Chapter 70

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

City of Rebirth, Outer Defensive Line.

"Well, here they come." Softly said Pyn as the mercenaries began marching towards them.

Allya chuckled.

"Nooo, you think, what gave you the idea? The drums, the trumpets, or was it the dramatic speech their commander has been giving about 'glorious victory' and 'limitless riches' for the past, oh, thirty or so minutes?"

Everyone in the fortified observation post laughed out loud at that.

"Fair enough, fair enough." Said the elf looking at her girlfriend, before focusing back on the advancing mercenaries. "Well, I suppose it's time to go then?"

"Yep. Sorry boys, we can't stay here. You know how we are, too greedy to stay here and pepper them from a distance, we have to go steal more kills at the frontline!"

This time it elected a roar of laughter from their troops, as well as a few calls to keep some alive for them, and Allya laughed back as she left, Pyn and their small squad of bodyguards in tow. This time everyone was here, all three of their original bodyguards as well as the knight reinforcements, which made for a surprisingly deadly group...or at least so Allya fervently hoped.

They carefully made their way down the mesa, and walked towards the redoubt that marked their main defensive position.

Normally, as the overall commander and lady of the area, she should have been in a fortified command post towards the rear, but not today. Today, they needed her there. There for their carefully calculated plan to work.

Anders hadn't been happy about it, but he'd agreed it was the best course of action.

As without the knights, their 'central' redoubt was manned by Willard and Anders' men, who were no match for the mercenaries, in every metric. And that meant that they might fall back before the right moment.

Allya was there to prevent that. Her presence should help steady their men and get them to hold the line until the time was right. It would also garner the mercenaries' attention, and focus it there. They'd even be deploying the kingdom's standard to make it extra clear.

Hopefully tales of what she'd done during the incursions by the republic's little black ops group would have made it to these mercenaries, and they'd assume this was just her usual recklessness...and not a trap. For once they were deep inside the gorges made by the maze of mesas, Philia's knights would strike.

They just had to hold on until the hammer came to crush their enemies against their anvil.

*****

Aline, aide de camp to Gothram, the scarlet swords' commanders, hid her disquiet as she walked in lockstep with her CO. They probably wouldn't mind, it was after all her first proper battle with them at her side, but it might start questions she really didn't want asked.

Like why she'd constantly advocated for them to wait, fortify and plan just a bit more before launching their assault. She'd been careful to phrase it as simply prudence in the face of a foe that had already bested attacks from much more experienced, if much smaller, units, but some might see it at exactly what it was: a delaying tactic.

For as she was Aline, she was also agent Serabor, of the Order to Restore Humanity, and her mission differed quite a bit from her mercenary commander's....which he had thrown into complete chaos with his early arrival, and unfortunate delays from her fellow agents.

Come on, you're not newbies. Get your ass moving, there's only so much I can do here to buy you time! She fervently thought, before focusing back on the present as the formation came to a sudden halt, and the battle lines began to form.

"Well, here we go." Said Gothram as he put on his helmet, before looking to his side. "Are you ready for this Aline?"

Aline put on her own helmet, and nodded.

"Yes sir!"

Gothram slowly nodded.

"Good." He looked to his other side, at his second in command. "Sia?"

"All of our men are ready and eager sir!" She smiled, her wrinkles becoming even more accentuated. "So am I. It has been too long since my blade has tasted blood!"

Gothram nodded as well, and Aline suppressed a swallow. She'd seen some seriously dangerous individuals in her service to the Order, but even then Sia was probably in the five best swordsman she'd met...ever. Then again, it was mostly because the upper echelon of the Order didn't bother with such things as swords, not when they had access to relics of the Old World that made such things...less important, if not outright obsolete.

"Very well then." He looked behind him as the battle lines finished drawing up. "In that case..." He raised his sword, holding it up for a few seconds as everyone held their breaths...then pointed it at the redoubt in front of them. "CHARGE!"

A great cry, somewhere between a roar and a scream of rage, rose from his troops, and the lines charged forward.

*****

"Wait for it...wait for it..." Said Anders as he carefully looked into the range finder Calder had so helpfully loaned them. "OPEN FIRE!"

Over a hundred crossbowman opened fire as one, and a veritable wave of death crashed down upon the first ranks of the charging mercenaries. A more scattered rain of projectiles followed, with the handful of archers and musketeers Rebirth possessed firing as fast as they could reload.

Men and women screamed as bullets pierced through them, and arrows and crossbow bolts skewered them. But still, they came on. Oh, some fell, their comrades parting to avoid smashing them into a pulp, but most continued on. After all, with their shields raised, only a few of the more powerful or lucky projectiles could get to them, and even those who were struck sometimes just shrugged it off.

Such was the power of armies of soldiers enhanced by essence.

A second volley came loose, and again mercenaries fell. This time more simply collapsed, as the distance closed, then..

"FIRE AT WILL!" Ordered Anders, and a constant stream of projectiles began. So far they had been holding off on that, having every crossbowman fire in volleys to attempt to break the charge, having trained them to fire at preset distances for maximum accuracy, and having Anders call the volleys thanks to his rangefinder, which avoided having to use the old trick of placing special landmarks or staffs into the ground to mark the range to the enemy.

More mercenaries began to fall. Then, they were almost there, bellowing a war cry as they raised their weapons in anticipation for the clash, preparing to leap over the stakes filled trench in front of the redbout, and-

"THROW!"

