The Storm King

Chapter 423: Softly Striking the Anvil

The unit of Octavius’ army that had turned to face Leon had been broken. Leon and the giants had cracked it open, and then the rest of the knights and their followers smashed it to pieces, routing thousands of men and women who fought for Octavius.

This success then cascaded into the rest of the army, which had been preoccupied with combating August’s main force and could no longer handle Leon’s flanking action. Duke Duronius’ left flank crumbled under Leon and August’s combined pressure.

For Leon, it was quite gratifying to finally cut through Octavius’ people to reach August’s army. It might’ve been difficult under normal circumstances to differentiate the two, but the eastern forces had a tendency to wield blunt weapons, in contrast with those of the other territories, who favored swords and polearms. Once Leon saw axes, maces, and hammers in the hands of those in front of him instead of swords and spears, he knew that he had successfully completed his task.

“Sir Leon!” shouted a booming voice, attracting Leon’s attention. He looked in the direction it had come from and saw Marquis Aeneas striding towards him, a number of other knights at his side. Notably, none of them were mounted.

“Lord Aeneas!” Leon replied in greeting, his voice quite a bit lighter and happier than the Marquis’, who was as serious and dour as he always was when dealing with Leon.

“Get your people organized! We’re pushing east!” Aeneas shouted as he pointed eastward with his mace, which Leon noticed was covered in blood and bits of gore—the Marquis clearly wasn’t the sort of stay back in the rear as most commanders would.

Leon couldn’t help but feel some small bit of respect start to well up within him for the Marquis. He doubted they’d ever be friends, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that Aeneas was willing to get his hands dirty.

He set those thoughts aside for now and got back to work. And a lot of work it was, taking nearly half an hour for the entire line to be reformed with Leon’s unit back at the extreme right. Fortunately, he didn’t have to deal with insubordination this time around, but since August’s army of nobles was made up of dozens of disparate units, it was still a monumental effort to get reorganized.

Once they were ready, though, they moved quickly, swinging back around eastward like a large hook. They had driven off the forces sent by Duke Duronius to hold them back, so it was time to try and catch the main body of his army between themselves and Roland’s Legions.

“This isn’t going to go so well,” Valeria quietly said as they rode along. She spoke quietly enough that only Alix and Leon could easily hear her, she didn’t want the others behind them to get demoralized.

“Why do you say that?” Alix inquired.

“They had a large unit waiting for us in place, and when we drove them off and appeared behind the forces engaging Marquis Aeneas, they reacted quickly, splitting off another group to try and hold us back. That would suggest that they knew what our plans were and had contingencies. I don’t think they were simply reacting in the moment, they had prepared themselves for that eventuality.”

“Prepared or not, they still lost,” Alix pointed out.

“They have the numbers that they don’t have to win every time,” Valeria countered. “There’s still the possibility that they have something waiting for us when we move to reinforce Sir Roland.”

Adding his thoughts, Leon said, “I agree that that’s likely, but we can hardly turn back now; neither do we have the time to send out scouts. Roland and Duronius are still fighting, as are a few other units on Prince August’s left flank. If we wait, they may be overrun. It’s best to move now, while we have the momentum and before their routed units have a chance to regroup and counter-attack.”

Valeria nodded and replied, “I wasn’t saying that we should wait, only that we should keep our eyes open and be cautious.”

“We’ll do so, it’s not like we’re running off with half-strung bows and our pants around our ankles,” Leon said. Indeed, their marching speed was relatively slow to accommodate for the weakest members of the army—being an army primarily composed of nobles, the weakest and slowest members were levied peasants that were barely even first-tier.

Valeria glanced at Leon a bit skeptically, but she let the topic go for now. For his part, Leon couldn’t blame her for being worried, he wasn’t so sure about what was going to happen himself. They’d done well so far, but that didn’t mean that they were going to win the battle. Their successes had put them into a good position, they just had to properly capitalize on their gains.

It seemed that Aeneas shared his views, for he kept the army moving once they finally managed to get organized and moving again. Being on the edge of the right flank, Leon and his unit didn’t see much more combat for a little while. Those further left ran into the enemy before Leon’s group did, but his unit had much farther to go—a couple of miles, in fact—in order to finally hit Duronius’ army in the back and crush them between themselves and Roland’s Legions.

They advanced as quickly as they could, and as they moved, Leon started hearing something strange—rather, it was what he wasn’t hearing that struck him as strange. The sounds of battle seemed to be lessening somewhat.

“Something’s going on…” he whispered half to himself and half to Alix and Valeria.

“What is it?” Alix asked as Valeria tensed up and readied her glaive for battle as if she expected Octavian knights to come pouring out of a hidden pit in the fields or something.

“It’s… we’re getting closer, but the sounds of fighting seem to be dying out…” Leon explained. His eyes darted around, but they couldn’t see far due to the rolling hills and occasional clumps of trees and bushes. He projected his magic senses in an attempt to see as far as he could—he had been training as much as he was able in these past months, and the results were that he could see a little over three miles away with his magic senses.

He directed the pulse of magic power directly in front of him, keeping it focused. Three miles was quite the distance to see, but even that was only just enough for Leon to locate a few of the reserve units held in the back of Duronius’ formations, while the front lines and Roland’s Legions were still beyond his senses.

