Section 62: Benissa's First Blood (Part II)

After completing their patrol sweep without finding anything unusual, Amango and his squad prepared to return to the Third Battalion's temporary encampment.

Situated in the northern part of Landia, Banisha connected to the central plains at the confluence of two rivers, with its back to a mountain range. Guarding a crucial thoroughfare, it had long since flourished as the most prosperous trading city in the north, through which all commerce between the south and north had to pass. Merchants could travel by waterway straight to the eastern city-states or even to the Duchy of Peony, or continue further north to reach their destinations.

From the founding of Landia until the collapse of the Tianlun Dynasty, Banisha, much like the regions of Gaul, had been divided among various lords of differing sizes. To safeguard their territories, they had constructed numerous fortresses. Originally built by the nobility to evade beasts and defend against enemies, these fortresses were fully equipped with all necessities—even palaces, chapels, and massive underground storehouses—serving as command centers from which the nobles exerted control over their domains. Peasants bound to the nobles typically built their homes and cultivated the land near these fortresses. In times of war, their lords would permit them to bring their livestock and certain movable properties inside the fortress walls for refuge until the enemy retreated.

These strongholds remained in the hands of the various lords until the fall of the Tianlun Dynasty, with the nobility occasionally holing up within their walls to defy the royal authority. However, following the victory of the Landia Revolution and the administration of Fahrenheit, the nobility were stripped of most of their privileges, making way for the rise of an emerging merchant class. These fortresses were unceremoniously nationalized and converted to purely military uses.

Present-day Banisha developed around the site of one of those original fortresses. While the original castle had been remodeled into the municipal center, thick ramparts had been erected to protect the urban area. Over the decades of subsequent development, the city limits continuously expanded, eventually connecting the various scattered fortresses surrounding the municipal center with a unified ring of walls, within which the urban area continued to spread, forming a massive fortress-city.

What Amango did not know at this moment was that the garrison in Banisha had been reduced to merely their own First Division of the Third Army. Reportedly, the armies of Sekens and Prosi had already appeared within the borders of Taliya; most importantly, the Holy Knights of the Church had also departed from the Great Cathedral and marched toward Taliya. If one added the yet-unseen Rosian Empire to the equation, the First Division's Second Regiment stationed there would face an extraordinarily perilous situation. It came as no surprise that the Church had chosen Taliya as its primary target of invasion, as Taliya's defensive fortifications were inherently inferior to those of Banisha. Following urgent deliberations, the First Division resolved to provide reinforcements. As long as they could assist the First Division in holding out for a certain duration, the Second Army, still trailing behind, and the Second Regiment of the Third Army—currently nearing completion of its formation—would both arrive to reinforce them.

As they walked back, Michael suddenly let out a strange cry and nervously raised his rifle. The flintlock smoothbore muskets currently used by Amango and his comrades were standard issue. While the Third Army was composed of a mixture of numerous recruits and a handful of veterans, these novices felt most comfortable with the flintlock smoothbores they now carried, having trained exclusively with this type of firearm. Naturally, they also knew how to handle matchlocks, but the recruits rarely used hybrid or modified firearms because their training period had been cut short by a third; eager to rush to the battlefield as soon as possible, they had skipped the spell-chanting and mana-meditation training required for those modified guns. This earned them a degree of contempt from the veterans, who were proficient in all three types of weaponry.

"Michael, what is it this time? Do you want us to strip you naked and throw you into the river?" a veteran demanded with great dissatisfaction regarding the recruit's behavior. Michael's repeated bouts of excessive panic along the way had given everyone several false alarms. Although they were on patrol duty, nobody genuinely wanted to run into an enemy ambush.

"N—no, it's not that! I think I heard hoofbeats," Michael stammered.

"Hoofbeats?" The veteran froze, then strained his ears to listen before springing up as if struck by an electric shock. "There really are hoofbeats! The Cardians must be coming! Fall back to the camp immediately and report to Banisha!"

By this time, even Amango could hear the sound of horses' hooves. Dozens of warhorses suddenly burst from both sides of the road. The riders wore rounded felt hats and differed somewhat from conventional knights, wielding heavy-backed, wide-bladed sabers devoid of crossguards. Catching sight of Amango and his comrades, they charged forward rapidly. The sharp-eyed young men noticed that the hooves of these warhorses were wrapped in thick cloth, mutinously dampening the sound and explaining why they had drawn so close before being detected by the nervous Michael.

