General Henry Alfonso, who had been reforming the ranks in the rear, could not believe his eyes.
The steel square of the Laurent Kingdom, which no empire’s cavalry had breached in two hundred years—
Even there, holes had opened here and there from the first to the third ranks at the very front, where the formation should have been interlocked most tightly.
The rocks and razor-sharp fragments that had poured down from the sky had not inflicted devastating casualties on the heavy infantry, but they had broken their morale and punched gaps throughout the line.
Above all, the archers and crossbowmen had suffered a heavy blow, leaving far more holes in the net of fire than expected, so they had failed to reduce the cavalry’s stopping power as much as calculated.
“Catapults……! In the middle of a plain, and at the very moment before their own troops charged in, they fired siege weapons! Are those madmen fighting without the slightest regard for friendly casualties!”
General Alfonso ground his teeth and roared as if coughing blood.
“Deploy the reserves on the walls at once! Fill the gaps! Tell the broken front ranks not to fall back, but to use the stones those bastards dropped and the corpses of our own men as cover and reform the square where they stand!”
He drew his sword himself and advanced the center.
Unfortunately for the empire, the catapults had arrived a little earlier than they were originally supposed to, and the center, which received the general’s orders directly, swiftly restored its front line—but the two wings could not do the same.
Kwaaang—!
The infantry on Laurent’s two wings, who should have absorbed the impact with their spearpoints packed tightly together, were trampled underfoot by the overwhelming mass of the imperial heavy cavalry that came crashing through the gaping holes.
“Kill them all!”
“Don’t focus on killing each soldier one by one! What we need to break is their formation! The ones behind us will do the killing!!!!!!”
The long, heavy lances carried by the imperial knights at the front pierced through the breastplates of the Laurent infantry and burst out through their backs.
But the empire’s losses were by no means light either.
No matter how much their formation had collapsed, Laurent were masters of defense who had endured for two hundred years.
The Laurent infantry, sensing death, did not flee; instead, they planted their long spears firmly against the ground and held on with desperate tenacity. The imperial vanguard, unable to control their speed in the darkness, crashed into them and were likewise skewered on those spears like meat on spits.
“Kraaaagh!”
Imperial knights impaled on spearheads that had pierced through thick horse armor and breastplates died instantly, spurting fountains of blood.
Because of the tremendous kinetic energy of the charge, the knights and horses into whom the shafts had been driven were lifted bodily into the air before crashing headfirst into the mud.
In particular, the carnage wrought by the riderless warhorses was a scene straight from hell.
Even after their masters had died instantly and rolled off their saddles, the warhorses, driven completely mad by the stench of blood and the roar of battle, shrieked wildly as they rampaged in every direction through the heart of the enemy ranks.
“Stop the horses! Stab their legs with your spears!”
A warhorse that had lost all control reared up and crushed the helmets of Laurent infantry beneath its forelegs.
With the horrific sound of skulls bursting like watermelons, brain matter and blood splattered in every direction.
But the maddened warhorses, too, had their flanks and necks pierced like hedgehogs by countless Laurent spearpoints thrusting in from all sides.
One massive black horse toppled as its forelegs bent grotesquely with the awful sound of shattering bone, and the soldiers of both armies trapped beneath it became tangled together, screaming for help as they were crushed to death.
In the midst of that asura-like chaos, the imperial cavalrymen cast aside their lances as if by prior agreement and drew their cavalry sabers in unison.
“I am Victoria von Arzenheim, the Greatest Sword on the Continent!!”
With a mad roar that tore through the thunder of the battlefield, a storm of blood arose.
At the very front, having penetrated the deepest, was Victoria, drenched in blood and rampaging like a goddess of war.
Each time she swung her enormous greatsword like a windmill, Laurent infantrymen were hacked apart and scattered in pieces.
“Maintain formation! If we’re pushed back, it’s over! Pin them down! If we hold, our allies will soon strike their flank!!!”
Far away, several dozen meters off, a Laurent commander of a thousand desperately encouraging his soldiers as he tried to rebuild the collapsed defensive line was caught in her gaze.
Without slowing her horse, Victoria seized the spare steel lance fixed beside her saddle.
She leaned her upper body back as far as it would go, drew every muscle in her body taut, and hurled the spear with the force of a ballista.
Crunch—!
“Guh, hck……!”
The steel lance ripped through the wind, piercing between a dozen soldiers before punching clean through the commander’s thick shield and breastplate in one stroke.
The commander, unable even to scream, was skewered together with the adjutant standing behind him and slammed into the dirt, dying instantly.
A formation whose chain of command had completely collapsed was no longer a square.
Along the massive blood road Victoria had opened, the following cuirassiers charged in with their lances raised, slaughtering the isolated Laurent infantry like hunted beasts.
Behind them, even the imperial infantry who had arrived on foot plunged into the melee of mud and blood, beginning to butcher the staggering enemies one by one with axes and swords.
‘Impossible…….’
Watching this from the center, veins stood out around General Alfonso’s eyes.
According to his meticulous calculations, no matter how fierce the cavalry charge was, if he yielded the first and second ranks, the charge should have stalled from the third rank onward because of the line tangled with corpses.
