WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Abood

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◈ Friedrich's Battlefield

Chapter 59: The Ducal Army’s Annihilation Battle (1)

Two days had passed since they were left out in the early spring wilderness. The roughly two hundred captured soldiers of the Bachstein Ducal Army were holding out, their numbers slowly dwindling.

Their enemies were thirst, the cold that struck at night, and the beasts.

"The wolves are back! It's the same pack from yesterday!"

One of the soldiers lying near the outer edge of the bound group shouted in a panic.

"Stay calm! Everyone, face outward and form a circle! Use your legs to drive them off!"

It was Knight Franziska who shouted the order. Her voice was hoarse after shouting non-stop for two days without water, yet still she yelled, doing her duty as a commander to keep her people alive.

The prisoners had managed to remove only their gags, helping one another with tied hands and feet.

"Damn it! Get out of here!"

"We’re not feeding you anyone else!"

Following Franziska’s orders, the prisoners faced outward and thrust out their bound legs to try and fend off the approaching pack. But the effect was limited. Even with free limbs and weapons, fighting off beasts like these was no easy task, and in their restrained state, they stood little chance.

"Hey, stop! Leave him alone!"

The clever wolves had fixed their sights on easy prey, wounded soldiers left near the edges by misfortune, and relentlessly tried to bring them down. The others nearby tried to shield them, but it was clear it was only a matter of time before they lost.

“It's… it's fine now…”

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?! Stay in the circle!”

Ignoring the protests of his comrades, the badly injured soldier shifted, offering himself to the wolves.

“With these wounds, I’m not going to make it either way. It’s fine… Tell my wife and daughters—”

He never finished. A wolf’s fangs sank into his throat. As the others cried out in anguish, the man was dragged away by the wolves. Having secured their prize, the beasts didn’t attack anyone else and soon retreated into the woods.

“Damn it! That’s another one gone!”

“Isn’t help here yet?! How long do we have to wait?!”

“Have we… been abandoned…?”

“Idiot, of course not! My brother’s with the main force!”

“My son-in-law too! He’s a knight! There’s no way he’d leave me here to die!”

As the voices of the soldiers rang out, Franziska clenched her teeth in frustration.

Over twenty deaths had already been reported, mostly among the severely wounded with little strength left. Some had succumbed to exhaustion. Some had frozen to death. And like the man just now, several had been eaten by wolves or bears.

How long was this hell going to last?

"H-hey! Over there—reinforcements, right?!"

Someone stationed on the northwestern edge called out, and everyone turned in that direction.

"No doubt about it! That’s the Duke’s banner!"

"The main force’s come to save us! We’re going to make it home alive!"

Cheers erupted among the soldiers at the sight of the approaching army cresting a gentle rise on the highway beyond a low hill.

"Captain! We’re saved!"

"...Yeah, looks like it."

Franziska replied so as not to dampen their joy, but inwardly, a tight tension gripped her.

They’d been left in plain view on the roadside, with a convenient excuse. Forest on all sides. It was obviously a trap.

She didn’t believe the main force had failed to notice that, but even if they were aware of the ambush, could they really break through it so easily?

・・・・・・

“Hurry! Your comrades are right in front of you now! Once the formation is set, the rescue begins!”

Even without Ernst’s urging, the five hundred-strong Bachstein Ducal Army was already shifting into combat formation, barely a moment’s rest since their arrival.

A handful of prisoners had managed to escape on their own and reached the marching troops. A few whose bindings had been loose enough had forcibly pulled their limbs free, snapping fingers, tearing skin, trailing blood as they stumbled their way here.

According to their accounts, the prisoners left out in the open were in a dire state and dying from hunger, thirst, cold, and wild beasts. The survivors were weak and fading fast.

To recover those prisoners while under enemy assault and then retreat would be one of the harshest battles the ducal army had ever faced.

But they had come too far to turn back now.

“Recovery and escort units, advance! Do not break formation, stay ready to fight at all times!”

As soon as the formation was complete, Ernst gave the order.

Roughly four hundred soldiers made up the first wave, consisting of the prisoner recovery unit and its armed escort, accompanied by several horse-drawn wagons.

“We’ve come to save you! You’re safe now!”

“If you’ve still got strength, speak up! We’ll cut your ropes first, then help us rescue the others!”

The prisoner recovery unit numbered only about fifty men, including the wagon drivers.

They began by cutting the ropes of the relatively stronger captives, arming them with spare knives and having them assist in freeing the others. It was a desperate tactic to maximize manpower and speed by turning the rescued into rescuers.

Meanwhile, the escort troops tightened their defenses. The prisoners were abandoned in the middle of an open field surrounded on all sides by forest. It was obvious the Ferdinand Regiment lay in wait within those woods, hidden from view.

