Chapter 20: Civil War Part 3 (Right into the Trap)
The dawn broke over the valley of the Three Forks, painting the morning mist in shades of grey and bruised purple. The air was cold, damp, and thick with the metallic scent of nervous sweat and oiled steel. From his command post on a low rise, Alexius looked down upon his creation. The First Legion was perfectly concealed behind the freshly dug earthworks and the wicked-looking rows of sharpened stakes that choked the valley's narrowest point. Five thousand men, holding their breath, waiting.
Alexius re-ran simulations, analyzed terrain data, and monitored the readiness reports of each cohort. He felt the immense, crushing weight of the 5,000 lives he was about to wager on a single, brutal war. This was not a game. A loss here meant the end of his reforms, the end of his kingdom, and the end of his life.
General Varrus stood beside him, his gaze fixed on the mouth of the valley. "They are coming, Your Majesty," the old general rumbled, his voice low and grimly satisfied. "Just as the scout reported."
Alexius gave a curt nod, his own eyes scanning the empty space before them. "Good, do exactly as we planned."
An hour later, they arrived. The rebel army spilled into the wider part of the valley, a chaotic and colorful mess of house banners, mercenary company flags, and the stark white-and-black standards of the Church. Their sheer numbers were intimidating, a sprawling host of over ten thousand that seemed to fill the world with the clamor of men and horses.
From a command post on the opposite side, the rebel leaders surveyed Alexius's position.
"Hah!" Marquess Dynan roared with laughter, pointing with a gauntleted finger. "Look at them! The boy is terrified! He digs ditches and hides behind pointed sticks like a common badger! My knights will ride over those pathetic little walls and sweep them from the field before lunchtime!" The report from the "escaped" Lord Aerion, filled with tales of the Royal Army's low morale and fear, had inflated his arrogance to monstrous proportions.
Bishop Valerius de Avarus stroked the iron-bound holy book he carried everywhere, a beatific smile on his face. "It is divine providence," he declared, "The heretics have gathered themselves in a neat little pen, saving us the trouble of hunting them through the hills. Today, the righteous will deliver divine judgment."
Only Sir Gideon, the pragmatic Templar Swordsman, felt a cold knot of dread tighten in his gut. His experienced eyes took in the battlefield with a professional's assessment, and he did not like what he saw.
"Your Excellency," he said, turning to the Bishop, "Forgive my caution, but this terrain is… a trap. A perfect one. The valley narrows into a bottleneck. Our superior numbers will be compressed and rendered meaningless. Their flanks are anchored by those steep, wooded hills. This is not a position they stumbled upon. This was chosen. Prepared. The annihilation of our vanguard was not merely a raid; it was an act of blinding us so we could not see this."
Sir Kael, sneared in his immaculate, shining armor, turned his helmeted head. "Caution is the language of fear, Sir Gideon. Our cause is divine. Our faith is our shield. Ten thousand righteous souls against five thousand wavering mercenaries and mongrels led by a boy. The terrain is irrelevant. The will of the Gods is not."
The Bishop sided with the zealot. "Sir Kael speaks truth. We will not win this battle with timid maneuvering. We will win with a single, overwhelming display of righteous force that will shatter their morale completely. Marquess Dynan, your knights will lead the charge. Break them!" because Bishop agreed with the Sir Kael, he has taken aback, lierally he could not outrightly and stubbornly oppose his superior Bishop of the country, in fact Sir Gideon is merely the Second order of the Holy See knights, and ranked under Sir Kael, the first order.
With a roar, the Marquess gave the order. Horns blared, and the heart of the rebel army—five hundred of Dynan's household knights, the pride of the Eastern Reaches—lowered their lances and began to move.
The earth began to tremble. From the perspective of a young Royal Army pikeman in the front rank, it was the most terrifying sight of his life. A wave of steel and horseflesh, a kaleidoscope of colorful banners and polished armor, thundering towards them with the promise of a swift and brutal death. He gripped his eighteen-foot pike, his knuckles white, the man next to him muttering a desperate prayer. Then came the shout from their sergeant, his voice raw and steady. "Hold the line! Brace!"
The charge was glorious. It was magnificent. And it was a disaster.
They hit the lines of sharpened stakes first. The front ranks of horses, unable to stop in time, impaled themselves with horrific, screaming cries, their riders thrown into the mud and trampled by the men behind them. The perfect, elegant momentum of the charge dissolved into a chaotic pile-up.
And then the sky turned black.
From the wooded hills on both flanks, Alexius's archers rose from their concealed positions. "First volley!" a cohort commander roared. A thousand bows drew and released in near-perfect unison. It was not a scattered shower of arrows; it was a black rain of death, arcing high into the air and plunging down into the compressed, struggling mass of knights.