The first line of infantry surged over the redoubt, and threw their javelins. Most of them were just that, unenchanted sticks with iron tips, but at such a short range, and so unexpectedly, they accomplished their desired effect nonetheless. The charge broke, some mercenaries staggering back, or hesitating and falling behind their comrades, while others charged on, leaping over the stakes or outright jumping into the trench and scrambling up the slope, their armor easily shrugging off the simple stakes. Instead of a single, coherent wave to carry them over the redoubt, the scattered charge broke upon the defenders' spears. Then, the wavering ones rallied as their sergeants and officers belowed, and everything devolved into the chaos of close quarters combat.

*****

Allya dodged backward, and prepared to strike, only to reflexively close her eyes as the mercenary's face exploded, and blood and brain matter splattered on her face as she felt the rush of essence, although it was vastly diluted thanks to the number of people around. It was still much more noticeable than the near constant bursts from the main battle as people fell left and right, but at least it wasn't as distracting as it would have been if she had been the only one there, or Gods forbid directly in the melee!

"Argh! I hate that!" She said as she wiped her face clean of her enemy's remains.

"Better than him skewering you." Answered Éclair as she calmly reloaded her gunblade. There was no need to technically, it had an internal magazine after all, but the mercenary was the last one to have managed to overwhelm the line from the initial charge, and make a beeline for the kingdom's standard.

Fortunately Allya's bodyguards were as deadly as she'd hoped, and the mercenaries' cooling bodies were the only trace that remained of their ephemeral breakthrough.

"I suppose that's true enough." Allya looked to the side at Pyn, and shook her head at her girlfriend.

The elf hadn't even bulged as the mercenaries had come screaming at them. The baroness rather doubted she'd missed it, but clearly she'd trusted their bodyguards to handle it, and continued firing into the general melee, alongside whatever ranged troops they had left.

Unfortunately the mercenaries' own ranged soldiers had gotten into position, at a more sedate pace than their more melee focused comrades, and they were now peppering them with return fire. Already Pyn's ward had deflected three arrows meant for her, and Allya constantly worried that the next one would collapse it. Of course she'd ordered her bodyguard to tackle the elf down when that happened, although the order had been probably superfluous.

"They're pushing us hard, but we're holding. For now at least." Said Anders as arrived next to Allya.

The baroness gave him a glance, before freezing and looking at him again.

"Damn it Anders, you're hit!"

"I'll be fine." The captain shrugged as he continued pressing onto his abdomen. "Got a healing potion in me. Give it a minute and I'll be right as rain."

"Right..." Allya knew enough about healing potions that they never could fully regenerate an injury, but let it slide. After all, he had probably seen worse. "We're doing surprisingly well, all things considered."

"That's mainly because they've kept a third of their men back." Anders winced. "And that their siege weapons take a while to move."

Allya nodded, as she looked back towards the enemy's rear lines. She could see in the distance the work teams grunting as they pushed their siege machines forward. They could have gotten them in range earlier, but clearly they'd feared some sort of concentrated magic barrage, or some form of hidden artillery emplacement to open fire on them. That and they'd needed to be initially deployed under the defensive umbrella of their camp, to allow their troops to leapfrog forward with fear of an air attack from the ships.

Much more worrying however was the group of robed mercenaries accompanying the siege machines. Mages, an entire formation of them. Allya had her own magic unit of course, but they were far less numerous...and none of them were trained in war spells.

She'd seen such spells in action. Spells made to be collectively casted by dozens, hundreds of mages at once. Spells that could annihilate entire platoons in a single attack.

Fortunately for now they were observing the same military doctrine as she was. Let the more regular forces duke it out, and pull out the big spells only when advantageous. They were, after all, each side's biggest trump card, kept in reserve to deal with any surprises, as cultivating mana on the battlefield, especially from a mana stone, was effectively suicidal. A single break in concentration could be catastrophic, and even lethal. The big question would be if they would consider the outflanking knights a big enough threat to use their magic.

"Well, it's their funeral. If they think-"

"LOOK OUT!"

Allya was halfway to turning around when Éclair tackled her to the ground...and a spear passed exactly where her head had been a second ago. He bodyguard came back up in an instant, and so did Allya, catching a glimpse of a group of mercenaries finishing their arc, and landing right in front of her and her bodyguards.

All of them wore identical, glowing bracelets, and Allya hissed. Bracelets of leap, no doubt, optimized for distance rather than speed, to enable them to, well, leap over the frontlines. Probably a special unit held in reserve until her men were bogged down to try and assassinate her.

Thee one of the mercenaries, obviously the leader of the unit, stepped forward...and collapsed, a surprised expression on his face as his ward of protection flickered, and completely failed to stop Pyn's arrow from piercing his brain.

That broke the spell, and both sides surged forward. Allya ducked under the sword swing of her first opponent, and barely had the time to slash ineffectually at his heavily armored torso before Rogard rammed him, and catapulted him into the rest of his comrades.

"Stay behind us milady!" He yelled out, before grunting as another of the mercenaries engaged him.

Yeah, easy enough to say, thought Allya as she looked around. It was complete pandemonium, she could see Éclair holding off three different opponents with her tesla field, somehow still fighting even with the taxing concentration the spell required, while Valker and her knight bodyguard held back the main force, Pyn hiding behind them.

And Anders...Anders didn't seem to need her help. Her wasn't fighting his enemies, their bodies were just flying away from him. In pieces. That man wasn't a soldier, he was a fucking blender.

Then one of her knight collapsed in a strangled scream, as a weighted staff crushed his throat, and a mercenary broke through the line, and this time there was no bodyguard that wasn't engaged to intercept him.

Allya carefully adjusted her grip on her daggers. Looked like it was time for her to get a more...hands on approach to the battle.