Ten Thousand Banners on the Horizon
Jannyana swallowed without thinking. She had seen columns of a few hundred soldiers come and go plenty of times before, but never had she seen so many gathered in one place like this.
It seemed as though the horizon itself, from one end to the other, was stuffed full of soldiers. She couldn't even guess how many enemies there were. The sight of more than a few hundred banners snapping in the wind made her heart shrivel in her chest.
On a battlefield, the individual was a speck of dust. Commanders who bent the field to their will with uncanny, precise tactics existed only in stories; in reality, things were far messier and far more of a shambles.
You couldn't tell who was winning while the fighting was going on, and sometimes it was hard to tell who had won even after it ended — that was what a pitched battle truly was.
The knights would gladly become dust themselves, charging out into the mire and the murk. Jannyana was not one of them. She racked her brain for any way at all to slip out of this.
"Y-Your Excellency. Isn't the enemy's number far too great?"
"So it would seem."
"If we stayed in the city..."
"They could have, and instead they came marching out after us. Their loyalty moves me."
Johan cut her off at the source before she could get to the part about 'wouldn't it be safer back in the city?' Jannyana retreated with the face of a child about to cry.
Even if Jannyana was no mage on the level of Suetlg or Caenerna, a mage was a mage. There was no telling when her talents might prove necessary.
I could always lure some monsters over from nearby, too.
Johan contemplated the kind of thought that would make priests faint dead away, entirely without shame.
"Aclada. When I signal the retreat, you retreat. Understood?"
"...My lord. That is the tenth time you have said that."
"Then I'll say it an eleventh. When I signal the retreat, you retreat."
"Why is it always us you..."
"Do you genuinely not know?"
At Johan's words, Aclada and Euclia pouted, looking thoroughly put out. Put that way, they had no real answer to give.
The battlefield here was crowded with countless nobles and knights, each flying their family's banners. The enemy side was no different.
Unified, coordinated command was naturally impossible, and even when the overall commander tried to communicate something, it took an age or simply failed.
In the end, everyone carved out their own sector and had to fight their own fight as best they could.
Johan's share was the right wing.
The dwarf mercenaries and the slave soldiers seemed unlikely to run wild, but the eastern tribes and the cavalry under Ezelia's command worried him.
Unlike infantry, once cavalry bolted, reeling them back in with an order was no easy thing.
Worse, the eastern tribes were famous for their love of a fight, and Ezelia's riders were nearly as fond of a charge as any knight...
Johan intended to lead Ezelia and the mercenary horsemen personally, keeping them under his own hand. Heavy cavalry in full plate, once loosed in a charge, carried the power to tear an enemy battle line apart in one pass — which meant they had to be held for the critical moment.
The eastern tribes, on the other hand, suited a lighter role: wheeling about the field, harrying the enemy, running down the broken. They wore comparatively little armor, but in exchange they possessed superb archery and peerless horsemanship.
"Now. When the horn sounds?"
"We retreat! Ugh, honestly — I swear upon my bow and my sword. I will not chase after them, not ever!"
"I swear it too."
Hearing the centaurs' oaths, Johan nodded with evident satisfaction. That much, at least, he could trust.
Then he summoned the mercenary captains and gave his final orders. Centurions of a dozen different races looked up at him with eyes burning with excitement and anticipation.
"Listen well. This is a fight being fought on someone else's battlefield. I trust none of you is fool enough to overreach himself and throw his life away for nothing. Do the work you were paid for. Am I understood?"
The mercenaries grinned at that. When he talked like this, it was honestly impossible to tell whether the great Count was a genuine noble or just another sell-sword.
But one thing was certain: a few blunt words like those made a far sounder shield at your back than any flowery speech or rousing cry.
Johan had not come because of Leoanos's secret envoys. The offers Leoanos had made left him entirely unmoved.
-Y-Your Excellency. Honestly speaking, does that not tempt you even a little?
-Not particularly. Didn't I tell you I have little interest in Vinashitim? And do you truly believe that man will keep a single one of his promises?