The effect was devastating. The arrows found gaps in plate armor, pierced the necks of horses, and turned the glorious charge into a slaughtered house. Knights screamed as they were thrown from dying mounts, their honor and bravery are meaningless in front of this brutal massacre.
The survivors, perhaps two hundred of them, finally reached the Royal Army's main line. They were met by an unmoving wall of overlapping shields. They crashed against it, their lances shattering, their swords ringing uselessly against the solid defense. Before they could recover, a second rank of soldiers stepped forward, their short swords flashing as they stabbed at the unprotected underbellies of horses and the vulnerable joints of armor. And behind them, the pikemen lowered their weapons, creating an impenetrable hedge of steel points.
The charge, the pride of the rebellion, died in a brutal, ugly scrum of screaming men and dying animals, trapped in the bottleneck and bleeding out under a relentless hail of arrows.
Shock and disbelief rippled through the rebel command. Marquess Dynan's face went from flushed red to sickly white. "Impossible," he stammered.
"They are just God forsaken men! Push forward!" Bishop Avarus commanded, his serene mask cracking to reveal the furious tyrant beneath. "Send in the infantry! Overwhelm them with numbers!"
The rebel mercenaries and the peasant crusaders were shoved forward, a disorganized, roaring mob forced into the same meat grinder that had just consumed the knights. They slammed into the Royal Army's shield wall, and the true battle began.
It was a brutal, grinding affair. The valley floor became a slick mire of mud and blood. From his command post, Alexius watched with cold detachment, the System feeding him a constant stream of information.
[Cohort 3: Morale dropping to 68% (Yellow). Fatigue: High.] [Enemy Main Body: Discipline crumbling. Casualties: 22% and rising.] [Archers (Flank 1): Ammunition at 75%.]
"Varrus," Alexius ordered calmly. "Reinforce the center with the third company of the reserve cohort. Tell the archers to switch to fire arrows. I want to create panic in their rear ranks."
His army fought like a well-oiled machine. When a man in the front rank fell, another stepped into his place. They moved in disciplined blocks, their sergeants and cohort commanders maintaining order amidst the deafening chaos. In contrast, the rebel army was a frantic mob, their attacks furious but uncoordinated, their dead and wounded piling up before the unyielding shield wall.
For an hour, the battle raged, the Royal Army bending but never breaking. But Bishop Avarus had one last card to play. His face a mask of cold fury at the incompetence of his secular allies, he turned to his true weapons.
"The time for games is over," he hissed. "Sir Kael! Sir Gideon! You will lead the Templars. You will break their line. You will shatter their spirits. Go now, and deliver the Gods' judgment!"
The two hundred Holy Templars advanced. They were an entirely different kind of threat. They moved through the panicked rebel infantry like sharks parting a school of fish. A faint, holy light shimmered around their masterwork plate armor.
They hit the center of the Royal Army's line like a thunderbolt.
This was a battle individual power, not formation. A single Aura-infused sword swing from Sir Kael shattered three shields at once, sending the men behind them flying like broken dolls. Sir Gideon moved with a deadly, efficient grace, his blade a blur that found every gap, every weak point, his own Aura acting as a shield that deflected arrows and spears.
The disciplined line of the First Legion, which had held so firm against thousands, began to tear apart under the focused assault of two hundred Expert-level warriors led by two Swordsmen.
[!!! WARNING !!!] [Center Line Integrity: 42% and falling rapidly.] [Threat Level: CRITICAL. Swordsman-class units causing cascading morale failure in Cohorts 2 & 3.] [Defeat Probability: 65% if breach is not contained within 7 minutes.]
Varrus was roaring orders, sending the last of his reserves—a precious company of Royal Guards—to plug the gap, but it was like trying to patch a collapsing dam with sand.
Alexius watched the red icons flashing across his vision. His plan had worked flawlessly, but a plan is only a framework. He had underestimated the sheer destructive power of two true Swordsmen concentrated on a single point.
This was the moment. The crucible. The point where strategy ended and a king's will began.
He turned to Captain Gregor, who stood beside him, a silent mountain of a man, his hand resting on the hilt of his massive sword. Fifty Royal Guards, his personal retinue, stood ready behind them.
Alexius drew his own sword. The pale blue flame of his untamed Aura roared to life, a beacon of defiant energy in the blood-soaked valley.
"With me," he commanded, his voice ringing with a power that cut through the din of battle. He spurred his warhorse forward, no longer a general watching from a hill, but a king descending into the fray. "Charge!!!!" (Continue…..)