For a moment, I was at a loss for words. It was absurd. Even with a clock secured, catapults were difficult to hit their mark. They could launch boulders all they wanted, but shrouded in fog and darkness, there'd be no way to confirm whether the shots were even flying true. The enemy's behavior made no sense.
"In the dead of night? We can't even see. Surely there aren't friendly units suffering damage from those attacks?"
Was it possible the Imperial Army had some method of piercing through the nighttime fog to verify their hits? If so, everything changed entirely. We had no way to strike back at their siege weapons, while they could happily pummel us at will. We'd gone through all the trouble of fortifying our positions in preparation for a knight charge, and now we might not even get to use them—forced to flee from the bombardment instead……
Commander Zepar put my fears to rest.
—Current damage to our right flank is zero. All units, maintain your composure and hold your positions.
Commander Zepar went on to repeat it over and over: stay calm, do not leave your positions. It seemed the commander had concluded the enemy was bombarding us purely to create confusion. Well, I agreed with his assessment. I couldn't think of any other intent behind the attack.
Laura, however, saw things differently. She twirled a strand of her golden hair around her finger as she spoke.
"There's no way they'd operate catapults without a clear purpose."
"But what meaning could a bombardment that doesn't even hit anything possibly have?"
"You need to rethink the assumption. They don't need to hit anything—perhaps that's exactly how the Imperial Army sees it."
She was saying that the boulders still raining down from afar weren't merely meant for destruction. Laura's serious demeanor was infectious, and I lowered my voice further as I asked.
"…If it's not for destruction, then what?"
"In my estimation, the enemy's goal is to lock down our army's movements. Even if the probability of a hit is virtually nonexistent, the boulders keep coming. Our troops naturally grow hesitant. We can't move our forces about recklessly. For whatever reason, the Imperial Army is trying to pin us in place."
I pressed my hand to my forehead. Laura's reasoning was persuasive. And though Laura said she didn't know the reason, I immediately grasped the enemy's intent. She wouldn't know—she hadn't yet experienced a large-scale, legion-level war. A headache began to set in.
"The Imperial Army is about to launch a full-scale offensive."
"Hm? How can you tell?"
It was basic strategy. You mount limited attacks across the entire front to fix the enemy's forces in place. Then you pick one point along the front line and concentrate your power there. If that section of the line collapses and there are no reserves left, it's game over.
And unfortunately……the "one point along the front line" the Imperial Army had chosen was exactly where we were standing.
The reason was obvious. Only the right flank wasn't being directly pelted with boulders. That meant the Imperial Army was already on the move toward it. No matter how godlike the Imperial Army's catapult skills might be, they weren't going to send boulders flying at the very ground their own troops were advancing on. It seemed the Imperial Army had observed our positions during the day before and identified our right flank as the most vulnerable.
I reported to the upper command immediately. Commander Zepar took my conjecture seriously. He fell into some sort of contemplative mood, letting his words trail off.
— The right flank will become the fiercest battlefield, then. Just as the Legion Commander envisioned……
Around five in the morning, a state of emergency was declared across every unit deployed on the right flank. The surroundings were pitch-black, and even monsters with sharp night vision couldn't make out anything beyond a hundred meters through the fog. The Imperial Army saw this as the perfect window to attack.
Thirty golems, ten fairies. Twelve Death Knights.
A total of fifty-two monsters made up my unit. The golems and fairies had all reached Level 10, the maximum a low-tier monster could hit. They were more powerful than your average mid-to-low-tier monster. And on top of that, Level 50 Death Knights. By human military classification, I had infantry, archers, and elite cavalry all accounted for. Numbers-wise, I had every reason to be confident! Besides, this was a pitch-black, godforsaken battlefield. Having more numbers didn't necessarily guarantee an advantage.
The real question was how the enemy would attack. Would they follow standard doctrine and lead with infantry, or would they go for a surprise assault, charging in with the knights from the start? If it was infantry, I liked my chances. If it was the knights……we'd dug holes and planted hundreds of stakes in front of our position, but honestly, I didn't think they'd hold. I'd have to pretend to fight, use the fog as cover, and fall back. Then link up with nearby units to mount a counterattack.
— The familiars have spotted the enemy.
The upper command relayed the reconnaissance report. The battle was unfolding exactly as Laura and I had predicted. The Imperial Army was advancing toward the right flank in multiple columns, intending to launch a full-scale offensive against it. They would shatter our right flank, then work their way through the left and center in turn. That had to be their plan.
According to the report, the Imperial Army had deployed both infantry and cavalry. This wasn't going to be a simple raid. It would be a brutal battle for both sides. The hills of Austerlitz would be drenched with untimely blood, watering the scrubland that had gone dry through winter and spring.
I waited in growing anxiety. Boulders were still shaking the earth every few minutes.
How much time had passed? Something flew out from beyond the black swamp of fog. Not one thing. Over a dozen. They sliced through the air with a sharp whistle, hurtling toward us. One of them embedded itself right in front of me. It was an arrow.
"……."
"……."
Laura and I instinctively looked at each other. Both of our faces had gone blank with disbelief. It wasn't because of the arrows themselves. Out there, in the distance — well over a hundred meters away — the thunder of hooves was ringing through the night. Arrows and the sound of hooves. That could only mean one thing. Laura's lips twisted into a grimace as she spat out:
"……Those are cavalry, aren't they?"
The enemy was deploying mounted archers.
The Imperial Army — or rather, was it General von Rosenberg, the supreme commander, in this case? The Count's tactics were absurdly unconventional. They had to be, to make even Laura lose her composure for a split second.
