novelAbuy #423 - I was not afraid in Pavia.
#423 - I was not afraid in Pavia.
As Horn had anticipated, the Hotham County and hired low-level knights launched a charge on both flanks.
However, the right-wing legion chose a normal retreating fire tactic because the enemy knights numbered only about a hundred.
The left-wing knights were slightly more numerous, so to prevent the Edict Legion from following the charge and the Holy Gunners from not having time to retreat back to the formation, they chose a front-kneeling and rear-standing firing stance.
Although they were basically reloaded, there was no chance to fire a second volley, so they had to stand up again on both sides of the gun formation, stuff smelling salts into their noses, and laboriously wind the springs.
"Accelerate, accelerate!"
Hearing the terrifying sound of gears grinding, Alman had no sympathy for his warhorse, directly using the spurs on his boots to vigorously prick its belly.
With a pained "neigh," its hooves swept the ground, and the bloodlust in the warhorse's eyes intensified.
Hooves pounded the ground, black smoke and hot wind constantly swept across Alman's visor, pouring into the helmet through the eye slits of his bird-beak helm.
Breathing heavily, Alman's back was slightly bent, his rear colliding with the saddle, and the knight's longsword inlaid with red and blue gems slapped against his thigh.
The bright golden mane danced in the hot wind, and the horse's head nodded slightly, as if even the earth was shaking up and down.
And before them was a slowly moving line of steel, the helmets and armor shining with a dim luster as they rubbed against their clothes.
The lances swayed uniformly from side to side, and the uniform black military uniforms and red belts made this army look less like a cowardly infantry square and more like a moving black wall of ribbons.
Steadfast as iron, seemingly impossible to overcome.
Alman shook his head, throwing the doubt out of his mind, and continued to charge with gritted teeth.
Wielding his lance and standing before this wall, Victor's palms were slightly sweaty.
Not far in front of him, warhorses arranged in a triangular wedge formation surged forward, with the Edict Legion as the vanguard, crashing like a tsunami towards Victor's Black Hat First Legion.
Heavy armored lancers advanced across the vast plains, and on the sides swept by their hooves lay knights writhing and groaning on the ground.
Fragments of shattered weapons and flags were trampled by horseshoes, bouncing on the ground.
The charging knights, like a tidal wave, would have shaken even the famed General Dunjar if he were alive.
And their infantry ranks were only a thin six layers deep. Victor didn't expect to leave all six hundred knights behind, but he had to leave at least two hundred to relieve the pressure on Lefay and Jourdan in the rear.
"Stand firm, stay close!" Victor repeated his order once more, "Anyone who dares to take a step back, I'll shove this lance up his ass!"
"Bang, bang—" The sound of gunfire drowned out half of Victor's voice, followed by the wails of warhorses.
The neighboring First Guards Legion once again launched a volley at the flank of the charging knights, with hundreds of lead bullets flying over and impacting the side of the wedge formation.
Blood splattered, warhorses reared up, and more than twenty knights fell instantly, with more than a dozen warhorses letting out painful howls.
The overturned warhorses stirred up dust, blocking the center of the charge path, and the elite knights in the rear skillfully jumped over them.
As for those who were less skilled, they either reined in their horses to slow down and detour, or were tripped and flew off their backs, breaking their necks.
"Don't stop, don't wait, charge, charge!"
The sharp-eyed Alman saw two horizontal formations moving in the distance, seemingly to support the four legions on the left.
There was no time to wait, they could only charge.
200 Hotham vassal knights, 100 regular knights, and 300 Edict Legion knights charging in front—this was all the main force that Alman could gather in a short time.
A full 600 knights, although seventy or eighty had already fallen behind, they still had more than 500, and most importantly, none of the Edict Legion were missing.
As long as they could charge out of the enemy formation with a certain speed before the enemy's Holy Gun cavalry could react, they wouldn't be considered completely defeated.
"Release the arrows!" Alman shouted, stuffing the last bottle of potion into his mouth.
The sound of bowstrings being drawn came from behind, released by the lightly armored attendant knights, and hundreds of arrows rained down from the sky, striking the war monks who were bracing their guns.
"Don't move, raise your lances."
"Look ahead, remember your position!"
"Bastard, hold your gun steady, do you want to desert?"
Eighty meters, fifty meters, thirty meters...
