Chapter 152
Chapter 152
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 152
Chapter Title: Calculations Must Be Thorough (5)
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Burn them? What kind of nonsense was that?
I couldn't understand what he was thinking at all.
A light drizzle was still falling on the moisture-laden plain.
In this kind of weather, it wasn't easy to start a fire.
It was a fact that everyone present knew.
Indeed, the soldiers were stirring restlessly.
In truth, the method for taking down large beasts was exceedingly simple.
You used your numerical advantage to stab at them from all sides, causing them to bleed out. Then you waited for them to collapse from exhaustion before rushing in to deliver the final blow.
This was the common method for felling large beasts.
But this method didn't work on all large beasts.
Ogres and trolls were prime examples.
With the former, it was impossible to even pierce their tough hide with blades and spears. With the latter, the problem was that any wounds inflicted would regenerate almost instantly.
If, as the scout said, trolls were mixed in with the enemy forces, it would be a disaster for our side.
“Do not worry! If they have trolls, we have a Knight who single-handedly slaughtered a hundred orcs!”
“Knight Rocarno from the allied city is also with us, so soldiers, do not waver!”
The commanders belatedly reminded the soldiers of the knight's presence, boosting their morale.
“That’s right! The Knight is with us!”
“The Knight will take care of the trolls!”
Perhaps because the knight's feat of single-handedly leaving the ranks to wipe out the gnolls chasing the scouts was still fresh in the soldiers' minds, the unrest quickly subsided.
“...!” “...!”
“...!”
In the center, Rocarno Matiasi also stepped forward, shouting something to quell the confusion.
The distance made it hard to hear, but I could guess what he was saying.
He was probably rattling on about how he would handle the trolls, so they shouldn't worry and just hold their positions.
The mercenary captain was, frankly, skeptical.
There were two ways to deal with a troll.
Either you cut off its head in one swift blow before that vaunted regeneration could kick in, or you wore it down by searing its wounds with fire to prevent them from healing.
In his opinion, Rocarno Matiasi didn't seem skilled enough to take on a troll clan by himself.
If he truly had that kind of ability, he wouldn't be rotting away in a backwater like this.
The latter option was also unrealistic.
With the constant rain saturating the entire plain, how on earth could they set a troll's body on fire?
“What on earth are they thinking?”
Even though they must have been well aware of the situation, the Imperial command took no special measures.
They merely continued to encourage the soldiers on the right and left flanks, preparing for the impending battle.
Watching the scene, the young centurion's puzzle came back to the mercenary captain's mind.
‘There must be a reason they left the most crucial center so thin.’
‘Think about why our army formed up like this.’
Thinking about it now, the young centurion's tone had been rather strange.
It was less that they had prepared ‘in case’ the center couldn't hold and collapsed, and more that they seemed to have deployed their forces assuming it would collapse from the very beginning.
“Nah, no way.”
He'd thought it couldn't be.
“Really?”
It seemed that his unlikely suspicion was correct.
He had learned something new, but his mind felt no clearer.
The question the young centurion had posed.
“Why? What are they hoping to achieve?”
The Imperial army's intentions were still a complete mystery.
Bwoooo, bwoooooo, bwoooooooo!
The mercenary captain was jolted from his thoughts.
“Enemies!”
In the distance, a black mass of enemies was swarming toward them.
“They’re coming straight for us!”
There was none of the usual regrouping one would expect from a force of that size.
“Graaaaaah!”
“Grrrrrr!”
The enemies that appeared at the far end of the plain were charging straight for them.
“Nothing about this is normal!”
“W-what do we do, Captain!”
“What do you mean, what do we do?! We hold our ground for now! We wait until we get orders from them!”
The moment he finished speaking, someone stepped forward from the front of the formation.
It was the knight who had just saved the scouts and the young centurion.
Swoosh, thunk.
The young centurion pointed somewhere ahead and handed the knight a spear with a red cloth tied to its shaft.
After gauging the direction for a moment, the knight threw the short spear without a running start.
Whoooooosh.
The short spear flew with a tremendous whoosh, piercing the air before embedding itself in the earth.
Far ahead, somewhere between the left and right flanks.
“Javelins, ready! On my signal, throw in order from the front! The target is that red flag!”
The young centurion shouted.
His voice was thunderous, echoing across the entire battlefield.
Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud.
The demi-humans were charging, the ground shaking beneath their feet.
“A little closer!”
Splashes of water erupted in their wake.
“Not yet!”
The figures of trolls, towering over the other large and small demi-humans, came into view.
Gulp.
The mercenary captain swallowed without realizing it.
“Not yet!”
The enemy picked up even more speed.
They were so close now that he could even make out the malformed features of the goblins panting at the vanguard.
“Throw!”
At that moment, the young centurion roared.
Whoooooosh!
The light infantrymen took a short run-up, hurled their javelins, and then knelt on one knee.
The soldiers standing right behind them threw their javelins in succession.
First rank, second rank, third rank, fourth rank, fifth rank.
The light infantrymen continued to throw their javelins at regular intervals.
Whoooooosh!
Hundreds of javelins soared from the right and left flanks.
The mercenary captain's eyes widened.
“Crossfire...!”
It was a crossfire tactic sometimes used by crossbowmen, who had slow reload times.
For him, who had never imagined applying a crossbowmen's tactic to javelin throwing, it was an astonishing sight.
It was intriguing, but that was all.
“Why do something so useless...”
To begin with, crossfire itself was a tactic born of desperation to compensate for the slow reloading of crossbows, and even those crossbowmen would, at most, split their volleys into two.
Throwing javelins in so many small waves would only disperse their force.
He couldn't understand why they would bother using such a tactic, one that was unlikely to be very effective in a real battle, in a situation like this.
Moreover, the angle of the throws was awkward.
Ranged weapons are most accurate and don't lose range when fired from the front, where the target's surface area is largest.
Furthermore, the shafts of the javelins thrown by the Imperial army were wrapped tightly with yellow and red cloth.
What a bizarre thing to do to javelins, which were already difficult to throw far.
Indeed, the range of the javelins thrown so vigorously by the light infantrymen was pathetic.
It was as if they had brought flagpoles from the camp to replace their spent javelins.
Were they trying to make up for the absence of their archers, neutralized by the ceaseless rain, in this way?
He wasn't sure.
One thing was certain: an attack like this was unlikely to yield much success.
So he thought.
He was half right and half wrong.
In reality, not many enemies fell to the javelins.
But the Imperial army hadn't thrown the javelins to kill in the first place.
The javelins thrown from the left and right fell in a crisscross pattern.
The javelins plunged deep into the rain-softened ground.
Srrrrk.
The tightly wound cloth unfurled.
“...Huh?”
The haphazardly planted javelins and cloth became an obstacle in themselves, obscuring the enemy's vision and slowing their charge.
The enemy ranks, which had been surging forward like a wave, began to falter.
A smaller one in front tripped and fell, and a larger one following from behind trampled the fallen.
“Yelp!”
“Guaaargh!”
Scenes of pandemonium erupted everywhere.
It was a welcome development.
How could it not be good when they'd solved a problem without lifting a finger?
But the obstacle created by short spears alone couldn't halt the enemy's charge.
Crack.
The medium-sized beasts charging from behind snapped the javelins.
Riiiiip!
Tearing the cloth connected to the javelins to shreds.
“Companies! Lower your stances!”
“Hah!”
The soldiers on the right flank gripped their shields at their commanders' orders, bracing for impact.
“Pikemen! To the rear of the phalanx!”
The Imperial centurion called for the pikemen.
As far as he knew, the Imperial army's roster didn't include pikemen.
“Oops. They’re calling us! Send the pikemen forward!”
At his command, mercenaries and conscripts holding pikes roughly six meters long began to shuffle forward.
“Rest the pikes on the infantry’s shoulders!”
“Pikes on their shoulders!”
The mercenary captain repeated the centurion's order.
The conscripts bustled about, resting their pikes on the shoulders of the Imperial heavy infantrymen.
“Push!”
“They said to push forward!”
The mercenary captain followed the order, careful to ensure the clumsy conscripts didn't accidentally jam their pikes into the backs of their allies' heads.
He glanced over at where his comrades were.
“...!”
“...!”
That side was in complete chaos.
Whether it was his shrieking comrades or the mercenaries under their command, they were all scared witless, just to different degrees.
That sight alone made it clear why the Imperial army hadn't entrusted the center to the allied city's forces.
“...!”