But even just seeing the reserve troops was enough for Leon to get a good idea of what was going on. To his eyes, it seemed like they were getting ready to march, not towards the front.

“… I think they’re getting ready to retreat…” Leon said in disbelief.

“They’re… running…?” Alix asked, her tone just as disbelieving as Leon’s.

“That’s what it looks like…” Leon said.

“That… makes some degree of sense…” Valeria stated. “If they’re in a bad position, then it might just be best to retreat and save what you can then continue on and take casualties trying to pull off a win. They haven’t won so far, so why take the chance?”

“Good point,” Leon responded. “Were I in their position, I’d probably withdraw, too. Better that than get caught in this flanking maneuver.”

The three started to relax a bit as they marched. Leon kept a close eye on those Octavian units he could see, but everything seemed to indicate that his initial judgment was correct, they were getting ready to retreat. It was almost too good to be true and didn’t even feel real until messengers came running in from Aeneas and August informing him that Duronius’ Legions were in the process of breaking away from Roland’s Legions.

It seemed that Leon and his unit had seen the end of combat for the day, for they were not going to arrive in time to stop Duronius’ retreat. They could’ve pursued, but August’s message had come with explicit instructions to link back up with the Legions and to under no circumstances pursue.

Leon didn’t like that. It either meant that August was stupidly letting the opportunity to crush this army slip through his fingers, or, more likely, the main battle between the Legions hadn’t gone so well and it was more beneficial to halt and regroup than to pursue their retreating enemy. Either way, the eastern Legions weren’t going to pursue, and without the support of those Legions, if the noble armies tried to chase the southern Legions, then they’d likely be drawn into a trap and possibly destroyed. The southern Legions hadn’t been broken, after all, and were retreating in an orderly manner.

Leon began to relay August’s message, and the line mostly began to slow down. Perhaps this was to give the troops a bit of a break, perhaps it was to allow those Octavian troops still between them to safely retreat, or perhaps everyone was just relaxing a bit too much. No matter the reason, as the ‘hammer’ of their plan, Leon felt a few twinges of regret in his heart as the armies of Duronius and Octavius slipped out before his hammer could strike the anvil of Roland’s Legions, crushing those retreating troops between them.

And so, as the last remnants of the southern Legions and the Octavian nobles disappeared into the distant forests of the Southern Territories, Leon’s unit finally came within eyesight of Roland’s Legions. They had mostly taken a shallow ridge, which forced Duronius’ Legions to charge uphill—or that had been the intent, the soft, grassy ridge had been torn asunder by magics of all sort. Enormous portions of the grass had been burned away and the ridge was covered in craters. Pillars and spikes of stone and ice dotted the ridge as well, along with deep gouges in the earth that suggested a few wind and water blades had missed their marks.

Still, the Legions standing atop seemed quite happy to see Leon’s troops, and they began to cheer as the noble armies closed the distance between them, their identifying banners blowing behind them. Not even the presence of stone giants seemed to dampen their excitement, which Leon found interesting since the eastern Legions had more cause than most to fear and hate the rocky beings.

The nobles and their followers walked up the ridge, and once they had reached the top, many of the Legion soldiers embraced the knights or clasped their wrists in greeting. It had been a long day of fighting, being about three or four in the afternoon, and much of the fighting had gotten started in the morning. These men and women were glad to see their comrades, and perhaps even gladder to have won the day.

And won the day they had. To get up the ridge, Leon and the rest had to climb over so many corpses that they had practically doubled the size of the ridge. Thousands of people had died this day, and Leon could understand the relief that the rank-and-file soldiers felt at finally seeing the day coming to a close, especially with them as the victors.

“Sir Leon!” cried the familiar voice of Roland from somewhere behind the Legion battalions. Leon briefly wondered just how it was that people like Roland and Aeneas were able to find him so easily, but a quick glance to Lapis and the rest of the giants made it obvious.

“Sir Roland!” Leon shouted back as the Legion soldiers between the two parted so they could meet.

“It’s good to see you!” Roland said as Leon rode Anzu forward. Alix, Valeria, and the giants began to follow, forcing the rest of the soldiers to make way even more, but Leon noted that aside from a few muttered curses, no one made such a thing difficult. Everyone just seemed too tired to care right now, regardless of their personal feelings about giants.

“I take it we’ve won?” Leon asked.

“That we have,” Roland replied, though his expression indicated to Leon that the victory had come at great cost—Roland seemed to have taken a commander’s role rather than that of a frontline soldier, so he wasn’t wearing a helmet. “I suppose you should come with me right now. The rest of the general staff will meet in an hour or so once we can properly regroup, but I think August will want to see you beforehand.”

Leon raised an eyebrow in confusion, but when he remembered that Roland probably couldn’t see that through his helmet, he added a confused, “Huh?”

“Oh, it’s nothing bad, I can assure you, but he was a bit concerned about how the giants would fare.”

“… I see…” Leon said. He then turned to Valeria and said, “Make sure the rest of our unit remains organized.” When Valeria gave him an inquisitive look, he followed up by saying, “You’re my second-in-command. Time to do some second-in-command things.”

A slight smile slowly spread across her face. She then confidently nodded and rode away, leaving Leon, Alix, and the giants to follow Roland.