A bad premonition always comes true.
The enemy showed no signs of fatigue, unleashing wave after wave of assaults without pause. As time wore on, the warhorses' forelegs pounded ever harder into the charge, and the knights drove their lances into our ranks before wheeling back. First wave: horse archers. Second wave: mounted charges. One unit's attack cycle repeated over seven times.
Disgusting bastards. I let out something between a sigh and a scream.
"They say Bretagne's warhorses don't even need to eat!"
The battle had been raging for over five hours. In that time, certain Bretagnian companies had charged roughly twelve times. Even with their armor dented and crushed, the cavalry hurled themselves at the spearmen without a care.
"Their momentum is still gradually declining, though."
Jeremy wiped the blood from his blade in a single stroke and spoke.
"No matter how extraordinary their men and horses are, they're still living creatures. There's no way they won't tire."
"The problem is our own soldiers are nearly at the point of collapse. Damn it."
The spearmen were clearly running on fumes.
For every enemy cavalryman who fell, three to five of our own died. Nearly a four-to-one casualty ratio. I'd sent messengers to the center and right flank just a while ago, and the situation there was no different from our own.
We had crammed a total of fifty-one thousand infantry into the line. Thanks to that, we'd managed to hold the palisade. If the disparity in forces between the two sides had been less than three times… an unimaginable disaster would have unfolded and then some.
Now I understood why Commander Zepar had regarded the enemy's cavalry force with such dread.
They were abnormally powerful. Not just the knights who could project their Aura beyond their bodies, but also the cavalrymen who had trained in Aura as knight retainers.
The lance lengths alone were monstrous. Five to eight meters! Unless you filled a phalanx with Orc spearmen, who on earth could face them on an open field? It was nothing short of a nightmare.
Now I could perfectly understand what Barbatos had told me. Commander Zepar, who had ordered the charge straight at the knight brigade, was the craziest of the crazy. Those things weren't even the same species as humans. They were something else entirely—something unspeakably foul, utterly different from ordinary people.
"They're charging again."
"Son of a bitch. Worse than dogs, those mongrel bastards."
Thousands upon thousands of men and horses were charging across the plain.
"If I ever charge into cavalry combat again, I swear I'll suck Parsi's cock!"
"Who the hell is that now? Good grief."
Jeremy sighed heavily as he headed toward the front line with a "Be back later." In the event that a knight broke through the lines, Jeremy's assassination squad would have to do its work. Five of those squad members were already dead.
"Cough, cough… damn it."
I wanted to use the voice-amplification magic to rally the soldiers once more, but it was impossible. My voice had already gone hoarse like a skeleton's. That had happened three hours ago.
Soldiers impaled on lances screamed in agony. Warhorses crashed to the ground with piteous cries. Friend and foe alike had been reduced to animals. Peasants who had been tilling the land were slicked with blood and tears, wailing in anguish, and the people of Bretagne were being sacrificed in a foreign land far from home.
"Father… please save this man…"
A soldier approached, supporting a wounded comrade. I sighed inwardly. Not again.
"His arm's been cut off, Father. Please, have mercy…"
There was no need to tell me. It was plain to see with my own eyes. The wounded man — no, the dead man — had both arms severed just above the elbows. The cuts were terrifyingly clean. Bad luck, of course — it had been a third-rank knight or higher that got to him.
The soldier kissed my toes and bowed his head to the ground again and again.
"He's the last one left from my village, Father. If he dies too, how am I supposed to face the townspeople back home… Father. Please, I'm begging you, show mercy!"
"Listen here, my friend."
I struggled to push the words out. My throat felt heavy with dread. This was truly a cursed thing to do.
"I'm afraid even a priestess of the Goddess cannot bring back the dead."
"Huh?"
"Your friend is already gone."
The soldier looked at the wounded man's face. The wounded man — no, the fallen — lay with eyes half-lidded and mouth agape. As though he still had more to see and more to say. The soldier's face went pale as he looked back and forth between his friend and me.
"Huh? Huh? What? He was talking just a moment ago, no — just a second ago… What?"
His eyes were begging me to take back what I had just said.
It was probably the soldier, after all. He had been talking to his friend right up until the end. Just hold on a little longer, endure the pain just a little more, the priest will heal you soon, just a little longer… He had barely managed to fight his way out of the allied pike square. And somewhere in the process, the wounded man had died.
Without even a chance to say goodbye to the friend heading to the same place. That was all.
The soldier slapped the fallen man's cheeks back and forth. He told him to open his eyes, to get up. There was no response. Only then did the soldier realize his friend had fallen into eternal sleep, and he burst into tears. Tears streamed down the rough, bearded face of a middle-aged man. His cries were half-buried in dust.
"……."
I patted the soldier on the back. It was hypocrisy. But even hypocrisy was what he needed right now. There was nothing fair about standing on a battlefield anyway.
Something had to be done. But what else could be done at this point? Either the enemy collapsed from exhaustion first, or our side crumbled first. One of the two. There was no alternative besides holding on……
Did the commanders all arrive at roughly the same conclusion?
"His Grace the Duke intends to deploy the reserves."
A messenger had arrived from the general command. It seemed that commanders elsewhere, not just on my left flank where I held responsibility, had also decided that 'something must be done.'
And honestly, it was understandable. If I bore the weight of twelve thousand lives, then Duke Gyz, as commander-in-chief, carried a staggering sixty-three thousand on his shoulders. Ten thousand and sixty thousand were on a different scale entirely. Not just in a rhetorical sense — they were truly on a different level. The psychological pressure would have been incomparably greater.
