Black Iron's Glory

“Have Line 1301 make way for the enemy reinforcements. Let them pass first before sealing their escape route. Set up trip ropes so that the enemy would have no choice but to find another way to escape. Also, have the tribesmen gather for a pre-battle council.” Claude made up his mind to take on the enemy reinforcements. He wanted to take care of the Canasian cavalrymen in one fell swoop.

It was a rare opportunity. The enemy left the fortified defences of Vebator and decided to enter deep into Balingana. While Claude wasn’t certain why they would abandon the comforts of their shell — he wasn’t quite convinced they were greedy enough for money to go hunting bulls — it was still a great chance for him to gravely wound or even exterminate them. Claude was confident he could use Thundercrash to wipe them out. The only concern was the kind of casualties the folk would have to suffer to achieve that.

The so-called discharged Canasian volunteers were actually standing corps members of the Canasian military. It was a public secret. Claude would happily admit that they were a much tougher challenge than what the Shiksan standing corps had amounted to. Albator Plains was also the ideal terrain for light cavalry like them to fight on. Claude wouldn’t be willing to suffer huge losses in order to eliminate the enemy.

However, the enemy had come this time around as reinforcements. Thundercrash could use the enemy’s camp to fight defensively and take advantage of the terrain. Not to mention, they’ve already wiped out four enemy lines, which amounted to more or less a folk of their troops. The enemy corps only had some 60 thousand men. Take 24 thousand out of that number and they’d be left with little more than 30 thousand plus. Their numbers weren’t that much more than the other four enhanced folks coupled with their security and support units.

It was worth noting that Thundercrash had had two triumphs. They defeated four lines of enemy troops and conquered two enemy camps and only had to suffer a thousand casualties. The troops’ morale were at an all-time high. Coupled with their superior equipment, Claude believed he was fighting the enemy on far more advantageous grounds, hence his decision to face them off.

The Canasian reinforcements only arrived around nine at night. When their vanguard discovered that Thundercrash had occupied their camp, they hurriedly stopped and retreated to an area some two kilometres away to set up a perimeter. From that alone, Claude could tell that their corpsman was an experienced and careful officer who picked up on the possibility that they had lost control of their camp. That was why they didn’t mount a hasty attack.

With some 30 thousand forces, the enemy spread out and seemed almost endless. The murky black swarms as they were seen from the camp gave off a domineering sensation. Compared to the chatter in the enemy camp, their own was incredibly quiet. They were like a resting beast on the plains, silent but deadly.

The enemy must be thinking the same thing. A clan of men were only a kilometre away, observing the Aueran camp constantly. However, they noticed that there were a few additional tranches in front of the camp with a couple half-person tall earth walls. Between the trenches were bonfires burning on cow dung, letting of a thick stench into the air.

That was a rather normal defence fortification, but the enemy clan remained at a safe distance for a long time. They didn’t even launch a probing attack and returned to their own camp an hour later.

Claude shook his head in disappointment. His luck was quite bad for him to have met a careful officer like this. He had tried as best he could to appear weak, but the enemy didn’t launch a night attack. His plans for the night had gone to waste.

“Let Line 1301 return to rest. There’s no need to remain in ambush any longer. The enemy won’t be attacking tonight.” Claude got Anders to spread his orders while he turned and headed to the central tent in the camp.

It seemed that the reinforcements of the Canasian troops intended to fight Thundercrash in a frontal siege. Claude hated battles like this the most. These days, relying on muskets and scatter shot wasn’t enough to ensure one’s victory. Not to mention, they were facing the experienced Canasians. As long as they were willing to pay a big enough price, they could breach the camp’s defences and usher in a melee.

That was why sieges tended to result in more casualties for both the attacking and defending side. Such cases had been proven throughout the course of the five-year war. In the most serious Rimodran siege, even the Aueran royal guard that was famous for their offensive prowess lost nearly half their own and had to recruit more and more to make up for lost men, to say nothing of the other irregular corps. In the five-year war, Aueras suffered around 600 thousand casualties, half of them in the sieges in Rimodra.

But this time around, Claude’s Thundercrash was more adept in defence and they even held the advantage. Even so, the Canasians could render that useless so long as they could afford to take more casualties. The moment the camp’s defences were breached, the only factor left would be the soldiers’ fighting spirit and bravery. It would turn into a battle of attrition to see which side could last longer.

That was why Claude particularly disliked sieges. Even if he was reasonably certain he could win, that could come with a heavy price. So, he always preferred sneak attacking or sudden charges when the enemy was off guard before turning tail and run. Not only did those strategies damage the enemy more effectively, it also helped reduce their casualties. Repeat the whole thing three to five times and the enemy would naturally crumble and hand Claude an easy victory.

However, this wasn’t an option for him this time as he was too short on time. He had no way of running after doing the hitting. There were some seven thousand captives and lots of spoils in the camp and he couldn’t afford to give them up. He could only leave after slaughtering all the captives and burning down the spoils, but that would be a huge waste. Claude also knew that nobody would agree to it since the rewards of every soldier in Thundercrash depended on those goods. Running before a weak enemy was also nothing short of humiliating.

Everyone believed without a doubt they would always be the final victors rather than the losers in battle. Claude had no choice but to go along with the flow and decided he would tough it out against the Canasians. He also knew that without going through a proper, tense battle, his men wouldn’t be able to grow stronger on the battlefield. Even if it would cost him significant casualties, it would be worth it, as this battle could be the fire he needed to forge a spirited force!

