Chapter 48: The Spear of Honor, the Fang of Longing

I stood on a hillside not far behind the battlefield, together with the devout monk Millia, the Necromantic Warlock Poirot, and his personal assistant Miss Eliot. I had wanted to stand at the very front of the formation with Fred and the others, to fight side by side with my friends, but Fred had placed me in the position of logistics and dispatch commander, making me the person farthest from the battlefield.

“Do you remember what I told you, Jeff? The supply line is the lifeline of an army, and keeping the supply line flowing is the first guarantee of victory. In this position, I can only trust you.”

This was what Fred said to me when he was assigning tasks. I admit without bragging that in his army, no one was more suited to this position than me. Many dispatch duties that others found extremely troublesome, I could complete with ease. But this did not mean I could watch with a clear conscience as my comrades fought bravely at the very front of the battle line, while I watched from far behind the lines, as if I were outside it all. No matter how I looked at it, this situation was shameful.

Yesterday evening’s battle had been ended by a single blade flash from Red Flame. The Winston commander must have sensed the low morale of his army and did not continue the pointless slaughter. Fred likewise made no move to attack the city, because we had no need to: the food in the city had been cleared out a full day earlier. We were completely, completely certain that we could make the enemy come down from their tall walls and fight us in a field battle on the plains with inferior numbers.

It should be said that the very occurrence of this battle was itself a strategic victory for Fred. Using five key cities as bait, Fred had laid what might be the greatest trap in history with an unprecedented stroke of boldness. Now, the fish had taken the hook, the rats had entered the trap, and the plan of “shutting the door to beat the dog” was already half successful.

“But our opponents are not timid rats, but the most dangerous beasts in a desperate situation.” Just the night before, Fred had expressed his unease in these words.

The war horns sounded. The battle had already begun.

Yesterday’s clash had made the Winstons put away their contempt for us. Burdened by their other troop types, they could no longer make a reckless suicidal charge that defied common sense like they had in the first battle. Instead, they formed up in proper battle arrays and engaged us head-on. After a few symbolic volleys of arrows and crossbow bolts, a squadron of light cavalry charged out of the Winston main formation, heading for our right flank.

Light cavalry were far inferior to the Winston heavy cavalry—their proudest unit—in the defensive power of their armor, the attacking power of their weapons, and even the destructive force of their charge, but they possessed an extremely high mobility that no other unit could match. Their charge was swift and agile; speed was their sharpest weapon. Once they were given enough space to gallop freely across the battlefield, they would sweep away the enemy’s lives like a cold wind sweeping away fallen leaves.

Unlike the silent heavy cavalry, the enemies before us were expressing the fierceness of the Northlands people in another way: they shouted wildly, letting their rough voices drift with the morning wind across the vast plains of Centuria. Galloping with their bodies on horseback was an indescribable warrior’s honor and courage. Their weapons pointed steadily at the heads of their opponents, even though what awaited them ahead was a dense forest of spears.

“Hold steady, archers ready!” Rodrick’s firm voice rang out from the front of the formation. Following his command, two rows of archers stepped out from the formation and drew their longbows into the shape of a full moon. Those wolf-fang-like arrows lay silently on the bowstrings, like beasts lurking in the grass, waiting for the moment to pounce on their prey and taste flesh and blood.

“For our loved ones…” Rodrick, on his warhorse, drew his sword and raised its tip high toward the blue sky. “Loose!”

In that instant, several hundred bowstrings hummed at the same time, playing a cruel melody about courage and death. One sharp arrowhead after another pierced the thin armor of the Winston light cavalry and found its home in the warm flesh of the warriors.

“Spearmen, move up!” The enemy’s charge was too fast, so fast that there was no chance for a second volley. The archers withdrew at the right moment, and a row of soldiers holding long pikes stepped to the very front of the formation. In front of the fierce cavalry, their movements were stiff and clumsy, and their young faces were filled with panic. We should forgive them, shouldn’t we? The scenes that had sunk into their hearts, the genuine fear of war from the bottom of their hearts, could not be erased by a short period of simple training and reorganization.

But this was war.

How could war forgive cowards?

