Chapter 43: A Mad Battle, a Desperate Charge

When we welcomed the sunset over the Centuria Plains for the fourth time, the Delanmaya Army had already grown to thirty thousand men. Before this, I had rarely had the chance to connect such a huge number with the actual gathering of that many people. These people had almost built a new city of weapon s, armor, and flesh and blood on the vast Centuria Plains. The crude, run-down port city of Rileyville was like a tiny, swaying autumn leaf before this mighty army, seeming destined to be swept clean without a trace. Even Fred said that even the incompetence of General Vincent, the supreme commander of the Delanmaya Army, and the cowardice of officers at every level might not be enough to cancel out this enormous numerical advantage.

According to the intelligence we received, there were only a little over six thousand Winston advance troops in Rileyville, a city of wood and stone not far from us, and the city walls and fortifications they relied on were as good as decorations in front of our numerous siege weapons. General Vincent, who had repeatedly stressed “winning through steadiness,” had spent a full ten days accumulating his forces in order to gain an absolute advantage over the enemy. Although this was a cowardly and foolish tactic with no skill to it whatsoever, it did make some sense to a certain extent.

Finally, when our commander felt that he had gathered enough combat capital to fight the enemy with all his strength, Fred, who had always been shut out of the officer command circle, received his first order: our thousand Light Cavalry would be the first wave of the charge, stationed at the very front of the entire army formation.

“I hope your unit will display the fearless spirit of our Delanmaya warriors and achieve great glory for His Majesty the King.” The officer who conveyed the order said politely to Fred, but his eyes honestly reflected his glee at our misfortune—no matter how great the advantage, the first wave to engage the Winston Army head-on would have to bear considerable losses, and would surely not gain results to match. Obviously, we were the unit that had been sacrificed.

This kind of treatment had long been within our expectations.

…

On the morning of the fifth day.

We finally saw our opponent in this battle. Below the ruined city of Rileyville, heavily armored riders formed neat ranks, pouring out of the city gate in columns. Their bodies were wrapped in one-piece armor, with only small gaps left at the eye and mouth positions of their helmets. One gleaming long lance after another pointed toward the sky, forming a dangerous forest of metal. The steeds beneath them had the tall, imposing build unique to northern horses, armored all over just like their masters, restlessly snorting out fierce breaths.

These were the Winston heavy cavalry, the warriors the Winston Army was most proud of. For six hundred years, no army could compare to the honors they had won. Under equal conditions, almost no force on the entire Farvill Continent had ever withstood their frontal assault, and so they had earned the title of “Formation-Breaking Iron Cavalry.” I still remembered Carlson’s crude evaluation of this army: meeting them head-on on a plain battlefield was like throwing a naked beauty into a pile of perverts—there was no possibility of resistance at all.

And a moment later, we would become their first opponent.

Suddenly, a deep blue central army banner was raised in the Winston Army, embroidered with the standing-horse emblem unique to the Winston Empire’s royal family. The appearance of this banner caused a huge commotion in our army. Some officers were excitedly stirred up, while others could not hide their fear. But whether excited or fearful, everyone who recognized the banner was surprised by its unexpected appearance.

This banner represented His Highness Louis, the Crown Prince, commander of the Winston Empire’s army and first in line to the imperial throne. In the series of battles against Delanmaya, the master of this banner had won achievements that made the commanders of other nations envious through a series of bold and exquisite maneuvers, and was known as “the commander who can embroider on the battlefield.” It could be said that his life and death determined the course of this war. No one had expected that he would actually take the risk of appearing on the beachhead position on the south bank of the Morning Light River, and as the side at a disadvantage, facing an enemy more than five times his number.

Capturing the Crown Prince and ending this war as the victor—I believed this fervent thought surged in the hearts of most Delanmaya officers. This was indeed a perfect opportunity. An unprecedented great achievement was practically placed on the breakfast dessert plate, waiting for them to take it at will.