Around eight in the morning the next day, the horn signals of an attack were blown in the Aueran and enemy camps. The Canasians’ horn signal signalled mobilisation. One unit after another charged out of their encampment and formed neat, square formations around 1.5 kilometres away from the Aueran camp. Thundercrash’s horn signal was blown to remind their soldiers to stay vigilant and prepare to defend against an attack.

Claude believed that the enemy had collected information about Thundercrash and believed they could estimate their strength. That was an obvious sign of a mistake on their part. They believed they actually stood a good chance because of their superior numbers. The enemy officer obviously believed that Thundercrash suffered huge casualties after taking two of their camps. Given his understanding of the four lines he commanded, he was almost certain that eliminating all of them would cost Thundercrash quite a lot as well.

When Thundercrash took the two Canasian camps, they had attacked from all four directions to make sure not a single enemy escaped. But the Canasian reinforcements chose to focus their attack on only one side, intending to crush the enemy’s will to fight with their superior numbers. So, all they forces were neatly lined up in front of the camp without splitting up.

That, however, only made it easier for the defending side. If the defences were really pierced from any side, the morale of the defenders would tank. Even if they could escape in the other three directions, they would have a hard time outrunning the enemy on the flat Albator Plains. The enemy corpsman was quite confident he could win this battle.

Each of the four cavalry lines spread out in a line formation. The centre of the line seemed much denser. Not long later, another horn signal was blown and each Canasian line sent out a clan of light cavalrymen from their flanks towards the camp site. This was a probing attack. They would use a smaller force to test the strength of enemy defences so that they could choose their approach for the latter part of the attacki.

From a distance, there were a few trenches outside the camps Thundercrash occupied that stretched out as far as 200 metres. Last night, the enemy was worried the decreased visibility would make them fall prey for any potential traps the Auerans laid, so the corpsman refused his subordinates’ suggestion to attack during the night and chose to attack the next day instead.

The enemy corpsman wanted to test how powerful Thundercrash’s defences were with the four clans of men from each line, all the while testing out whether the trenches would pose to be an obstacle to his troops. From his vantage point, the trenches were crudely dug and any of the riders could easily let their mounts jump over the trenches.

But something that utterly shocked the corpsman occurred. In a few short minutes, the thousand cavalrymen on the probing attack reached the first trench, but they forcefully stopped their mounts the moment they were there. There were tens of men that didn’t stop their war horses and let them make the jump. When they landed, they crashed into the ground before countless heads and guns poked out from the third trench. They fired their shots and the soldiers that stopped in the first trench were obliterated.

“Blow the horn! Have them retreat immediately!” the corpsman ordered with a stern look.

Of the near thousand men he sent out, less than a clan of them returned. Those who managed to were the lucky ones. The officers soon came to understand why they stopped their horses. The enemy was far too sneaky. The first trench was only two metres wide and deep, making it quite easy for horses to jump over.

However, there was a trench only a foot deep directly ahead of the first trench which were only discovered close up. From far, it looked just like normal flat land. Any horse that landed there and tried to gallop would immediately stumble and fall.

The enemy troops who were lying in ambush in the third trench then popped out and shot at the troops that stopped before the first trench, causing them heavy losses. What agonised the corpsman even further was how he didn’t manage to adequately test out the enemy’s defences with his probing attack. It was all done for naught.

What seemed at first to be simple trenches turned out to be carefully laid out, effective fortifications. According to the cavalrymen that managed to escape, it was especially created to counter them. The enemy wanted to render light cavalry useless.

“We can use grass weave sacks filled with earth to fill the trenches up,” a high-ranking officer suggested. It was a tactic mostly reserved for dealing with trench fortifications. As long as they could fill the parts of the trenches where their attack would be going through, they would be able to reach the enemy camps and engage them with their riding blades close up.

But the possibility for a high casualty count using that method was rather high. The enemy was no fool. They still hadn’t revealed where they had hidden the cannons. In fact, they could use their cannons to deal with the parts of the trenches filled out by the bags. One could imagine the kind of sacrifice they would have to make to even reach the enemies at the camp.

The corpsman shook his head. “Let’s return to camp first. We’ll have a proper discussion on how we can deal with the enemy trenches.”

This was inevitable. There was no way they could continue the battle that day. The soldiers that returned from the probe were rather crestfallen. The insidious trench arrangement in front of the camp had rendered cavalry useless. They couldn’t continue charging blindly into the enemy to be target practice, could they?

But before they even began the discussion upon their return to camp, the lookouts reported that the enemy had their captives digging trenches once more at the rear of the camp The corpsman went to the frontlines with his subordinates and observed with his telescope. He found that the captives were indeed men on his side. The soldiers of Thundercrash were forcing them to maintain the moat. A rough estimation put the soldiers taken captive at around a thousand men. There was still and endless stream of captives coming out of the camp.

The soldiers of Thundercrash were really harsh. The slightest odd movement by the captives were grounds enough for the crack of the whip or a bump from the gun stock. The corpsman and his subordinates saw a number of their own men taken captive and being beaten to the ground, writhing about with blood all over them.

“General, we have to save them…” one officer angrily pleaded.

Save? That sounded easy. But how could it be done? The moment any large force was sent out, the enemy would’ve returned into the camp. Now, they weren’t able to reach the enemy camp in the first place!

“I believe we can dig our own trenches and connect them to the enemy’s. We can then have my men dismount and attack as infantry!” one of them suggested.

The corpsman’s eyes shone. It was true that the enemy’s defences were geared specifically against their cavalrymen. Light cavalry was only advantageous when evading enemy firing ranges and charging into enemy defence camps were necessary, which was an advantage they held over infantrymen. While infantry would suffer huge casualties given their limited mobility. they could use trenches to avoid enemy fire. It was indeed a rather good idea coming from the strategist.