry charge could match in destructive power. Their slow speed was less of an issue in a pitched battle, and the enemy soldiers before them were crushed one after another like grains before the millstone.
In contrast, the Free Lances had a more uneven performance, since each platoon was set up differently and did things in their own way. It was still undeniably effective, however, as the mercenaries mowed down their opponents, and the disparity between the different platoons were even something they exploited themselves, often shifting their positions so that an enemy that fought against one platoon suddenly found themselves fighting a different one, often with fatal results.
The fighting continued on for another couple of hours, though it mostly died down by then, with the Imperial army’s withdrawal – once again a far more organized one than Reinhardt liked – from the battlefield, and both armies returned to their respective camps as the sun started to set beneath the horizon.
Neither side escaped unscathed from the fighting. The Coalition army’s left flank took a pummeling, and accounted for the majority of the four thousand or so casualties they took in total, with a couple of the mercenary companies in the left flank at risk of dissolution. Fortunately, the right flank of the Coalition army more than evened things up and it was estimated that their enemies took at least double that number in casualties in exchange.
It was not exactly an even trade, as the Coalition army lost some of their more skilled soldiers – and the near-extermination of a couple companies also bothered some of the other mercenaries present – while the Imperial army mostly lost more of their worst soldiers. Nestor countered the morale issues amongst the mercenaries by paying considerable bonuses to the mercenaries on the right flank for their performance, while at the same time also paying his dues to those who lost their lives in his service.
Such a move secured the morale and loyalty of the once wavering mercenary companies once more, but they all knew that repeats of similar situations could potentially prove to be troublesome.