"Mounted archers, in the middle of the night!"
I could understand using catapults to pin down our center and right flank. But deploying mounted archers? That was beyond anything I'd imagined. And the reason was elementary. For mounted archers to unleash a volley at the enemy and then wheel around to retreat, they needed — obviously — flawless coordination among the riders.
If anything went wrong while firing and turning, they'd crash right into their own ranks. They had to maintain proper spacing between horsemen, and given the nature of mounted archery, they needed to release their arrows simultaneously for any chance of accuracy. Shooting from horseback already made accuracy terrible, so to deal any meaningful damage to the enemy, they had to overwhelm them with sheer volume of arrows fired all at once.
In short, mounted archery was already difficult to master, and executing it at a unit level was no small feat. ……But right now, the battlefield was insanely dark. One slight misstep and our own forces could easily collide with each other. Deploying elite cavalry archers in conditions like this? It was absolute madness.
The problem was that this madness was actually working against us.
"Seriously, don't those lunatics care about the cost of all those arrows……."
"They're probably arrows distributed through the knightly order, not ones funded out of pocket. I've never heard of the Habsburg Empire running any specialized mounted archery training program. I think they might be the retinue cavalry of the Von Rosenberg knightly order."
Laura and I talked while hiding behind our cover. In preparation for a cavalry charge, our unit had fortified its position as solidly as possible. Naturally, we'd also deployed plenty of cover to shelter from arrow fire — requisitioned wagons from the territory, door panels stripped from houses in the villages we'd passed through on our march from Brandenburg.
In this world, where residents were constantly beset by monster threats, people generally built their front doors thick and sturdy, which made them excellent barriers in a pinch. Thanks to the safety-conscious mindset of the locals, our unit had suffered virtually no casualties despite the relentless volleys from the mounted archers. If the only damage was two arrows lodged in a pair of golems, that hardly counted. Arrows hitting a golem with physical resistance of -50% were about as threatening as mosquito bites.
Incidentally, Death Knights had physical resistance of a whopping -70%. And fairies were so small that even if you wanted to hit them with arrows, you couldn't. Our unit, though it hadn't been planned that way, was almost perfectly shielded against ranged attacks. However.
"……We can't move at all."
Laura groaned. That was exactly the problem — having to stay hidden behind cover, completely still.
Our unit had strong physical resistance and could afford to move around a bit, but the other units weren't so lucky. For most of them, the main fighting force consisted of Orcs and Goblins. Orcs and Goblins had no physical resistance to speak of. When arrow fire was raining down like this, they had to stay meekly hidden behind cover.
The mounted archers' volleys weren't just targeting our unit — they covered the entire right flank, which meant the right flank's range of movement was essentially locked down completely.
The Imperial Army's intentions were crystal clear. They'd move freely while keeping us pinned in place. According to the scouts we'd sent ahead, the Empire was concentrating its infantry forces on a section of our right flank. With our troops frozen in place under the mounted archers' barrage, they planned to annihilate a portion of the right.
I let out a heavy sigh.
"That's Von Rosenberg alright. Simple, but devastatingly effective tactics."
First came the catapult assault, then the mounted archer assault.
Everything operated according to a single principle. The catapults would hammer away relentlessly to lock down the Demon Lord's central and left armies. Then the mounted archers would lock down the entire right flank. Finally, they'd concentrate their forces on a section of the right.……They had literally recreated the most fundamental principle of military strategy: 'preserve your own mobility while killing the enemy's.'
The frustrating part was that even though we'd figured out the Imperial Army's tactics, there was nothing we could do about it. You had to be able to move before you could even attempt anything! Damn it. The enemy was advancing their infantry through the fog with painstaking caution, while all we could do was hide behind wooden doors and sigh.
"What about requesting reinforcements from the corps commander?"
"That would probably be denied."
I shook my head.
"Barbatos wants our right wing to draw in as many enemy forces as possible. Pulling troops from the central or left wing to protect the right would be putting the cart before the horse."
Time was running out. At this rate, some section of the right wing was going to be overrun before long. We couldn't request reinforcements from outside, and the right wing's units couldn't move freely either.
In the end, my unit was left with only one option. A pretty damn miserable option, at that.
"My unit will annihilate the horse archers on our own."
"...Are you sure about that? Your lord's forces will take losses."
"I don't like it either, but there's no other way. If I sit around trying to preserve my forces, the enemy infantry will break through and we'll end up getting swallowed whole later."
Truly, they were the most annoying enemy to deal with. Margrave von Rosenberg was definitely a tier above Kurt Schleimacher of the Black Mountain Fortress. Kurt had been bad enough, but von Rosenberg—this man had to be eliminated for the sake of my future peace of mind. I tightened my armor and spoke.
"Prepare yourselves, Laura. It seems our unit has been selected as tonight's main event for the Austerlitz Ball."
Laura nodded. Her gaze was far off, lost in thought. What was she thinking about? Was she feeling regret over participating in a large-scale battle for the first time, or was she struck by the irony of having joined the Crescent Alliance Army—humanity's enemy—to fight against the Empire? I couldn't tell.
============================ Author's Afterword ============================
Austerlitz Battle Situation Overview:
The Empire's left wing has begun attacking the Demon Lord's army's right wing. Meanwhile, exploiting their high-ground advantage, the Empire is concentrating catapult fire on the Demon Lord's central and left forces. On the Demon Lord's army's right wing, the knight order's attendant cavalry are being dispersed and deployed in horse archer tactics.