The Battle of Albredo, Part Two
The Albredo Plains.
The hosts of the Drail Kingdom and the Zahed Empire closed the distance between their camps by slow degrees. I had taken a place on the right rear of our formation and followed at an easy pace, driving the Humvee along behind the ranks. After a word with the mage dispatched from the court, I had settled in among the mercenaries rather than with the other mages. Once the fighting started, standing in the center of the unit would only mean forever reading the mages and the commanders, and I had no appetite for that. From a comfortable remove, I meant to watch both sides tear into each other.
For a moment I did entertain the notion of wading in myself and collecting the bounty. Then it occurred to me that all I would accomplish was laying bare the hand I was holding, and I let the thought go. Nothing good would come of too many people learning that the Humvee and the rifles existed.
So I pressed on at my leisure, buried among the troops.
And when the gap between the two vanguards had narrowed to a little over a hundred meters, it happened almost at once.
From behind each van, a flock of arrows leapt into the empty air.
Shwish-shwish-shwish—!!
The black shadows that had climbed the sky bent their heads and came raining down on the enemy vanguard.
"Arrows!"
"Dodge!"
Warning cries burst out. Both camps had already seen the shafts pouring in. But the men standing in the van were not regular soldiers. They were slave troops, and no one would have issued the likes of them a proper shield.
Thud-thud-thud-thud—!!
Dozens of arrows fell into both formations, and the slaves who could not evade them dropped where they stood, bodies punched through.
"Ghk!"
"Aaaagh!"
"Save me!"
"You bastards!"
Amid the screams, the curses, and the shouting, the order to charge came down.
Bwoooooo—!!
"There aren't many archers. Charge! Run in and fight them! Then they can't loose arrows!"
"Charge!"
"Waaaaah!!!"
"Dogs of the Empire! Die!"
"You sons of bitches!!!!"
Neither side waited on the other. The slaves of both armies broke into a run toward the line opposite, and with both of them sprinting that hundred meters at once, the gap closed in a breath.
Just before the two lines met, the mages behind the Drail army opened their attack.
"Fireball!"
"Fireball!"
"Fireball!"
A dozen balls of flame sailed over the heads of our own slave soldiers and dropped onto the enemy slaves charging in.
Boom!! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom—!!!
Explosions chained through the middle of their formation. Flame leapt up, and with the blast a shockwave flung the slaves in every direction.
"Aaaagh!"
"Mages!"
"Save me!"
The other side did not sit still.
"The grace of God!"
"Stamina that does not tire!"
"The shield of faith and the armor of belief!"
Slaves buffed by the priests of the Zahed faith forgot they had just eaten the first blow and came on screaming. The ones who had led the charge leveled the spears in their hands and crashed into one another.
"Waaaaaah—!!!"
Thud! Thud-thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Clang-clang! Clang! Clang! Clang-clang! Clang! Clang!
Iron met iron. Bone snapped. Flesh sheared away. A spear punched through a belly and jutted out the back. A spear that had run a man through drove into the earth. Skewered, he hung in the air and flailed both arms.
"Ghk! S-save me—"
"Die!!"
Throats were cut. Ears fell. Wrists flew, severed. A spear drove into the rear flank of a slave who had been holding a runner off with his own, and a blade sank into the back of the man stabbing down at a slave already on the ground.
Thud!
"Ghk!"
Blood sprayed and ran, churning the ground to muck and pooling into dark crimson. When a slave lost a foot in one of those pools and staggered, another launched himself and drove a blade into his heart.
Thock!
"Krgh!"
Blood and screams tangled together, spreading a thick, nauseating reek of gore. It was past awe. Faced with that desperate spectacle of the struggle between life and death, the bile rose of its own accord.
"Whoa. Fuck. This is real."
I took back every scrap of the contempt I'd felt for a mere few thousand men. Barely two thousand slaves were fighting across both sides, and already it was brutal enough to make my head swim.
I was staring blankly at the scene before me when, at some point, I saw the imperial slave formation curl in like a crescent and wrap itself around the Drail troops. Numbers, it seemed, could not be argued with. Leave it like this and the outcome was obvious.
Then a horn sounded again from the center of the Drail army.
Bwoo—!!! Ooooooong—!!
"The wings will strike both flanks!"
He meant the mercenaries.
The moment the order fell, the standard-bearers standing before the mercenary companies advanced as one. Following each company's banner, the mercenaries swung out from the front and then wide to the side, driving into the flanks of the imperial slaves.
"Kill them all!"
"Worthless slaves! Die!"
"Drop dead, you convert bastards!"
