WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Abood

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◈ Friedrich's Battlefield

Chapter 113: A Victorious Battle (2)

Soon after, both armies finished forming their lines, and the battle began.

The first to move was Novakia’s host. Knowing that a drawn-out fight would only worsen their odds, they advanced with the momentum of men determined to settle the outcome in a single clash, over 2,000 infantry and archers surging forward.

Edelstein’s forces did not move from their formation. With infantry in front and archers behind, they held to a standard array identical to that of the enemy, calmly awaiting the collision.

As the Novakian host drew closer, Edelstein’s archers began to loft their arrows. Yet before those volleys could inflict much damage, Novakia’s infantry and archers pressed the advance all the harder, desperate to close quickly and force melee.

“Forward! Break the enemy, and you may seize and eat whatever you wish!”

“Food awaits us! Run, run!”

The officers’ shouts of encouragement drove the soldiers on, eyes bloodshot with hunger and frenzy, as they charged at full speed.

If they could defeat the enemy, occupy the camp, and retake the fortress, the food abandoned in flight would be theirs to devour freely. King Oscar himself had promised it, and so the men pushed through hunger and illness with sheer will, roaring as they ran.

In moments the distance between the armies closed, and Novakian infantry slammed into Edelstein’s infantry, hurling themselves into the line in a furious attempt to smash through.

Meanwhile, Novakia’s rear-line archers halted their advance and fired their arrows in high arcs. They sought to counter Edelstein’s archers, supporting their front line from behind.

Their numbers were not great, but among them were veterans who had survived the war with Arelia, and their skill was formidable.

With blistering speed and deadly precision, their shafts arced over their comrades’ heads and rained upon Edelstein’s infantry and archers alike.

“…Even with such a fierce charge, they do not break?”

Despite unleashing his starving men like ravenous beasts, driving them into the enemy with all the force they could muster, the enemy line did not falter. Watching from the main command, Oscar muttered with a grim expression.

The Edelstein Kingdom’s Albrecht Regiment, he had heard of their reputation for rigorous training, unit cohesion, and the formidable defense it produced. But never had he imagined their line would prove so unyielding.

Oscar had believed that goading his hungry soldiers into a desperate assault, smashing into the enemy to tear their formation apart, was the only path to victory.

And indeed, the infantry had struck with force enough to crush an ordinary army with ease. Yet this was the result.

“…Send out the cavalry on the left wing. Strike the enemy’s formation from their right flank.”

If this failed as well, then all truly was lost. With that grim thought, Oscar gave his next command.

・・・・・・

“Do not yield! Not a single step back! All for His Majesty the King!”

“For His Majesty the King!”

At the very front of the battlefield, where the infantry of both sides clashed head-on, the foremost ranks of Edelstein’s line were held by the regular soldiers of the Albrecht Regiment and the Eisenhut Marquisate’s forces.

When the regiment’s infantry battalion commander, responsible for the whole line, shouted his order, the knights and soldiers roared their reply in unison.

These were the troops who enjoyed Rebecca Eisenhut’s deepest trust.

True to the words they cried, they met the enemy’s charge without the slightest faltering, holding formation as they received the impact.

Shields locked to form a wall, blades thrusting out through the gaps, they fought with such vigor that it seemed they might drive the enemy back instead.

The source of this unshakable defense lay in their morale, and the source of their morale was none other than Margrave Rebecca Eisenhut herself, born of the Eisenhut bloodline.

Among the officers and veterans forming the backbone of the Albrecht Regiment, many hailed from the Eisenhut domain.

And for the knights and soldiers of the Eisenhut domain’s army, their commander Rebecca was not merely a superior officer, she was the head of their liege house, the very lord to whom they had sworn their loyalty.

All of them, like Rebecca, bore the blood of another people.

In Edelstein they had once been outsiders.

Now they were members of the kingdom, sharing a sense of kinship with their fellow subjects, yet still conscious that their roots and culture were not quite the same as the rest.

The Eisenhut Marquisate, though descended from foreigners, had risen to nobility within Edelstein. Its present head, Rebecca, was the descendant of a line that had long protected those of foreign blood within the kingdom. In another history, she might well have been queen of the northern marches.

Their absolute protector, the current head of that house, had sworn unbreakable loyalty to Edelstein’s royal family.

Though of foreign descent, she was treated as one of the most distinguished nobles of the realm. As commander of a royal regiment, she was regarded with respect by the crown itself.

And so, they too swore loyalty to the crown. They offered their battle to King Sigismund.

The sense of unity and kinship bound by blood, centered on Rebecca, was what gave the infantry’s foremost line its unyielding strength.

