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Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 33: The Battle of Malešov (2)

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"Just as planned."

I murmured as I watched the hill through the narrow firing port in the steel barricade.

Everything had been calculated down to the last detail.

The soldiers' clumsy act of fleeing.

The king's banner, tempting the Cumans' greed.

And the terrain of Malešov Hill, where once they gained momentum, they could not stop.

I could see the leading Cuman riders at the top of the hill hesitate when they spotted the densely packed Panzer Wagenburg below.

But it was already too late.

They had already charged over the hill at full speed. Even if the front ranks pulled their reins to stop, the thousands of horses behind them, blinded by greed and still charging forward, would shove them onward.

And this was a downhill slope. The kinetic energy strengthened by gravity itself forced them toward the steel trap waiting below with its jaws open.

Newton's first law. The absolute law of inertia had seized them by the neck and was hurling them into the jaws of Hell.

"Now."

Jan Žižka, the old one-eyed veteran standing beside me, raised the heavy mace in his hand high into the air before bringing it down sharply.

"Fire!"

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!

The explosive roar struck my eardrums as though thousands of thunderclaps had crashed down from a clear sky all at once.

Red flames burst from hundreds of firing ports, while choking Gunpowder smoke blanketed the front of the steel wall like a cloud.

Neighhh!

The horses racing down the hill screamed in terror.

Animals instinctively feared loud noises and fire. Even horses accustomed to battlefields throughout their lives were nothing more than maddened beasts before thunder exploding right in front of them and the stinging smell of sulfur.

"Aagh! Calm down! Calm down!"

"The horse! The horse won't listen!"

The horses in the front screamed and reared up. With horses frothing at the mouth and thrashing wildly, the Cuman formation became a tangled mess in an instant.

Riders who fell were trampled into pulp beneath the hooves of their own allies. The horses that could not stop crashed into the steel wall head-on, their brains bursting from the impact.

The hillside had become utter chaos.

Even amid the confusion, the Cuman commander, the man in the grotesque mask, desperately shouted orders.

"Don't stop! If we stop, we're all dead! Break through! They're only wagons!"

The enemy commander had realized it.

If they turned and ran now, they would only become stationary targets, wiped out by lead balls flying into their backs.

There was only one way to live. They had to break through the wall beyond that smoke.

Like a cornered rat turning on a cat, the Cuman commander drew his saber and charged fiercely.

"Kill them!"

"Waaaaah!"

The desperate struggle of cornered beasts.

With their commander at the front, hundreds of Cuman warriors still mounted on their horses followed with the same desperation.

They twisted their bodies like acrobats atop their horses and fired their bows.

Whoosh!

A rain of arrows blackened the sky.

An ordinary army would have had to raise their shields, halting their attack.

But.

Clang! Ting! Ting!

Clear, ringing sounds echoed out.

It was like hail striking a tin roof.

The arrows struck the smooth surface of the steel plates and bounced away helplessly. Even the occasional arrow aimed at the gaps could not pass through the narrow firing ports, leaving only white scratches on the steel.

"W-what is that?!"

Every Cuman rider stared in horror.

The death they fired had been rendered useless before the walls of the Panzer.

But the death fired from inside the Panzer was all too certain.

Bang!

Flame burst from the Hand cannon of the gunner beside me. A lead ball flew from its barrel and struck a charging Cuman warrior square in the chest.

Leather armor? A chainmail breastplate?

Before the kinetic energy of Gunpowder, they were no sturdier than paper.

The lead ball tore through the armor, turned the man's insides to pulp, and exited through his back.

"Keep firing! Fire as soon as you reload! You don't even need to aim!"

The gunners behind the Panzer shouted excitedly.

They had no need to hide. Behind this absolute shield, all they had to do was pack in Gunpowder and light the fuse.

Gunfire rang out again.

Bang! Bang! Bang, bang!

"Urk!"

"Aaargh!"

The Cuman cavalrymen who had rushed right up to the Panzer fell, spraying blood. Their iron mask helmets came loose, and their horribly twisted faces plunged into the mud.

Yet inertia was cruel.

Even after the riders died, their horses did not stop running.

Boom!

The riderless horses, along with cavalrymen who could not stop, crashed straight into the walls of the Panzer.

If the wagons had been made of wood, the impact might have smashed or overturned them.

But the steel-reinforced Panzer gave one heavy shudder but held firm.

Instead, the charging horses broke their necks, while the riders' bodies were crushed against the steel plates.

