Herald of Steel

As the Adhanian right flank rapidly closed in on the unprepared right flank of Regias's mercenaries, a thousand thoughts ran through his mind.

"Is this the ambush Samaras was talking about? Did they anticipate our scouting and hide beforehand? What do I do now?"

Surrender was the first option that crept into Regias's mind.

It was supremely alluring but he then remembered Menicus's warning, 'Don't forget what we did at Acme and it is well-known what Adhania does to enemies like us. Death is a hundredfold better option.'

And he agreed.

The creative ways the Adhanians killed their enemies who massacred their people had been almost turned into an art form.

He did not want to die like that.

So Regias's only real option was' fight or flight' and he struggled to choose between the two.

Running was a tempting option.

But then he looked back at the dark, viscous gooey earth that lay behind him and seriously doubted if his soldiers' had enough energy to run through the mud again.

Out of formation, they would be easy pickings for the pursuing Adhanians, especially if these Adhanians had ranged units like archers and slingers.

Then he looked around the forest that surrounded them.

For a second he contemplated running through there but then understood it was an even worse option.

Heading there in this deep fog, meant getting lost for certain and in this cold weather, to spend a whole night with no food, water, or shelter, in a place festering with wild beasts looking to stock up for the winter and the inevitable chasing of the Adhanians meant that the forest was as much a death trap as the mud

To Regias, the encroaching thick white fog seemed to have wrapped the entire forest in white funeral clothes, beckoning them to the other side.

Fight!

Seeing their escape route cut off Regias understood his only option was to fight.

Using his experience, he ballparked the Adhanians to be around a thousand strong and judged them to be an early scouting force

"Form up, form up. Don't run. There are only a thousand peasants coming!" He shouted.

He was confident that his two thousand battle-hardened troops could withstand the attack of only a thousand conscripts, even if they were attacked in their flanks.

"Hurrah." The mercenaries answered.

Any lesser unit would have broken formation and ran at their current predicament, but these veterans didn't.

They chose to stand their ground and fight.

Because, many of them, especially the phalanx captains came to similar conclusions as Regias and thought fight, not flight was the correct option.

"Quick, order the phalanxes to get ready. My first and second phalanx will hold the Adhanians for now." Regias ordered in desperation.

For five hundred men to hold off against a presumed a thousand-man force was a daunting task for any unit, elite or otherwise, but Regias was desperate.

The cause for this was Regias was caught exposing his right flank to the charging Adhanians and he simply could not order all his phalanxes to just turn 90 degrees clockwise to turn their flanks into front sides.

This was because the soldiers were jammed packed together and the soldiers would need inhumane coordination to all turn at the same time or risk bumping and tripping into one another.

If soldiers and phalanxes were able to instantly turn to their sides, then there would be no such things as flanks because the soldiers could simply turn on the spot to whichever direction the enemy was attacking them from, similar to a tank's turret.

But flanks did exist, meaning such coordination was impossible to get across the entire army.

Even in Alexander's previous life, there was no historical record of such on-spot formation maneuvers, and the famous hollow squared formation was invented specifically to counter flanking attacks by the enemy, especially the cavalry because that formation had no exposed flanks to be taken advantage of.

The only real way for a phalanx to change directions was not to turn on its heels like a human did but like a car, in a large curve, almost semi-circular shape.

Hence the turning of a phalanx needed large space to maneuver, space not available in a compact formation like in an army.

And thus each phalanx needed to spread itself out, isolating itself and leaving itself vulnerable to enemy attack.

As such, Regias planned to hold on his own with just two phalanxes units, who quickly turned their front sides to the Adhanians while the other phalanxes would spread out and slowly turn.

This sounded solid on paper, but it had one catastrophic oversight.

Their force estimation was grossly wrong.

Obscured by the coming dusk, the thick fog, and the rapid pace of the Adhanians, they erroneously estimated four thousand troops to be only one thousand.

A four-fold difference!

Even at full physical strength, in perfect formation, and on ideal flat ground, these mercenaries would have had a very hard time against double their numbers.

And now? Facing four thousand heavy infantry with essentially only two phalanx units, totaling five hundred troops?

Disaster!