Because the officers and veterans would not retreat, the Albrecht Regiment’s infantry held steady in order, and the Eisenhut Marquisate’s troops lent their weight to that stand.

Thus, as Edelstein’s army stood firm like a wall upon the battlefield, a force of some two hundred Novakian cavalry bore down on their flank.

In Novakia, whose homeland was more rugged and uneven than Edelstein’s plains, the proportion of cavalry within the army was high, and their training correspondingly strong. These seasoned Novakian warriors now unleashed a charge in perfect formation.

A mounted assault carried immense power to break through and destroy. Yet even that was not enough to shatter the army under Rebecca’s command.

Guarding the flank were likewise the elite of the Albrecht Regiment and the Eisenhut Marquisate’s forces. Armed with long spears, they locked together in flawless coordination to form a hedge of spearpoints.

Their ranks were arrayed without waste, the spearheads angled and spaced with precision to face directly forward.

Even as the onrushing cavalry thundered toward them, the knights and soldiers did not so much as flinch, an iron nerve beyond the ordinary.

Combined together, these factors created a hedge of spears of the highest purity, capable of receiving the mounted charge.

It was as if two walls had collided, the impact so heavy it shook the very earth. Yet the shield wall bristling with spearpoints held firm, while the foremost knights who led the charge were thrown into disarray.

Some impaled themselves as though driving straight onto the waiting spearheads; others lost their balance, tumbling from their saddles to be trampled beneath the hooves of their own mounts, or crushed under those of their comrades.

Once a cavalry charge loses its momentum, its strength is far from invincible.

The warhorses reared and lashed out with their forelegs, seeking to crush the men before them as trained, but the interlocked shields blocked their fury.

Spears thrusting from the flanks stabbed into horse bellies or struck riders from their saddles, leaving them helpless.

Yet even as the line descended into chaos, more and more of the trailing knights arrived at the melee.

Not even the strongest wall could easily withstand the sheer weight of two hundred mounted warriors pressing upon it.

Gradually, Edelstein’s right flank was forced back.

Sensing an opening, Novakia committed its remaining cavalry as well. Another two hundred knights now bore down upon Edelstein’s left wing.

Without hesitation, Rebecca gave the order to the cavalry she had held back near her own main camp. More than two hundred riders spurred forward, their target the exposed flank of Novakia’s infantry line.

Across the field locked in stalemate, the cavalry of both armies thundered into motion.

・・・・・・

“…They still hold out. Their resilience is greater than I imagined.”

At the crown prince Julius’s murmur, Oscar gave a bitter nod in silence.

After the cavalry on their left wing, those on the right had also charged into the enemy’s flank. Yet there too, elite troops had clearly been stationed, and the mounted assault was stopped.

And what had seemed on the verge of collapse, the enemy’s right wing, still held, against expectation. By deliberately giving a little ground while maintaining their line of defense, they prevented the enemy from breaking through and avoided the collapse of their formation.

The enemy’s left flank would likely endure in the same way for a while longer. The greater-than-expected strength of the enemy’s sides meant that committing Novakia’s cavalry on both wings had turned out to be a miscalculation.

And as for the infantry battle at the front, it was clear by now that a breakthrough of the enemy line was no longer possible.

From the outset, Novakia’s infantry had been weakened. They had been driven forward only by stoking their spirits with promises of the food they might seize from the enemy once victory was won.

Their first charge had been fierce, but the momentum soon vanished. Failing to smash through in a single blow, the longer the fight dragged on, the quicker hunger and sickness sapped their strength.

Instead of breaking the enemy infantry, they themselves were being pushed back, their ranks beginning to collapse.

At that moment, the enemy’s cavalry struck. Novakia had already committed both wings of its own cavalry in the opening attack, leaving no means of interception. And the infantry lines did not have the toughness to withstand a mounted charge to the flank.

The enemy horsemen burst through with ease, and at the same time their infantry pressed the attack with even greater ferocity.

There was no hope of holding. Novakia’s infantry fell into complete disorder. With the vanguard broken, the rear could not fight properly either, and the archer units lost formation, their covering fire faltering.

“It’s over, huh. This is our defeat.”

Oscar spoke in a flat tone.

Their only chance of victory had been in the opening blow. With that failed, there was no longer any meaning in continuing the fight.

“At this point, it is the duty of a ruler to order retreat and see that as many men as possible return alive. Even if this army struggles on until it is annihilated, Novakia’s future will not improve.”

“…As you say, Father.”

The crown prince Julius answered bitterly at his side, and Oscar gave a small nod before turning back to the front.

“Order the full retreat. Pull the infantry and archers back first, and assign the cavalry to cover them.”

The king’s command as supreme commander was carried by messengers to every unit.

Footnotes:

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