“When the plan is ripe, that is when you pick it like a fruit. Rare to see that happen if the other side has someone who knows what they’re doing in a position of power, though.” - General Publius Cornelius of Caeropa, circa 3 FP.

Reinhardt smirked as he watched the Kolain army fall into disarray under the onslaught of the rolling logs. Given the slope of the hill, it was easy enough to stack up some really big logs by the eastern gate to later push them and let nature take its course. Thanks to their shape, they mostly stayed to the road, too, instead of being diverted to the side, which helped, as he had people hidden in the woods to the sides of the road.

Two days ago, after learning about the network of mining tunnels, Reinhardt had sent out four of his platoons – Elfriede’s, Erycea’s, Nicole’s, and Fatimah’s – out with instructions for them to harass and if possible, lure parts of the enemy army into ambushes. It was a task they seemed to have done well, since late last night he received a report from them that they had taken out over three hundred of the enemies.

While the harassment attacks with javelins and crossbows – something the platoons carried extras of – would not have caused that many casualties, they had successfully lured away three hundred or so enemies into chasing them. The platoons had prepared ambushes for that eventuality, and all the pursuers received was death by their hands once they fell prey to the ambush.

The soldiers from Kolain might have battlefield experience, but they were lacking when it came to experience in dealing with the sort of irregular tactics the Free Lances favored and specialized in. Caught in difficult terrain, ambushed by enemies that not only matched them in numbers but also surpassed them in individual skill, most of them could only perish, with a few laying down their arms to surrender.

As such, the four platoons had slain roughly as many enemies as their own number, on top of acquiring fifty or so captives. Reinhardt gave them another task for the day’s battle, as he himself directed Aldenstadt’s defense with Daleeni’s help. He did not plan to hold a static defense, however, as the city of Aldenstadt was poorly suited for that.

Instead, he first lowered the enemy morale by showering them wildly with arrows – something the locals were more than good enough for, as many of them hunt on the regular – from afar, the archers aiming at predetermined angles that would land their arrows in the general vicinity of certain areas of the path leading towards town. Once they got close enough, he had Salicia’s platoon come out from hiding and let loose with more targeted shots, while also pushing down the logs down the path, towards the marching army.

Then he gave the signal for the assault with his whistle.

Reinhardt himself led his own personal platoon – mostly old veterans of the Company that were still active – of sixty down the path, alongside Daleeni who led around five hundred of the home guard, directly assaulting the frontlines of the Kolain formation. On his signal, the rest of the home guard, four hundred men in total, split into teams of a hundred each, also emerged from their hiding spot in the woods beside the path and struck at the enemy’s flanks.

Grünhildr and Mischka also brought out their platoons from the side to strike at the middle of the Kolain formation, forcefully breaking the enemy formation in half and preventing those in the back from reinforcing those ahead of them. Grünhildr harried the back of the enemies further up the hill with her platoon, while Mischka and her folk set up a solid defense line and prevented those further behind from heading further upwards at the same time.

That was roughly when Reinhardt and Daleeni brought their troops to strike at the now encircled front half of the Kolain formation from above.

As he leapt over one of the large logs – it had lost all its momentum after crushing many people and was temporarily anchored in place by the bodies stuck beneath it – Reinhardt roared loudly, mostly to intimidate the enemy than anything, as he brought his polemace down on a Kolain soldier ahead of him. The enemy soldier tried to block his blow with a shield, only for said shield to shatter into halves, the blow breaking the man’s arm and crushing his head underneath, undeterred.

Not far to his left, Daleeni also led her guards into the fray, the middle-aged woman ferociously swinging around a large battle axe that a human would probably find far too heavy to even wield, much less swing around one-handed like she did. Given that Grünhildr had mentioned that her mother was half orcish and a quarter dwarven, Reinhardt was not surprised though.

He could also tell that Grünhildr must have learned how to use axes from her mother, though unlike her daughter Daleeni had a shield on her other arm.

As for the guards, while they were nowhere near as skilled – they were mostly trained to handle civil troubles like bandits or riots at worst, not for warfare – as his mercenaries, they were people fighting for their homes and families, and as such morale was high. Seeing how Daleeni and Reinhardt personally led the charge, they were further motivated and attacked the already reeling Kolain soldiers fiercely.

Reinhardt also ordered his platoon to split up into teams of five and intersperse themselves with the guards. That way, the experienced mercenaries could help them out should they run into difficulties. Given the chaos that the battle had devolved to, the enemy formation had long been broken, and most of the fighting was on the small scale by that point, something the mercenaries were skilled in abusing.

Of course, that was not all Reinhardt had in mind. The crucial part of his plan was to break the enemy morale – the potential annihilation of half the Kolain army in the encirclement was for that purpose, as was his order for Salicia to snipe out anyone she noticed giving commands – and the final blow was yet to come.

A blow he had entrusted to the four platoons he sent out two days ago.