"Urk!"

Watching enemies fall from their horses, vomiting blood, I felt pity for them.

This was not a battle.

It was the Industrial Revolution crushing a nomadic civilization.

"Aaargh!"

"Kill them!"

The relatively uninjured Cuman riders who had climbed over their comrades' corpses and broken through the hail of fire finally reached the Wagenburg.

They tried to force their way through the gaps between the wagons using their horses' speed, or leap onto the wagons.

One of them raised an axe and brought it down on a steel plate.

If it had been wood, it would have split apart.

Clang!

But the steel plate only sent up sparks. It did not even dent.

Instead, the rebound broke the man's wrist.

"Thrust!"

At Žižka's command, hundreds of pikes sprang out through the gaps between the steel plates.

The charging horses and riders were skewered on their points.

Thunk! Thunk!

"Ghk..."

The Cuman commander, the masked man, was no exception.

He knocked away two or three incoming pikes with flashy swordsmanship, but the third and fourth, thrusting at him from all sides, pierced his thigh and shoulder.

As his horse collapsed, the Cuman commander collided head-on with the steel wall of the Wagenburg.

Thud!

He rolled onto the ground and looked up at me through his bloodstained mask.

There was no anger in his eyes.

Only fear of what he could not understand and despair at the overwhelming difference in strength.

I raised my lit Hand cannon and aimed it between his eyes.

"The times have changed, barbarian."

Bang!

The Cuman commander's head snapped back.

That was the end.

Once the vanguard collapsed, the troops behind them lost their will to fight. Seeing the mountain of corpses piled before the steel wall, the following riders screamed and hurriedly tried to turn their horses around.

But three thousand men were tangled together on that narrow slope.

There was nowhere to run.

Žižka raised his bloodstained mace and roared.

"Don't let a single one live! Show them Bohemia's wrath!"

* * *

The battle was over.

The slopes of Malešov Hill were covered in dark red blood, mangled flesh, and the corpses of riderless horses.

The steel door of the Panzer opened, and Taborite infantry armed with hooks and flails poured out. In an instant, the battlefield became a slaughterhouse.

The Cuman cavalrymen who had lost speed and fallen from their horses, or lay floundering in the mud, were easy prey for the infantry.

Thud! Crack!

"Die! Die, you demons!"

"That's for my brother! That's for my village!"

The soldiers had lost their minds.

They rushed at the already dead Cuman corpses and struck those grotesque iron masks with their flails again and again.

Blood and brains splattered from gaps in the dented helmets, but the soldiers' eyes burned only with mad joy and old hatred.

It was understandable. Were these not Sigismund's hunting dogs, the ones who had turned Bohemia into a living Hell twenty years ago?

The name of a nightmare so terrible that crying children would fall silent and hide at the mere mention that the Cumans were coming.

But today, that nightmare had shattered against a steel wall.

Our losses were extremely light. Other than the soldiers struck by arrows or who fell while carrying out the initial lure, the troops hidden inside the Panzer had not suffered so much as a scratch.

It was a complete victory.

Waaaaah!

"We won!"

"The demons are dead! Those bastards bled and died!"

"So the Cumans aren't all that great!"

Cheers loud enough to shake the battlefield erupted. The soldiers pounded their shields and the Panzer's steel plates like mad, savoring their victory.

I dismounted and crossed the blood-soaked battlefield. Blood-mixed pulp splashed with every step, but I did not care.

When the soldiers saw me, they split apart like the Red Sea and cleared a path.

"Long live King Ulrich!"

"Long live the Steel King!"

"Long live the new Emperor Charles!"

Their eyes were filled with fanatical worship that went beyond simple awe.

I briefly raised my hand in response and headed toward the center of the battlefield.

There, standing tall atop a mountain of corpses, was a massive old warrior.

Jan Žižka.

The one-eyed wolf of the Taborites.

Dark red blood and clinging scraps of flesh still dripped from the giant mace in his hand. His single eye, visible through the gap in his helmet, gleamed at me.

"You arrived in time, General. If not for your army, my domain would have been ashes by now."

I meant it sincerely.

The distance from the southern Tabor Fortress to Malešov was far from short.

Unlike the Cumans, who had come on horseback, the Taborite army had to pull wagons fitted with heavy steel plates.

They could not have made it in time unless they had marched day and night from the moment they received my letter, until the soles of their soldiers' feet blistered.

