“Only by committing all of one’s being could one snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. What others called insanity, is but necessity for those who live on the edge of the blade.” - Marzban Umaya nil Daffendi, Aqwa Sultanate general from the Reunification War of Al-Shan.

“Soldiers, turn! Those with spears aim for the wheels of those chariots! Blade unit, aim for the legs of their mounts!” yelled an Imperial field commander over the din of the fighting. The man himself took a lucky – or unlucky, from his point of view – bolt through the head mere moments later, but the Imperial army kept moving as he ordered despite that little tidbit.

Pikes and spears were turned around, shoved and hurled towards the wildly rotating wheels of the dwarven chariots, with the intent of getting them through the spokes of the wheel to hopefully tip over the running chariot.

Such a move would have worked well against the typical chariots used for war in Posuin itself in the past, lightweight vehicles mostly crafted out of wood, with only two wheels and room for little more than one driver and one or two passengers. Sadly, dwarven chariots were nothing like what most others considered a chariot at all.

They were instead practically carved out of a block of metal, with the wagon holding enough room to fit up to a dozen dwarves at once with ease and eight solid metal wheels, four to a side. Where a spear’s shaft would be solid enough to disrupt the rotation of a regular chariot’s wheels or even to break the spokes of the wooden wheel, the same did not apply to the dwarven chariots.

Instead the spears that made it through between the spokes of a wheel by luck were shattered into pieces by the metal wheel with barely a hitch thrown into the pace of the moving chariot.

As for those soldiers who wielded long blades and aimed for the legs of the rhinos, they similarly had little success. The dwarves set up their chariots so that one of the polearm wielders and one of the marksmen covered each corner of the wagon, each pair responsible for the direction they were covering. That meant anyone attempting to attack the rhinos from the front had to first deal with the onslaught of crossbow bolts from the marksmen stationed at the front corners of the chariot, as well as the long polearms which would whip out once they got even closer.

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Many of the daring soldiers fell before they could even get a strike in, while those that managed to actually get close enough to land a strike were horrified at how their blades only managed to create shallow wounds – if that – through the thick and durable skin of the rhino’s leg. The beasts themselves pretty much ignored the cuts and kept going, even trampling some of the soldiers that struck them.

Those same soldiers had better luck against the heavy cavalry that followed the chariots, since singular rhinos were easier to assault compared to the well-defended trio that pulled the chariots in question, but the casualties they took were still gruesome nonetheless. The dwarves welcomed the enemy soldiers and mowed them down as they came as more and more of the cavalry crashed into the sides of the enemy formation.

The impact of the cavalry strike against the flanks of the Imperial formation was immense, as while not even the dwarves were so cocksure as to charge directly through an enemy formation that was in good order, the angle they struck at was still pretty deep as the cavalry basically gouged out the sides of the Imperial formation.

Thousands of Imperial soldiers lost their lives beneath the hooves of the cavalry’s mounts or under their weapons, but even with the devastating impact, it was not as if the cavalry themselves came out of the charge unscathed either.

What got some of the cavalry was the daring shown by the Imperial soldiers this time around compared to the way they routed and broke back in the east. Many of the soldiers literally exchanged their lives for a chance to strike at the cavalrymen, which emboldened others to follow their example and to pick up their weapons and fight harder. It was the difference between dealing with elite, hardened soldiers and a rabble.

Seven of the chariots were bogged down or overturned and fell, some because the Imperial soldiers managed to injure the rhinos that pulled the chariots enough, while in other cases because the ground-up mash of flesh and blood from the trampled soldiers eventually got to the moving parts of the chariots and fouled up the joints.

Some of the crew on said chariots were rescued by other chariots behind them, but others were lost to the hand of the enemy soldiers. Similarly, out of the two thousand dwarven heavy cavalry, nearly two hundred fell to the enemy spears and blades. Even with their natural armor and additional armor their dwarven riders equipped on them, enough small wounds still added up and eventually brought down some of the mighty beasts.

Losses amongst the light cavalry were proportionally lighter with less than a thousand casualties, as they were spared the enemy’s most dogged resistance that those at the head of the charge had to deal with. It was relatively heavy losses to the dwarven cavalry, at least heavier than what Nestor and the other leaders had expected, even if the Imperial army paid for that price in blood as well.

While exact numbers were difficult to attain, it was estimated that a good twenty thousand or so of the enemy infantry must have perished or were otherwise injured from the charge. It was a loss ratio that the Imperial army would not be able to withstand for long, with the only hitch in the equation being what the Coalition leaders discovered only when the dwarves returned after the battle.

Namely how they took heavier than expected casualties amongst their commanders and officers, and it was likely a targeted act, to boot.