Out of Control (1)

Well I'll be. Look at that thing fly.

Paul, a soldier conscripted out of the Weistenfell Margraviate, watched the fireballs arc across the sky beyond the trench and couldn't help but marvel. He craned his neck over the parapet to follow their path, and saw them plunge straight into the head of the enemy column.

They came in with a shriek and a chain of detonations, a merciless bombardment that sent smoke boiling into the air. When the haze finally thinned, nothing remained of what had stood there but lumps of charcoal, the original shapes already impossible to guess.

"Lord, that racket's loud enough to kill a man. My ears are ringing to death."

The grousing from the man beside him almost drew a laugh, but grousing was still grousing. Paul shot back at once.

"You'd best live with the ringing, hadn't you? Else we'd be staring down the folks getting hit by that. You fancy that, do you?"

"Whoa now, you'll talk a man to death. I was just bored and misspoke—don't come at me like that."

"There's things you say and things you don't. Can't go badmouthing the mage lords working themselves ragged in our place, can we?"

"Alright, alright, I hear you. I'm sorry. Now just—"

A rumble rolled across the sky.

Even through the mix of explosions and shouting that filled the field, the sound was unmistakably wrong, and it rang out with perfect clarity. They looked up, following it, and found the heavens packed with stormclouds that had not been there a moment before.

"H-huh? What in the world is that?"

They were still staring, bewildered, when the rain hit.

It came down in a hard, driving sheet, and water began to pool in the trenches where the soldiers stood. They had dug drainage ditches as the officers had ordered, but the downpour was overwhelming, and the water climbed anyway. Before long the rain only grew heavier, until a man could scarcely tell what stood a hand's breadth in front of his face. Even the sound of it changed, until it no longer resembled rain at all, but a waterfall hammering down from the sky.

"Evacuate! Evacuate! Get out of the trenches! Move, now!"

A small mercy, at least: the commander's voice punched through the roar of the rain, loud and raw. He was probably shouting into one of those strange magic tools they called a megaphone.

Paul threw everything he had into climbing out, the way he'd been told. Even in that handful of heartbeats the water was already up to his calves, and the rain made the ladders nearly impossible to find.

"Found it! Over here!"

His comrade, thank God, had spotted one. Paul forced himself through the current toward the shout. Even at the ladder the water came down in a torrent that made it hard to keep his feet, but he hauled himself over the lip of the trench and was just drawing a breath of relief when he looked back.

The sky was still emptying itself as if someone had punched a hole in it. The trench he had been standing in was already more than half full. The unlucky ones who hadn't found a ladder thrashed below, clawing for the rim, but the current pinned them there. The trench would be brim-full in less than five minutes.

Paul and the others leaned down and stretched out their hands, straining to pull people up, but there was no saving everyone. By the time the water had climbed to eight-tenths of the way, they gave up. Mud and bodies and wreckage had already churned together and gone under; finding a living man in that soup was next to impossible.

"All hands, assemble! Form up, now! Anyone who doesn't make it is a straggler!"

The familiar voice ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the knight who led them cut through the rain. Paul and his comrades were already spent to the bone, but they stumbled toward the sound as fast as they could. They knew what would happen if they didn't. The rain would swallow them whole.

The rain came down like the sky had gone mad. And in proportion to it, the static on the communication tools grew worse—the telltale interference of mana, proof that a powerful spell had been loosed.

Not that I needed the static to tell me.

A heavy pulse of mana had rolled out from the center of the Second Prince's army, and in the next instant the clouds had closed and the rain had begun. There was no mistaking it. This was the magic the enemy had prepared.

It's nothing like the Weather Control I know.

That spell could steer the weather well enough to start a rain and stop it. A concentrated deluge on this scale was another matter entirely.

The base formula might be the same. Not that it matters right now.

I snatched up the receiver of the communication tool, switched to the open channel, and barked the order.

Chain of command? I didn't have the luxury of worrying about that. We needed as many people as possible on high ground, as fast as possible.

Damn it. This is bad.

I kept shouting the order at the top of my lungs, but a darker cloud was already settling in a corner of my mind. We were on the gentle valley floor between the White Mountain Range and the Rotkamm Mountains. Plains or not, this close to the ranges there was still a slope, however mild—and the high ground, of course, was exactly where the enemy had planted themselves. They had almost certainly launched this attack with that in mind.

Plenty of people will die or be maimed by the spell itself. The bigger problem is that the entire premise of our tactics just got washed away.

The plan had been to scour the enemy infantry with long-range bombardment, then hold the approaching knights with our own foot and the trenches. The flood the enemy had conjured had swept that plan off the board. From here on, we would have to improvise our way through whatever came.

"I hear you. What do you need, Your Highness?"