Žižka laughed heartily as he slid his mace into his belt.

"No need to thank me, Your Majesty. I'm the one who should be grateful."

Žižka gestured behind him.

The Panzer Wagenburg, a steel fortress glowing red beneath the sunset, stood there.

Clang! Clang!

He struck the steel plate with his bloodstained gauntlet. A clear metallic ring echoed out.

"I've spent my whole life fighting on battlefields, but I've never fought as comfortably as I did today. It's all thanks to this thing Your Majesty sent us. It's damn heavy, but the wheel axles were well-oiled, so it rolled better than I expected."

Žižka looked toward the Cuman corpses scattered on the ground.

"With this, I don't fear even the Emperor. Whether he brings cavalry or elephants, we'll smash them all to pieces."

"Elephants might be a bit difficult."

I gave a faint smile and held out my hand to Žižka.

It was an offer of a handshake between comrades.

But Žižka did not take my hand.

He stared quietly at it, then suddenly removed his helmet and tucked it beneath his arm.

Then.

Thud.

The massive old warrior dropped to one knee in the mud.

The cheering soldiers around us gaped. Even János Hunyadi and Sir Kuno, who had been guarding me, widened their eyes in surprise.

This was Jan Žižka.

The leader of the radicals who had mocked the Emperor's authority and the Pope's Excommunication Edict.

A man who bowed to no one but God and his own convictions had gone to his knees.

"General? What is this..."

"Your Majesty was right."

With his head bowed, Žižka spoke in a deep voice.

"To be honest, at first I thought this was just some noble brat wasting his money. But... one steel plate is worth more than a hundred soldiers."

He raised his head and looked up at me.

"But more remarkable than the steel is Your Majesty. No matter how powerful the weapons or strategy, they mean nothing if the leader is a coward."

Žižka looked toward the hill where I had stood.

"The reason we defeated the Cumans so easily today was because they lost their minds when they saw the king's banner. I've seen many kings and nobles, but I've never seen a king offer himself as bait to lure the enemy."

There was no longer doubt or scrutiny in his one eye.

There was only the pure loyalty a warrior offered to his lord.

"I, Jan Žižka, will become Your Majesty's sword and shield from this day forward, and sweep away Bohemia's enemies. Give the order, and I will do anything."

"..."

Without realizing it, something swelled in my chest.

I bent down and held out my hand to Žižka once more.

"Rise, General. It is not us who should be kneeling. It is Sigismund."

This time, Žižka did not ignore my hand. He gripped it firmly and rose.

"The Cumans are only the beginning. There will be much for you to do."

"Leave it to me, Your Majesty."

At that moment, cheers erupted from both the Taborite soldiers and the Prague militia.

The joining of the Steel King and the undefeated general.

Confidence that they could face even Sigismund's main force swept through the army.

But God did not give us long to enjoy the toast of victory.

Thud, thud, thud!

Far to the north, a horse was racing toward us like mad.

It was not a Cuman.

It was one of our messengers, covered in dust.

"Out of the way! Clear the path! Urgent news!"

The soldiers murmured and opened a path.

The messenger rode up to me and practically fell from his horse.

He was panting for breath, and his eyes were filled with terror.

"Y-Your Majesty! Something terrible has happened!"

"What is it? Has another Cuman force appeared?"

The messenger shook his head fiercely.

"No! Not from the south! From the north!"

"The north?"

Žižka and I both frowned at once.

Sigismund was the King of Hungary. His base was in the southeast, so naturally we had expected the attack to begin from the south.

But the north?

"It's the Imperial army! The main Imperial army led by Emperor Sigismund... has crossed the Saxon border from the north!"

For a moment, my mind went blank.

Saxony? He came down from Germany?

'Could the Cumans in the south have been nothing more than bait?'

Had he turned our attention south while joining forces with the imperial princes and making a sweeping flanking movement around from the north?

János Hunyadi asked in a trembling voice.

"H-how many?"

The messenger answered in despair.

"Saxony, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary... the flags of all Europe cover the border. The Emperor's army is advancing in numbers enough to fill the horizon! At least one hundred thousand men!"

Silence.

The mouths of the cheering soldiers fell shut.

They had just been celebrating the defeat of three thousand Cumans, and now the Emperor's army of one hundred thousand was coming.

Žižka spoke in a fierce voice.

"What is their target?"

The messenger swallowed hard.

"Prague. The enemy is... advancing toward the capital, Prague!"

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