An angry voice erupted from various points among the encampment.
"When do we move in, Commander!"
"We haven't received the order yet. Hold your positions!"
"Our soldiers are going to get slaughtered at this rate!"
They were knights who had dismounted and been urgently deployed to the center to hold back the ogres. Knights were only human, after all — no one could help but tremble with anxiety when two hundred ogres loomed before them. And so many of their allies were already being massacred!
The body of a militiaman flew into the air after being struck by an ogre's club. The body, sheared in two above and below the waist, fell in two pieces in different directions. A knight shouted.
"Commander!"
"Not yet!"
The commander roared back the order, but even he could barely understand it. Wasn't their mission to defend the first line, composed of citizen-soldiers? If the ogres were left to run rampant like this, the militiamen would surely lose their will to fight and flee.
But Elisabeth, the Supreme Commander, saw things differently.
'I'll use the militiamen to offset the ogres' charge.'
Elisabeth coolly observed the situation at the front.
'We deal with the ogres after they've lost their momentum. Minimize the casualties among the knights.'
The militiamen had been expendable from the start.
Knights had been sprinkled throughout the first line solely for the purpose of dealing with the ogres efficiently. 'Protect the militiamen' and 'slaughter the ogres' — there was an enormous gap between these two objectives.
Two hundred ogres shattered the palisade defense line in an instant. While a thousand militiamen fell helplessly, the main body of the Habsburg Imperial Army — the Helvetica mercenaries — were slowly advancing. It was then that Elisabeth raised her right arm.
"Now!"
What was "now"? No explanation was necessary. Kurz Schleiermacher was no fool. He shouted in Habsburg.
"Issue the sortie order to the knights!"
"Yes, General!"
Aides who had been waiting raised their flags immediately. A bugle call, pitched an octave higher than the rest, rang out at length from the command post — the signal to issue orders. Each unit had two or three sharp-eared soldiers assigned to it, and they hurriedly pointed the rest of the unit toward the rear.
"The order, Commander. It's the sortie order."
"Well, that was fast."
The commander glanced behind him. The purple-and-white banner symbolizing the Republican Knights. The black banner representing the center. And the red banner signifying an attack. The order had been issued exactly as the soldier had reported.
The commander cast off his burden and straightened his helmet.
"Charge! Slaughter those filthy monstrosities!"
First, the dismounted knights charged out with longswords in hand, burning with the most fervor of all. The instinctive fear of the ogres, the pre-battle nervousness — the moment they raised their right foot and stomped the ground, it all went flying away somewhere.
"For the glory of Habsburg!"
"Long live the Consul! Long live the Republic!"
Weapons of war, raised since childhood for the sole purpose of being thrown onto the battlefield, surged forward in a mass. They had been indoctrinated with the Republic's ideology by their instructors, and above all, they knew all too well that the cost of their daily food and shelter came from the people's taxes. Now was the time to repay the great Republic, and the beautiful Consul!
— KRRRAAAAH!
The ogres finally sensed that worthy opponents were rushing toward them.
They had been growing cold-blooded from the monotonous slaughter. The ogres were warriors too. They took pride in the battlefield. If there was no difference between smashing a rabbit's skull and blowing apart an enemy soldier's spine, then why bother crawling all the way out here to fight?
Veins bulged from the ogres' forearms. Slaughter! Destruction! Following the two words carved into their instincts, the ogres swung their iron clubs and axes.
"Don't face them head-on!"
"Draw their attention! Spread them out!"
The more experienced veteran knights gave calm orders. But drawing their attention meant that at least one of them would have to face an ogre directly.
Knights and ogres clashed all along the first line of the Habsburg Republic. Most of them, by sheer luck, dodged the ogres' blows. But a few unlucky ones took hits dead on. An ogre's axe shattered a shield to pieces and crushed the body beneath it.
"Sibyl! Damn it, Sibyl is down!"
"Don't be an idiot, keep your eyes off the dead man. Does the thing in front of you look like nothing more than an oversized boar to you?"
"Attack! Keep attacking without pause!"
And so the front line slowly began to stabilize.
A precious respite was granted to the militiamen. Knights were dying right in front of them, but what mattered was that they had escaped the immediate disaster. Some militiamen erupted in anger at having been left to fend for themselves for so long.
"You lazy bastards. Another moment later and we'd all be dead."
"Oh, you're a fine one to talk, you moral reject. They came and helped — what's with the complaining? Can't you see the knights dying over there?"
"Tch. They were always meant to die here."
The militiamen, who had been pushed far back by the ogres' charge, once again reassembled into a ragged formation. They deserved praise for not turning and fleeing on the spot.
The fact that if they ran from here, the Republican capital of Munich would fall. The fact that the Demon Lord's army that had trampled their homeland was right before their eyes. These truths gave the militiamen the strength to walk forward, and then forward again. Clenching their teeth, the militiamen screamed at the top of their lungs.
"Keep moving forward! Ignore the ogres and march!"
The militiamen pushed past the ogres and reformed their ranks.
Not far away, enemy soldiers were approaching. Helvetica mercenaries.