Rocarno Matiasi let out a spirited cry and dashed to the front of the formation.
And there, he cut down a few of the demi-humans charging at the front.
But no matter how skilled a knight he was, one man couldn't fight ten.
“...?”
Rocarno Matiasi, who had charged to the front, was swept away by the tide of enemies and disappeared from view.
“Don’t tell me he’s already been taken down...”
He tried to stand on his tiptoes to find the vanished knight, but it was no use.
Besides, this wasn't the time for that.
“Impact!”
“Hah!”
The heavy infantrymen roared and stomped their feet.
“Hold those pikes tight! Don’t go slicing off an ally’s ear!”
“Huh? Huh!”
The half-witted conscripts spat out what barely passed for a reply.
CRASH!
A series of heavy impacts followed.
The infantry line buckled.
“We held!”
The conscripts burst into cheers.
“You idiots! Is this the time to be cheering?!”
At their far-too-premature cheers, the mercenary captain snatched a pike from a conscript's hands and thrust it forward.
“Stab them! Are you using those pikes to hang laundry?!”
The conscripts, who had been standing around gawking as if watching a fire across the river, finally began to thrust their pikes.
“Don’t pull back too far and stab an ally, just make short jabs!”
“Don’t drive it too deep into the enemy! The pike will get stuck!”
That was the beginning.
The mercenary captain moved frantically through the ranks, shouting his lungs out.
His own mercenaries were also following his lead, kicking the conscripts' asses rather than engaging in direct combat themselves.
There was no other choice.
The poorly trained conscripts were greenhorns who would stab their own allies in the back of the head if you let your guard down for even a moment.
As he was berating the conscripts, the mercenary captain's eyes fell upon the Imperial soldiers.
Unlike the conscripts, who were making a racket with sounds that were somewhere between battle cries and screams, the Imperial soldiers were silent.
There was only the sound of their harsh breathing and the occasional shouts of commanders coordinating the formation's advance and retreat.
“My shield for my comrade’s heart!”
“Your shield for my heart!”
That was all, aside from chanting a slogan that somehow made one's blood boil.
The mercenary captain was genuinely impressed.
The clumsy pikemen jabbing from behind must have been a nuisance, yet not a single one of them looked back.
“And this is a unit that was shattered and reformed...”
His comrades' jeers echoed in his ears.
Defeated soldiers whose morale hadn't just dropped but had hit rock bottom.
Dropouts pushed from the most glorious positions because they lacked the strength.
If only he could, he wanted to show them.
Just how elite these men they had denigrated as defeated soldiers truly were.
If his comrades survived this battle, that is.
“Keep stabbing!”
“If the front line breaks, we’re all dead!”
Hearing the mercenaries yelling, he too went back to kicking the asses of the dazed conscripts.
How long had they been fighting like this?
Just as the roars of the demi-humans from the front were about to deafen him.
Just as he could no longer smell the disgusting stench of beasts and blood.
“Hm?”
The mercenary captain suddenly realized.
Their line was being pushed back, little by little.
The proof was that the very edge of the right flank, the end of the line, was jutting out far ahead.
“Damn it...!”
Startled, he looked for the Imperial commander.
If the formation twisted like this, the soldiers in the front rank would inevitably have their flanks exposed at some point.
If that happened, the Imperial army's vaunted phalanx would collapse in an instant, and the clumsy conscripts would surely be annihilated.
He had to inform the Imperial commander of the situation as quickly as possible.
But there was no need.
“We’re not being pushed back, we’re advancing?”
This side hadn't been pushed back.
His allies were advancing.
From the far right of the flank, very slowly.
At first, it was so gradual that even their own side barely noticed.
But then, at a certain point.
“Hoo, hah!”
“Hoo, hah!”
The heavy infantrymen began to advance in unison, letting out their unique grunts.
The entire right flank was pivoting.
“This is insane!”
Stunned by the sudden change, the mercenary captain shouted without thinking.
The young centurion's question, asking him to think about why the Imperial army had deployed its forces in such an unorthodox way.
The answer was right before his eyes.
The enemy's main force, which had pierced the center in a single rush.
The right and left flanks, advancing in a curve from the ends.
“This was their plan from the very beginning...!”
It was a formation that looked as if the enemy had thrown themselves into the embrace of a hawk spreading its wings wide.