As the Adhanians closed in on the mercenaries, it was only at fifty meters did Regias who led the first phalanx personally and as luck would have it, Nestoras who led the second phalanx managed to get a true look at the real size of the Adhanian force and understood their mistake.

Both their hearts turned cold and they felt their world spinning as the two men understood the gates of death had just opened for them.

There was no way they could win or even hold off against this enormous force.

There was no time to sound the retreat either or even run.

But befitting their long battle-hardened careers, the mercenary leaders decided not to try and run and then be hunted down like stray curs by the Adhanians.

"Soldiers, the gates of Elysium have opened for us! Gaia beckons to us! Charge." Regias howled.

"Brothers, it would be rude not to invite the Adhanians to heaven with us. Fight." Nestoras roared.

"For Constans, for all our brothers." Xanthine flourished his spears.

"Hurrah, hurrah." Came the fearless roar.

The five hundred soldiers decided to fight and die like men rather than run and be hunted down and paraded like animals.

But although their bravado was unmatched by any, in the face of the unstoppable momentum of the marching Adhanians it mattered little.

The enormous line far exceeding the mercenary's lines on both sides seemed to swallow them whole as spear attacks from all sides overwhelmed the paltry five hundred men.

Nestoras and Xanthine were both fighting like caged lions, parrying, deflecting, and countering strike after strike, but no matter how many they warded off, more and more seemed to manifest out of thin air.

To them, the strikes seemed to come from all directions and they even suspected that some were coming from the sky.

And soon, these two men started to feel their ranks thin.

Friends, sub-ordinates, and familiar faces soon began to fall one after another and the ground began to stack up with their corpses.

Romeus was one of the very first to go.

Craven, unskilled, and placed in the front echelon, he was killed in the very first strike.

Seven spear strikes sped towards him and two each were deflected by the soldiers on his sides, but three made it through.

But Romeus instead of standing his ground and defending, let go of his spear and shield and turned to try and flee and was caught by all three spears in his back.

One strike managed to even come out the other side, fully skewering him.

He fell, violently spasming in pain as he bled out, quickly dying and, his dead body being stepped over the next person filling his position.

The boy who wanted to live by discarding his spear and shield and ditching his comrades was the first to die.

How fitting!

Soon came the other two men's turn as well.

A lucky spear thrust managed to pierce Xanthine's left thigh and he fell on his knees, losing his balance and a space opening up between him and his shield.

Not even the untrained Adhanians farmers would let go of such an easy opportunity and three of them charged, determined to rip Xanthine's soul.

"Oh no, you don't." Turning to see Xanthine become defenseless, Nestoras let out an animalistic roar as he ran to try and cover his senior and subordinate.

*Pierce*, *Pierce*, *Pierce*,*Pierce*.

But this loss of concentration made him miss the four strikes coming to greet him.

The spears struck his left arm, left rib, left kidney, and the fatal strike, that pierced right through his throat.

"Agghh, agghh"

He fell like a broken puppet, blood foaming out of his mouth as he gurgled incoherently and soon the light faded out of his eyes.

"Boy!" Xanthine cried out a name he hadn't used in over twelve years.

But even before he could turn his head to look at him, a cruel spear streaked through the air, passing through his head and killing him instantly.

Xanthine fell next to his leader, Nestoras's lifeless static eyes staring right through Xanthine's gaping hole in the skull.

Dead! The two men, with so much dreams, and so much ambition were dead just like that!

And this situation was not anything unique.

People were falling left and right, including Regias and his men.

The overwhelmingly larger Adhanians made quick work of the numerically inferior two phalanxes, and in just a few minutes, they crushed them like a small bug.

Then, without losing any momentum, they smashed into the center of the rest of the mercenaries, snapping the whole formation into little chunks and effectively destroying them.

The Cantagenan mercenaries tried their best to resist, some fought, some ran, and some surrendered, but all in all, out of the original two thousand mercenaries, less than fifty would return to camp!

The Cantagenan's left flank had been destroyed.

And in a symmetrical twist of fate, their right flank had also suffered, though lesser but similar defeat.

Now the Cantegenan center was like a sitting duck, with both its wings clipped off.