I drew a sharp, useless breath.
A lance charge after the swarm! The enemy was employing a hit-and-fade tactic—the first rank would unleash a volley, then immediately pull back while the second rank charged forward. I frantically waved my command baton.
"Pikemen! Move the pikemen to the front!"
The command flags flapped wildly.
Before I had even finished the order, Jacques-Lee and the dwarf mercenaries were already bellowing "Forward!" The peasant militia, caught completely off guard as the battle unfolded in unexpected ways one after another, stood frozen in shock—until the sergeants booting them in the backside got them scrambling into motion.
"Chargeeee!"
The infantrymen gripped their spears and pressed up against the wooden palisade. Some were in such a hurry that they dropped their long pikes clattering to the ground. It was a sorry spectacle of blunders. I could not hide my mounting anxiety. Our lines were in utter disarray!
The archers—hunters by trade who had stepped up to teach the enemy cavalry a lesson—were now scrambling to fall back. The pikemen pushing forward collided with the archers trying to retreat, and confusion erupted everywhere.
Every second counted. A lance charge, especially by knights channeling Aura, was something archers could not withstand for even a moment. I had to reorganize the formation at once. And were not Bretagne's knights even now bearing down like a tidal wave, closing in by the second?
At last the knights closed in. They drove their warhorses at full gallop. The mounts thundered forward in a frenzy. The knights poured through the gaps between the palisades and let out their battle cries.
"Narcissus Company, charge with honor!"
"For Her Majesty the Queen! For Henrietta de Bretagne!"
The knights crashed into the pikemen. Blood sprayed through the air. Lance shafts loaded with Aura tore through three or four infantrymen at a stretch. The hybrid monster warhorses screamed as though blades meant nothing to them. The knights' lances, far longer and more imposing than any pike, punched through the peasant militia's shoulders, their necks, their chests.
The warhorses' forelegs trampled every obstacle in their path as they galloped on. In the blink of an eye, dozens of pikemen collapsed all at once.
I could not hold back any longer.
"Hold them! You have to hold them somehow!"
I swung onto my horse and charged out immediately. Behind me, Jeremy shouted something, but I ignored him.
No doubt he was screaming that it was too dangerous, that I shouldn't do it. What a joke. The one in danger wasn't me—it was the entire army.
Henrietta de Bretagne had combined a deception operation with a surprise attack. The plan's effectiveness was at its peak right now, in the opening phase of the battle. If the infantry, cowed by the knights, so much as drifted away from the palisade by even a fraction—it was over. Everything.
"Do not retreat!"
We had to hold the palisade at all costs. I activated the voice-amplification magic I'd pre-attached to my necklace and roared. My voice thundered across the battlefield.
"P-Priest?"
The soldiers nearby flinched and turned to stare at me. Idiots! I spurred my horse forward, pushing all the way to the very back of the pike square.
"Face forward, men of the Frank Empire! Do not retreat, no matter what!"
The soldiers who had been looking back hurriedly turned their heads around. This wasn't over yet. I had absolutely no intention of letting you end this battle on your terms, Henrietta de Bretagne.
"Listen! The knights may look impressive, but they haven't broken through the palisade. The moment you move away from the barricade, the knights will cut through it with their Aura without hesitation. That is when we lose. Soldiers, cling to the palisade! Hold the line and stop the knights from charging through!"
To the palisade! To the palisade! The dwarves roared in response to me. Whether the soldiers understood my words or not, swept up in the heat of the battlefield, they planted their feet and pushed forward. Uuuuuh! Uaaah! The soldiers screamed and advanced, one grueling step at a time.
The dwarf mercenaries scrambled back and forth until their feet were bleeding, desperately trying to hold formation. Not too fast. Not too slow. A single knight was cutting down five infantrymen. So what? We'd meet them with five more, then ten, then fifty—it didn't matter!
"Uaaaaah! Die!"
"Spear their horses! Show those Bretagne pigs what a lance tastes like!"
"Long live His Majesty the Emperor! Long live the great Frank Empire!"
Not every cavalryman who charged was a knight. The knights held the very front, and the cavalry that followed behind them were all regular soldiers. Their five-meter lances were just as terrifying, but there was no Aura in them.
A lance was a weapon you couldn't use twice in succession. After the initial thrust, you had to draw your sword. The knights and cavalry of Bretagne dropped their lances and pulled out their blades. Curved greatswords clashed against the long pikes with a sharp ring.
No matter how elite the Bretagne forces were, it was impossible to break a pike square with swords alone. The cavalry lost their momentum, and their speed dropped noticeably. Good—a cavalryman who'd lost his speed was nothing more than fodder for the pikes!
"Look, proud warriors of the Frank Empire!"
Something hot surged up from deep inside my guts.
"The Bretagne bastards are all eunuchs! Their dicks are long, sure, but after two thrusts they blow their load! Men of the Frank Empire! Show these eunuchs what real manhood looks like!"
The soldiers erupted in wild laughter. It wasn't the laughter of amusement. They were wringing it out of their lungs, forcing laughter through the agony. Not a single soldier had fled, even as the knights butchered their comrades.
This was the power of a deeply packed infantry formation. If our lines had been thin at any point, the cavalry charge would have shattered us completely. But even if one man fell, there were dozens behind him, and beyond those dozens, hundreds more, standing firm.