The mercenaries marched with longspears in hand, singing a war hymn handed down since ancient times. The peculiar singing style of the dwarves and elves drifted hauntingly across the plain. High notes and low notes vibrated together, shaking the air with the melody.
Heads of the Gigantes severed, a hundred serpents writhe—
Though buried under mountains and crushed beneath the heavens—
The thirst for slaughter and blood shall birth a volcanic eruption—
Even the gods shall flee, and mankind shall perish—
The Gigantes were monsters from ancient myth. They had once driven all the gods to the brink of terror and nearly brought about the end of the world. But Heracles, the hero of the human race, had allied with the gods and defeated the Gigantes. Driven from the lands and driven to burrow into the Alps, the people of Helvetica had taken to openly comparing themselves to the Gigantes.
"KRUH! KRUH-HAH! KRUHALA, KRUH!"
The mercenaries stomped their feet as they added the refrain. An elf employed a peculiar vocal technique, drawing out an aria that stretched on without end. A song of unbridled barbarism unfolded there. But within that barbarism lay a regular rhythm, and it was precisely that which made it sound so terrifying to human ears.
Elisabeth stared at the front.
"Deploy the flanks."
"Issue the order to both flanks! Sortie!"
Kurz Schleiermacher repeated the command, and his aides echoed it.
The purple-and-white banner symbolizing the Knights. The blue banner for the right flank, the green banner for the left. Finally, the red banner ordering the attack snapped vigorously in the wind. At the same time, the bugle call rang out far and wide through the air.
"General."
"I'm not deaf either. It's our turn."
Charles Lichtenhoffen, the blonde commander of the Imperial Guard Knights, hummed a tune.
Charles Lichtenhoffen commanded the cavalry of the right flank. Traditionally, this was the position held by the army's supreme commander. But since Elisabeth was the supreme commander now, Charles Lichtenhoffen had been patiently awaiting orders. Fortunately, the need for patience had just vanished.
"Shall we go offer a warm welcome to those Helvetica bumpkins?"
"Yes, General. Sound the bugles!"
The cavalry raised their bugles as though lifting wine goblets to drink.
They pitied their comrades locked in a desperate struggle with the ogres in the center. A knight's true worth was realized only when mounted on a warhorse.
With a sharpened lance at his hip, cutting through the air at an angle, feeling a sharp yet intense shiver from the trembling ground, and finally synchronizing his breathing with the warhorse's labored breath to charge forward without end —
It was war, yet it was also the aesthetics of war. From the saddle of a galloping warhorse, everything became light. Light enough to willingly throw away one's life.
"Mount up!"
"Mount up!"
Charles Lichtenhoffen shouted. A thousand cavalrymen on the right flank accelerated in unison.
On the far side of the plain, another formation of horsemen was charging forward. Enemy cavalry. As if facing a mirror, the moment they sped up on this side, the other side matched them. Charles Lichtenhoffen felt as though he were commanding thousands of cavalry all at once.
'If we stop, will they stop too!'
Charles Lichtenhoffen grinned.
'As if that would happen — and it must not!'
On the opposite side, Baroness Juliana de Blanc was leading the cavalry. This cavalry commander who had distinguished herself alongside Laura in the Second Chrysanthemum War had already annihilated the enemy's cavalry on several occasions. She had no doubt that she would slaughter them again this time.
"Forward!"
"Forward!"
Baroness Juliana de Blanc shouted fiercely. Her long hair whipped in the wind behind her. The Baroness wore no helmet — it would only obstruct her vision. The thousand cavalry following Baroness Juliana de Blanc accelerated as one.
— Thudududum, th-thunk!
A thin haze of dust began to settle over the ground.
Baroness Juliana de Blanc smelled the earth. This was it. Every time she felt this scent of soil, the blood surged alive throughout her body. She knew that the smell of earth felt from underground and the smell of earth from atop a warhorse were entirely different. This was the smell of war.
"Charge!"
"Charge!"
Charles Lichtenhoffen and Juliana de Blanc both cried out at the same time, neither waiting for the other. On this side, a thousand cavalrymen raised their lances. On that side, a thousand more leveled theirs. The two formations had now closed completely upon each other.
And in a single instant —
"Charge!"
"Glory to Helvetica! Glory to the Goddess Athena!"
"Charge! Charge! Long live the Habsburg Republic!"
Warhorses surged forward at full speed. Heated breaths burst from the horses' bits. In a span of less than ten seconds, the cavalry of both armies closed the distance. The soldiers screamed as they thrust their lances — and at last they collided.
"Screams and screams, roars and roars intertwined. One soldier took an enemy lance squarely and tumbled from his horse. Another had his throat pierced by a sharp lancehead. Blood spattered across the dust clouds rising from the fallen riders.
"Kill them! Kill them all!"
"Long live the Consul!"
Behind the vanguard, the second wave crashed, then the third, then the fourth — all colliding in rapid succession. Neither side slowed. The sound of cavalry smashing into one another rang deafeningly across the battlefield.
With this, the Battle of Munich entered its second act.