“They’re here! Enemy troops sighted from the north!”

The warning came from a knight commanding the escort unit. At once, the soldiers fell into formation.

According to Ernst’s earlier assessment, the main ambush force was likely concealed in the northern woods, broad terrain with a gentle incline, ideal for staging an attack. The ducal troops had planned for this, facing north from the start. Now, as things unfolded exactly as predicted, they moved swiftly and without panic.

Their formation was solid, with shields raised in front and archers aligned behind.

From the northern tree line, an infantry battalion emerged first. Then, right behind them, two more companies of archers appeared, quickly spreading into formation and unleashing a flurry of arrows.

“AAAAAGH!!”

“Damn it! They’re firing straight through the prisoners?!”

Two hundred enemy archers let loose a relentless rain of arrows. The volley reached not just the escort troops in formation but also the unarmed recovery team and the prisoners sprawled helpless in the rear.

The soldiers rushing about to cut ropes had no shields to protect them. As for the prisoners, they were still bound lying flat on the cold ground, they had nothing at all.

All they could do was pray they'd be lucky enough to survive.

“Leave the severely wounded bound, just get them on the wagons! We need to retreat, now!”

The one shouting was none other than Knight Franziska, who had been among the first to be freed and had immediately begun helping with the prisoner evacuation.

Despite the pain in her injured shoulder, she carried herself as a commander, rallying her fellow soldiers. Following her lead, the freed prisoners lifted the more badly wounded and hauled them onto the wagon beds. Their movements were rough which was unavoidable in the chaos, and the resulting jostling tore at fresh injuries, drawing agonized cries from those being loaded.

Meanwhile the battlefield continued to shift. Though the ducal army’s archers returned fire, they were vastly outnumbered. With only a fraction of the enemy’s two companies to fight back, their volleys lacked both force and impact.

After several volleys back and forth, the Ferdinand Regiment’s infantry began to charge.

“Hold the line! Even if you die, don’t let them through!”

The escort unit’s captain shouted at the top of his lungs.

The moment he finished, the enemy infantry crashed into their ranks. The massed soldiers of the Ferdinand Regiment barreled forward, only to be stopped in their tracks by the ducal army’s elite men who stood firm, shielding their comrades behind them.

Their defense was desperate, but resolute. This wasn’t about honor or orders anymore, this was survival. And they would not let the enemy through.

・・・・・・

Matthias and the others watched the scene from their main camp, which was set in the woods to the south, opposite the side where the main force of the ambush was positioned, from the enemy’s perspective.

“The enemy sure is quite capable.”

“Indeed. It’s commendable that they assigned only the minimum number of troops to the prisoner rescue and accurately predicted where our main force was hiding.”

Their own forces numbered just under seven hundred, excluding those left to defend the fortress. Of those, five hundred were deployed in the forest to the north.

Opposing them, the Ducal Army had committed about four hundred troops to the rescue operation. Assuming a battle was inevitable once the prisoners were freed, it was reasonable even from Matthias’s viewpoint to allocate the bulk of the forces to support the escort unit, prepared to hold the enemy at bay.

Though under four hundred troops couldn’t cover all directions, focusing vigilance on just one front made it possible to temporarily hold ground against the ambush. That assumption was correct as well. The enemy commander had arranged the escort unit’s formation on the premise that their main force was in the northern forest.

They likely didn’t confirm this by scouts beforehand. The enemy had no time for leisurely reconnaissance, and Matthias’s side had stationed many lookouts around the forest perimeter. Even if enemy scouts detected Ferdinand Regiment’s ambush in the woods, they would not have been able to determine the number or exact placement of troops, nor which forest, the northern or southern, held the main force.

Scouts are not all-seeing after all, they have many limitations.

That means it was the enemy commander’s judgment to assume the main force was in the northern forest. He gambled based on his own deduction, and that deduction was correct.

“Ernst Bachstein, Duke of Bachstein. Truly worthy of one who has long served as lord of this great domain.”

The enemy’s main camp flew the ducal banner, and it was confirmed that the Duke himself was clad in armor there. Leading from the front and commanding the battle firsthand, he was clearly no incompetent fool. He was indeed a worthy challenger to the royal house.

“Send out the cavalry to strike the enemy’s southern flank… Eugen, I’m counting on you.”

“Yes, sir! We’ll trap the enemy from behind and finish them off!”

At Matthias’s call, Baron Eugen Stamitz, commander of the cavalry waiting in the southern forest, answered with great enthusiasm.

The cavalry led by Eugen prepared to charge from the enemy’s south where the escort forces were not guarding, aiming to attack the defenseless prisoners. The heavily armored knights on horseback advanced rapidly toward the Ducal Army prisoners and their rescuers, many of whom were unarmed.

Footnotes:

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