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Chapter XCVII – Your battle come.
🕑 Added 2024-07-07 06:23:40 +0000 UTC
68th of Summer 5859
Below the disintegrated walls of Casamonu, Casamonu
Casamonu: a grand ancient city, established several millennia before the Empire of Gemeinplatz had ever been born. The city stands above all the Casamonus before it, so much rubble had built up over the years that the city had found itself on a hill. For the last week, city’s walls had been bombarded by a canon which had caused a breach. Such an important city required excellent protection from those protecting it, and excellent protection required excellent soldiers.
Unfortunately, experienced guards require money. Money that Sir Korvus definitely couldn’t afford to spare for some men to stand around all day waiting for an attack from the sieging forces outside.
“So, what’re you doing this weekend?” asked Billy (whole real name continued to be Bilaleddin), who had escaped being caught and gotten a place in the sortie. Thankfully, his gambeson being newly fixed was about to become really useful.
“…don’t you have anything else to talk about? We’re heading to battle, for my granny’s sake!” replied Bob (who real name had been Boron until he had gone to court last week and legally changed his name to be Bob, and then he had illegally changed his name to Boraks while he had been under hiding), who too had survived again and found himself stuck with the idiot right next to him again. He had to sell his tabard to cover lodging costs during his stint in hiding, and now he looked like any ordinary soldier amongst the mob of soldiers.
Billy sighed and looked forward toward the ranks of fugitive slaves in formation. They had gotten close enough to them to see eye-to-eye, though the eyes of Billy were more focused on the spears that the fugitives held. They stood like a human porcupine, which definitely wasn’t a pleasant sight, especially when one was potentially about to be on the sharp end of said porcupine.
The two sides met… or, they were about to meet, but Billy saw that the men around him slowed down right before they were about to be impaled. Billy and Bob stopped too as they wanted to continue being alive. They saw javelins, bolts and arrows whizz dangerously close as both sides exchanged fire without entering melee. Billy turned around to see if he could run away, but the crowd of soldiers behind him was too great. He was being pushed forward by the people behind him, and he was pushing the people in front of him. Eventually the push proved too great, and the brave souls in front of Billy were forced into contact. Those with shorter weapons crouched under the spears in order to close the distance, while those with longer weapons began clashing spears at a more respectable distance.
Billy and Bob joined their spears in the clash, though they were unable to do much in the chaos as their spears were practically lost in the forest of wooden shafts. They still had hold of their own spears, sure, but they were unable to control their weapons as the forest of spears moved seemingly randomly. It was chaos distilled to its purest and densest form.
Slowly, Bob saw holes forming in the shield wall of the fugitives. A few men had been downed thanks to the bold adventurers (who were looking to earn some extra pay by being in the front) crawling under many a spear. The fugitives who fell found themselves crushed either by enemies or friends trying to reposition themselves. The same was true of the men of Casamonu, who either went forward or went downward to never come up again. Neither Billy or Bob could tell who was winning and who was losing.
The fugitives were unable to reinforce their front properly however, and Billy had found himself being pushed forward towards a portion of the wall which had been left without spears. He was so close to an enemy soldier that he could feel them breathe on his neck. Spears became unwieldy at such close range, so both men dropped their weapons and began wrestling each other. Everyone around them was busy with the battle, so there wasn’t much to bother them in their fight to the death. Billy punched the fugitive right in the face. He immediately drew his fist back when the fugitive responded by biting his arm while twisting it. The fugitive followed up with a kick to Billy’s gut, and then a headbutt that threw him back and landed him on his backside.
With his head spinning like a windmill on a stormy day, Billy retreated back to the relative safety of Korvus’ men. His comrades had done the same as well, the fighting winding down as both sides retreated to rest with no man’s land in between them. Billy had felt hours pass by when, in actuality, only a couple minutes of fighting had occurred before everyone had been too tired to fight on. He felt like he had run an intense marathon, and it made sense: fighting was physically intense, especially when it was a fight where both sides were trying to dearly hold on to their lives. In the middle, where the no man’s land was, were the poor souls who had failed in holding on to life. Worse than a graveyard the scene was, with the bodies just lying there exposed with no tombstone or any sort respect for the dead.
Billy looked away from the open-air graveyard. Corpses weren’t the most pleasant of things to look at. He’d have noticed Bob amongst those in the pile of corpses if he did, but now was not the time for noticing such things. Projectiles were still flying to-and-fro. One man next to Billy collapsed after being hit right in the throat by a javelin.
He wondered how things were looking from the other side of the battle…
68th of Summer 5859
Below the disintegrated walls of Casamonu but a bit further, Casamonu
“Hold, hold you-” shouted Ayomide to the crowd who were too busy to listen to her. All that training, all that drill, and it had gained them what? A few more minutes before the men of the League had begun slowly falling back from the enemy army? She watched as the copper spears of her comrades struggled to penetrate through simple gambeson. What’d happen when the more heavily armored retainers came to the frontline, would they not be able to penetrate their armor at all? Ayomide had done her best by casting wind there and then to make a few enemies trip, but she herself wasn’t going to be able to turn the tide of battle. The old man, despite having made a remarkable show with the cultivator, had seemingly exhausted all his built-up power all in that one fight. He wasn’t going to be of much use either, unless he could pray hard enough to summon a miracle or something.
Everything seemed to become silent for a moment, even if it was nothing but silent. Ayomide could see chains bind her again as the right flank of the shield wall completely broke off. She turned her head around to see that the flank had met the brunt of a cavalry charge by Korvus’ retainers. “Turn around, there’s cavalry to your right!” she shouted, and the few men who heard her tried their best to reform their ranks to face the charging cavalry. The horses stopped right before the spears, and the cavalrymen turned around to retreat after unloading a volley of fire at the men who had stopped them. Then came the enemy infantrymen who, looking to take advantage of the distracted men of the League, had already surrounded the men who had turned around to meet the charge.
Ayomide looked around her, seeing John Brown in the distance to her left. He was keeping his cool, calmly commanding men in the back to march forward to fill the broken ranks. Soon the right flank was built up again as the fresh and energetic reserves pushed back the tired enemy. This local retreat prompted a general retreat as both sides silently agreed on a brief truce to take a breather. Such brief, impromptu truces in mass combat were common in Gemeinplatz, or for any sort of melee battle everywhere for that matter. Ayomide ran to the left to meet up with Brown during this brief respite.
The old man welcomed Ayomide as she ran towards him. “Don’t run, young lady. You need to conserve your energy for the rest of the day.”
“Old man, we…” she broadly gestured at where the right flank had collapsed.
Brown broadly gestured to where the men from the flank had retreated to, which was right next to him. “Hm? We’ve reinforced that flank, haven’t we? It’s normal to have men retreat in battle, especially after such a devastating cavalry charge. What’s important is that we don’t break completely, and that they return to battle when they are ready.” He looked at the enemy side. “Things might look bad here, young lady, but I can assure you that the enemy isn’t feeling any better than us. Keep faith, and we’ll be victorious. Especially as…” The old man’s gaze went up to the walls. “I think they’ve arrived.”
“What has arrived?” Ayomide looked up the wall as well. The walls were deserted, without soldiers, except for two dark figures in the distance. She could swear that there had been at least a skeleton crew of enemy soldiers there before. The dark figures threw some burning bags down towards the enemy soldiers and-
BOOM!
Before Ayomide could even reorient herself from the explosion, Brown shouted “Now is the time, charge!”