The two armies clashed, and the spearmen paid the price for their cowardice and panic. In the exchange of spear thrusts, where flesh traded for flesh and life fought against life, they not only lost their breath but also lost the enemy’s respect. Under the fierce trampling of warhorses, the front row of spearmen collapsed almost instantly. They half-heartedly thrust their spears toward the enemy’s bodies, but did not aim at their vital points. After inflicting far less damage than expected, they began to struggle desperately, trying to dodge the deadly attacks coming at them. If only they could have been a little braver, if only they could have held on a little longer, if only they could have stood taller and thrust their spears farther, then perhaps the Winston hooves would have stopped because of their courage, and they would have paid a smaller price. But all of this was merely “if.”

They shrank back in fear, and so fear punished them.

The light cavalry did not get entangled in the position they had broken into; their mobility was their life. With a shout from their leading officer, this squadron of light iron cavalry swept along the front of the formation like the wind. They were like a light and sharp fruit knife, ruthlessly slicing at the skin of the right flank position. Their officer made excellent use of his speed advantage, scattering the formations that were assembling or might assemble before him, keeping the Delanmaya soldiers too busy to respond, while never stopping to linger himself. They demonstrated the fact very well: a cavalryman in motion was the true cavalryman. Their poorly trained opponents could only offer up their heads before them; the luckier ones might exchange a broken limb for a gasping breath of life.

In the Winston main formation, the cavalry units began to mobilize tightly. Without a doubt, once Rodrick’s troops fell into irreversible chaos, our enemies would swarm out with all their strength, break through our blockade here, and charge out of our encirclement. This scene seemed like it would appear very soon. Under the fierce sweeping attack of the light cavalry, the right flank position wriggled uglily and clumsily, as if its collapse was only a matter of time.

Would that really happen?

The answer was no.

Their opponent was Rodrick, the man who valued a warrior’s dignity more than life, who buried his longing for his loved ones deep in his heart. Just when the right flank position seemed utterly chaotic and on the verge of falling apart, two columns of pikemen jutted out from the very center of the formation. On this mess of a battlefield, these two columns of pikemen were so neat they dazzled the eye, like a rock jutting above the muddy waves, standing firm and unmoving amid the turbulent river currents.

They met the enemies before them and shouted that soul-stirring battle cry:

“For the glory of our loved ones!”

That’s right. This thousand-man pike unit had been built around the three hundred spearmen who survived the Battle of Kampnavia. They had once shouted this battle cry and fought head-on against heavy infantry five times their number, blocking them below the walls of Kampnavia for half a day, without the enemy even touching the city walls. Only true warriors were qualified to hold the specially made pikes that belonged only to this unit; only soldiers among soldiers would stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

Pikemen, the guards at the very front of the formation, the soldiers who resisted the charge of enemy cavalry, the lowly troop type whose lives hung by a thread, the garbage unit with the highest death rate.

That was not the true meaning of their existence.

These warriors were using their bodies and their will to explain such a word: pikemen. It was as if only when the pike was in their hands could it truly be called a “pike”—that dangerous weapon with a long shaft, a sharp tip, gleaming and bloodthirsty. It was their pride, their support, the vessel of their longing for family and friends.

“The Fang of Longing.” That was the name they had given themselves. Behind this nickname, which carried a hint of delicate femininity, was a thick layer of bloody smell, and an even deeper layer of remembrance.

Now, they were the mainstay of the turbulent right flank formation. With them there, the formation would not collapse, the position would not be lost, and the enemy was not worth fearing. Only because their spears did not strike for their own lives, but for the glory of their loved ones far away—loved ones they might never meet again.

That was the softest, and also the strongest, place in a warrior’s heart.

…

They clashed. That sweeping, bloodthirsty red wind and that sharp bulwark had finally clashed. What was then presented before us was no longer one side slaughtering brutally and the other side routing disgracefully, but a true battle.

The cavalry formation, having already lost their lances, still swung their sabers fearlessly and charged at this one formation that remained steady. Their goal was to break up this side of the formation and create an opportunity for the follow-up troops to break out. Their choice was correct. To break through here was to break through our encirclement. But their choice was also wrong. They had crashed into the true defense line.

One body after another was pierced. Two rows of pikes thrust forward and back in rhythm, keeping the enemy outside the range where their sabers could be effective. At the same time, the cavalry, carrying tremendous momentum, charged fiercely into this dense forest of pikes, shouting loudly as they chopped down the heads of the nearest opponents.

Carlson had once said: No normal person loves blood, but when you have to fight, you’d better pretend that you love blood.

