“Discretion is the better part of valor, oftentimes.” - Old military saying.
Things were not going as planned for the Imperial generals and their army.
The plan Xingl Liat had set into motion had been a simple one – like all the best plans, as the general was a firm believer that a complicated plan just meant more chances of failure during the execution – where the elite soldiers under her command would make a pincer attack from both flanks of the enemy’s forward elements. They would avoid the toughest enemies at the front and hit at the more vulnerable troops slightly behind them instead.
Executed well, the elite soldiers should break through the enemy lines and connect with each other shortly after, completely cutting off the enemy’s forward elements – which were conveniently arrayed in a rather narrow formation – from the rest of their troops. At that point, the Imperial army would use their superior numbers to isolate, surround, and grind down the forward elements of the enemy they caught until they were no more.
It was a simple, foolproof plan that even an imbecile could execute without much difficulty, yet it failed to manifest as expected nonetheless.
While Liat received a signal from her subordinate leading the charge to the enemy right flank that they managed to breach through the lines, the offense was nevertheless bogged down before it could result in a true pincer effect where the enemy forces would be threatened from both sides at once. Instead of faltering, the enemy managed to put up enough resistance to prevent the advance from pushing further.
Of course, the situation on Liat’s end of the battlefield was even worse, as the enemies before her doggedly resisted her elites to the point that they had yet to create a single breach in the enemy lines. In fact, while the majority of the enemies on her side hunkered down in a defensive formation, a small group actually counterattacked viciously and threatened to destabilize her own lines.
In fact Liat was personally headed in that direction to take control of the situation. She arrived just in time to watch one of her elites fall on his back with his skull split in half, the dead man’s brain matter leaking out from the massive rent that practically divided the upper half of his head into two halves vertically. Before she could find out what caused the man’s death, she spotted another of her soldiers stumbling back towards her.
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The second man had his throat pierced, though the wound did not look as if it was made by a proper sharp weapon. Instead, it looked as if it was caused by a crude sharpened point on the end of an otherwise blunt instrument. There was no saving the man, however, as his windpipe had collapsed and he would likely suffocate before long.
It was also then that Xingl Liat laid eyes on the culprit responsible for those deaths, as just ahead of her, three of her elites were fighting with one of the beast-like enemies – though fortunately a smaller one in their case, only half a head taller or so than them – and were barely able to eke out an advantage.
Two of those three soldiers bound the beast-like foe’s weapons with their own, while the third was about to take the opening to finish them off when something unexpected happened. Before the third soldier could swing his blade, the beast-like enemy suddenly lunged forward with enough force that the other two soldiers were forced to take a step back.
Far enough for the beast to have sunk its fangs deep into the throat of the third soldier, tearing off a bloody chunk that they then spat out right onto the face of another of her soldiers, forcing them to back away hastily.
Liat jumped in and struck with her blade, deflecting a blow from the beast’s weapon – a ridged metal truncheon – before it could land on the man, and was surprised by the force she felt from the impact. The blow was far heavier than what she expected a one-handed strike would be like, and it basically confirmed to her who the culprit responsible for the dead soldiers she saw was.
She was not given much time to contemplate, however, as her opponent swung that truncheon around as if it was a wooden stick. The blows came in hard and very fast, to the point that Liat struggled to block them at times. And that was with her only dealing with one of the beast’s pair of weapons, another two of her soldiers being held back by the other.
The beast itself was likely the leader of the enemy forces she faced, or at least in charge of those making the counterattack, so taking them down would likely cut the wind out from the enemy’s sails, but that was far easier said than done. Even fighting them three against one with the help of some of her elites, she struggled to hold her opponent back, much less overpowering them.
To make matters worse, during that fighting she spotted the signal she wanted to see the least, one that came from the other side of the enemy formation, sent by her lieutenant. A signal that the advance had stalled and that they would attempt to hold so that she could break through and reach them from her side as she was supposed to do.
She did not have the heart to signal back that it was not in the question, at least for the moment, nor the time to give the command as she was fighting for her life right then.
It was when the second, rather frantic signal came from the other side that Xingl Liat shook her head and made her decision as she allowed herself to be pushed back by one of her foe’s strikes, allowing two more of her soldiers to take her place. The frantic signal had reported of her lieutenant’s demise, and probably the bannerman’s too, since the banner itself fell over shortly after.
As such, with the assault failing to reach the desired results and her flanks now under threat from the enemy’s counterattacks as well, Liat gave the order to her bannerman to signal a general retreat. They had failed on that day, and would have to seek to redeem their honor on another occasion.