A burst of rapid and intense drumbeats came from the enemy formation, adding a touch of grandeur to the morning of the vast plain. Then, without any warning at all, the drumbeats stopped in an instant. The sudden, empty silence brought a feeling of awe that almost made one’s heartbeat stop. Before us, the armored knights at the front of the enemy formation split left and right, and a tall silver-white war horse slowly walked out from behind the formation. On its back was a young commander in silver armor, wearing no helmet. Barring any accident, that was probably the enemy’s legendary young commander. It was too far away for me to see his face clearly. I could only see his head full of golden hair, radiating a brilliant glow like the sun.

There was no rousing speech, no probing arrow fire, no bold and mighty shouts from the soldiers. The Prince drew his longsword and pointed forward. The heavily armored knights uniformly spurred their horses forward and began their charge. From beginning to end, our enemies made no sound at all, not even the neighing of war horses. A moment later, this heavy silence was replaced by the gradually approaching sound of hoofbeats, ceaselessly trembling our hearts and souls.

The horn sounded behind us, and Fred shouted loudly, leading us charging toward the powerful opponent.

“Keep the formation! Act according to the plan!” Fred shouted as he charged, steadying our ranks.

When the two cavalry forces were less than an arrow’s flight apart, Fred suddenly gave a whistle and turned his horse toward the right side. Following the pre-arranged plan, we orderly closed in from both sides toward the center, changing our formation from a traditional single line into a triangular cone. This was the countermeasure Fred had proposed after we received the order: since we could not possibly meet the powerful opponent head-on, it was better to narrow the attack point and use a dense formation to break through the enemy’s weak spot—not seeking to cause great damage, but only seeking to protect ourselves. In the formation, Fred, Red Flame, and Carlson were not gathered at the very center but spread across different segments of the column. Once Fred gave the order to change formation, the other two could command and adjust the formation from their positions—after all, the training and battle experience of the enemy were far beyond what we could compare with. We could only use this emergency command method to make up for our lack of training.

Just as I thought our formation change would shock the enemy and bring them chaos and damage, the Winston formation also gradually tightened and, unexpectedly, arranged itself into a sharp cone shape similar to ours, shifting its central point toward our left side. Instantly, a bizarre sight appeared on the battlefield: the two cavalry forces charging at high speed had, because of their simultaneous formation changes, shifted away from each other’s targets and passed each other by with a very small gap. The gap was so small that lances could strike the enemy’s armor shell, yet could not cause any effective damage. I could not describe my feelings at that moment. I only saw that when a Winston Knight met me face to face, his eyes carried the same indescribable expression, as if he too was surprised by this sudden coincidence.

Two reckless, glory-seeking soldiers in our unit lost their balance and fell from their horses while stabbing at the enemy at an angle, pointlessly losing their lives. In comparison, our enemies were clearly more disciplined. When the soldiers in the front rows discovered that they could not harm us at such a distance, the soldiers in the back rows made no more such attempts, pouring all their attention into the bigger target ahead, paying no more attention to our actions, as if we did not exist.

Then, I saw the second unbelievable sight of this battle.

Crown Prince Louis suddenly spurred his horse forward, leading all the soldiers behind him in a charge. The dense forest of lances rapidly drifted across the plain. Behind it was an empty stretch of land and the wide-open city gates of Rileyville.

A full-line charge! They had actually abandoned the only barrier they relied on for defense and, at the very moment the battle had just begun, launched a full-line charge against a massive army several times their size! What was this crazy commander thinking?

If he had wanted, the cavalry units behind could have easily smashed us—they only needed to make a small loop to do it. But they completely ignored our existence and charged forward without looking back at our main formation. Their goal was clear, and they showed no greed for easy achievements—just like that ambush battle at Dragon’s Spine Canyon where we lost our dear comrade Rama. The layers of earth churned up by horse hooves and the thick, splashing dust all told us over and over this fact: the six thousand troops of the Winston Army were, incredibly, all cavalry! In the precious time before the great enemy arrived, their transport ships had given up transporting large numbers of troops, equipment, and supplies, and had only shipped in more than six thousand horses.