"Form ranks! Fire!" the company commander of Amango's detachment barked. Under his command, all the men swiftly and compactly formed two front-and-back ranks. Ordinarily, military firing doctrine was accustomed to a three-rank rotation for firing and reloading, but that was typically executed at the battalion level at the very least. Their current detachment was, at most, a third of a battalion; forcing a division into three ranks would drastically diminish their firepower. After all, even with various evolutionary developments, standard muskets still relied on formation density and overlapping fire to guarantee stopping power and accuracy. Sniper-capable magical firearms were so exorbitant to manufacture that equipping everyone with them was utterly impossible; typically, only a single regiment within an entire division was issued such weapons, and each soldier was allocated a mere five enchanted rounds daily. Even the regiment that the revolutionary forces and the beastmen had once joined forces to annihilate had possessed enchanted ammunition for only a single battalion.

Furthermore, only the original First and Second Armies had been equipped with enchanted rounds, and the newly formed Third Army had not yet had time to issue them to any portion of its troops. In other words, the weapons in the hands of Amango and his peers were entirely conventional muskets. The only consolation was that they possessed flintlock weapons, which required no ignition spell-chants and were theoretically the fastest-firing guns currently available.

During military shooting training, to maintain a certain degree of accuracy, Amango's company should have condensed into a single rank for concentrated volley fire to annihilate the enemy's living force at the very first moment. However, they had been forced into two ranks due to the spatial constraints of the road terrain. Consequently, the dispersion of personnel would lead to insufficient firepower, yet fortunately, their training had long prepared them with different tactical responses for varied scenarios.

Michael, positioned in Amango's front rank, nervously crouched down and raised his rifle, while Amango stood and took aim ahead. At the command, a dense volley of gunfire erupted.

The forefront Cardian cavalrymen instantly blossomed with bloodstains across their chests, leaning sideways and plunging—horse, blade, and rider alike—into the brushwood, though their riderless mounts continued charging forward. Amidst the gunfire, one rider after another fell, yet the remaining cavaliers pressed a fierce charge forward as if entirely blind to the deaths of their comrades.

"Damn it!" Amango was startled. The charge speed of these cavalrymen was astonishingly swift, their mounts exceptionally robust, and reloading a musket after firing required precious time.

He forced himself to remain calm, loaded the gunpowder first, drew a lead ball from his waist pouch, retrieved another parcel of grease-soaked linen from the opposite side, rammed them down the barrel with his ramrod, and re-aimed—only to find that the enemy cavalry had already closed the distance like a whirlwind. There was no alternative; to ensure maximum lethality, they had been forced to fire simultaneously, a rare occurrence in training where the standard operational procedure was three-stage firing, with one squad stepping down to reload as the next stepped up to maintain continuous suppression of the enemy.

Another volley rang out. Because the distance had closed so drastically, at least twenty-odd riders fell from their saddles this time—nearly double the previous casualty count. Michael failed to keep pace with the firing rhythm; paralyzed by terror, his reloading was sluggish. By the time he finished, the mass volley had passed him by, and several other recruits suffered the same fate. Otherwise, a few more corpses might have been added to the field.

Yet Amango had no time to lament this, for the company commander's expression had already transformed drastically. This time, however, the order he barked was no longer to fire, but to retreat—even though they had just dealt the enemy a heavy blow.

This was because wave after wave of cavalry continued to emerge from behind, and the distance between them and the following horsemen had closed to a point where reloading was utterly out of the question. In the span of a breath, they had transformed from hunters into the hunted.

Amango hastily obeyed the order. At this juncture, their mission was no longer to annihilate the enemy, but to carry the news of the enemy ambush back to Banisha.

Sporadic gunfire erupted behind them—erratic shots from those who had lagged behind in reloading. However, their suppressive impact was negligible; merely two cavalrymen were struck, and one of them refused to fall from his mount, instead pursuing them with heightened ferocity.

"Don't be afraid! Once we reach the camp, we'll have reinforcements!" the company commander roared at the top of his lungs as he sprinted.

As he ran, Amango suddenly felt a rush of heat across his face, accompanied by a piercing scream close to his ear. Startled to the core, he glanced sideways just in time to see his young companion Michael struck down by a saber blow from a closing horseman, collapsing with wide, terror-stricken eyes.

For a long time afterward, Amango could never shake that scene from his memory. He forever recalled the manner of Michael's fall: a deep, gaping wound cleaved from the crown of his head down to his back, his body twitching as he sprawled upon the dirt, blood mingling with dust, one hand lifting weakly as if beckoning in a faint farewell.

Amango remembered fleeing while weeping. Ordinarily, the next life claimed should have been his; fortunately, several veterans who usually treated Michael and the other recruits with supreme harshness displayed supernatural valor. While sprinting at full tilt, they managed an impossible reload, wheeled about to shoot down the two closest pursuing horsemen, and even seized the riderless mounts on the fly.

For the first time, the young man grasped the cruel reality of war: companions who had been laughing and joking with him mere moments ago could vanish from the world in the blink of an eye.