-Even if he keeps only a few of them, it's still profit, Your Excellency.
-Then it follows he may keep none of them at all.
-He... he wouldn't dare.
-I have no intention of moving until the coin is in my hand, whatever the matter. Once burned is enough. Take the gold and send the envoys home.
Giada had been sorely tempted, but Johan cut the argument clean as a blade and sent the envoys packing.
It was someone else entirely who changed his mind.
-I am called Jusban, of the Republic. Your Excellency — I look forward to serving with you.
Jusban, mercenary commander of a venerable Venedo military house, had marched south at the head of an army.
-Jusban hails from one of our Republic's most distinguished soldier families. Almost certainly he comes with backing from the homeland.
Republican territory lay not far to the north. They had no intention whatsoever of sitting idle while heathens rampaged.
Still, even so — hiring an army and marching it down here this quickly?
-Jusban is trusted enough within Vinashitim to hold the post of Grand Equerry. The fact that a man like that has come here suggests he and Vinashitim have been in talks...
Giada's prediction proved right. One day after Jusban arrived with his army, the Emperor of Vinashitim himself appeared, leading his Imperial Guard in person.
He had come down the northern highroad, they said — at a speed that beggared belief. Forgoing the pass, the Emperor had taken the long way around to join Jusban.
And together with Jusban, he came seeking Johan to press their case.
-The enemy's numbers are greater than we reckoned. I ask for your participation in the battle.
-Your Excellency. As brothers of the same faith, I beg this of you. Fight alongside us against these heathens.
Their two armies combined came to four or five thousand, but measured against the enemy's scale, that still felt precarious. Both were desperate to bring Johan's elite soldiers into the field.
-I find myself curious where the gold Your Majesty promised might be.
-I have brought three times the promised sum.
-Then I will fight. We are brothers of the same faith, after all.
Vinashitim truly did have gold to burn. To their blazing offer, Johan gave a blazing reply.
When Johan answered on the spot, the Emperor's face turned sour, but Johan paid it no mind. They were the ones left wanting, so the Emperor and Jusban offered their thanks and withdrew.
Thus the army of the Republic, the Count, and the Emperor was made complete. And they marched on the pass in full pomp.
"Is he truly a man to be trusted?"
"Trust me, Your Majesty. Count Yeats will not disappoint you."
At Jusban's confident assurance, the Emperor nodded. Still, his first impression of Johan had not been a favorable one.
For one thing, the man was far too young. Judging only by rumor, the Emperor had pictured a grizzled veteran of forty winters and a hundred battles. Instead he got someone barely younger than himself.
Jusban returned to take command of the left wing.
The Emperor was the overall commander, but he could not simply issue orders to the left or right wing. Unless Jusban gave the word himself, the mercenaries would not obey.
"Jusban would not deceive me, would he?"
Jusban was a pro-Vinashitim noble, but he was not the sort of man to aid Vinashitim at the cost of his own Republic.
Betrayal was possible at any moment.
An aged eunuch attending the Emperor asked carefully, "Why does Your Majesty think so?"
"He's far younger than the rumors promised, is he not. And yet such a reputation. I wonder if the Republic isn't playing me false."
Having lived in the army since boyhood, the Emperor knew better than anyone how hard command truly was. That a man as young as Johan could have racked up such a record simply did not bear believing.
"The Republic has no reason to deceive Your Majesty."
"True. But there is no such thing as never."
"If anything suspicious occurs, I shall go myself and bring you Jusban's head."
Only at the eunuch's words did the Emperor's expression ease. It was the eunuch and his staff officers who propped up an Emperor still short on experience, and their seasoned steadiness reassured him.
"In any case, the left and right wings are little more than window dressing. Trust the soldiers you raised with your own hands, Your Majesty. They will settle it."
"I will."
The Emperor nodded. Truthfully, he had never placed much hope in Jusban or Count Yeats to begin with.
The one to trample and shatter the enemy's center would be no one but himself, and the Imperial Guard he led.
