The situation was beginning to spiral rapidly.
First, I reported to Commander Zepar that I intended to launch an independent counterattack. Commander Zepar himself was also feeling extremely frustrated by the current situation.
We quickly reviewed the situation on the spot. A new operational plan was drawn up right there. True to his reputation as a veteran commander of the Plains Faction, Zepar had a solid grasp of the battlefield situation and gave serious consideration to my proposal to deploy small-unit guerrilla tactics.
Heh. This is why it matters who your superior turns out to be. If Zepar had been incompetent, he would have hesitated to change the operational plan on the fly. And the result? The right flank would have withered away until it collapsed entirely. The Imperial Army led by von Rosenberg was certainly capable — enough to deploy cavalry archers at night. But the allied forces under Commander Zepar's watch were equally capable. That fact filled me with boundless confidence.
— However, Dantalion. Rather than operating small-unit guerrilla forces, wouldn't it be better to mount a full-scale counterattack?
Before accepting my proposal, Commander Zepar put forward yet another option. His reasoning was this: even if it required pushing ourselves, we should have all units on the right flank launch a simultaneous counterattack. Just as our visibility was limited, the enemy was effectively blind as well. If we charged in swiftly, we would force the cavalry archers into close-quarters combat. There was no way cavalry archers could hold up in melee. They would have no choice but to retreat, and we would pursue them while simultaneously encircling their infantry forces. In one fell swoop, we'd begin an encirclement and annihilation.
"That's brilliant! That would be far better."
I exclaimed in admiration. Commander Zepar's strategy was quite convincing. The enemy's intentions would be immediately thwarted. The right flank would break free, and we could plunge the enemy infantry into utter chaos.
The more chaotic the battlefield became, the more it favored monsters over humans. Monsters had excellent night vision, and they received our Demon Lord's commands directly. Moreover, at this very moment, the Demon Lords were able to communicate with one another. The chances of successfully achieving encirclement and annihilation were quite high…
— Then let's proceed with the counterattack immediately. You stand by for just a moment.
I was about to reply "Yes" when Laura carefully interjected from beside me. She requested permission to speak. I tilted my head but granted it readily. I served as the operations officer of the Crescent Alliance Army's Sixth Legion, and Laura, my closest aide, was entitled to be treated as an assistant operations officer. Laura offered her apologies and immediately addressed Commander Zepar.
"Forgive my interruption, Supreme Commander. I am Laura de Farnese, assistant operations officer. It is presumptuous of me, but in this young woman's judgment, the counterattack operation contains a serious flaw."
— Oh? What is it, Assistant Officer de Farnese?
"There is a possibility that a knight order is waiting in the rear of the Imperial Army."
I was stunned. A knight order? It had already been confirmed that the infantry was marching alone. There had been no reports whatsoever of a knight order moving in concert. Commander Zepar seemed taken aback as well, his voice rising a full octave.
— A knight order? What makes you think so?
"If this young woman may dare to speculate, the Imperial Army does not intend merely to pin down our right flank. The Imperial Army is luring us in."
Laura explained her prediction clearly and concisely. She laid out Count von Rosenberg's battle scenario as follows.
First, the cavalry archer assault. Like a drizzle soaking through clothes, our right flank would gradually accumulate damage from the riders' volley fire. The Demon Lord's army would judge that if the situation continued as is, the Imperial infantry would eventually attempt a breakthrough at a single point. To turn the tide, they would launch an all-out counterattack. — It was precisely at this moment, Laura predicted, that a knight order would suddenly appear from the rear.
I grew serious and spoke.
"...If Laura is right, then we'll have to fight a pitched battle against the knight order."
— Agreed. Facing a knight order with no countermeasures in place... it's a horrifying thought.
Commander Zepar's tone was one of revulsion. Come to think of it, he had a history from the old Crescent Alliance Army of charging headlong at a knight order and getting his forces utterly annihilated. No one else could match Zepar's sense of wariness when it came to the power of a knight order.
Commander Zepar immediately dispatched mounted-servitor scouting teams to intensively probe the Imperial Army's rear. If Laura's prediction turned out to be wrong, we would have wasted precious time on the battlefield with excessively cautious scouting to no avail. The Imperial infantry was advancing slowly even at this very moment. Laura's mistake would become my mistake. If the battle ended in defeat, someone would certainly come to hold me accountable.
But I chose to heed Laura's warning. She was a woman who had fought on equal footing for years against the Hero's party—the greatest warrior group in the continent's history. Knowing Laura's original fate as I did, I absolutely could not afford to dismiss her warning lightly.
Were the cavalry archers truly a feint? Was the Imperial Army preparing a knight order as their hidden countermeasure...? Would Laura prove her genius or wouldn't she? Either way, I reorganized my troops so we could launch a charge at any moment. Five anxious minutes or so drifted by.
Then the slime quietly opened its mouth. Commander Zepar's voice flowed out mechanically.
— Dantalion. A knight order has been sighted in the Imperial Army's rear. They were camouflaged behind a ridge in our blind spot. Exactly as your adjutant predicted.
"...!"
I instinctively looked at Laura. Despite being enveloped in the pre-dawn darkness, her eyes gleamed with a deep light. A chill ran down my spine in an instant. Even though her prediction had proven correct—even though her mere handful of words had just saved her allies from the brink of ruin—she showed not a trace of emotion, lost calmly in thought.
What an extraordinary monster she was. She was only seventeen! At her age, I had been dozing off in a chair at the training hall... Laura at seventeen had changed the fate of an entire legion. My skull went cold. Just now, without a single clash of blades, Count von Rosenberg and Adjutant Laura de Farnese had fought the quietest battle in the world. And Laura had won...