In that brief instant of crossing by each other, I did not know if it was an illusion, but Crown Prince Louis’s gaze suddenly turned toward us, looking at Fred at the very front of our formation.

At that moment, Fred was also looking at him.

The enormous momentum and our generally unskilled riding made it impossible for us to change direction in a short time. When we finally turned our horses around unevenly under Fred’s command and looked back at the battlefield, the Winston Iron Cavalry had already made contact with our main formation.

Perhaps because the tactical coincidence between us and the enemy was too unexpected, no one had considered that the Winston cavalry would arrive so quickly, and therefore our archers never got the chance to do anything. The charging formation in the front row instantly plunged into the unprepared Delanmaya ranks, rapidly scattering their formation.

If it had only been that, when the formation regrouped and surrounded the enemy that had charged in, their doom would have arrived. But this situation did not appear. The large column of Winston cavalry following closely at full speed viciously plunged through that torn-open gap, ripping it into an unhealable wound. Under the impact of two waves of charging iron from front and back, our main formation was pierced through without putting up much resistance. A sharp and slender blade of iron cavalry easily cut the enemy formation, five times its size, into two halves. This kind of destructive power was breathtaking. Watching from the side, we could not help but feel a chill rising from our backs: if they had just met us head-on…

“What should we do?” I asked Fred. I felt that staying aside and watching the battle was not the right decision. There was a good chance that some officer who bore a grudge against Fred would make trouble for him—if they could even go back alive.

“Wait a while. Let’s watch and see.” Fred replied, and then he stared unblinkingly at the battlefield situation, not saying another word.

Completely disregarding the common sense of combat, the Winston cavalry, after fully breaking through the main formation, suddenly turned around on the spot, the rear section becoming the front, and plunged once more into the already chaotic ranks. This great turn took almost no extra time at all. The Knights turned their horses around in a manner even more orderly than our formation drills, and their superb riding skills were fully displayed in that moment. The soldiers who had just escaped from a catastrophe had not expected the whirlwind of death to sweep across the land where they stood again. Many had not yet recovered from the shock of the previous assault before their heads were already split in two.

Soon, the cavalry group pierced through the main formation once more.

If the first charge had caught them off guard, and the second turn-on-the-spot charge defied the common sense of warfare, then the third turn-on-the-spot charge robbed all their enemies of the ability to think, completely destroying the order of the Delanmaya Army. The soldiers ignored their officers’ commands and completely followed their instinct to avoid danger, dodging the wolf-like and tiger-like Winston cavalry. The officers likewise had no idea what their opponent’s purpose was, and could not issue clear and effective orders at all. Even worse, they dodged the enemy’s killing even earlier than their own subordinates. The soldiers in this formation lost their will to resist, desperately pressing toward both sides, trying to clear the middle road and let the Winston cavalry pass through. In most cases, their dodging was futile. The bloody weapons of the iron cavalry soldiers pierced their bodies from behind, forcibly taking away their unwilling souls. A small number escaped the slaughter, but their frantic pressing had already stirred the formations on both sides into utter chaos.

Three back-and-forth charges at the same position—no one knew what the Winston wanted to do, not even Fred. He frowned deeply, watching the changes on the battlefield with puzzlement, yet seemed unable to grasp the key from Crown Prince Louis’s riddle-like command.

When they once again charged out of the rear of the formation and successfully cut the Delanmaya formation into two completely unrelated parts, the powerful Winston Knights turned toward the right along the formation’s rear. The slender column formed by sharp lances and gleaming war blades, like a fruit-peeling knife, peeled off an entire layer from the Delanmaya left rear formation. They met almost no resistance that could even slightly slow their advance. On such flat, open ground, the Winston heavy knights indeed displayed their formidable combat power, completely ignoring the enormous gap in numbers, willfully depriving the enemy of their right to live.

On the battlefield, when an army faces a powerful opponent, what would be the most fatal problem?