Had Johan heard that thought, he would have laughed and said that here, at last, the two of them were of one mind.
The two armies hurtled into a pitched battle with no warning at all. No parley, no pre-battle duels, no probing for position.
The Eastern Empire's nobles, spotting the force closing in from their rear, had simply begun screaming and hurling themselves into the charge. Cavalry and infantry burst out from both flanks on the left and right, and the lines collided.
"Dwarves, forward! His Excellency is watching us. Do not yield an inch!"
"Remember the master who holds your lives! Time to repay your debts!"
Surcoats differed overhead, but weapons and armor were much the same either way. Enemy cavalry in chain mail with longswords came thundering in to trample the front line.
But the dwarves held without flinching. Crossbow bolts and arrows raked down on the horsemen in a merciless hail. With despairing screams, several of them went down.
Then Johan moved. The soldiers behind parted, and the horsemen under Johan and Ezelia burst out like wolves loosed from a pen.
"The Count! It's the Count! Take him!"
Spotting Johan's banner and realizing a man of high rank rode beneath it, the heathen knights swarmed toward him with a howl. But before any of them could reach him, Ezelia took their heads.
"Die! Die! Die!"
"......"
Keeping his horse alongside Ezelia's as she ran utterly wild, Johan wore a look of pure bewilderment.
"Ezelia. Calm yourself."
"I am not excited."
"Ah. So you're not..."
Astonishingly, Ezelia's blood-smeared face looked utterly serene. It was simply the elven battle-cry, nothing more.
The enemy came at them again. This time Johan went in first. The moment Giant Slayer came around, flesh and blood sprayed in all directions, and an open space carved itself out of the press in an instant.
"■■■! Demon■■■ ■■■■!"
Whatever they were shrieking was lost to the dialect-laced Eastern tongue, but he could roughly guess the meaning.
Johan swung his warhammer and went about harvesting heads in earnest. Charge and wheel away, charge and wheel away — by the fifth pass, the enemy around them had come apart and was falling back.
"The enemy is retreating!"
"Re-form the line! Re-form the line!"
"Wounded, get to the rear!"
"Your Excellency! We'll pull them out for you!"
"Aclada. Don't forget your promise."
"Yes, my lord!"
The eastern tribes swept out, kicking up a wall of dust. They used the breadth of the battlefield to the full, tearing across it at a gallop. Arrows thudded into the backs of the retreating men, and more thudded into the heads of those still deep within the camp.
Those who bolted out in fury became prey exactly as they emerged. Five or six of the enemy's banners snapped, their bands scattered — and after that, a strange lull settled over the right wing.
"The enemy isn't coming."
"They must be dressing their lines."
Johan didn't know it, but the enemy was simply too frightened to close the distance.
"Shall I order an advance?"
"No. Hold pace with the rest."
If he pushed forward alone and the allies elsewhere happened to lose their fight, then even Johan would find himself in a position where retreat was no longer an option.
Unbearable. Are the others actually winning over there?
Johan squinted out over the dust-choked field. Even blessed eyes had their limits at this distance.
The most he could make out was the fighting at the nearby center.
Another man would have seen nothing at all, but Johan's blessed sight cut through the murk and took the measure of it. The enemy banners were surging inward toward the center in a chaotic mass. That was a danger sign.
"I'm taking support to the center! Follow me!"
Johan picked out only the freshest and swiftest of his riders and tore off, intending to sink his teeth into the flank of an enemy whose attention was fixed elsewhere.
"Seize the Emperor here, and all the glory in the world shall be yours!"
Yeheman didn't even need to shout it. Every noble with sword or spear was already throwing himself forward with eyes gone red as coals.
The loyal Imperial Guard held their ground, swinging their weapons with savage desperation, but the enemy's momentum was something else entirely.
The finest warriors gathered on this whole field were all hurling themselves at the Emperor at once.
"Charge them and break them! Charge them and break—"
One noble, mid-shriek, felt a single thread of cold slice through the furnace-heat of the battlefield.
What was that?