But because the catapults’ wide-area bombardment had swept away the troops up to the front of the third rank, the enemy’s breakthrough power was far stronger than he had expected, and the enemy cavalry was already trampling through the fourth and fifth ranks as they surged forward.
In particular, that mad imperial princess rampaging like a demon at the head of the left wing had even torn apart the sixth rank’s defensive line, breaking through the left wing far more severely than expected.
‘The place that mad princess has reached is the left wing. My son is there...!’
The safety of his son Kyle, who would be holding the square on the left wing, suddenly flashed through his mind.
But Alfonso clenched his molars and cut away the stray thought.
If the center was completely breached now, the nation would fall.
“Commit every reserve on the walls to the left wing! Drive every last soldier toward that princess! Even if you have to build a mountain of corpses, break the legs of their horses!!”
At Alfonso’s desperate command, thousands of Laurent elites poured down from the walls and rushed like a swarm of ants toward Victoria’s wedge formation.
Dozens of infantrymen threw away their lives as they clung to the legs of the imperial warhorses, and under the endless flood of human-wave tactics, the imperial charge was finally brought to a halt.
Cavalry that had lost mobility and speed were, from that moment on, nothing more than enormous targets.
“Drag them down! Stab them!!”
Once a square worthy of the name thickly formed again, the halted imperial cavalrymen were caught by the infantry’s hooks and spears and fell helplessly from their horses.
Into the gaps in the helmets and the joints of the armor of the knights who rolled into the mud, Laurent infantrymen’s daggers plunged mercilessly.
All across the field, the casualties of the imperial knights began to soar sharply amid death cries.
At the very moment the imperial charge was blocked and mired down, a triumphant smile spread across General Alfonso’s stern face.
Another faint vibration carried through the ground—the Laurent elite cavalry, which had made a wide detour around the walls, was finally approaching to strike the imperial army’s flank.
#
But at the highest point of the battlefield, atop the wall, the crown prince who looked down upon all of this thought entirely differently from General Alfonso.
The crown prince’s eyes had gone white with terror, as if they might split apart.
In his field of vision, there was no sign of the tactical stalemate or the timing of the counterattack that General Alfonso saw.
All that was seared into his mind was the sight of the entire formation being pushed back by the overwhelming imperial charge, and the horrific scene of the rearmost soldiers, helplessly driven into the moat before the wall, floundering and drowning as they sank into the pitch-black water while wearing heavy steel armor.
Above all, the imperial princess in the middle of the left wing, scattering blood and chunks of flesh as she slaughtered their allies like a madwoman, was not a being a human could withstand.
“……Retreat. We have to retreat. If this many soldiers die, when we return, all of it will become my responsibility...!”
The crown prince, trembling like an aspen, muttered in a hoarse voice.
He hurriedly ran to the officer in charge of the watchtower at the very top of the wall.
“Signal the retreat at once! Beat the drums quickly and call the entire army back into the city!! Our losses in the field are becoming too great! At this rate, we won’t have enough troops left for the siege!”
At the crown prince’s sudden order to retreat, the officer hesitated in confusion.
“Y-Your Highness! You must not! General Alfonso below has not yet issued an order to retreat! If we sound the retreat drums at this timing, the front line will completely collapse, and the imperial army will push into the gates!”
“Shut your mouth! Can you not see that my army, my soldiers, are dying like dogs! Move! If you refuse to beat it, I will beat the drum myself!”
The crown prince, whose eyes had completely rolled back in terror, shoved the officer aside and tried to seize the drumsticks himself.
At that moment, a sharp, icy ferocity rose in the officer’s eyes as well.
“Even if you are His Highness the Prince, on the battlefield, you cannot defy the commander-in-chief’s orders! Go down at once!”
Even the guards standing nearby chose the old general fighting in the jaws of death over their terrified liege.
“Go down at once, Your Highness!”
“Go down!”
The soldiers, weapons in hand, shouted harshly at the crown prince to step back.
“How dare you…… Are you scoundrels committing insubordination!”
The crown prince drew the sword at his waist, his face twisted with humiliation and rage.
But before he could swing it, the officer of the watchtower drew his own sword without the slightest hesitation and struck hard against the back of the crown prince’s blade.
Clang—!
“Aaagh!”
The crown prince’s sword clattered uselessly to the floor.
The officer coldly ordered the soldiers as the crown prince staggered, clutching his wrist.
“Escort His Highness safely to the rear! If he continues to resist, you may bind him! I will bear all responsibility for what happens!”
“Y-you traitorous bastards! You’ve been bewitched by that old man and gone blind! Let go! I said let go!!”
The crown prince was seized by both arms and dragged away by the soldiers, screaming in rage, but the officer did not look back.
The officer gazed anxiously beyond the wall at the horrific hellscape where blood, dust, and death were tangled together.
“General…… please. I beg you, bring us victory.”
Beneath the officer’s earnest prayer, the dull thunder of hooves splitting the vast dark earth rang out heavily.
The blood-soaked night upon which the fates of the empire and Laurent rested was deepening.