The mercenaries' fighting power was not something ordinary slaves could match. Men with experience, skill, and proper gear simply slaughtered them. An axe split a skull. A swordsman cut down slave after slave as he passed. A spear-wielding mercenary knocked aside an incoming thrust with a simple motion and countered in the same breath—one clean stab, and the spearpoint punched through a slave's throat and came back out.
Thuk!
"Krgh—!!"
The slave dropped his spear and clapped both hands to his neck, but he could not stop the fountain of blood spilling between his fingers, and he pitched forward. The mercenaries took the slaves' crude attacks on the little shields strapped to their forearms, then swung blades that severed wrists and opened flanks.
"Where do you think you're rushing!"
"Worthless little shits!"
"Kill them all! Go on, beg for your lives! You vermin!"
When the mercenaries hit the flanks, the thin line of imperial slaves collapsed outright. Struck from within and without, the vanguard was crumbling fast. At this rate, it felt as if the battle would end with Drail on top.
I was not the only one who thought so.
Behind Marcus's mercenary company, waiting on horseback, Hans spoke up.
"Looks like this'll be over as it stands. Unless those Zahed bastards move their main body, there's no turning it around."
In that instant—
"Hey! That asshole! Shut his mouth!"
"Hans, you bastard! Shut up and—"
Then a magnificent horn-call rolled out from the Zahed Empire's side.
Bwooooooo—
And the uneasy feeling became fact.
Dududududududu.
A heavy tremor of the earth shook the sky. From the rear of the imperial camp, hundreds of horsemen swung around their own lines and charged straight for both flanks of the Drail army.
The mercenaries spat curses.
"Goddamn it!"
"I told you we ought to gag that bastard before he opened his mouth!"
"Hans, you son of a bitch!"
Contrary to the expectation that both camps would spend only the customary slave troops and call it a day, the fight slid of its own accord into the next stage. From the moment the cavalry took the field, it was war to the last—total, until one side gave way.
Having seen Zahed's cavalry, there was only one thing the Drail camp could do.
"Cavalry, sortie! Engage their horse!"
"Break the van of their magic cavalry!"
The order had barely fallen when the cavalry waiting in the rear of the Drail camp came thundering out at a furious pace. The mounted mercenaries mixed into that charge and drove for the enemy horse as well.
Unlike Earth, this other world had, strangely enough, never much developed weapons for fighting at range. Firearms, of course, did not exist, and they did not even use cannon. Crossbows saw a little use at best, and even archers were nothing more than an auxiliary, brought out briefly at the opening of a battle.
There were several reasons. The first was that the mobility of their horses was so exceptional it rendered a bow's range meaningless. Beasts with stamina and strength far beyond the horses of Earth closed the distance in a flash and crashed into one another.
"For the kingdom!"
"In the name of God!"
Both sides set their knights at the point, and cavalry drawn up in wedge drove into one another. The impact and the roar were beyond anything the infantry collision could compare to. Knights bearing lances charged with aura—the same as what Captain Marcus had shown before—ran enemy knights, riders, and warhorses clean through and flung them aside.
Boom! Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash-crash-crash—!!
The second reason was armor wrought by a refining art that shrugged ordinary arrows aside with ease, and the existence of aura, the form in which knights put mana to use. Aura could unleash tremendous force in attack, but it was at the same time a tremendous means of defense.
"Die!"
A greatsword came down on a knight's shoulder.
Crash!
But where the blade met the armor, a flash of light burst like sparks, and the greatsword rebounded. The knight who had struck lost his balance instead and staggered. In that moment his opponent turned and swept the greatsword in his hand sideways.
Shing—!!
The armor the blade passed through sheared away smooth as silk, and the knight's body was cut with it and fell to the ground.
Only an aura weapon could cut or pierce armor imbued with aura. That, or a famed blade forged of orichalcum-grade metal.
I stared, spellbound, as the field turned all at once into a battle along the whole front. I had hung as far back as I could on the excuse of being a mage, but already both camps were mixing together at speed. At this rate they would reach the center before long. Just as I was thinking the main body ought to be doing something—
Viscount Malic's shout came down from the central platform.
Advance? When they have the greater numbers? Not a retreat? What in the world is he thinking? In the space of that thought, Zahed cavalry were already climbing up near me.
Nothing else for it, then.
I caught up the rifle laid across the sandbags and set my eye to the scope. All I could do was drag the flow of the battlefield as far my way as my reach allowed.
I swept the advance through the 9x scope, and a target came into view. I kept up the breathing I had practiced, then stopped at a certain moment. Slowly, I drew the trigger straight back, unhurried, until it broke against my fingertip.
And—
Tak!
The trigger fell, and the muzzle spat fire.
The curtain rose on my battle as well.