As the Edict Knights' ferocious bird-beak helms drew closer, the war monks became increasingly silent.
Without the Holy Wind cover of the Holy Gunners, were they afraid?
They had excellent armor, sharp lances, higher-level breathing techniques, and more proficient supernatural martial arts.
Compared to their civilian days, they now possessed a steadfast heart.
They had never been afraid when they only had cloth armor in Pavia, let alone now?
The whistling wind fell before the galloping hooves, and the knights could clearly see the peasants, and they were also seeing for the first time peasants stubbornly raising their heads beneath the hooves of horses.
"Leia! Leia! Leia!" Shouting the name of their country three times, more than five hundred Edict Knights took the lead and charged into the Black Hat First Legion's horizontal formation.
"Holy Lord be with us!" Three rows of lances densely packed thrust towards the Edict Knights, "You freeloading pigs!"
Armor rubbed against lances, scattering countless sparks, twisting into bent or even spiral shapes.
The wooden shafts of the lances burst one after another, and the ten or so war monks in the front row were knocked off their feet, tumbling several times in the air before landing.
Glaives swung, axe-pikes cleaved, and these Edict Knights once again encountered what they had faced in the Battle of Windmill Land, facing Dunjar's formation.
Viewed from above, the original long line of the Gallaar horizontal formation was instantly bent backward by the knights.
But it was like a strip of cloth about to be pierced, already approaching the breaking point.
Exploding wood chips littered the ground, and Alman seemed to be sailing through the ocean of lances and halberds.
Lances and halberds reaching out from all around brushed against his armor, and messy daggers, stones, and even sticky unknown objects struck him.
But this could not stop him from continuing to charge. Downing the fourth bottle of potion, exceeding the limit, Alman's face turned the same purple as the hired knights.
Similarly, his figure swelled several times, and the lance and longsword waved back and forth, sending war monks flying one by one.
Roars and the sound of weapons scraping against armor continued to ring out, but Alman was, after all, a titled knight.
He skillfully and easily avoided all the weapons that were being swung at him, trying to let the weapons land on non-vital areas, and the longsword danced in his hand, heads falling with each raise and fall of his hand.
In ten seconds, Alman had cut through this legion.
Six rows of thin formations were simply a piece of cake for a transcendent knight.
The Edict Legion seemed to be the last straw, tearing apart the tough strip of Gallaar horizontal formation, breaking it in the middle.
From this breach, the remaining knights surged out, widening the wound, almost splitting the horizontal formation in two.
In the past, Alman would definitely have charged again to completely crush this 500-man company, but he couldn't do that now.
"How many of us are left?"
"About 400 are left, the vassal knights are basically all lost, and about ten of our Edict Knights have been lost."
Although Alman had broken through, nearly a hundred knights were still blocked in the battle formation, their charge distance was originally short, and they were severely hit on the flank by the Holy Gunners.
Some who were not skilled enough on horseback simply couldn't pick up speed, and with the obstruction of these armored transcendent infantry, they were trapped in the military formation.
And in the midst of lances and halberds crossing, the Holy Gunners slipped into the horizontal formation.
The Holy Gunners occasionally fired, and then one could see a knight covering his waist and abdomen in pain, or suddenly straightening his back, followed by seven or eight lances and three or five axe-pikes stabbing into him.
The knights were letting out battle roars that resembled wails, and blood gurgled from the wounds. They covered their wounds, waved their longswords with one hand, staggering, with weapons stabbing from all directions.
This reminded them of the game they once loved to play—surrounding a civilian and then, according to the rule that civilians were not allowed to speak with their backs to knights, shouting 'civilian' and stabbing him until he bled to death.
But now, when they were trapped in this circle, they felt that desperate helplessness.
The knights trapped in the formation stared eagerly at Alman, their only hope.
Looking back at those knights who had been dragged off their horses and surrounded on the ground, the adjutant couldn't help but ask, "Do we need to turn back to rescue them?"
Alman hesitated, he looked at Mizaram, who was trembling on horseback, and looked at the moving line of soldiers in the distance, and finally shouted in frustration.
"Ah—"
Startled by the shout, the adjutant asked in a low voice, "Your Excellency?"
"Don't save them, pick up the speed, continue the charge!" Alman said through gritted teeth, looking at the line of soldiers that was only one layer thick in front of him.