"Reserves? We still have reserves left in our forces?"
"The allied cavalry. His Grace plans to put them to use."
With the messenger's supplementary explanation, it clicked.
Why hadn't I considered it until now! Of course. Just as the enemy had cavalry, so did we. A thousand knights and ten thousand horsemen, at that. They might not match the quality of Bretagne's elite riders, but the enemy was exhausted.
Our cavalry, on the other hand, was fresh. They hadn't participated in the fighting, so naturally.
"I see……I had no cavalry under my own command, so it simply didn't occur to me. His Grace has devised the finest move available."
I nodded. The messenger spoke.
"May I convey that the right-flank commander has also agreed to the operation?"
"Ah, certainly. Though I have no cavalry myself, so it's hardly a meaningful endorsement on my part. Please tell His Grace that I wish him the best of fortune."
I managed a wry smile. The messenger bowed and departed.
It wasn't really a matter of whether I agreed or not. High-value forces like cavalry were held by the central empress-faction nobles and the right-flank Batavia Republic Army. In truth, they could have reached their own agreement and simply issued me orders, and that would have been fine.
And yet, the Duke of Gise had gone out of his way to send a messenger seeking my consent. It told me everything I needed to know about how thorough and meticulous a man he was. He had the virtue of drawing people in.
'If only the Emperor had been half the man the Duke of Gise was, the civil war would never have happened.'
It was misfortune for Franck, but good fortune for me. And, for the wounded soldier who had just died moments ago, it was tragedy as well…
I mounted my horse and looked toward the rear. Ten thousand cavalry were moving slowly forward. I had already ordered the path cleared so they could pass through our pikemen's phalanx formation without difficulty.
I let out a long sigh.
"So it's come to the end. It hasn't been an easy fight…"
"At last, it begins."
Queen Henrietta smiled. She was clad in heavy armor and mounted on her warhorse. Around her, the Bretagne staff officers sat in a row with their horses' heads pointed forward.
The enemy's cursed wooden palisades. Between the barricades, through the narrow gaps, our pikemen were slowly falling back. The queen suppressed her excitement and spoke.
"Pass the word to the lancers immediately. Tell them to arm themselves with lances at once."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
A staff officer relayed the order to the messengers, who saluted crisply and then spurred their horses off at full gallop. The number of lances prepared for today's battle alone was staggering. They had ransacked every last speck of dust from the Franck imperial armory, of course, and had also worked the great forges of Parisium at a relentless pace for days on end.
"Saint of Longwy. Last time, I told you that the one who sold that intelligence was someone close to the Emperor."
"Ma'am? Ah, yes. I remember, Your Majesty."
Jacqueline Longwy, the Saint of Athena, answered.
"That was a lie."
"…Excuse me?"
Henrietta de Bretagne gave a thin smile.
"If that information broker had truly wanted to stop our Bretagne army, she would never have called for reinforcements from yet another foreign threat—the Republic. Someone brought the Republic into this on their own initiative. It has to be one of the two."
She first pointed to one man. The figure who sought to be enthroned with the Republic's power — in other words, the Duke of Guise, Henri de Guise, who currently commanded the aristocratic army.
"The Duke of Guise was the only one who withdrew safely from the last battle. Meanwhile, his political rival, Marshal Montmorency, was killed in action. There's a strong possibility the Duke of Guise orchestrated everything."
"And what is the second possibility, Your Majesty?"
"Longwy. A change of perspective."
Henrietta received a lance from her attendant. The lances of the Bretagne army, made of fir, were hollowed out to reduce weight. This made them lighter but less durable — however, Bretagne's lances were designed to shatter upon impact while still piercing through enemy soldiers.
As a second-rank knight herself, Henrietta gripped the lance with practiced ease.
"No one moved the Republic. The Republic itself manipulated the northern nobles of Frank."
"…The Republic, you say?"
"Yes. And that's why it makes sense that they insisted on overcoming Frank's danger through foreign power. Hmm. It's been quite some time since I last charged on horseback."
The warhorse the queen rode snorted lightly, as if to say, Don't worry.
A warhorse with an jet-black body and jet-black mane. The queen had named the fine steed "Crow's Feather." She treasured it as the perfect mount to display Bretagne's symbol — the black lily.
"If the Duke of Guise is the culprit, we would have needed to lure him deep into a trap."
Queen Henrietta gently stroked the horse's mane.
"He's a man cunning and sharp enough to sacrifice his own allies. He wouldn't have taken the field at all unless the battlefield tilted sufficiently in his favor. Hm, he would have dragged things out into an endless war of attrition. As we were losing in justification, a long war would have worked against us. Batavia would have favored political scheming as well."
The cavalry, who had been attacking in alternating waves, began forming up across the plain. A single line — the classic formation for a mounted charge. The enemy cavalry were also filing out from behind their barriers, steadily forming their own ranks.
"Regardless of which is the truth, we need to eliminate the Duke of Guise and the Batavian army. Today, we cannot simply win."
Queen Henrietta rode at an unhurried pace. Her staff officers moved along with the great queen.
"We must crush them utterly. Saint Longwy, wish good fortune upon me and my soldiers. We need to give it everything one more time."
"Yes. May destiny align with Your Majesty's will."
The queen's party joined the cavalry, taking their place at the vanguard of the charge.