Maybe this was the kind of scene he was talking about.

Arrows of blood splashed from pierced bodies, spraying onto the armor and skin of the pikemen. Warriors bathed in blood shouted wildly, even laughed crazily, as if their excitement could not be contained. Their enemies were the same.

But I seemed to hear the sobbing sounds of their souls.

Once again, the pikemen stopped the enemy’s charge, and what was also stopped was the rout of their own troops. Because of their perseverance, those panicked, distracted soldiers found their courage, and also found their weapons. More and more men began to accept the orders of their officers, gradually steadying their steps and closing their encirclement around the mounted enemies.

Perhaps Rodrick did not have Riley’s quick adaptability, and could not perfect his defenses in time, leaving the enemy no opening to exploit. But his ability to control the entire formation was the best among us. His proud pike warriors won him the time to reorganize the troops. His battle line stabilized in an extremely short time and began an orderly counterattack. The soldiers who had been on the verge of collapse learned obedience at the edge of death, and once they began to obey their young commander, they became a force that could not be underestimated.

“Front row fall back! Second row advance! Left column, attack!”

Rodrick pulled back his ace unit. It was enough. Their task had been merely to stop the enemy in their tracks. Once the cavalry stopped charging, the numerical difference would be enough to drown them in a sea of men. Moreover, he needed those scattered soldiers to be tempered, truly tempered on the battlefield. Without facing the enemy in life-and-death combat, they would never become an army worthy of trust.

“Center formation, advance! Follow me, attack!”

Giving orders from behind the formation was not Rodrick’s style. He was a commander, but before that, he was an excellent soldier. Standing at the front of the formation, the first to charge and the last to leave—that was the Rodrick we knew.

“Follow me!” The churning hooves could not drown out his roar.

Many officers had never understood how to truly inspire soldiers’ will to fight, to make them charge at the enemy without regard for their own lives. Actually, it was simple. When needed, stand in front of them and tell them: “Follow me.” Instead of hiding behind them. That was enough. You would be their hero, someone worthy of their lives.

Rodrick was exactly such a man!

Similar to fear, courage was also a contagious emotion. When someone stood by your side and showed you with their own actions what bravery was, most people would imitate the actions of these brave warriors. That was a power that had been inspired.

Just as the saying spread across the battlefield went: the brave never lack companions.

The tide of the battle turned. The once arrogant, proud riders fell into trouble. There was no longer any difference in tactics, mobility, or formation. Both sides had fallen into a deadly melee, trading blood for blood and life for life. In terms of kills, the highly skilled Winston light cavalry far surpassed Rodrick’s soldiers, but their absolute disadvantage in total numbers doomed them to be the losing side. The mounted warriors fell one row after another, letting their last breaths scatter among the uncontrolled trampling of their mounts.

The Winstons lost their composure. Short horn blasts came from their main formation, giving the light cavalry trapped in the enemy formation the order to retreat.

Without the slightest hesitation, the riders in the unfavorable situation quickly broke free from the entanglement of the gradually closing infantry and retreated swiftly and steadily. Even after encountering the enemy’s tenacious resistance and abandoning the bodies of nearly half their comrades, their formation still showed not the slightest trace of panic. The riders held their heads high on horseback. Self-respect and discipline carved into their bones made them carry the proud bearing of soldiers even as they had just escaped the shadow of death and slaughter.

A squadron of light cavalry charged out of our formation, trying to take advantage of the enemy’s exhaustion to intercept the retreating Winstons. A squadron of cavalry leapt out from the enemy’s position as well. They drifted nimbly across the front, firing a cold, sharp rain of arrows that forced back our futile attempt, then protected the rear of their comrades as they returned to camp.

Rodrick had already reorganized his formation. Although his position had lost a few hundred men, it was stronger than before the battle, because the soldiers had survived a fierce fight. Here, a single battle might not turn a group of rookies into elite veterans, but it was enough to let them temporarily get used to this life-and-death contest.

The air carried the sweet and salty smell of blood. The smell was not strong enough to make one nauseous. Perhaps that meant not enough soldiers had died yet, I thought.

Yes, not yet enough. Over a thousand brave warriors, who like me had once breathed the sweet air, had just lost their lives and become ghosts we could not see. And all of this was only just beginning.

How many had to die before it was enough—this battle, this war?