Saddle-type Altar Cannons. Nobody used those except Bruno and his people, so we hadn't exactly stockpiled spares.

"Counting the Dragoon Unit's reserves, two per rider. Forty in all."

So the First Prince meant to smash through this mess with a charge.

"Understood. Who will be commanding on the field?"

I asked on the off chance. Surely he wouldn't personally lead a charge even n—

Ah.

The First Prince, never one to disappoint.

"Then the army will be without its commander-in-chief."

The most important work here, he added, was resource management and allocation anyway.

The Third Prince was gifted at administration, that much was true. Among everyone I had met since reincarnating, his talent in that field stood in a class of its own. He might come up short as a field commander, but the administrative power to more than cover that gap made him a man who could do the work of one soldier and then some.

That said—could he please just not come out?

What was it with this so-called commander-in-chief? Did he have a fetish for battlefields? I could not understand why he insisted on prowling the front line.

I had the distinct, uneasy impression that I could hear the Third Prince sighing from here. I doubted it was only my imagination.

Thirty minutes after the enemy's spell, the rain had already begun to ease.

Behind us came the roar of men and the thud of drums, the sound of our own and the enemy's soldiers locked together. The low ground was already underwater from the enemy's magic, so the troops who had climbed for high ground were now trading blows with enemy infantry directly.

Bruno, the Dragoon Unit, and I were riding for the First Army Group at the First Prince's summons, having left command of the remaining corps in Hans's hands.

"All halt!"

We reined up at the spot we had agreed on near the First Army Group. A few of the horses snorted and stamped at the sudden stop, though they were the minority. Most of the rest, the moment the run ended, simply collapsed onto the wet ground without the slightest concern for the mud. We had dragged out every spare mount left in the unit and ridden them in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rotation until they were spent. We had come at something close to a full gallop the entire way—a marathon's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠distance at a hundred-meter-dash pace. It was a wonder they hadn't dropped dead.

We had barely arrived when hoofbeats came hammering over the rain-soaked earth. Knights who had been gathered with the Second Army Group were riding in to join the First. The First Army Group's own knights were assembling as well; before long, virtually every rider that could be called cavalry in the First Prince's army had come together.

Not long after that, the First Prince himself appeared on the field, armed to the teeth.

So the Third Prince couldn't talk him out of it after all.

"Is everyone here? We'll skip the greetings. Check your gear and we ride."

I had already asked the First Prince for fresh horses for the Magic Corps. Unlike our spent mounts, the other knights' horses followed their riders without a fuss—they were clearly a different caliber from the ones that had been hauling fully armored knights around.

After a brief pause to refit, we started straight for the enemy line. Knights and Magic Corps together, nearly twelve hundred riders, their hooves drumming the wet ground in a rolling thunder.

We had been riding for perhaps twenty minutes when the foremost line came into view, ours and theirs still locked in the fight. At the direction of the First Prince and several men who looked to be captains of noble knightly orders, the riders split into three great groups and formed wedges. The Magic Corps and I fell in behind the center of the First Prince's wedge and ran with them.

"Enemy cavalry!"

The shout went up from the other side, late. They had already let us in close. Blue mana began to run along the knights' lances, and the Dragoon Unit and I loosed our opening strike.

A barrage of Fire Balls slammed home, and in the next breath the lances delivered the second shock. Enemy soldiers went down as if someone were snapping wooden chopsticks. The first rank melted in an instant, but the charge did not stop. We drove another thirty meters before we finally drew up, having carved ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a little creek of blood into the field.

Our knights began to dress their lines and fall back. The enemy clung to them, trying to tear a piece out of the withdrawal. It was the one moment infantry could hope to mix it up with knights—right after a charge, when the riders had spent their momentum.

These are a cut above the usual levy.

Ordinary conscripts would have shattered under a knightly charge and then been too busy drowning in terror to even think of closing. The men in front of us fought more like the private troops of some noble house—the same breed as the soldiers the First Prince himself had once commanded. Nothing else would have produced a response this professional.

Not that it changes anything.

Under ordinary circumstances, even knights would have been in genuine danger. Not today. Not with the Dragoon Unit riding with them. We kept the bombardment up long enough for the knights to gather themselves and pull out. Hits were welcome; misses didn't matter much. Cutting off the enemy's approach was enough on its own.

In the end the enemy gave up trying to close with our knights and drew back. Our riders used the space to finish dressing their lines, open the distance, and ready the next charge.

Three or four times it went like that, and the line was beginning to tilt our way, when hoofbeats that were not ours came rolling in from a long way off. At the head of that column, a blade-aura burned with a radiance in a completely different class from anything else on the field.

There you are.

One of the greatest problems of this civil war. The enemy's Sword Master. Countess Berenkamm.

Roswitha had taken the field.