If one in ten fell, the rest of the soldiers wavered. If one in a hundred died, they could hold steady easily. Having countless comrades to your front and sides was, in and of itself, like standing behind an impregnable fortress wall. And on top of that, we had the palisade…
Bretagne's horse archers and mounted charges were genuinely formidable. You could tell just how much training and real combat Henrietta's command had put them through. They must have arrived at the Plains of Saint-Denis early and spent the wait drilling tactics and running through checks.
But they were only formidable — that was all. The ten thousand volunteer soldiers were still holding out brilliantly.
"You really are the most reckless person I've ever met! What's going to happen to you if something goes terribly wrong? I can't even fathom it!"
The assassins came scrambling over to me. Jeremy was out in front, leading the pack.
I switched off the voice-amplification magic for a moment and spoke.
"Jeremy, take your squad and bring down the knights! Once we take care of the knights, there's nothing left to fear. Cut the legs out from under their warhorses and then toss the meat to the pikemen."
"Wait — if even I leave, how is the Commander supposed to issue orders?"
"Don't worry. Your Commander is perfectly capable of finding his own adjutant."
I hurried Jeremy along, urging her to get moving.
"Every last one of the ten thousand volunteers at Saint-Denis is my adjutant!"
"…Ah, truly! What a mess. Yes, sir! Would it kill you to just say yes, sir?!"
Jeremy scratched her head furiously. Then she turned around and bellowed to the rear.
"You damned red-scarred whores, it's time to slaughter some pigs! Cut those useless dicks off right at the root!"
The instant Jeremy finished speaking, twenty assassins vanished toward the front lines. Jeremy spat on the ground — pt — drew a short sword from her hip, and charged out without so much as a word of farewell to me.
Angry voices, the clashing of steel on steel, the screams of the defeated, the hoarse battle cries of the victors — the earth itself shook beneath them. The Bretagne forces thrashed and struggled, trying to push us back. Our side fought tooth and nail to drive the Bretagne army beyond the palisade.
The moment the assassins entered the fray, their effect was immediate. A few Bretagne knights had each been holding nothing but a single curved blade, fighting one against a thousand and tearing through our ranks. Those men suddenly tumbled from their saddles.
"A knight is down! Stab him! Drive your spears in!"
"Aaargh! Everyone, charge!"
The knights had penetrated so deep into the formation that enemies surrounded them on all sides. The moment even a tiny gap opened, the pikemen swarmed in, hammering their spears down. Dozens of spears and axes crashed onto the knight who had fallen to the ground. He could not even stand before his life ended.
That sight grew ever more frequent. The assassins hid among the pikemen and swiftly severed only the warhorses' legs, leaving the rest to be finished off by the soldiers. Without a single order being given, the dwarf noncommissioned officers matched their demands with perfect precision.
Perhaps they judged it could no longer hold.
"Fall back! Fall back for now!"
A company of Bretagne's cavalry turned their horses about.
The moment a single company began to retreat, virtually every cavalry unit fell back at the same time. The cheers of their allies, resounding with the conviction that they had held the defensive line, spread in all directions. Victory! They had won the opening engagement. The peasant militia had driven off the elite cavalry, knights and all.
"Uraaaa! Long live the Frank Empire! Long live His Majesty the Emperor!"
"You Bretagne sons of bitches!"
The cavalry filed back out through the gaps between the palisades. As if determined not to let them go quietly, some archers drew their bowstrings to the last. There was little result, but it was proof that the soldiers were fighting with complete disregard for the cost of arrows.
"Sons of Frank! I ask you!"
I shouted with a hoarse voice.
"Are you proud of your Empire?!"
The soldiers roared back in disorganized chorus. Polished words were no longer needed. All we required was the cry of beasts.
"Yes! Frank is our pride. Those premature-dick rabbits are trying to trample it—how dare we forgive them!"
— Non! Non! Non!
The soldiers chanted in unison. No!
"How should we deal with these filthy rabbits?!"
— Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!
"Yes, kill them! Kill them without hesitation! Slaughter them!"
I was screaming without any prepared speech at all. Ah, at a time like this, scripted speeches could go straight to hell. Ten thousand humans had become a single body, swept up in the madness of the battlefield. No—we were becoming the wave, hammering that madness into the battle!
"Endless slaughter! Insatiable slaughter! The fields of the Ile-de-France shall grow upon the blood of the barbarians! Let the gods' promised fate for those who would plunder the Empire be branded upon them! Warriors of Frank, before our long history, show them that we are the Empire's wall!"
I took a deep, ragged breath and screamed.
"Today, right here, we shall be victorious!"
The soldiers roared with wild enthusiasm. "Viva Frank! Viva Frank!" The shout that began on the left flank soon spread to our center, then beyond the dawn mist to the right.
Not just the left flank, but our entire line had undoubtedly held back the cavalry charge. Queen Henrietta's resolute surprise attack had been thwarted!
But from across the plain, the thunder of hoofbeats was once again approaching. I fought to still my heart, which was pounding with excitement, and stared straight ahead. Horse archers. Over a thousand of them were charging at us again.
"Ngh."
I realized it. The tactic Henrietta de Bretagne had chosen.
The Queen intended to attack in an endless, alternating sequence: horse archers in the first wave, lancers in the second, then horse archers again in the third, lancers in the fourth. In other words, we had only just weathered the very first wave.
Bretagne's spear, or Frank's shield? The sun was just beginning to rise. I ordered the archers moved forward again. Today was sure to be a long and arduous day...