And three days passed.
Boom! Bang! Bang! Ka-boom!
As if the Lord had set the stage for us to fight to our hearts’ content, the weather that day was gloriously clear. It was also the first day in the history of the Duchy of Beren that the boom of cannons rang out in a field battle.
A wheeling eagle seemed to gaze down at us from high above. In the Greek and Roman eras, they say a battlefield eagle was revered as a blessing of Zeus.
Brave infantrymen advanced toward the battlefield.
The stamping of their feet shook the earth like an earthquake.
A force of thousands had gathered on this plain, and through this battle, the fate of Radensdorf would be decided. As the one commanding the combined cavalry, I was positioned in the rear.
The Offenburg Knights advancing alongside the infantry took on the crucial role of breaking through the enemy heavy infantry at the front. Benjamin considered this an honor and saw it as a chance to spread Offenburg’s renown.
The shells pouring down from all sides were enough to break any soldier’s morale.
The shells both sides hurled at the advancing infantry came with a deafening roar and tremor, but the accuracy was very poor. Still, a direct hit was fatal.
Boom!
"Aaargh! My leg!"
"Aaagh! My eyes! My eyes!"
Stone shot was markedly inferior to iron shot in durability and force. But it was cheaper than iron shot, and when it shattered on hitting the ground, it scattered like buckshot, so its killing power was actually higher.
The shells that crashed into both sides’ infantry lines caused countless casualties like this, but they couldn’t bring the infantry’s advance to a halt. All the soldiers could do was pray to the holy Lord to please grant them strength.
"Prepare to reload! Preheat carefully!"
"Damn it, watch out for burns! You blockheads!"
"Bring the stone shot! Stone shot!"
Our gun battery was as noisy as ever.
The enemy had more guns (sixteen) and the advantage in mobility, but our cannons had the greater force. Being siege weapons, their stone shot caliber and powder charge were far larger.
Just as I planned to raid the enemy’s artillery corps, the enemy would surely try to raid ours. It wasn’t as if they fought every other day, and dealing with the most troublesome threat first was the most basic of principles.
Stakes had been driven in around the gun battery, and since they’d been hammered in hastily, you couldn’t expect much defense from them, but they could hold off an enemy cavalry raid to some degree. And the finishing touch was the Swiss mercenary company.
These men, who stood waiting with their spears raised at the rear of the Royal Artillery Corps, would make for a dependable shield.
[Gale Knight X Quest]
[Neutralize the rebel artillery corps]
[Reward - 10,000 points, 10 gold coins]
[Item Reward - Courage +200% Boost Scroll (one day)]
[Danger Rating ★★★☆☆]
A quest had been generated.
Ten thousand points, huh. The rewards during wartime were still quite handsome. The end of the civil war was starting to come into view, so I needed to rack up a good stockpile of points while I still could.
I considered using the Cavalry Breakthrough +200% Boost Scroll I’d obtained last time, but since I wasn’t breaking through the enemy heavy infantry, I decided to save it.
Gauging the timing, I kept a close eye on the rebel formation and then moved to strike the enemy’s rear.
The enemy cavalry, who’d watched us move, shifted their position to intercept us head-on. I’d understood the enemy cavalry force to be stronger than ours, but the cavalry before my eyes was nearly equal in number.
That meant the cavalry I couldn’t see now had to be the raiding force. I hadn’t expected them to split their cavalry strength in two against me, a man of considerable renown as a cavalry commander.
"Anton, the enemy has split their cavalry strength in two."
"Against us? The enemy commander seems rather bold."
Anton and the rest of the Gale Knights were confident, born from their unbeaten streak. And they believed they couldn’t lose as long as they were with me.
My cavalry commander rank was D (Breakthrough 40%, Charge 40%). So the cavalry I commanded always displayed a certain level of capability and was a top-tier elite force that trampled and crushed the enemy without hesitation.
"...What’s that?"
The Commander Scouter’s radar just barely reached the enemy rear.
And there I could spot that an unidentified unit had been deployed around the artillery corps. Seized by an ominous premonition, I checked the unit information, and an alarm went off in my head.
Damn it, the enemy had a gunner unit!
It looked like a unit that had joined late.
But there was no changing the plan now, so just as I was scrambling to put together a contingency, the cavalry on the left flank suddenly charged on their own.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Whoaaaaa!
The other cavalry commanders and I were thrown into a panic.
The cavalry that had been so well controlled until now fragmented in an instant.
"Those bastards, what the hell are they doing?!"
"Charging on their own without any orders!"