I believed it was chaos—chaos in formation, chaos in commands, chaos in the hearts of men…

Because I witnessed with my own eyes that all these kinds of chaos were now concentrated in the Delanmaya formation, and not a single one was missing. And the consequences caused by this great chaos were shocking to the eye.

General Vincent had not failed to try to organize an encirclement of these mere six thousand enemies. As a commander who, though foolish, was not lacking in experience with defeat, he himself knew very well that as long as he slowed down the gallop of the Winston cavalry, trapped them in an infantry encirclement, and took away the speed advantage of their charging war horses, Crown Prince Louis’s head would be his for the taking. But his efforts turned to nothing time after time under the impact of the Winston Iron Cavalry. Crown Prince Louis pointed his spear time and again at the weakest spots in the Delanmaya formation, washing them away like a flood before any potentially threatening force could gather. These mere six thousand cavalry were like a giant whale in the sea, easily breaking through the waves and stirring up destructive swells; or like a butcher knife wielded by an experienced butcher, freely gliding through the bodies of pigs and dogs being slaughtered, snapping their tendons and destroying their vitality.

Chaos. It was all chaos.

The mighty army of thirty thousand had no way to deal with enemies that moved through their midst as if there was nothing there at all. Officers and soldiers alike abandoned their ranks, wailing and fleeing, only hoping to stay a little farther, and farther still, from this group of armored death behind them. But how could two human legs escape the charge of swift horses? Compared to the order and skill of the Winston cavalry, the numerous Delanmaya cavalry played no role whatsoever. In the chaotic army, they were blocked by their own infantry ranks and even knocked to the ground by the torrents of fleeing infantry. The Winston attack could be completely described as cutting. They were like a paper knife cutting through fragile paper. The paper shattered at the edge of the blade, leaving only numerous crimson bloodstains and countless mutilated corpses along the shattered edges. And from the start of the battle until now, fewer than two hundred Winston Knights had fallen from their horses, dead or wounded. What a tremendous gap!

We were privileged to witness Prince Louis’s outstanding military command ability. He was worthy of the title “the commander who can embroider on the battlefield.” Under his command, the six thousand iron cavalry were indeed like a powerful and artistic needle and thread, embroidering blazing red flowers full of the fear of death into the enemy formation time and time again.

“Crazy man…” It was the first time I heard Fred express such admiration for an opponent. “Launching an attack from an absolute disadvantage, and they’re still seeking a complete victory. There really are people this crazy!”

After a pause, he added: “The craziest thing is, he actually did it.”

“We haven’t completely failed yet, have we?” I was a little puzzled by his evaluation. “In terms of numbers, we still hold an absolute advantage. As long as we hold on a little longer, then…”

“You don’t see it, Jeff.” Fred explained to me. “He’s using the same method as us—concentrating his forces when facing a superior enemy. Although their numbers are few, they haven’t left us many opportunities. The best moment was after they cut our main formation into two pieces. At that time, we should not have set up defensive lines in front of them and let the soldiers on those lines fall into chaos. We should have sent the units farther from the enemy around in a loop to surround them. A completely chaotic crowd can effectively stop a cavalry assault, buying time and creating opportunities for a full encirclement. Unfortunately…”

“Unfortunately what?” Apart from killing and being killed, I had seen nothing.

“Unfortunately, our commander’s vision can only see the small area of the battlefield near the enemy. He completely fails to consider that the unit farthest from them has the most strength. He only knows how to organize defenses around the enemy, but does not know that such a powerful enemy will never give you the chance to organize defenses at its feet. You saw it—every defensive line collapsed before it was finished forming. This collapse spread throughout the entire camp like dominoes in a short time. Indeed, we still have a lot of people now, but they have all lost their formation and can’t be commanded at all. We’re in a situation where we have strength but can’t use it. Now, we are not far from a full collapse…”

“Then what are we waiting for? We have to do something.” Red Flame said, looking at the Winston cavalry.

“I’m waiting for the moment of full collapse.” Fred’s words shocked all of us.

“Probably… that is our only chance…”