— I always considered you a brilliant strategist, but now I see you also possess sufficient qualities of a sovereign. A sovereign's qualities are determined by those of their retainers, after all. I would praise you and your subordinate a hundred times over, but circumstances prevent me from doing so.
"Yes."
We had now fully grasped the enemy's strategy. The tactical objective of the cavalry archers was twofold. The first was to lock down the movement of the Demon Lord army's entire right flank. The second was the feint itself.
I absentmindedly glanced past the cover. The cavalry archers were pouring out dozens of arrows per minute, as if they had arrows to spare. A rain of arrows flying toward us with gleeful abandon—that was nothing less than a tempting hand beckoning us forward. They were speaking through their volleys.
*'Getting angry? Then come out and try to crush us. Leave the sturdy positions you built in preparation for the knight order's charge. Let's have a proper fight on this barren ridge!'*
Sly little bastards.
Laura summarized the situation.
"From the Imperial Army's perspective, it doesn't matter how our forces react. If we continue to endure the arrow barrage as we are, the Imperial Army will push their infantry forward. Part of our right flank will be pierced. If we launch a large-scale counterattack instead, the cavalry archers will withdraw en masse. In their place, the knight order will charge. Our right flank collapses."
─ Hmm. Either way, the situation is thoroughly disadvantageous to us. This era's Imperial Border Count is far from incompetent……
With the counterattack option ruled out, we were left with only one choice. The one I'd originally proposed — guerrilla tactics at the small-unit scale. We immediately agreed that this was our sole answer. The small units in question, of course, were Dantalion units specialized in physical resilience.
The new operational objectives assigned to my unit were as follows.
First: annihilate the mounted archer sub-unit directly in front of our unit.
Second: once the sub-unit is annihilated, our unit immediately transitions to guerrilla warfare. We then collapse, one by one, the mounted archer sub-units pinning down other allied units.
Third: throughout this process, maintain constant coordination with nearby allied units.
The Imperial Army had split their mounted archers into small sub-units for deployment. The ones conducting hit-and-run raids in front of my unit right now numbered only about twenty, judging by the arrow count. This was only natural. The Imperial Army wasn't targeting just a portion of the right flank — they were raining arrows across the entire right wing. They had no choice but to spread the mounted archers as wide as physically possible.
In other words, even if the mounted archers numbered a thousand strong as a grand formation, the ones we'd actually face on the ground were small units of twenty to fifty. There were odds. No — we would create the odds. That's what a battlefield is! If you don't move your own feet, no one hands you a chance at victory.
─ I find myself having to rely on your efforts. Once today passes, I hope we'll share a toast to victory together.
The communication ended.
Hoo.
I drew in a deep breath. The chill air unique to dawn cooled my lungs.
From this point forward, aside from my unit, the entire right flank would transition to defensive hold. No matter how much the mounted archers harassed them, they would never leave their fortified positions. Positions that had been established over the past few days with anti-cavalry tactics in mind — essentially small fortress-like strongholds. They would hold there to the very end. The Imperial Army's luring strategy had been thwarted by Laura.
"It's a race against time."
"Yeah. A race against time."
Which would come first — the Imperial Army's infantry attacking a portion of our right flank, or my guerrilla unit driving the mounted archers into retreat? This would decide the opening act of the Battle of Austerlitz. Either way, things had turned completely absurd.
What is this? Seriously? Am I cosmically destined to be forever tumbling downhill? Damn it. There's never a single day I can rest in peace.……Who could I even pour this injustice out to? My hatred for Venus Pants surged up all over again. That bastard — even if I kill him, I won't let him die clean. If I can kill him, that is.
The one silver lining was that the Imperial Army, deeply concerned about severely limited visibility, was advancing their infantry formations extremely slowly. The sluggish march speed wasn't just due to visibility issues — it also carried another intention: giving the mounted archers ample time to lure our forces out. The Imperial Army still didn't know we'd seen through their luring strategy. That ignorance left me with a sliver of breathing room.
Count von Rosenberg. Your mistake was overlooking the fact that our army has Laura de Farnese. She's a genius. Still green, yes, but the ability to dominate a battlefield clearly lies dormant within her. Let her show them.
"My lord, now."
The mounted archers loosed a final volley and wheeled back. Beyond the fog, the sound of hoofbeats receded into the distance.
Laura and I broke from cover and sprinted toward the fog. It wasn't a reckless charge by the two of us alone. Twelve Death Knights, invisible as ethereal spirits, trailed behind us. We ran until we'd closed to the right distance, then dropped into a prone position.
"……."
The dew-soaked brush pricked sharply at my cheeks. Insects crawled through the grass, but I paid them no mind. I pressed my ear gently to the earth, straining to catch the hoofbeats of the mounted archer battalion.
After perhaps thirty seconds, the ground trembled faintly. The thunder of hooves was closing in fast.
============================ Afterword ============================
Austerlitz Battle Situation:
On the Demon Lord Army's right wing (= the Imperial Army's left wing), the mounted archer attacks continue. The Imperial Army's knight order has set an ambush in the blind spot behind the hills, banking on the Demon Lord Army sallying out to annihilate the mounted archers. The Demon Lord Army has seen through their intentions and is holding a strong defensive posture. Meanwhile, the Dantalion unit has begun to move.
On the Demon Lord Army's left wing (= the Imperial Army's right wing), battle is also on the verge of erupting. Unlike the right wing, however, both sides on the left wing are maintaining an extremely passive stance.