Section 63: The Prelude to the Battle of Benissa (Part Two)

The Cartier infantry charging directly forward suffered a devastating blow. Sokalis deployed a formation akin to a grand triple-volley system. A standard triple-volley involves one squad firing while another immediately reloads, followed by a third preparing, while the first finishes reloading. The grand triple-volley, however, meant three squads firing simultaneously: one kneeling, one half-kneeling, and one standing. Operating as a three-squad unit, they would fire, step back to reload, while another three-squad unit advanced to fire in the same manner. This required a considerable number of musketeers and was extremely difficult to execute during the earlier matchlock era. The previous matchlocks trailed long, inconvenient fuses, and employing such a synchronized three-volley setup would easily induce chaos. However, the Third Army's musketeer force was now capable of sustaining this level of attack, both in terms of manpower and the modified flintlocks, which drastically reduced the necessary space and facilitated smoother firing.

With the coordination between the pikemen and the musketeers, the Cartier infantry charge incurred catastrophic casualties. Sensing the danger, the nomadic cavalry retreated beyond musketry range, leaving only the archers to offer stubborn retaliation. Although the longbowmen inflicted notable casualties on the Landian side, as their numbers dwindled in this exchange between arrows and flintlocks, the muskets gradually gained the upper hand.

Realizing that the enemy's morale was broken and their strength exhausted, Sokalis ordered the cessation of the triple-volley, shifting the formation into a linear spread. Several regiments of musketeers deployed in a single line along the river plain, marching and firing simultaneously to bring the entire enemy force within range, driving the Cartier troops into a continuous retreat. Due to an abundance of raw recruits, the formation was actually deployed far from ideally, and the gunfire lacked the pristine uniformity described in training manuals. The ragged reports of the volleys made it evident that the shooting was insufficiently synchronized. Nonetheless, having already suffered dearly in the intense engagement, the Cartier forces were harboring thoughts of retreat.

Had nothing unexpected occurred, the battle would have concluded with a victory for the Banisa side. Only the Cartier nomadic cavalry would have managed a clean withdrawal, while the vast majority of the archers and remaining infantry would have been hunted down.

Just at that moment, however, an army emerged from the flank, shattering Sokalis's sweet dream.

This force rapidly cut in from the side, precisely intercepting Sokalis's pursuit. Growing increasingly seasoned through combat, the green recruits angrily turned their fire upon this new arrival. The fierce battle had instilled a powerful confidence in these young soldiers, making them feel invincible against any foe.

Yet, these youths quickly discovered their own arrogance. The reinforcements stabbing into their flank were no mere rabble; one of their vanguard units rushed to the front of the array and raised massive heavy shields.

These individuals were clearly handpicked elites rather than ordinary soldiers. Every last one of them was immensely powerful, wielding long sabers. Their heavy shields were even more exaggerated, standing at least one and a half meters high, with iron spikes cast upon the outer surface. As squad after squad of warriors hoisted their shields, it was as if a mountain of shields had materialized out of thin air. The bullets fired from the flintlocks struck them with crisp, sharp clangs, yet failed to pierce these colossal rectangular shields.

The shield mountain advanced slowly. The shield-bearers exposed only their helmeted brows above the upper rim of the shields while concealing everything else behind them. Armango fired frantically, but to no avail. The shield mountain kept moving forward; unless a musket ball struck precisely in the narrow eye-slits of a helmet or down at the feet beneath the shields, stopping their advance was plainly impossible.

"It's the Shield-bearer Legion of the Ross Empire!" Sokalis cried out in astonishment. The Shield-bearer Legion was an elite force of the Ross Empire, composed primarily of warriors selected and trained with meticulous care. Possessing superhuman strength, they specialized in utilizing a uniquely crafted heavy shield. The shields were constructed by first shaping a wooden frame, filling it with lightweight yet resilient packing materials, covering it with multiple layers of raw hide, and finally encasing both faces with metal plates. Later on, to further counter longbowmen, they experimented with adding spikes to the exterior of the shields so that any incoming arrows striking the spikes would simply deflect and drop.

This military unit had originally been established by the Ross Empire to counter longbowmen. Cartier longbowmen had long been a massive headache for nations like Lott and Ross during border friction, prompting the Ross Empire to leverage the robust physical constitution of its people to carefully drill this Shield-bearer Legion; meanwhile, the Lott Empire began emulating the south to train its own new recruits.

This development was truly startling. Because Prussian and Saxon forces had manifested within Taria, drawing the attention of even the Holy Knights, everyone had assumed that the highest probability was that the Ross Empire would converge there for a joint assault. Consequently, the most elite First Army, First Division, had been hastily dispatched to reinforce that sector.

Yet, who could have anticipated that the Ross Empire's forces would bypass Taria entirely and materialize here in Banisa, rendering timely aid to the retreating Cartier army and using their Shield-bearer Legion to block the musketry?

Sokalis felt a vague sense of unease and decisively ordered a retreat.

Maintaining their formation, the Shield-bearer Legion refrained from an immediate pursuit. The retreating Cartier forces managed to stabilize their footing, and upon the convergence of the two armies, the Cartier commander, Buzureano, expressed his thanks in shame to General Zhukov of the Ross Empire and suggested an immediate pursuit.

However, Zhukov flatly rejected the proposal. "We underestimated the potency of these firearms, and you suffered heavily because of it. Even if we charge now, we cannot prevent them from retreating back into the city; we are simply too close to it. Better to wait for the arrival of the other allied forces and attack together. Landia's First Army should be entirely occupied in Taria, believing we would strike there. By the time they realize their most elite First Army is severed from the heavily fortified city of Banisa, it will be too late. We need only pin down Taria with a single nation's forces, and then gather all our armies to capture Banisa in one stroke. That will be equivalent to smashing open Landia's primary gateway."

Sokalis remained unaware of the enemy's intentions, but the sudden arrival of the Ross Empire's army on the battlefield filled him with profound anxiety. Falling back into the city, he ordered the immediate accommodation of the wounded before conferring with Prestewich. The two men arrived at a sobering conclusion: it was possible they had been mistaken all along. The enemy's primary strategic objective was not Taria, but this heavily fortified Banisa.

Subsequent events increasingly validated Sokalis's hypothesis, for on the following day, the Lott forces arrived as well. Although the armies of Prussia and Saxony had yet to appear, both men were now convinced that those two nations' forces were likewise marching hitherward from the vicinity of Taria, and the prior pressure exerted upon Taria had merely been a feint.

Having reached this conclusion, Sokalis immediately employed a magical crystal communicator—specially issued to every corps-level commander to cope with such crises—to beam an urgent report directly back to Valencia.

Magic crystal communication typically belonged exclusively to mages and high-tier alchemists. However, utilizing his laboratory and assistance from a certain female mage among the constellations, Fahrenheit had managed to mass-produce these devices intended specifically for long-distance communication, deploying them within the military for this war. Nevertheless, this mode of communication consumed vast quantities of wind-attribute or spatial-attribute magic crystals, restricting connections for the time being solely between high-ranking generals and Valencia.