Since this combined cavalry was larger in scale than the one I’d led before, the variety of its members was also greater. Even the Essenbach dragoons were following my commands, yet it was the so-called regular cavalry that caused the trouble.
They were cavalry who’d never served under my command.
The enemy cavalry was just as flustered.
The cavalry that had charged without obeying orders had drawn all the aggro. Wait, this might actually be an opportunity. Hadn’t they made themselves into bait?
"All cavalry, follow me!"
The friendly cavalry, thrown off by the unexpected situation, calmed down and followed when I galloped off in a different direction. Our forces had split in two, but since that side was playing the part of bait, I could put it to use.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
I made use of the optimal route, a function of the Commander Scouter. I led the cavalry along that path, and it took us straight through the enemy rear. It was thanks to the friendly cavalry that had ignored orders.
Whoosh, boom!
Once the enemy artillery position spotted our approach, they began firing shells our way. Perhaps because the cannons had wheels, changing direction seemed easy too.
"Scatter! Scatter!"
When Anton hurriedly waved the flag, the cavalry who caught the signal spread out wide. Boom! As sixteen guns rained down shells, casualties mounted among the friendly cavalry as well.
Aaagh!
Neeeigh!
Boom! Bang!
War horses, startled by the roar, collapsed and dozens of cavalry tumbled from their mounts, but Chrysos, galloping like a valiant goddess with her golden mane streaming, didn’t falter in her charge.
Boom!
A shell fell ahead, but the Gale Knights at the front bravely galloped on, cutting through the gunpowder smoke that hung thick everywhere. And I quickly ordered a flanking maneuver.
It was because the muzzles of the enemy gunner unit waiting behind the stakes were taking aim at us. Unable to do something insane like charging straight at the gunners, I chose to evade their line of fire as much as possible.
Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!
The gunfire that roughly three hundred gunners poured out knocked the galloping friendly cavalry from their mounts. It was only because we’d executed a flanking maneuver that we didn’t take heavy losses.
But several Gale Knights were also shot and unhorsed, and a shot even put a hole in the flag Anton was carrying. It sent a chill through me, but I instantly turned into a vengeful demon.
The greatest weakness of the arquebus is reloading.
And relying on stakes alone was a fatal mistake.
I would have mixed gunners and pikemen together. That the enemy commander hadn’t told me he didn’t truly know how to employ gunners. So I charged at them as they fumbled to reload.
If you weren’t going to deploy pikemen, you should’ve driven the stakes in more densely. There was a narrow gap to slip through. And the elite cavalry didn’t miss that gap and bored right in.
Slash!
Aaagh!
Passing between the stakes, I swung my halberd and beat a gunner to death. The gunners, facing the countless cavalry swords with nothing but their bare bodies, had no way to hold out.
I drenched my whole body in blood and killed the enemy like a vengeful demon.
Strength flowed into the hands that swung the halberd, and I brought it down on the head of a gunner who’d resisted.
The gunners resisted by swinging the butts of their arquebuses, but it was futile. A gun without a bayonet was no match at all for cavalry in close combat.
The gunners began to flee.
But our objective was the neutralization of the enemy battery.
Seeing the friendly cavalry that had closed in right in front of them, the artillerymen had already fled. Cavalry carrying stakes and hammers rushed at the cannons left standing unattended.
"Don’t break the stakes, drive them in properly! Before I shove your little Schwanz in there!"
At my shout, the cavalry burst out laughing.
So as not to ruin the operation, I was merely imitating the joke Schneider had spouted. When they set a stake against the touch hole and brought down the wooden hammer, the stake slid right into the hole.
"We plugged the enemy cannon’s hole with the duke’s Schwanz!"
"Damn it, insulting the royal family! All right, let’s bolt now!"
The enemy pikemen positioned in the rear were rapidly approaching to retake the battery. Like an ebbing tide, having completed our mission, we hurriedly slipped out in the opposite direction.
The quest was already complete.
The points I’d earned were quite the tidy sum.
Now that the enemy battery was neutralized, all the enemy infantry could do was endure our artillery pounding them with no way to answer. And this had a considerable impact on morale.
Boom! Bang!
Part of the enemy infantry line began to waver.
When the morale of some units turned yellow, rather than withdrawing as planned, I decided to attempt a raid. It was because they made for very appetizing prey.
"Charge!"
Whoaaaaa!
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
We attacked the enemy rear, and the flustered enemy began to fragment.
And the Offenburg Knights, who had been charging relentlessly at the enemy heavy infantry, finally broke through the line. Along with the booms of the Royal Artillery Corps firing without pause, the enemy collapsed completely.